Jia: A Novel of North Korea (10 page)

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?"

"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 onstage. "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?"