Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

“But where are they?” Jun Do asked. He could see the girl rower shooting flares his way, he could feel the Mate’s cold cheek as the sharks pulled him under. “Will we ever find them?”

JUN DO dreamed of sharks biting him, of the actress Sun Moon blinking and squinting, the way Rumina had when the sand was in her eyes. He dreamed of the Second Mate drifting farther and farther into that harsh light. A stab of pain would arrive, and was he awake or asleep? His eyes roamed the insides of lids swollen shut. The endless smell of fish. Shock-work whistles signaled dawn, and he knew night had arrived when the hum of a little fridge went off with the power.

All his joints felt locked up, and taking too deep a breath was like opening the furnace slats of pain. When his good arm could finally reach over to inspect the bad arm, he could feel fat horsefly hairs, the coarse thread of surgical stitching. He had a half memory of the Captain helping him up the stairs of the community housing block where the Second Mate lived with his wife.

The loudspeaker— Citizens! —took care of him during the day. Afternoons, she came from the cannery, the faint scent of machine oil still on her hands. The little teapot would rattle and whistle and she would hum along with The March of Kim Jong Il , which signaled the end of the news. Then her hands, ice cold with alcohol, would disinfect his wounds. Those hands rolled him left and right to change the sheets and empty his bladder, and he was sure he could feel in her fingers the trace of her wedding ring.

Soon, the swelling had gone down, and now it was gunk sealing his eyes shut, rather than inflammation. She was there with a hot cloth to steam them open. “There he is,” she said when his vision was finally back. “The man who loves Sun Moon.”

Jun Do lifted his head. He was on a pallet on the floor, naked under a light yellow sheet. He recognized the louvered windows of the housing block. The room was strung with little perch, drying on wires like laundry.

She said, “My father believed that if his daughter married a fisherman, she’d never starve.”

And into focus came the Second Mate’s wife.

“What floor are we on?” he asked.

“The tenth.”

“How’d you get me up here?”

“It wasn’t so bad. The way my husband described you, I thought you’d be a lot bigger.” She ran the hot cloth over his chest, and he tried not to wince. “Your poor actress, her face is black and blue. It makes her look old, like her time has passed. Have you seen her movies?”

Shaking his head no made his neck hurt.

“Me either,” she said. “Not in this dumpy town. The only movie I ever saw was a foreign film, a love story.” She immersed the cloth in hot water again, then soaked the ridges of all his scars. “It was about a ship that hits an iceberg and everybody dies.”

She climbed onto the pallet next to him. With both arms, she muscled him over and onto his side. She held a jar to him and maneuvered it until his umkyoung was inside. “Come on,” she said, then gave him a couple claps on the back to get him going. His body pulsed in pain, and then the stream began. When he was done, she lifted the jar to the light. The fluid was cloudy and rust-colored. “Getting better,” she announced. “Soon you’ll be walking down the hall to the tenth-floor toilet like a big boy.”

Jun Do tried to roll onto his back by himself, but he couldn’t, so he just lay there, curled on his side. On the wall, beneath the portraits of the Dear and Great Leaders, was a little shelf with the Second Mate’s “America” shoes on them. Jun Do tried to figure out how the Second Mate had gotten them home, when the whole crew had seen them go into the water. Tacked large on the wall was the main chart from the Junma . It showed the entire Korean Sea, and it was the chart by which all the other charts onboard were referenced. They’d thought it burned with the others in the fire. On it were pushpins marking every fishing ground they’d visited, and in pencil were traced the coordinates of several northerly positions.

“Is that the course of the rowers?” Jun Do asked her.

“The rowers?” she asked. “This is a map of all the places he’d been. The red pins are cities he’d heard about. He was always talking about the places he’d take me.”

She looked into Jun Do’s eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“Did he really do it? Did he really pull a knife on American commandos, or is that some bullshit story you guys cooked up?”

“Why would you listen to me?”

“Because you’re an intelligence officer,” she said. “Because you don’t give a shit about anybody around this backwater. When your mission’s done, you’ll go back to Pyongyang and never think about fishermen again.”

“And what’s my mission?”

“There’s going to be a war at the bottom of the ocean,” she said. “Maybe my husband shouldn’t have told me, but he did.”

“Don’t fool yourself,” he said. “I’m just a radio guy. And yes, your husband took on the U.S. Navy with a knife.”

She shook her head with muted admiration.

“He had so many crazy plans,” she said. “Hearing that makes me think if he’d have lived, he might have really gone through with one.”

She ladled sweetened rice water into Jun Do’s mouth, then rolled him back, covering him with a sheet again. The room was getting dark, and soon the power would fail.

“Look, I’ve got to go out,” she said. “If you have an emergency, give a yell, and the floor official will come. She’s at the door if someone so much as farts in here.”

She took a sponge bath by the door, where he couldn’t see her. He could only hear the faint sound of the cloth on her skin and the sound of water as it dripped from her body to the pan she crouched in. He wondered if it was the same cloth she’d used on him.

Before she left, she stood over him in a dress that bore the wrinkles of having been hand-wrung and hung to dry. Though he beheld her through the oceany vision of newly opened eyes, it was clear she was a true beauty—tall and square-shouldered, yet cloaked in a soft layer of baby fat. Her eyes were large and unpredictable and black bobbed hair framed a round face. She had an English dictionary in her hand. “I’ve seen some people get hurt at the cannery,” she said. “You’re going to be all right.” Then, in English, she added, “Sweet dreams.”

In the morning, he woke with a start—a dream ending with a flash of pain. The sheet smelled of cigarettes and sweat, and he knew that she’d slept next to him. Beside the pallet was a jar filled with urine that looked tinctured with iodine. At least it was clear. He reached to touch the jar—it was cold. When he managed to sit up, there was no sign of her.

The light was amplified by the sea, filling the room. He pulled off his sheet. Bright bruising fanned his chest, and there were pressure cuts on the ribs. His stitches were crusty, and after smelling them, he knew they’d have to be expressed. The loudspeaker greeted him—“Citizens, today it is announced that a delegation is to visit America to confront some of the problems facing our two fearsome nations.” Then the broadcast went on in the usual formula: evidence of the worldwide admiration for North Korea, an example of Kim Jong Il’s divine wisdom, a new method to help citizens avoid starvation, and, finally, warnings to civilians from various ministries.

A draft through the window set the dried fish swaying on their lines, the cartilage of their fins the color of lantern paper. From the roof came a series of yips and howls, and the constant clicking of nails on cement. For the first time in days, he felt a pang of hunger.