Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

She was going to cry. He tried to comfort her, but she wouldn’t have it.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me,” Sun Moon said. “And now everything has gone wrong.”

“Not everything,” he said.

“Yes, everything,” she said. “You just don’t know the feeling. You don’t know what it’s like to lose a movie you worked on for a year. You’ve never lost all your friends or had your husband taken from you.”

“Don’t speak this way,” he told her. “There’s no need to talk like this.”

“This is what hunger must feel like,” she said, “this hollowness inside. This is what people must feel in Africa, where they have nothing to eat.”

He was suddenly repulsed by her.

“You want to know the flavor of hunger?” he demanded.

From the table’s floral centerpiece, he plucked a petal from a rose. He tore off its white base, then placed the petal to her lips. “Open,” he said, and when she didn’t, he was rough with the word. “Open,” he demanded. She parted her lips and allowed the flower in. She looked up at him with welling eyes. And here the tears spilled as slowly, slowly, she began to chew.

CITIZENS ,come, gather ’round the loudspeakers in your kitchens and offices for the next installment of this year’s Best North Korean Story. Have you missed an episode? They are available for playback in the languages lab of the Grand People’s Study House. When last we saw the coward Commander Ga, he had been treated to his own taekwondo demonstration by the Dear Leader! Don’t be fooled by the Commander’s dashing uniform and cleanly parted hair—he is a tragic figure, who has far, far to fall before talk of redemption can begin.

For now, our dazzling couple was crossing Pyongyang late after an opulent party as, neighborhood by neighborhood, substation power switches were being thrown to cast our sweet city into slumber. Commander Ga drove, while Sun Moon leaned with the turns.

“I’m sorry about your movie,” he said.

She didn’t respond. Her head was turned toward the darkening buildings.

He said, “You can make another.”

She dug through her purse, and then in frustration closed it.

“My husband never let me run out of cigarettes, not once,” she said. “He had some special hiding place for the cartons, and every morning, there was a fresh pack under my pillow.”

The Pyongchon eating district extinguished as they drove through it, and then one, two, three, the housing blocks along Haebangsan Street went black. Nighty-night, Pyongyang. You earned it. No nation sleeps as North Korea sleeps. After lights-out, there is a collective exhale as heads hit pillows across a million households. When the tireless generators wind down for the night and their red-hot turbines begin to cool, no lights glare on alone, no refrigerator buzzes dully through the dark. There’s just eye-closing satisfaction and then deep, powerful dreams of work quotas fulfilled and the embrace of reunification. The American citizen, however, is wide awake. You should see a satellite photo of that confused nation at night—it’s one grand swath of light, glaring with the sum of their idle, indolent evenings. Lazy and unmotivated, Americans stay up late, engaging in television, homosexuality, and even religion, anything to fill their selfish appetites.

The city was in full darkness as they drove by the Hyoksin line’s Rakwan station. Their headlights momentarily illuminated an eagle owl atop the subway’s vent shaft, its beak at work on a fresh lamb. It would be easy, dear citizens, to feel for the poor lamb, plucked so young from life. Or the mama sheep, all her love and labor for nothing. Or even the eagle owl, whose duty it is to live by devouring others. Yet this is a happy story, citizen: by the loss of the inattentive and disobedient lamb, the ones on other rooftops are made stronger.

They began making their way up the hill, passing the Central Zoo, where the Dear Leader’s own Siberian tigers were on display next to the pen that housed the zoo’s six dogs, all gifts from the former king of Swaziland. The dogs were kept on a strict diet of soft tomatoes and kimchi to lessen that animal’s inherent danger, though they will become meat-eaters again when it comes time for the Americans to visit!

In the headlights they saw a man running from the zoo with an ostrich egg in his hands. Chasing him up the hill with flashlights were two watchmen.

“Do you feel for the man hungry enough to steal?” Commander Ga asked as they drove by. “Or for the men who must hunt him down?”

“Isn’t it the bird who suffers?” Sun Moon asked.

They passed the cemetery, which was dark, as was the Fun Fair, its gondola chairs hanging pure black against a blue-black sky. Only the botanical gardens were lighted. Here, even at night, work on the hybrid crop program continued, the precious seed vault protected from an American invasion by a grand electric fence. Ga glanced at a cone of moths, high in protein, circling in a security light, and he became melancholy as he drove slowly up this last stretch of dirt road.

“This is a fine automobile,” he said. “I will miss it.”

By this, the Commander meant that, though our nation produces the finest vehicles in the world, life is transient and subject to hardships, which is the entire reason the Dear Leader has given us Juche philosophy.

“I’ll pass your sentiments along,” Sun Moon said, “to the next man who finds himself driving it.”

Here, the good actress is agreeing that the car is not theirs, but rather is the property of the citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Dearest General who leads us. She is wrong, however, to suggest that she does not belong to her husband, for a wife has certain obligations, and to these she is bound.

Commander Ga pulled up before the house. The dust cloud that had been trailing them now caught up, ghostly in the headlights and the front door they illuminated. Sun Moon stared at this door with uncertainty, trepidation.

“Is this a dream?” Sun Moon asked. “Tell me it’s only a movie I’m in.” But enough of your moods, the two of you! It’s time for sleep. Off to bed, now …

Oh, Sun Moon, our heart never stops going out to you!

Let us all repeat together: We miss you, Sun Moon!

Finally, citizens, a warning that tomorrow’s installment contains an adult situation, so protect the ears of our littlest citizens as the actress Sun Moon decides whether she will open herself fully to her new husband Commander Ga, as is required by law of a wife, or whether she will make a misguided declaration of chastity.

Remember, female citizens, however admirable it may be to remain chaste to a missing husband, such a sense of duty is misplaced. Whenever a loved one disappears, there is bound to be a lingering hurt. The Americans have the saying “Time heals all wounds.” But this is not true. Experiments have shown that healing is hastened only by self-criticism sessions, the inspirational tracts of Kim Jong Il, and replacement persons. So when the Dear Leader gives you a new husband, give yourself to him. Still: We love you, Sun Moon!

Again: We love you, Sun Moon!

Show your vigor, citizens.

Repeat: We admire you, Sun Moon!

Yes, citizens, that’s better.

Louder: We emulate your sacrifice, Sun Moon!

Let the Great Leader Kim Il Sung himself hear you in heaven!

All together: We will bathe in the blood of the Americans who came to our great nation to hurt you!

But we get ahead of ourselves. That is for a future episode.

HOME FROM the Dear Leader’s party, Commander Ga studied Sun Moon’s evening routine. First, she lit an oil lantern, the kind they place on the beaches of Cheju so night fishermen can navigate their skiffs. She let the dog inside, then checked the bedroom to see that the children were asleep. When she did, she left the doors open for the first time. Inside, by the glow of her lamp, he saw a low mattress and rolled ox-hair mats.