The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  “I gave Gil my word,” he told Officer So. “I said we’d forget how he tried to run.”

  Rumina sat with the wind at her back, hair turbulent in her face. “Put him in the bag,” she said.

  Officer So had a grand laugh at that. “The opera lady’s right,” he said. “You caught a defector, my boy. He had a fucking gun to our heads. But he couldn’t outsmart us. Start thinking of your reward,” he said. “Start savoring it.”

  The idea of a reward, of finding his mother and delivering her from her fate in Pyongyang, now made him sick. In the tunnels, they would sometimes wander into a curtain of gas. You couldn’t detect it—a headache would spike, and you’d see the darkness throb red. He felt that now with Rumina glaring at him. He suddenly wondered if she didn’t mean him, that Jun Do should go in the bag. But he wasn’t the one who beat her or folded her up. It wasn’t his father who’d ordered her kidnapping. And what choice did he have, about anything? He couldn’t help that he was from a town lacking in electricity and heat and fuel, where the factories were frozen in rust, where able-bodied men were either in labor camps or were listless with hunger. It wasn’t his fault that all the boys in his care were numb with abandonment and hopeless at the prospect of being recruited as prison guards or conscripted into suicide squads.

  The lead was still around Gil’s neck. Out of pure joy, Officer So leaned over and yanked it hard, just to feel it cinch. “I’d roll you over the side,” he said. “But I’d miss what they’re going to do to you.”

  Gil winced from the pain. “Jun Do knows how to do it now,” he said. “He’ll replace you, and they’ll send you to a camp so you never talk about this business.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Officer So said. “You’re soft and weak. I fucking invented this game. I kidnapped Kim Jong Il’s personal sushi chef. I plucked the Dear Leader’s own doctor out of an Osaka hospital, in broad daylight, with these hands.”

  “You don’t know how Pyongyang works,” Gil said. “Once the other ministers see her, they’ll all want their own opera singers.”

  A cold, white spray slapped them. It made Rumina inhale sharply, as if every little thing was trying to take her life. She turned to Jun Do, glaring again. She was about to say something, he could tell—a word was forming on her lips.

  He unfolded his glasses, put them on—now he could see the bruising on her throat, the way her hands were fat and purple below the tape on her wrists. He saw a wedding ring, a birth-surgery scar. She wouldn’t stop glaring at him. Her eyes—they could see the decisions he’d made. They could tell it was Jun Do who’d picked which orphans ate first and which were left with watery spoonfuls. They recognized that it was he who assigned the bunks next to the stove and the ones in the hall where blackfinger lurked. He’d picked the boys who got blinded by the arc furnace. He’d chosen the boys who were at the chemical plant when it made the sky go yellow. He’d sent Ha Shin, the boy who wouldn’t speak, who wouldn’t say no, to clean the vats at the paint factory. It was Jun Do who put the gaff in Bo Song’s hands.

  “What choice did I have?” Jun Do asked her. He really needed to know, just as he had to know what happened to the boy and the girl at the end of the aria.

  She raised her foot and showed Jun Do her toenails, the red paint vibrant against the platinum dark. She spoke a word, then drove her foot into his face.

  The blood, it was dark. It trickled down his shirt, last worn by the man they’d plucked from the beach. Her big toenail had cut along his gums, but it was okay, he felt better, he knew the word now, the word that had been upon her lips. He didn’t need to speak Japanese to understand the word “die.” It was the ending to the opera, too, he was sure of it. That’s what happened to the boy and the girl on the boat. It wasn’t a sad story, really. It was one of love—the boy and the girl at least knew each other’s fates, and they’d never be alone.

  THERE WERE many kidnappings to come—years of them, in fact. There was the old woman they came upon in a tidal pool on Nishino Island. Her pants were rolled up and she peered into a camera mounted on three wooden legs. Her hair was gray and wild and she went without protest, in exchange for Jun Do’s portrait. There was the Japanese climatologist they discovered on an iceberg in the Tsugaru Strait. They plucked his scientific equipment and red kayak, too. There was a rice farmer, a jetty engineer, and a woman who said she’d come to the beach to drown herself.

  Then the kidnappings ended, as suddenly as they’d begun. Jun Do was assigned to language school, to spend a year learning English. He asked the control officer in Kyongsong if the new post was a reward for stopping a minister’s son from defecting. The officer took Jun Do’s old military uniform, his liquor ration card and coupon book for prostitutes. When the officer saw the book was nearly full, he smiled. Sure, he said.

  Majon-ni, in the Onjin Mountains, was colder than Chongjin had ever been. Jun Do was grateful for the blue headphones he wore all day, as they drowned out the endless tank exercises of the Ninth Mechanized, which was stationed there. The school officials had no interest in teaching Jun Do to speak English. He simply had to transcribe it, learning vocabulary and grammar over the headphones and, key by clacking key, parroting it back on his manual typewriter. I would like to purchase a puppy, the woman’s voice would say over the headphones, and this Jun Do would tap out. At least near the end, the school got a human teacher, a rather sad man, prone to depression, that Pyongyang had acquired from Africa. The man spoke no Korean, and he spent the classes asking the students grand, unanswerable questions, which greatly increased their command of the interrogative mode.

  For four seasons, Jun Do managed to avoid poisonous snakes, self-criticism sessions, and tetanus, which struck soldiers nearly every week. It would start innocently enough—a barbed-wire puncture, a cut from the rim of a ration tin—but soon came fevers, tremors, and finally, a coiling of the musculature that left the body too twisted and rigid for a casket. Jun Do’s reward for these achievements was a listening post in the East Sea, aboard the fishing vessel Junma. His quarters were down in the Junma’s aft hold, a steel room big enough for a table, a chair, a typewriter, and a stack of receivers that had been pilfered from downed American planes in the war. The hold was lit only by the green glow of the listening equipment, which was reflected in the sheen of fish water that seeped under the bulkheads and constantly slicked the floor. Even after three months aboard the ship, Jun Do couldn’t stop visualizing what was on the other side of those metal walls: chambers of tightly packed fish sucking their last breath in the refrigerated dark.

  They’d been in international waters for several days now, their North Korean flag lowered so as not to invite trouble. First they chased deep-running mackerel and then schools of jittery bonito that surfaced in brief patches of sun. Now they were after sharks. All night the Junma had long-lined for them at the edge of the trench, and at daybreak, Jun Do could hear above him the grinding of the winch and the slapping of sharks as they cleared the water and struck the hull.

  From sunset to sunrise, Jun Do monitored the usual transmissions: fishing captains mostly, the ferry from Uichi to Vladivostok, even the nightly check-in of two American women rowing around the world—one rowed all night, the other all day, ruining the crew’s theory that they’d made their way to the East Sea for the purpose of having girl sex.

  Hidden inside the Junma’s rigging and booms was a strong array antenna, and above the helm was a directional antenna that could turn 360 degrees. The U.S. and Japan and South Korea all encrypted their military transmissions, which sounded only like squeals and bleats. But how much squeal and where and when seemed really important to Pyongyang. As long as he documented that, he could listen to whatever he liked.

  It was clear the crew didn’t like having him aboard. He had an orphan’s name, and all night he clacked away on his typewriter down there in the dark. It was as if having a person aboard whose job it was to perceive and record threats made the crew, young men from the port of Kinjye, sni
ff the air for danger as well. And then there was the Captain. He had reason to be wary, and each time Jun Do made him change course to track down an unusual signal, it was all he could do to contain his anger at the ill luck of having a listening officer posted to his fishing ship. Only when Jun Do started relating to the crew the updates of the two American girls rowing around the world did they begin to warm to him.

  When Jun Do had filled out his daily requisition of military soundings, he roamed the spectrum. The lepers sent out broadcasts, as did the blind, and the families of inmates imprisoned in Manila who broadcast news into the prisons—all day the families would line up to speak of report cards, baby teeth, and new job prospects. There was Dr. Rendezvous, a Brit who broadcast his erotic “dreams” every day, along with the coordinates of where his sailboat would be anchored next. There was a station in Okinawa that broadcast portraits of families that U.S. servicemen refused to claim. Once a day, the Chinese broadcast prisoner confessions, and it didn’t matter that the confessions were forced, false, and in a language he didn’t understand—Jun Do could barely make it through them. And then came that girl who rowed in the dark. Each night she paused to relay her coordinates, how her body was performing, and the atmospheric conditions. Often she noted things—the outlines of birds migrating at night, a whale shark seining for krill off her bow. She had, she said, a growing ability to dream while she rowed.

  What was it about English speakers that allowed them to talk into transmitters as if the sky were a diary? If Koreans spoke this way, maybe they’d make more sense to Jun Do. Maybe he’d understand why some people accepted their fates while others didn’t. He might know why people sometimes scoured all the orphanages looking for one particular child when any child would do, when there were perfectly good children everywhere. He’d know why all the fishermen on the Junma had their wives’ portraits tattooed on their chests, while he was a man who wore headphones in the dark of a fish hold on a boat that was twenty-seven days at sea a month.

  Not that he envied those who rowed in the daylight. The light, the sky, the water, they were all things you looked through during the day. At night, they were things you looked into. You looked into the stars, you looked into dark rollers and the surprising platinum flash of their caps. No one ever stared at the tip of a cigarette in the daylight hours, and with the sun in the sky, who would ever post a “watch”? At night on the Junma, there was acuity, quietude, pause. There was a look in the crew members’ eyes that was both faraway and inward. Presumably there was another English linguist out there on a similar fishing boat, pointlessly listening to broadcasts from sunrise to sunset. It was certainly another lowly transcriber like himself. He’d heard that the language school where they taught you to speak English was in Pyongyang and was filled with yangbans, kids of the elite who were in the military as a prerequisite to the Party and then a life as a diplomat. Jun Do could just imagine their patriotic names and fancy Chinese clothes as they spent their days in the capital practicing dialogs about ordering coffee and buying overseas medicines.

  Above, another shark flopped onto the deck, and Jun Do decided to call it a night. As he was turning off his instruments, he heard the ghost broadcast: once a week or so, an English transmission came through that was powerful and brief, just a couple of minutes before it was gone. Tonight the speakers had American and Russian accents, and as usual, the broadcast was from the middle of a conversation. The two spoke about a trajectory and a docking maneuver and fuel. Last week, there’d been a Japanese speaker with them. Jun Do manned the crank that slowly turned the directional antenna, but no matter where he aimed it, the signal strength was the same, which was impossible. How could a signal come from everywhere?

  Just like that, the broadcast seemed to end, but Jun Do grabbed his UHF receiver and a handheld parabolic, and headed above decks. The ship was an old Soviet steel-hulled vessel, made for cold water, and its sharp, tall bow made it plunge deep into waves and leap the troughs.

  He held the rail and pointed the dish into the morning haze, sweeping the horizon. He picked up some chatter from container-vessel pilots and toward Japan he got all the craft advisories crosscut with a VHF Christian broadcast. There was blood on the deck, and Jun Do’s military boots left drunk-looking tracks all the way to the stern, where the only transmissions were the squawks and barks of U.S. naval encryption. He did a quick sweep of the sky, dialing in a Taiwan Air pilot who lamented the approach of DPRK airspace. But there was nothing, the signal was gone.

  “Anything I should know about?” the Captain asked.

  “Steady as she goes,” Jun Do told the Captain.

  The Captain nodded toward the directional antenna atop the helm, which was made to look like a loudspeaker. “That one’s a little more subtle,” he said. There was an agreement that Jun Do wouldn’t do anything foolish, like bringing spying equipment on deck. The Captain was older. He’d been a heavy man, but he’d done some time aboard a Russian penal vessel and that had leaned him so that now his skin hung loose. You could tell he’d once been an intense captain, giving clear-eyed commands, even if they were to fish in waters contested by Russia. And you could tell he’d been an intense prisoner, laboring carefully and without complaint under intense scrutiny. And now, it seemed, he was both.

  The Captain lit a cigarette, offered one to Jun Do, then returned to tallying sharks, using a hand counter to click off each one the Machinist winched aboard. The sharks had been hanging from lead lines in open water so they were in a low-oxygen stupor when they breached the water and slammed against the hull before being boomed up. On deck, they moved slowly, nosing around like blind puppies, their mouths opening and closing as if there were something they were trying to say. The job of the Second Mate, because he was young and new to the ship, was to retrieve the hooks, while the First Mate, in seven quick cuts, dorsal to anal, took the fins and then rolled the shark back into the water, where, unable to maneuver, it could race nowhere but down, disappearing into the blackness, leaving only a thin contrail of blood behind.

  Jun Do leaned over the side and watched one descend, following it down with his parabolic. The water crossing the shark’s gills would revive its mind and perceptions. They were above the trench now, almost four kilometers deep, perhaps a half hour of free fall, and through his headphones, the background hiss of the abyss sounded more like the creeping, spooky crackle of pressure death. There was nothing to hear down there—all the subs communicated with ultralow-frequency bursts. Still, he pointed his parabolic toward the waves and slowly panned from bow to stern. The ghost broadcast had to come from somewhere. How could it seem to come from every direction if it didn’t come from below? He could feel the eyes of the crew.

  “You find something down there?” the Machinist asked.

  “Actually,” Jun Do said, “I lost something.”

  Come first light, Jun Do slept, while the crew—Pilot, Machinist, First Mate, Second Mate, and Captain alike—spent the day crating the shark fins in layers of salt and ice. The Chinese paid in hard currency, and they were very particular about their fins.

  Jun Do woke before dinner, which was breakfast time for him. He had reports to type before darkness fell. There had been a fire on the Junma which took the galley, the head, and half of the bunks, leaving only the tin plates, a black mirror, and a toilet that had cracked in two from the heat. But the stove still worked, and it was summer, so everyone sat on the hatches to eat, where it was possible for the men to view a rare sunset. On the horizon was a carrier group from the American fleet, ships so large they didn’t look as if they could move, let alone float. It looked like an island chain, so fixed and ancient as to have its own people and language and gods.

  On the longline, they’d caught a grouper, whose cheeks they ate raw on the spot, and a turtle, unusual to hook. The turtle would take a day to stew, but the fish they baked whole and pulled off the bone with their fingers. A squid had also snagged on the line, but the Captain wouldn’t abide them on board. H
e had lectured them many times on the squid. He considered the octopus the most intelligent animal in the ocean, the squid the most savage.

  They took off their shirts and smoked, even as the sun fell. The Junma was pilotless, cantering in the waves, buoys rolling loose on the deck, and even the cables and booms glowed orange in the oven-colored light. The life of a fisherman was good—there were no endless factory quotas to fill, and on a ship there was no loudspeaker blaring government reports all day. There was food. And even though they were leery about having a listening officer on board, it meant that the Junma got all the fuel coupons it needed, and if Jun Do directed the ship in a way that lowered the catch, everyone got extra ration cards.

  “So, Third Mate,” the Pilot said. “How are our girls?”

  That’s what they called Jun Do sometimes, the Third Mate, as a joke.

  “They’re nearing Hokkaido,” Jun Do told them. “At least they were last night. They’re rowing thirty kilometers a day.”

  “Are they still naked?” the Machinist asked.

  “Only the girl who rows in the dark,” said Jun Do.

  “To row around the world,” the Second Mate said. “Only a sexy woman would do that. It’s so pointless and arrogant. Only sexy Americans would think the world was something to defeat.” The Second Mate couldn’t have been more than twenty. On his chest, the tattoo of his wife was new, and it was clear she was a beauty.

  “Who said they were sexy?” Jun Do asked, though he pictured them that way, too.

  “I know this,” the Second Mate said. “A sexy girl thinks she can do anything. Trust me, I deal with it every day.”

  “If your wife is so hot,” the Machinist asked, “how come they didn’t sweep her up to be a hostess in Pyongyang?”

  “It’s easy,” the Second Mate said. “Her father didn’t want her ending up as a barmaid or a whore in Pyongyang, so he pulled some strings and got her assigned to the fish factory. A beautiful girl like that, and along comes me.”