Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

“The food was not from the Senator, but from his church. There were barrels of flour and hundred-kilo sacks of rice, burlap bags of beans, all stacked up in a cube and wrapped tight with plastic.”

“Food?” the Dear Leader asked.

Ga nodded.

“Go on,” the Dear Leader said.

“And on another skid were little Bibles, thousands of them, shrink-wrapped in plastic.”

“Bibles,” the Dear Leader said.

“Very small ones, with green vinyl covers.”

“How have I not heard any of this?”

“Of course we didn’t accept it, we left it on the runway.”

“On the runway,” the Dear Leader said.

“There was one other thing,” Commander Ga said. “A dog, a baby one. It was given to us by the Senator’s wife herself, bred from her own stock.”

“Food aid,” the Dear Leader said, his eyes darting about, thinking. “Bibles and a dog.”

“The food is already prepared,” Ga said.

“And of the Bibles?”

Ga smiled. “I know an author whose thoughts on opera should be required reading in all civilized nations. A thousand copies could easily be obtained.”

The Dear Leader nodded. “About the dog, what Korean pet would be the equivalent? A tiger, perhaps? A tremendous snake?”

“Why not give them a dog back—we’ll say it’s the Senator’s dog, and say we’re returning it because it’s selfish, lazy, and materialistic.”

“This dog,” the Dear Leader said, “must be the most vicious, snarling cur in all the land. It must have tasted the blood of baboons in the Central Zoo and chewed on the bones of half-starved prisoners in Camp 22.” The Dear Leader looked off, as if he wasn’t at the bottom of a bunker, but on a plane, watching the Senator being ravaged by a rabid canine for the sixteen hours it took to return to Texas.

“I know just the dog,” Commander Ga said.

“You know,” the Dear Leader said, “you broke my driver’s nose.”

Ga said, “The nose will heal back stronger.”

“Spoken like a true North Korean,” the Dear Leader said. “Come, Commander, there’s something I’ve been meaning to show you.”

They moved to another floor, to another room that looked just like the last one. Ga understood that sameness was meant to confuse an invading force, but wasn’t the effect worse on those who must daily endure it? In the halls, he could feel the presence of security teams, always just out of sight, making the Dear Leader seem eternally alone.

In the room was a school desk with a lone computer monitor, its green cursor blinking. “Here’s the machine I promised to show you,” the Dear Leader said. “Were you secretly mad at me for making you wait?”

“Is this the master computer?” Ga asked.

“It is,” the Dear Leader answered. “We used to have a dummy version, but that was only for interrogations. This one contains the vital information for every single citizen—it tells you date of birth or date of death, current location, family members, and so on. When you type in a citizen’s name, all this information is sent to a special agency that dispatches a crow right away.”

The Dear Leader ushered Commander Ga into the chair. Before him was only the black of the screen, that green flash. “Everyone’s in here?” Ga asked.

“Every man, woman, and child,” the Dear Leader said. “When a name is typed on this screen, it is sent to our finest team. They act with great dispatch. The person in question will be found and transported right away. There is no evading its reach.”

The Dear Leader pushed a button, and on the screen appeared a number: 22,604,301.

He pressed the button again, and the number changed: 22,604,302.

“Witness the miracle of life,” the Dear Leader said. “Do you know we are fifty-four-percent female? We didn’t discover that until this machine. They say that famine favors the girls. In the South, it’s the opposite. They have a machine that can tell if a baby will be a boy or a girl, and the girls they dispose of. Can you imagine that, killing a girl baby, still in the mother?”

Ga said nothing—all babies in Prison 33 were killed. Every couple of months, there was a termination day in which rows of pregnant inmates had their bellies injected with saline. The guards had a wooden box on casters that they pushed around with their feet. Into this went, one by one, purple and dogpaddling, the partly developed babies as they came.

“But we will have the last word,” the Dear Leader said. “A version is being created with every South Korean’s name inside, so that there will be no one beyond our reach. That’s real reunification, don’t you think, being able to place a guiding hand on the shoulder of every Korean, North or South? With good infiltration teams, it will be like the DMZ doesn’t exist. In the spirit of One Korea, I offer you a gift. Type in the name of a person you’d like found, for whom resolution is lacking, and they will be dealt with. Go ahead, any name. Perhaps someone who wronged you during the Arduous March or a rival from the orphanage.”

The parade of people came to Ga, all those whose absences hung like empty dry docks in his memory. Throughout his life, he’d felt the presence of people he’d lost, eternally just out of reach. And here he was, seated before the collected fates of everyone. Yet he did not know his parents’ names, and the only information an orphan’s name gives is that he’s an orphan. Since Sun Moon had come into his life, he’d stopped wondering what had happened to Officer So and the Second Mate and his wife. The Captain’s name is the one he would have typed, but there was no need for that now. And Mongnan and Dr. Song, those were the last names he’d enter, as he wanted them to live forever in his memory. In the end, there was only one person who was haunting him, whose fate and location he had to know about. Commander Ga put his fingers to the keys and typed “Commander Ga Chol Chun.”

When the Dear Leader saw this, he was beside himself. “Oh, that’s rich,” he said. “Oh, that’s a new one. You know what this machine does, right, you know what kind of team waits for these names? It’s good, too good, but I can’t let you do it.” The Dear Leader hit the Delete button and shook his head. “He typed his own name. Wait till I tell everyone at dinner tonight. Wait till they hear the story of how the Commander entered his own name into the master computer.”

The green blinked at Ga like a faraway pulse in the dark.

The Dear Leader clapped him on the shoulder. “Come,” he said. “One last thing. I need you to translate something for me.”

When they reached the Girl Rower’s cell, the Dear Leader paused outside. He leaned against the wall, tapping the key against the cement. “I don’t want to let her go,” he said.

Of course a deal had been struck, the Americans would be here in a few days and breaking a deal like this would never be forgiven. But Ga didn’t mention any of that. He said, “I understand exactly how you feel.”

“She has no idea what I’m talking about when I speak to her,” the Dear Leader said. “But that’s okay. She has a curious mind, I can tell. I’ve been visiting her for a year. I’ve always needed someone like that, someone I can say things to. I like to think she enjoys my visits. Over time I think I have grown on her. How she makes you work for a smile, but when she gives you one, it’s real, you know it.”

The Dear Leader’s eyes were small and searching, as if he was trying not to see the fact that he would have to give her up. It was the way your eyes could scan the sloshing water in the bottom of a skiff because to look anywhere else—at the beach or the duct tape in your hands or Officer So’s stony face—was to acknowledge you were trapped, that very soon you’d be forced to do the thing you abhorred the most.