“I’m eighteen.”
“I can’t even remember being that age. What was I like back then, I wonder. Was I pretty like you?” She seemed transported for the briefest moment, and then came back to me. “You’re lucky to be here—everyone at the hotel is nice.”
I looked at her and said with a grin, “Yes, I think you’re right.”
I thought about Teacher Song. How considerate she was! She must have toiled hard to send me to such a good place.
From the next day forward, I was one of the busiest people in the hotel. In the early morning, before the dancers and singers came to the practice room, I had to clean it up. They were professional dancers and singers for guests at the hotel, and they practiced every day to stay on top of the game. They were carefully selected to work at the hotel and justifiably proud of their status. In addition to performing traditional drum and fan dances wearing hanbok and revolutionary dances wearing military uniforms, they could all play at least two musical instruments, and they were talented singers as well.
Running errands for Director Park and helping with Aunt Ann’s chores were also my duties. As soon as Director Park introduced me to the other dancers, I had to learn how to assist them and to find out where their things belonged, like cosmetics and costumes.
There were 50 in the group, the most fashionable women I had ever seen. They even played the male roles in the dances and operas, so their vocal ranges were impressively wide. I was excited to meet real, professional dancers. Every morning, they practiced how to smile and gesture. I never thought a day could be so short.
One day, Director Park beckoned me over as I was gazing enviously at the dancers practicing on-stage. “Jia, come here.”
I rushed to her. “Yes, Director Park?” Although she looked frail and girlish, she was severe, make no mistake, and she didn’t tolerate laziness in her dancers. Sometimes I couldn’t help smiling, because her teaching style and hard facial expressions reminded me so much of Teacher Song.
“Jia, this woman will teach you to dance from now on. Call her Teacher Son.” A young woman was walking toward us—Sunyoung, one of the best dancers at the hotel. She always wore a bright smile.
Sunyoung’s high, sonorous voice echoed through the practice room. “See, Teacher, look at her long legs and arms, they’ll help her make much prettier gestures than anyone else here.” She stood next to me and said with a low voice, so Director Park couldn’t hear, “If you don’t mind, just call me Sister; I’m hardly old enough to be called a teacher.”
Sunyoung’s face attracted attention. The first time I saw her among the dancing team members, I felt she must be from another country. She was the tallest of the group, and her nose started prominently from her forehead, while her thick, folded eyelids gave her features a clear-cut look. After that first meeting, we became best friends.
The dancers who worked at the hotel thought I was an orphan from a good family who was only there for practical training. They were all from families with good backgrounds, and their lives were as splendid as their appearance; it seemed they could get anything they wanted. After the festival, having curly hair became popular in Pyongyang, and women bought colorful blouses and skirts from other countries at import markets. Only a chosen few, such as these dancers, could afford those fashions.
Employees were chosen to work at the hotel only after passing an investigation into their family background. The stigma of belonging to the “reactionary class,” or to the “commonly” or “extremely” bad, or having any other blemish on one’s family record meant immediate disqualification. The dancers were proud of having made the cut, and they assumed I, too, came from a privileged background. When I started working in the souvenir section as a clerk, the dancers and other employees expressed sympathy at my having been assigned extra work. I had to practice dancing after my shift at the souvenir section, or at night with Sunyoung. Some dancers envied my job as a clerk and complained that they couldn’t take on extra work because their families would lose face.
“The souvenir section’s the best place to see foreigners up close and have private conversations with them,” they would say.
As a matter of fact, I didn’t mind doing the extra work, if only as a token of gratitude to the hotel for accepting me. I wanted also to make up for 15 years of isolation from the real world.
Three years after my arrival, the hotel provided me with a flat nearby. It had been allocated for an employee of the hotel, but nobody else had wanted to move into such a small space. Finally, I would be on own in the city.
My determination to move was sparked, in time, by Sunyoung’s tragedy.
A year and a half after we became friends, gossip about Sunyoung started brewing among the dancers.
“She’s a slut.”
I’ll never forget the shock of hearing that word spat out by the other dancers. They avoided talking about it with me because they knew Sunyoung and I were always together. I began to notice, however, that whenever we showed up in the practice room, the usual babble of voices would halt. I worried about whether Sunyoung had heard the rumors, but she was the same woman: full of vitality, gay, constantly joking; she got along with others very well. I felt the other dancers were secretly jealous of her, and I could only hope the rumor would die out.
After a month of continual performances, the dancers had their first break in a long while.
That morning, no one was in the practice hall. I rolled up my sleeves and started cleaning the mirrors of a dressing room, when Sister Min and Sister Oh came in. Min exclaimed, “Sure, no smoke without fire! She did it. It’s obvious. Otherwise, those kinds of dirty stories wouldn’t follow Sunyoung around. How could she do that? So gross…. Such a wanton woman!”
When they discovered me, they were startled and shut their mouths right away.
I pretended I’d heard nothing. “Good morning, sisters.”
“Hi, Jia.”
They sat at the dressing table, looking at their faces in the mirror. “My skin is getting drier. I hate winter,” Sister Oh said, feigning innocence. I organized the scattered cosmetics.
“Have you heard the gossip?” I asked, not looking at them.
Sister Oh, who always enjoyed a good rumor, turned to me. “About what?” she asked.
The mention of a story got them excited. I kept my head down and continued, “About Sister Sunyoung… Can you believe it?” I pretended to know.
“See? Even she’s heard!” Sister Oh shouted with joy, and the two women dragged their chairs over to me.
Sister Min grabbed my right arm. “What did you hear? Is there more recent news?”
“No, not really… You know… I wonder if Sister Sunyoung has heard; she wouldn’t do those things anymore if she had ears.”
“Exactly! How dare she give her body away? Isn’t she scared? I heard that foreign men are different from ours. Look at them: so big and tall. Actually she’s big and tall compared to us, so maybe it’s possible for her.” They giggled, covering their mouths with their hands.
I felt flushed. “But do you think it’s true? It might just be gossip. I can’t imagine…”
Sister Oh stood up and leaned against the dressing table, forcing me to stop cleaning. Her face was red with excitement, her nostrils flaring. “No, Jia. I thought like that when I first heard, but Guard Kim confirmed it yesterday. He knows all the gossip here, and everything he says turns out to be true. He told me that Sunyoung and Guard Lee have worked out their dirty strategy. While she and their foreign target are doing it in the room, Guard Lee sneaks in, takes pictures, and threatens to notify the target’s country and the hotel of what he saw, unless he’s paid in US dollars. After that, Sunyoung and Guard Lee share the money.”