The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  Ga said nothing—all babies in Prison 33 were killed. Every couple of months, there was a termination day in which rows of pregnant inmates had their bellies injected with saline. The guards had a wooden box on casters that they pushed around with their feet. Into this went, one by one, purple and dogpaddling, the partly developed babies as they came.

  “But we will have the last word,” the Dear Leader said. “A version is being created with every South Korean’s name inside, so that there will be no one beyond our reach. That’s real reunification, don’t you think, being able to place a guiding hand on the shoulder of every Korean, North or South? With good infiltration teams, it will be like the DMZ doesn’t exist. In the spirit of One Korea, I offer you a gift. Type in the name of a person you’d like found, for whom resolution is lacking, and they will be dealt with. Go ahead, any name. Perhaps someone who wronged you during the Arduous March or a rival from the orphanage.”

  The parade of people came to Ga, all those whose absences hung like empty dry docks in his memory. Throughout his life, he’d felt the presence of people he’d lost, eternally just out of reach. And here he was, seated before the collected fates of everyone. Yet he did not know his parents’ names, and the only information an orphan’s name gives is that he’s an orphan. Since Sun Moon had come into his life, he’d stopped wondering what had happened to Officer So and the Second Mate and his wife. The Captain’s name is the one he would have typed, but there was no need for that now. And Mongnan and Dr. Song, those were the last names he’d enter, as he wanted them to live forever in his memory. In the end, there was only one person who was haunting him, whose fate and location he had to know about. Commander Ga put his fingers to the keys and typed “Commander Ga Chol Chun.”

  When the Dear Leader saw this, he was beside himself. “Oh, that’s rich,” he said. “Oh, that’s a new one. You know what this machine does, right, you know what kind of team waits for these names? It’s good, too good, but I can’t let you do it.” The Dear Leader hit the Delete button and shook his head. “He typed his own name. Wait till I tell everyone at dinner tonight. Wait till they hear the story of how the Commander entered his own name into the master computer.”

  The green blinked at Ga like a faraway pulse in the dark.

  The Dear Leader clapped him on the shoulder. “Come,” he said. “One last thing. I need you to translate something for me.”

  When they reached the Girl Rower’s cell, the Dear Leader paused outside. He leaned against the wall, tapping the key against the cement. “I don’t want to let her go,” he said.

  Of course a deal had been struck, the Americans would be here in a few days and breaking a deal like this would never be forgiven. But Ga didn’t mention any of that. He said, “I understand exactly how you feel.”

  “She has no idea what I’m talking about when I speak to her,” the Dear Leader said. “But that’s okay. She has a curious mind, I can tell. I’ve been visiting her for a year. I’ve always needed someone like that, someone I can say things to. I like to think she enjoys my visits. Over time I think I have grown on her. How she makes you work for a smile, but when she gives you one, it’s real, you know it.”

  The Dear Leader’s eyes were small and searching, as if he was trying not to see the fact that he would have to give her up. It was the way your eyes could scan the sloshing water in the bottom of a skiff because to look anywhere else—at the beach or the duct tape in your hands or Officer So’s stony face—was to acknowledge you were trapped, that very soon you’d be forced to do the thing you abhorred the most.

  “I have read that there is a syndrome,” the Dear Leader said. “In this syndrome, a female captive begins to sympathize with her captor. Often it leads to love. Have you heard of this?”

  The idea seemed impossible, preposterous, to him. What person could shift allegiance toward their oppressor? Who could possibly sympathize with the villain who stole your life?

  Ga shook his head.

  “The syndrome is real, I assure you. The only problem is they say it sometimes takes years to work, which it seems we don’t have.” He looked at the wall. “When you said you understood how I felt, did you mean that?”

  “I did,” he said. “I do.”

  The Dear Leader studied closely the ridges of the key in his hand. “I suppose you do,” he said. “You have Sun Moon. I used to confide in her. Yes, I used to tell her everything. That was years ago. Before you came and took her.” He looked at Ga now, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you’re still alive. I can’t believe I didn’t throw you to the Pubyok. Tell me, where am I going to find another girl rower? One who’s tall and beautiful and who listens, a girl whose heart is true and yet she still knows how to take the blood out of her friend with her bare hands?” He stuck the key in the lock. “So she doesn’t understand the words I say to her—she gets the meaning, I’m sure of it. And she doesn’t need words—everything she feels crosses her face. Sun Moon was that way. Sun Moon was exactly like that,” he said, and turned the key in the lock.

  Inside, the Girl Rower was at her studies. Her notebooks were stacked high, and she was silently transcribing an English version of The Vigorous Zeal of the Revolutionary Spirit by Kim Jong Il.

  The Dear Leader stood leaning against the open doorframe, admiring her at a distance.

  “She’s read every word I’ve written,” he said. “That’s the truest way to know the heart of another. Can you imagine it, Ga, if that syndrome is real, an American in love with me? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate victory? A brawny, beautiful American girl. Wouldn’t that be the last word?”

  Ga knelt next to her and slid the lamp across the table so he could get a better look. Her skin was so pale it seemed translucent. There was a rattle when she breathed from the damp air.

  The Dear Leader said, “Ask her if she knows what a choson-ot is. I honestly doubt it. She hasn’t seen another woman in a year. I bet the last woman she saw was being killed by her own hands.”

  Ga got her to lock eyes with him. “Do you want to go home?” he asked her.

  She nodded.

  “Excellent,” the Dear Leader said. “So she does know what a choson-ot is. Tell her I’ll have someone come fit her for one.”

  “This is very important,” Ga said to her. “The Americans are going to try to come get you. Right now, in your notebook, I need you to write what I say: Wanda, accept—”

  “Tell her she will get her first bath, too,” the Dear Leader interrupted. “And assure her it will be a woman that helps her.”

  Ga went on. “Write exactly what I say: Wanda, accept food aid, dog, and books.”

  While she wrote, he looked back at the Dear Leader, backlit by the corridor lights.

  The Dear Leader said to him, “Maybe I should let her out, take her to that spa treatment at the Koryo Hotel. She might start to look forward to things like that.”

  “Excellent idea,” Ga told him, then turned to the girl. Quietly, clearly, he said, “Add: Hidden guests bring a valuable laptop.”

  “Maybe I should spoil her a little,” the Dear Leader mused, looking at the ceiling. “Ask her if there’s anything she wants, anything.”

  “When we leave, destroy that paper,” Ga told her. “Trust me, I’m going to get you home. In the meantime, is there anything you need?”

  “Soap,” she said.

  “Soap,” he told the Dear Leader.

  “Soap?” the Dear Leader asked. “Didn’t you just tell her that she was getting a bath?”

  “Not soap,” Ga told her.

  “Not soap?” she asked. “Toothpaste, then. And a brush.”

  “She meant the kind of soap you clean your teeth with,” Ga told him. “You know, toothpaste and a brush.”

  The Dear Leader stared first at her, then at him. He pointed the cell key at Ga.

  “She grows on a person, doesn’t she?” the Dear Leader asked. “How can I give her up? Tell me, what do you think the Americans would do if they came here, ret
urned my property, got humiliated, and left with nothing but bags of rice and a mean dog?”

  “I thought that was the plan.”

  “Yes, that was the plan. But all my advisors, they’re like mice in a munitions factory. They tell me not to anger the Americans, that I can only push them so far, that now that the Americans know the Girl Rower’s alive, they’ll never relent.”

  “The girl is yours,” Ga said. “That is the only fact. People must understand that whether she stays or goes or becomes a cinder in Division 42, it is as you wish it. If the Americans receive a tutorial in this fact, it doesn’t matter what happens to her.”

  “True, true,” the Dear Leader said. “Except I don’t want to let her go. Is there a way, you think?”

  “If the girl met with the Senator and told him herself that she wished to stay, then maybe there would be no incident.”

  The Dear Leader shook his head at that distasteful suggestion. “If only I had another girl rower,” he said. “If only our little killer here hadn’t done away with her friend, then I could have sent home the one I liked the least.” Here he laughed. “That’s all I need, right? Two bad girls on my hands.” He wagged his finger at her. “Bad girl, bad girl,” he said, laughing. “Very bad girl.”

  Commander Ga produced his camera. “If she’s going to get cleaned up and fitted for a choson-ot,” he said, “I’ll need to get a ‘before’ photo.” He neared her and squatted low to snap the picture. “And maybe an action shot,” he announced, “of how our guest has documented the amassed knowledge of our glorious leader Kim Jong Il.”

  He nodded to her. “Now hold up the book.”

  Commander Ga was squinting to make sure everything fit perfectly, the woman and her book, the note to Wanda—everything had to be in focus—when he saw through the viewfinder that the Dear Leader was crouching down and squeezing into the frame, his hand pulling her close by her shoulder. Ga stared at the strange and dangerous image before him and decided it was right that cameras were illegal.

  “Tell her to smile,” the Dear Leader said.

  “Can you smile?” he asked.

  She smiled.

  “The truth is,” Ga said, his finger on the button, “that eventually everyone goes away.”

  That these words should come from the lips of Commander Ga made the Dear Leader grin. “Isn’t that the truth of it,” he responded.

  In English, Ga said, “Say ‘Cheese.’ ”

  And then the Dear Leader and his dear rower were blinking together from the flash.

  “I want copies of those,” the Dear Leader said, straining to get back to his feet.

  I’D STAYED LATE at Division 42; my body felt weak. It was like there was some nourishment I was missing, like my body was hungering for some kind of food I’d simply never run across. I thought of the dogs in the Central Zoo that lived only on cabbage and old tomatoes. Had they forgotten the taste of meat? I felt like there was something, some sustenance that I’d simply never known. I breathed deeply, but the air smelled no different—grilled onion stalks, boiling peanuts, millet in the pan, dinner in Pyongyang. There was nothing to do but go home.

  Much of the city’s electricity was being diverted to run industrial rice dryers south of town, so the subway was shut down. And the line for the Kwangbok express bus was three blocks long. I started walking. I didn’t make it two blocks before I heard the bullhorns and knew I was in trouble. The Minister of Mass Mobilization and his cadres were moving through the district, sweeping up any citizen unlucky enough to be out on the street. Just the sight of their yellow insignia sickened me. You couldn’t run—if they even thought you were trying to avoid “volunteering” for harvest duty, it was off to a Redeemability Farm for a month of labor and group criticism. It was, however, the kind of thing a Pubyok badge could get you out of. Without it, I found myself in the back of a dump truck headed to the countryside to harvest rice for sixteen hours.

  We drove northeast by moonlight, toward the silhouetted Myohyang Range, a dump truck filled with city folks in professional attire, the driver flashing on his headlamps when he thought he saw something in the road, but there was nothing in the road, no people, no cars, nothing but empty highways lined with tank traps and large Chinese excavators—their orange arms frozen in extension—abandoned by the canals for want of parts.

  In the dark, we found a peasant village somewhere along the Chongchon River. We city folk, about a hundred of us, climbed down to sleep on the open ground. I had a smock to keep me warm and my briefcase for a pillow. The stars above seemed placed for my pleasure, and it was a welcome change from sleeping under dirt and goats. For five years, I’d used a badge to escape harvest details, so I’d forgotten the sounds of crickets and frogs in the summer, the pungent mist that rises off the rice water. I heard children somewhere playing a game in the dark, and I heard the sounds of a man and a woman engaged in what must have been intercourse. What followed was my best night of sleep in years.

  There was no breakfast, and my hands blistered before the sun was fully up. For hours I did nothing but dig open irrigation dams and backfill running canals. Why we drained one field and flooded another, I had no idea, but light dawned hard on the peasants of Chagang Province. They all wore cheap, ill-fitting vinalon clothes, they had nothing but black sandals, and their bodies were rail thin with cracked, dark skin and teeth translucent to their black cores. Every woman with a hint of beauty had been siphoned to the capital. It turned out I showed too little promise as a rice harvester and was instead sent to empty latrine pots, raking the contents in between layers of rice hull. Then I dug ruts through the village that I was told would be of use when the rains came. An old woman, too old to work, watched me dig. She smoked her own kind of cigarette, rolled in corn husks, and told me many stories, but because she lacked teeth, I could not understand them.

  In the afternoon, a city woman was struck by a grand snake, long as a man. They gave her wound a poultice. I tried to quiet her screams by stroking her hair, but that snakebite must have done something to her—she started hitting me and pushing me away. The peasants by then had caught the twisting snake, black as the befecaled water that had concealed it. Some wanted to take its gall bladder, others wished to milk its venom for liquor. They appealed to the old woman, who motioned for them to free it. I watched the snake swim away through a paddy field cleared of rice. The shallow water was both dark and flashing with sunset. The snake took its own course, away from all of us, and I had a feeling there was another black snake out across the water, waiting for this broad swimmer to make its way home to her.

  It was midnight when I made it home. Though the key turned in the lock, the door wouldn’t open. It was somehow barricaded from within. I pounded on the door. “Mother,” I called. “Father, it’s me, your son. There’s something wrong with the door. You must open it for me.” I pleaded for a while, then put my shoulder to the wood, leaning into it some, but not too hard. Breaking down a door would cause much discussion in the building. Finally, I buttoned my smock and lay down in the hall. I tried to think of the sounds of the crickets and the children running in the dark, but when I closed my eyes I could imagine only cold cement. I thought of the peasants with their ropy bodies and harsh manner of speaking, of how, except for starvation, they didn’t have a care in the world.

  In the dark, I heard a sound—bing! It was the red cell phone.

  I found the phone, its green light flashing. On the tiny screen was a new picture: a Korean boy and a Korean girl stood half-stunned, half-smiling against a sunny blue sky. They wore black caps with ears that made them look like mice.

  Come morning, the door was standing open. Inside, my mother was cooking porridge while my father sat at the table. “Who’s there?” my father asked. “Is someone there?”

  I could see that one of the chairs had a shiny spot on its back where the doorknob had rubbed.

  “It’s me, Father, your son.”

  “Thank goodness you’re back,” my father sa
id. “We were worried about you.”

  My mother said nothing.

  On the table were the files I’d pulled on my parents. I’d been studying them all week. They looked like they’d been rifled.

  “I tried to get in last night but the door was blocked,” I said. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Father said. He spoke to the air. “My wife, did you hear anything?”

  “No,” she said from the stove. “I heard nothing, nothing at all.”

  I straightened the files. “I suppose you two have gone deaf, now, as well.”

  My mother shuffled to the table with two bowls of porridge, her feet sliding in baby steps lest she stumble in her darkness.

  I asked, “But why was the door blocked? You aren’t afraid of me, are you?”

  “Afraid of you?” my mother asked.

  “Why would we be afraid of you?” asked my father.

  My mother said, “The loudspeaker said the American Navy was conducting aggressive military exercises off the coast.”

  “You can’t take any chances,” my father said. “With the Americans, you must take measures.”

  They blew on their food and took quiet spoonfuls.

  “How is it,” I asked my mother, “that you cook so well without your sight?”

  “I can feel the heat that comes off the pan,” she said. “And as the food cooks, the smell changes.”

  “What about the knife?”

  “Using the knife is easy,” she said. “I guide it with my knuckles. Stirring food in the pan is the hardest. I always spill.”

  In my mother’s file was a photo of her when she was young. She was a beauty, perhaps the reason she was brought to the capital from the countryside, but what got her sentenced to a factory, rather than assigned as a singer or a hostess, was not in her record. I ruffled the folders, so they could be heard.