Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to re-create one of my grandmother’s songs. In America, I will discover the missing words, and this song, it will be about him. It will contain everything of this place that I could never utter, every last bit of it, and I’m going to sing it on the state channel of America’s central broadcasting division and everyone in the world will know the truth of him.”

“The rest of the world knows the truth of him,” he said.

“No, they don’t,” she said. “They won’t know it until they hear it in my voice. It’s a song I thought I’d never get to sing.” Sun Moon struck a match. In the flash of it, she said, “And then you came along. Do you see that the Dear Leader has no idea that I’m the purest actress, that it’s not just when I speak his lines, but every single moment? It is also the actress that I have shown you. But that’s not who I am. Though I must act all the time—inside I’m simply a woman.”

He blew out the match and took her arm, rolling her to him. It was the arm he’d grabbed before. This time she didn’t pull back. His face was near hers and he could feel her breath as it came.

She reached out and gripped his shirt.

“Show it to me,” she said.

“But it’s dark. You won’t be able to see it.”

“I want to feel it,” she told him.

He pulled his shirt over his head and leaned to her, so that his tattoo was at her fingertips.

She traced his muscles, felt the flare of his ribs.

“Maybe I should get one,” she said.

“One what, a tattoo?” he asked. “What would you get a tattoo of?”

“Who do you suggest?”

“It depends. Where on your body would this tattoo be inked?”

She pulled the shift over her head and took his hand, placing it with both of hers over her heart. “What do you think of here?”

He felt the delicacy of her skin, the suggestion of her breasts. Most of all, he felt against his palm the heat of her blood and how her heart pumped it through her body, down her arms and into the hands that clasped the back of his so that the sensation was of being engulfed by her.

“This is an easy one,” he said. “The tattoo to place over your heart is the image of what’s inside your heart.”

Leaning close, he kissed her. It was long and singular and his eyes closed with the parting of their lips. After, she was silent, and he became afraid, not knowing what she was thinking.

“Sun Moon, are you there?”

“I’m here,” she said. “A song just ran through my head.”

“A good one or a bad one?”

“There’s only one kind.”

“Is it true, have you really never sung for pleasure?”

“What song would you have me sing?” she asked him. “One about spilling blood, celebrating martyrdom, glorifying lies?”

“Is there no song at all? What about a love song?”

“Name one that hasn’t been twisted into being about our love for the Dear Leader.”

In the dark, he let his hand roam over her, the hollow above her collarbone, that taut cord in her neck, the fine point of her shoulder.

“There’s one song I know,” he told her.

“How does it go?”

“I only know the opening. I heard it in America.”

“Tell me.”

“She’s the yellow rose of Texas,” he said.

“ She’s the yellow rose of Texas ,” she sang.

The English words were thick in her mouth, but the sound, her voice, it was lovely. He delicately touched her lips so he could feel her sing the words.

“I’m going for to see.”

“ I’m going for to see. ”

“When I finally find her, I’ll have her marry me.”

“What do the words mean?”

“They’re about a woman whose beauty is like a rare flower. There is a man who has a great love for her, a love he’s been saving up for his entire life, and it doesn’t matter that he must make a great journey to her, and it doesn’t matter if their time together is brief, that afterward he might lose her, for she is the flower of his heart and nothing will keep him from her.”

“The man in the song,” she said. “Is he you?”

“You know I’m him.”

“I’m not the woman in the song,” she said. “I’m not an actress or a singer or a flower. I’m just a woman. Do you want to know this woman? Do you want to be the only man in the world who knows the real Sun Moon?”

“You know I do.”

Here she raised her body some to allow him to pull free her last garment.

“Do you know what happens to men who fall in love with me?” she asked.

Ga took a moment to think about it.

“They get locked in your tunnel and fed nothing but broth for two weeks?”

Playfully, she said, “No.”

“Hmm,” Ga said. “Your neighbor tries to give them botulism and then they get punched in the nose by the Dear Leader’s driver?”

“No.”

“Okay, I give up. What happens to men who fall for you?”

She shimmied her body so that her hips were under his.

“They fall forever,” she said.

AFTER the loss of Jujack and Q-Kee’s defection to the Pubyok, I stayed away from Division 42. I know I roamed the city, but for how long, a week? And where did I go? Did I wander the People’s Footpath, watching birds hopelessly hover above the snares that held their feet? Did I inhabit the Kumsusan mausoleum, where I endlessly stared into the chrome-and-glass coffin of Kim Il Sung, his body glowing red under preservation lamps? Or did I study the Urchin Master as he used his truck, disguised as an ice-cream van, to rid Pyongyang’s alleys of beggar boys? Did I at any time recall recruiting Jujack at Kim Il Sung University’s career day, where I wore a suit and a tie as I showed the boy our color brochures and explained to him that interrogation wasn’t about violence anymore, that it was about the highest order of intellectual gamesmanship, where the tools were creative thinking and the stakes were national security? Perhaps I sat in Mansu Park watching virgins soak their uniforms with sweat as they chopped firewood. Wouldn’t I have, here, pondered the notion that I was alone, that my team was gone, that my interns were gone, that my successes were gone, that my chances at love and friendship and family seemed all but gone? Maybe my mind was empty as I stood in line for buses I didn’t intend to take, and maybe I thought nothing as I was rounded up for a sandbag brigade. Or perhaps I was reclined the whole time on the blue vinyl of an autopilot chair, imagining such things? And what was wrong with my memory? How come I didn’t recollect how I spent these painful days, and why was I okay with the fact that I couldn’t recall them? I preferred it this way, didn’t I? Compared to forgetting, did living really stand a chance?

I was nervous when I finally returned to Division 42. Descending the final staircase, I wasn’t sure what I’d find. But all seemed active and normal. There were new cases on the big board and red lights glowed above the holding tanks. Q-Kee walked past, new intern in tow.

“Good to see you, sir,” she said.

Sarge was particularly jovial. “There’s our interrogator,” he said. “Good to have you back.” He said it in a way that suggested he was talking about more than my recent absence.

He had a large metal object on the workbench.

“Hey, Sarge,” I said.

“Sarge?” he asked. “Who’s that?”

“I mean Comrade, sorry,” I said.

“There’s the spirit,” Sarge said.

Just then, Commander Park walked by, limping, his arm in a sling. He had something in his hand—I couldn’t make it out, but it was pink and wet and raw. Let me tell you, Commander Park, with his scarified face, was one sinister figure. The way he looked at you with those dead eyes in their marred sockets, it was like he belonged in some kind of spooky movie about evil dictators in Africa or something. He wrapped the item in newspaper, then sent it via vacuum tube deep into the bunker under us. He wiped his hand on his pants and left.