God Throws Dice 

by

H. James Kutscka

Translation from the Portuguese  

by

Darian Land

I just finished translating the chapter below.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Pyongyang — Monday 10 September 2001

8:30 PM

Kim Hoon was naked from the waist up when his eyes meet his own image in the large mirror in his dressing room. What he saw did not disappoint him.

A mixture of his mother’s Korean genes with those of his father, a French career diplomat, had resulted in a tall, light brown-compected man with transparent blue feline eyes that brought to mind tropical beaches.

His perfect muscles and his bronze skin were the result of his labor. He was the newest general in the North Korean Regular Army. His features, strange for those of his mother’s race, were extraordinarily attractive when seen through Western eyes.

This was a reality that Kim Hoon was totally aware of, and felt so comfortable with it that he had transformed it into a resource he handled with grace and resourcefulness to meet his objectives, be they in the fulfillment of his official duties, or simply to massage his Eastern macho ego.

Though the number of Western women in Pyongyang was ridiculous for a city of its size, the majority of them that deserved a second look in any world capital had already passed at least once through his bed.

The record holders almost always were Russian diplomatic women, who, after the Gorbachev era, had gotten much better, so much so in the question of age as in their sophistication. The Communists had discovered that power didn’t go well with ugly women, and this acknowledgment had set off an irrepressible wave of divorces in which they traded in women who brought to mind Vincent Van Gogh’s The Potato Eatersfor models and professional prostitutes who, most of the time, weren’t as old as their oldest daughters, an occurrence Kim Hoon would daily thank the gods for, granted the state would let him have them.

Something in his ancestry made him immune to local women whom he wasn’t attracted to, in the same way they weren’t attracted to him. It might have been because they reminded him of his mother whom he respected with the Eastern side of his personality and with everything it involved. He loved her very much, but it was always prudent to keep his distance.

When his father died, he was fifteen years old. It was in the seventies, with everyone acting crazy, except for Kim Hoon Carpentier. It happened that when his mother went back to her hometown of Kae Song, which now, because of a treaty and a few kilometers, was located in the wrong Korea. It was the one in the north.

His maternal grandfather was a general in the newly formed Regular Army of the new country. The man had a strong personality and in short time he had total dominion over his grandson whom he saw for the first time. His mother, a pacifist, tried at all costs to avoid the unavoidable. So as not to lose her son, she ended up accepting her father’s demands that the first thing to go would be the Carpentier name. Then he showed him the way to a military career. In this way Kim Hoon was protected from disco music and bell bottom pants, an occurrence that he as much as his mother hadn’t regretted.

She put up with everything without complaining, and kept her adolescent son and habits in tow by keeping him on a short leash.

‘The old woman isn’t a push-over,’ he thought to himself, ‘but I think if she knew what I’m ready to do in order to make this world more just, she would be happy with my career.’

His mother went on living in Kae Song. Elderly people such as she were encouraged to leave Pyongyang, where, until very recently, the elderly, beggars, and pregnant women were forbidden. The position Kim Hoon held with a certain ease would make it so that the people responsible for these cares of the city’s appearance gave it a merchant look in its streets and squares.

The problem was her. She would never agree to leave the old block that was squeezed in with its old pagodas between the main road and the river, like an impregnable bastion that resisted bravely at the advance of wide avenues in the modern city that held approximately two hundred thousand inhabitants.

To her, Kim Jong-il, known as “the beloved leader” was nothing more than a moron. A burlesque imitation of Kim il-sung, he was a scoundrel who was surely burning in hell. This was an opinion that she shared secretly—which showed him that the brainwashing his grandfather had practiced on her hadn’t come close to being a success—, but if it weren’t for them with their absolute power, in what other way would somebody like Kim Hoon be able to have within his reach the means to bring the world to its knees and punish it for the arrogance that the richest countries imposed upon the poorest ones?

‘Fucking globalization!’ he thought out loud.

That shitty dictatorship was finally going to serve for something. And the best part is that the tormentor on duty didn’t even suspect what was about to come.

He put on a shirt and an austere tie. Anelice Binot, a reporter from Paris Match would certainly appreciate his kindness to attend the dinner that had been arranged by wearing civilian dress. He tried to describe her mentally, but this was based on the lousy airport security videos he had seen quickly, with the image of Catharine Deneuve that had come to mind in the film Indochina.

She was perhaps a bit younger than the actress, but with charm and a stunning presence the majority of mortals only find in their dreams. She had arrived in Pyongyang on Friday afternoon, only three days earlier.

Though he was a person of renown with important connections, he had spent the weekend in state installations trying to comply with the endless demands of the local bureaucracy; and while at those state installations he had been informed about her the entire day. During the week the state was terrible; on Saturday and Sunday anyone who would need his services would rather have strolled barefoot through the seventh hell. It was that, according to the state, he didn’t exist. The idea formed a smile on Kim Hoon’s face.

The dinner was to search for a solution to the young woman’s troubles. Her company had made the necessary contacts through the embassy in order to obtain a few comforts that were indispensable when dealing with North Korea, so that she could do the photo shoot. The reportage would use some city scenes and the surrounding area as background for clothes of Asiatic inspiration that has been designed by some European faggot whose name he didn’t remember. As usual after arriving it became clear to them that nobody knew anything about it, and the authorizations came out on time without the intervention of some local authority. At this point Kim Hoon came into play.

With her were five French models, a Chilean photographer who seemed to be bedding all of them, a French gay make-up artist who seemed to be in love with the photographer’s assistant who was a black Brazilian about twenty-five years old, and last, there was a fifty year old lady, the seamstress. All of them were guests at the Ko Ryo Hotel, a stately construction with forty-five floors that enabled a view of the entire city from the majority of its five hundred rooms.

Since over half of the rooms—all on the lowest floors—had never been fully occupied, the possibility of any guests not having a stunning panoramic view was nonsense, but the tourists did not need to know this, and paid more for this obligatory privilege.

They had agreed to meet at 9 PM, and it would be better that they dined in the revolving restaurant at the top of the hotel—the place always made such an impression on visitors so that they forgot temporarily where they were; and from the kitchen that, despite it being of quality for Asiatic standards, it was far from any good Western restaurant, and it only served Western dishes—a decision made by some genius in the hotel’s marketing. Any option not from the local menu would only fill his companion’s eyes with tears that evening, since she would not have the opportunity to compare it to any other meal that, in all certainty, she had tasted in some better place before; but in order for this to have been possible, the hotel had to have at least a three day notice, time that he had not been given. Among other comforts was the one that made it possible to go by her room, where he could pass by without being seen from the lobby, which was always compromising, even for him. On the other hand, in all of Pyongyang they would find nothing better on a Monday. For a long time the country had been suffering a lack of food. Whatever there was of the best was in the hotel for the scarce tourists and eventual businessmen with most of them being European. It’s clear that the government’s objective wasn’t to make it appear to outsiders that everything ran well in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. After all, anyone averagely enlightened knew about the shitty place his country currently was. The idea was to give some comfort to them so that eventually they would come back. Dollars were always welcome. Outside the hotel, the best that could be had was Tong Ir duck (on Unification Street) with Pong Hak, the only available beer.  Yet, at the Ko Ryo, with a bit of luck, even a Budweiser could be had.

The fact he spoke perfect French designated him for a series of intelligence services, where language and the refinement of a blue blood were necessary in order to make up a pristine image of North Korea’s good intentions to the world.

Members of the eclectic group of guests had been investigated one by one by the secret service, and nothing had arisen that could call into question the past of any one of them other than a traffic violation. The truth be known, they were so genuine and such good people they could only be spies.

‘And what importance could this have on Thursday? None,’ he thought.

Wednesday, thanks to him, the world as we know it would not exist; his country would no longer be a nation isolated from the rest of the world because of its technological lagging, and with its economy sunk at a 5% to 6% rate per annum. It would become “just one more” among the rest of the nations of the planet, with all of then unexpectedly hurled into the chaos. It would not be exactly the end of the world. It would be more like a new beginning, now with equal opportunity for all. A formidable task for a god, but gods were forbidden in that land in which churches and temples only served as tourist attractions, and where Confucianism had been the order of the day for longer than he could remember. Maybe the authorities were right.  Once someone did what he was about to do, maybe it was a new kind of god, a god that at the moment was hungry; and if everything went as planned, he intended to bed Catherine Denevue, before the end of the world, which was set for two days later.

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copyright 2013 by Darian Land and H. James Kutscka