From the Fatherland, with Love, page 53
The restaurant was called Cafe Luggnagg, after the enchanted isle in Gulliver’s Travels, and its ceiling must have been over forty meters high. There were about a hundred tables, a stage for performances, and on the south side a treehouse, accessible by elevator, which was used for wedding ceremonies. The entire space was enclosed in an artificial rainforest, with luxuriant palms, banana and rubber trees, aviaries housing parrots and other birds, and a waterfall. Kuroda had often been there with colleagues for cocktails, or to have some South Sea food with his family.
According to the commander, the air conditioning at Cafe Luggnagg had been turned off ever since the occupation, as nobody was using the space. With its airtight glass walls, it could get pretty hot in there, depending on the weather. The occupation had lasted almost a week now. Kuroda was asked whether the insects he’d just seen could have bred and multiplied in this huge hothouse. Although he wasn’t a biologist or entomologist, he thought it possible. Even in homes left empty for some time you’d find insects hitherto unseen there on your return.
When the cafe had been open for business, someone must have been responsible for periodically watering the plants, spraying insecticide, pruning branches, and sweeping up fallen leaves. With neglect, along with the rise in temperature, weeds would have grown, bacteria would have propagated in stagnant water, and fallen leaves would have rotted. The caged birds had evidently been unattended, and were probably dying of starvation. It was conceivable that the carcasses of some had already started to decompose. Any closed artificial ecosystem would soon break down if it wasn’t maintained.
“Has anyone been inside to check conditions there since the outbreak of insects?” he asked, but the commander shook his head as if this was out of the question. He added that the insects had got into the air ducts in the hotel, so the top floors had been made out of bounds; all the exits on the fourth-floor reception and third-floor banquet halls had been sealed off; and the Japanese hotel staff and tourists being held hostage had been moved to some of the lower-level banquet rooms. Kuroda could see that these people had no intention of disinfecting the cafe. Once the fleet arrived, they’d abandon the hotel and move to the temporary accommodation now under construction. If the hothouse insects proved to be the cause of the men’s illness, they’d probably just torch the place without any more ado.
He’d never be able to like these people, he realized. They were polite and surprisingly well mannered, but that was just the other side of their insular nature. The elite that pledged loyalty to the group was taken good care of, but anyone who protested, or who had different values, or who was weak or handicapped, was simply stamped out, like an insect.
Kuroda and the officers, together with Ri Gyu Yeong, returned to the first-floor lobby for a final discussion. This was largely just a matter of summarizing the situation and making sure they understood each other. Kuroda decided simply to answer the questions put to him, and refrain from giving his opinion or advice. He confirmed four main points: he didn’t know whether it was an infectious disease, but it was a possibility; he didn’t know whether the insects were the source of infection, but it was a possibility; if it was about ten hours since the three men had fallen ill and nobody else had complained of symptoms, the disease had probably been contained; but in any case, it would be best to keep the contaminated area sealed off and continue to isolate the patients.
Tea and sesame cookies were served again, but Kuroda didn’t have the energy to eat anything. Ri had removed her cap and mask to reveal rosy cheeks, and was helping herself to the cookies, looking pleased to be included in the discussion. Once they had gone over the main points, Han thanked Kuroda for his help that day and dismissed Ri and Pak. He then changed the subject. “Normally I’d ask you to treat those three men in your hospital,” he started. “That would be the natural human response. However, reinforcements are due to reach Japanese territorial waters two days from now. Until then we have to avoid anything, however minor, that could be used against us by your government. As the commanding officer, I cannot entrust three sick soldiers to a Japanese hospital. We shall be collecting Corporal Son, who was admitted yesterday, before the fleet arrives.
“You must understand that the Republic was decimated by cholera in the Liberation War and the turbulent period that followed it. Later on, there were frequent major outbreaks of dysentery after flooding. We lacked sufficient medicines, so there were many deaths, especially of children and the elderly. Everybody in the Republic, without exception, has a deep dread of infectious diseases. Were those three men to be admitted to your hospital and diagnosed with such a disease, our soldiers’ morale would plummet. I have to maintain morale as best I can until the main force arrives. And there is an even more important issue, which has to do with the leadership of the main force. Let us just say that they would not be pleased to find our soldiers receiving treatment in a Japanese hospital. I am in a very difficult position.”
Who did he think he was kidding? This guy would say anything to get the effect he wanted. The fact of the matter was that he was capable of abandoning his own people, when they were sick with a life-threatening fever. And yet his account of the outbreaks of cholera and dysentery touched a chord. Kuroda had been in elementary school when one summer heavy rain in his hometown in northern Kyushu had flooded the sewers in the underground shopping mall, and due to administrative bungling there had been an outbreak of dysentery. Four of his classmates had died, including one who was a close friend. It was as they placed flowers on the boy’s desk that Kuroda decided to become a doctor when he grew up. Children were the ones most vulnerable to infectious diseases. Sanitary conditions in North Korea must be pretty bad. He recalled TV images of malnourished children. Han must have seen an awful lot of kids die. And when he said that they all lived in fear of a possible epidemic, Kuroda had in spite of himself commiserated with him: “I can understand that.”
Still, he wondered why the man was telling him all this. Heo was seated beside him, but he didn’t understand Japanese, and Pak was some distance away, smoking, so it felt as though Han was secretly confiding in him. It made him feel trusted, and that feeling seeped comfortingly into the crack that had opened up in his psyche. His nerves were frayed from the anxiety he’d felt ever since leaving the Medical Center. “Dr. Kuroda, can you understand my position?” asked Han. “Of course,” he said, nodding repeatedly as the two shook hands.
“Good. Well then, I’ll see you to the car.” The commander rose to his feet and called over to Pak. “Why don’t you take some cookies, to share with your friends and family?” he suggested with a smile, and Kuroda gratefully accepted. He thought his colleagues might enjoy trying something unusual like this, and had a vision of himself producing the cookies and holding forth about what he’d seen in the hotel, adding that he couldn’t reveal certain details. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything better to put them in,” the commander said, filling a paper bag provided by a woman soldier. “Be careful with them, they crumble easily,” he added as he handed them over. “Thank you very much,” said Kuroda, and bowed his head deeply.
The car was apparently parked by the B1 exit. The commander accompanied Kuroda onto the escalator, with Pak leading the way and Heo Jip following behind. “Do you know how those cookies are made?” Han asked, putting his hand on Kuroda’s shoulder again. “They’re called keganjon, which means literally ‘sesame sweets.’” Kuroda tried saying the name out loud. He was told that the ke was pronounced with a sharp exhalation of breath. Pak demonstrated: “Ke, ke—it’s like coughing up phlegm.” The commander laughed and said, “But that sounds disgusting!” Kuroda laughed too. “How about teaching your wife to make them for your children’s birthdays? All you need is some fresh white and black sesame, and some brown sugar melted in honey.”
Down in the B1 parking lot, Kuroda began heading for the exit, but Pak and Heo moved in on either side of him and, hands on his shoulder blades, steered him toward a staircase in the corner. Why weren’t they going outside? They passed by the glass door of the janitor’s office, where Ri Gyu Yeong was already back at work. Catching sight of them, she stuck her masked face out and bowed. The commander, meanwhile, was continuing with his recipe. “You have to keep the white and black sesame seeds separate. That’s important. You lightly fry them just long enough for them to swell up, like a flea after sucking blood.”
Pak opened the door to the staircase, making the rusty hinges screech unnervingly. The walls glowed dully under a dim fluorescent lamp. The smell of disinfectant, along with another smell he couldn’t identify, hung in the air. Kuroda’s smile had frozen with uncertainty, his face muscles twitching, and his throat was dry. Yet he still hadn’t quite grasped what was happening—or perhaps was refusing to take it in. This staircase connected to the B2 parking lot. And that was where the people arrested were being held. Had they always planned on bringing him here instead of back to the Medical Center? His mind went blank. The stairs were dotted here and there with dark stains. He knew immediately what it was, but he couldn’t connect it with the word “blood.” It was as though his brain had seized up.
“Put the black and white sesame, after frying, into separate bowls and add the melted sugar and honey. You call this ‘syrup,’ right? You’ve got to make sure that the sesame and syrup are both warm.” From the bottom of the stairs came sounds like stone being crushed with a metal bar and of boards being ripped up. On the staircase landing, he caught sight of a single shoe—brown leather, a man’s—lying upside down. There was gum or something stuck to the sole, with a white mold sprouting out of it. He really was being taken to the detention center. A bitter taste rose from his bowels, and he felt his lips trembling. What had happened to the owner of that brown shoe? Had he gone berserk? Had they then proceeded to beat him?
“Once you’ve properly mixed the still-warm sesame with warm syrup, you spread the mixtures out flat. If you like, you can use one of those small rolling pins, like pins used for making the skins of dumplings.” As they descended the stairs, the smell of excrement grew stronger. Fear welled up in Kuroda, to the point where he could almost feel it oozing out. He looked up at the ceiling and turned around to protest, when Pak suddenly gripped his shoulder and twisted his arm up behind his back. It hurt, and he found himself immobilized. Pak was murmuring in his ear: “Dr. Kuroda, we are going to give you a tour of the detention center. Don’t worry, we aren’t arresting you, just giving you a tour.”
Held firmly on either side, he was virtually carried into the parking lot. The floor was wet, with puddles here and there, judging from the sloshing of their footsteps. Kuroda could see a hundred or so detainees, people who’d been arrested for alleged serious crimes, lined up like a row of Buddhist statues at a temple, seated at regular intervals, cross-legged or kneeling, atop what looked like wooden pallets laid out on the floor. A soldier emerged from a large bus and, noticing the commander, stood at attention, saluting. Kuroda felt his field of vision warping. The scene before him was utterly unreal. Further inside, some prisoners lay wrapped in blankets, presumably very sick. The hem of one man’s cotton hotel gown was raised to reveal a leg swollen to twice its normal size; another had purple bruising behind his knees. The whole place reeked of excrement. Soldiers wearing face masks were in the process of dismantling the place, ripping up the pallets and corrugated iron and stacking them on the floor. Some were even breaking up the cement on the pillars with pickaxes. That must be what he’d heard from the stairwell earlier. When the soldiers caught sight of Han, they all immediately stopped working and stood in rigid salute. Han waved a hand to indicate they should carry on.
The smell was like a cross between the smell of the homeless and that of the dying. Whether cross-legged or kneeling, they all sat with their hands on their knees and their backs hunched, like prawns, their heads drooping. Their hands were dark with grime, but he could see that the skin on some of them was split open, showing a thin white stringy stuff inside. Broken bones, perhaps. Some of them seemed to be suffering from cyanosis, with their fingers strangely twisted. And all the while, walking alongside Kuroda, Han continued his cooking instructions. “You spread out the mixture thin as paper on a flat board. You have to take care it doesn’t stick to the rolling pin as the syrup cools.” Ordinary houseflies were buzzing around one prisoner lying in a gown stained black around his buttocks. “Tell your wife it’s a good idea to coat it with a little bit of sesame oil. That will stop the mixture from sticking to it. You want to end up with a paper-thin square.”
Incongruously, the image of Ri’s mouth as she was eating those cookies floated into his mind. Her lips had been chapped and were bare of lipstick or salve, and she used the pointed tip of her tongue to lick away some crumbs stuck to them. They passed a prisoner whose hair was matted with blood and whose scalp was covered with pale, festering wounds that unfortunately recalled the tuna flakes he’d had at lunch. He was on the verge of vomiting. A glimpse of a pair of wrinkled breasts and dark nipples through the open front of a prisoner’s gown made him cover his mouth with his hand to hold it back. He heard someone crying, but couldn’t tell who it was.
“Next you place the sheets of black and white sesame on top of each other. Then you roll them up—just as if you were making sushi rolls. You could even use one of those little bamboo mats if you like. Finally you take a sharp knife and cut slices to the desired width. What do you think? Easy, isn’t it?” The commander spread out his hands and beamed as he brought his explanation to an end.
Just in front of them someone moaned in pain and toppled forward, hands on the floor to support his body. The long shadow of a soldier moving toward him made the man shake his head and whimper like a child. The soldier grabbed his hair and pulled him upright. Still held by his hair, he began desperately apologizing, yelling almost incoherently that he was sorry, as the soldier’s nightstick came down at the joint of his shoulder.
“Hey, Kuroda, you all right? Looks like they’re up to something down there.” It was his colleague Tsuchiya outside his door. They’d been at college together, and Tsuchiya was now the deputy head of hematology. Kuroda had been dozing in his chair, sleeping off a double dose of tranquilizers. His head felt heavy and his body sluggish, and the strength had gone from his hands, leaving an unpleasant numbness in his fingertips. He got up and opened the door. “Ah, the color’s coming back to your face,” Tsuchiya said, stepping inside and taking his left wrist to check the pulse. Kuroda could have done this himself, but it felt reassuring to have another white-coated doctor do it. “It’s still over a hundred!” Tsuchiya took a blood-pressure cuff off the shelf and applied it to his arm. The reading came out at 172 over 110—both figures almost forty higher than normal. He’d been dozing for over an hour, but he was still in a state of extreme tension.
Kuroda hadn’t spoken to anyone about his experience at the Sea Hawk Hotel. The three patients with a suspected infectious disease, the insects, the prisoners—these were things he mustn’t talk about, and that little tour of the detention facility was effectively a warning of what lay in store for him if he did. As soon as it was over, he’d run to a toilet and thrown up. One of the stalls was covered in blood, and a prisoner with hollow eyes was cleaning it up and watching him vacantly. Afterwards, when he staggered into the hospital, his white coat stained with vomit, Takahashi was there to meet him. Kuroda was still in the company of Pak and Heo, however, and had lied to his department head, saying that the hotel’s ventilation wasn’t working well and he’d started to feel queasy while examining a soldier with acute pneumonia. Pak and Heo had left after thanking them politely, and Kuroda had gone to his consultation room to rest.
“How’s the nausea?” asked Tsuchiya. Kuroda tried to say it was better, but there was something stuck in his throat. He screwed up his face and pressed his hand to his neck, and a look of concern crossed Tsuchiya’s face. Then he coughed, and a bit of vomit flew out. “I’ll be okay now,” he said, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. Tsuchiya jerked his chin in the direction of the camp. “It looks like something’s going on. Everyone’s talking about it. The soldiers have all gathered in formation.” It’s the public execution, thought Kuroda. What with the shock of the detention center, he’d clean forgotten about the two wooden posts in the camp. “I’ll be along in a moment,” he said. He washed his hands and gargled at the sink, then put on a fresh white coat. His mouth still tasted sour.
Some of the medical staff had gathered on a glass-enclosed balcony at the far end of the outpatients waiting hall. It was north-facing, but on fine days it got quite a bit of sun, and it had an unobstructed view of the hotel and Dome. “Kuroda, are you all right?” Takahashi was standing in the middle of the balcony. “I had a nap,” he said, making his way over to him and looking down at the encampment. In the rain, soldiers were still filing into the open space before a large tent. A helicopter marked NHK FUKUOKA was hovering just to the left of the hotel. Several soldiers were checking that the posts hadn’t become loose in the rain, stamping down the earth around them, with two officers watching to make sure the things were straight and the sandbags in place.
The patients shouldn’t be seeing this, thought Kuroda. The fifth to tenth floors were occupied by inpatients, and those in north-facing wards would effectively have a grandstand view of it all. Kuroda tugged at the arm of Takahashi’s white coat and steered him away from the balcony. “They’re about to conduct an execution by firing squad,” he told him in a low voice. Takahashi gaped at him, brow creased in utter incomprehension. The media apparently hadn’t reported this. “I think we should try to stop the patients upstairs from seeing it,” Kuroda added, but Takahashi just blinked rapidly: “Did you just say, execution?” Kuroda’s still felt sluggish from the tranquilizers, and the department head’s slow reaction was irritating. “Two soldiers are about to be shot,” he said, raising his voice.
