The Orphan Master's Son (36 page)

He tried to imagine the woman he was about to behold. He understood that the real Sun Moon couldn't be as beautiful as the one on the screen, the way her skin glowed, the radiance of her smile. And the particular way her desires took up residence about the eyes—it must be a product of projection, of some cinematic effect. He wanted to be intimate with her, to harbor no secrets, to have nothing between them. Seeing her projected on the wall of the infirmary, that's how it had felt, that there was no snow or cold between them, that she was right there with him, a woman
who'd given everything, who'd abandoned her freedom and entered Prison 33 to save him. It had been a mistake to wait until the last moment to tell the Second Mate's wife about the replacement husbands that awaited her, Ga could see that now. So there was no way he was going to let a secret spoil things with Sun Moon. That was the great thing about their relationship: a new beginning, a chance to unburden all. What the Captain had said of getting his wife back would be true of him and Sun Moon as well: they'd be strangers for a while, there would be a period of discovery, but love, love would eventually return.

The women of the Koryo Hotel toweled him, dressed him. Finally, he took a number 7 haircut—the one they called Speed Battle, the Commander's signature style.

In the late afternoon, the Mercedes climbed the final, winding road that led to the peak of Mount Taesong. They passed the botanical gardens, the national seed bank, and the hothouses that contained the breeding stocks of kimilsungia and kimjongilia. They passed the Pyongyang Central Zoo, closed at this hour. On the seat beside him were some of Commander Ga's possessions. There was a bottle of cologne, and he quickly applied some.
This is the smell of me
, he thought. He picked up Commander Ga's pistol.
This is my pistol
, he thought. He pulled back the slide enough to see a bullet peek from the breech.
I am the kind of man who keeps one in the chamber
.

Finally, they passed a cemetery whose bronze-busted tombstones glowed orange in the light. This was the Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery, whose 114 occupants, all of whom had died before they could engender sons, gave names to every orphan in the nation. They reached the peak and here were three houses built for the ministers of Mass Mobilization, Prison Mines, and Procurement.

The driver came to a stop before the middle house, and Commander Ga walked through the gate himself, its low slats woven with cucumber vines and the blossoms of a magnificent melon. Nearing Sun Moon's door, he felt his chest tighten with pain, the pain of the Captain pressing him with inky needles, of the saltwater he splashed on the raw tattoo, of the Second Mate's wife weeping the infection out with a steaming towel. At the door, he took that breath, and knocked.

Almost immediately, Sun Moon answered. She wore a loose house robe, under which her breasts swung free. He'd seen such a house robe
only once before, in Texas, hanging in the bath of his guest room. That robe was white and fluffy, while Sun Moon's was matted and stained with old sauces. She was without makeup, and her hair was down, falling across her shoulders. Her face was filled with excitement and possibility and, suddenly, he felt the terrible violence of this day leave him. Gone was the combat he'd faced at the hands of her husband. Gone was the look of doom on the Warden's face. Wiped away were the multitudes Mongnan had captured on film. This house was a good house, white paint, red trim. It was the opposite of the Canning Master's house—nothing bad had happened here, he could tell.

“I'm home,” he said to her.

She looked past him, peering around the yard, the road.

“Do you have a package for me?” she asked. “Did the studio send you?”

But here she paused, taking in all the inconsistencies—the lean stranger in her husband's uniform, the man wearing his cologne and riding in his car.

“Who are you supposed to be?” she asked.

“I'm Commander Ga,” he said. “And I'm finally home.”

“You're telling me you've brought no script, nothing?” she asked. “You mean the studio dressed you up like this and sent you all the way up here, and you don't have a script for me? You tell Dak-Ho I said that's cold, even for him. He's crossed a line.”

“I don't know who Dak-Ho is,” he said and marveled at the evenness of her skin, at the way her dark eyes locked on him. “You're even more beautiful than I imagined.”

She undid the belt of her house robe, then recinched it tighter.

Then she lifted her hands to the heavens. “Why do we live on this godforsaken hill?” she asked the sky. “Why am I up here, when everything that matters is down there?” She pointed to Pyongyang far below, this time of day just a haze of buildings lining the silver Y of the Taedong River. She approached him and looked up into his eyes. “Why can't we live by Mansu Park? I could take an express bus to the studio from there. How can you pretend not to know who Dak-Ho is? Everybody knows him. Has he sent you here to mock me? Are they all down there laughing at me?”

“I can tell you've been hurting for a long time,” he said. “But that's all over now. Your husband's home.”

“You're the worst actor in the world,” she said. “They're all down there
at a casting party, aren't they? They're drunk and laughing and casting a new female lead, and they decided to send the worst actor in the world up the hill to mock me.”

She fell down to the grass and placed the back of her hand against her forehead. “Go on, get out of here. You've had your fun. Go tell Dak-Ho how the old actress wept.” She tried to wipe her eyes. Then, from her house robe, she produced a pack of cigarettes. She brazenly lit one—it made her look mannish and seductive. “Not a single script, an entire year without a script.”

She needed him. It was completely clear how much she needed him.

She noticed that the front door was cracked and that her children were peeking out. She hooked loose a slipper and kicked it toward the door, which was quickly pulled shut.

“I don't know anything about the movie business,” he said. “But I've brought you a movie, as a gift. It's
Casablanca
, and it's supposed to be the best.”

She reached up and took the DVD case, dirty and battered, from his hands. She quickly glanced at it. “That one's black-and-white,” she said, then threw it across the yard. “Plus I don't watch movies—they'd only corrupt the purity of my acting.” On her back in the grass, she smoked contemplatively. “You really don't have anything to do with the studio?” she asked.

He shook his head no. She was so vulnerable before him, so pure—how did she stay so in this harsh world?

“So what are you, one of my husband's new flunkies? Sent to check on me while he goes on a secret mission? Oh, I know about his secret missions—he alone is brave enough to infiltrate a whorehouse in Minpo, only the great Commander Ga can survive a week in a Vladivostok card den.”

He crouched beside her. “Oh, no. You judge him too harshly. He's changed. Sure, he's a man who's made some mistakes, he's sorry for those, but all that matters now is you. He adores you, I'm sure of it. He's completely devoted to you.”

“Tell him I can't take much more of this. Please pass that along for me.”

“I'm him now,” he said. “So you can tell him yourself.”

She took a deep breath and shook her head. “So you want to be Commander Ga, huh?” she asked. “Do you know what he'd do to you if he
heard you assume his name? His taekwondo ‘tests' are for real, you know. They've made an enemy of everyone in this town. That's why I can't get a role anymore. Just make up with the Dear Leader, won't you? Can't you just bow to him at the opera? Will you give my husband that request from me? That's all it would take, a single gesture, in front of everybody, and the Dear Leader would forgive all.”

He reached to wipe her cheek, but she pulled away.

“These tears in my eyes,” she said. “Do you see them? Can you tell my husband of these tears?” she asked. “Don't go on any more missions, please. Tell him not to send another flunky to babysit me.”

“He already knows,” he said. “And he's sorry. Will you do something for him, a favor? It would mean so much to him.”

Lying on the grass, she turned to her side, her breasts lolling under the house robe, snot running freely from her nose. “Go away,” she said.

“I'm afraid I can't do that,” he said. “I told you it's been a long journey, and I've only just arrived. The favor is a small one, really, it's nothing to a great actress like yourself. You know that part from
A True Daughter of the Country
, where, to find your sister, you must cross the Inchon Strait, still aflame with the sinking battleship
Koryo
, and when you wade in, you're just a fishing-village girl from Cheju, but after swimming through the corpses of patriots in blood-red waters, you emerge a different person, now you are a woman soldier, a half-burned flag in your hands, and the line you say, you know it, will you say it to me now?”

She didn't say the words, but he thought he could see them pass through her eyes—
There is a greater love
,
one that from the lowest places calls us high
. Yes, they were there in her eyes, that's the sign of a true actress—being able to speak with just her expressions.

“Can you sense how right everything feels?” he asked her. “How everything's going to be different? When I was in prison—”

“Prison?” she asked. She sat up straight. “How exactly do you know my husband?”

“Your husband attacked me this morning,” he said. “We were in a tunnel, in Prison 33, and I killed him.”

She cocked her head. “What?”

“I mean, I believe I killed him. It was dark, so I can't be sure, but my hands, they know what to do.”

“Is this one of my husband's tests?” she asked. “If so, it's his sickest one
yet. Are you supposed to report back how I responded to that news, whether I danced for joy or hanged myself in grief? I can't believe he's stooped this low. He's a child, really, a scared little boy. Only someone like that would loyalty-test an old woman in the park. Only Commander Ga would give his own son a masculinity test. And by the way, his sidekicks eventually get tested, too, and when they fail, you don't see them anymore.”

“Your husband won't be testing anyone ever again,” he said. “You're all that matters in his life right now. Over time, you'll come to understand that.”

“Stop it,” she said. “This isn't funny anymore. It's time for you to leave.”

He looked up to the doorway, and standing there silent were the children—a girl perhaps eleven, a boy a little younger. They held the collar of a dog with thick shoulders and a shiny coat. “Brando,” Commander Ga called, and the dog broke free. The Catahoula bounded to him, tail wagging. It kept leaping high to lick his face, then flattening low to nip his heels.

“You got him,” he said to her. “I can't believe you got him.”

“Got him?” she asked. Her voice was suddenly serious. “How do you know its name?” she asked. “We've kept the dog a secret so he won't be taken by the authorities.”

“How do I know his name? I named him,” he said. “Right before I sent him to you last year. ‘Brando' is the word that Texans use to say something is yours forever.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, and all the theatrics were gone. “Just who exactly are you?”

“I'm the good husband. I'm the one who's going to make everything up to you.”

There was a look on her face that Ga recognized, and it was not a happy one. It expressed an understanding that everything would be different now, that the person you'd been and the life you'd been living were over. It was a tough knowledge to suddenly gain, but it got better with tomorrows. And it would be easier since she'd probably worn that look once before, when the Dear Leader gave her, as a prize, to the winner of the Golden Belt, the man who'd beat Kimura.

In his dark room in Division 42, the smoldering cigarette in Commander Ga's lips was nearly finished. It had been a long day, and the memory
of Sun Moon had saved him yet again. But it was time to put her away in his mind—she'd always be there when he needed her. He smiled a last time at the thought of her, causing the cigarette to fall from his mouth into the well where his neck curved into collarbone. There it burned slowly against his skin, a tiny red glow in an otherwise black room.

Pain, what was pain?

CITIZENS
,
we bring good news! In your kitchens, in your offices, on your factory floors—wherever you hear this broadcast, turn up the volume! The first success we have to report is that our Grass into Meat Campaign is a complete triumph. Still, much more soil needs to be hauled to the rooftops, so all housing-block managers are instructed to schedule extra motivation meetings.

Also, this month's recipe contest is upon us, citizens. The winning recipe will be painted on the front wall of the central bus terminal for all to copy down. The winner will be the citizen who submits the best recipe for: Celery Root Noodles!

Now for world news. Naked aggression continues from America—currently, two nuclear attack groups are parked in the East Sea, while in the U.S. Mainland, homeless citizens lie urine-soaked in the streets. And in poor South Korea, our soiled little sister, there is more flooding and hunger. Don't worry, help is on the way—Dear Leader Kim Jong Il has ordered that sandbags and food shipments be sent south right away.

Finally, the first installment of this year's Best North Korean Story begins today. Close your eyes and picture for a moment our national actress Sun Moon. Banish from your minds the foolish stories and gossip that have lately swirled our city about her. Picture her the way she will live forever in our national consciousness. Remember her famous “With Fever” scene in
Woman of a Nation
, where, following her rape at the hands of the Japanese, the sweat ran from her brow to meet, with moonlight, the tears upon her cheek, only to tumble down to her patriotic breasts? How can one tear, tracing its brief journey, start as a drop of ruin, trail into a drip of resolution, and, finally, splash with national fervor? Certainly, citizens, fresh in your minds is the final image of
Motherless Fatherland
, in which Sun Moon, clad only in bloodied gauze, emerges from the battlefield
having saved the national flag, while behind her, the American Army is in ruins, foundering and aflame.