Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

She looked at him as though she truly wanted an answer, but he could only wonder if she was speaking of himself or his predecessor.

“What if a woman had children with her captor?”

Ga took the ladle from her hands and drew water for the boy and the girl, but they were now assuming the poses of the hammer and sickle bearers on the frieze of the Party Foundation Monument, and even the heat of the day could not make them break from their personas.

“That man is gone,” he said. “I’m here now. I’m not your captor. I’m liberating you. It’s easy to talk about prisoners, but I’m the one trying to get you to say the word ‘escape.’ That’s what the Dear Leader’s captive wants. She might be locked in a cell, but her heart is restless. She will leap at the chance to get out, trust me.”

“You sound like you know her,” Sun Moon said.

“There was a time,” he told her. “It seems like another life. I had a job transcribing radio transmissions on the sea. I listened from sunset to sunrise, and in the darkest hour, I’d hear her, the Girl Rower. She and her friend were rowing around the world, but this one, she was the one that rowed all night, without the horizon to steer toward or the sun to mark her progress. She was forever bound to the other rower, yet completely alone. She labored forward solely on duty, her body bowing to the oars, but her mind, the broadcasts she made, never had a woman sounded so free.”

Sun Moon cocked her head and tried on those words. “Forever bound to another,” she whispered. “Yet totally alone,” she added in self-reflection.

“Is that how you want to live?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Are you ready to talk about the plan?”

She nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Just remember, forever bound yet alone—that could be a good thing. If for some reason we ended up separated, if somehow we didn’t get out together, we could be bound, even if we weren’t together.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “There will be no alone. That’s not how it’s going to go.”

“What if something goes wrong, what if in getting the three of you out, I am left behind?”

“Oh no,” she said. “There is going to be none of that. I need you. I don’t speak English, I don’t know where to go, I don’t know which Americans are informants and which are not. We’re not going around the world with just the clothes on our backs.”

“Believe me—if something went wrong, I’d eventually join you. Somehow I’d make it. And you wouldn’t be alone. The Senator’s wife would help you until I made my way to you.”

“I don’t need someone’s wife,” she told him. “I need you. It’s you I must have. You don’t understand what my life has been like, how I’ve been baited and tricked before.”

“You must believe me that I’ll follow,” Ga said. “After you get safely out, I’ll be right behind you. I’ve been to South Korea twelve times in my life, Japan nine times, Russia twice, and I have seen the sun rise and set on Texas soil. I will join you.”

“No, no, no,” she said. “You never do that to me, you never disappear on me. We all go together. Your job is to make that happen. Is it the Casablanca movie that’s got you confused?” Her voice was rising now. “You don’t stay behind like a martyr, like Rick. Rick failed at his job, his job was to …” She stopped herself before she became too upset. Instead, she gave him that voluptuous actress smile of hers. “You can’t leave me. I’m your captive,” she said. “What good’s a captive without her captor? Won’t we need a lot of time together if we’re to prove once and for all if the Dear Leader’s syndrome is true?”

He could hear the lie in her voice. Her acting, he could recognize it now. But he saw the desperation and vulnerability underneath, and he loved her all the more for it.

“Of course I am going with you,” Ga told her. “I’ll always be with you.”

And then came the kiss. It started with the tilt of her head, her eyes flashing to his mouth, a hand slowly reaching to his collarbone, where it rested, and then she leaned in, the slowest lean in the world. He recognized the kiss. It was from Hold the Banner High! , the one she planted on the weak-minded South Korean border guard, distracting him while her band of freedom fighters cut the power to the sentry tower and began the liberation of South Korea from the hands of its capitalist oppressors. He’d dreamed of that kiss and now it was his.

Into his ear, she whispered, “Let’s escape.”

CITIZENS! Open your windows and cast your eyes upward, for a crow flies above Pyongyang, its raked beak twitching at every possible threat to the patriotic populace below. Hear the black wings beat, flinch at its sharp call. Observe this master of the air swooping into the schoolyards to sniff all the children for traces of cowardice, then dive, claws extended, to gauge the loyalty of the doves that adorn the statue of Kim Il Sung. Being the only animal with eyes sharp enough to spot virginity, witness our crow circle a Juche Youth Troop, and nod in approval as this illustrious avian performs an aerial inspection of their reproductive purity.

But America’s what’s really on this crow’s mind. It’s not hunting chestnut thieves or peering in housing-block windows for the telltale paw-prints of illegal dog farming. No, citizens, the Americans have accepted the Dear Leader’s invitation to visit Pyongyang, the most glorious capital in the world. So the dark wings that protectively cast their shadow upon the fields of Arirang are hunting for any hint of capitalist sympathizers. One traitor is all it would take to disillusion a land so pure it knows nothing of materialist greed or war-crime sneak attacks. Luckily, citizens, no animal keeps its benevolent eye on the Korean people like the crow. It won’t let ours become a nation where people give names to canines, oppress others because of the color of their skin, and eat pharmaceutically sweetened pills to abort their babies.

But why, you ask, does this crow circle the Chosun Relaxation Footpath? Isn’t this where our finest citizens come to stroll, where young people gather to wash the feet of the old and where on a hot day wet nurses volunteer their paps to refresh Pyongyang’s finest yangban babies? The keen-eyed crow is here, citizens, because it spotted a man tossing a shiny object into the bushes, where some scrambling orphans fought to obtain it. Not only does the giving of coins to orphans rob them of their self-respect and Juche Spirit, it violates a central rule of good citizenship: Practice Self-Sufficiency.

Looking more closely, the crow noted that as this man spoke to a woman, he made certain gestures that were clear indicators of the discussion of a plan. Tomorrow is a concern of the state, citizens. Tomorrow is the business of your leaders, and you must leave what’s to come in their hands. So another rule of good citizenship had been violated: Refrain from the Future. It was then that this crow recognized the violator as Commander Ga, a man who had recently been observed disregarding all the rules of good citizenship: Devote Yourself Eternally to Our Glorious Leaders, Treasure Criticism, Obey Songun Policies, Pledge Yourself to Collective Child Rearing, and Conduct Regular Martyrdom Drills.

It was here, spellbound by beauty, that the crow almost fell from the sky when it realized that the woman speaking to this loathsome citizen was none other than Sun Moon. Wings arresting a free fall, the bird dropped between our mismatched couple. There was a message in the crow’s beak, and when Commander Ga bent to retrieve it, the bird leaped high— Caw! —and lashed its wings at Ga’s face. The bird then turned to face Sun Moon. The note, she saw, was intended for her. When she unfolded the strip of paper, it bore only the name of our Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.