The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  Each morning before work, when the trees were alive with finches and wrens, Commander Ga taught the children the art of fashioning bird snares from delicate loops of thread. With a deadfall stone and a trigger twig, they each set a snare on the balcony rail and baited it with celery seeds.

  After he arrived home in the afternoons, Commander Ga taught the children work. Because they’d never tried work before, the boy and the girl found it new and interesting, though Ga had to show them everything, like how to use your foot to drive a shovel into dirt or how you must go to your knees to swing a pick in a tunnel. Still, the girl liked to be out of her school uniform and she wasn’t afraid of tunnel dust. The boy relished hauling buckets of dirt up the ladder and muscling them out back to the balcony, where he slowly poured them down the mountainside.

  While Sun Moon sang the children nightly to sleep, he explored the laptop, which mostly consisted of maps he didn’t understand. There was a file of photographs, though, hundreds of them, which were hard to look at. The pictures were not so different than Mongnan’s: images of men regarding the camera with a mixture of trepidation and denial toward what was about to happen to them. And then there were the “after” pictures, in which men—bloodied, crumpled, half-naked—clung to the ground. The images of Comrade Buc were especially hard.

  Each night, she slept on her side of the bed, and he slept on his.

  Time to get some shut-eye, he’d say to her, and she’d say, Sweet dreams.

  Toward the end of the week, a script arrived from the Dear Leader. It was called Ultimate Sacrifices. Sun Moon left it on the table where the messenger had placed it, and all day she approached it and retreated, circling with a fingernail fixed in the space between her teeth.

  Finally, she sought the comfort of her house robe and took the script into the bedroom, where with the aid of two packs of cigarettes she read it over and over for an entire day.

  In bed that night, he said, Time to get some shut-eye. She said nothing.

  Side by side, they stared at the ceiling.

  “Does the script trouble you?” he asked. “What is the character the Dear Leader wishes you to play?”

  Sun Moon pondered this awhile. “She is a simple woman,” Sun Moon said. “In a simpler time. Her husband has gone off to fight the imperialists in the war. He had been a nice man, well liked, but as manager of the farm collective he was lenient and productivity suffered. During the war, the peasants almost starved. Four years pass, they assume he is dead. It is then that he returns. The husband barely recognizes his wife, while his own appearance is completely different—he has been burned in battle. War has hardened him and he is a cold taskmaster. But the crop yields increase and the harvest is bountiful. The peasants fill with hope.”

  “Let me guess,” Commander Ga said. “It is then that the wife begins to suspect this is not her real husband, and when she has her proof, she must decide whether to sacrifice her personal happiness for the good of the people.”

  “Is the script that obvious?” she asked. “So obvious that a man who has seen but one movie can guess its content?”

  “I only speculated on the ending. Perhaps there is some twist by which the farm collective meets its quota and the woman can be fulfilled.”

  She exhaled. “There is no twist. The plot is the same as all the others. I endure and endure and the movie ends.”

  Sun Moon’s voice in the dark was freighted with sorrow, like the final voice-over of Motherless Fatherland during which the Japanese tighten the chains to prevent the character from hurting herself during all the future escapes she would attempt.

  “People find your movies inspiring,” he said.

  “Do they?”

  “I find them inspiring. And your acting shows people that good can come from suffering, that it can be noble. That’s better than the truth.”

  “Which is?”

  “That there’s no point to it. It’s just a thing that sometimes has to be done and even if thirty thousand suffer with you, you suffer alone.”

  She said nothing. He tried again.

  “You should be flattered,” he told her. “With all that demands the Dear Leader’s attention, he has spent the week composing a new movie for you.”

  “Have you forgotten that this man’s prank got you beaten in front of all the yangbans of Pyongyang? Oh, it will give him no end of delight to watch me act my heart out in another movie that he will never release. It will be of endless amusement to him to see how I play a woman who must submit to a new husband.”

  “He’s not trying to humiliate you. The Americans are coming in two weeks. He’s focused on humiliating the greatest nation on earth. He replaced your husband in public. He took Comfort Woman from you. He’s made his point. At this stage, if he really wanted to hurt you, he’d really hurt you.”

  “Let me tell you about the Dear Leader,” she said. “When he wants you to lose more, he gives you more to lose.”

  “His grudge was with me, not you. What reason could he have to—”

  “There,” she said. “There is the proof that you don’t understand any of this. The answer is that the Dear Leader doesn’t need reasons.”

  He rolled to his side, so he faced her eye to eye.

  “Let’s rewrite the script,” he said.

  She was silent a moment.

  “We’ll use your husband’s laptop, and we’ll give the new version a plot twist. Let’s have the peasants meet their quotas and the wife find her happiness. Perhaps we’ll have that first husband make a surprise return in the third act.”

  “Do you know what you’re talking about?” she asked. “This is the Dear Leader’s script.”

  “What I know about the Dear Leader is this: satisfaction matters to him. And he admires crafty solutions.”

  “What’s it matter to you?” she asked. “You said after the Americans came, he was going to get rid of you.”

  He rolled to his back. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s that.”

  Now he was quiet.

  “I don’t think I’d have the first husband return from the war,” she said. “Then there would be a showdown, and that would appeal to the viewer’s sense of honor, rather than duty. Let’s say that the manager of another farm collective is jealous of the burned man’s success. This other manager is corrupt and he gets a corrupt Party official to sign a warrant for the woman’s husband to be sent to a reeducation camp as punishment for his previous low quotas.”

  “I see,” Commander Ga said. “Instead of the woman being trapped, now it is the burned man who has a choice. If he admits he is an imposter, he may leave freely with his shame. But if he insists he is her husband, with honor he goes to the camp.”

  Sun Moon said, “The wife’s almost positive that beneath the burns this husband is not hers. But what if she’s wrong, what if he’s just been hardened by the savagery of war, what if she lets the father of her children be sent away?”

  “Now there is a story of duty,” he said. “But what happens to the woman? In either outcome, she is alone.”

  “What happens to the woman?” Sun Moon asked the room.

  Brando stood. The dog stared into the dark house.

  Commander Ga and Sun Moon looked at one another.

  When the dog started growling, the boy and the girl woke. Sun Moon pulled on her robe while Commander Ga cupped a candle and followed the dog to the door of the balcony. Outside, the bird snare had tripped, and in the loop a small wren thrashed wildly, flashes of brown and gray feathers, streaks of pale yellow. He handed the candle to the boy, whose eyes were wide with amazement. Ga took the bird in his hands and removed the slipknot from its leg. He spread its wings between his fingers and showed them to the children.

  “It worked,” the girl said. “It really worked.”

  In Prison 33, it was dangerous to get caught with a bird, so you learned to dress one in seconds. “Okay, watch close,” Ga told the children. “Pinch the back of the neck, then pull up and turn.” The bird’
s head snapped off, and he tossed it over the rail. “Then the legs come off with a twist, as do the wings at the first joint. Then put your thumbs on the breast and slide them away from one another.” The friction tore the skin and exposed the breast. “This meat is the prize, but if you have time, save the rest. You can boil the bones, and the broth will keep you healthy. For that, just send your finger into the abdomen, and by rotating the bird, all the insides come out at once.” Ga slung his finger clean, and by turning the skin inside out, it stripped all at once.

  “There,” he said. Ga held the bird out for them again. It was beautiful, the meat pearlescent and pink, fanned over the finest white bones, the tiny tips of which leaked red.

  With a thumbnail he scraped along the sternum and removed a perfect almond of translucent breast meat. This he placed in his mouth and savored, remembering.

  He offered the other breast, but the children, stunned, shook their heads. This, too, Ga ate, then tossed the carcass to the dog, who crunched it right down.

  CONGRATULATE one another, citizens, for high praises are in order on the occasion of the publication of the Dear Leader’s latest artistic treatise, On the Art of Opera. This is a sequel to Kim Jong Il’s earlier book On the Art of the Cinema, which is required reading for serious actors worldwide. To mark the occasion, the Minister of Collective Child Rearing announced the composition of two new children’s songs—“Hide Deeply” and “Duck the Rope.” All week, expired ration cards may be used to gain admittance to matinee opera performances!

  Now, an important word from our Minister of Defense: Certainly the loudspeaker in each and every apartment in North Korea provides news, announcements, and cultural programming, but it must be reminded that it was by Great Leader Kim Il Sung’s decree in 1973 that an air-raid warning system be installed across this nation, and a properly functioning early-warning network is of supreme importance. The Inuit people are a tribe of isolated savages that live near the North Pole. Their boots are called mukluk. Ask your neighbor later today, what is a mukluk? If he does not know, perhaps there is a malfunction with his loudspeaker, or perhaps it has for some reason become accidentally disconnected. By reporting this, you could be saving his life the next time the Americans sneak-attack our great nation.

  Citizens, when last we saw the beauty Sun Moon, she had closed herself off. Our poor actress was handling her loss badly. Why won’t she turn to the inspirational tracts of the Dear Leader? Kim Jong Il is someone who understands what you’re going through. Losing his brother when he was seven, his mother after that, and then a baby sister a year later, not to mention a couple of stepmothers—yes, the Dear Leader is someone who speaks the language of loss.

  Still, Sun Moon did understand the role of reverence in a good citizen’s life, so she packed a picnic lunch to take to the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery, just a short walk from her house on Mount Taesong. Once there, her family spread a cloth on the ground, where they could relax at their meal, knowing Taepodong-II missiles stood at the ready, while high above, North Korea’s BrightStar satellite defended them from space.

  The meal, of course, was bulgogi, and Sun Moon had prepared all manner of banchan to accompany the feast, including some gui, jjim, jeon, and namul. They thanked the Dear Leader for their bounty and dug in!

  As he ate, Commander Ga asked about her parents. “Do they live here in the capital?”

  “It’s just my mother,” Sun Moon said. “She retired to Wonsan, but I never hear from her.”

  Commander Ga nodded. “Yes,” he said, “Wonsan.”

  He stared off into the cemetery, no doubt thinking of all the golf and karaoke to be found in that glorious retirement community.

  “You’ve been there?” she asked.

  “No, but I’ve seen it from the sea.”

  “Is it beautiful, Wonsan?”

  The children were fast at their chopsticks. Birds eyed them from the trees.

  “Well,” he said, “I can say the sand is especially white. And the waves are quite blue.”

  She nodded. “I’m sure,” she said. “But why, why doesn’t she write?”

  “Have you written her?”

  “She never sent me her address.”

  Commander Ga certainly knew that Sun Moon’s mother was having too much fun to write. No other nation on earth has an entire city, right on the beach, dedicated to the comfort of its retired persons. Here, there is surf casting, watercolor, handicrafts, and a Juche book club. Too many activities to name! And Ga also knew that if more citizens volunteered at the Central Postal Bureau in their evenings and weekends, less mail would be lost in transit across our glorious nation.

  “Stop worrying about your mother,” he told her. “It’s the young ones you should focus on.”

  After lunch, they spilled the leftover food into the grass for the cute little birds to eat. Then Ga decided the children needed some education. He took them to the top of the hill, and while Sun Moon looked on with pride, the good Commander indicated the most important martyr in the cemetery, Kim Jong Suk, wife of Kim Il Sung and mother of Kim Jong Il. The busts of all the martyrs were larger-than-life bronzes whose burnished hues seemed to bring their subjects to life. Ga explained at length Kim Jong Suk’s anti-Japanese heroics and how she was kindly known for carrying the heavy packs of older revolutionary guerrillas. The children wept that she died so young.

  Then they walked a few meters to the next martyrs, Kim Chaek, An Kil, Kang Kon, Ryu Kyong Su, Jo Jong Chol, and Choe Chun Guk, all patriots of the highest order who fought at the Great Leader’s side. Then Commander Ga pointed out the tomb of the hot-blooded O Jung Hup, commander of the famed Seventh Regiment. Next was the eternal sentinel Cha Kwang Su, who froze to death during a night watch at Lake Chon. The children rejoiced in their new understandings. And here was Pak Jun Do, who took his own life in a test of loyalty to our leaders. Don’t forget Back Hak Lim, who earned his nickname Eagle Owl one imperialist at a time. Who hadn’t heard of Un Bo Song, who’d packed his ears with earth before charging a Japanese gun emplacement? More, the children called, more! Thus they walked the rows, taking note of Kong Young, Kim Chul Joo, Choe Kwang, and O Paek Ryong, all too heroic for medals. Ahead was Choe Tong O, father of South Korean commander Choe Tok Sin, who defected to North Korea in order to pay his respects here. And here is Choe Tong O’s brother by marriage Ryu Tong Yol! Next was the bust of tunnel master Ryang Se Bong and the assassination trio of Jong Jun Thaek, Kang Yong Chang, and “the Sportsman” Pak Yong Sun. Many Japanese orphans still feel the burn of Kim Jong Thae’s long patriotic shadow.

  Such education was the kind that brought milk to women’s breasts!

  Sun Moon’s skin was flush, so nakedly had Commander Ga aroused her patriotism.

  “Children,” she called. “Go play in the woods.”

  Then she took the arm of Commander Ga and led him downhill to the botanical gardens. They passed the experimental farm, with its tall corn and bursting soybeans, the guards with their chrome Kalashnikovs ever at the ready to defend the national seed bank against imperial aggression.

  She paused before what is perhaps our greatest national treasure, the twin greenhouses that exclusively cultivate kimjongilia and kimilsungia.

  “Pick your hothouse,” she told him.

  The buildings were translucent white. One glowed with the full fuchsia of kimjongilia. The breeding house of kimilsungia radiated an operatic overload of lavender orchid.

  It was clear she couldn’t wait. “I choose Kim Il Sung,” Sun Moon said. “For he is the progenitor of our entire nation.”

  Inside, the air was warm, humid. A mist hung. As this husband and wife strolled the rows arm in arm, the plants seemed to take notice—their swiveling blossoms followed in our lovers’ wake, as if to drink in the full flavor of Sun Moon’s honor and modesty. The couple stopped, deep in the hothouse, to recumbently enjoy the splendor of North Korea’s leadership. An army of hummingbirds hovered above them, expert pollinators of the state, the buzzi
ng thrum of their wing beats penetrating the souls of our lovers, all the while dazzling them with the iridescent flash of their throats and the way their long flower-kissing tongues flicked in delight. Around Sun Moon, blossoms opened, the petals spreading wide to reveal hidden pollen pots. Commander Ga dripped with sweat, and in his honor, groping stamens emanated their scent in clouds of sweet spoor that coated our lovers’ bodies with the sticky seed of socialism. Sun Moon offered her Juche to him, and he gave her all he had of Songun policy. At length, in depth, their spirited exchange culminated in a mutual exclaim of Party understanding. Suddenly, all the plants in the hothouse shuddered and dropped their blossoms, leaving a blanket upon which Sun Moon could recline as a field of butterflies ticklishly alighted upon her innocent skin.

  Finally, citizens, Sun Moon has shared her convictions with her husband!

  Savor the glow, citizens, for in the next installment, we take a closer look at this “Commander Ga.” Though he is remarkable at satisfying the political needs of a woman, we will look closely at the ways in which he has defiled all seven tenets of North Korean Good Citizenship.

  SUN MOON announced that the day to honor her great-uncle was upon them. Even though it was Saturday, a workday, they’d make the walk to the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery to lay a wreath. “We’ll make it a picnic,” Commander Ga told her. “And I’ll cook my favorite meal.”

  Ga had refused to let any of them eat breakfast. “An empty stomach,” he told them, “is my secret ingredient.” For the picnic, Ga brought only a pot, some salt, and Brando on a lead.

  Sun Moon shook her head at the sight of the dog. “He’s not legal,” she said.

  “I’m Commander Ga,” he told her. “If I want to walk a dog, I walk a dog. Besides, my days are numbered, right?”

  “What’s that mean?” the boy asked. “His days are numbered.”

  “Nothing,” Sun Moon said.

  They walked downhill under the Fun Fair’s idle gondola. With the children of Pyongyang hard at work, the lift chairs creaked in place above them. The zoo, however, was crowded with peasants bused in for their once-a-year trip to the capital. The four of them cut through the woods, dense this time of year, and left Brando tied to a tree so as not to offend any of the veterans paying their respects.