The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  He roused Sun Moon and together they listened to it head north, as if it had originated in Seoul, a direction from which nothing was allowed to come. He checked his watch—the Americans were three hours early. The Dear Leader would be furious.

  “They’re flying low to announce their arrival,” he said. “Very American.”

  Sun Moon turned to him. “So it’s time.”

  He looked into her eyes to see what remained of their lovemaking last night, but she was looking forward and not back.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  “Children,” Sun Moon called, “we’re going on an adventure today. Go put together some food for us.” When they were gone, she pulled on her robe and lit a cigarette at the window, watching the American Goliath lower its landing gear over the Taedong and descend toward the airport. She turned to Ga. “There’s something you need to understand,” she said. “Where the Dear Leader is concerned, there’s only one of me. He has many girls, an entire kippumjo of them, but only I matter. He thinks that I reveal all to him, that emotions cross my face without my control, making me incapable of conspiring against him. I’m the only person in the world he thinks he can trust. ”

  “Then today, he will feel the sting.”

  “I’m not talking about him,” she said. “This is about you. Understand that if I slip from the Dear Leader’s grasp, someone is going to pay, and that price will be unimaginable. You can’t stay, you can’t be the one who pays.”

  “I don’t know where you got these notions about me,” he said. “But—”

  “You’re the one with the notions,” she went on. “I think you saw that movie and got it in your head that a noble man stays behind.”

  “You’re tattooed on my heart,” he said. “You’ll always be with me.”

  “I’m talking about you being with me.”

  “We’ll make it work,” he said. “I promise. It will all work out. You’ve got to trust me.”

  “It’s that kind of talk that scares me,” she said, and exhaled smoke. “This whole thing feels like some kind of loyalty test. One so sick not even my husband could’ve thought it up.”

  How different it was to have warning that your life was about to change, Ga thought, let alone know the moment it would happen. Didn’t Sun Moon understand that? And they had a say in it. He had to smile at the notion that things might, for one morning, bend to their influence.

  “That look on your face,” she said. “Even that makes me nervous.”

  She came close to him, and he stood to be near her.

  “You’re coming with me,” she said. “Understand? I can’t do it without you.”

  “I’ll never leave your side.”

  He tried to touch her, but she pulled away.

  “Why won’t you just say you’re coming?”

  “Why won’t you hear what I’m saying? Of course I am.”

  She gave him a look of doubt. “My sister, my father, my sister, my mother. Even that cruel husband of mine. One by one, they were stripped from me. Don’t make it happen again. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, not when you have a choice. Just look me in the eyes and say it.”

  He did it, he looked her in the eyes. “You said forever, and that’s me, forever. Soon, you’ll never be able to get rid of me.”

  After Sun Moon donned her white choson-ot, she hung the red one and the blue one in the back of the Mustang. Ga pulled on his cowboy boots, tucked the can of peaches in his rucksack, and then patted his pocket to make sure he had his camera. The girl chased the dog with a rope to leash it.

  The boy came running. “My bird snare’s gone,” he said.

  “We weren’t going to bring it anyway,” Sun Moon said.

  “Bring it where?” the boy asked.

  “We’ll make another sometime,” Ga told him.

  “I bet it caught a giant bird,” the boy said. “One with wings so strong that it flew away with my snare.”

  Sun Moon stood before the shrine to her husband’s Golden Belt. Ga joined her in contemplating the jewels and golden scrollwork, the way the overall flash of it was bright enough to allow its owner to take any woman in the land.

  “Good-bye, my husband,” she said, and turned off the lightbulb that illuminated it. Then she turned to consider for a moment her gayageum case, tall and regal in the corner. So it was pure tragedy on her face when she grabbed instead the simpleton instrument called a guitar.

  Outside, he took a photo in front of the bean trellis, its white blossoms open, the tendrils of the girl’s prize melon plant tangling through the white slats. The girl held the dog, the boy a laptop, and Sun Moon the dreaded American instrument. The light was soft, though, and he wished the picture wasn’t Wanda’s, but his.

  In his best military uniform, Commander Ga drove slowly away, Sun Moon beside him in the front seat. It was a beautiful morning, the light golden as swallows circled the hothouses of the botanical gardens, their beaks popping like chopsticks at the clouds of insects there. Sun Moon leaned her head against the window and stared with melancholy as they passed the zoo and the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery. He knew now that she had no great-uncle buried there, that she was just a zinc miner’s daughter from Huchang, but in the morning glow, he saw how the rows of bronze busts seemed to ignite in unison. He noted how the mica in the marble pedestals sparkled, and he, too, understood he would never again see such a thing. If he was lucky, he’d get returned to a prison mine. Most likely, he’d be sent down into one of the Dear Leader’s interrogation bunkers. Either way, he’d never again taste spruce sap on the wind or smell the brine of sorghum distilling in roadside crockery. Suddenly, he savored the dust the Mustang kicked up and the pound of the tires when they crossed the Yanggakdo Bridge. He saw the emerald flash of every armored plate defending the roof of the Self-Criticism Pavilion, and he took delight in the red glow of the digital baby counter atop the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital.

  To the north, they could see the great American jet steadily circling the airport, looking as if it were on an endless bombing run. He knew he should be teaching the boy and the girl a few words of English. He knew he should be teaching them how to denounce him, should anything go wrong. Yet a sorrow was settling over Sun Moon, and he could attend to nothing but that.

  “Have you made friends with your guitar?” he asked her.

  She twanged a single, off note.

  He held out his cigarettes. “Can I light you one?”

  “Not before I sing,” she said. “I’ll smoke when we’re safely in the sky. On that American airplane, I’ll smoke a hundred of them.”

  “We’re going on an airplane?” the boy asked.

  Sun Moon ignored him.

  “So you’re going to sing the Rower Girl’s farewell?” Ga asked her.

  “I suppose I must,” Sun Moon said.

  “What is the song about?”

  “I haven’t written it yet,” she said. “When I start to play, the words will come. Mostly I’m filled with questions.” She took up her guitar and strummed it once. “How long have I known you?” she sang.

  “How long have I known you,” the girl responded, singing the line as a lament.

  “Seven seas you have rowed through,” Sun Moon sang.

  “Seven oceans you have known,” her daughter sang.

  Sun Moon strummed. “But now you’re in the eighth sea.”

  “The one we call home,” the boy sang, his voice higher than his sister’s.

  A contentment settled over Ga as he listened to them sing, as if something long-ago was finally being fulfilled.

  “Take wing, Girl Rower,” Sun Moon sang, “and leave the sea alone.”

  The girl answered her. “Fly away, Rower Girl, and leave the eighth one be.”

  “That’s good,” Sun Moon said. “Let’s try it together.”

  The girl asked, “Who’s the Rower Girl?”

  “We’re driving to bid her farewell,” Sun Moon said. “Now all together.”

&nbs
p; Then the family sang as one, “Fly away, Rower Girl, and leave the eighth sea be.”

  The boy’s voice was clear and trusting, the girl’s was graveled with a growing awareness. Combined with Sun Moon’s longing, a harmony arose that was nourishing to Ga. No other family in the world could create such a sound, and here he was, in the glow of it. Not even the sight of the soccer stadium could diminish the feeling.

  At the airport, Ga’s uniform allowed him to drive around the terminal to the hangars, where, to welcome the Americans, throngs of people were assembled, all of them conscripted from the streets of Pyongyang, citizens still holding their briefcases, toolboxes, and slide rules.

  The Wangjaesan Light Music Band was playing “Speed Battle Haircut” to commemorate the Dear Leader’s military achievements, while a legion of children in green-and-yellow gymnastics costumes practiced logrolling large white plastic barrels. Through a haze of barbecue smoke, Ga could see scientists, soldiers, and the Minister of Mass Mobilization’s men in yellow armbands arranging a large crowd into rows by height.

  The Americans finally decided it was safe to land. They heaved the gray beast around, wings broader than the runway, and brought it down through the gauntlet of Antonov and Tupolev fuselages abandoned along the greenways.

  Ga parked near the hangar where he and Dr. Song had been debriefed after his return from Texas. He left the keys in the ignition. The girl carried her mother’s dresses, while the boy led the dog by its rope. Sun Moon took her guitar, and Commander Ga carried the guitar case. He could see in the late morning sun several crows idling in the distance.

  The Dear Leader was conferring with Commander Park as they approached.

  At the sight of Sun Moon, the Dear Leader gestured for her to raise her arms so he could behold the dress. Nearing him, she spun once, flaring the shimmering white hem of her chima. Then she bowed. The Dear Leader took her hand and kissed it. He produced two silver keys and swept his hand to indicate Sun Moon’s changing station, a miniature replica of the Pohyon Temple, with its red columns and its swaying, scrolled eaves. Though no bigger than a travel-document control booth, it was exquisite in every detail. The Dear Leader handed her one key, then pocketed the other. He said something to Sun Moon that Ga couldn’t hear, and Sun Moon laughed for the first time that day.

  The Dear Leader then noticed Commander Ga.

  “And here is the taekwondo champion of Korea!” the Dear Leader announced.

  A cheer went up from the crowd, making Brando’s tail wag.

  Commander Park added, “And he brings with him the most vicious dog known.”

  When the Dear Leader laughed, everyone laughed.

  If the Dear Leader was furious, Ga thought, this was how he showed it.

  The jet lumbered toward them, slowly negotiating access strips designed for much smaller aircraft. The Dear Leader turned to Commander Ga, so they could speak in relative privacy.

  “It’s not every day that the Americans visit,” he said.

  “I have a feeling today will be quite rare,” Ga responded.

  “Indeed,” the Dear Leader said, “I have a feeling that after this, everything will be different, for all of us. I love those opportunities, don’t you? New beginnings, a fresh start.” The Dear Leader regarded Ga with a look of wonder. “You never did tell me, there’s one thing I’ve always been curious about—just how did you get out of that prison?”

  Ga thought about reminding the Dear Leader that they lived in a land where people had been trained to accept any reality presented to them. He considered sharing how there was only one penalty, the ultimate one, for questioning reality, how a citizen could fall into great jeopardy for simply noticing that realities had changed. Even a warden wouldn’t risk that.

  But Ga said, “I put on the Commander’s uniform and spoke as the Commander spoke. The Warden carried on his shoulders a heavy stone. That’s what he was concerned with, getting permission to set it down.”

  “Yes, but how did you force him to do what you wanted, to turn the key in the lock and open the prison gates? You had no power over him. He knew you were the lowliest of prisoners, a nameless nobody. Yet you got him to set you free.”

  Commander Ga shrugged. “I think the Warden looked into my eyes and saw that I’d just gotten the better of the most dangerous man alive.”

  The Dear Leader laughed. “Now I know you’re lying,” he said. “Because that man is me.”

  Ga laughed, too. “Indeed.”

  The tremendous aircraft taxied near the terminal. Drawing closer, however, its engines simmered and the plane came to a halt. The crowd stared up at the dark cockpit windows, waiting for the pilot to advance toward two airport workers who were beckoning it with orange batons. Instead, the craft ramped its starboard engines and, pivoting, turned back toward the runway.

  “Are they leaving?” Sun Moon asked.

  “The Americans are insufferable,” the Dear Leader said. “Is there no trick too petty? Is nothing beneath them?”

  The jet taxied all the way back to the runway, turned to position itself for takeoff, then shut down its engines. Slowly the great nose of the beast opened and a hydraulic cargo ramp lowered.

  The plane was nearly a kilometer away. Commander Park began berating the assembled citizens, to get them moving. In the sun, the scar tissue on his face shined translucent pink. Scores of children began rolling their barrels toward the runway, while masses of beleaguered citizens fell in behind. Ghosting among the people was a small fleet of forklifts and the Dear Leader’s personal car. Left behind were the bands, the barbecue pits, and the exhibition of DPRK farm equipment. Commander Ga saw Comrade Buc on his yellow forklift try to move the temple where Sun Moon was to change, but it proved too unwieldy to raise. But there was no looking backward with Commander Park bringing up the rear.

  “Can nothing inspire the Americans?” the Dear Leader asked as they shuffled along. “Uplift, I tell you, is unknown to them.” He indicated the terminal. “Look at the grand edifice of Kim Il Sung, supreme patriot, founder of this nation, my father. Look at the crimson-and-gold mosaic of Juche flame—does it not seem truly ablaze in the morning light? And yet the Americans—where do they park? Near the stewardesses’ outhouse and the pond where the planes dump their waste.”

  Sun Moon began to perspire. She and Ga exchanged a glance.

  “Will the American girl be joining us?” Ga asked the Dear Leader.

  “Interesting you should bring her up,” the Dear Leader said. “It’s fortunate that I find myself in the company of the most Korean couple in the land, the champion of our national martial art and his wife, the actress of an entire people. May I seek your opinion on a matter?”

  “We are all yours,” Ga said.

  “Recently,” the Dear Leader said, “I have discovered there is an operation by which a Korean eye can be made to look Western.”

  “For what purpose?” Sun Moon asked.

  “Yes, for what purpose,” the Dear Leader echoed. “Unknown, but the operation exists, I’ve been assured of it.”

  Ga felt this conversation veering into a territory where wrong moves could unknowingly be made. “Ah, the miracles of modern medicine,” he said in a general way. “Too bad they should be applied for cosmetic purposes when so many are born lame and cleft in South Korea.”

  “Well spoken,” the Dear Leader said. “Still, these medical advances might have a social application. This very dawn, I assembled the surgeons of Pyongyang and posed to them the question of whether a Western eye could be turned Korean.”

  “And the answer?” Sun Moon asked.

  “Unanimous,” the Dear Leader said. “Through a series of procedures, any woman could be made Korean. Head to toe, they said. When the doctors were done, she would be as Korean as the handmaids in King Tangun’s tomb.” He addressed Sun Moon as they walked. “Tell me,” he said. “Do you think this woman, this new Korean—would she be considered a virgin?”

  Ga began to speak, but Sun Moon cut h
im off. “A woman, by the love of the right man, can be made more pure than the womb that produced her,” she answered.

  The Dear Leader regarded her. “I can always count on you for the thoughtful response,” he said. “But seriously, if the procedures were successful, if she was restored, through and through, would you use the term “modest” to describe her? Could you call her Korean?”

  Sun Moon didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely not,” she said. “This woman would be nothing but an imposter. ‘Korean,’ this is a word written in blood on the walls of the heart. No American could ever use it. So she has paddled her little boat, so some sun has beat down on her. Have the people she loved faced death so that she might live? Is sorrow the only thing that connects her to all who came before? Has her nation been occupied by Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese oppressors for ten thousand years?”

  “Spoken as only a true Korean could,” the Dear Leader responded. “But you have such venom for this word ‘imposter.’ It’s so ugly when you say it.” He turned to Ga. “Tell me, Commander, what is your opinion of imposters? Do you think that, over time, a replacement could become the real thing?”

  “The substitute becomes genuine,” Ga said, “when you declare it so.”

  The Dear Leader raised his eyebrows at the truth of this.

  Sun Moon shot her husband a vicious look. “No,” she said, then turned to the Dear Leader. “No one can have feelings for an imposter. An imposter will always be a lesser thing, it will always leave the heart hungry.”

  People emerged from the bow of the aircraft. Ga saw the Senator, as well as Tommy and Wanda and a few others, all accompanied by a contingent of security personnel in blue suits. Right away, they were assaulted by flies from the lavatory lagoon.