The Orphan Master's Son (65 page)

“The Dear Leader knows my basic story, the facts of it. He knows my grandmother was taken to Japan to serve as a comfort woman. But he could never understand what she went through, why she came home having learned only songs of despair. Because she couldn't speak of those years, it was important that her daughters know these songs. And she had to convey them without the lyrics—after the war, just knowing Japanese could get you killed. She taught the musical notes, though, and how to transfer to the notes the feeling of the missing words. That's what Japan had taught her to do—to make the pluck of a string contain a missing thing, to store in a struck chord what had been swallowed by war. The Dear Leader doesn't understand that the skill he prizes me for is this.

“He doesn't know that when he first heard me singing, it was to my mother, locked in another train car, a song to keep her from despairing. There were hundreds of us on a relocation train to a redeemability camp, all with freshly bleeding ears. This was after my older sister was siphoned to Pyongyang for her beauty. This was after we'd agreed as a family that my father would try to smuggle out my little sister. This was after the attempt failed, after we'd lost her, after my father had been labeled a defector and we'd become the family of a defector, my mother and I. It was a long journey, the train moving so slowly that crows landed on the roof of the boxcar, where they paced back and forth between the vent holes to stare down at us like we were crickets they couldn't quite get. My mother was in
another boxcar. Talking wasn't allowed, but singing was. I would sing ‘Arirang' to let her know I was okay. She would return the song to say she was still with me.

“Our train pulled onto a side track to let another pass. It turned out to be the Dear Leader's bulletproof train, which stopped so the two conductors could discuss the tracks ahead. Rumors spread through the boxcars, a hushed panic at what was about to befall us. People's voices rose, speculating on what was happening to those in other boxcars, whether people would be singled out, so I sang, loud as I could, hoping my mother might hear me above the sounds of anguish.

“Suddenly, the door to our train car opened, and the guards beat a man to his knees. When they told him to bow down, we all followed suit. And there, backlit by the bright light, appeared the Dear Leader.

“
Did I hear a songbird?
he asked.
Tell me
,
who among us is this forlorn bird?

“No one spoke.

“
Who has taken our national melody and adorned it with such emotion?
the Dear Leader asked us, pacing through our kneeling ranks.
What person can so distill the human heart and pour it into the vessel of patriotic zeal? Please
,
someone
,
finish the song. How can it exist without an ending?

“From my knees, tears falling, I started to sing:

“The Dear Leader closed his eyes and smiled. I didn't know which was worse—to displease him or to please him. All I knew was that my mother would not survive without me.

“When I was finished, the Dear Leader seemed not to hear the faint song answering back.

“I was taken to his personal train car, where the windows were so thick that the light through them was green and warped. Here, he asked me to recite lines from a story he had typed out. It was called ‘Tyrants Asunder.' How could he fail to smell the urine on me, or the stink of hunger that creeps up your throat and infects your breath? I spoke the words, though they had no meaning for me in that state. I could barely finish a sentence without succumbing.

“Then the Dear Leader called out
Bravo
and showered me with applause.
Tell me
, he said.
Tell me you will memorize my lines
,
say you will accept the role
.

“How could he know that I didn't really understand what a movie was, that I'd only heard broadcasts of revolutionary operas? How could I know that on the Dear Leader's train there were other cars whose construction was for propositions much less noble than auditions?

“Here, the Dear Leader gestured large, as if we were now in a theater.
Of course
,
such is the subtlety of this art form
, he added,
that my lines will become yours. The people will see you fill the screen and remember only the emotion of your voice bringing the words to life
.

“The train beneath me started moving.

“
Please!
I called out, it was almost a scream.
My mother must be safe
.

“
Certainly
, he said.
I'll have someone check on her
.

“I don't know what came over me. I raised my eyes to his.
Safe forever
, I said.

“He smiled with the surprise of new appreciation.
Safe
,
forever
, he agreed.

“I saw that he responded to conditions. He spoke the language of rules.

“
Then I'll do it
, I told him.
I'll perform your story
.

“This is the moment I was ‘discovered.' How fondly the Dear Leader recalls it, as if through his keen insight and wisdom, I was saved from some destructive natural force, such as a landslide. It was a story he loved to recount over the years, when we were alone in his opera box or sailing through the sky on his personal gondola, this story of fortune bringing our two trains together. He never meant it as a threat to me, to remind me of how far I had to fall. Rather, it was a reminder of the forever of us.

“Through the green of the window, I watched the train bearing my mother recede.

“
I knew you'd agree
, the Dear Leader said.
I had a feeling. I'll cancel the other actress right away. In the meantime
,
let's get you some proper clothes. And that ear of yours could use some attention.
”

In the dark, Commander Ga said the word “cancel.”

“Cancel,” Sun Moon repeated. “How many times have I thought of that other girl? How could the Dear Leader know that my arms still go cold for her?”

“What happened to her?” Ga asked.

“You know what happened to her,” she said.

They were quiet a moment.

“There is another thing the Dear Leader doesn't know about me,” she said. “But it's something he'll soon find out.”

“What's that?”

“I'm going to re-create one of my grandmother's songs. In America, I will discover the missing words, and this song, it will be about him. It will contain everything of this place that I could never utter, every last bit of it, and I'm going to sing it on the state channel of America's central broadcasting division and everyone in the world will know the truth of him.”

“The rest of the world knows the truth of him,” he said.

“No, they don't,” she said. “They won't know it until they hear it in my voice. It's a song I thought I'd never get to sing.” Sun Moon struck a match. In the flash of it, she said, “And then you came along. Do you see that the Dear Leader has no idea that I'm the purest actress, that it's not just when I speak his lines, but every single moment? It is also the actress that I have shown you. But that's not who I am. Though I must act all the time—inside I'm simply a woman.”

He blew out the match and took her arm, rolling her to him. It was the arm he'd grabbed before. This time she didn't pull back. His face was near hers and he could feel her breath as it came.

She reached out and gripped his shirt.

“Show it to me,” she said.

“But it's dark. You won't be able to see it.”

“I want to feel it,” she told him.

He pulled his shirt over his head and leaned to her, so that his tattoo was at her fingertips.

She traced his muscles, felt the flare of his ribs.

“Maybe I should get one,” she said.

“One what, a tattoo?” he asked. “What would you get a tattoo of?”

“Who do you suggest?”

“It depends. Where on your body would this tattoo be inked?”

She pulled the shift over her head and took his hand, placing it with both of hers over her heart. “What do you think of here?”

He felt the delicacy of her skin, the suggestion of her breasts. Most of all, he felt against his palm the heat of her blood and how her heart pumped it through her body, down her arms and into the hands that clasped the back of his so that the sensation was of being engulfed by her.

“This is an easy one,” he said. “The tattoo to place over your heart is the image of what's inside your heart.”

Leaning close, he kissed her. It was long and singular and his eyes closed with the parting of their lips. After, she was silent, and he became afraid, not knowing what she was thinking.

“Sun Moon, are you there?”

“I'm here,” she said. “A song just ran through my head.”

“A good one or a bad one?”

“There's only one kind.”

“Is it true, have you really never sung for pleasure?”

“What song would you have me sing?” she asked him. “One about spilling blood, celebrating martyrdom, glorifying lies?”

“Is there no song at all? What about a love song?”

“Name one that hasn't been twisted into being about our love for the Dear Leader.”

In the dark, he let his hand roam over her, the hollow above her collarbone, that taut cord in her neck, the fine point of her shoulder.

“There's one song I know,” he told her.

“How does it go?”

“I only know the opening. I heard it in America.”

“Tell me.”

“She's the yellow rose of Texas,” he said.

“
She's the yellow rose of Texas
,” she sang.

The English words were thick in her mouth, but the sound, her voice, it was lovely. He delicately touched her lips so he could feel her sing the words.

“I'm going for to see.”

“
I'm going for to see.
”

“When I finally find her, I'll have her marry me.”

“What do the words mean?”

“They're about a woman whose beauty is like a rare flower. There is a man who has a great love for her, a love he's been saving up for his entire life, and it doesn't matter that he must make a great journey to her, and it doesn't matter if their time together is brief, that afterward he might lose her, for she is the flower of his heart and nothing will keep him from her.”

“The man in the song,” she said. “Is he you?”

“You know I'm him.”

“I'm not the woman in the song,” she said. “I'm not an actress or a singer or a flower. I'm just a woman. Do you want to know this woman? Do you want to be the only man in the world who knows the real Sun Moon?”

“You know I do.”

Here she raised her body some to allow him to pull free her last garment.

“Do you know what happens to men who fall in love with me?” she asked.

Ga took a moment to think about it.

“They get locked in your tunnel and fed nothing but broth for two weeks?”

Playfully, she said, “No.”

“Hmm,” Ga said. “Your neighbor tries to give them botulism and then they get punched in the nose by the Dear Leader's driver?”

“No.”

“Okay, I give up. What happens to men who fall for you?”

She shimmied her body so that her hips were under his.

“They fall forever,” she said.

AFTER
the loss of Jujack and Q-Kee's defection to the Pubyok, I stayed away from Division 42. I know I roamed the city, but for how long, a week? And where did I go? Did I wander the People's Footpath, watching birds hopelessly hover above the snares that held their feet? Did I inhabit the Kumsusan mausoleum, where I endlessly stared into the chrome-and-glass coffin of Kim Il Sung, his body glowing red under preservation lamps? Or did I study the Urchin Master as he used his truck, disguised as an ice-cream van, to rid Pyongyang's alleys of beggar boys? Did I at any time recall recruiting Jujack at Kim Il Sung University's career day, where I wore a suit and a tie as I showed the boy our color brochures and explained to him that interrogation wasn't about violence anymore, that it was about the highest order of intellectual gamesmanship, where the tools were creative thinking and the stakes were national security? Perhaps I sat in Mansu Park watching virgins soak their uniforms with sweat as they chopped firewood. Wouldn't I have, here, pondered the notion that I was alone, that my team was gone, that my interns were gone, that my successes were gone, that my chances at love and friendship and family seemed all but gone? Maybe my mind was empty as I stood in line for buses I didn't intend to take, and maybe I thought nothing as I was rounded up for a sandbag brigade. Or perhaps I was reclined the whole time on the blue vinyl of an autopilot chair, imagining such things? And what was wrong with my memory? How come I didn't recollect how I spent these painful days, and why was I okay with the fact that I couldn't recall them? I preferred it this way, didn't I? Compared to forgetting, did living really stand a chance?