The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  “I wish I had my radio,” he said.

  “You’ve got a radio?” she asked. “Where is it?”

  He nodded toward the window, and the Canning Master’s house beyond. “It’s in my kitchen,” he said.

  Jun Do slept all night, then woke in the morning, so turned around was his system now. All of the fish that had been strung through the room were gone, and sitting on the chair was his radio, the loose parts in a plastic bowl. When the news came on, he could feel the entire housing block hum with two hundred loudspeakers. He stared at the place on the wall where the chart had been while he was informed of the coming negotiations in America, of the Dear Leader’s inspection of a cement factory in Sinpo, of the news that North Korea had defeated the Libyan badminton team in straight sets, and finally, a reminder that it is illegal to eat swallows, as they control insect populations that feed on rice seedlings.

  Jun Do stood awkwardly and scrounged a piece of brown paper. Then he pulled on the blood-soaked pants he’d been wearing four days ago, when it all happened. Outside, at the end of the hall, was the line for the tenth-floor toilet. With all the adults at the cannery, the line was made up of old women and children, each waiting with scraps of paper in their hands. When it was his turn, though, Jun Do saw the wastebasket was filled instead with wadded pages of Rodong Sinmun, which was illegal to tear, let alone wipe your ass with.

  He was in there a long time. Finally, he scooped two ladles of water into the toilet, and when he was leaving, an old lady in line stopped him. “You’re the one who lives in the Canning Master’s house,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Jun Do told her.

  “They should burn that place,” she said.

  The apartment door was open when he returned. Inside Jun Do found the old man who’d interrogated him. He held the pair of Nikes in his hands. “What the hell is on your roof?” he asked.

  “Dogs,” Jun Do told him.

  “Filthy animals. You know they’re illegal in Pyongyang. That’s the way it should be. Besides, I’ll take pork any day.” He held up the Nikes. “What are these?”

  “They’re some kind of American shoes,” Jun Do told him. “We found them in our nets one night.”

  “You don’t say. What are they for?”

  It was hard to believe an interrogator from Pyongyang had never seen nice athletic shoes. Still, Jun Do said, “They’re for exercise, I think.”

  “I’ve heard that,” the old man said. “That Americans do pointless labor for fun.” He pointed at the radio. “And what about this?” he said.

  “That’s work-related,” Jun Do said. “I’m fixing it.”

  “Turn it on.”

  “It’s not all put together.” Jun Do pointed at the bowl of parts. “Even if it was, there’s no antenna.”

  The old man put the shoes back and walked to the window. The sun was high but still rising, and the angle made the water, despite its depth, shimmer light blue.

  “Look at that,” he said. “I could stare at that forever.”

  “It’s quite a lovely sea, sir,” Jun Do said.

  “If a guy walked down to that dock and cast a line in,” the old man said, “would he catch a fish?”

  The place to catch a fish was a little to the south, where the canning factory’s waste pipes pumped fish sludge into the sea, but Jun Do said, “Yeah, I think he might.”

  “And up north, in Wonsan,” the old man said. “They have beaches there, no?”

  “I’ve never visited,” Jun Do told him. “But you can see the sand from our ship.”

  “Here,” the old guy said. “I brought you this.” He handed Jun Do a crimson velvet case. “It’s your medal for heroism. I’d pin it on you, but I can tell you’re not a medal guy. I like that about you.”

  Jun Do didn’t open the case.

  The old interrogator looked again out the window. “To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero.” Here he laughed. “At least, that’s what a guy told me one time when I was beating the shit out of him.”

  “I just want to get back on my boat,” Jun Do said.

  The old interrogator took a look at Jun Do. “I think that saltwater made your shirt shrink,” he said. He tugged Jun Do’s sleeve up to look at the scars, which were red-lipped and wept at the corners.

  Jun Do pulled his arm back.

  “Easy, there, tiger. There’ll be plenty of time to fish. First, we’ve got to show those Americans. They’ve got to get theirs. I hear a plan’s in motion. So we’ve got to get you presentable. Right now, it looks like the sharks won.”

  “This is all some kind of test, isn’t it?”

  The old interrogator smiled. “What do you mean?”

  “Asking about Wonsan like some kind of fool when everybody knows no one retires there. Everyone knows that’s just a place for military leaders to vacation. Why not just say what you want from me?”

  A flash of uncertainty crossed the old interrogator’s face. It shifted slightly to measurement and then settled into a smile. “Hey,” he said. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be rattling you.” He laughed. “Seriously, though, we’re both legally heroes. We’re on the same team. Our mission is to stick it to the Americans who did this to you. First, though, I need to know if you’ve got some kind of beef with the Captain. We can’t be having any surprises.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jun Do asked. “Never, not at all.”

  He looked out the window. Half the fleet was out, but the Junma had its nets spread across the docks, drying them for a mend.

  “Okay, then, forget I said anything. If you didn’t say anything to piss him off, I believe you.”

  “The Captain’s my family,” Jun Do said. “If you’ve got something to say about him then you’d better say it.”

  “It’s nothing. The Captain just came to me and asked if I could put you on another boat.”

  Jun Do stared at him in disbelief.

  “The Captain said he’s tired of heroes, that he only has so much time left, and he just wants to do his job and fish. I wouldn’t sweat it—the Captain, he’s a capable man, a real solid hand, but you get old, you lose your flexibility. I’ve seen it many times.”

  Jun Do sat down in a chair. “It’s because of his wife,” he said. “That’s got to be it. That’s something you guys did to him, giving his wife away.”

  “I doubt that’s how it worked. I’m not familiar with the case, but she was an old woman, right? Not too many replacement husbands are clamoring for an old woman. The Captain went to jail, and she left him. That sounds pretty likely. As the Dear Leader says, The simplest answer is usually the right one.”

  “And the Second Mate’s wife. Are you handling that case?”

  “She’s a pretty girl, she’ll do well. You don’t have to worry about her. She won’t be living underneath dogs anymore, that’s for sure.”

  “What will happen to her?”

  “I think there’s a warden in Sinpo who’s high on the list, and down in Chongwang there’s a retired Party official making some noise to get his hands on her.”

  “I thought girls like her got sent to Pyongyang.”

  The old man cocked his head. “She’s no virgin,” he finally said. “Plus, she’s twenty now, and headstrong. Most of the girls who go to Pyongyang are seventeen—all they know is how to listen. But what do you care? You don’t want her for yourself, do you?”

  “No,” Jun Do said. “Not at all.”

  “ ’Cause that’s suddenly not so heroic. If you want a girl, we can get you a girl. But the wife of a fallen comrade, that’s discouraged.”

  “I’m not saying that’s what I want,” Jun Do said. “But I’m a hero. I’ve got rights.”

  “Privileges,” the old man said. “You get some privileges.”

  All day he worked on the radio. The light was good at the window ledge. There he used the flattened end of a wire as a jeweler’s screwdriver and melted fine strands of solder
with a candle flame. There, too, he could keep an eye on the harbor to observe the Captain pacing the decks.

  Toward twilight, she returned. She was in high spirits, radiant.

  “I see some of you still works,” she said.

  “I couldn’t stay in bed without any fish to look at. They were my mobile.”

  “Some impression that would make,” she said. “Showing up in Pyongyang with a suitcase full of fish.” Then she pulled back her hair to reveal a new pair of earrings made from thin tails of gold. “Not a bad trade, huh? I’ll have to wear my hair up so people can see them.”

  She went to the radio. “Does it work?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I rigged an antenna. We should set it up on the roof, though, before the power goes out.”

  She grabbed the pair of Nikes.

  “Okay,” she said. “But there’s something I’ve got to do first.”

  They took the stairs, carefully, down to the sixth floor. They passed apartments ringing with family arguments, but most were eerily silent. The walls here were painted with slogans to the Dear and Great Leaders, accompanied by depictions of children singing from the songbooks of the revolution and peasant farmers pausing at their rich harvests, sickles high, to gaze into the pure light of everlasting wisdom.

  The Second Mate’s wife knocked on a door, waited a moment, then went inside. The windows were covered with ration paper, and the room smelled of the crotch rot that would spread through the DMZ tunnels. Here they found a man sitting in a plastic dining chair, a bandaged foot elevated on a stool. From the shape of the bandages, you could tell there was no room for toes. He wore overalls from the canning factory, and his name patch said “Team Leader Gun.” Gun’s eyes lit when he saw the shoes. He beckoned for them, then turned them in his hands, smelled them.

  “Can you get more of these?” he asked her.

  “Maybe,” she said. She saw a box on a table, about the size of a funeral cake. “Is this it?”

  “Yes,” he said, marveling at the Nikes. Then he pointed at her box. “That wasn’t easy to get, you know—it’s straight from the South.”

  Without looking inside, she put the box under her arm.

  “What does your friend want?” Gun asked her.

  Jun Do looked around the room, at the cases of strange Chinese liquor and the bins of old clothing, at the dangling wires where a loudspeaker should have been. There was a birdcage, jammed full with rabbits. He answered for himself. “I don’t need anything.”

  “Ah, but I asked what you want,” Gun said, smiling for the first time. “Come, accept a gift. I think I have a belt that will fit you.” He strained for a plastic bag on the floor that was filled with used belts.

  “Don’t bother,” Jun Do told him.

  The Second Mate’s wife saw a pair of shoes she liked. They were black and almost new. While she tried them on, Jun Do looked at all the crates of merchandise. There were Russian cigarettes and baggies of pills with handwritten labels and a dish filled with sunglasses. There was a stack of family cooking pans, their handles pointing in different directions, and they seemed almost tragic to him.

  On a small bookshelf, he found his English dictionaries, and he looked over his old notes in the margins, noting all the idioms he’d once found impossible, like “dry run” and “close but no cigar.” Rummaging further, he found the badger-hair shaving brush that had belonged to the Captain. Jun Do didn’t blame the Second Mate for pilfering things, even personal things, but when Jun Do turned to observe the Second Mate’s wife regard the black shoes in a mirror, it suddenly mattered whether it was she or her husband who’d sold them here.

  “Okay,” she said. “I want them.”

  “They look good,” Gun said. “That leather is Japanese, you know, the best. You bring me another pair of Nikes, and we’ll trade.”

  “No,” she said. “The Nikes are far too valuable. When I get another pair, we’ll see what you have that’s equal.”

  “When you get another pair, you will bring them to me. Agreed.”

  “Agreed,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “You take those shoes, and then you can owe me one.”

  “I’ll owe you one,” she said.

  “Don’t do it,” Jun Do told her.

  “I’m not afraid,” she said.

  “Good,” Gun told her. “When the time comes that you can be of service, I will come for you, and then we will be even.”

  Box under her arm, they turned to go. On a small table, though, something caught Jun Do’s eye. He picked it up. It was a stationmaster’s watch on a little chain. The Orphan Master had had such a watch, and with it he ran their entire lives, from dawn to lights-out, as he farmed the boys out to clean septic tanks or to be sent down shafts on bare ropes to drain oil sumps. Every moment went by that watch, and he’d never tell the boys the time, but they learned by his facial expressions how things would go until he next checked it.

  “Take the watch,” Gun said. “I got it from an old man who said it ran perfectly for a lifetime.”

  Jun Do set down the watch. When they’d left and the door closed behind them, he asked, “What happened to him?”

  “He hurt his foot last year, from a steam line under pressure, something like that.”

  “Last year?”

  “The wound won’t close, that’s what the foreman says.”

  “You shouldn’t have made that deal with him,” Jun Do said.

  “When he comes to collect,” she told him, “I’ll be long gone.”

  Jun Do looked at her. In this moment he felt truly sad for her. He thought of the men who were lobbying for her, the warden in Sinpo and the old Party boss in Chongwang, men who were right now preparing their homes for her arrival. Had they been shown a photo of her, told some kind of story, or had they only heard over their loudspeakers the tragic news that a hero had been lost to the sharks, leaving a beautiful young wife behind?

  Winding the stairwell to the roof, they pushed through the metal door into darkness and stars. The adult dogs were free and skittish, their eyes locating them. In the center of the roof, there was a screened-in shed to keep insects off the sides of dog—rubbed with coarse salt and crushed green peppercorns—hanging to cure in the ocean air.

  “It’s beautiful up here,” he said.

  “Sometimes I come up here to think,” she said. They looked far out onto the water. “What’s it like out there?” she asked.

  “When you’re out of sight of shore,” he said, “you could be anybody, from anywhere. It’s like you have no past. Out there, everything is spontaneous, every lick of water that kicks up, every bird that drops in from nowhere. Over the airwaves, people say things you’d never imagine. Here, nothing is spontaneous.”

  “I can’t wait to hear that radio,” she said. “Can you get the pop stations from Seoul?”

  “It’s not that kind of radio,” he said and jammed the antenna through the mesh of the puppy warren, the little dogs scurrying in terror.

  “I don’t get it.”

  Jun Do tossed the cable off the overhang, where they could retrieve it from the window below. “This radio doesn’t receive broadcasts,” he said. “It transmits them.”

  “What’s the point of that?”

  “We have a message to send.”

  Inside the apartment, his fingers worked quickly to hook up the antenna cable and a small microphone. “I had a dream,” he told her. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I dreamed your husband had a radio, that he was on a raft, heading into shimmering water, bright like a thousand mirrors.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Jun Do turned the radio on and they both stared at the sodium-yellow glow of its power meter. He set it to 63 megahertz, then squeezed the breaker bar: “Third Mate to Second Mate, Third Mate to Second Mate, over.” Jun Do repeated this, knowing that, just as he couldn’t hear, the Second Mate couldn’t respond. Finally, he said, “My friend, I know you’re out there and you mustn’t despa
ir.” Jun Do could’ve explained how to unbraid a single strand of copper from the battery leads, then connect the strand to both poles so it would heat up enough to light a cigarette. Jun Do could have told the Second Mate how to make a compass from the magnet in the radio’s windings, or how surrounding the capacitors is a foil he could flash as a signal mirror.

  But the survival skills the Second Mate needed concerned enduring solitude and tolerating the unknown, topics about which Jun Do had some practice. “Sleep during the day,” Jun Do told him. “At night your thoughts will come clear. We have looked at the stars together—chart them each night. If they are in the right places, you’re doing fine. Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past. Do not try to picture people’s faces—you will despair if they don’t come clear. If you are visited by people from far away, don’t think of them as ghosts. Treat them as family, ask them questions, be a good host.

  “You will need a purpose,” he told the Second Mate. “The Captain’s purpose was to get us home safe. Your purpose will be to stay strong so that you can rescue the girl who rows in the dark. She is in trouble and needs help. You’re the only one out there who can help her. Scan the horizons at night, look for lights and flares. You must save her for me.

  “I’m sorry that I let you down. It was my job to look out for you. I was supposed to save you, and I failed. You were the real hero. When the Americans came, you saved us all, and when you needed us, we weren’t there for you. Somehow, one day, I’ll make things right.”

  Jun Do stopped broadcasting, and the needle on the meter went flat.

  The Second Mate’s wife just looked at him. “That must have been one sad dream. Because that was the saddest message one person ever sent another.” When Jun Do nodded, she said, “Who was the girl who rows in the dark?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “She was just in the dream.”

  He handed the microphone to her.

  “I think you should say something to him,” he said.

  She didn’t take it. “This is about your dream, not mine. What would I say?” she asked. “What would I tell him?”

  “What would you have told him if you knew you’d never see him again?” he asked. “Or you don’t have to say anything. He told me how much he loved your singing.”