From the Fatherland, with Love, page 68
Some were lying on their sides, a few face down, and the smell one associates with homeless people hung in the air. Beyond them a tour bus was parked, and next to it a pair of Koryo soldiers leaned against a concrete pillar, looking toward the exit. They were smoking, the gray cigarette smoke curling up toward the fluorescent light fixtures suspended from the ceiling. The pillars were spaced several meters apart throughout the garage, but only the center row of lights was on. In the semi-darkness, the hundred pairs of hollow eyes turned as one toward them. Hino forgot about having to pee.
Tateno half walked, half carried Orihara to the pillar directly in front of them. Takeguchi joined them in its shadow, while Hino, Sato, and Shinohara quickly took cover behind the next one down. Shinohara whispered that three or four Koryos had just run up the emergency stairs. They must have heard the gunfire on the floor above. As soon as they caught a glimpse of the bodies outside the elevator, they’d realize what was going on and head back here. On the wall near the exit was a digital clock showing 12:13:40. Takeguchi crept over to Hino’s pillar. “We’ll throw the grenades at the bus and run to the exit when they explode,” he said. One of the Koryos leaning against the pillar next to the bus had an AK hanging from a shoulder strap; the other had a pistol on his hip. They seemed to be waiting for something as they smoked, their attention still directed toward the exit. From Hino’s pillar to the bus was about twenty meters, with most of that space filled with rows of prisoners. From the bus to the exit was another twenty meters.
“Can Orihara make it?” Hino whispered. He was obviously in no shape to run. Though he said he’d just been grazed by the grenade flak, clearly it was worse than that. But Hino knew that Tateno was upset about what had happened to Miyazaki and Felix and wouldn’t hear of leaving Orihara behind. “When I give the signal, we heave the grenades,” Takeguchi said, and Hino nodded, though the thought of contributing to more bloodshed made him sick to his stomach. He had never seen anything as repulsive and disturbing as the scenes upstairs. “Psst. Hey,” someone hissed. Hino and Takeguchi both gave a start and peered out around the pillar. Lying on his side in the first row of prisoners, a man with a shaved head said, “You’re Japanese, right?” The men around him, hearing this, began whispering amongst themselves. “Can’t you help us?” the skinhead said, then held out his hands. “Just look.” The flesh on the back of them was flayed, and the fingers were bent at weird angles. “You must be SDF, right? I didn’t do anything wrong, and look what they did to me. I’ve got a family!” As he whispered all this, he was inching toward them on his elbows, his broken fingers flopping. Several others began edging this way as well, with a pleading look in their eyes.
“They’re coming toward us,” Takeguchi said, the blood draining from his face. “I’ll put a stop to that,” Shinohara said. He took out his Tupperware container, removed the lid, and sailed it into the middle of the block of prisoners. The container flipped over in mid-air, and the centipedes dropped like rain. The skinhead screamed and rolled on the floor, apparently bitten, and then several other prisoners began shrieking and thrashing about. The two guards crushed out their cigarettes under the toes of their boots and shouted something.
“Now,” Takeguchi said in a soft voice, and backed up two steps. The pillar was big enough to hide the four of them easily, but he had to step out to the right of it, bringing his arm back in a wide arc. The Koryo with the AK spotted him and raised his weapon. Takeguchi’s arm whipped forward, and just as he released the grenade, two dry pocks resounded through the garage. His head jerked backwards twice and he fell at Hino’s feet. The upper-right quadrant of his head was missing. Seeing this, Sato scowled, his cheeks flushed red, and he leaped out to the left of the column firing his own AK and shouting, “Motherfuckers!” just as the grenade exploded against the windows of the bus.
The force of the explosion dislodged several of the light fixtures from their chains. Sato shielded his eyes and spun back behind the pillar. Nudging aside the body of Takeguchi, whose blood continued to surge over what was left of his face, Hino was suddenly seized with a raw fury that robbed him of all self-control. As he threw his grenade at the bus, the rear of which was already a ruin, he was clearly visualizing the carnage that would result. One of the prisoners had crawled up to his pillar, mumbling something, and now reached out to grab hold of Hino’s leg. Sato hit the man with the butt of his rifle and Shinohara kicked him in the chest, knocking him back on his ass and making him wail like a siren. His voice was immediately drowned out by the second explosion, which lifted him sideways briefly and brought another light fixture crashing down nearby. “That’s it for the Koryos. Let’s go,” Shinohara said, and ran for the exit. Sato, shouldering the AK, tried to get one arm under Takeguchi to lift him to his feet. “He’s dead,” Hino said, pulling him away. Sato gaped back at him for a moment, then turned and ran. Hino helped Tateno support Orihara, lending a shoulder on the other side, and the three of them followed.
It was even darker now that so many lights were broken. Some of the prisoners reached out toward Hino and Tateno, begging to be taken along. Orihara’s bandage was saturated with blood, his thigh swollen and purple, and with each step he gave a small cry of pain. Shinohara stood at the revolving door by the exit, gesturing for them to hurry. Fear took hold of Hino again as they pressed on, and he wondered how he’d managed such a murderous rage just now. The rage had filled him like gas injected into a balloon. Right then I could have killed anyone, he thought—a woman, an old man, a kid. One of the Koryos was propped against the half-burned bus in a daze, his arms hanging helplessly at his sides, and the other was face down on the floor and motionless. Dead prisoners littered the floor well into the interior of the garage. They could see the steps just outside the exit. At the top of the steps they should find the four-lane road, and beyond that the beach.
Hino stumbled over a fallen light fixture, and a prisoner lying nearby grabbed hold of Orihara’s leg. Tateno was about to kick him in the face when he realized it was a woman. Her cotton robe was ragged, exposing her breasts and crotch, and her eyes were wild. She was flapping her lips, trying to say something, but both edges of her mouth had been slit open, and she couldn’t form words. Hino tried to kick her hand away, but another prisoner had already tottered over to cling to Orihara’s torso. A third grabbed his arm, and now a swarm of them was converging on him. Orihara gave an anguished moan as he was pulled back and to one side, slipping out of his companions’ grasp, and he screamed when his wounded thigh hit the floor. One after another, prisoners straddled or crawled over him, as if pantomiming a gang rape. They must have thought that by holding on to him they could stop the other two as well. “I’m out of here,” Hino said. Tateno looked back at Orihara, now barely visible beneath the wriggling mass of figures, and whispered, “Forgive us,” before he too made a dash for the exit.
Outside, they saw the road right in front of them. Beyond it was the elevated expressway, and beyond that a pine grove, the sky, and the sea. They were on a brick sidewalk lined with tall, vase-shaped shrubs. Men were running this way from Checkpoint E, to the right. Sato ran up the steps and out into the road. There he stopped, pointed his AK at the soldiers, and pulled the trigger, but the magazine was empty. He threw the weapon down and sprinted for the bay. The enemy were maybe two hundred meters away at this point. One stopped and raised his own rifle, and the now familiar pock-pock-pock sound punctured the air. These were warning shots, but the next burst ricocheted off the asphalt at Sato’s feet. They were aiming low in order to disable and capture, Hino thought. It’d be better to die than to end up like one of those prisoners. There was no point in zigzagging since the fire was from the side, so they made a beeline across the divided four-lane road. Straight ahead, just beyond the road, they would reach the expressway overpass and the shelter of its huge pillars. Hino was thinking of those TV commercials in which impossibly happy young people run toward the sea, whooping it up with friends or sweethearts, when ahead of him Shinohara caught a bullet in the ankle and went down.
He stopped to help him up, stooping to wrap Shinohara’s right arm around his own shoulders. Tateno took the other arm, and the three of them ran on as bullets skipped off the potholed asphalt in front of them, Shinohara dragging one foot and leaving a smeared trail of blood. They had just reached the center divider when they saw Sato slip into the shadow of the overpass and jump down to the beach. “We make too good a target like this,” Shinohara said. “Leave me here. I can’t even feel my leg.” Tateno shook his head. “What about the bugs and frogs?” he said, and Hino said, “Yeah, those fuckin’ things. Without you, they’d die.” Another bullet keened off the asphalt and Hino felt something hot and sharp pierce his hip. He assumed he’d been shot, but he managed to continue hobbling along at the same speed, and neither of the others noticed anything. In the distance behind them, a loudspeaker at the Koryo camp crackled to life and spat out an announcement in Korean. Craning his neck to look back, Hino saw soldiers spilling out of their tents, preparing their weapons, and falling in, as three MAVs rolled this way from the far side of Checkpoint A.
Are you watching? he muttered to the mind’s-eye image of his mother. You see all the rats panicking? The gunfire ceased once it was clear that the targets were heading for the beach, where the Koryos knew the sea would block their escape. They were out of breath by the time they reached the sand, and running was even more of a struggle here. Ahead, Sato was already crawling under an enormous shelf of concrete where the beach bordered the foundation of the road. “There’s no time to reach the breakwater!” he shouted. “Take cover here!” With his left arm supporting Shinohara, Hino couldn’t see his watch and had no idea how much time was left. They stumbled to the shelf, dived to the sand, and dug in behind Sato, who was already wedged in as far as he could get. Blood was flowing from Hino’s hip and soaking into the sand. Shinohara saw this and gasped: “Hino! You got hit?” Everything below his waist had gone cold, and suddenly he couldn’t feel anything at all down there. His elbows and chest hurt from crawling over the wet sand, but it was as if his lower half had been disconnected.
Hino! Hino-san! The voices grew smaller and smaller. It was like being left on a riverbank as people called his name from a receding boat. Is this all death is? he asked himself. There was nothing scary about it. Others would come along to take his place. Being with the Ishihara group had taught him that no one is indispensable, that someone somewhere could always replace you. People who think that they alone are the be-all and end-all must freak out when facing death, he thought, but any further thoughts dissolved unformed into a vast darkness, like the bottom of the deepest lake. He was sinking toward it, spiraling like a slowly falling leaf, and just as he was about to touch down, there was an unearthly roar and a shock wave that split the lake floor apart. Registering the shock even in his unfeeling hip and legs, Hino sank into the depths that had opened below.
12
WINGS OF AN ANGEL
April 11, 2011
IN A DREAM KIM HYANG MOK finds herself making her way down a sloping road near the village she grew up in. The landscape around her is covered with snow, and in the dim light she has to take care over each step. A large black automobile is approaching from behind. What is such a fancy car doing on this twisting mountain road? Some part of her knows she’s dreaming. The dazzling headlights make it impossible to see the driver or passengers, but the car appears to be of Japanese make. It pulls to one side, as though trying to pass her, but either because the road is too narrow or someone inside wants to talk to her, it merely slows down. The twin beams reach toward the distant mountains, illuminating their jagged outline against the dark sky. She hears a voice calling to her, but it’s too faint for her to make out the words. “What did you say?” she asks in Japanese, but then remembers: the rabbits! She forgot all about the quota she’s been assigned. She has to catch at least three rabbits during the winter and bring the pelts to school. The meat will go to the trapper, so she mustn’t fail.
Hyang Mok turns toward the mountains, the car headlights pointing the way. She’s holding the wire snare that one of her older brothers made for her, with a loop at the front end. Along the way, on top of a hillock, she sees the house she was born in. She looks down and notices that she is barefoot. She will have to stop by and put on some shoes; otherwise she’ll never make it to the mountains. When she steps into the earthen-floored entrance, the whole family is lined up there waiting for her, all standing in a row just outside the pitchdark kitchen. Even her two older brothers are there—they must be back from military service. She asks them if they’ve seen her shoes, then asks her mother and little brothers as well, but no one answers. The smell of burning pine twigs comes from the heated ondol floor. She can’t see her father, even though she was sure he was standing there with the others. Perhaps he’s gone off somewhere, she thinks, but then remembers that he’s been dead for some time. When she at last finds her shoes, it turns out they’re both for her right foot. She hears a voice saying: “Hurry!” It’s that man. He appears from behind her mother, slips past her, and runs out into the darkness, urging her again and again: “Hurry! Hurry!”
Hyang Mok awoke earlier than usual, at 5:30. Her heart was pounding. Some decisive event had occurred, and there was somewhere she must go—and go immediately. She’d never experienced such a disorienting sensation before. She didn’t usually dream—or, rather, forgot her dreams the moment she awoke. Even back at home in her village, let alone after joining the army, she’d rarely slept more than four hours. She would drop off the instant she settled under her covers and leap out of bed the instant she awoke; she never had time for dreams. And yet now she’d dreamed for three nights running. And the same person had appeared each time—a Japanese man. The first night he had simply been there, but the second time he’d tried to say something, and this time she’d understood: he was telling her to hurry. The voice was neither harsh nor gentle, but urgent. And yet she’d had no shoes to wear. She must have taken them off somewhere. “Hurry!” the person had said. “Never mind about left or right or even whose shoes they are. Just go!” Sensing that if she didn’t catch up with the man, she’d never see him again, she dashed out after him barefoot—and that was the point at which she awoke.
Lying there, she was aware of an oppressive and unfamiliar feeling in her breast, a mixture of sadness and joy. It was like blending two different oil paints and ending up with a new and unexpected color. Nothing like this had ever happened before, but it wasn’t as if she could tell anyone about it. She could hardly confess that she was dreaming of the same Japanese man every night, seeing him not only in her dreams but in her mind’s eye just before falling asleep, or that she found herself deep in thought about him even during the day. She lingered in her cot, wrapped in her blanket, wondering why she was so obsessed with this person. Now as before, she found no answer.
Her three bunkmates—Ri Gwi Hui, Kim Sun I, and Ri Gyu Yeong—were still asleep. Being careful not to wake them, Hyang Mok untangled herself from her blanket, got out of bed, quietly slipped into her uniform, and went to wash her face. On the morning of the ninth, the mess hall and the officers’ sleeping quarters had been shifted to the first floor, along with the command center. The men slept in the smaller ballroom, which also served as the canteen, while the women had the Maple Room. This was one of five banquet rooms, all lavishly furnished and named after trees: Katsura, Laurel, Oak, Elm, Maple. The command center was directly across from them, in the big ballroom named Argos, which resembled in sheer scale the Revolutionary Museum, and had crimson carpeting and six enormous crystal chandeliers.
Light was leaking into the lobby from the command center; several officers had been working all night. The convoy of ships carrying troops from the Eighth Corps was now well on its way, under the command of rigidly anti-American figures like Vice-Marshal Ri Cheong Yeol and General Kim Myeong Hyeon, both of whom had often been mentioned in those persistent rumors of a coup d’état. This was a critical time in the operation. Pressure was on Japan to reopen foreign consulates, which might force the government to abandon any attempt to retake Fukuoka and would be a persuasive fait accompli for international recognition of the KEF.
China and southern Korea in particular were actively working, through private corporations in Fukuoka, to get the consulates reopened. From their point of view, the blockade of Hakata Port was a crucial concern; losses for the past week alone were easily on the order of hundreds of millions of yen. It was also reported that with the blocking of the northern shipping lanes connecting Shanghai, Busan, Fukuoka, and Seattle, America’s West Coast high-tech industry had been badly affected and was thus expected to use its considerable muscle to lobby Congress in the same cause.
But economic factors would be far from the minds of Ri Cheong Yeol and Kim Myeong Hyeon, who thought of the US and southern Korea as the Republic’s mortal enemies. Winning these hardliners over would require first of all the cooperation of China. Secondly, military discipline had to be improved and a model for Fukuoka’s ongoing administration outlined; and thirdly, they had to show that the city was firmly under the thumb of the KEF. With that aim, Han Seung Jin intended to explain that major criminal elements had been arrested and their assets seized, and to underline how accommodating City Hall had been in helping them secure supplies and arrange for construction of the new barracks. Han had assigned to the mayor the task of mobilizing several thousand citizens to greet the troops as they made their landing. First Lieutenant Jo Su Ryeon had also issued an appeal to that effect on his NHK program.
The imminent arrival of another hundred and twenty thousand soldiers filled Kim Hyang Mok with a mixture of reassurance and dismay. Until now, five hundred had endeavored to uphold the values of the Republic; now those same values would permeate the city. She washed her face in the bathroom and adjusted her clothing. She still wasn’t used to getting hot water from the tap. One faucet was blue, the other red, and if she turned the latter, she had to be careful not to scald herself. And yet by using both in a balanced mixture, she was assured of a constant supply at just the right temperature. With no running water in her small village near the harbor town of Ranam, it was the children’s task to go every morning to a stream several hundred meters away. She had two older brothers and one younger. According to the household rule established before she was born, a child was obliged to help carry water from the age of five. Hyang Mok adored her older brothers, who, like their father, were tall and good-looking. She and the two of them would get up in the morning, go to the stream, wash their faces, return with the water, and pour it into a vat on the earthen floor. Her brothers carried large buckets, she a smaller one.
