Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

“I don’t know,” Jun Do said. “What’s it matter?”

“What’s it take to row around the world, a couple years? Even if they don’t have husbands, what about everyone else, the people they left behind? Don’t those girls give a shit about anybody?”

Jun Do picked some tobacco off his tongue and looked at the boy, who had his hands behind his head as he squinted at the stars. It was a good question —What about the people left behind ?—but an odd one for the Second Mate to ask. “Earlier tonight,” Jun Do said, “you were all for sexy rowers. They do something to piss you off?”

“I’m just wondering what got into them, to just take off and paddle around the world?”

“Wouldn’t you, if you could?”

“That’s my point, you can’t. Who could pull it off—all those waves and ice, in that tiny boat? Someone should have stopped them. Someone should have taken that stupid idea out of their heads.”

The kid sounded new to whatever heavy thinking was going on in his brain. Jun Do decided to talk him down a bit. “They already made it halfway,” he pointed out. “Plus, they have to be some pretty serious athletes. They’re trained for this, it’s probably what they love. And when you say boat, you can’t be thinking of this bucket. Those are American girls, their craft is hi-tech, with comforts and electronics—you can’t be picturing them like Party officials’ wives rowing a tin can around.”

The Second Mate wasn’t quite listening. “And what if you do make it around the world—how do you wait in line for your dormitory toilet again, knowing that you’ve been to America? Maybe the millet tasted better in some other country and the loudspeakers weren’t so tinny. Suddenly it’s your tap water that smells not so good—then what do you do?”

Jun Do didn’t answer him.

The moon was coming up. Above, they could see a jet rising out of Japan—slowly it began its great veer away from North Korean airspace.

After a while, the Second Mate said, “The sharks will probably get them.” He flicked his cigarette away. “So, what’s this all about, pointing the antenna and all? What’s down there?”

Jun Do wasn’t sure how to answer. “A voice.”

“In the ocean? What is it, what’s it say?”

“There are American voices and an English-speaking Russian. Once a Japanese guy. They talk about docking and maneuvering. Stuff like that.”

“No offense, but that sounds like the conspiracy talk the old widows are always trading in my housing block.”

It did sound a little paranoid when the Second Mate said it out loud. But the truth was the idea of conspiracy appealed to Jun Do. That people were in communication, that things had a design, that there was intention, significance, and purpose in what people did—he needed to believe this. Normal people, he understood, had no need for such thinking. The girl who rowed during the day had the horizon of where she came from, and when she turned to look, the horizon of where she was headed. But the girl who rowed in the dark had only the splash and pull of each stroke and the belief that they’d all add up to get her home.

Jun Do looked at his watch. “It’s about time for the night rower to broadcast,” he said. “Or maybe it’s the daytime girl you want?”

The Second Mate suddenly bristled. “What kind of a question is that? What’s it matter which one? I don’t want either of them. My wife is the most beautiful woman in her housing block. When I look into her eyes, I know exactly what she’s thinking. I know what she’s going to say before she says it. That’s the definition of love, ask any old-timer.”

The Second Mate smoked another cigarette and then tossed it in the sea. “Say the Russians and Americans are at the bottom of the ocean—what makes you think they’re up to no good?”

Jun Do was thinking about all the popular definitions of love, that it was a pair of bare hands clasping an ember to keep it alive, that it was a pearl that shines forever, even in the belly of the eel that eats the oyster, that love was a bear that feeds you honey from its claws. Jun Do visualized those girls: alternating in labor and solitude, that moment when the oarlocks were handed off.

Jun Do pointed to the water. “The Americans and Russians are down there, and they’re up to something, I know it. You ever hear of someone launching a submarine in the name of peace and fucking brotherhood?”

The Second Mate leaned back on the winch house, the sky vast above them. “No,” he said, “I suppose not.”

The Captain came out of the pilothouse and told the Second Mate he had shit buckets to clean. Jun Do offered the Captain a smoke, but when the boy had gone below, the Captain refused it. “Don’t put ideas in his head,” he said, and walked deliberately across the dark gangway to the high-riding bow of the Junma . A large vessel was creeping by, its deck carpeted with new cars. As it passed, likely headed from South Korea to California, the moonlight flashed in rapid succession off a thousand new windshields.

A couple of nights later, the Junma ’s holds were full, and she was headed west for home. Jun Do was smoking with the Captain and the Pilot when they saw the red light flash on and off in the pilothouse. The wind was from the north, pacing them, so the deck was calm, making it seem like they were standing still. The light flashed on and off again. “You going to get that?” the Pilot asked the Captain.

The Captain pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it. “What’s the point?”

“What’s the point?” the Pilot asked.

“Yeah, what’s the point? It’s shit for us either way.”

Finally, the Captain stood, straightened his jacket. His time in Russia had cured him of alcohol, yet he walked to the pilothouse as if for the harsh inevitability of a drink, rather than a radio call from the maritime minister in Chongjin. “That guy’s only got so much,” the Pilot said, and when the red light went off, they knew the Captain had answered the call. Not that he had a choice. The Junma was never out of range. The Russians who’d owned the Junma had outfitted it with a radio taken from a submarine—its long antenna was meant to transmit from below the surface, and it had a 20-volt wet-cell battery to power it.

Jun Do watched the Captain silhouetted in the pilothouse and tried to imagine what he might be saying into the radio by the way he pushed his hat back and rubbed his eyes. Jun Do, in his hold, only received. He’d never transmitted in his life. He was secretly building a transmitter on shore, and the closer he got to completion, the more nervous he became over what he’d say into it.

When the Captain returned, he sat at the break in the rail where the winch swung over, his legs hanging free over the side. He took off his hat, a filthy thing he only sometimes wore, and set it aside. Jun Do studied the brass crest with the sickle and hammer embossed over a compass face and a harpoon. They didn’t even make hats like that anymore.

“So,” the Pilot said. “What do they want?”

“Shrimp,” the Captain said. “Live shrimp.”

“In these waters?” the Pilot asked. “This time of year?” He shook his head. “No way, can’t be done.”

Jun Do asked, “Why don’t they just buy some shrimp?”

“I asked them that,” the Captain said. “The shrimp must be North Korean, they said.”

A request like that could only come from the top, perhaps the very top. They’d heard cold-water shrimp were in big demand in Pyongyang. It was a new fashion there to eat them while they were still alive.

“What should we do?” the Pilot asked.