Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

The crow unhitched them in the outskirts of Pyongyang, and at the Koryo Hotel, the girls gave him Commander Ga’s usual treatment—the deep soaking and cleansing he sought after every visit to a prison mine. His uniform was cleaned and pressed, and he was bathed in a grand tub, where the girls scrubbed the blood stains from his hands and tried to repair his nails, and they didn’t care whose blood it was that tinted the soapy water, his or Commander Ga’s or someone else’s. In the warm, buoyant water he came to see that at some point in the last year, his mind and his flesh had separated, that his brain had sat high and frightened above the mule of his body, a beast of burden that hopefully would make it alone over the treacherous mountain pass of Prison 33. But now as a woman ran a warm washcloth along the arch of his foot, the sensation was allowed to rise up, up into his brain, and it was okay to perceive again, to recognize forgotten parts of his body as they hailed him. His lungs were more than air bellows. His heart, he believed now, could do more than move blood.

He tried to imagine the woman he was about to behold. He understood that the real Sun Moon couldn’t be as beautiful as the one on the screen, the way her skin glowed, the radiance of her smile. And the particular way her desires took up residence about the eyes—it must be a product of projection, of some cinematic effect. He wanted to be intimate with her, to harbor no secrets, to have nothing between them. Seeing her projected on the wall of the infirmary, that’s how it had felt, that there was no snow or cold between them, that she was right there with him, a woman who’d given everything, who’d abandoned her freedom and entered Prison 33 to save him. It had been a mistake to wait until the last moment to tell the Second Mate’s wife about the replacement husbands that awaited her, Ga could see that now. So there was no way he was going to let a secret spoil things with Sun Moon. That was the great thing about their relationship: a new beginning, a chance to unburden all. What the Captain had said of getting his wife back would be true of him and Sun Moon as well: they’d be strangers for a while, there would be a period of discovery, but love, love would eventually return.

The women of the Koryo Hotel toweled him, dressed him. Finally, he took a number 7 haircut—the one they called Speed Battle, the Commander’s signature style.

In the late afternoon, the Mercedes climbed the final, winding road that led to the peak of Mount Taesong. They passed the botanical gardens, the national seed bank, and the hothouses that contained the breeding stocks of kimilsungia and kimjongilia. They passed the Pyongyang Central Zoo, closed at this hour. On the seat beside him were some of Commander Ga’s possessions. There was a bottle of cologne, and he quickly applied some. This is the smell of me , he thought. He picked up Commander Ga’s pistol. This is my pistol , he thought. He pulled back the slide enough to see a bullet peek from the breech. I am the kind of man who keeps one in the chamber .

Finally, they passed a cemetery whose bronze-busted tombstones glowed orange in the light. This was the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery, whose 114 occupants, all of whom had died before they could engender sons, gave names to every orphan in the nation. They reached the peak and here were three houses built for the ministers of Mass Mobilization, Prison Mines, and Procurement.

The driver came to a stop before the middle house, and Commander Ga walked through the gate himself, its low slats woven with cucumber vines and the blossoms of a magnificent melon. Nearing Sun Moon’s door, he felt his chest tighten with pain, the pain of the Captain pressing him with inky needles, of the saltwater he splashed on the raw tattoo, of the Second Mate’s wife weeping the infection out with a steaming towel. At the door, he took that breath, and knocked.

Almost immediately, Sun Moon answered. She wore a loose house robe, under which her breasts swung free. He’d seen such a house robe only once before, in Texas, hanging in the bath of his guest room. That robe was white and fluffy, while Sun Moon’s was matted and stained with old sauces. She was without makeup, and her hair was down, falling across her shoulders. Her face was filled with excitement and possibility and, suddenly, he felt the terrible violence of this day leave him. Gone was the combat he’d faced at the hands of her husband. Gone was the look of doom on the Warden’s face. Wiped away were the multitudes Mongnan had captured on film. This house was a good house, white paint, red trim. It was the opposite of the Canning Master’s house—nothing bad had happened here, he could tell.

“I’m home,” he said to her.

She looked past him, peering around the yard, the road.

“Do you have a package for me?” she asked. “Did the studio send you?”

But here she paused, taking in all the inconsistencies—the lean stranger in her husband’s uniform, the man wearing his cologne and riding in his car.

“Who are you supposed to be?” she asked.

“I’m Commander Ga,” he said. “And I’m finally home.”

“You’re telling me you’ve brought no script, nothing?” she asked. “You mean the studio dressed you up like this and sent you all the way up here, and you don’t have a script for me? You tell Dak-Ho I said that’s cold, even for him. He’s crossed a line.”

“I don’t know who Dak-Ho is,” he said and marveled at the evenness of her skin, at the way her dark eyes locked on him. “You’re even more beautiful than I imagined.”

She undid the belt of her house robe, then recinched it tighter.

Then she lifted her hands to the heavens. “Why do we live on this godforsaken hill?” she asked the sky. “Why am I up here, when everything that matters is down there?” She pointed to Pyongyang far below, this time of day just a haze of buildings lining the silver Y of the Taedong River. She approached him and looked up into his eyes. “Why can’t we live by Mansu Park? I could take an express bus to the studio from there. How can you pretend not to know who Dak-Ho is? Everybody knows him. Has he sent you here to mock me? Are they all down there laughing at me?”

“I can tell you’ve been hurting for a long time,” he said. “But that’s all over now. Your husband’s home.”

“You’re the worst actor in the world,” she said. “They’re all down there at a casting party, aren’t they? They’re drunk and laughing and casting a new female lead, and they decided to send the worst actor in the world up the hill to mock me.”

She fell down to the grass and placed the back of her hand against her forehead. “Go on, get out of here. You’ve had your fun. Go tell Dak-Ho how the old actress wept.” She tried to wipe her eyes. Then, from her house robe, she produced a pack of cigarettes. She brazenly lit one—it made her look mannish and seductive. “Not a single script, an entire year without a script.”

She needed him. It was completely clear how much she needed him.

She noticed that the front door was cracked and that her children were peeking out. She hooked loose a slipper and kicked it toward the door, which was quickly pulled shut.

“I don’t know anything about the movie business,” he said. “But I’ve brought you a movie, as a gift. It’s Casablanca , and it’s supposed to be the best.”

She reached up and took the DVD case, dirty and battered, from his hands. She quickly glanced at it. “That one’s black-and-white,” she said, then threw it across the yard. “Plus I don’t watch movies—they’d only corrupt the purity of my acting.” On her back in the grass, she smoked contemplatively. “You really don’t have anything to do with the studio?” she asked.