Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

The Captain sensed his hesitation and started describing others who’d done great deeds and the prizes they’d asked for, “like the guys in Yongbyon who put out the fire at the power plant—one of them got a car, it was in the paper. Another guy wanted his own telephone—done, no questions, they ran a wire to his apartment. When you’re a hero, that’s how it works.”

“I’d have to think about it,” Jun Do said. “You caught me a little off guard. I’m not so good off the top of my head.”

“See, I knew that,” said the Captain. “I knew that about you because we’re family. You’re the kind of guy who doesn’t want anything for himself. You’re a guy who doesn’t need much, but when it comes to other people, the sky’s the limit. You showed it the other day, you really proved it, and now you’re acting like family. I went to jail for my crew, you know. I’m no hero, but I took four years so my boys could go home. That’s how I showed it.”

The Captain was looking agitated, worried even. He was still holding the jar of urine, and Jun Do wanted to tell him to put it down. The Captain moved to the edge of his chair, like maybe he was going to come down to the pallet.

“Maybe it’s just ’cause I’m old,” the Captain said. “I mean, other people have problems. A lot of people have it worse off than me, but I just can’t live without her, I just can’t do it. It’s where my mind goes, it always goes back to that, and I’m not mad or resentful about how it happened, I just need my wife, I’ve got to have her back. And see, you can do that, you’re in a position to make that happen. Very soon, you’re going to be able to say the word, and anything can happen.”

Jun Do tried to speak, but the Captain cut him off. “She’s old—I know what you’re thinking. I’m old, too, but age doesn’t have anything to do with it. In fact, it only seems to get worse with each year. Who would have thought it would get worse? Nobody tells you that, nobody ever talks about that part.” The Captain heard some dogs moving across the roof, and he looked up at the ceiling. He set down the jar and stood. “We would be strangers for a while,” he said. “After I got her back, there would be things she couldn’t talk about, I know that. But a kind of discovery would begin, I’m sure of it. And then what we had would return.”

The Captain took up his chart. “Don’t say anything,” he said. “Don’t say anything at all. Just think about it, that’s all I ask.” Then, in the candlelight, the Captain rolled the chart tight with two hands. It was a gesture Jun Do had seen him make a thousand times. It meant that a bearing had been chosen, the men had been tasked, and whether full nets or empty lay ahead, a decision was made, events set in motion.

From below in the courtyard came a whoop, followed by a sound that might have been a laugh or a cry, and Jun Do somehow knew that at the center of these drunk people was the Second Mate’s wife. From above came the clicking nails of dogs standing to take an interest, and he followed the sounds as they moved to the edge of the roof. Even on the tenth floor, the windows managed to capture the sounds, and from all over the housing block came the squeaks of people cranking their louvered windows open to see which citizen was up to no good.

Jun Do pulled himself up and by pushing a chair like a walker, he made his way to the window. There was just a sliver of moon, and in the courtyard far below, he located several people by their sharp laughs, though he could make out only the black sheen of them. He could picture the luster of her hair, though, the glow of her neck and shoulders.

The town of Kinjye was dark—the bread collective, the magistrate, the school, the ration station. Even the karaoke bar’s generator was silent, its blue neon light gone blank. Wind whistled through the old cannery and heat waves emanated off the steaming chambers of the new. There was the outline of the Canning Master’s house and in the harbor was only a single light—the Captain reading late aboard the Junma . Beyond that, the dark sea. Jun Do heard a sniffing sound and looked up to the roof overhang to see two paws and a cocked puppy’s face looking down at him.

He’d lit a candle and was in a chair, covered with a sheet, when she came in, unsteady through the door. She’d been crying.

“Assholes,” she said and lit a cigarette.

“Come back,” a voice yelled from the courtyard below. “We were only joking.”

She went to the window and threw a fish down at them.

She turned to Jun Do. “What are you looking at?” From a chest of drawers, she grabbed some of her husband’s clothes. “Put a shirt on, would you?” she said and threw a white undershirt at him.

The shirt was small and smelled sharp, like the Second Mate. It was murder to get his arms through. “Maybe the karaoke bar isn’t the place for you,” he said.

“Assholes,” she said and smoked in the other chair, looking up as if there was something she was trying to figure out. “All night long they were toasting my husband the hero.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I must have had ten plum wines. Then they started picking sad songs on the karaoke machine. By the time I sang ‘Pochonbo’ I was practically a wreck. Then they were all fighting to take my mind off it. ”

“Why would you spend time with those guys?”

“I need them,” she said. “My new husband’s going to be picked soon. I have to make a good impression on people. They need to know I can sing. This is my chance.”

“Those guys are local bureaucrats. They’re nobodies.”

She grabbed her stomach in discomfort. “I am so tired of getting fish parasites and then having to eat chlorine pills. Smell me, I reek of it. Can you believe my father did this to me? How can I get to Pyongyang when I smell like fish and chlorine?”

“Look,” Jun Do said, “I know it seems like a raw deal, but your father must have known the options. Certainly, he picked the one that was best for you.” It felt low and ugly to pass along the line that he’d fed so many times to the other boys— You don’t know what they were going through , your parents wouldn’t have put you in an orphanage if it wasn’t their best option , maybe their only one .

“A couple times a year these guys would come to town. They’d line up all the girls, and the pretty ones, they just”—she leaned her head back and blew smoke—“disappeared. My father had a connection, he always got wind of it, and I’d stay home sick that day. Then he sends me down the coast to this place. But what’s the point, you know? Why be safe, why survive if you’re going to gut fish for fifty years?”

“What are those girls now?” Jun Do asked. “Barmaids, room cleaners, worse ? You think doing that for fifty years is any better?”

“If that’s how it works, just say so. If that’s what happens to them, tell me.”

“I have no way of knowing. I’ve never been to the capital.”

“Then don’t call them whores, then,” she said. “Those girls were my friends.” She gave him an angry look. “What kind of spy are you, anyway?”

“I’m just a radio guy.”

“Why don’t I believe you? Why don’t you have a real name? All I know about you is that my husband, who had the maturity of a thirteen-year-old, worshipped you. That’s why he fiddled with your radios. That’s why he nearly burned the ship up reading your dictionaries by candlelight in the toilet.”

“Wait,” he said. “The Machinist said it was the wiring.”

“Suit yourself.”

“He started the fire?”

“You want to know the other things he didn’t tell you about?”