imagine that a fugitive would live next to the very place where the round-
ups were planned. The darkest spot is right beneath the candle.
A few days later I rented a one-room apartment next door to the Xita
Road Police Station. In fact, the distance
from the entrance of my new
apartment building to the station was about five steps. From my window, I
could see some of the police from the interrogation room coming and going
in their dark-blue uniforms. I was so close that I figured they wouldn’t
bother with my block, even on one of their most thorough round-ups.
Two weeks after I had moved there, I was returning home after a long day
at the restaurant. I was so tired it was an effort to climb the stairs. I felt in
the bottom of my bag for the keys to my door. The stairwell had no light.
Suddenly I heard the sound of a rapid movement in the darkness to my
left, as if something were rushing toward me. Before I could react, a
massive blow struck the back of my head. The explosion in my ears stunned
my brain.
My vision went blank, then I blacked out.
Chapter 27
The plan
I opened my eyes to a diffuse white light. I was lying on my side on a bed.
Pain pulsed from the back of my head. I felt nauseous.
A soft-spoken
female voice asked me to look at her. I turned my eyes slightly and saw a
lady in a green surgical mask. The gash in my head required ten stitches,
she said. I was being given an anaesthetic and would be going under for
about half an hour.
If I don’t wake up no one will know who I am, I thought.
The girl with many names and no identity.
My eyes began to droop.
It was a couple of days before I could piece together what had happened.
My neighbour in the apartment block had heard a noise in the stairwell. She
found me lying on the concrete floor. A widening pool of blood was
flowing from the back of my skull. The attacker
had smashed a full one-
litre beer bottle over my head and had run off.
Someone had been waiting for me in the dark, intending to attack me
with such violence that the blow might have been fatal. Whoever it was
didn’t take my wallet, or the keys out of my hand to rob my apartment.
I had been very lucky that my attacker had not drunk the beer first, the
hospital staff said. The glass of an empty bottle would have done far more
damage. They urged me to report to the police as soon as possible. I said I
would, but I had no intention of talking to the police.
My
old dorm friend, Ji-woo, thought the family of my jilted ex-fiancé
was behind the attack. Mrs Jang might have been seeking to avenge the
family’s honour for my humiliation of Geun-soo before the wedding.
This thought troubled me very much. But the more I considered it, the
less likely it seemed. The manner of the attack, and the choice of weapon –
a one-litre bottle of beer! – wasn’t something the family would stoop to. I
credited Mrs Jang with more class.
The timing, just two weeks after my police interrogation, suggested that
it was more likely to be connected to the informer who’d told the police I
was a North Korean, and who provided them with my name and place of
work. This is speculation, but the informer might have suffered
consequences for wasting police time with a ‘false’ report, and was taking
revenge.
Once I was on the mend, I went back to work at the restaurant, but I was no
longer enjoying the job. The comfort of my routine had been shattered. I
was now mistrustful of everyone. I became paranoid whenever a customer
tried to chat with me.
I missed my family more than ever. I longed for my mother’s affection. I
wanted to cry in her arms after what had happened to me. I longed for Min-
ho’s company. There was not an hour of the day when I did not think about
them. Before
the police interrogation, I had started to make friends in
Shenyang, but now I kept to myself. Once again, I was alone.
In my new neighbourhood, I found myself using the same laundry as
some of the policemen. Sometimes I saw the handsome Inspector Xu. He
didn’t recognize me. One of the regulars
in the laundry was a Korean-
Chinese officer who always smiled at me. I tried to think whether he’d been
in the background when I’d been interrogated, but I wasn’t sure and I
couldn’t ask. He seemed nice. His name was Shin Jin-su and he held the
rank of sergeant. He was a little older than me. Not good-looking, but
impressive
in his uniform. One evening in the laundry he asked if I’d like to
have dinner. My instinct was to smile and decline, but after all that had
happened in the last few weeks, I was frightened and cynical. A voice in my
head said:
Why not? A policeman ally could be useful.
We began dating. It was the autumn of 2001.
Our dates were nothing
fancy. We’d go to a McDonald’s or a KFC. One evening, he seemed tired
but in high spirits. ‘I’m exhausted,’ he said. ‘And starving.’ He was stuffing
a Big Mac and fries into his mouth and wiping the grease from his lips with
the back of his hand.
‘Why?’
‘Rounding up North Koreans since dawn.’ His mouth was full. ‘We
caught so many I had to skip lunch.’
He described how some of them cried and begged when they were
cornered, and seemed to think I’d find this as funny as he did. ‘Please don’t
send me back,’ he said, putting on a high-pitched North Korean accent.
I had to control my face to hide my anger.
The woman you’re looking at
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