Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

Sun Moon feigned being startled. “She has no way with words?”

“You tease me now,” he said. “You know she speaks only English. She is no Sun Moon, I grant you that, but don’t underestimate her, this American girl. Don’t think my Rower Girl doesn’t have her own special qualities, her own dark energy.”

Now Sun Moon leaned forward, so that over the bar, the two were close.

“Answer me this, my Dearest Leader,” she said. “And please, speak from the heart. Can a spoiled American girl handle the grand notions that emanate from a mind as great as yours? Can this girl from a land of corruption and greed comprehend the purity of your wisdom? Is she worthy of you, or should she be sent home so that a real woman can take her place?”

The Dear Leader reached behind the bar. He produced for Sun Moon a bar of soap, a comb, and a choson-ot that seemed cut from pure gold.

“That’s what you’re going to tell me,” he said.

Citizens, observe the hospitality our Dear Leader shows for all peoples of the world, even a subject of the despotic United States. Does the Dear Leader not dispatch our nation’s best woman to give solace and support to this wayward American? And does Sun Moon not find the Girl Rower housed in a beautiful room, fresh and white and brightly lit, with a pretty little window affording a view of a lovely North Korean meadow and the dappled horses that frolic there? This is not dingy China or soiled little South Korea, so do not picture some sort of a prison cell with lamp-blacked walls and rust-colored puddles on the floor. Instead, notice the large white tub fitted with golden lion’s feet and filled with the steaming restorative water of the Taedong.

Sun Moon approached her. Though the Rower was young, her skin had been marred by the sun and the sea. Still, her spirit seemed strong—perhaps her year as a guest of our great nation had given her life focus and conviction. Undoubtedly, it had provided this American the only chastity she’d ever known. Sun Moon helped her disrobe, holding the Rower’s garments as she removed them. The girl’s shoulders were broad and strong cords were visible in her neck. There was a small, circular scar on the Rower’s upper arm. When Sun Moon touched this, words came from the Rower that Sun Moon couldn’t understand. And yet a look crossed the Girl Rower’s face that reassured Sun Moon that the mark was a sign of something good, if such a wound was possible.

In the water, the American reclined, and Sun Moon sat at the head of the tub, wetting the Rower’s dark, straight hair one ladle at a time. The last inch of her hair was distressed and needed to come off, but Sun Moon had no scissors. Instead, Sun Moon massaged the soap into her scalp, raising a lather. “So you’re the woman of endurance, of aloneness, the survivor,” Sun Moon said as she rinsed and soaped and rinsed again. “The girl that has captured the attention of all the males. You are a female who struggles, yes, a student of solitude? You must think we know nothing of adversity in our happy little nation of plenty. Perhaps you think I am a doll on a shelf in a hall of yangbans . That my life will be a diet of shrimp and peaches until I retire to the beaches of Wonsan.”

Sun Moon moved to the foot of the tub, where she began washing the Rower’s long toes and ungainly feet. “My grandmother was a great beauty,” Sun Moon said. “During the occupation, she was singled out to become the comfort woman for Emperor Taisho, the decadent predecessor to Hirohito. The dictator was short and sickly, with thick glasses. She was kept in a fortress by the sea, which the emperor visited at the end of each week. He would ravage her at the bay window, where with binoculars, he could also keep track of his fleet. Such was his need to control her that the evil little man insisted that she act happy.”

Sun Moon soaped the Rower’s taut ankles and withered calves.

“When my grandmother attempted to leap from the window, the Emperor tried to cheer her up with a paddle boat shaped like a swan. Then he bought her a mechanical horse that circled a pole on a metal track. When she tried to throw herself on the ocean’s jagged reef, a shark rose. Endure , the shark said. I must dive each day to the bottom of the sea for my dinner—surely you can find a way to survive . When she placed her neck in the gears of the mechanical horse, a finch landed and implored her to keep living. I must fly around the world to find my little seeds—certainly you can last another day . In her room, as she waited for the arrival of the Emperor, she stared at the wall. Gazing at the mortar binding the wall’s stones, she thought, I can hold fast a little longer. The Dear Leader turned her story into a screenplay for me, so I know what my grandmother felt. I have tasted her words and stood waiting by her side for the Japanese dictator’s inevitable arrival.”

Sun Moon motioned for the Rower to stand, and she washed the girl’s entire body, like a giant child, skin glistening above the gray-skeined water in which she stood. “And the choices my own mother had to make are things about which I can’t even speak. If I am alone in this world, stripped of my siblings, it is because of the decisions she had to make.”

There were freckles along the Girl Rower’s arms and down her back. Sun Moon had never seen freckles before. Even just a month before, she would have viewed them as flaws marring otherwise even skin. But now the freckles suggested there were other kinds of beauty in the world than simply striving to be made from Pyongyang porcelain. “Perhaps adversity has skipped my generation,” Sun Moon told her. “Maybe it’s true that I don’t know real suffering, that I haven’t stuck my head in mechanical gears or rowed around the world in the dark. Maybe I am untouched by loneliness and sorrow.”

They were silent as Sun Moon helped the Rower step from the tub, and they didn’t speak as she toweled the American’s body. The choson-ot , utterly golden, was exquisite. Sun Moon pinched the fabric here and there until the dress fell perfectly. Finally, Sun Moon began weaving the Rower’s hair into a single braid. “I do know that my turn at suffering will come,” she said. “Everyone’s does. Mine might be just around the corner. I wonder of what you must daily endure in America, having no government to protect you, no one to tell you what to do. Is it true you’re given no ration card, that you must find food for yourself? Is it true that you labor for no higher purpose than paper money? What is California, this place you come from? I have never seen a picture. What plays over the American loudspeakers, when is your curfew, what is taught at your child-rearing collectives? Where does a woman go with her children on Sunday afternoons, and if a woman loses her husband, how does she know the government will assign her a good replacement? With whom would she curry favor to ensure her children got the best Youth Troop leader?”

Here, Sun Moon realized she had gripped the Girl Rower’s wrists, and her questions had become demands, leveled into the Rower’s wide eyes. “How does a society without a fatherly leader work?” Sun Moon implored. “How can a citizen know what is best without a benevolent hand to shepherd her? Isn’t that endurance, learning how to navigate such a realm alone—isn’t that survival?”

The Girl Rower took her hands back and gestured toward some unknown distance. Sun Moon had a feeling this woman was asking about the end of the story, of what became of the Emperor’s comfort woman, his private kisaeng . “She waited until she was older, my grandmother,” Sun Moon said. “She waited until she was back in her village and all her children had been grown and married away, and that’s when she unsheathed her long-hidden knife and took her honor back.”