Even with wildfires blazing so close by, none of the villages had the manpower left to do anything about it. Once a fire began, it would burn for several days, sometimes as long as a week, until all the mountains nearby had burned too. When the dense forests were reduced to ash, people scrambled to stake out their plots and dig up the burned tree stumps to create open fields. There they planted corn and potatoes. Those who cultivated these slash-and-burn fields survived the following year.
I made my way back across the Tumen River, back to where I’d started my journey, pausing at every peak to look behind me at the smoke rising from mountains both near and far. It looked like distress signals sent to distant passing ships from people trapped on desert islands in the middle of a boundless ocean. The smoke rose to the sky in silent, ominously thick clouds, and the sound I’d heard, the whoosh of air rushing past on a night thronged with ghosts, seemed to lay heavy across the land.
Five
After I failed to make it all the way to Puryong in search of my parents, and then lost Chilsung on top of that, I returned to the dugout hut in silence. When I stepped inside I discovered that a disgusting old badger had taken up residence. I searched for a long stick that I could use to try to drive it out, but he was a ferocious little guy: he kept blocking my stick with his paws and lunging at me in fury. His shrill cry was terrifying, but I was no less tough, having already faced certain death and prevailed more than once. I chased out the badger, cleaned up the little hut, dug up the cache of grain that I’d buried in the woods, and proceeded to hunker down for the next month or so, until one day I heard someone moving around outside. It was the farmer. He pulled back the piece of vinyl covering the door and poked his head in.
“Ya! Look who’s here! You’re still alive!”
His eyes reddened with tears, and he clasped my hand tight. I went with him back to the farmhouse. The family already knew about Hyun’s death and Father’s departure. I told them all about Grandmother dying, my going back to North Korea to search for the rest of my family, and losing Chilsung. The farmer’s wife and his mother turned their backs and wept.
“See,” the farmer’s mother said, “you have to carry on for your family’s sake. Someone has to survive to tell the story.”
I stayed with them for nearly a month. My cheeks plumped back up, and my hair regained its lustre. The farmer contacted Uncle Salamander, who said he would find work for me, and then he personally escorted me all the way past Helong to downtown Yanji. There, we waited in a teahouse for Uncle Salamander. His potbelly had grown bigger since the last time I’d seen him, and he was wearing a baggy windbreaker. He told us that after the famine started the authorities had cracked down on cross-border trade, so he’d started a small travel agency for South Korean tourists with someone instead. The three of us went out to eat. Uncle Salamander and the farmer bought me food while they filled each other in on everything that had happened. Uncle Salamander downed several shots of soju before turning to me.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. That’s how it goes, I guess. I kept telling myself I would check in on you guys, but easier said than done. In any case, think of me as your family now. Don’t hesitate to come to me anytime you need my help.”
I finished eating and decided to risk a question while the men were still drinking.
“My sister Mi crossed over before the rest of us. If she’s still here, I’d like to try to find her.”
“Ah yes, I remember. I know some people who might have leads. I’ll see what I can find out.”
Uncle Salamander found me a job working for a Han Chinese family. The parents were both teachers. I spent six months as a live-in housekeeper and babysitter before moving on to Paradise, the massage studio where I would later work. While living with the family, I learned a little Chinese. The woman gave me a primary-school textbook and helped me learn how to read and write. When I moved out, she patted me on the back.
“You’re a clever one, Bari,” she said. “You’ll do well wherever you go. I’ve never seen a student learn as quickly as you do.”
The job at Paradise was also thanks to Uncle Salamander — except I wasn’t supposed to call him that anymore. I said it to his face without thinking, and he rapped me on the head with his knuckles and gently scolded me: “Little cheeky to call your uncle by a nickname, no? Your father’s the only person left who gets to call me that.” It made me sad to hear that.
He told me that if I wanted to make a lot of money without too much risk, then I should learn a trade at a business run by one of his younger friends. I was well aware that most North Koreans in my position weren’t paid for their work — they were grateful if they got so much as room and board. The police were not yet actively hunting down defectors, but they did show up if complaints were made. Regardless of the type of work they did, North Koreans earned no more than a third of what a documented Chinese resident might earn; but I was lucky, and earned half, and that was for doing mostly small errands as an apprentice.
Paradise, which specialized in foot massage, was surrounded by bars and karaoke parlours. There were massage studios nearby that doubled as saunas and gave full-body massages, but they charged more than us and were rumoured to offer more than just a rubdown. Our place was frequented mostly by tourists and business travellers. Married couples also came by sometimes to get foot massages together. Paradise was where I met Xiang. There were around twenty masseuses in total, with Korean-Chinese working alongside Han Chinese. Most were young, unmarried women who’d come from distant rural villages to earn money in the city. Of the six who were married, only two actually lived with their husbands. The married women were no different from the rest in that they’d left their hometowns and come to Yanji in search of work, either alone or with only their children in tow. Xiang was one of the two who lived with her husband. She must have been around twenty-five years old at the time. The oldest was Qinqin, who had her kids with her and claimed she was thirty, but according to Ms Kim, the old Korean-Chinese auntie who took care of the cooking and cleaning, she was closer to thirty-four. The owner of the studio would show up around closing time to dole out everyone’s daily wages, while his wife ran the business the rest of the time.
Our biggest rush was always right after lunch or late at night. During the slack hours of the late afternoons and early evenings, the masseuses would gather in the lobby and pass the time snacking and watching television. Sometimes Ms Kim and I would throw together a simple dish for them. We minded the owners, but the ones we really had to be good to were the masseuses, because they would sometimes split their tips with us.
*
One day, while cleaning the showers, I found a gold ring. I’d just sprayed detergent on the tiled walls, given them a good scrub and was rinsing the suds off with the handheld showerhead when I noticed something shiny in the drain trap. I bent over to take a closer look. The sizeable gold ring had a square face with a lotus flower engraved in the middle. I slipped it on. The ring spun loosely around my finger. I wondered who’d lost it. Given the size, it would be worth a lot if I sold it in the night market. I stashed it in my apron pocket. The following morning, after everyone had arrived for work and I was carrying trays of food back and forth to serve them their lunch, I paused for a moment and asked for everyone’s attention.