by Adam Johnson
The Dear Leader took her by the arm and turned her toward the lights and music.
“Come,” he said. “I have a last movie to show you. The American visit has got me thinking about cowboys and frontier justice. So I have composed a Western. You’ll play the long-suffering wife of a Texas cattle driver who’s being exploited by capitalist landowners. When a corrupt sheriff accuses the cattle driver of rustling—”
She stopped him.
“Promise me nothing bad will happen to him,” Sun Moon said.
“Who? The cattle driver?”
“No, my husband. Or whoever he is,” she said. “He has a good heart.”
“In this world,” the Dear Leader told her, “no one can make such a promise.”
COMMANDER GA smoked on the balcony, eyes narrowed to the dark road below, searching for any sign of the car that might return Sun Moon to him. He heard the faraway bark of a dog in the zoo, and he recalled a dog on a beach long ago, standing sentinel at the waves for someone who would never return. There were people who came into your life and cost you everything. Comrade Buc’s wife was right about that. It had felt pretty shitty being one of those people. He had been the person who took. He’d been the one who was taken. And he’d been the one left behind. Next he would find out what it was like to be all three at once.
He extinguished his cigarette. There were stray celery seeds on the rail from the boy’s bird snare. Ga rolled them under his finger as he gazed upon a city whose surface was black, but below was a labyrinth of brightly lit bunkers, one of which, he was certain, held Sun Moon. Who had thought up this place? Who had concocted its existence? How ugly and laughable was the idea of a quilt to Comrade Buc’s wife. Where was the pattern, with what fabric, would someone sew the story of life in this place? If he had learned anything about the real Commander Ga by living in his clothes and sleeping in his bed, it was the fact that this place had made him. In North Korea, you weren’t born, you were made, and the man that had done the making, he was working late tonight. The stray seeds on the balcony rail led the way to a mound of seeds. Ever so slowly, Ga extended his hand to them. Where was it, he wondered, that Comrade Buc’s wife got her calm in the face of it all? How was it she knew what had to be done? Suddenly, a twig twitched, a stone fell, a thread tightened, and then a little noose cinched itself around Ga’s finger.
He searched the house, looking for information—for what purpose, of what kind, he didn’t know. He went through Commander Ga’s rice-wine collection, laying hands on each bottle. He stood on a chair, and with the use of a candle, studied a variety of pistols, haphazard in the upper cabinet. In the tunnel, he ran his eyes across all the DVDs, looking for one that might address his situation, but it didn’t seem Americans made such movies. He studied the pictures on their covers and read their descriptions, but where was the film that had no beginning, an unrelenting middle, and ended over and over? Reading English made his eyes hurt and then it started him thinking in English, which forced him to think of tomorrow, and, for the first time in a long time, he was filled with great fear. There would be English in his head until he heard the voice of Sun Moon.
When at last her car arrived, he was lying flat in the bed, letting the breathing of the children—unconscious, elemental—soothe him. He listened to her enter in the dark and in the kitchen ladle herself a glass of water. When she opened the door to the bedroom, he felt for the box of matches and drew one.
“Don’t,” she said.
He feared that she had somehow been damaged or marked, that she was trying to hide something that had been inflicted upon her.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
He listened to her change into her bedclothes. Despite the darkness, he could visualize her, the way she removed garments and draped them across a chair back, how she balanced herself, hand against the wall, to step into the shift she would wear to sleep. He could sense her in the dark, touching the children’s faces, making sure they were safe and dreaming deep.
When she was under the covers, he lit the candle, and there she was, illuminated in golden light.
“Where did he take you?” he asked. “What did he do to you?”
He studied her face, looking for a sign of what she might have gone through.
“He didn’t hurt me,” she said. “He simply gave me a glimpse of the future.”
Ga saw the three choson-ots hanging red, white, and blue against the wall.
“Is that part of it?” he asked.
“Those are the costumes I’m to wear tomorrow. Won’t I look like one of those patriotic tour guides in the War Museum?”
“You’re not to wear your own dress, the silver one?”
She shook her head.
“So you’ll leave here looking like the showgirl he wants you to be,” he said. “I know that’s not how you wanted to go, but the important thing is that you get out. You’re not having second thoughts, are you? You’re still going, right?”
“We’re still going, right?” she said. Then something caught her eye. She looked up to the empty mantel. “Where are the peaches?”
He paused. “I threw the can off the balcony,” he told her. “We won’t need them anymore.”
She stared at him.
“What if someone finds them and eats them?” she asked.
“I cut open the lid first,” he said, “so they’d all spill out.”
Sun Moon cocked her head. “Are you lying to me?”
“Of course not.”
“Can I still trust you?”
“I threw them away because we’re not taking that path,” he said. “We’re choosing a different one, one that leads to a life like the one in the American movie.”
She rolled to her back and stared at the ceiling.
“What about you?” he asked. “Why won’t you tell me what he did to you?”
She pulled the sheet higher and kept ahold of the fabric.
“Did he put his hands on you?”
“There are things that happen in this world,” she said. “And what is there to say about them?”
Ga waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t.
After a while, she exhaled.
“The time has come for me to be intimate with you,” she said. “There are many things that the Dear Leader knows about me. When we’re safe on a plane, I’ll tell you my story, if that’s what you want. Tonight I’m going to tell you the things he doesn’t know.”
She craned her neck toward the candle and blew it out.
“The Dear Leader doesn’t have a clue about how my husband and Commander Park plotted against him. The Dear Leader doesn’t know that I hate his constant karaoke, that I’ve never sung a song for pleasure in my life. He has no idea that his wife used to send me notes—she put his seal on them to get me to open them, but I never did. He could never know how I turn my hearing off when he starts to confide his vile secrets to me. I would never tell him how much I hated you for making me eat a flower, how I loathed you for forcing me to break my vow never to eat as a starving person again.”
Ga wanted to light the candle, to see if she was angry or afraid. “If I’d known—”
“Don’t interrupt me,” she told him. “I won’t be able to say these things if you stop me. He doesn’t know my mother’s prized possession was a steel zither. It had seventeen strings, and you could see yourself in the black lacquer of its finish. The night before my younger sister died, my father filled the room with the steam of boiling herbs, while my mother flooded us with sanjo music, fierce through the darkness, sweat coming off her, the metal strings flashing. It was a sound meant to challenge the light that come morning would take her little girl. The Dear Leader doesn’t know that I reach for my sister at night. Not finding her, every time, wakes me. I would never tell him how that music is still stuck in my head.
“The Dear Leader knows my basic story, the facts of it. He knows my grandmother was taken to Japan to serve as a comfort w
oman. But he could never understand what she went through, why she came home having learned only songs of despair. Because she couldn’t speak of those years, it was important that her daughters know these songs. And she had to convey them without the lyrics—after the war, just knowing Japanese could get you killed. She taught the musical notes, though, and how to transfer to the notes the feeling of the missing words. That’s what Japan had taught her to do—to make the pluck of a string contain a missing thing, to store in a struck chord what had been swallowed by war. The Dear Leader doesn’t understand that the skill he prizes me for is this.
“He doesn’t know that when he first heard me singing, it was to my mother, locked in another train car, a song to keep her from despairing. There were hundreds of us on a relocation train to a redeemability camp, all with freshly bleeding ears. This was after my older sister was siphoned to Pyongyang for her beauty. This was after we’d agreed as a family that my father would try to smuggle out my little sister. This was after the attempt failed, after we’d lost her, after my father had been labeled a defector and we’d become the family of a defector, my mother and I. It was a long journey, the train moving so slowly that crows landed on the roof of the boxcar, where they paced back and forth between the vent holes to stare down at us like we were crickets they couldn’t quite get. My mother was in another boxcar. Talking wasn’t allowed, but singing was. I would sing ‘Arirang’ to let her know I was okay. She would return the song to say she was still with me.
“Our train pulled onto a side track to let another pass. It turned out to be the Dear Leader’s bulletproof train, which stopped so the two conductors could discuss the tracks ahead. Rumors spread through the boxcars, a hushed panic at what was about to befall us. People’s voices rose, speculating on what was happening to those in other boxcars, whether people would be singled out, so I sang, loud as I could, hoping my mother might hear me above the sounds of anguish.
“Suddenly, the door to our train car opened, and the guards beat a man to his knees. When they told him to bow down, we all followed suit. And there, backlit by the bright light, appeared the Dear Leader.
“Did I hear a songbird? he asked. Tell me, who among us is this forlorn bird?
“No one spoke.
“Who has taken our national melody and adorned it with such emotion? the Dear Leader asked us, pacing through our kneeling ranks. What person can so distill the human heart and pour it into the vessel of patriotic zeal? Please, someone, finish the song. How can it exist without an ending?
“From my knees, tears falling, I started to sing:
“Arirang, Arirang, ah-rah-ree-yoh, I am crossing Arirang Hill.
I believed you when you told me
We were going to Arirang Hill for a spring picnic.
Arirang, your feet will fail you before you take ten steps from me.
“The Dear Leader closed his eyes and smiled. I didn’t know which was worse—to displease him or to please him. All I knew was that my mother would not survive without me.
“Arirang, Arirang, ah-rah-ree-yoh, Arirang all alone,
With a bottle of rice wine hidden under my skirt.
I looked for you, my love, in our secret spot, in Odong, Odong Forest.
Arirang, Arirang, give me back my love.
“When I was finished, the Dear Leader seemed not to hear the faint song answering back.
“I was taken to his personal train car, where the windows were so thick that the light through them was green and warped. Here, he asked me to recite lines from a story he had typed out. It was called ‘Tyrants Asunder.’ How could he fail to smell the urine on me, or the stink of hunger that creeps up your throat and infects your breath? I spoke the words, though they had no meaning for me in that state. I could barely finish a sentence without succumbing.
“Then the Dear Leader called out Bravo and showered me with applause. Tell me, he said. Tell me you will memorize my lines, say you will accept the role.
“How could he know that I didn’t really understand what a movie was, that I’d only heard broadcasts of revolutionary operas? How could I know that on the Dear Leader’s train there were other cars whose construction was for propositions much less noble than auditions?
“Here, the Dear Leader gestured large, as if we were now in a theater. Of course, such is the subtlety of this art form, he added, that my lines will become yours. The people will see you fill the screen and remember only the emotion of your voice bringing the words to life.
“The train beneath me started moving.
“Please! I called out, it was almost a scream. My mother must be safe.
“Certainly, he said. I’ll have someone check on her.
“I don’t know what came over me. I raised my eyes to his. Safe forever, I said.
“He smiled with the surprise of new appreciation. Safe, forever, he agreed.
“I saw that he responded to conditions. He spoke the language of rules.
“Then I’ll do it, I told him. I’ll perform your story.
“This is the moment I was ‘discovered.’ How fondly the Dear Leader recalls it, as if through his keen insight and wisdom, I was saved from some destructive natural force, such as a landslide. It was a story he loved to recount over the years, when we were alone in his opera box or sailing through the sky on his personal gondola, this story of fortune bringing our two trains together. He never meant it as a threat to me, to remind me of how far I had to fall. Rather, it was a reminder of the forever of us.
“Through the green of the window, I watched the train bearing my mother recede.
“I knew you’d agree, the Dear Leader said. I had a feeling. I’ll cancel the other actress right away. In the meantime, let’s get you some proper clothes. And that ear of yours could use some attention.”
In the dark, Commander Ga said the word “cancel.”
“Cancel,” Sun Moon repeated. “How many times have I thought of that other girl? How could the Dear Leader know that my arms still go cold for her?”
“What happened to her?” Ga asked.
“You know what happened to her,” she said.
They were quiet a moment.
“There is another thing the Dear Leader doesn’t know about me,” she said. “But it’s something he’ll soon find out.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to re-create one of my grandmother’s songs. In America, I will discover the missing words, and this song, it will be about him. It will contain everything of this place that I could never utter, every last bit of it, and I’m going to sing it on the state channel of America’s central broadcasting division and everyone in the world will know the truth of him.”
“The rest of the world knows the truth of him,” he said.
“No, they don’t,” she said. “They won’t know it until they hear it in my voice. It’s a song I thought I’d never get to sing.” Sun Moon struck a match. In the flash of it, she said, “And then you came along. Do you see that the Dear Leader has no idea that I’m the purest actress, that it’s not just when I speak his lines, but every single moment? It is also the actress that I have shown you. But that’s not who I am. Though I must act all the time—inside I’m simply a woman.”
He blew out the match and took her arm, rolling her to him. It was the arm he’d grabbed before. This time she didn’t pull back. His face was near hers and he could feel her breath as it came.
She reached out and gripped his shirt.
“Show it to me,” she said.
“But it’s dark. You won’t be able to see it.”
“I want to feel it,” she told him.
He pulled his shirt over his head and leaned to her, so that his tattoo was at her fingertips.
She traced his muscles, felt the flare of his ribs.
“Maybe I should get one,” she said.
“One what, a tattoo?” he asked. “What would you get a tattoo of?”
“Who do you suggest?”
“It depe
nds. Where on your body would this tattoo be inked?”
She pulled the shift over her head and took his hand, placing it with both of hers over her heart. “What do you think of here?”
He felt the delicacy of her skin, the suggestion of her breasts. Most of all, he felt against his palm the heat of her blood and how her heart pumped it through her body, down her arms and into the hands that clasped the back of his so that the sensation was of being engulfed by her.
“This is an easy one,” he said. “The tattoo to place over your heart is the image of what’s inside your heart.”
Leaning close, he kissed her. It was long and singular and his eyes closed with the parting of their lips. After, she was silent, and he became afraid, not knowing what she was thinking.
“Sun Moon, are you there?”
“I’m here,” she said. “A song just ran through my head.”
“A good one or a bad one?”
“There’s only one kind.”
“Is it true, have you really never sung for pleasure?”
“What song would you have me sing?” she asked him. “One about spilling blood, celebrating martyrdom, glorifying lies?”
“Is there no song at all? What about a love song?”
“Name one that hasn’t been twisted into being about our love for the Dear Leader.”
In the dark, he let his hand roam over her, the hollow above her collarbone, that taut cord in her neck, the fine point of her shoulder.
“There’s one song I know,” he told her.
“How does it go?”
“I only know the opening. I heard it in America.”
“Tell me.”
“She’s the yellow rose of Texas,” he said.
“She’s the yellow rose of Texas,” she sang.
The English words were thick in her mouth, but the sound, her voice, it was lovely. He delicately touched her lips so he could feel her sing the words.
“I’m going for to see.”
“I’m going for to see.”
“When I finally find her, I’ll have her marry me.”