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interpreter translated.
    She quickly made up an answer. “Three miles.”
    The next official asked, “Who occupies the house east of yours? What is the surname and how many are they?”
    Jee-yun swiftly invented a name and number.
    Before she could take a breath, the third man asked, “How many stairs lead to the ancestral hall? Are they stone or wood?”
    All day the officials shot questions at her and carefully recorded her answers.
    â€œWhat are the market days in town?”
    â€œHow many steps is it from your front door to the village entrance?”
    â€œIn what directions are there hills? How many hills can be seen from the village entrance?”
    â€œHow many tombs are on the hill where your grandfather is buried?”
    Her throat dried, but the men refused to provide water. She grew faint, but her captors kept the window shut.
    When Jee-yun was finally taken to her cell, she could hardly breathe. The officials had posed several hundred questions and she had fabricated answers to all of them. Their scheme was clear. In a few days, they would repeat their questions. It would be impossible for her to recall all her false replies. Then they would know she wasn’t Yung Gim-lan and had no right to enter.
    She realized she had fallen into a well-crafted trap. From the barred window, she saw a forest park by the ocean. Her cell contained no chairs or desk, and certainly no paper or pen. But to soothe her nerves, she composed a poem in her head, and then cut the words into the wall with her jade pendant.
    Walls of stone and steel rise to surround me,
Windows frame a forest green, ringed by sea.
But I will ride the ocean waves crashing high,
And carry deep desires to meet the sky.
    Each day she wrote lines of poetry. It helped the hours creep along. When the officials dragged her back to the interrogation room, she tried to recall her answers but soon confessed she wasn’t Yung Gim-lan.
    â€œWho sent you this birth certificate?” demanded her jailers.
    She refused to reply. They waited to see who might visit her but Wah-lung suspected a trap and dared not approach. Each day he trudged home from work by himself, hoping a miracle would bring her to his room.
    Jee-yun carved more poems onto the wall, but their tone grew grimmer and the images darker.
    Why does a heart beat when no one can hear?
How many sorrows can a solitary heart bear?
The wisdom of the past slips with autumn leaves,
Sweep them away, and scatter the seeds.
    When she saw horse-drawn carriages trot gaily along the seawall, tears poured from her eyes. When children ran by with colorful kites aloft in the sky, she gripped the iron bars until her hands ached.
    The officials grew worried. Some days she refused to eat. Often she spat in their faces; other times she lay on her cot and wouldn’t budge.
    As she grew thinner and weaker, the officials summoned a Chinatown doctor. Jee-yun shook her head and wouldn’t let him touch her. He coaxed her with kind words to try to learn her real identity, but she turned away and wouldn’t meet his eyes. When the doctor noticed her wall poems, he copied them down in his notepad. Later, he showed them to the editor of one of Chinatown’s newspapers, who praised them and quickly published them.
    Soon all Chinatown was marveling at the talented poet imprisoned in Pig Pen. When Wah-lung read the poems, he detected the growing despair and realized he had to act soon. But Pig Pen was tightly guarded.
    One warm night, he waited in the shadows of a nearby alley. When the truck came to haul away kitchen waste, he jumped onto the vehicles back and crouched among the greasy barrels. He held his breath until the sentries at Pig Pen’s gate waved the truck through. Then he hopped off and slipped into the building. Approaching footsteps sent him running into a dark corner. But he didn’t realize the truck’s garbage smells were clinging to him, and the guards easily sniffed