The gas station at the edge of the city looked deserted; the front gate was shut tight. A sentry waved me away when I pulled up. An old man wearing a cloth cap looked at me from behind the bars of the gate.
"Everything's closed. You can't get nothing here." I handed the coupons to him. He studied them closely, then said something to the sentry. The gate sagged so badly it took the two of them to swing it open.
The old man put out his hand. "Give me the keys. You can't drive in without a military pass. You can sit over there if you want." He indicated a concrete bench on a patch of dirt next to a low fence. He got in and started the car. "A Volvo. Not many of these left. None in Hamhung as far as I know. And only a few in Pyongyang." I watched the car pull up to the fuel pump at the far end of the compound. The sentry dragged the gate shut and locked it.
A rose bush grew along the fence behind the bench, climbing up from the ugly oil-stained pavement to make a thick wall. The flowers were red, a shade lighter than the girl's blouse had been. The bush was pruned and tended, fed and watered. Each leaf was a glossy green, free of pests or disease. At night, when the air was still and no trucks were spewing exhaust along the street, this spot must have been a perfumed silence.
The old man was standing next to me. "Even in this sadness, in this ugly time, the roses want to bloom," he said quietly. "Here are your keys. You better keep these gas coupons. Or maybe put 'em back where they came from." He touched the bill of his cap in a small salute and watched from the side of the road as I drove down the town's main street, past a half-ruined guesthouse called the Rainbow Inn and a park where a woman and a frail girl were sweeping imaginary leaves from the gravel walkway.
At the edge of town, the street made a sharp bend and gave way to a two-lane, rutted dirt track. I couldn't drive fast, but with a full tank of gas, I made it to just outside Manpo with only one stop. A bridge was down, and two soldiers were directing traffic through a field to a ford across the river. They weren't checking papers, but when I parked at the water's edge, waiting my turn, one of them looked at my plates, then stuck his head in the window. "You really from Hamhung?"
"Nah. Never been there." From his accent I could tell he wasn't from that part of the country. "Hamgyong people are kind of thick. I won this car in a card game with a couple of them." He laughed and waved me on, forgetting that he meant to bum a cigarette.