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From our
archive - Aug 11, 2001
I made pizza for
Kim Jong-il
Part 2: Hot ovens at the seaside
By Ermanno
Furlanis
(Part
1: Welcome to
megalopolis)
Exhibitionism
One
morning they took us to visit what they referred to as
the "exhibition", some 10 oversized pavilions crammed to
the rafters with the products of North Korea's presumed
industrial might. A kind of ongoing fair. As everything
else in this place, the scale was nothing less than
vast. There was a pavilion for heavy industry, one for
manufacturing, etc.
Alongside samples of
products you often got a reconstruction of entire
production plants. What I particularly liked were the
little star-shaped markers on the floor indicating the
exact point where the Leader had stood on a certain
occasion and pronounced some memorable phrase to the
workers. I couldn't help blurting out that all they
needed here were little stars commemorating the precise
spot where the Leader had relieved himself. Although my
remark had been issued in Italian, the mirth it stirred
meant that it had been translated for Mr Om, whose
estimate of me (if this was at all possible) plummeted
to new depths. I had never seen him look so offended. It
occurred to me that these matters were of great
significance to the North Koreans, or at least that was
the idea they were attempting to convey to us, and I
resolved from then on to do my best to "respect their
respect" as Mr Om so graciously put it.
After
the customary banquet and with my customary bluntness, I
said to Mr Om that we were tired of being cooped up and
that we wanted to go out somewhere dancing. Obviously
this was a painful request for him. I had guessed that
there was no such thing as a nightclub or disco in this
country, but I wanted to hear him tell us so himself.
But Mr Om's reply caught me off guard and, alas, the
embarrassment was to be all mine. After a moment's
hesitation he conceded that although there indeed were
no nightclubs in Korea as we had in the West,
nevertheless, we should get ourselves ready to go
dancing. He was truly a man of many resources and as it
turned out history was on his side.
All slicked
up for a night on the town, at around eight o'clock a
car took us to the center. We passed a couple of
checkpoints along the way and ended up behind some
stairs. On either side of the roadway I could sense the
presence of history coming at me: We were approaching
the great square where they held public demonstrations
and military parades. I recognized this from a picture
in one of the magazines I had read on my first night, a
place spangled with banners and other symbols of the
regime. It was a dizzying sight. The square itself was a
boundless quadrilateral, perhaps somewhat larger than
Saint Peter's in Rome, and it was facing the river. On
the other side of the river, in the distance you could
make out Tower of the Idea of juche with a red
light shaped like a flame flickering from the top: "the
fire of knowledge".
The sides of the square were
lined by stark looking buildings in the empire style,
no-nonsense facades on the buildings to the left. On the
right loomed statues of Marx and Lenin. An immense
runway cut across the middle of the square serving as a
route for military parades. Here was the very heart of
the nation, a place which had been carefully designed on
the drawing board with the special purpose of
enthralling and bewitching the populace: a perfectly
functional masterpiece of celebratory art. Even we
succumbed to its hypnotic effect. In the center they had
set up an immense dais with a band and choir while
overhead a board indicated the date and the "hymn
number" on the program. It was the anniversary of some
victory. All around the dais, in perfectly regular
squares of 300 or 400 people, the population of Pyongang
had dutifully assembled for the dance. Mr Om estimated
that there were 30,000 persons. Upon a signal from the
master of ceremonies, the clamor around us suddenly
ceased as the participants listened to the commemoration
in a religious silence. And then the dancing began.
First the squares formed into circles and then
flared out into stars. I felt a shiver down my spine in
front of the precision of their movements: rarely had I
experienced such powerful emotions. Mr Om invited us to
join the crowd. Delighted by the invitation we accepted.
We clasped hands with a ring of dancers and had a
wonderful time while they playfully reproached us for
getting all the steps wrong. It turned out to be an
unforgettable evening, historical in every sense of the
word. They had really won us over. Their bluff had held.
During the next few days over lunch and in the
wake of other whirlwind tours we finally got down to
discussing politics. As neo-sympathizers, though perhaps
a bit more moderate then them, we continued to wonder
about those odd sights we kept observing around us. Mr
Om, in one of is more successful flights, told us that
if a Korean sees his daughter drowning alongside the
daughter of another comrade it wouldn't make any
difference to him which to save first because all
children are considered one's own, and that is what
communism is all about. I was moved by this affirmation
and after the solidarity we had witnessed the night
before it wasn't hard to believe.
Out of bed
and on the move
By now we had acquired a taste
for our lives as tourists when one morning at six
o'clock we were awakened by the telephone. It was Mr Om:
"Breakfast in one hour. Get your bags ready, but don't
take too much, we'll only be gone for a few days. A
place at the seaside." It was to be the last we would
see of Pyongang before our departure. On the main
highway at the turnoff I caught a glimpse of the sign
with our destination on it. This annoyed Mr Om and he
did his best to deny the evidence the whole time. Out of
respect for him I will not reveal the name of the place
here.
The scenes we saw during our 200-kilometer
trip had the effect of seriously weakening the effect of
our hosts' bluff. The countryside was so poor and
backward looking that it had a kind of historical charm
about it. Not a trace of the various gadgets and
equipment (and even these had been slightly obsolete)
from the exhibition. The main conveyance appeared to be
a rickety sort of wooden cart with neolithic style
wheels drawn by oxen or horses. Extensive areas were
under cultivation, the buildings looked impoverished and
abandoned, though beside them there were newer
constructions that were a little more decent.
But the most incredible thing was the great
number of people standing around doing nothing. Outside
the city this is quite a shocking sight. Here and there
among the fields there rose odd looking mounds shaped
like squares and covered with reeds: these were shelters
as friends from the kitchen told me later. And
everywhere from the hillsides you could see immense
slogans written in huge red letters. Now and then the
track - there is no better word to describe what could
hardly be termed a road because of the great number of
potholes and the apparent absence of any form of
maintenance - was marked by a militarized checkpoint
manned by heavily-armed soldiers in front of which
hordes of "pilgrims" crowded before being let through in
small groups. I couldn't understand the purpose of these
roadblocks. There appeared to be nothing of any great
importance either leading up to them or on the other
side, only bare, empty fields and desolate-looking
dwellings. People were sprawling about as if they had
been camped there for some time. The grasscutters were
everywhere to be seen with huge bags of grass waiting to
be picked up.
We came to a tunnel guarded by a
bunch of half-naked soldiers. Inside the tunnel the
darkness did nothing to hide the number of people
wandering about aimlessly and the ruinous state of the
paving. A veritable river appeared to be flowing over
the road. A group of ragtag soldiers was loitering off
to the side in disarray. One of them looked like he was
sick and in the process of being relieved by another.
More of the same civilians we had seen before standing
around, maybe trying to get out of the heat. I was at a
loss as to what was going on, but later we realized that
we had been travelling near the border. We were watching
all this from behind the darkened windows of the
limousine to the accompaniment of the melancholy strains
of Korean music. It seemed like a hallucination. Another
limousine with darkened windows was waiting for us when
we came out of the tunnel. It had been sent ahead by the
"company". There was also a new face waiting to meet us:
"Mr Pak?" we asked hesitantly. But it wasn't Mr Pak. It
was Mr Chang. By his absence, Mr Pak was acquiring a
legendary status.
Mr Chang drove us into the
city to our base. Mr Om was now lost. This was a base he
had never been to, and so he had trouble locating it. It
took us several failed attempts before we finally
managed to get there. The spot was pretty much
inaccessible. The whole compound was surrounded by an
immense park, studded with lakes and luxuriant
vegetation; then we came to a bridge with a gate on it
and sentries. At the end of a second driveway there was
another gate patrolled by armed soldiers; then a third
gate even more carefully guarded by soldiers, who this
time were bearing really heavy-duty arms. It was at this
point that we were finally allowed to enter the
enchanted village which reminded me of a Club Med style
resort on the Adriatic - clusters of small houses tucked
away in a pleasant grove of pine trees.
Before
we got to the seaside we had to go through yet another
gate, which was an opening to a very high wall with
watchtowers. This was starting to become scary. Driving
down the boardwalk, every 40 meters or so, behind
bundles of barbed wire, we passed batteries of
anti-aircraft guns with quadruple cannons manned by four
men and an officer, all of whom looked as if they were
made out of wax. Finally, we passed what was to be our
last gate, this time just a metal wire fence and only
one guard. We had reached our destination.
To
our right we could see the ocean and a gorgeous white
sandy beach, so well raked it looked like cement dust;
on our left at the foot of a hill there was a pond with
water lilies floating on it; behind the pond ascending
up the hillside in a semi-circle like an amphitheater
was group of buildings. The first of these was the
center with its kitchens on the ground floor; above that
a longish two-storey building which appeared to be
locked up. Obviously, this was off-limits for us. To the
left of that three smaller buildings, each with their
own kitchen. The kitchens in each of these places were
elaborately equipped, reflecting what must be a
veritable obsession with good food. Further on there was
a high wall and gate which none of us ever dared to
cross. Near the main gate and not far from the beach the
barracks for the soldiers lay behind yet another wall.
We finally see action
After installing
ourselves in our rooms, which were no less sumptuous
than the ones we had had in Pyongang and, if anything,
even more modern and well appointed, we made our way to
the kitchen. Our first contacts with the staff were
cordial and relaxed: it is an incredible fact that
people engaged in the same line of work, no matter from
what part of the world that they come from, immediately
manage to make friends: toil knows no boundaries.
I had three pupils. Mr Yi, a specialist in
pastry and international baking was fat, somewhat
taciturn but very likeable - not a word of English
though. Mr Chang, a little older but with the sweet
naive manners of a teenager, spoke a very good English
but his pronunciation was at first almost unintelligible
to me. Koreans have trouble distinguishing their v from
their b and their f from their p. Finally, a Mr Kim
showed up, a younger fellow with a shifty demeanor. He
arrived a few days later when it had became clear that
there was more to my techniques than he had probably
supposed, and that they were much more difficult than
those of my celebrated predecessor, the Roman pizza chef
who they were still talking about. My class immediately
wanted to get down to business and asked me to make a
pizza for them right away. I told them this would be
impossible because my dough had to sit for at least 24
hours. Their answer was that a professional of my
standing should be able to pull off any feat asked of
him. I was given four hours.
Fortunately, I had
brought with me a natural leaven especially for
unforeseen circumstances such as this and I was able to
carry out my preparations. The dough turned out
perfectly, but then maybe I was just lucky. While I
worked, my pupils, pen and notebook in hand, took down
every detail while the rest of the staff, a dozen people
or so, gathered round to watch the proceedings in an
absorbed silence. At one point Mr Yi even asked to count
the olives I used and to measure the distance between
them. I don't know if he was just pulling my leg, but he
looked totally serious.
One of the pizzas I made
was then carefully selected by Mr Om and taken out of
the kitchen. A few minutes later I was summoned to sit
before a kind of a tribunal. Attempts were made to put
me at ease, but to no avail. The eldest of the three
judges was a man gleaming in gold jewelry. He wore a
Rolex watch on his wrist and held a cigar in his hand.
He had a cynical knowing look, rather like an Oriental
Humphrey Bogart, but after a few minutes he broke into
an unaffected smile, and paid me the most wonderful
compliment of my entire career: "A dough like this can
only have been prepared by a very sophisticated cook,"
he held out his hand and introduced himself: it was Mr
Pak - finally.
Mr Pak went on to explain that he
had been the one who had arranged our little expedition,
that he had wanted to prepare a special surprise for
persons he referred to as his "guests", and that this
was why he had been inviting chefs from all over the
world. In that center they had the capability of
reproducing dishes from all over the planet, a kind of
an international culinary menagerie. They had a library
which contained thousands of texts on cooking. They
brought me some of the material they had on pizza, just
to show me that they were already up on the topic. Mr
Pak;s easy-going manner, quite unlike Mr Om, who never
let his guard down for a instant, gave him away as a
person of exceedingly high rank.
Also, Mr Pak
was not wearing the ubiquitous badge. But scoring this
initial success was to prove my undoing: my hosts became
eager for me to outdo myself every time. The Chef was
given until the next day. After a few hours I was
getting along so famously with my class that Mr Om's
presence was no longer required, so he left us alone.
Finally, I was able to talk about any topic I pleased
and my pupils were not reluctant to converse. The breaks
- 20 minutes out of each hour - we spent in another room
furnished with armchairs where we could leaf through the
official gazette and where smokers could indulge.
Speak but the word
During the next
uneventful few days I slipped into comfortable routine.
All day I was only expected to prepare 10 or 20 pizzas,
and this usually took me no more than a couple of hours.
My pupils gravely noted down the most trivial details
and gradually began doing much of the work themselves,
picking up my techniques with amazing rapidity. In the
ability of these boys to learn you had an explanation
for the economic miracle of the Far East, while the
corruption of the higher-ups, the mysterious "guests",
accounted for the current state of collapse. Once again
it was a confirmation of how thoroughly things are done
in the Far East. In my spare time, I indulged in the
engaging pastime of learning the fascinating Korean
language, a complicated idiom, divided lexically into
different strata whose use varies according to caste and
social situation.
My pupils informed me that
they were all army officers, the lowest ranked among
them being a lieutenant. I was also able to determine
that they were pretty much died-in-the-wool communists:
they said that money for them (money in North Korea
looking pretty much like Monopoly money) was a
superfluous commodity. The state provided them with
everything they needed: housing, clothes, food, cars and
even cigarettes. The little money they did see -
according to them a few dollars a month, though the
official exchange rates are misleading - was a kind of
pocket money to amuse themselves with. All this sounded
like a nice idea. Too bad it couldn't be applied to
everybody. And yet the whole time I stayed in the
country I never met anybody who ever openly or
inadvertently expressed or, for that matter, even gave
the slightest sign that they had anything to be
dissatisfied with, and this was not just among the
personnel at the base who were obviously well taken care
of and had no reason to complain, but even among the
people I was able to speak to the few times I was able
to get away from Mr Om. I was told that an emergency
plan existed to mobilize the entire population. A great
many weapons were on hand if needed. The nightmare of
attack is a constant obsession for North Koreans, as is
getting revenge on their American nemesis. Unification
is a unquestioned dogma.
Before the imposing
means at his disposal, our Chef had waxed euphoric. He
asked me to prepare a list of things and ingredients to
order from Italy all of which amounted to many thousands
of dollars. Everything arrived punctually in a matter of
a few days. On one occasion, after looking over a
brochure I had brought with me, Mr Pak got the sudden
bright idea to order a prefabricated kiln. After first
inquiring whether I would be able to build such a thing
myself, he chose the most expensive model available and
asked me to telephone and order it right away. It was
only because the company was closed for holidays that we
avoided another colossal waste of money. Every now and
then a kind of courier would show up from some corner of
the world. I saw him twice unloading two enormous boxes
containing an assortment of 20 very costly French
cheeses, and one box of prized French wines. That
evening, dinner - a feast worthy of Petronius'
Satyricon - was served with an excellent Burgundy
and delicacies from around the world. As an Italian I
could not refrain from objecting, and three days later
fresh from Italy a shipment of Barolo
arrived.
Part
1: Welcome to megalopolis
Tomorrow, Part 3: The
Great Man eats
(© Heartland. Translated by Jiang Yajun. This version has been edited by Asia Times Online. To subscribe to Heartland, please email cassanpress@sina.com)
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