Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

Q-Kee placed the prongs of the cattle prod against the iron bar and crackled off some juice—that got everyone’s attention. Most of the subjects covered their faces on instinct or rolled into a baby position. A man at the end of the bar, down in the water, sat up and barked in pain. He wore a torn, soaked dress shirt, underwear, and sock suspenders around his calves. This was Comrade Buc.

We approached him and saw the vertical scar above his left eye. The wound had split the eyebrow in two, and it had healed so badly the halves of the brow missed each other. Who marries a woman that can’t sew?

“Are you Comrade Buc?” we asked him.

Buc looked up, blinded by the headlamps. “What are you, the night shift?” he asked, and laughed a feeble, unconvincing laugh. He put his hands up in mock defense. “I confess, I confess,” he said, but the laugh broke into a long cough—a sure sign of cracked ribs.

Q-Kee put the end of the prod in the water and pulled the trigger.

Comrade Buc was seized, while the naked man next to him rolled to one side and defecated into the black water.

“Look, we don’t like this,” we told Buc. “When we’re in charge, we’re going to close this place down.”

“Oh, that’s rich.” Comrade Buc laughed. “You’re not even in charge.”

“How’d you get that scar?” we asked.

“What, this?” he asked, pointing to the wrong eyebrow.

Q-Kee lowered the prod again, but we caught her hand. She was new, she was a woman, and we understood the pressure to prove oneself, but this was not our way.

We clarified: “How’d you get that scar from Commander Ga?” we asked, and signaled Jujack to cut the chain. “Answer that question for us and we’ll answer any question you like.”

“A yes-or-no question,” Q-Kee added.

“Yes or no?” Comrade Buc asked in confirmation.

It was a bold move from Q-Kee, ill-advised, but we had to present a unified front, so we all nodded, and with a grunt from Jujack, the good comrade’s chains fell.

Comrade Buc’s hands went straight to his face, to massage his eyes. We poured clean water on a handkerchief and handed it to him.

“I worked in the same building with Commander Ga,” Buc said. “I did procurement, so I had my head under a black hood all day, ordering supplies on the computer. China mostly, Vietnam. Ga, he had his nice desk and a window, and he didn’t do any work. This was before he began his feud with the Dear Leader, before Prison 9 burned. Back then, he didn’t know anything about prisons or mines. The post was just a reward for winning the Golden Belt and for going to Japan to fight Kimura. That was a big deal after Ryoktosan went to Japan to fight Sakuraba and defected. Ga would bring me lists of things he needed, stuff like DVDs and rare bottles of rice wine.”

“Did he ever ask you to order fruit?”

“Fruit?”

“Peaches, perhaps? Did he want canned peaches?”

Buc studied us. “No, why?”

“Nothing, continue.”

“One day, I had worked late, it was just me and Commander Ga on the third floor. He often wore a white fighting dobok with a black belt, like he was in the gym, ready to spar. This night, he was leafing through magazines about taekwondo from South Korea. He liked to read illegal magazines right in front of us, saying he was studying the enemy. Just knowing about such a magazine could get you sent to Prison 15, the prison for families, the one they call Yodok. I often did the procurement for that prison. Anyway, these magazines have fold-out posters of fighters from Seoul. Ga was holding one up, appraising the fighter, when he caught me looking at him. I’d been warned about him, so I was nervous.”

Q-Kee interrupted. “Was it a man who warned you or a woman?”

“Men,” Comrade Buc said. “Commander Ga then stood. He had the poster in his hand. He grabbed something out of his desk and started walking toward me, and I thought, okay, I have been beaten up before, I can do this. I’d heard that once he beat you up, he never bothered you again. He began walking toward me. He was famous for his composure—when he fought, he never showed emotion. The only time he smiled was when he executed the dwi chagi , where he turned his back to the opponent, inviting his offense.

“ Comrade , Ga said to me in a very mocking tone. Then he stands there, appraising me. People think I am a sycophant to go by ‘Comrade,’ but I am a twin, and as is custom, we both have the same name. Our mother called us Comrade Buc and Citizen Buc to identify us. People thought it was cute—to this day, my brother is Citizen Buc.”

Ah, we should have seen this information in his file. Missing it was a mistake on our part. Most people hate twins because of the procreation bonuses their families receive from the government. This explains much of Buc’s exterior, and constitutes an advantage we should have exploited.

“Commander Ga,” Buc continued, “held the poster out for me to view. It was just a young black belt with a dragon tattooed on his chest. Do you like this? Commander Ga asked. Does it interest you? He asked these questions in a way that implied a wrong answer, but I didn’t know what that might be. Taekwondo is an ancient and noble sport , I told him. And I must get home to my family .

“ All the lessons you need to learn in life , he said, will be taught to you by your enemy . Then, for the first time, I noticed that what he’d brought with him was a dobok . This he tossed to me. It was damp and smelled of groin. I’d heard that if you didn’t fight him, he beat you up. But if you did fight back, he might do something much worse to you, something unthinkable.

“Very crisply, I said, I do not wish to wear a dobok .

“ Of course , he said. It is optional .

“I just looked at him, trying to see in his eyes what would happen next.

“ We are vulnerable , he told me. We must always be ready. First let’s check your core strength . He unbuttoned my shirt and then pulled it open. He put his ear to my chest and thumped me on the sides and back. He repeated this with my stomach. He would thump me hard and say something like Lungs clear , kidneys strong , avoid the alcohol . Then he had to check my symmetry, he said. He had a little camera, very small, and he photographed my symmetry.”

We asked Buc, “Did Commander Ga wind the film or was there a sound of a camera motor winding the film?”

“No,” he said.

“No whir or anything?”

“It beeped,” Buc said. “Then Commander Ga said, The foreigner’s first impulse is toward aggression . He told me I needed to learn how to fight off this force. Repelling foreign impulses from without is how you prepare yourself to repel them from within , he said. The Commander then presented several scenarios like, what would I do if the Americans landed on the roof and rappelled down the air shafts? And what would I do if confronted with a Japanese man attack?

“ A man attack? I asked him.

“He put his hand on my shoulder, pulled my arm straight, and got ahold of my hip. A homosexual attack , Ga said, as if I was stupid. The Japanese are famous for this. In Manchuria , the Japanese raped everything , men , women , the pandas in the zoo . He tripped me, and I went down, cutting my eye on the corner of a desk. That’s the story, that’s how I got this scar. And now the answer to my question.”

Here Comrade Buc stopped, as if he knew it drove us crazy not to get an ending. “Please do continue,” we suggested.