It gave a summary of the conflict between the two Koreas that began in 1950, the North supported by the Soviets and China, the South by the U.S. and the United Nations, the signing of the armistice on July 27, 1953 and the creation of this frontier on the 38th parallel, the world’s most heavily militarized border, in the midst of a no man’s land four kilometers wide and 238 kilometers in length. In the course of those three years, two to four million deaths, both civilian and military. No peace treaty had ever been signed.

Kerrand was listening to me intently, head down, one hand on his forehead to hold back his hair. The only display that had caught my attention was one with schoolchildren’s shoes from the North along with Choco Pies packaged in blue instead of their trademark purple. Were they the real thing? Did they actually have a cake inside or had they been specially made for the museum?

I checked the time on my phone. The tip of my finger had gone white. I touched it and felt nothing. Ten minutes later the blood still wasn’t flowing back. I signaled to Kerrand. He held my fingers in his warm hand and said it wasn’t normal for me to be so cold. I said I was always cold. He shook his head, tucked my hand into his pocket.

The last room in the museum was a reconstruction of a military camp. At the far end, wax figures of men lying on straw. The room doubled as a souvenir shop. You could purchase Pyongyang alcohol, children’s drawings, badges with images of the North’s dictators. Behind the counter, a waxwork of a woman in a gray uniform staring straight ahead. I walked up to it. The eyelids twitched. A real live person. Sales staff. I tried to catch her eye. No movement of the lips, no raising of the eyebrows.

I told Kerrand I wanted to go.

We drove back in silence. The rain hammered down, the sea rising beneath it in spikes like the spines of a sea urchin. Kerrand drove with his left hand on the wheel, the other on the gearstick, brushing against my knee. Between us, his sketchbook his gloves resting on it. Shadows on his nails, traces of ink. I felt uneasy and did my best to stay close to the door. The angle of the seat made my position uncomfortable.

That evening, I spied on him again through the half-open door. He looked older, bent over at his desk. He’d scribbled an image of a woman’s torso, bare-breasted, her back arched, feet half-hidden beneath one buttock. Curled on a futon. He sketched a wooden floor, filled in the details of the futon, as if to avoid the faceless body clamoring for life. He finished the background in pencil and took up his pen to give her eyes. The woman sat up. Straight-backed. Hair swept back. The chin awaiting a mouth. Kerrand’s breath came faster and faster, in time with the strokes of his pen, until a set of white teeth exploded into laughter on the page. The sound too deep for a woman’s laugh. Kerrand knocked over the inkpot, the woman reeled, tried to cry out again, but the ink slid between her lips, blacking her out until she vanished completely.