The Orphan Master's Son (60 page)

So we went our ways, individually probing the mud for any sign of an actress below.

I started turning shovels of mud, one after the other. Each time I did I could visualize success, each time I felt discovery was at hand and I'd be able to leverage the actress to get Commander Ga's story, and then his biography would be mine, with Ga's real name in gold on the spine, and then Sarge's office would become mine. As the rain fell and fell, I kept coming up with pithy lines I'd say as Sarge placed his meager possessions in an old food-aid box and removed them from my new office.

Finally, I felt, here was an event in my life worthy of inclusion in my own biography.

The crow's drivers watched us from behind their windshield. It grew dark enough to see the red glow of their cigarettes. As my arms weakened, I switched from my right hand to my left. Every bone I struck turned out to be a tree root. If only a piece of silk would float up, or a shoe, perhaps. The eels kept striking at things in the muddy water, and thinking they were onto something, I began digging wherever they slashed their teeth and battled over unseen prey. Every clump of mud brought my spirits lower, and soon the day seemed less like the life I wanted and more like the one I had—slogging, for nothing, the failures mounting. It was like my whole university experience—when I first arrived, I wondered which of these thousands of women was for me, yet one by one, over time, I realized the answer was none. No, today certainly wasn't a chapter to include in my biography.

In the dark, the only thing I could hear was Q-Kee grunting each time she brought her weight to bear on the shovel. Finally I shouted into the darkness, “Let's pack it in.”

When Q-Kee and I made it back to the crow, we discovered Jujack already inside.

We were soaked and shivering, our hands blistered from working wet handles, the soles of our feet sore from spading the heads of shovels a thousand times into the mud.

Q-Kee stared at Jujack the entire drive back to Division 42.

“You knew she wasn't there, didn't you?” Q-Kee kept saying to him. “You knew something, and you didn't tell us.”

Right away, when we'd descended the stairs to Division 42, Q-Kee marched up to Sarge.

“Jujack's holding out on us,” she said. “He knows something about this Commander Ga case he's not telling us.”

A grave look crossed Sarge's face. He studied Q-Kee. Then he studied Jujack.

“That's a big accusation,” Sarge said to her. “You have any proof?”

Q-Kee pointed to her heart. “I can feel it,” she said.

Sarge considered this, then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Let's get the truth out of him.”

A couple of Pubyok moved to grab Jujack.

“Whoa,” I said, stepping in. “Let's slow down. A ‘feeling' isn't proof.”

I put my hand on Jujack's shoulder. “Tell the truth, son,” I said. “Just say what you know, and I'll stand by you.”

Jujack looked at our feet. “I don't know anything, I swear.”

We all turned to Q-Kee. “Don't take my word for it,” she said. “Look in his eyes. It's right there for everyone to see.”

Sarge bent and looked in the boy's eyes. For the longest time, Sarge just stared. Then he nodded and said, “Take him away.”

A couple of the Pubyok put their hands on Jujack. A look of terror filled his eyes.

“Wait,” I told them, but there was no stopping the floating wall. Soon Jujack was kicking as they dragged him toward the shop.

Jujack screamed, “I'm the son of a minister.”

“Save it for your biography,” Sarge called after him, laughing.

I said, “There's got to be some kind of mistake.”

Sarge seemed not to hear me. “Fucking disloyalty,” he said, shaking his head. Then he turned to Q-Kee. “Good work,” he said to her. “Get your smock on. You'll be the one to get the truth out of him.”

Jujack was concealing something, and the only other person who knew what that might be was Commander Ga. I raced to the tank where we were holding him. Inside, Ga was shirtless, staring at his chest's reflection in the stainless-steel wall.

Without looking at me, Ga said, “You know, I should have had them ink her image in reverse.”

“There's an emergency,” I said. “It's my intern, Jujack. He's in trouble.”

“But I didn't know then,” Ga said. “I didn't know my destiny.” He turned to me, indicating his tattoo. “You see her as she is. I'm forced to see her backward. I should have had them ink her image in reverse. But back then, I thought it was for others to see. When really, the whole time, she was for me.”

“I need some information,” I told him. “It's really important.”

“Why are you so intent on writing my biography?” Commander Ga asked me. “The only people in the world who'd want to read it are gone now.”

“I just need to know one thing. It's life and death,” I said. “We went to
the military base, on the road to Nampo, but there was no corral or fire pit or ox. I know you made a village there, to make the Americans feel at home. But the actress wasn't there. Nothing was.”

“I told you, you'll never find her.”

“But where was the picnic table, the chuck wagon?”

“We moved those.”

“Where?”

“I can't tell you.”

“Why, why not?”

“Because this mystery is the only reminder to the Dear Leader that what happened to him is real, that something happened that was out of his control.”

“What happened to him?”

“That would be a good question to ask him.”

“But this isn't about the Dear Leader, it's about a kid who made a mistake.”

“It's also the only thing keeping me alive.”

I appealed to his reason. “You're not going to live through any of this,” I said.

He nodded in acknowledgment. “None of us will,” he said. “Do you have a plan? Have you taken steps? You still have time, you can choose your terms.”

“In whatever time you have left,” I said, “you can save this kid, you can atone for whatever heinous thing you did to the actress.” I pulled his phone from my pocket. “The pictures that arrive on this phone,” I asked him. “Are they meant for you?”

“What pictures?”

I turned on the phone, let him see the blue glow of its charged battery.

“I must have that,” he told me.

“Then help me,” I said.

I held the phone in front of his face, showing him the image of the star on the sidewalk.

He took the phone from my hand. “The Americans refused the Dear Leader's hospitality,” he said. “They wouldn't leave their plane, so we moved the Texas village to the airport.”

“Thank you,” I said, and just as I turned, the door flew open.

It was Q-Kee on the threshold, the rest of the Pubyok behind her.
There was gore on her smock. “They moved to the airport,” she declared. “That's where the actress disappeared.”

“Makes sense he'd know what was going on at the airport,” one of the Pubyok said. “His dad is the Minister of Transportation.”

“What about Jujack?” I demanded. “Where is he, what's happened to him?”

Q-Kee didn't answer. She looked to Sarge, who nodded his approval.

Steeling her eyes, Q-Kee turned to face the Pubyok assembled in the doorway. She assumed a taekwondo stance. The men backed up, gave her a moment to compose herself. Then, together, they said
Junbi. Hana
,
dul
,
set
, they counted, and when they shouted
Sijak!
Q-Kee's hand struck the stainless-steel door.

There was a long, shuddering inhale, and then she drew several sharp breaths.

Slowly, she pulled her broken hand to her chest and sheltered it there.

Always the first break is a chopping strike to the outside of the palm. There will be plenty of time to break the knuckles, a couple at a time, later.

Calmly, carefully, Sarge took her arm and extended it, placing her broken hand in his. With great care, he gripped her wrist with one hand then pinched her last two fingers with the other. “You're one of us now,” he said. “You're an intern no more. You no longer have use for a name,” he added as he pulled hard on her fingers, snapping the cracked bones straight for a proper heal.

Sarge nodded his head my way, as a sign of respect. “I was against having a woman in the Division,” he told me. “But you were right—she's the future.”

IT WAS
afternoon, the sun bright and heatless through the windows. Commander Ga sat between the boy and the girl, the three of them watching Sun Moon restlessly wander the house, her hands lifting certain objects that she seemed to consider anew. The dog followed her, sniffing at everything she touched—a hand mirror, a parasol, the kettle in the kitchen. It was the day before the Americans were to arrive, the day before the escape, though the children didn't know that.

“What's wrong with her?” the boy asked. “What's she looking for?”

“She acts like this before she starts a new movie,” the girl said. “Is there a new movie?”

“Something like that,” Ga told them.

Sun Moon came to him. In her hands was a hand-painted
chang-gi
board. The look on her face said,
How can I abandon this?
He'd told her that they could take nothing with them, that any keepsake might signal their plan.

“My father,” she said. “It's all I have of him.”

He shook his head. How could he explain to her that it was better this way, that yes, an object could hold a person, that you could talk to a photograph, that you could kiss a ring, that by breathing into a harmonica, you can give voice to someone far away. But photographs can be lost. In your sleep, a ring can be slipped from your finger by the thief in your barracks. Ga had seen an old man lose the will to live—you could see it go out of him—when a prison guard made him hand over a locket. No, you had to keep the people you loved safer than that. They had to become as fixed to you as a tattoo, which no one could take away.

“Nothing but the clothes on my back?” she asked him.

Then a look of dawning crossed her face. She turned and moved quickly to her wardrobe. Here, she stared into the row of
choson-ots
, each
folded over its own dowel. The setting sun was tinted and rich through the bedroom. In this golden, yolk-colored light, the dresses glowed with life.

“How will I choose?” she asked him. She ran her fingers over them. “I wore this one in
Motherless Fatherland
,” she said. “But I played a politician's wife. I can't leave here as that. I can't be her forever.” Sun Moon studied a simple
choson-ot
whose
jeogori
was white and
chima
was patterned with pale blossoms. “And here's
A True Daughter of the Country
. I can't arrive in America dressed as a peasant girl.” She leafed through all the dresses—
Oppressors Tumble
,
Tyrants Asunder
,
Hold the Banner High!

“All of your dresses have come from your movies?”

She nodded. “Technically, they're the property of Wardrobe. But when I act in them, they become a part of me.”

“You have none of your own?” he asked.

“I don't need my own,” she said. “I've got these.”

“What about the dresses you wore before you were in the movies?”

She stared at him a moment.

“Oh, I cannot decide,” she said and closed her eyes. “I'll leave it for later.”

“No,” he told her. “This one.”

She removed the silver
choson-ot
he'd selected, held it to her figure.

“Glory of Glories,”
she said. “You wish me to be the opera singer?”

“It is a story of love,” he told her.

“And tragedy.”

“And tragedy,” he acknowledged. “Wouldn't the Dear Leader love to see you dressed as an opera star? Wouldn't that be a nod to his other passion?”