Hwang Sok-yong - Princess Bari

I followed the deer over the ridge with Chilsung and sat down on the grass and dried leaves so I could slide down the steep slope of the mountain like a playground slide. The slope ended abruptly, and my body was aloft. I slammed into a tree branch, ricocheted off it, and hit the ground. My body was soaked with sweat, and the pain in my side from where I had collided with the branch made it hard to breathe. It turned out that smoke was coming up from below on that side as well. Chilsung pressed his ears back and began to growl and snarl. A family of wild boar came bounding down the slope after us. They balked when they saw us, turned tail and vanished downhill, the babies scrambling to keep up with their parents. Chilsung growled and took off after them.

Stupid dog! They won’t hurt us! They’re trying to escape too!

I stood up to try to follow them, but couldn’t draw a breath. I must have pulled a muscle in my side, or possibly broken a rib. The pain went away after a few days, but even after I made it back across the Tumen River, it was another month before I stopped getting a stitch in my side every time I walked. I planted my hands on the ground and crawled on all fours through the underbrush, like the boars. The ground turned rocky, and I came upon a ravine where a stream of water was burbling down through the rocks.

Acrid smoke carried on the wind began to fill the ravine. The flames were now at the upper reaches of the slope. The crackling of dry branches catching fire sounded very close. I crouched down behind a large boulder where the water had pooled. The small puddle held no more than about two large bowls’ worth of water.

The flames zigzagged down the slope, following the trees and the curve of the mountain, while the ravine acted like a chimney, channelling the wind and narrowing the approaching column of smoke and fire. Already I could feel the heat pressing down, and it became harder and harder to breathe. Though I’d never been taught what to do in a fire, I dunked my clothes in the water, wrapped my wet jacket around my head and lay as flat as I could behind the boulder. The trees directly overhead shivered and shook and caught flame. Despite the wet clothes covering me, my back burned like I was standing too close to a campfire. The smoke, the smells, the spattering of pine resin and tree bark as they burned and the whoosh of the flames buoyed by the strong wind soared up through the ravine. I squeezed my eyes shut, but my face still wound up covered in tears and snot, and I could not stop coughing. When I finally raised my head the fire had passed, and only small embers were floating around; smoke rose from what was left of the trees. It was starting to get dark. We were on the north side of the mountain, so the sun would set even faster. The ground was spotted red with glowing embers, and burned-out stumps illuminated the ashes around them like blocks of charcoal inside a furnace. Small columns of smoke rose from the ground, and as it grew darker I felt as if I was standing in the middle of Hell. I could still hear some trees burning. A tall larch on fire stood on the slope like a giant torch, its flaming branches spreading out in all directions.

“Chilsung- ah ! Chilsung- ah !” I called out as I limped down the ravine.

My voice echoed all around. Just as I had done once before, I focused my mind on trying to picture his location. He wasn’t far. I wandered among the rocks, looking for him. I finally spotted his body collapsed on a patch of grass, not far from the water’s edge. When Chilsung saw me, he wagged his tail weakly. Are you hurt? I said. Can you get up? But it seemed he no longer had the strength to communicate his thoughts to me. His white fur was streaked with ash, and I saw then that blood was pouring out of an angry red gash in his belly. The blood had turned the underside of his fur red, and was soaking the ground. Who would be stupid enough to go after some wild boars who were only trying to get their babies to safety?! Maybe he’d thought he was protecting me from them. Of course the mother and father boar would have defended themselves to the death against this intruder. The boar’s sharp tusks had ripped open Chilsung’s belly. Then, to make matters worse, the fire had passed right over him. I cradled Chilsung’s head in my arms and stifled the sound of my crying.

You’re all the family I had left in this world, and now I have to go it alone .

For the next few days, as I made my way back to Musan, the mountains continued to burn and send up smoke. I didn’t find out how the wildfires had started until after I’d crossed the border again and was in Yanji. They said there were many forest fires all over the world that year. In North Korea, the land was so parched that some of the fires happened on their own, but others were started deliberately. As the famine swept through the country and more and more people starved to death, no one could be stopped from setting fires in the mountains. All the crops had already been harvested from the collective farms and rations had been cut off, so people resorted to creating small slash-and-burn plots for themselves in the mountains. They would slip a pack of matches into their pocket, find a slope or a ravine where no one could see them and drop a lit match before making a quick getaway.

Even with wildfires blazing so close by, none of the villages had the manpower left to do anything about it. Once a fire began, it would burn for several days, sometimes as long as a week, until all the mountains nearby had burned too. When the dense forests were reduced to ash, people scrambled to stake out their plots and dig up the burned tree stumps to create open fields. There they planted corn and potatoes. Those who cultivated these slash-and-burn fields survived the following year.

I made my way back across the Tumen River, back to where I’d started my journey, pausing at every peak to look behind me at the smoke rising from mountains both near and far. It looked like distress signals sent to distant passing ships from people trapped on desert islands in the middle of a boundless ocean. The smoke rose to the sky in silent, ominously thick clouds, and the sound I’d heard, the whoosh of air rushing past on a night thronged with ghosts, seemed to lay heavy across the land.

After I failed to make it all the way to Puryong in search of my parents, and then lost Chilsung on top of that, I returned to the dugout hut in silence. When I stepped inside I discovered that a disgusting old badger had taken up residence. I searched for a long stick that I could use to try to drive it out, but he was a ferocious little guy: he kept blocking my stick with his paws and lunging at me in fury. His shrill cry was terrifying, but I was no less tough, having already faced certain death and prevailed more than once. I chased out the badger, cleaned up the little hut, dug up the cache of grain that I’d buried in the woods, and proceeded to hunker down for the next month or so, until one day I heard someone moving around outside. It was the farmer. He pulled back the piece of vinyl covering the door and poked his head in.

“ Ya! Look who’s here! You’re still alive!”

His eyes reddened with tears, and he clasped my hand tight. I went with him back to the farmhouse. The family already knew about Hyun’s death and Father’s departure. I told them all about Grandmother dying, my going back to North Korea to search for the rest of my family, and losing Chilsung. The farmer’s wife and his mother turned their backs and wept.

“See,” the farmer’s mother said, “you have to carry on for your family’s sake. Someone has to survive to tell the story.”

I stayed with them for nearly a month. My cheeks plumped back up, and my hair regained its lustre. The farmer contacted Uncle Salamander, who said he would find work for me, and then he personally escorted me all the way past Helong to downtown Yanji. There, we waited in a teahouse for Uncle Salamander. His potbelly had grown bigger since the last time I’d seen him, and he was wearing a baggy windbreaker. He told us that after the famine started the authorities had cracked down on cross-border trade, so he’d started a small travel agency for South Korean tourists with someone instead. The three of us went out to eat. Uncle Salamander and the farmer bought me food while they filled each other in on everything that had happened. Uncle Salamander downed several shots of soju before turning to me.