Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

“What am I supposed to do with that?” Wanda asked. She seemed almost mad at him. “That doesn’t help me understand anything.”

“When you’re in my country,” he said, “everything makes simple, clear sense. It’s the most straightforward place on earth.”

She looked out toward the desert.

Jun Do said, “Your father was a tunnel rat, yes?”

“It was my uncle,” she said.

“Okay, your uncle. Most people walking around—they don’t think about being alive. But when your uncle was about to enter an enemy tunnel, I bet he was thinking about nothing but that. And when he made it out, he probably felt more alive than we’ll ever feel, the most alive in the world, and that until the next tunnel, nothing could touch him, he was invincible. You ask him if he felt more alive here or over there.”

“I know what you’re saying and all,” Wanda said. “When I was a kid, he was always telling hair-raisers about the tunnels, like it was no big deal. But when he visits Dad’s now, and you get up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, there he is, wide awake in the kitchen, just standing there, staring into the sink. That’s not invincible. That’s not wishing you were back in Vietnam where you felt alive. That’s wishing you’d never even seen the place. Think about what that does to your freedom metaphor.”

Jun Do gave a look of sad recognition. “I know this dream your uncle has,” he said. “The one that woke him and made him walk to the kitchen.”

“Trust me,” she said. “You don’t know my uncle.”

Jun Do nodded. “Fair enough,” he said.

She stared at him, almost vexed again.

“Okay,” she said. “Go on and tell it.”

“I’m just trying to help you understand him.”

“Tell it,” she said.

“When a tunnel would collapse,” Jun Do said.

“In the prison mines?”

“That’s right,” he said. “When a tunnel would collapse, in a mine, we’d have to go dig men out. Their eyeballs would be flat and caked. And their mouths—they were always wide open and filled with dirt. That’s what you couldn’t stand to look at, a throat packed like that, the tongue grubbed and brown. It was our greatest fear, ending up with everyone standing around in a circle, staring at the panic of your last moment. So your uncle, when you find him at the sink late at night, it means he’s had the dream where you breathe the dirt. In the dream, everything’s dark. You’re holding your breath, holding it, and when you can’t hold it anymore, when you’re about to breathe the dirt—that’s when you wake, gasping. I have to wash my face after that dream. For a while I do nothing but breathe, but it seems like I’ll never get my air back.”

Wanda studied him a moment.

She said, “I’m going to give you something, okay?”

She handed him a small camera that fit in his palm. He’d seen one like it in Japan.

“Take my picture,” she said. “Just point it and press the button.”

He held the camera up in the dark. There was a little screen upon which he could barely see her outline. Then there was a flash.

Wanda reached in her pocket, and removed a bright red cell phone. When she held it up, the picture he’d taken of her was on its screen. “These were made for Iraq,” she said. “I give them to locals, people who are friendly. When they think I need to see something, they take a picture of it. The picture goes to a satellite, then only to me. The camera has no memory, so it doesn’t store the pictures. No one could ever find out what you took a picture of or where it went.”

“What do you want me to take a picture of?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Anything. It’s up to you. If there’s ever something you’d like to show me, that would help me understand your country, just push this button.”

He looked around, as if trying to decide what in this dark world he would photograph.

“Don’t be scared of it,” she said and leaned in close to him. “Reach out and take our picture,” she told him.

He could feel her shouldering into him, her arm around his back.

He took the picture, then looked at it on the screen.

“Was I supposed to smile?” he asked, handing it to her.

She looked at the picture. “How intimate,” she said, and laughed. “You could loosen up a bit, yeah. A smile wouldn’t hurt.”

“ ‘Intimate,’ ” he said. “I don’t know this word.”

“You know, close,” she said. “When two people share everything, when there are no secrets between them.”

He looked at the picture. “Intimate,” he said.

That night, in his sleep, Jun Do heard the orphan Bo Song. Because he had no hearing, Bo Song was one of the loudest boys when he tried to speak, and in his sleep he was even worse, clamoring on through the night in the slaw of his deaf-talk. Jun Do gave him a bunk in the hall, where the cold stupefied most boys—there’d be some teeth chattering for a while, and then silence. But not Bo Song—it only made him talk louder in his sleep. Tonight, Jun Do could hear him, whimpering, whining, and in this dream, Jun Do somehow began to understand the deaf boy. His stray sounds started to form words, and though Jun Do couldn’t quite make the words into sentences, he knew that Bo Song was trying to tell him the truth about something. There was a grand and terrible truth, and just as the orphan’s words started to make sense, just as the deaf boy was finally making himself heard, Jun Do woke.

He opened his eyes to see the muzzle of the dog, who’d crept up to share the pillow with him. Jun Do could see that behind the eyelid, the dog’s eye was rolling and twitching with each whimper of its own bad dream. Reaching out, Jun Do stroked the dog’s fur, calming it, and the whines and whimpers ceased.

Jun Do pulled on pants and his new white shirt. Barefoot, he made his way to Dr. Song’s room, which was empty, save for a packed travel suitcase waiting at the foot of the bed.

The kitchen was empty, as was the dining room.

Out in the corral was where Jun Do found him, sitting at a wooden picnic table. There was a midnight wind. Clouds flashed across a newly risen moon. Dr. Song had changed back into a suit and a tie.

“The CIA woman came to see me,” Jun Do said.

Dr. Song didn’t respond. He was staring at the fire pit—its coals still gave off warmth, and when the wind eddied away fresh ashes, the pit throbbed pink.

“You know what she asked me?” Jun Do said. “She asked if I felt free.”

On the table was Dr. Song’s cowboy hat, his hand keeping it from blowing away.

“And what did you tell our spunky American gal?” he asked.

“The truth,” Jun Do said.

Dr. Song nodded.

His face seemed puffy somehow, his eyes almost drooped shut with age.

“Was it a success?” Jun Do asked. “Did you get what you came for, whatever it was that you needed?”

“Did I get what I needed?” Dr. Song asked himself. “I have a car and a driver and an apartment on Moranbong Hill. My wife, when I had her, was love itself. I have seen the white nights in Moscow and toured the Forbidden City. I have lectured at Kim Il Sung University. I have raced a Jet Ski with the Dear Leader in a cold mountain lake, and I have witnessed ten thousand women tumble in unison at the Arirang Festival. Now I have tasted Texas barbecue.”

That kind of talk gave Jun Do the willies.

“Is there something you need to tell me, Dr. Song?” he asked.

Dr. Song fingered the crest of his hat. “I have outlasted everyone,” he said. “My colleagues, my friends, I have seen them sent to farm communes and mining camps, and some just went away. So many predicaments we faced. Every fix, every pickle. Yet here I am, old Dr. Song.” He gave Jun Do a fatherly pat on the leg. “Not bad for a war orphan.”