The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  I put my hand on Jujack’s shoulder. “Tell the truth, son,” I said. “Just say what you know, and I’ll stand by you.”

  Jujack looked at our feet. “I don’t know anything, I swear.”

  We all turned to Q-Kee. “Don’t take my word for it,” she said. “Look in his eyes. It’s right there for everyone to see.”

  Sarge bent and looked in the boy’s eyes. For the longest time, Sarge just stared. Then he nodded and said, “Take him away.”

  A couple of the Pubyok put their hands on Jujack. A look of terror filled his eyes.

  “Wait,” I told them, but there was no stopping the floating wall. Soon Jujack was kicking as they dragged him toward the shop.

  Jujack screamed, “I’m the son of a minister.”

  “Save it for your biography,” Sarge called after him, laughing.

  I said, “There’s got to be some kind of mistake.”

  Sarge seemed not to hear me. “Fucking disloyalty,” he said, shaking his head. Then he turned to Q-Kee. “Good work,” he said to her. “Get your smock on. You’ll be the one to get the truth out of him.”

  Jujack was concealing something, and the only other person who knew what that might be was Commander Ga. I raced to the tank where we were holding him. Inside, Ga was shirtless, staring at his chest’s reflection in the stainless-steel wall.

  Without looking at me, Ga said, “You know, I should have had them ink her image in reverse.”

  “There’s an emergency,” I said. “It’s my intern, Jujack. He’s in trouble.”

  “But I didn’t know then,” Ga said. “I didn’t know my destiny.” He turned to me, indicating his tattoo. “You see her as she is. I’m forced to see her backward. I should have had them ink her image in reverse. But back then, I thought it was for others to see. When really, the whole time, she was for me.”

  “I need some information,” I told him. “It’s really important.”

  “Why are you so intent on writing my biography?” Commander Ga asked me. “The only people in the world who’d want to read it are gone now.”

  “I just need to know one thing. It’s life and death,” I said. “We went to the military base, on the road to Nampo, but there was no corral or fire pit or ox. I know you made a village there, to make the Americans feel at home. But the actress wasn’t there. Nothing was.”

  “I told you, you’ll never find her.”

  “But where was the picnic table, the chuck wagon?”

  “We moved those.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why, why not?”

  “Because this mystery is the only reminder to the Dear Leader that what happened to him is real, that something happened that was out of his control.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “That would be a good question to ask him.”

  “But this isn’t about the Dear Leader, it’s about a kid who made a mistake.”

  “It’s also the only thing keeping me alive.”

  I appealed to his reason. “You’re not going to live through any of this,” I said.

  He nodded in acknowledgment. “None of us will,” he said. “Do you have a plan? Have you taken steps? You still have time, you can choose your terms.”

  “In whatever time you have left,” I said, “you can save this kid, you can atone for whatever heinous thing you did to the actress.” I pulled his phone from my pocket. “The pictures that arrive on this phone,” I asked him. “Are they meant for you?”

  “What pictures?”

  I turned on the phone, let him see the blue glow of its charged battery.

  “I must have that,” he told me.

  “Then help me,” I said.

  I held the phone in front of his face, showing him the image of the star on the sidewalk.

  He took the phone from my hand. “The Americans refused the Dear Leader’s hospitality,” he said. “They wouldn’t leave their plane, so we moved the Texas village to the airport.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and just as I turned, the door flew open.

  It was Q-Kee on the threshold, the rest of the Pubyok behind her. There was gore on her smock. “They moved to the airport,” she declared. “That’s where the actress disappeared.”

  “Makes sense he’d know what was going on at the airport,” one of the Pubyok said. “His dad is the Minister of Transportation.”

  “What about Jujack?” I demanded. “Where is he, what’s happened to him?”

  Q-Kee didn’t answer. She looked to Sarge, who nodded his approval.

  Steeling her eyes, Q-Kee turned to face the Pubyok assembled in the doorway. She assumed a taekwondo stance. The men backed up, gave her a moment to compose herself. Then, together, they said Junbi. Hana, dul, set, they counted, and when they shouted Sijak! Q-Kee’s hand struck the stainless-steel door.

  There was a long, shuddering inhale, and then she drew several sharp breaths.

  Slowly, she pulled her broken hand to her chest and sheltered it there.

  Always the first break is a chopping strike to the outside of the palm. There will be plenty of time to break the knuckles, a couple at a time, later.

  Calmly, carefully, Sarge took her arm and extended it, placing her broken hand in his. With great care, he gripped her wrist with one hand then pinched her last two fingers with the other. “You’re one of us now,” he said. “You’re an intern no more. You no longer have use for a name,” he added as he pulled hard on her fingers, snapping the cracked bones straight for a proper heal.

  Sarge nodded his head my way, as a sign of respect. “I was against having a woman in the Division,” he told me. “But you were right—she’s the future.”

  IT WAS afternoon, the sun bright and heatless through the windows. Commander Ga sat between the boy and the girl, the three of them watching Sun Moon restlessly wander the house, her hands lifting certain objects that she seemed to consider anew. The dog followed her, sniffing at everything she touched—a hand mirror, a parasol, the kettle in the kitchen. It was the day before the Americans were to arrive, the day before the escape, though the children didn’t know that.

  “What’s wrong with her?” the boy asked. “What’s she looking for?”

  “She acts like this before she starts a new movie,” the girl said. “Is there a new movie?”

  “Something like that,” Ga told them.

  Sun Moon came to him. In her hands was a hand-painted chang-gi board. The look on her face said, How can I abandon this? He’d told her that they could take nothing with them, that any keepsake might signal their plan.

  “My father,” she said. “It’s all I have of him.”

  He shook his head. How could he explain to her that it was better this way, that yes, an object could hold a person, that you could talk to a photograph, that you could kiss a ring, that by breathing into a harmonica, you can give voice to someone far away. But photographs can be lost. In your sleep, a ring can be slipped from your finger by the thief in your barracks. Ga had seen an old man lose the will to live—you could see it go out of him—when a prison guard made him hand over a locket. No, you had to keep the people you loved safer than that. They had to become as fixed to you as a tattoo, which no one could take away.

  “Nothing but the clothes on my back?” she asked him.

  Then a look of dawning crossed her face. She turned and moved quickly to her wardrobe. Here, she stared into the row of choson-ots, each folded over its own dowel. The setting sun was tinted and rich through the bedroom. In this golden, yolk-colored light, the dresses glowed with life.

  “How will I choose?” she asked him. She ran her fingers over them. “I wore this one in Motherless Fatherland,” she said. “But I played a politician’s wife. I can’t leave here as that. I can’t be her forever.” Sun Moon studied a simple choson-ot whose jeogori was white and chima was patterned with pale blossoms. “And here’s A True Daughter of the Country. I can’t arrive in America dressed as a
peasant girl.” She leafed through all the dresses—Oppressors Tumble, Tyrants Asunder, Hold the Banner High!

  “All of your dresses have come from your movies?”

  She nodded. “Technically, they’re the property of Wardrobe. But when I act in them, they become a part of me.”

  “You have none of your own?” he asked.

  “I don’t need my own,” she said. “I’ve got these.”

  “What about the dresses you wore before you were in the movies?”

  She stared at him a moment.

  “Oh, I cannot decide,” she said and closed her eyes. “I’ll leave it for later.”

  “No,” he told her. “This one.”

  She removed the silver choson-ot he’d selected, held it to her figure.

  “Glory of Glories,” she said. “You wish me to be the opera singer?”

  “It is a story of love,” he told her.

  “And tragedy.”

  “And tragedy,” he acknowledged. “Wouldn’t the Dear Leader love to see you dressed as an opera star? Wouldn’t that be a nod to his other passion?”

  Sun Moon wrinkled her nose at this idea. “He got me an opera singer to help me prepare for that role, but she was impossible.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Sun Moon shrugged. “She vanished.”

  “Vanished where?”

  “She went where people go, I guess. One day she just wasn’t there.”

  He touched the fabric. “Then this is the dress to wear.”

  They spent the remaining light harvesting the garden, preparing a feast to eat raw. The flowers they turned to tea, and the cucumbers they sliced and let brine in vinegar and sugar water with shredded red cabbage. The girl’s prize melon they broke open on a rock, so that the meat inside tore along the seed lines. Sun Moon lit a candle, and at the table, they started their final dinner with beans, which they shelled and rolled in coarse salt. Then the boy had a treat—four songbirds he’d snared and dressed and cured in the sun with red pepper seeds.

  The boy started to tell a story he’d heard over the loudspeaker about a laborer who thought he’d found a precious gem. Instead of sharing the discovery with the leader of his detachment, the laborer swallowed the gem in the hopes of keeping it for himself.

  “Everyone’s heard that story,” his sister said. “It turned out to be a piece of glass.”

  “Please,” Sun Moon said. “Let’s have a happy story.”

  The girl said, “What about the one where the dove flew into the path of an imperialist bullet and saved the life of a—”

  Sun Moon raised a hand to stop her.

  It seemed the only stories the children knew of had come from the loudspeaker. When Commander Ga was young, sometimes all the orphans had to fill themselves with at the dinner table were stories. In an offhanded way, Commander Ga said, “I’d tell the story about the little dog from Pyongyang who went into space, but I’m sure you’ve heard that one.”

  With uncertainty on her face, the girl looked from her brother to her mother. Then she shrugged. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “Who hasn’t heard that one?”

  The boy also feigned knowledge of the story. “Yeah, that’s an old one,” he added.

  “Let me see if I remember how it goes,” Commander Ga said. “The best scientists got together and built a gigantic rocket. On its fuselage, they painted the blue star and red circle of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Then they filled it full of volatile fuel and rolled it out to the launch pad. The rocket was designed to go up. If it worked, they would try to make the next rocket capable of coming back down. Even though the scientist that piloted it would be declared a martyr, no one was brave enough to climb inside.”

  Ga stopped his story there. He sipped his tea, and looked at the children, who could not tell what this story was designed to glorify.

  Hesitantly, the girl said, “That’s when they decided to send the dog.”

  Ga smiled. “That’s right,” he said. “I knew you’d know the story. Now where was it they found the dog again?”

  Once more, there was silence. “At the zoo,” the boy finally said.

  “Of course,” Ga said. “How could I forget? And what did that dog look like?”

  “He was gray,” the girl said.

  “And brown,” the boy said.

  “With white paws,” the girl said. “He had a long, slim tail. They chose him because he was skinny and could fit in the rocket.”

  “Old tomatoes,” the boy said. “That’s all the mean zookeeper fed him.”

  Sun Moon smiled to see her children engage in the tale. “At night, the dog would consider the moon,” was her contribution.

  “The moon was his only friend,” the girl said.

  “The dog would call and call,” the boy added, “but he never heard back.”

  “Yes, it is an old story, but a good one,” Commander Ga said, smiling. “Now, the dog agreed to ride the rocket into space—”

  “—to be closer to his friend the moon,” the girl said.

  “Yes, to be closer to his friend the moon,” Ga said. “But did they tell the dog he would never be coming back?”

  A look of betrayal crossed the boy’s face. “They didn’t tell him anything,” he said.

  Ga nodded at the wrongness of this injustice. “The scientists, as I recall, allowed the dog to bring one thing with him.”

  “It was a stick,” the boy said.

  “No,” the girl said. “It was his bowl.”

  And suddenly the two of them were racing to discover the item the dog chose to take into space, but Ga nodded in approval at all their proposals.

  “The dog brought along a squirrel,” the boy said. “So he wouldn’t get lonely.”

  “He chose to bring a garden,” the girl countered. “So he wouldn’t be hungry.”

  On and on they went—a ball, a rope, a parachute, a flute he could play with his paws.

  Ga halted them with a hand, letting a silence fall over the table. “Secretly,” he whispered, “the dog brought along all those things, the weight of which changed the course of the rocket when it launched, sending it on a new trajectory …”

  Ga gestured up in the air, and the children looked above them, as if the answer would materialize on the ceiling.

  “… to the moon,” the girl said.

  Ga and Sun Moon now listened as the children spun the rest of the story for themselves, how on the moon, the dog discovered another dog, the one who howled at the earth every night, how there was a boy on the moon, and a girl, and how the dogs and the children began building their own rocket, and Ga watched how the candlelight played on their faces, how Sun Moon’s eyes lowered with delight, how the children relished their mother’s attention, and how they kept trying to outdo one another for it, and how, as a family, they turned that melon to rind, saving the seeds in a small wooden bowl, smiling together as the sweet pink juice ran down their fingers and wrists.

  The boy and the girl implored their mother to create a ballad for the dog who went to the moon, and since Sun Moon wouldn’t play her gayageum in house clothes, she soon emerged in a choson-ot whose chima was cut from plum-colored satin. On the wooden floor, she placed the crown of the instrument on a pillow while its base rested sidesaddle on her folded legs. She bowed to the children, and they lowered their heads to her.

  At first she plucked its strings high, creating notes that were fast and bright. She strummed the sounds of the rocket blast, her voice laced with humor and rhyme. As the dog left gravity for space, her playing became ethereal, the strings reverberating, as if sounding together in a void. Candlelight was alive in the fall of Sun Moon’s hair, and when she pursed her lips to play more difficult chords, Ga felt it in his chest, in the out-chambers of his heart.

  He was stricken anew by her, overcome with the knowledge that in the morning he would have to relinquish her. In Prison 33, little by little, you relinquished everything, starting with your tomorrows and all that migh
t be. Next went your past, and suddenly it was inconceivable that your head had ever touched a pillow, that you’d once used a spoon or a toilet, that your mouth had once known flavors and your eyes had beheld colors beyond gray and brown and the shade of black that blood took on. Before you relinquished yourself—Ga had felt it starting, like the numb of cold limbs—you let go of all the others, each person you’d once known. They became ideas and then notions and then impressions, and then they were as ghostly as projections against a prison infirmary. Sun Moon appeared to him now like this, not as a woman, vital and beautiful, making an instrument speak her sorrow, but as the flicker of someone once known, a photo of a person long gone.

  The story of the dog became more lonesome now and melancholy. He tried to control his breathing. There was nothing beyond the light of the candle, he told himself. The glow included the boy, the girl, this woman, and himself. Beyond that, there was no Mount Taesong, no Pyongyang, no Dear Leader. He tried to diffuse the pain in his chest across his body, the way his pain mentor Kimsan had once taught him, to feel the flame not on the part but the entire, to visualize the flow of his blood spreading, diluting the hurt in his heart across the whole of him.

  And then he closed his eyes and imagined Sun Moon, the one that was always within him—she was a calm presence, open-armed, ready to save him at all times. She wasn’t leaving him, she wasn’t going anywhere. And here the sharp pain in his chest subsided, and Commander Ga understood that the Sun Moon inside him was the pain reserve that would allow him to survive the loss of the Sun Moon before him. He began to enjoy the song again, even as it grew increasingly sad. The sweet glow of the puppy’s moon had given way to an unfamiliar rocket on an uncertain course. What had started as the children’s song had become her song, and when the chords became disconnected, the notes wayward and alone, he understood that it was his. Finally, she stopped playing and leaned slowly forward until her forehead came to rest against the fine wood of an instrument she would never play again.

  “Come, children,” Ga said. “It’s time for bed.”

  He ushered them to the bedroom and closed the door.