17
Mia was awoken by the creak of a door. She opened her eyes. Paul was pushing a room-service cart into the room. He went to her side, saying good morning.
“Coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, pastries, hard-boiled eggs, and cereal. Would the lady care for anything else?”
He poured her a cup of coffee.
Mia sat up and arranged the pillows behind her back.
“To what do I owe all this special treatment?”
“Nothing special about it. Now that I’ve fired my assistant, I’m going to have to do everything around here myself,” Paul replied.
“That’s strange, I heard she resigned.”
“Well, she had the right idea. I would much rather lose an employee and keep a friend. Sugar?”
“Yes, please.”
“And as I am now my own assistant, I took a few liberties this morning. All of today’s appointments have been canceled. Our only obligation is the reception at the embassy. The rest of the day is free. Seoul is ours to explore until this evening, so let’s make the most of it. Every last moment.”
“You canceled all your appointments?”
“Postponed them until tomorrow. I said I was coming down with something. After all, I can’t let Murakami monopolize the flu. It’s a question of status.”
Mia caught sight of the newspaper lying folded on the breakfast table and quickly made a grab for it.
“Your photo’s on the front page!”
“I know. They didn’t get my good side. Awful. Looks like there’s about ten pounds more of me than there should be.”
“Come on, you look good. Have you called your press officer to ask her to translate the article for you? A front-page photo—that’s a big deal!”
“For now, I have no way of knowing if the coverage is positive or negative, but I do have a creeping suspicion the whole thing might actually be about Murakami’s latest novel and not mine.”
“Where did this obsession with Murakami come from? That’s the second time you’ve mentioned him in the past five minutes.”
“There’s no obsession. Although, after last night, I’d have good reason to be obsessed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I half wish you had watched the thing. It was so surreal. Getting interviewed by a journalist who hasn’t read my books is one thing, but nothing could have prepared me for an interview with someone who was mixing up my book with somebody else’s!”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Last night! The moron kept asking me questions that were obviously intended for . . . I’m not going to say his name, or you’ll accuse me of being obsessed again. There I am, alone on the set, sitting across from the host. ‘So, what led to your interest in the fate of the North Korean people? How did you find out so much information about the lives of those oppressed by Kim Jong-un’s regime? Why are you so committed to this cause in particular? Do you think the days are numbered for the dictator’s reign? In your opinion, is Kim Jong-un a puppet leader appointed by an oligarchy or is he really, truly in control? Are your characters inspired by reality or did you invent them?’ Et cetera, et cetera . . .”
“You can’t be serious!” said Mia, unsure whether to laugh or show sympathy.
“That’s exactly what I said to the interpreter talking to me through that stupid earpiece. Those things really do itch, you know. I thought it might be some kind of prank. That seemed like the most logical explanation. At first, I told myself I wasn’t going to let them put one over on me, not that easily, but after twenty minutes, the joke was getting pretty stale. Except it wasn’t a joke. Those jackasses somehow got their authors mixed up, and the interpreter was too scared to tell them.”
“That is flat-out crazy,” Mia replied, covering her mouth with her hand to suppress the laughter she could feel welling up inside her.
“Go ahead, laugh it up, I haven’t stopped laughing since we got back last night. I mean—this is the type of thing that could only happen to me. Only me.”
“But how could they have made such an outrageous mistake?”
“Stupidity has no bounds. Let’s not waste our day on that,” Paul said, grabbing the newspaper from Mia’s hands and tossing it to the other end of the room. “Finish your breakfast and let’s head out for a walk.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I only made a complete fool of myself in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers. Somebody must have told the TV channel about their screwup, which is presumably what that article is all about. So if anyone on the street bursts into laughter when they see me, let’s try to pretend we can’t hear them.”
“I’m so sorry, Paul.”
“Don’t be. Let’s move on. You said it yourself: no one cares about that TV show. And look what a beautiful day it is outside!”
Paul persuaded Mia to leave the hotel through the back parking lot, in case Ms. Bak was waiting for him in the lobby. He planned to spend the day alone with Mia, and the last thing he wanted was the added encumbrance of a guide.
They spent the morning visiting Changgyeonggung Palace. Walking through Honghwa Gate, Paul attempted to pronounce all the names he saw, and his guttural exaggerations had Mia in stitches. Standing on Okcheongyo Bridge, she admired the ornamental pond and the beauty of the historical surroundings.
“That’s Myeongjeongjeon, the throne hall,” said Paul, pointing to a small single-story building. “It was opened in 1484. All the houses you see are facing south, because the ancestral shrines of the royal family are located in the south, but Myeongjeongjeon faces east, going against Confucian tradition.”
“Did Kyong teach you all that?”
“What? Who’s this Kyong? No, I picked up a brochure when I was buying the tickets. It was my attempt at impressing you. Would you like to see the botanical garden?”
They left the palace and visited the Insa-dong district. They wandered into art galleries, stopped to sample traditional pancakes, and spent the rest of the afternoon rummaging through antique stores. Mia wanted to get a present for Daisy. She was hesitating between an old spice box and a beautiful necklace. Paul advised Mia to go for the necklace, while he discreetly signaled the antique dealer to wrap up the spice box. He presented it to Mia and said: “Give this to Daisy from me.”
They got back to the hotel just in time to prepare for the evening. Catching sight of Ms. Bak standing vigil in the lobby, Mia pushed Paul behind a pillar. They crept from one pillar to the next, finally taking advantage of a passing bellboy and his luggage cart to reach the elevators without being spotted.
At seven p.m., Mia put on her dress.
“If you say I look ‘not bad’ one more time, we’ll see how good you look showing up stag to the ambassador’s!” Mia announced, admiring herself in the mirror.
“All right, I’ll keep my mouth shut, then.” Paul allowed himself a smile of pride at having bought the dress for her.
“Paul!”
“What can I say? You look—”
“Don’t you dare!” Mia interrupted.
“Beautiful. You look beautiful.”
“Well, in that case, thank you for the compliment.”
Half an hour later, the limousine dropped them in front of the American ambassador’s residence.
The ambassador was waiting for his guests in the entrance hall. Paul and Mia were the first to arrive.
“Mr. Barton. It’s an honor and a pleasure to welcome you to my home,” the ambassador began.
“The honor is all mine,” Paul replied, introducing Mia.
The ambassador bent to kiss her hand.
“Tell me a little about yourself, Ms. Grinberg,” he said.
“Mia has a restaurant in Paris,” Paul replied on her behalf.
The ambassador led them into a large drawing room.
“I haven’t had time to read your latest novel yet,” he whispered to Paul. “I speak a little Korean, but unfortunately not enough for a whole book. On the other hand, I can tell you that you made my partner cry his eyes out. You’re all he’s talked about for the past week. He was deeply moved by your novel. Part of his family lives in North Korea and he told me that your story was incredibly accurate and detailed. How I envy the freedom you have as a writer. Giving voice to viewpoints that people in my position are forced to keep under wraps, due to diplomatic obligations. But allow me to say that with this novel, with this story, you are speaking for all of America.”
Paul frowned at the ambassador for several moments.
“Um . . . Would you mind elaborating on that a bit?” he asked warily.
“My partner is Korean, as I said, and . . . Oh, there he is! I assure you he’s far more eloquent than I am. I’ll let you go ahead and introduce yourself. He’s dying to meet you. In the meantime, I should probably go and welcome our other guests. And, if you don’t mind, I’m going to kidnap your charming friend here to come along as backup. Don’t you worry, I’m harmless,” the ambassador added with a smile.
Mia shot a pleading look at Paul, but their host was already leading her away.
Paul barely had time to come to his senses before a slender and extremely elegant man flung his arms around his neck and pressed his head against Paul’s shoulder.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said. “I’m so honored to meet you.”
“Um . . . Me too,” said Paul, attempting to free himself from the man’s grip. “But for what exactly am I being thanked?”
“For everything! For being who you are, for your words, your deep concern for the fate of my people. Who else cares these days? What your work means to me . . . you can’t even imagine.”
“You’re right, actually, I can’t. Is this some sort of mass prank or what?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” said Paul, exasperated. “I don’t understand anything anymore.”
The two men looked each other up and down.
“I hope you are not shocked by my relationship with Henry, Ms. Barton. We’ve been deeply in love for ten years. We even have a child together, a little boy we adopted, whom we love very dearly.”
“No, no—that’s not it. I grew up in San Francisco and I’m a Democrat. Love whoever you want. What I don’t understand is what you were saying about my book.”
“Did I say something offensive? If that is the case, please excuse me. Your novel is so very important to me.”
“My novel? My novel? The one I wrote?”
“Yes, yours, of course,” the man replied, holding up the book he gripped in his hand.
While Paul was incapable of deciphering the Hangul characters, he had no trouble recognizing his photo on the back cover, the same his editor had shown him the day before yesterday. The deep well of confusion filled Paul with doubt. And this doubt grew and grew, until finally he felt as though the ground were giving way beneath his feet.
“Would you agree to sign it for me?” the man pleaded. “My name is Shin.”
Paul took him by the arm.
“Is there someplace nearby where we could talk for a moment in private?”
Shin led Paul down a corridor and into an office.
“We won’t be disturbed here,” he assured Paul, gesturing to a chair.
Paul took a deep breath and tried to find the right words.
“You speak perfect English. And I assume you’re fluent in Korean?”
“Yes, of course. I am Korean,” Shin replied, sitting down opposite Paul.
“Good. And so you’ve read my book?”
“Twice! It had such a powerful effect on me. And every night before I go to sleep, I reread a passage.”
“Fantastic. Shin, I just have a small favor to ask.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t worry, it really is small.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Barton?”
“Tell me . . . what happens in my book.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me right. If you don’t know where to start, just give me a summary of the first few chapters, and we’ll take it from there.”
“Are you sure? But why?”
“It’s impossible for a writer to assess the fidelity of a translation in a language he doesn’t speak. But you . . . are bilingual. So go ahead. It’ll be easy.”
Shin seemed to take Paul’s request at face value. He told him what happened in his novel, starting at the beginning.
In the first chapter, Paul was introduced to a child who had grown up in North Korea. Her family lived in unimaginable poverty, as did all the inhabitants of the village. The dictatorial regime, imposed by a cruel dynasty, kept the entire population in slavery. Their free time was devoted to worshipping the leaders. The school—which most children were not allowed to attend, being forced instead to work in the fields—was merely a propaganda tool designed to mold impressionable minds into thinking of their torturers as supreme deities.
In the second chapter, Paul met the narrator’s father, a university lecturer. In the evenings, he secretly taught English literature to his brightest students, undertaking the perilous task of teaching them to think for themselves and attempting to instill in them the wonderful virtues of liberty.
In chapter three, the narrator’s father was denounced to the authorities by the mother of one of his students. After being tortured, he was executed in front of his family. His students suffered the same fate, and their bodies were all dragged by horses through the streets. The only student spared was the one whose parents had betrayed the lecturer. Instead of being killed, that girl was imprisoned in a labor camp for the rest of her life.
In the next chapter, the heroine of the novel recounted how her brother, who had stolen a few grains of corn, was beaten and locked in a cage too small to stand up or lie down in. His torturers burned his skin. One year later, the narrator’s aunt, after accidentally damaging a sewing machine, had her thumbs chopped off by her employer.
In chapter six, the heroine was seventeen years old. The night of her birthday, she left her family and ran away. Crossing valleys and rivers on foot, hiding by day and traveling by night, eating only roots and wild grass, she managed to sneak past the police officers patrolling the border and at last entered South Korea, the land of resilience.
Shin paused, seeing that the author of the story was just as overwhelmed at hearing the saga unfold as Shin himself had been upon reading it, if not more so. It suddenly hit Paul how insignificant his own prose was.
“What happens next?” Paul asked. “Tell me what happens next!”
“But you already know what happens!” Shin replied.
“Please, just go on,” Paul begged him.
“In Seoul, your heroine is welcomed by an old friend of her father’s, another defector from the regime. He looks after her as if she were his own daughter and provides for her education. After university, she gets a job and devotes all of her free time to informing the world about the plight of her compatriots.”
“What sort of job?”
“She starts out as an assistant in a publishing house, then she is promoted to copyeditor, and finally she becomes editorial director.”
“Go on,” said Paul, through gritted teeth.
“The money she earns is used to pay people-smugglers, and to fund foreign opposition movements, all with the intent of making Western politicians aware of the situation and pushing them into finally taking action against Kim Jong-un’s regime. Twice a year, she travels abroad to secretly meet with these groups. Her family members are still at the mercy of a ruthless regime; if anyone were to make the connection, her mother, her brother, and especially the man she loves would pay a heavy price.”
“I think I’ve heard enough,” Paul interrupted, looking at the floor.
“Mr. Barton, are you all right?”
“You know, I’m really not sure.”
“Can I help you?” Shin asked, handing him a tissue.
“One last question. The main character in my story, my heroine,” Paul asked, wiping his eyes. “Her name . . . is it, by any chance . . . Kyong?”
“Why yes, of course,” said the ambassador’s partner.
Paul found Mia in the drawing room. Upon seeing how pale and haggard he looked, she put down her glass of champagne, apologized to the person she’d been talking to, and came over to him.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, concerned.
“Do you think there’s an emergency exit in this building?” he said numbly. “Or in life in general, preferably . . .”
“You’re white as a sheet.”
“I need a drink. A stiff one.”
Mia grabbed a martini from a tray held by a passing waiter and handed it to Paul. He downed it in one gulp.
“Let’s go somewhere quiet and you can tell me everything.”
“Not now,” Paul replied, his jaw clenched. “I can’t just keel over and faint right before the ambassador gives his speech.”
During the meal, Paul couldn’t shake the vision: a family could be starving to death only a hundred miles from this room where waiters proffered lavish trays of petits fours and foie-gras canapés. Two worlds, separated by a border. His own world had ceased to exist one hour earlier. Had Kyong planned this all along? Mia kept trying to catch his eye, but Paul couldn’t see it. When he left the table, Mia followed him. He thanked the ambassador and apologized for the fatigue that forced him to leave.
Shin accompanied them to the door. He shook hands with Paul for a long time on the steps of the mansion. Seeing his gentle, sad smile, Paul felt certain Shin had pieced together some of the truth of the situation.
“What in the world could have put you in this state? Did something happen to Kyong?” Mia asked as the limousine drove away.
“Yes, sort of. It happened to both of us, apparently. My success in Korea was never real. My novels never really existed here, and Kyong was a hell of a lot more than just a translator.”
Mia listened in shock as Paul went on.
“She kept my name on the covers of the books, but that was all. Under that front, she published her own novels—her story, her battles. That TV host yesterday wasn’t a moron at all, and neither was the interpreter. I’ll have to be sure to apologize to them. And, you know, all this would be like one gigantic farce, if the real subject of my Korean novels were not so tragic. To think . . . for years I’ve been living off royalties from books I didn’t even write. You were right to tender your resignation—you were working for an impostor. My only excuse is that I didn’t know a thing about any of this.”
Mia asked the chauffeur to stop the car.
“Come on,” she said to Paul. “You need some fresh air.”
They walked side by side in silence until Paul started speaking again.
“I have every right to hate her for what she did. But behind all the betrayal and deception is something noble. If she had published those books under her own name, it would have been a death sentence for her family.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“I don’t know. I need to think. All throughout dinner, I was trying to wrap my head around it. I guess I’ll have to play along, at least while I’m here. Otherwise, I risk putting her in danger. When I get back to Paris, I’ll send her the money she’s owed and cancel that contract. Cristoneli’s going to be just thrilled: I can see it now, him having a conniption right at the Deux Magots. And when the dust settles, I’ll have to figure out a way to make a living.”
“Nothing is forcing you to do any of that. That money came from Korean publishers, and they must have made a fortune off your books.”
“Not my books. Kyong’s.”
“If you really decide to go through with this, you’re going to have to give some kind of explanation.”
“We’ll see. Anyway, at least now I understand why she’s been MIA. I have to find her so we can talk about this. I can’t leave without seeing her.”
“You do love her, don’t you?”
Paul stopped and shrugged. “Let’s go home. I’m freezing. God, what a weird night!”
In the elevator that took them up to their suite, Mia stood in front of Paul. She gently stroked his face and then abruptly slapped him. Paul snapped out of his stupor. Mia pressed him against the wall and kissed him.
They were still kissing when the doors opened and they continued kissing out in the corridor, his back pressed against the wall, sliding from door to door until they reached their room.
They were still kissing as they got undressed, and didn’t stop even as they fell onto the bed together.
Mia whispered: “This doesn’t count. None of it counts, nothing but the present moment . . .”
And they kissed mouths and necks, stomachs and hips, legs and thighs, their limbs entangled. Their breath came faster as they locked each other in a furious embrace until, weak with exhaustion, they fell asleep on the damp sheets.