Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

It felt very liberating to finally speak of this, a topic I could never commit to paper. I knew suddenly that I would share everything with them, that we’d be closer than ever—I’d tell them of the humiliations I suffered in mandatory military service, of my one sexual encounter with a woman, of the cruel hazing I’d received as an intern of the Pubyok.

“I don’t mean to dwell on the subject of this loyalty test, but it changed how I saw things. Behind a chest of medals might be a hero or a man with an eager index finger. I became a suspicious boy who knew there was always something more beneath the surface, if you were willing to probe. It perhaps sent me down my career path, a trajectory that has confirmed that there is no such thing as the right-minded, self-sacrificing citizen the government tells us we all are. I’m not complaining, mind you, merely explaining. I didn’t have it half as rough as some. I didn’t grow up in an orphanage like my friend Commander Ga.”

“Commander Ga?” my father asked. “Is that your new friend?”

I nodded.

“Answer me,” my father said. “Is Commander Ga your new friend?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But you can’t trust Commander Ga,” my mother said. “He’s a coward and a criminal.”

“Yes,” my father added. “He’s an imposter.”

“You don’t know Commander Ga,” I told them. “Have you been reading my files?”

“We don’t need to read any files,” my father said. “We have it on the highest authority. Commander Ga’s an enemy of the state.”

“Not to mention his weaselly friend Comrade Buc,” my mother added.

“Don’t even say that name,” my father cautioned.

“How do you know all this?” I asked. “Tell me about this authority.”

They both pointed toward the loudspeaker.

“Every day they tell some of his story,” my mother said. “Of him and Sun Moon.”

“Yes,” my father said. “Yesterday was episode five. In it, Commander Ga drives to the Opera House with Sun Moon, but it’s not really Commander Ga, you see—”

“Stop it,” I said. “That’s impossible. I’ve made very little progress on his biography. It doesn’t even have an ending.”

“Listen for yourself,” my mother said. “The loudspeaker doesn’t lie. The next installment is this afternoon.”

I dragged a chair to the kitchen, where I used it to reach the loudspeaker. Even after I tore it from the wall, it was connected to a cable that kept it squawking. Only with a meat knife was I able to shut it up.

“What’s happening?” my mother asked. “What are you doing?”

My father was hysterical.

“What if the Americans sneak-attack?” he asked. “How will we receive the warning?”

“You won’t have to worry about sneak attacks anymore,” I told them.

My father moved to protest, but a stream of saliva ran from his mouth. He reached for his mouth and felt his lips, as if they had gone numb. And one of my mother’s hands was showing a tremor. She stilled it with her other hand. The botulism toxin was beginning to bloom inside them. The time for suspicions and arguments was over.

I remembered that horrible picture of Comrade Buc’s family, crumpled beneath the table. I was resolved that my parents wouldn’t suffer such indignities. I gave them each a tall glass of water and placed them on their cots to await the fall of night. All afternoon and into the twilight, I gave them the gift of my story, every bit of it, and I left nothing out. I stared out the window as I spoke, and I concluded only when they’d begun to writhe on their cots. I couldn’t act until darkness arrived, and when it finally did, the city of Pyongyang was like that black cricket in the fairy tale—it was everywhere and nowhere, its chirp annoying only those who ignored the final call to slumber. The moon shimmered off the river, and after the eagle owls had struck, you could hear nothing of the sheep and goats but the clicking of their teeth as they chewed grass in the dark. When darkness was total, and my parents had lost their faculties, I kissed them good-bye, for I could not bear to witness the inevitable. A sure sign of botulism is a loss of vision, so I only hoped they’d never know what had struck them. I looked around the room a last time, at our family photograph, my father’s harmonica, their wedding rings. But I left it all. I could take nothing where I was going.

There was no way Commander Ga could attempt the arduous journey ahead with an open wound. At the night market, I bartered my Pubyok badge for some iodine and a large compress. Crossing the city in the dark, headed for Division 42, I felt the stillness of the big machine at rest. There was no thrum of electricity in the wires overhead or gurgle of water in the pipes. Pyongyang was coiling in the dark to pounce upon the next day. And how I loved the capital springing to life, morning wood smoke in the air, the smell of frying radishes, the hot burn of trolley brakes. I was a city boy. I would miss the metropolis, its hubbub and vitality. If only there were a place here for a person who gathered human stories and wrote them down. But Pyongyang is already filled with obituary writers. And I can’t stand propaganda. You’d think a person would get used to cruel fates.

When I appeared in Commander Ga’s room, he asked, “Is it morning already?”

“Not yet,” I told him. “There’s still time.”

I tried to minister to Commander Ga as best I could. The iodine turned my fingers red, making it look as if I were the one who’d brutalized the man before me. But when I placed the bandage on Commander Ga, the wound disappeared. I used the whole roll of tape to secure it.

“I’m getting out of here,” I told him. “Would you like me to bring you along?”

He nodded.

“Do you care where you’re going, or about the obstacles ahead?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Are you ready? Do you need to do anything to prepare?”

“No,” he told me. “I’m ready.”

I helped him up, then sailor-carried him across Division 42 to an interrogation bay, where I rolled him into a baby-blue chair.

“This is where you gave me an aspirin when I first came,” he said. “It seems like so long ago.”

“It won’t be a bad journey,” I told him. “On the other side, there won’t be Pubyok or cattle prods or branding irons. Hopefully, you’ll get sent to a rural farm collective. Not an easy life, but you can start a new family and serve your nation in the true spirit of communism—through labor and devotion.”

“I had my life,” Commander Ga said. “I’ll pass on the rest.”

I grabbed two sedatives. When Commander Ga declined one, I took them both.

From the supply cabinet, I flipped through the diapers until I found a medium.

“Would you like one?” I asked. “We keep some on hand for when VIPs come through. It can save some embarrassment. I have a large right here.”

“No thanks,” he said.

I dropped my trousers and secured mine, using the adhesive tabs.

“You know, I respect you,” I said. “You were the only guy who came through that never talked. You were smart—if you’d told us where the actress was, they’d have killed you right away.”

“Are you going to hook me up to this machine?”

I nodded.

He looked at the autopilot’s wires and energy meters. “There’s no mystery,” he said. “The actress simply defected.”

“You never stop, do you? You’re about to lose everything you own but your heartbeat, and still you’re trying to throw us off the trail.”

“It’s true,” he said. “She got on an airplane and flew away.”

“Impossible,” I told him. “Sure, a few peasants risk life and limb to cross an icy river. But our national actress, under the nose of the Dear Leader? You insult me.”