Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

“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.