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He reached out and took her hand, squeezed it, felt the strength there as she gripped him back.
She said, “I didn’t want to leave you back there.”
“But you did it right by the book. You don’t leave the people we’re guarding without coverage.”
“But it’s still going to stick with me, Robie.”
“You need to let it go. I made the call. You did exactly what you were supposed to. And on top of it you had the foresight to save my ass. I owe you my life, Jess. But for you I’m gone. Forever.”
She grazed his cheek with her hand and then leaned over and kissed him there. She settled against him as he wrapped his arm around her.
He didn’t know if she was weeping. It was nearly impossible to tell with Jessica Reel. What was inside of her never seemed to truly make it to the outside.
So he just held her, as the big carrier made its way south where the free part of Korea would welcome them briefly before their journey home.
Chapter
59
CHUNG-CHA WATCHED AS MIN wrote out the symbols in the small lined notebook Chung-Cha had purchased for her. They were seated at the table by the window in Chung-Cha’s apartment. Min was dutifully inking the marks as best she could. Chung-Cha’s features did not betray what she was thinking.
At age ten Min could not really read and she could not really write. Her vocabulary was stunted, her breadth of thought constrained within the brutal limits of a concentration camp. She had seen more horrors than a soldier on a hellish battlefield. And for her, the war had been a decade long.
Min looked up after struggling with the alphabet. She searched Chung-Cha’s face for approval or disappointment.
Chung-Cha smiled and said, “We will continue to work on this each day. A little at a time.”
Min said, “I am not very smart.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it is what they said back there.”
She did not refer to the place as Yodok, or Camp 15, or any of its myriad other names. She just called it “back there.”
“Back there, they lie, Min. That is all they do. To them you are nothing. Why bother with the truth for nothing?”
“Could you read, or write your letters, when you were free?”
“No. And they called me stupid too. Now I have this place. I have a car. I have a job. And…I have you.”
Min furrowed her brow as she thought about this. “What is it that you do?”
“I work for the Supreme Leader.”
“But you said you had never met him.”
“Most who serve him have never met him. He is a very important man. The most important of all. But we serve him well and he takes care of us like the father he is.”
Min nodded slowly. “But he doesn’t take care of people back there.”
“To him they are his enemies.”
“I did nothing to him,” Min pointed out.
“No, you didn’t. It is because of a philosophy.”
“What is that word?”
“It means an idea.”
“It was because of an idea that I was back there?”
Chung-Cha nodded and then worried that she was venturing into waters that would prove too deep for her. She looked at her watch. “It is time to eat.”
This remark always served to make Min forget whatever else she was thinking.
“I will help you. Can we have the white rice again?”
Chung-Cha nodded and Min walked to the little kitchen to begin her tasks.
As the pair worked away in the tiny space, Chung-Cha glanced out the window and saw the same man out there. He was always out there, or else someone just like him was. He worked, she believed, for the black tunic. The tunic had a name, but it was unimportant to Chung-Cha, and she had decided not to add it to her memory. The black tunic was a suspicious, paranoid man, which was one of the major reasons he had risen so high in the government. In some ways he was more influential than the capped and medaled generals with their tight, weathered faces where the potential for violence percolated just below the surface.
He was both her savior and her enemy, Chung-Cha knew. She would always tread cautiously around him. The approval for taking Min from Yodok had come through his good offices. But he could take Min away at any moment and for any reason. She was well aware of that.
For now, Min was with her. That was what mattered. That was all, really, that mattered.
She glanced at Min, who was very carefully cutting a small tomato into precise slices. Her lips were pursed in concentration and her hands, Chung-Cha noted, were rock-steady.
They reminded her of her own hands. But Chung-Cha was more likely to be holding a knife for the purpose of killing someone than for cutting up a tomato.
Chung-Cha said, “My mother’s name was Hea Woo.”
Min stopped slicing and looked at her, but Chung-Cha was still staring out the window.
“She was tall, taller than my father. His name was Kwan. Yie Kwan. Do you know what Kwan means?”
Min said, “Kwan means strong. Was he strong?”
“He once was, yes. Perhaps all fathers are strong in the eyes of their daughters. He was a teacher. He taught at a university. So did my mother.”
Min put down the knife. “But you said you could not read or write.”
“I went to Yodok when I was very young. I do not remember my life before. I grew up there. That is all I knew. There was nothing else before Yodok.”
“But didn’t your parents teach you when—”
“They taught me nothing,” said Chung-Cha sharply, as she closed the lid on the rice cooker and turned it on. She said more calmly, “They taught me nothing because it was forbidden. And by the time I could have learned…they could teach me nothing.”
“Did you have brothers or sisters?”
Chung-Cha started to answer, but then the image of the four hooded people tied to posts impacted her mind as suddenly as a rifle round.
Do you see the red circle drawn on their fronts? You will stick this knife inside the red circle…Do it now, or you will die here as an old woman.
Chung-Cha’s hand moved involuntarily. She was gripping not a knife but a teaspoon. Min watched as the spoon made thrusts in the air. Then Min gripped her hand and said, “Are you okay, Chung-Cha?” Her voice was fearful.
Chung-Cha looked down at her and put aside the spoon. She readily interpreted the fear Min held: Is my savior, the one person who stands between me and “back there,” going mad?
“Memories are sometimes as painful as wounds on the skin, Min. Do you see that?”
The girl nodded, the fear slowly receding from her eyes.
Chung-Cha said, “We cannot live without memories, but we cannot live within them either. Do you understand that?”
“I think that I do.”
“Good. Now finish with that tomato. When the rice is done we will have our meal.”
An hour later they set aside their bowls and utensils.
“Can I work on my writing now?” asked Min, and Chung-Cha nodded.
The girl rushed to get the tablet and the pen.
But before she returned there was a knock at the door.
They never summoned Chung-Cha by phone. They came and got her. She knew why this was. Just to show that they could do so at any time they wanted. And she would have to drop whatever it was she was doing and obey.
Min’s face scrunched up as Chung-Cha rose to answer the knock.
The men there were not in military uniforms. They were in sleek slacks and jackets with white shirts buttoned up to the neck. They were young, nearly as young as she was, and their angular features were smug.
“Yes?” she said.
