The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  Jun Do went to his knees, turned, and rolled onto the pallet. On his back, he took several large breaths. When he tried to pull the shirt off, he found he couldn’t.

  “Don’t listen,” she told him.

  He put his fingers in his ears, the same inside feeling as wearing headphones, and watched her lips move. She spoke only for a little bit, her eyes pointed toward the windows, and when he realized she was singing, he opened his ears and welcomed the sound, a children’s lullaby:

  The cat’s in the cradle, the baby’s in the tree.

  The birds up above all click their beaks.

  Papa’s in the tunnel, preparing for the storm,

  Here comes mama, her hands are worn.

  She holds out her apron for the baby to see.

  The baby full of trust lets go the tree.

  Her voice was simple and pure. Everyone knew their lullabies, but how did he know his? Had someone ever sung them to him, from before he could remember?

  When she was done, she turned off the radio. The lights would go off soon, so she lit a candle. She came to his side, and there was something new in her eyes. “I needed that,” she said. “I didn’t know I needed that.” She took a deep breath. “I feel like something’s been lifted.”

  “That was beautiful,” he said. “I recognized that lullaby.”

  “Of course you did,” she said. “Everyone knows it.” She put her hand on the box. “I’ve been carrying this around, and not once have you asked what it is.”

  “So show me,” he said.

  “Close your eyes,” she told him.

  He did. First came the unzipping of her canning-line jumpsuit, and then he heard the whole process, the opening of the box, the shuffle of stiff satin, the shush as she stepped into it and drew it up her legs, and then the whisper as it spun on her body, the shimmy of a final position, and then her arms, almost without sound, entering the sleeves.

  “You can open your eyes now,” she told him, but he did not want to.

  Eyes closed, he could see her skin in long flashes, in the comfortable manner of someone unobserved. She was trusting him, completely, and he wished for anything but to have that end.

  She kneeled beside him again, and when he did open his eyes, he saw she was in a shimmering yellow dress.

  “This is the kind they wear in the West,” she said.

  “You’re beautiful,” he told her.

  “Let’s get that shirt off.”

  She slid a leg over his waist, the hem of her dress enveloping his midsection. Straddling him, she pulled his arms till he was sitting up, then taking hold of his shirt, she let the gravity of his return peel it off.

  “I can see those earrings from here,” he said.

  “Maybe I don’t need to cut my hair, then.”

  He looked up at her. The yellow of her dress shined in the black of her hair.

  She asked him, “How come you never married?”

  “Bad songbun.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Were your parents denounced?”

  “No,” he answered. “People think I’m an orphan.”

  “That will do it,” she said, then hesitated. “Sorry, that sounded bad, the way I said that.”

  What was there to say? Jun Do shrugged at her.

  She said, “You said my husband’s purpose was to save the girl who rowed in your dreams.”

  “I just told him that to keep him strong and focused,” Jun Do said. “The mission is always to stay alive.”

  “My husband isn’t alive, is he? You’d tell me, right?”

  “Yes, I’d tell you,” Jun Do said. “But no, he’s not alive.”

  She looked in his eyes.

  “My lullaby, could everybody hear that broadcast?”

  “Anyone on the East Sea.”

  “What about Pyongyang, could they hear it there?”

  “No,” he said. “That’s too far, there’s mountains. The signal travels farther over water.”

  “But anyone who was listening,” she said.

  “Ships, navigation stations, naval craft, they all heard. And I’m sure he heard you, too.”

  “In this dream of yours?”

  “In my dream, yes,” Jun Do said. “The dream of him floating away, the bright lights, his radio. It’s as real as the sharks rising out of the dark water, as the teeth in my arm. I know one is real and one’s a dream, but I keep forgetting which is which, they’re both so true. I can’t tell anymore. I don’t know which one.”

  “Choose the beautiful story, with the bright lights, the one where he can hear us,” she told him. “That’s the true one. Not the scary story, not the sharks.”

  “But isn’t it more scary to be utterly alone upon the waters, completely cut off from everyone, no friends, no family, no direction, nothing but a radio for solace?”

  She touched the side of his face. “That’s your story,” she said. “You’re trying to tell me your story, aren’t you?”

  Jun Do stared at her.

  “Oh, you poor boy,” she said. “You poor little boy. It doesn’t have to be that way. Come in off the water, things can be different. You don’t need a radio, I’m right here. You don’t have to choose the alone.”

  She leaned in close and kissed him tenderly on the forehead and once on each cheek. She sat up and regarded him. She stroked his hand. When she leaned in again, moving as if to kiss him, she paused, staring at his chest.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s stupid,” she said. She covered her mouth.

  “No it isn’t. Tell me.”

  “I’m just used to looking down at my husband and seeing my face over his heart. I’ve never known anything different.”

  When the shock-work whistles blew in the morning, and the housing block was a hive of loudspeakers, they went onto the roof to remove the antenna. The morning sun was flat and brilliant upon the waters, yet lacking the heat to revive the flies or the stink of dog waste. The dogs, which seemed to snap and herd one another all day, were cowered in a single, sleeping mass in the crisp morning air, their coats white with dew.

  The Second Mate’s wife walked to the edge of the roof and sat with her legs swinging over the edge. Jun Do joined her, but the sight of the courtyard ten stories below made him close his eyes a moment.

  “I won’t be able to use mourning as an excuse much longer,” she said. “At work, they’ll hold a criticism session about me and reinstate my quota.”

  Below, a steady procession of workers in their jumpsuits crossed the courtyard, traversing the fish-cart paths and passing the Canning Master’s house for the gates of the fish-processing factory.

  “They never look up,” she said. “I sit out here all the time and watch them. Not one has ever looked up and caught me.”

  Jun Do found the courage to gaze down upon them, and it was nothing like looking into the depths of the ocean. A hundred feet of air or sea alike would kill you, but the water would shuttle you, slowly, to a new realm.

  Toward the sea, the sun was now hard to look at, so many flashes off the water. If it reminded her of Jun Do’s dream about her husband, she didn’t show it. The Junma could now be discerned from the other helms in the harbor, its peculiar bow-to-stern pitch from even the slightest wake of a passing vessel. Its nets were back aboard and it would be upon the water again soon. By shielding his eyes and squinting, Jun Do could make out a figure at the rail, looking down into the water. Only the Captain would stare into the water like that.

  Below in the courtyard, a black Mercedes pulled up. It drove very slowly over the small, rutted fish-cart path and came to a stop in the grass of the courtyard. Two men in blue suits got out.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s happening.”

  The men below shielded their eyes and gave the building a once-over. At the sound of their car doors slamming shut, the dogs stood and shook the wet from their fur. She turned to Jun Do. “It’s really happening.” Then she made for the metal door of the stair
shaft.

  The first thing she did was pull on her yellow dress, and this time there was no asking Jun Do to close his eyes. She moved frantically through the one-room apartment, throwing things in her suitcase.

  “I can’t believe they’re here already,” she said. She looked around the room, the expression on her face suggesting that everything she needed was eluding her. “I’m not ready. I didn’t get a chance to cut my hair. I’m not even close to being ready.”

  “I care about what happens to you,” Jun Do told her. “And I can’t let them do this to you.”

  She was pulling items from a chest of drawers. “That’s sweet,” she said. “You’re sweet, too, but this is my destiny, I have to go.”

  “We’ve got to get you out of here,” Jun Do told her. “Maybe we can get you to your father. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Are you insane?” she asked. “He’s how I got stuck here.”

  For some reason, she handed him a stack of clothes.

  “There’s something I should have told you,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “The old interrogator. He described the guys they picked out for you.”

  “What guys?”

  “Your replacement husbands.”

  She stopped packing. “There’s more than one?”

  “One’s a warden in Sinpo. The other guy’s old, a Party official down in Chongwang. The interrogator didn’t know which one was going to get you.”

  She cocked her head in confusion. “There’s got to be some kind of mistake.”

  “Let’s just get you out of here,” he said. “It’ll buy you some time till they come back.”

  “No,” she said, her eyes fixing on him. “You can do something about this, you’re a hero, you have powers. They can’t say no to you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jun Do said. “I don’t think it works like that, not really.”

  “Tell them to go away, tell them you’re marrying me.” There was a knock at the door.

  She grabbed his arm. “Tell them you’re marrying me,” she said.

  He studied her face, vulnerable—he’d never seen her like this.

  “You don’t want to marry me,” he told her.

  “You’re a hero,” she said. “And I’m a hero’s wife. You just need to come to me.” She took the hem of her skirt and held it out like an apron. “You’re the baby in the tree, and you just need to trust me.”

  He went to the door, but paused before opening it.

  “You talked about my husband’s purpose,” she said. “What about yours? What if your purpose is me?”

  “I don’t know if I have a purpose,” he told her. “But you know yours—it’s Pyongyang, not a radio man in Kinjye. Don’t underestimate yourself—you’ll survive.”

  “Survive like you?” she asked.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You know what you are?” she said. “You’re a survivor who has nothing to live for.”

  “What would you rather, that I die for something I cared about?”

  “That’s what my husband did,” she said.

  The door was forced open. It was the two men from below. They didn’t look happy about all those stairs. “Pak Jun Do?” one asked, and when Jun Do nodded, the man said, “You’ll need to come with us.”

  The other one asked, “Have you got a suit?”

  THE MEN in suits drove Jun Do along the cannery tracks before following a military road that wound up and out of the hills above Kinjye. Jun Do turned and watched everything recede in glimpses through the rear window. Through cuts in the road, he could see boats bobbing blue in the harbor and ceramic tiles flashing from the Canning Master’s roof. He saw for a moment the town’s red spire honoring April Fifteenth. The town looked suddenly like one of the happy villages they paint on the side of ration buildings. Going over the hill, there was only a plume of steam rising high from the cannery, a last sliver of ocean, and then he could see nothing. Real life was back again—a new work detail had been assigned, and Jun Do had no illusions about what kind of business it might entail. He turned to the men in suits. They were talking about a co-worker who was sick. They speculated on whether or not the sick man had a stockpile of food, and who would get his apartment if he died.

  The Mercedes had windshield-wiper blades, something you never saw, and the radio was factory, capable of picking up broadcasts from South Korea and Voice of America. Breaking that law alone could get you sent to a mining camp, unless you happened to be above the law. While the men spoke, Jun Do observed that their teeth had been fixed with gold, something possible only in Pyongyang. Yes, the hero thought, this might be his ugliest assignment yet.

  The two men drove Jun Do inland to a deserted air base. Some of the hangars had been converted into hothouses, and in the meadows surrounding the runway, Jun Do could see broken-down cargo planes had been pushed off the blacktop. They lay this way and that in the grass, their fuselages now serving as ostrich warrens—the birds’ small heads watched him pass through clouded cockpit windows. They came to a small airliner, engines running. Descending its steps came two men in blue suits. One was older and quite small—like a grandfather wearing the dress clothes of his grandson. The old man took a look at Jun Do, then turned to the man next to him.

  “Where’s his suit?” the old man asked. “Comrade Buc, I told you he must have a suit.”

  Comrade Buc was young and lean, with round glasses. His Kim Il Sung pin was perfectly placed. But he had a deep vertical scar above his right eye. It had mishealed so that his eyebrow was broken into two pieces that didn’t quite line up.

  “You heard Dr. Song,” he told the drivers. “The man must have a suit.”

  Comrade Buc ushered the smaller driver to Jun Do, where he compared their shoulders. Then he had the taller driver stand back-to-back with Jun Do. When Jun Do felt the other man’s shoulder blades, it began to really sink in, that he probably wouldn’t be upon the sea again, that he’d never know what would become of the Second Mate’s wife, beyond the image of the hem of her yellow dress being fingered by an old warden from Sinpo. He thought of all the broadcasts he’d miss, of lives continuing beyond him. His whole life, he’d been assigned to work details without warning or explanation. There’d never been any point in asking questions or speculating on why—it never changed the work that had to be done. But then again, he’d never had anything to lose before.

  To the taller driver, Dr. Song said, “Come, come, off with it.”

  The driver began to shed the jacket. “This suit’s from Shenyang,” he complained.

  Comrade Buc was having none of it. “You got that in Hamhung, and you know it.”

  The driver loosened the shirt buttons and then the cuffs, and when he had it off, Jun Do offered in return the Second Mate’s work shirt.

  “I don’t want your lousy shirt,” the driver said.

  Before Jun Do could don the new shirt, Dr. Song said, “Not so fast. Let’s have a look at that shark bite of yours.” Dr. Song lowered his glasses and leaned in close. He touched the wound very delicately, and rotated Jun Do’s arm to examine the stitches.

  In the sunlight, Jun Do could see the redness around the sutures, the way the seams wept.

  “Very convincing,” Dr. Song said.

  “Convincing?” Jun Do asked. “I nearly died from that.”

  “The timing is perfect,” Comrade Buc said. “Those stitches will have to come out soon. Will you have one of their doctors do it, or would it speak louder if we pulled them ourselves?”

  “What kind of a doctor are you?” Jun Do asked.

  Dr. Song didn’t answer. His watery eyes were fixed on the tattoo on Jun Do’s chest.

  “I see our hero is a patron of the cinema,” Dr. Song said. With a finger, he rapped Jun Do on the arm as a sign to get dressed, then asked him, “Did you know Sun Moon is Comrade Buc’s girlfriend?”

  Comrade Buc smiled, indulging the old man. “She’s my neighbor,” he corrected. />
  “In Pyongyang?” Jun Do asked. Immediately, he knew the question marked him as a rube. To cover his ignorance, he said, “Then you know her husband Commander Ga?”

  Dr. Song and Comrade Buc went silent.

  Jun Do went on, “He was the winner of the Golden Belt in taekwondo. They said he rid the military of homosexuals.”

  Gone was the playful light in Dr. Song’s eyes. Comrade Buc looked away.

  The driver removed a comb and a pack of cigarettes from his pockets, passed the suit jacket to Jun Do, and began unbuttoning his pants.

  “Enough of Commander Ga’s exploits,” Dr. Song said.

  “Yes,” said Comrade Buc. “Let’s see how that jacket fits.”

  Jun Do slid into the jacket. He had no way of knowing if it fit or not. The driver, in his underwear, handed over his pants, and then the last item, a silk tie. Jun Do studied it, running his eyes along the fat and skinny ends.

  “Look,” the driver said, lighting a cigarette and breathing out smoke. “He doesn’t even know how to tie it.”

  Dr. Song took the tie. “Come, I will show you the nuances of Western neckwear,” he said, then asked Comrade Buc, “Should we employ the Windsor knot or the half Windsor?”

  “Four square,” Buc said. “That’s what the young men are wearing now.”

  Together, they ushered Jun Do up the stairs. From the top step, Comrade Buc turned to the driver. “File a requisition form with your regional allocations clerk,” he said. “That’ll put you in line for a new suit.”

  Jun Do looked back to his old clothes on the ground, soon to be scattered among ostrich warrens by the jet wash.

  Inside the cabin, gold-framed portraits of the Dear Leader and Great Leader were paired on the bulkheads. The plane smelled of cigarettes and dirty dishes. Jun Do could tell that dogs had been aboard. He scanned the rows and rows of empty seats but saw no sign of animals. Up front sat a lone man in a black suit and high-brimmed military hat. He was being attended by a stewardess of perfect complexion. Toward the rear of the plane, a half-dozen young men were engrossed in paperwork. One of them employed a computer that folded open and closed. Thrown across a few seats, Jun Do spotted a yellow emergency life raft with a red inflation handle and instructions in Russian. Jun Do placed his hand on it—the sea, the sun, a tin of meat. So many days upon the water.