Into a Different World
Thirty minutes later, the van deposited me in front of a tall, imposing building, my bag at my heels. The driver shouted at a young man in a blue uniform standing erect outside the glass doors. My gaze followed the building up to the sky. Two brown towers, like giant chopsticks, pressed down on me. They looked like separate buildings but were connected in the middle by a tunnel, like a bridge across a river.
The Kaya Hotel was the one of the biggest hotels in Pyongyang. Foreign guests stayed there during the 1989 festival. The building was visible from Rungra Island, where I had stayed with other dancers during the festival, but I had never seen it up close.
I gasped in amazement. Is this where I’m supposed to be?
The young uniformed man stepped into my line of sight, and I knew I had to follow him. When I turned around, the van had already disappeared.
Inside, the vast interior of the lobby spread out before me. Everyone seemed to be staring at me. I kept my head down and chased after the uniformed man. Turning left off the main hall, we arrived at an open door, and he gestured for me to go in.
Stepping inside, I found myself in an auditorium, on the shining, hard, wooden stage. Glancing around the interior, my eyes were drawn to two women, who stopped talking and looked at me.
“Come here,” the younger woman commanded me, her high-pitched voice reverberating through the room. “You’ll share a room with Aunt Ann. She’ll show you around.” With her chin she pointed to the woman at her side. She continued, speaking quickly, “You’ll be on standby for our dancing group—I’ve heard a lot about you from Teacher Song. I’ll introduce you to the other dancers when they arrive tomorrow morning. You can’t participate in the performances yet—you’re the youngest and a novice. I wasn’t expecting you, actually, I just got the call from Teacher Song. Learn a lot from the other dancers and you can assist them for the time being.”
Everything about this commanding woman was simple. Her bobbed hair, hanging like a curtain above her shoulders, was pitch-black and glossy. Her black skirt and jacket looked worn-out compared to her shiny hair. As she spoke, she flipped her hair behind her right ear. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were positioned appropriately on her face, and everything was the correct size. Her hands, however, were disproportionately large; they were too big and sturdy-looking.
“Aunt Ann, take her to your room and instruct her as we just discussed,” the woman said, turning to the older woman beside her, who appeared to be in her 50s. Aunt Ann looked up at us, nodding her head.
The commanding woman glanced impetuously at her wristwatch and grabbed her hefty gray bag. The tendons on the back of her hand jumped out. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Be back here at eight A.M. See you then.”
As she spun around to leave, she stumbled, and my hands reached toward her involuntarily to prevent her from falling. She straightened suddenly, turned back to me, and said, “Oh, call me Director Park. Make yourself at home. Teacher Song was also my teacher.” She slipped through the door. Her exit was as sudden as her introduction.
After she left, I had a chance to look around the auditorium. The stage was medium-sized, a little bigger than the one at the orphanage. But the auditorium was beautiful and clean, with about a hundred deep-red seats. They looked comfortable. A thick curtain of red velvet hung at the back of the stage.
“This is the small stage. There’s a much bigger one downstairs, but they don’t open it very often; most of the time the dancers practice here.” I turned and found Aunt Ann standing behind me, wearing a round khaki hat and a simple uniform. Covered in ivory cotton work gloves, her hands looked bigger than the rest of her body. Her halfmoon eyes disappeared when she smiled.
“This building is huge,” I said, glancing around the theater.
She took off her gloves. “And you’ve only seen a tiny part of it. Let’s go. I’ll take you to our room. We will be roommates from today on.” She looked down at my backpack, next to my feet, and grinned. “Compared to this place, our room is tiny. If that backpack is all you brought, that’s just fine.” She stuffed her gloves in the small pocket of her jacket.
I followed Aunt Ann through the lobby, and at length into the hotel’s cafeteria. Six shimmering chandeliers dangled from the ivory ceiling. A fragrant aroma pierced the air, and I wondered what food they were cooking; it was different from the aroma of regular food. I looked around, but there were no dishes on the tables.
“What is this smell, Aunt Ann? It’s incredibly good.”
“Yes, right. The smell is—it’s not the food. It’s the tea the foreigners drink every day, instead of water. You’re right, the aroma is good, but the taste is so bad…so bitter. It’s like tea from hell.” She moved as close as possible to me and said under her breath, “I stole a taste once when I had to clean up the tables. I was nervous other people might see, so I poured the rest of a cup into my mouth. Blech—I rushed to the restroom and rinsed out my mouth over and over.”
I couldn’t believe that such a sweet smell came with a bitter flavor.
When we passed through the kitchen, people wearing white from top to bottom stopped their chores. “Hey, Ann, is she the new girl?” they asked. I bobbed my head toward them. They chuckled and said, “You’re lucky to have such a nice old roommate.”
Aunt Ann put her hands on her waist and shouted at them, “Who says I’m old? I’m young enough to be her friend.”
People laughed. “Oh, well, if you say so…” They all seemed so pleasant.
Continuing down a long hall, we reached our room. Aunt Ann opened the door. At first sight, the room looked about the same size as a toilet. I couldn’t help comparing it to my previous room, which I had shared with nineteen girls.
Aunt Ann had everything organized so well. “You can put your things on the right side,” she said. “Fortunately, I don’t own a lot, either.”
Two jackets, a skirt, a pair of pants, and several perfectly ironed shirts hung evenly on the wall. Her things looked simple. On the windowsill, there was an old radio, with a long antenna sticking up from the side. Through the window I could see the Taedong River in the distance; the room had a good view of Pyongyang. In one corner, two books and a little, transparent, chipped cup sat atop a miniature tea table.
“Do you live here?” I asked, putting my backpack down where Aunt Ann indicated. I thought she must have a separate house in the city where she could go to see her family.
“This building has been my home since I lost my whole family five years ago.” She took off her hat, revealing a head of long, shocking white hair, tied neatly with a black string. Her unwrinkled skin didn’t match her hair at all.
“What happened?” The question came out unexpectedly, and I realized immediately I shouldn’t have asked it. Feeling ill at ease, I studied her face.
“There was a fire in a factory five years ago. My husband and son worked there together, but one day, they didn’t come home for dinner. I waited and waited for them. After a while, I heard from my neighbors about the accident. So…that’s the story,” she said, folding her hat and gloves neatly and placing them on the tea table.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” I was embarrassed to have drawn out such a sad story.
“It’s okay. It’s history. My sadness has dried out, and I’m sure they must have better lives in the other world. They’re always happy in my dreams. They never cry… Never say they miss me… I decided not to drive myself crazy thinking about them.” She smiled widely at me. “I never expected such a young girl for a roommate. Are you twenty yet?”