tongue. But I wasn’t a thief. There must be a better way.
A door slid open. An old woman in a baggy skirt and tunic stepped off a wooden porch, carrying a pan that she placed in front of the dog. The dog wagged its tail gratefully and immediately stuck his snout into what looked like rice gruel. The woman left the dog and puttered around in a small garden. Nothing was growing at this time of year, but still she squatted through the rows, pulling out weeds where she found them.
Her hair was gray, her face covered with liver spots. Certainly, she’d been an adult two decades ago during the Korean War. The experiences she’d lived through, I could only imagine. I decided to take a chance on her. I rose from my hiding place and walked slowly into the village. As I approached, she looked up and I greeted her.
“Anyonghaseiyo, halmonni?” I said. Are you at peace, grandmother?
To my surprise, she didn’t seem shocked at the sudden appearance of a foreigner. The wrinkles on her face deepened as she smiled.
“Anyonghaseiyo,” she replied.
She seemed delighted to see me. There probably wasn’t a lot to do in this sleepy village of Neibyol. Even a filthy foreigner emerging suddenly from the hills was a welcome diversion. I apologized for my appearance and told her that I’d been traveling and asked her if she had any rice gruel she could spare.
Still smiling, she nodded and told me she had. Placing both hands on her knees, she rose stiffly and walked with her back bent into the house. Two minutes later, she returned with a pan that looked very much like the one she’d given the dog. I bowed and thanked her and squatted near her porch, shoveling the delicious rice gruel laced with what I believed to be turnip greens into my mouth with the pair of chopsticks she’d furnished. When I was finished, I bowed and handed the pan back to her, using both hands, as was the custom.
She was still smiling. “You’re very hungry,” she said.
I nodded, wiping my mouth.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m searching for someone.”
“Who?”
I decided to risk it. “Moon Chaser,” I said.
Her expression didn’t change.
“Are you a Soviet?” she asked.
“Romanian,” I replied.
The word apparently meant nothing to her. “Why are you alone?”
“I got lost. Moon Chaser will help me return to my unit.”
She nodded at that. “Do you know what Moon Chaser does?”
“No,” I replied. “Not exactly.”
“He’s a capitalist,” she said. “He exploits the people, sucks their blood. And worst of all, he doesn’t follow the precepts of our Great Leader.” Her face broke into an even broader grin and she was cackling madly, as if at some great joke. “A capitalist,” she said, slapping her knee with the mirth of the statement. “A capitalist.” She was almost choking on her laughter now. “Can you imagine those idiots? Here they almost starve us to death, work us to the bone, steal our sons to spend their lives in the army, and then they tell us to beware of capitalists. Capitalists who would exploit our labor. Capitalists like that skinny idiot, Moon Chaser!”
She was beside herself with laughter now. I was grinning too, keeping up with her.
“And what has Moon Chaser ever done,” she asked me, “except maybe make a little extra money for his mother and his grandmother? Except maybe build a new gravestone for his father. ‘Exploit the workers.’ Bah! ”
Then she glanced around, realizing she’d said too much. She turned back to me. “Are you going to turn me in?”
I shook my head. “I am a simple soldier. I only want to talk to Moon Chaser.”
She squinted at me, suspicious for the first time. “Why do you speak Korean?”
I shrugged. “Practice.”
“You are a soldier,” she said, “but not so simple.” She studied me pensively, her mind reaching back in time. “During the war, I saw many foreign soldiers. They all looked like you. Dirty, dark beards, filthy clothes. But to us they looked like princes. They had food. They had medicine. At night, when there was no fighting, they’d sometimes set up tents and fire up diesel-fuel heaters. They lived like kings.”
She was staring off into space, conjuring up ghosts.
“The Great Leader wants us to hate them,” she continued. “I suppose I should-two of my brothers were killed in the war-but I can’t bring myself to hate them. They were just doing what their leaders forced them to do. Like us. Always under the thumb of the emperor.”
In all my time in North Korea, no one-not even Hero Kang-had spoken so boldly.
“You are very brave, grandmother,” I said.
She cackled. “What are they going to do? Shoot me? I’m old. They’d be curing the ache in my bones. Still, I don’t normally talk like this. Not to these nosey old biddies here in this village. But you are a foreigner. No one listens to a foreigner. I can say whatever I like.”
“What kind of man is Moon Chaser?”
“Smart,” she replied immediately. “Despite what the people around here say. He does business. He survives. He takes care of his mother and his grandmother. Isn’t that what a son is supposed to do?”
“I thought you said he was an idiot.”
“An idiot to take the risks he does. But smart to get away with them.”
“How can I find him?”
She glanced around the village. “They’re all out working now. Go hide somewhere. When I see him, I’ll tell him to go to you.”
“Where should I hide?”
The old woman thought. “Are you afraid of ghosts?”
“Ghosts? No.”
“Good. Just ignore them. They won’t harm you. You’re a foreigner. Wait at the grave mounds, on that hill over there. Stay well hidden. I’ll send Moon Chaser to you.”
Before I left, she handed me a few rubbery lengths of ddok. I bowed and thanked her gratefully.
It must’ve been nine or ten p. m when the army trucks pulled into Neibyol. I lay flat on a grass-studded grave mound, my ddok long since eaten, wondering when-or if-Moon Chaser would show up. There were two trucks, Soviet-made, judging by the triangular shape of their engine compartments. Had the old grandmother betrayed me, or was this just part of their regular search pattern? Actually, it didn’t make much difference. Either way, the smart move was for me to canvass the area. Still, I waited. I wanted to find out as much as I could about this patrol.
Shadows leapt off the backs of the trucks, about a dozen from each. They fanned out toward the flickering candlelight from the straw-thatched hovels. Voices were raised in fright and in protest. More voices shouted them down. Soon the entire village had been searched and people were lined up to be questioned. My eyes were well adjusted to the moonlight by now, but only by listening to the quavering tone of children’s voices could I imagine the tears on their faces. And then one woman was screaming. The soldiers were taking something valuable from her, an heirloom of some sort. The gruff voice of the officer in charge accused her of harboring contraband and hoarding wealth against the will of the people. She screamed that the heirloom belonged to her grandmother, but she was smacked down, and except for her whimpering, the village became deathly quiet. Using lanterns confiscated from the villagers, the soldiers started searching the outlying barns.
I contemplated trying to steal a truck. My feet were raw and the soles of my shoes were about to fall off. I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be able to march through these mountains. In the end, I decided that letting them know that I was here would be the worst thing I could do. Reluctantly, I backed away from the grave mounds, leaving the ghosts behind, disappointed that I hadn’t been able to make contact with the man called Moon Chaser.
When the sun rose ahead of me, I was still walking. No matter how painful each step was, it was better than stopping and allowing the cold to seep into my bones. There was little frost on the ground, so I figured the temperature was just above freezing, but that didn’t mean that my teeth weren’t chattering. It seemed that my upper and lower jaw had been clacking together for eons.
Following the contours of the terrain, I traveled as close to the top of the ridgelines as I could. In the valley below, I glimpsed the occasional pair of headlamps during the night, moving east, as if the soldiers searching for me
