Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

In the dark kitchen, he pulled a bottle of Ryoksong from the cool place under the sink. The beer was good, and the bottle soothed his stiffening hand. He didn’t want to see what his face looked like. She inspected his knuckles, a little fan of yellow beginning to show.

“I have nursed many broken hands,” she said. “This is only a sprain.”

“You think that driver was okay? It looked like I broke his nose.”

She shrugged. “You have chosen to impersonate a man dedicated to violence,” she said. “These things happen.”

“You’ve got it backward,” he answered. “Your husband chose me.”

“Does it matter? You’re him now, aren’t you? Commander Ga Chol Chun—is that what I should call you?”

“Look at how your children hide their eyes, how they’re afraid to move. I don’t want to be the man who taught them that.”

“Tell me, then. What should I call you?”

He shook his head.

Her face agreed it was a difficult problem.

The lamp’s light cast shadows that gave form to her body. She leaned against the counter and stared at the cabinets as if she were seeing the contents inside. But really she was looking the other way, into herself.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

“That woman,” she said. “I haven’t been able to get her out of my head.”

He’d thought, by the look on her face, that she was somehow blaming herself for things, which was something the Captain said his wife always did. But the moment she mentioned that woman, he knew exactly what Sun Moon was talking about.

“That was foolish, that talk about lobotomies,” he said. “There is no such prison. People start rumors like that out of fear, out of not knowing.”

He took a drink of beer. He opened and closed his jaw, moved it side to side to assess the damage to his face. Of course there was a zombie prison—he knew it must be true the second he’d heard it. He wished he could ask Mongnan about it—she’d know, she’d tell him all about the lobotomy factory, and she’d tell it in a way that made you certain you were the luckiest person in the world, that your lot in life was pure gold compared to others’.

“If you’re worried about your husband, about what happened to him, I’ll tell you the story.”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” she said. She bit one of her fingernails. “You mustn’t let me run out of cigarettes again, you must promise.” She retrieved a glass from the cupboard and set it on the counter. “This is the time of evening when you pour me some rice wine,” she told him. “That is one of your duties.”

With the lamp, he went down into the tunnel to retrieve a bottle of rice wine, but he found himself looking at the DVDs instead. He ran his fingers along the movies, looking for one of hers, but there were no Korean films, and soon titles like Rambo , Moonstruck , and Raiders of the Lost Ark flipped the switch in his brain to read English and he couldn’t stop skimming the rows. Suddenly, Sun Moon was by his side.

“You left me in the dark,” she said. “You have a lot to learn about how to treat me.”

“I was looking for one of your movies.”

“Yes?”

“But there aren’t any.”

“Not one?” She studied the rows of titles. “All these movies he had and not one by his own wife?” she asked, confused. She pulled one off the shelf. “What movie is this?”

Ga looked at the cover. “It’s called Schindler’s List. ” “Schindler” was a difficult word to say.

She opened the case and looked at the DVD, how its surface shined against the light.

“These are stupid,” she said. “Movies are the property of the people, not for a single person to hoard. If you’d like to see one of my films go to the Moranbong Theater, they never stop playing there. You can see a Sun Moon film with peasant and politburo alike.”

“Have you seen any of these?”

“I told you,” she said. “I’m a pure actress. These things would only corrupt me. I’m perhaps the only pure actress in the world.” She grabbed another movie and waved it at him. “How can people be artists when they act for money? Like the baboons in the zoo who dance at their tethers for heads of cabbage. I act for a nation, for an entire people.” She looked suddenly crestfallen. “The Dear Leader said I was going to act for the world. You know he gave me this name. In English, Sun means hae and Moon means dal , so I’d be night and day, light and dark, celestial body and its eternal satellite. The Dear Leader said that would make me mysterious to American audiences, that the intense symbolism would speak to them.”

She stared at him.

“But they don’t watch my movies in America, do they?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe they do.”

She returned Schindler’s List to the shelf. “Get rid of these,” she said, “I don’t want to see them again.”

“How did he watch them, your husband?” he asked. “You don’t have a player.”

She shrugged.

“Did he have a laptop?”

“A what?”

“A computer that folds up.”

“Yes,” she said, “but I haven’t seen it in a while.”

“Wherever the laptop is hiding,” he told her, “I bet your cigarettes are there, too.”

“It’s too late for wine,” she said. “Come, I will turn down the sheets.”

The bed faced a large window that displayed the darkness of Pyongyang. She left the lamp burning on a side table. The children slept on a pallet at the foot, the dog between them. On the mantel above, out of the children’s reach, was the can of peaches Comrade Buc had given them. In the low light, they undressed, stripping to their undergarments. When they were under the sheets, Sun Moon spoke.

“Here are the rules,” she said. “The first is that you will begin work on the tunnel, and you will not stop until there is a way out. I’m not getting trapped again.”

He closed his eyes and listened to her demand. There was something pure and beautiful about it. If only more people in life said, This is what I must have .

She eyed him, to make sure he was listening. “Next, the children will reveal their names to you only when they decide.”

“Agreed,” he said.

Far below, dogs began baying in the Central Zoo. Brando whimpered in his sleep.

“And you cannot ever use taekwondo on them,” she said. “You will never make them prove their loyalty, you will never test them in any way.” She trained her eyes on him. “Tonight you discovered that my husband’s friends are happy to hurt you in public. It is still within my power to have one person crippled in this world.”

From the botanical gardens down the hill came an intense blue flash that filled the room. There’s no arc quite like a human meeting an electric fence. Sometimes birds set off the fence in Prison 33. But a person—a deep-humming blue snap—that was a light that came through your eyelids and a buzz that entered your bones. In his barracks, that light, that sound, woke him up every time, though Mongnan said after a while you stop noticing.

“Are there other rules?” he asked.

“Only one,” she said. “You will never touch me.”

In the dark, there was a long silence.

He took a deep breath.

“One morning, they lined up all the miners,” he said. “There were about six hundred of us. The Warden approached. He had a black eye, a fresh one. There was a military officer with him—tall-brimmed hat, lots of medals. This was your husband. He told the Warden to have us all remove our shirts.”

He paused, waiting to see if Sun Moon would encourage the story or not.