Miranda: AFTER YEARS

I learn to hate as much as i learn to live: I KNOW, it's strange,
people are slaves more or less. You become rich and you are a slave to
your worries about thieves, cheaters, and the government. You become a
master and you are a slave of your lack of desire, your desire to
experience more extreme things in order to feel THINGS again, just
because doing the same thing over and over again makes you weak,
soulless, hard.


Hollywood was fun, even amusing. I enjoyed making a dozen or
more movies. "OH oh, darling (putting on a falsetto), not even O could
be so daring even with HER false set of toes." You, READER, should
REMEMBER me:
I have the streaked scarlett hair of my ancestors -- it was dipped in
the blood of the nobles that witches killed. My eyes are far, far away:
a blue sun, almost naked, and yet, please, please do not come near. I
used to have a golden halo around my head, but now it's JUST AS CLEAR
as the voices of pins in former SPRINT advertisements.


I'm a SPY now, working for the CIA, that is, the Central
Intelligence Agency. I think it's more fun than making movies since I
get to do field work and no one ever suspects me of being a spy since I
am known as an actor. Once an actor; now a spy.


I WORK IN COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE:
It's difficult for the agency to make me look like a North Korean
woman. My knowledge of the Korean language has been enhanced by years
and years of watching South and North Korean movies. I have also
watched many Chinese and Japanese flicks.


After months and months of plastic surgery, I come out
TRANSFORMED.


"Well"
"you're not as beautiful as before."
"You are so superficial," I snap somewhat flirtateously.
"You look like the enemy."
"Hello" (I say this in Korean)



"I can't tell the difference between her and a North Korean
woman. It's remarkable, even to the mole."


THE INTERVIEW:


"What makes you, comrade KO Jung Min, a valid candidate for
Department 171?"


"My qualifications are immaculate. If you think that I will
speak about what goes on in the GREAT LEADER'S bedroom, you should know
that I really suspect that he's gay." She puffs her gauloises and
condescends a smile.


THERE IS DEAFENING SILENCE: someone aims a gun at her, toward
her heart, and shoots. She slides, knocks him out with a furious
punch.


"You are a funny comrade," he continues, "OUR GREAT LEADER is
not gay, although we have some reports which suggest that a certain
other leader, namely George Bush, is indeed as gay as Hollywood." He
stares at me with the eyes of cockroaches, trying to break
me.


"Well, you know rumours. They are so untrue," I continue, "I
was simply reporting a rumour I heard in our great country." She tones
it down as to avoid sarcasm.


CONTINUED INTERVIEWS:
"ARE YOU A CIA AGENT WORKING FOR COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE?"
My heart almost thumps but I simply imagine the multidinous seas
incarnadine.
"NO."
"HAVE YOU EVER TAKEN A POLYGRAPH TEST BEFORE."
"YES."
"WHEN?"
"BEFORE I TOOK THE FINAL EXAM."
"HAVE YOU EVER ASSOCIATED WITH HOLLYWOOD?"
"NO."
"ARE YOU A NORTH KOREAN COMRADE?"
"YES."


There are many more interviews. FINALLY, I am let into a
room.


MY BODY IS TRANSFORMED by years of careful surgery. Even my
breast is ASIAN. IT IS AS IF I HAD DIED AND BECOME REINCARNATED AS AN
ASIAN, AS A NORTH KOREAN SPY.


IT FEELS FUNNY, A FOREST? SOME PLACE UNIMAGINABLY FOREIGN,
THE FOREST THE FOREST.


I APPLY A FACIAL CREAM:
"Don't Speak. There is a camera behind the mirror. Can you hear
me?"
I APPLY LOTION TO MY EAR LOBES.
"Have you gotten in?"
I smile.
"I didn't ask if you knew me. I asked you if you had gotten in."
I wiggle my nose and then form a dimple.
"You've only reached the second stage?"
Ahn Young Ha Sey Yo (Hello in Korean).
"You're a sly one. What is department 171 like?"
"This room's so Nirvana-esque."


*****


Once a waitress, always a waitress. I'm dressed in a tuxedo.
The Great Leader eyes me:


"Comrade, do you want to do something miraculous for your
country?"
"NO. Do you?"
"You are a strange fish," he laughs as he say this, drinking Henessey
Cognac.
"May I have some?" I ask. I think about saying "And then some."
He pours me a drink.
"It's difficult having so much fun while so many of our other comrades
are dying of starvation," he begins to weep. "Waiter, more Cognac for
the latest addition to our spy ring!"


The only thing I can do to wave off his incredible ugliness,
ugliness is to imagine that I am dreaming and that I'm supposed to be
nice in this little dream of mine, that I actually respect this
person.


The Cognac shoots through my throat and burns it:
"It's like a warm gun, isn't it?"
"Very much so."
"It's good that I have comrades like you protecting me."
"SOMETIMES I WISH YOU WERE DEAD."
He looks at me, a bit confused.
"So that you wouldn't have to suffer so much for your people, Comrade,"
I raise my Cognac glass:
"To our great long-suffering LEADER!"
Everyone raises a glass.
He smiles.


The GREAT LEADER is tired -- he wishes to have someone amuse
him: MIRANDA knows this but his Korean BODY is abhorrent to her and she
does not wish to violate her code of ethics (SADLy, she does not sleep
with anyone *she thinks sex is rather outdated, stale and even dumb,
something only fools partake of*):


"You are a quite charming man, aren't you?" she smiles.
"I'm an ugly man. I KNOW THAT, but what matters is power, isn't
it?"
"Do you really think so?" "I know so."


He stares blankly at her, and she stares back with a
smile.
"Am I so disgusting to you?"
"Even more than you know."
"How very honest of you."
"How many women have you had?"
"Not many. You'd be surprised. They really have to be drunk to be with
me."
"You're not quite that disgusting. After all, you're not a
cannibal."
"That is true. My father was an elegant man, but I?"
"You are a good man, isn't that left?"
He starts giggling. She inserts some potion into his
Cognac.


"Drink, oh great one."
"No you drink."
"It'll make you feel so much better."


*****


Although the GREAT LEADER is quite a bore AT MOST to me, I'm
begunning to like some of my other comrades. Kim Jung Man is quite the
man -- he speaks his mind always *afterthoughts of profanely disgusting
glory* and always speaks when he is spoken to, through teethings of
wheeling nakedness:


"That girl's a cunt." "That's so very crude of you." "You're
so sexy, comrade, MAY I CALL YOU COMRADE?" "You may call me CALL ME
anytime." "Really comrade?"


She is suspected of being the GREAT LEADER'S lover. It is
strange -- she has forgotten her code name, it is lost in her mind
somewhere beyond all experience, only if she could remember, IS IT? She
senses vibrations:


Someone grabs her breasts: she grabs his hand, lurches
forward, and throws him over her shoulders. The gun's in his
mouth.


"Comrade Jung Man, what is this?" she inquires, "IS this a
joke?"
"No Com rade KO KO JUNG me?.in." "Are you fucking trying to rape me?
Well then, rape me like a man!" she says sarcastically. "You mean from
behind like the missionaries?" "Comrade, are you fucking with my
fucking mind?" "NO? you gave me the EYE, I THOUGHT you wanted me to
take you from behind?"


Her eyes release bits of beams from the most inner part of
her blue-gold pupils. Her inner self is laughing madly at this poor
little man. She begins to understand:


"I apologize for the eye. Tell me, does the GREAT LEADER like
me?" "He likes whatever he cannot get his hands on, and that is the
GREAT TRUTH COMRADE!" He suddenly falls asleep in the streets without
even saying goodbye.


When I get back to my room, I use sign
language:


"They invited me to the Great Rejuvenation of the GE or
Spirit banquet. It's so Zeigeist. Did I ever tell you that I am part
German, part French, part Woman, and part Jewish. The Jewish part of me
doesn't get out much. I must also reveal to you that I'm 100 percent
American."


"Do you even know what the Great Rejuvenation of the GE
banquet is?"


"What?"


"It's where you eat dogs and kim-chi and drink saki.
Afterward, you're supposed to feel alive and well again, cultured and
such."


"You talk like a girl."


"Keep putting on your make-up."


"Have you ever eaten a dog?"


"No."


"I have."


"You have?"


"Just drink some saki beforewards and remember to smile while
you eat."


"Thanks for the advice. This bug in my ear? What do I do if a
comrade tries to stick his tongue into my earlobes?"


"That comrade will de dead."


DEATH it seems to me IS SUPERFLUOUS. After all, how can an
all-knowing, all powerful, and all-good God permit a hell after death
and consign Satan to the task of ruling over the suffering evil. It's
too complicated, isn't it. Why not let all people live immortally? We
have our heavens and our hells and our purgatories in life. This is
perhaps my Purgatory?perchance, to dream?


"How do you do?"
"How do you do?" It's the first time I've met a German since I've been
here. For some strange reason, I feel attracted to her. She's so
beautiful.
"For a North Korean, you speak excellent German."
"For a German, you speak pass-able Korean."
"This country is in a mess."
"You are so very naive? so very naive."


They drink saki together. I am dressed in a black-white,
striped tuxedo. The GREAT LEADER IS ABOUT TO SPEAK. LISTEN LISTEN
LISTEN


"THEY said that we would bow on our knees!
Are we bowing on our knees?
NO!!!!!!!!
We are a great people's nation!
We have successfully SUCCESSFULLY waved off the WESTERN TERROR, the
capitalistic PIGS, and the RAGING LUNACY of the WEST.
WE ARE ONE and they are many!
WE WILL WIN WE WILL WIN. NEVER EVER GIVE THEM AN INCH!
I MEANT A CENTIMETER."


"TO THE GREAT LEADER!"
They drink up and down the
drink.

"NEVER GIVE UP NEVER GIVE UP NEVER GIVE UP!"


"This is actually one of his better speeches. Have you ever
heard his father speak? It's true, he was a Monsieur Prudhomme, but he
spoke very elegantly, that is, his dead father."
"OF course I heard his father speak. He spoke so clearly."
"Yes. The people's farms will be a thousand points of light. Kind of
sounds like George Bush Sr."
Miranda accidentally eats the meat in the soup before anyone else does.
It tastes a bit raw and yet cooked. She smiles.


"May the GREAT LEADER become a GREAT GOD!" she lifts up her
saki and downs it.
Everyone begins to chuckle.
"You are not a typical North Korean girl, are you?" Fraulein Mary
extends her voice?
Miranda hears in her mind "YOU ARE A SPY? WHO ARE YOU WORKING
FOR?"
so loudly and clearly, something deep and unsettling
inside.


"The dog was interesting to my taste," Miranda tells the
mirror in sign language, "I was pretending that the dog was actually
chicken. I remembered the taste of chicken."
"You ate dog?" a voice says, "Dear Miranda, I'm afraid that when we
fuck, you may now bark into orgasm."
"You tasted it too, didn't you?"
"No never?"
"YOU ARE SUCH A LIAR."
"What did it taste like?"
"Like raw meat except it had this strange smell. I try not to remember
events that I do not like to remember."
"YES I'M A LIAR, but if I told you the truth, you would not have eaten
that dog."
"That's true. When do I get a vacation so that I may see you
again."
"June 2005."
"SO far away? far away into the net of time?"


--I remember writing a Harley Davidson: I remember things
even if I don't want to remember, she says.
Like what?
I actually remember being Miranda, not this foreign thing that I am
now. I feel trapped. Very trapped?
Really?
Who are you?
I'm a person, aren't I? Tell me that I am human.


-- Do you want to pull out of this operation? YES YES, tell
me I'm beautiful. CoME TO ME, MY DARLING, this culture is stifling to
me, I WANT TO BE FREE AGAIN, to breathe again. YOU CAN PULL OUT
TOMORROW, but it can't last forever. It's just temporary, isn't it, so
temporary, so very temporary. Percy, Percy, i just don't think it's
worth it. I almost threw up the dog I ate. Do you know what happened
afterward? do you know what I saw when I entered a door by mistake
during the night? It's disgusting. I mean, I grew up in America where
such things happened but not in political circles. Don't worry, just
hang in there, please please?


MIRANDA is cold? her heart has become a snake, a
multicoloured snake of divine beauty: everything has come too easy to
her and if she some fascist conceits, it's because all things come to
her, even divine illuminations through the gateway of the soul from
perhaps God himself. HER HEART is tattoo-ed by the image of her lover,
Percy, whom she loves as an equal. It is his image, the one whom she
speaks so silently to through a mirror that keeps her
sane.


She dives into the lake near the woods: "Comrade,
comrade?"
"Shut the fuck up," she is about to scream into shelves of her precise,
elegant mind, but she answers, "What is it?"
"You have to ask permission if you are to leave the premises."
"FUCK YOU," she thinks, but instead, she just keeps on swimming. She
goes deeper and deeper into the water. She sees such beautiful fish?
one thing North Korea possesses is wonderously clean water reserves?
she thinks.


[We've lost contact, Percy says. We've lost her. We don't
know what she's done but we can't spot her anymore. It's funny, even
strange, funnier than even the strangest things in life. We've lost our
mole in the North Korean Spy Agency.]


For once, she feels free. She takes a fish and cuts it open.
She slices it into little pieces and eats it. Sushi a la carte, she
thinks. A little rabbit perches by her side. nibbling on grass. She
gives a little piece to the rabbit. Any piece but Katie's piece. What
does she miss? She misses the movies, the strangeness of all things,
cerebral or sane? the heat of the sun. She is free?


Is it that simple though or is it much more than that? It's
the bug in her ear? it falls out as a dead bee may fall out of the ear.
So I'm alone now, she thinks.


There's a strange, almost marvelous power that comes from
being alone, and Miranda knew that -- the other thing she did not know
was that when she was alone, she planned out the entire scene that
would occur when she stepped out into the world. Make it magnificent,
she heard a spirit say, make it magnificent. She found herself making
back into the fortress-like building, the Communist factory called the
Spy Unit.


"Where have you been comrade?"
"In the woods."
"Comrade, we were looking for you and we found a camera behind your
mirror."
"Funny place to be looking for me in."
"Can you tell me why there was a camera behind your mirror?"
"Perhaps it was there before I arrived."
"Comrade, are you a spy for Europe?"
"Yes," she answers affirmatively, trying to look as serious as she
could.
"Europe," Miranda answers, "pays better."

ESCAPE, she thinks, is the only solution. Miranda, as you know, is
lost, lost, not knowing where she is. She decides to leave. She shoots
her interviewer with a silent gun. Happiness is a silent gun. She
leaves, both US and North Korea behind and arrives in France.

Gabriel smiles at her. A certain blonde woman smiles supremely at
her.
"You've made it."

They have tea together in Paris of all places.
"Enchanted," snaps Gabriel.