54. I was about to sever from the group when one of the women had the same idea. She had a look I’d seen before. It said: Soon I will be dead. The others did not argue, didn’t even break stride. But the one who trailed had come to a stop, pitched left, right, and, when neither direction appealed, straight down. She wore black sweats and a thin parka, a shawl round her head, and slip-on sneakers. Nothing fit; this was not clothing so much as coverage. But it was still worth money, so that when she called me over it was to ask if I’d buy it off her in bulk. She was at least seventy years old; she’d fit in my carry-on luggage.
I looked around. It was still dark, and anyone not at work would not be coming. She sat in the snow and began to undress. It was December, freezing, and her jacket seemed to unzip one tooth at a time for how slow she went. I risked speech and said, “What makes you think I have money? Get up,” and since I could hear the generators kick on at the factory, I said, “There’s work.”
She smiled, but even the black before dawn had nothing on what opened up from inside this woman. She was dying; she was ready. And there was nothing unusual about it. Every day, millions of lives were resolved in this horrible place in the same way.
“I have a daughter,” she said, and she took off her sneakers, which she held out to me. “Three thousand won.” A month’s salary. “Just give it to her. I know you won’t steal. I can tell you have a child, too.”
I wanted this dialogue to end, but I couldn’t leave her in the snow. I tried to help her up. No chance. It was as though the end of her life had consolidated in her body, given her heft and presence. I took the sneakers, sat down. Probably she had roundworm. The skin of her face was almost brittle, her eyes punched deep into her skull, but I still thought she could make it.
But no. She simply lay down in the snow. And when I bent over to check her pulse, she said, “Foreigners are not liked in this country. If it’s really worth it, get who you came for and run.”
55. I got my new face at the inn. And another at Hyesan, which I passed through unbothered, though I might have preferred bother to the kind of fear I’d begun to experience the closer I got to Pyongyang. The kind that molests the confidence of a heart called up from the minor leagues.
Next: a few hours in Kanggye, home to Plant 26, where many of the country’s nuclear aspirations are pursued underground.
Finally: Pyongyang. For the ride in, I’d upgraded my face and clothes to reflect the outsized prosperity of the city’s demographic, at least compared to the north. I wore leather pumps, which cost six months’ salary at the jangmadang, and notably false eyelashes, because augmentations of beauty meant wealth. Ah, irony: I was a Western woman wanting to look like a Korean who wanted to look Western.
56. We rolled in at noon to music pumped from loudspeakers at a square nearby. I think it was the anthem “No Motherland Without You,” in which one hundred men chorus Kim Jong-il’s glory to mesmerizing effect. With the trumpets, horns, voice of the people risen up as one, I left the station all in favor of the socialist state, too. The majesty of this place was undeniable — the giant courtyards, monuments, imperial architecture — and dwarfing of whatever private aspirations you woke up to. I bowed to the wind and headed south, toward the river. The music trailed off. We cannot live without you, Kim Jongil. Our country cannot exist without you. The people believe in you. It was a festive time to be in Pyongyang, close to the New Year, when the city dolls up. No power for most of the night, but plenty to train footlights on Kim Il-sung, whose likeness was cloned in statues across the country. A big guy, Kim Il-sung, or so the statues would have you believe. The chest is pumped; the gut is jut.
I moved on. Most roads are too wide to traverse if there’s traffic, which there never is, but still, you have to underpass your way across town. The city is almost as built underground as over. The metro is but a quarter of the action down there. Bunkers, escape routes, and residencies for when the shit hits — at 350 feet below ground, you can build most anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if the architecture under Cincinnati once looked to the North for inspiration.
57. Martin was waiting for me near the Chungsong Bridge, on a park bench by the water. We were conspicuous for being outside in this weather, but inconspicuous for the same reason: No one trying to hide would present themselves thus. Martin was too tall to make like a Korean, so we’d agreed on Russian Here for Business. We couldn’t talk for more than three minutes in the open, just enough time to discuss where he’d set up shop. He said I was late. He said he needed eight hours for our Glorious General Who Descended from Heaven face. I said we had six. He said Kim Jong-il was the hardest face we’d ever done. I said we had six, let’s go.
58. We reconvened in a café near the hotel district where foreigners are a common sight. The proprietress showed me to the basement without comment; she might have been more surprised if we’d sat down and ordered lunch. Martin had his gear arranged on a blanket. For light we had a kerosene lamp plus dapple from a window that gave us the shoe view from above. He sat me on the floor. Glorious General Kim Jong-il has four look-alikes in his employ, probably more. Some have had plastic surgery; others were just born with it. I had Martin. Martin plus six hours plus the high handicap of having to impersonate an impersonator, sartor resartus, which took the pressure off. Or so you’d think.
He said, “It’s Popsicles down here — how can you be sweating?” Nonplussed Martin. Swabbing my cheeks. “My fingers are numb. These conditions are terrible.”
“Get some tea.”
He snorted. “I don’t think we paid her to serve us.” Though, judging from the contraband all over the basement — like that aerial wasn’t snatching broadcast news from Seoul every night — the lady of the place did business of all kinds. “Just relax,” he said. “We’ve done this a thousand times.” He applied powder. Blew on my skin.
“Seriously,” he said. “Whatever it is, shut it down. I can’t work like this. You need to stop sweating.”
And what could I say? Was I supposed to tell him that, after all this, it seemed possible I might not be able to breathe in the shared car space of my ex-husband?
59. Eyes closed. And when they open, it is to a handheld mirror, eye level. Hello, I say. Greetings. I am sixty-three. I am five-two without the platform shoes I’ve never been seen without. I am rotund. My hairline has withdrawn midway up my skull; it hopes to reach the summit by 2012, Year of the Perfect Strong and Prosperous Nation. I wear girly glasses, but I am a man at heart. I like women who take off their clothes for money, and ravioli with pumpkin filling. My favorite garment is the anorak; my favorite color is brown. I am mysterious and unreachable, North Korea cannot live without me, and just now I am about to meet a gentleman from the United States who will tell me about the Helix and its plans to bring our people together. We will drive around Pyongyang. And a few hours later, when I ask about his family, he will say things about his wife and child with a subtext of longing whose content is the loneliness we’re born into and cannot shake, but so what, so what, so what. It is the wife who matters now. The wife and child, nothing else. And for this information, I will begin to rethink my life.
60. So now it’s on record: How dangerous is Thurlow Dan? Not so much. When he was in North Korea, all he did was tour the city with his sweetheart in disguise.
The chairman wiped his brow. It was getting on 4 p.m., the sleepiest time of day. He thought if this were Spain or Israel or any country more attuned to the circadian needs of the body, he could at least recess for a siesta. But no. They would carry on until the very Western hour of 5 p.m., the happy hour. The hour a chairman returns to his wife and her cause du jour — the weeding of our SWAT and HRT personnel for those with jiffy finger: boys who don’t think, just shoot. Was there any chance the hostages got sniped and no one was telling him? Doubtful. His private theory? The four detained by Thurlow Dan were dispersed throughout the country, having escaped the Helix House hours before it blew and wanting, horribly, to escape everything else. The chairman understood. Were he not accountable to the people for answers, he might even have wished them luck. Either way, those stories would out.