Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

“Don’t get mad,” my mother said. “We were just showing concern for the unlucky souls in your files.”

“Unlucky?” I asked. “What makes you call them unlucky?”

They both went silent. I turned toward the kitchen and looked at the can of peaches perched above the top cabinet. I had a feeling the can had been moved a little, inspected perhaps by this blind duo, but I couldn’t be sure of the direction I’d left the can facing.

Slowly, I waved my mother’s file once before her eyes, yet she made no track of it. Then I fanned her with the file, so the breeze moved across her face, surprising her.

My mother recoiled, inhaling with fright.

“What is it?” my father asked her. “What happened?”

She said nothing.

“Can you see me, Mother?” I asked. “It’s important that I know if you can see me.”

She faced my direction, though her eyes were focusless. “Can I see you?” she asked me. “I see you as I first saw you, in glimpses, through darkness.”

“Spare me the riddles,” I warned her. “I have to know.”

“You were born at night,” she said. “I labored all day, and when darkness fell, we had no candles. You came by feel into your father’s hands.”

My father lifted his hands, scarred by mechanical looms. “These hands,” he said.

“Such was the year Juche 62,” my mother said. “Such was life in a factory dormitory. Your father lit match after match.”

“One after another, until they were gone,” my father said.

“I touched every part of your body, at first to see if you were whole and then to know you. So new you were, so innocent—you could have become anyone. It took a while, until first light, that we got a look at what we had created.”

“Were there other children?” I asked. “Was there another family?”

My mother ignored this. “Our eyes do not work. That is the answer to your question. But then as now, we do not need sight to see what you have become.”

ON SUNDAY ,Commander Ga strolled with Sun Moon along the Chosun Relaxation Footpath, which followed the river to the Central Bus Terminal. In this public place, they thought they might not be overheard. Old people filled the benches, and because a new book had been published that month, young people lay in the grass reading copies of the novel All for Her Country . Commander Ga could smell the hot ink from the presses of the Rodong Sinmun , which, rumor had it, printed on Sunday afternoons all the newspaper editions for the week to come. Whenever Ga spotted a hungry-eyed urchin crouched in the bushes, he’d toss him a couple of coins. Sun Moon’s children seemed oblivious to these orphans hiding in their midst. The boy and the girl ate flavored ice and wandered through willows whose late-summer arms hung low enough to sweep the gravel path.

Commander Ga and Sun Moon had been speaking in abstractions and half notions, dancing around the facts of the very real thing they had set in motion. He wanted to put a name to what they were doing, to call it escape, defection. He wanted to outline the steps, to memorize them and practice out loud how they would go. Like a script, he said. He asked her to say she understood that the worst could happen. She would speak of none of this. Instead, she remarked on the crunch of the gravel under her feet, of the groan of the river dredges as they bent their rusty booms below the surface. She stopped to smell an azalea as if it were the last azalea, and as she walked, she wove fine purple bracelets from wisteria. She wore a white cotton choson-ot that outlined her body with shifts in the breeze.

“I want to tell the children before we leave,” he said.

This, perhaps because it seemed so preposterous to her, moved her to speak.

“Tell them what?” she asked. “That you killed their father? No, they’re going to grow up in America believing that their dad was a great hero whose remains rest in a faraway land.”

“But they have to know,” he said, then was silent a moment as a brigade of soldiers’ mothers passed by, shaking their red cans to intimidate Songun donations from people. “Those kids have to hear it from me,” he went on. “The truth, an explanation—these are the most important things for them to hear. This is all I have to give them.”

“But there will be time,” she said. “This decision can be made later, when we’re safe in America.”

“No,” he told her. “It must be now.”

Commander Ga looked back at the boy and the girl. They were watching this conversation, even though they were too far away to make out the words.

“Is something wrong?” Sun Moon asked. “Does the Dear Leader suspect something?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said, though the question conjured the Girl Who Rowed in the Dark and the notion that the Dear Leader might not relinquish her.

Sun Moon stopped by a cement water barrel and lifted its wooden cover. She drew a ladle and drank, her hands cupping the silver dipper. Commander Ga watched a trickle of water darken the front of her choson-ot . He tried to imagine her with another man. If the Dear Leader didn’t let go of his Girl Rower, then the plan was off, the Americans would leave in outrage, and something bad would soon happen to Commander Ga. As for Sun Moon, she would become a prize once more, to whatever replacement husband was found. And what if the Dear Leader was right, what if over the years she came to love this new husband, real love, not the promise of love or the potential for love—could Commander Ga leave this world knowing her heart was destined for another?

Sun Moon plunged the ladle deep into the barrel to get the cool water at the bottom before holding the dipper for Ga to drink. The water tasted mineral and fresh.

He wiped his mouth. “Tell me,” he said to her. “Do you think it’s possible for a woman to fall in love with her captor?”

She observed him a moment. He could tell she was looking for signs as to how to answer.

He said, “It’s impossible, right? The idea is completely insane, don’t you think?” He saw in his mind a parade of all the people he’d captured, their wide eyes and abraded faces, the white of their lips when the duct tape was torn off. He saw those red toenails rearing to strike. “I mean, all they can have is contempt for you, for taking everything from them. Tell the truth, say there can be no such syndrome.”

“Syndrome?” she asked.

He looked over at the children, frozen in mid-stride. They often played a game to see which one could be the most statue-like.

“The Dear Leader has read of a syndrome, and he believes that if he keeps a certain woman imprisoned long enough, she will come to love him.”

“A certain woman?” Sun Moon asked.

“It’s not important who she is,” he said. “All that matters is that she’s American. A delegation is coming for her, and if the Dear Leader doesn’t hand her over, our plan is ruined.”

“You said she was a captive. What—is she in a cage or a prison? How long has this been going on?”

“She’s in his private bunker. She was going around the world but had a problem on her boat. They plucked her out of the sea, and now the Dear Leader’s infatuated with her. He goes down there at night and plays her operas composed in his honor. He wants to keep her down deep until she develops feelings for him. Have you ever heard of anything like this? Tell me there’s no such thing.”

Sun Moon was quiet a moment. Then she said, “What if a woman had to sleep in the same bed as her captor?”

Ga eyed her to see what she was getting at.

Sun Moon said, “What if she depended on her captor for every necessity—food, cigarettes, clothes—and he could indulge or deprive her at his whim?”