14. Portraits
PORTRAITS
RI
The corridor outside the Vice Minister's office smelled of floor wax and the particular mustiness of radiators that had run all winter without once being cleaned. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vice Minister Jung Il-Shim was not used to waiting, so Ri made sure that he didn't.
Vice Minister Jung was in charge of the European Affairs Department Two, which covered the European Union countries surrounding the area. Jung was a career-climber, and vying for a promotion to European Affairs Department One, comprising Russia and Baltic republics.
As a result, he was always nervous. Everyone was always nervous in the DPRK, but Ri had always thought that career-climbers were next to criminals as the most nervous of the bunch… until he started a love affair with a foreign diplomatic officer.
Then he realized that he was the most nerve-wracked person that he knew.
He adjusted his cuffs, waiting outside the vice minister's door for the secretary to come out and call him in.
The hallway was silent in the specific way that meant the door was thick and the walls were thicker.
He checked his watch. Six minutes past the appointed time.
He did not check it again, because checking it again would mean he was counting, and he had trained himself, mostly, not to count.
Choi Gyeong-ok had worked for the Ministry for three years now, just after completing her military service. She was of slight build, with a quiet voice, and a knack for discretion. He had never once heard her raise it.
She emerged, minutes later, smoothing her hair back into place with both hands, quickly, the way a person straightens a picture frame that has been knocked crooked—not vanity, but correction.
Her blouse was buttoned to the throat, as it always was, but she tugged once at the collar before she saw him and stopped. Her hand dropped.
“Comrade Ri, the vice minister has been expecting you.”
She opened the door and Vice Minister Jung looked calm from behind his desk. Contented. Like the cat that got the cream.
Ri's eyes cut over to his secretary, who looked like the opposite.
She was already reaching for her notepad, already composing her face into pleasant blankness, but doing it a half-second too fast, the way a person does when the composing is a task rather than a state.
He said nothing. It wasn't his place. He should remember his place, where he was, and what would happen if he forgot.
He’d forgotten everything last night.
“How is the delegation faring?” Vice Minister Jung said.
“Well,” Ri supplied. He was still blinking away thoughts of Marina.
Jung sighed. “That’s the canned answer. I need the real one. What is your feel for the situation?”
Feel? His feel for the situation? Did the vice minister know, already, that he had kissed Marina last night?
“They’re working on their evaluation plan.”
“Of course they are. Will it be favorable to us?”
“They don’t tell me, sir.”
The vice minister snorted. “Of course they don’t tell you. You have to find out. If you’re not going to do the job, I'll find someone else who will tell me the truth.”
He swallowed. The truth was the feel of her fingertips sliding inside of his sleeves, her hair in his hands, her lips and her entire body against his. His mind was fogged with it. His heart was reeling. Any minutes now they’d see it on his face.
“Hmm. Gyeong-ok, what else is on my schedule today?" Jung asked.
"You are making a surprise inspection of the Great Leader portraits on the third floor, and then we go down to the basement where a self-criticism session is scheduled." Her voice did not waver. It was steady, sanded smooth over something.
Jung leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers on his chest. "Perfect, so if the portraits are not flawless, the wrong-doers go straight to the self-criticism session."
Gyeong-ok nodded. "Yes, that's the idea. Mr. Yi from the fourth floor is scheduled for self-criticism, he has been chronically late to work."
Jung huffed a laugh. "Someone from the fourth floor? Perfect. That's the European Affairs Department One. From Vice Minister Kim's team. Ha! I think I might enjoy that session."
Ri gave a half-smile, as it was expected to share in the joy of his superior.
Gyeong-ok didn't move a muscle. Which worried him—she wasn't married yet, and something was odd about the way she acted around Vice Minister Jung.
She kept her eyes on the notepad, on the middle distance, on anything that was not the two men in the doorway, and Ri understood, without being told and without wanting to understand it, that this was a skill she had honed.
Jung rose, tugging his own jacket straight, and did not look at her again before moving toward the stairs. Ri fell into step half a pace behind, where he belonged, and did not look back.
They made their way to the third floor, ignoring the ancient elevators that were only for show—brass doors polished to a shine, a relic of some earlier five-year plan, permanently out of service.
The hallway was dark, with a window at the end to let in sunlight, dust turning slowly in the shaft of it like something suspended in water.
Each office door was open, pooling light from their office windows too, so that the corridor read as a sequence of bright squares laid over the gloom, on, off, on, off, all the way to the end.
The corridor was quickly filled with Division Two employees bowing as they passed by, heads dropping in a ripple that moved ahead of Jung like weather. After they passed, people scattered—not back to their offices, but to the places that a vice minister might look.
By the time they got to the largest Great Leader portraits at the end of the hall, gilt frames catching what light there was, glass buffed to an unnatural clarity, two men were putting back a chair into an office, and a woman was locking a feather duster reserved for this purpose back into a hall closet.
The law in Joseon was quite strict about the meticulous upkeep of the portraits. They were regularly inspected by the National Intelligence Agency—the secret police.
The three people stopped and saluted. "Comrade Vice Minister," they said.
Another dozen onlookers clustered around them, which showed that no one expected to be found in violation for not keeping up the polishing of the portraits.
When people got into trouble, onlookers vanished.
Ri had seen it happen in the space of a breath—a full corridor emptying like water down a drain, doors easing shut without a sound.
Vice Minister Jung checked his watch. "Don't you dust off the portraits on Mondays? It's almost three o'clock on a Tuesday."
A hush swirled around the crowd, and Vice Minister Kim from European Division One turned the corner, his team behind him, moving with the unhurried confidence of a man whose department's number came first.
"Ah, Vice Minister Jung," he exclaimed.
Everyone bowed. "Vice Minister Kim, honored that you visit our floor."
"I was just heading down to the self-criticism session. By all means, continue."
A corner of Vice Minister Jung's mouth turned down, which Ri knew meant a storm was brewing.
"Thank you." He turned to the three employees. "As you were saying?"
The woman stepped forward. Ri recognized her—it was Mrs. Chan from accounting, her feather duster still held against her chest like a shield.
"We often feel bursts of patriotic fervour, and we spontaneously clean the portraits of the Great Comrade Leader and Eternal President, as well as that of the Respected General and Eternal Chairman. "
Ri looked between Mrs. Chan, the two men, and the two vice ministers. Mrs. Chan was taking pains to refer to Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in front of so many state witnesses, her voice pitched to carry, each title given its full weight and none of its shortcuts.
Vice Minister Jung frowned and nodded. "Very well."
Vice Minister Kim caught up with his colleague, and said loudly: "That is so nice that you can do that in Division Two.
In Division One, we are so busy with Russia, our new bridge to Russia, and of course Ukraine that all must sacrifice and not give in to unscheduled personal flights of revolutionary zeal. "
Vice Minister Jung was walking at a clip, but his pace slowed. So did Ri's and Gyeong-ok's behind him—their boss would get angry over this loss of face, and both of them had learned to read the change in his stride the way sailors read a shift in wind.
"If only you could spare me some of your team, perhaps just those three, so we too could have free time to do the same."
"Excuse me—Gyeong-ok!"
Gyeong-ok bowed and went over to him, then nodded at whatever he said in her ear, and took her place back behind Ri. Her face, when she returned, had arranged itself into nothing at all.
"I'm sure that you have just the right size team that you require, comrade," his boss replied levelly.
Ri turned around, but Gyeong-ok wasn't there when they walked down to the basement.
Ri’s stomach dropped with every step. If they even had an inkling of what he’d done with Marina, there would be a lot more than a circle of chairs waiting for him.
He loosened his tie and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his fingertips.
The basement was colder than the floors above, the fluorescent light overhead humming faintly at a pitch Ri had stopped noticing years ago.
It smelled of concrete and something fainter beneath it, chalk dust, old paper.
By the time they got to it, Mr. Yi from the fourth floor was on his knees in the center of a circle of chairs, his hands flat on his thighs, staring at a point on the floor just in front of him.
Beside him was Mrs. Chan, her head bowed, the feather duster nowhere in sight.
Gyeong-ok crept in silently, closing the door behind her with a care that made no sound at all. She looked up once at Mrs. Chan and then clasped her hands in front of her, her jaw tight, eyes on the floor.