The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  When the dogs returned, the Senator gave them treats from his pocket, and Jun Do understood that in communism, you’d threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

  The food line favored no rank or privilege—standing together were the Senator, the ranch hands, the house servants, the security agents in their black suits, the wives of Texas officials. While the Minister took a seat at a picnic table and was brought his food by the Senator’s wife, Dr. Song and Jun Do lined up with plates made from paper. The young man next to Jun Do and Dr. Song introduced himself as a PhD candidate from the university. He was writing a dissertation on the North Korean nuclear program. He leaned in close and said, quietly, “You know the South won the war, right?”

  They were served beef ribs, corn grilled in the husk, marinated tomatoes, and a scoop of macaroni. Dr. Song and Jun Do made their way to where the Minister ate with the Senator and his wife. Dogs followed them.

  Dr. Song sat with them. “Please, join us,” he said to Jun Do. “There is plenty of room, no?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jun Do told them. “I’m sure you have important matters to discuss.”

  He sat alone at a wooden picnic table that had been vandalized with people’s initials. The meat was both sweet and spicy, the tomatoes tangy, but the corn and noodles were made most foul by butter and cheese, substances he knew only from dialogs they’d heard recited over tapes in his language school. I would like to buy some cheese. Please pass the butter.

  A large bird circled above. He didn’t know its variety.

  Wanda joined him. She was licking a white plastic spoon.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Don’t miss out on the pecan pie.”

  He had just finished eating a rib and his hands were covered with sauce.

  She nodded to the end of the table, where a dog sat patiently, staring. Its eyes were cloudy blue, and its coat was marbled gray and brindle. How could a dog, obviously well fed, capture the exact look of an orphan boy, relegated to the end of the line?

  “Go ahead,” Wanda said. “Why not?”

  He threw the bone, which was snapped from the air.

  “That’s a Catahoula dog,” she said. “A gift from the governor of Louisiana for helping out after the hurricane.”

  Jun Do lifted another rib. He couldn’t stop eating them, even when it felt as if the meat was backing up in his throat.

  “Who are all these people?” he asked.

  Wanda looked around. “A couple think-tankers, some NGO folk, various lookey-loos. The North Koreans don’t visit every day, you know.”

  “What about you?” he asked. “Are you a think-tanker or a lookey-loo?”

  “I’m the shadowy intelligence figure,” she said.

  Jun Do stared at her.

  She smiled. “Come on, do I look shadowy?” she asked. “I’m an open-source gal. I’m all about sharing. You can ask me anything you want.”

  Tommy crossed the corral holding a cup of iced tea, coming from wherever he’d stored the poles and pistols. Jun Do watched Tommy line up and get served, offering a bow of the head when he was handed his plate.

  Jun Do said to Wanda, “You’re looking at me like maybe I never saw a black person before.”

  Wanda shrugged. “It’s possible.”

  “I met the U.S. Navy before,” Jun Do said. “Lots of those guys are black. And my English teacher was from Angola. The only black man in the DPRK. He said it wasn’t so lonely as long as he gave us all African accents.”

  Wanda said, “I heard a story that in the ’70s an American soldier crossed the DMZ, a boy from North Carolina who was drunk or something. The North Koreans made him a language teacher, but had to stop after he taught all the agents to talk like crackers.”

  Jun Do didn’t know what she meant by “cracker.” “I never heard that story,” he said. “And I’m not an agent, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  Wanda watched him dig into another rib. “I’m surprised you didn’t take me up on my offer to answer any question,” she said. “I’d have bet you’d ask me if I spoke Korean.”

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “But I can tell when someone’s muddling a translation. That’s why I figure you’re here as something other than a lowly interpreter.”

  Dr. Song and the Minister stood at their picnic table. Dr. Song announced, “The Minister wishes to present gifts to the Senator and his wife. For the Senator, The Selected Works of Kim Jong Il.” Here, Dr. Song produced the bound, eleven-volume set.

  A Mexican woman walked by with a tray full of food. “EBay,” she said to Wanda.

  “Oh, Pilar,” Wanda called after her. “You’re bad.”

  The Senator accepted the gift with a smile. “Are they signed?” he asked.

  Dr. Song’s face showed a flash of uncertainty. He conferred with the Minister. Jun Do couldn’t hear them, but their words were flashing back and forth. Then Dr. Song smiled. “The Dear Leader Kim Jong Il would be happy to inscribe the books in person should the Senator visit as our guest in Pyongyang.”

  In return, the Senator gave the Minister an iPod loaded with country music.

  Dr. Song then began to speak publicly of the beauty and graciousness of the Senator’s wife, while the Minister prepared to offer her the cooler.

  The smell of that meat returned to Jun Do’s nose. He set the rib aside and looked away.

  “What?” Wanda asked him. “What’s in that cooler?”

  This seemed like a turning point somehow, that Dr. Song’s ruses up till now were all in fun, but the tiger ploy was of a different sort—one sniff and the Americans would know that the meat was foul, that some ugly game was being played, and everything would be different.

  “I need to know,” Jun Do asked her. “Were you serious?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Serious about what?”

  He took her hand. With a pen, he wrote across her palm the name of the Second Mate.

  “I need to know if he made it,” Jun Do said. “Did he get out?”

  Using her phone, Wanda took a picture of her hand. She typed a message using both her thumbs and then pressed Send. “Let’s find out,” she said.

  Dr. Song finished his tribute to the loveliness of the Senator’s wife, and the Minister handed her the cooler. “From the citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” he said. “Fresh tiger meat, taken recently from a majestic beast culled from the peaks of Mount Paektu. You can’t imagine how white was his fur. The Minister desires that we all feast of it tonight, yes?”

  The Minister nodded with pride.

  Dr. Song adopted a wily smile. “And remember,” he said to the Senator’s wife, “when you eat of the tiger, you become like the tiger.”

  People stopped eating to witness the Senator’s wife’s reaction to this, but she said nothing. The clouds were thicker now, and the air smelled of rain that probably wouldn’t arrive. The Senator removed the cooler from the table. “Let me see if I can take charge of that,” he said with a businesslike smile. “Tiger sounds like a man’s business.”

  The Senator’s wife turned her attention to a dog at her side; she cupped its ears with both hands and spoke sweetly to it.

  The gift ceremony seemed to have slipped from Dr. Song’s hands. He was at a loss as to what had gone wrong. He came over to Jun Do. “How are you holding up, son?” he asked. “It’s the arm, it’s hurting quite badly, I can tell, yes?”

  Jun Do rotated his shoulder a couple of times. “Yes, but I’ll be okay, Dr. Song. I’ll manage.”

  Dr. Song looked frantic. “No, no need, son. I knew this time would come. There’s no bravery lost in seeking medical attention.” He looked to Wanda. “You wouldn’t have a knife or some scissors we could use?”

  Wanda looked to Jun Do. “Is your arm hurt?” she asked. When he nodded, Wanda called the Senator’s wife over, and for the first time, Jun Do took true notice of her—a lean woman with shoulder-length white
hair and pale, pearled eyes. “I think our friend here is hurt,” Wanda told her.

  To the Senator’s wife, Dr. Song asked, “Is it possible to get some alcohol and a knife? It’s no emergency. We simply have some stitches to remove.”

  “Are you a doctor doctor?” the Senator’s wife asked.

  “No,” Dr. Song said.

  She turned to Jun Do. “Where are you hurt?” she asked him. “I used to practice medicine.”

  “It’s nothing,” Dr. Song said. “We probably should have removed the stitches before we left.”

  She turned to Dr. Song, glaring. Her lack of patience for him blazed until he looked away. She brought out a pair of glasses and placed them on the end of her nose. “Show me,” she said to Jun Do. He removed his suit coat, and then his shirt. He offered his arm for the Senator’s wife to examine. She lifted her head to employ the lenses. The eyelets of the sutures were red and inflamed. When she pressed her thumb, they wept.

  “Yes,” she said. “These must come out. Come, I have a good light in the kitchen.”

  Soon the Senator’s wife and Wanda had him shirtless, sitting on the kitchen counter. The kitchen was bright yellow, the walls papered with blue checked print and sunflowers. Pinned to the refrigerator by magnets were many snapshots of children, but also groups of young people, arms thrown around each other. One photo depicted the Senator in an orange astronaut’s suit, space helmet tucked under his arm.

  The Senator’s wife scrubbed her hands under steaming sink water. Wanda did, too, in case she was needed. The woman Wanda called Pilar came into the kitchen carrying the cooler of tiger meat. She said something in Spanish when she saw Jun Do shirtless, and she said something else in Spanish when she saw his wound.

  The Senator’s wife scrubbed well past her elbows. Without looking from her work, she said, “Jun Do, this is Pilar, our family’s special helper.”

  “I’m the maid,” Pilar said. “John Doe? Isn’t that the name you give a missing person?”

  “It’s Pak Jun Do,” Jun Do said, then he pronounced it slowly. “Jhun Doh.”

  Pilar looked at the cooler, studying the way someone had attempted to scrape away the Red Cross insignia. “My nephew Manny drives a truck that moves organs and eyes and things between hospitals,” she said, “He uses a cooler just like this.”

  The Senator’s wife popped on latex gloves. “Actually,” she said, “I don’t think a John Doe is a missing person. I think it’s when you have the person, just not his identity.”

  Wanda blew into her latex gloves. “A John Doe has an exact identity,” she said, and considered the patient. “It’s just yet to be discovered.”

  The Senator’s wife poured hydrogen peroxide up and down his arm, massaging it into the wounds. “This will loosen the sutures,” she said.

  For a moment, there was only the hiss of his arm foaming white. It didn’t hurt, exactly—it felt like ants, maybe, swarming in and out of him.

  Wanda said, “Are you all right being treated by a female doctor?”

  Jun Do nodded. “Most of the doctors in Korea are women,” he said. “Though I’ve never seen one.”

  “A woman doctor?” Wanda asked.

  “Or any doctor?” the Senator’s wife asked.

  “Any doctor,” he said.

  “Not even in the military, for a physical?” the Senator’s wife asked.

  “I guess I’ve never been sick,” he said.

  “Who patched you up?”

  “A friend,” Jun Do said.

  “A friend?”

  “A guy I work with.”

  While the wound foamed, the Senator’s wife lifted his arms, spread them wide, then brought them forward, her eyes following invisible lines on his body. He watched as she noted the burns on the undersides of his arms—candle marks from his pain training. She touched the ridges of the scars with her fingertips. “A bad place to get burned,” she said. “The skin is quite sensitive here.” She ran her hand across his chest to the collarbone. “This knitting,” she said. “That’s a fresh break to the clavicle.” She brought his hands up, as though she were going to kiss a ring—instead, she studied the alignment of his finger bones. “Do you want me to look you over? Do you have any complaints?”

  He wasn’t as muscular as when he’d been in the military, but his physique was strong, and he could feel the women looking at him.

  “No,” he said. “It’s just these stitches. They itch like crazy.”

  “We’ll get those out in no time,” she said. “Can I ask what happened?”

  “It’s a story I’d rather not tell,” he said. “But it was a shark that did it.”

  “Madre de Dios,” Pilar said.

  Wanda was standing next to the Senator’s wife. She held open a white first-aid kit the size of a briefcase. “You mean the kind with the fins, that live in the ocean?” Wanda asked.

  “I lost a lot of blood,” he said.

  They just stared at him.

  “My friend wasn’t so lucky,” he added.

  “I understand,” the Senator’s wife said. “Take a deep breath.”

  Jun Do inhaled.

  “Really deep,” she said. “Lift your shoulders.”

  He took a breath, deep as he could. It came with a wince.

  The Senator’s wife nodded. “Your eleventh rib,” she said. “Still healing. Seriously, you want a full checkup, now’s your chance.”

  Did she sniff his breath? Jun Do had the feeling there were things she was noting but no longer pointing out. “No, ma’am,” he told her.

  Wanda found a pair of tweezers and some finger scissors with pointed, baby blades. He had nine lacerations total, each one laced shut, and the Senator’s wife started with the longest one, along the peak of his biceps.

  Pilar pointed at his chest. “Who’s she?”

  Jun Do looked down. He didn’t know what to say. “That’s my wife,” he said.

  “Very beautiful,” Pilar said.

  “She is beautiful,” Wanda said. “It’s a beautiful tattoo, too. Do you mind if I take a pic?”

  Jun Do had only had his photograph taken that one time, by the old Japanese woman with the wooden camera, and he never saw the picture that came of it. But it haunted him, what she must have seen. Still, he didn’t know how to say no.

  “Great,” Wanda said, and with a small camera, she snapped a picture of his chest, then his injured arm, and finally she lifted the camera to his face and there was a flash in his eyes.

  Pilar asked, “Is she a translator, too?”

  “My wife’s an actress,” he said.

  “What’s her name?” Wanda asked.

  “Her name?” Jun Do asked. “Her name is Sun Moon.”

  The name was beautiful, he noticed, and it felt good in his mouth and to say aloud, the name of his wife, to these three women. Sun Moon.

  “What is this stuff?” the Senator’s wife asked. She held up a strand of suturing she’d removed. It was variously clear, yellow, and rust-colored.

  “It’s fishing line,” he said.

  “I guess if you’d caught tetanus, we’d already know by now,” she said. “In med school, they taught us never to use monofilament, but I can’t for the life of me remember why.”

  “What are you going to bring her?” Wanda asked. “As a souvenir of your trip to Texas?”

  Jun Do shook his head. “What do you suggest?”

  Distractedly, the Senator’s wife asked, “What’s she like?”

  “She likes traditional dresses. Her yellow one is my favorite. She wears her hair back to show off her gold earrings. She likes to sing karaoke. She likes movies.”

  “No,” Wanda said. “What’s she like, her personality?”

  Jun Do took a moment. “She needs lots of attention,” he said, then paused, unsure how to proceed. “She is not free with her love. Her father was afraid that men would take advantage of her beauty, that they would be drawn to her for the wrong reasons, so when she was sixteen, he got her a job
in a fish factory, where no men from Pyongyang would find her. That experience shaped her, made her strive for what she wanted. Still, she found a husband who is domineering. They say he can be a real asshole. And she is trapped by the state. She cannot choose her own movie roles. Except for karaoke, she can only sing the songs they tell her to sing. I suppose what matters is that, despite her success and stardom, her beauty and her children, Sun Moon is a sad woman. She is unaccountably alone. She plays the gayageum all day, plucking notes that are lonesome and forlorn.”

  There was a pause, and Jun Do realized all three women were staring at him.

  “You’re not an asshole husband,” Wanda said. “I know the look of one.”

  The Senator’s wife stopped tugging sutures, and wholly without guile, appraised his eyes. She looked at the tattoo on Jun Do’s chest. She asked, “Is there a way I could talk to her? I feel that if I could just speak to her, I would be able to help.” On the counter was a phone, one with a loopy cord that connected the handset to the base. “Can you get her on the line?” she asked.

  “There are few phones,” Jun Do said.

  Pilar opened her cell phone. “I have international minutes,” she said.

  Wanda said, “I don’t think North Korea works like that.”

  The Senator’s wife nodded and finished removing the stitches in silence. When she was done, she irrigated the wounds again, then stripped off her gloves.

  Jun Do pulled on the driver’s shirt he’d been wearing for two days. His arm felt as thick and raw as the day of the bite. As for the tie, he held it in his hand as the Senator’s wife did his buttons—her fingers strong and measured as they coaxed each button through its eye.