The Orphan Master's Son (67 page)

My father inhaled deeply. “I can just see them, plain as day, the thick juice they're in, the way they glow in the light.”

“It's been so long since I've tasted a peach,” my mother said. “We used to get a coupon for a can every month in our ration book.”

My father said, “Oh, that was years ago.”

“I suppose you're right,” my mother answered. “I'm just saying that we used to love peaches, and then one day you couldn't get them anymore.”

“Well, allow me, then,” I told them. “Open.”

Like children, they opened their mouths. In anticipation, my father closed his milky eyes.

I stirred the peaches in their can, then selected a slice. Passing the bottom of the spoon across the edge of the can, I caught the dripping syrup. Then I reached and slipped the slice into my mother's mouth.

“Mmm,” she said.

I fed my father next.

“That, son,” he said, “was a peach.”

There was silence, except for the blaring loudspeaker, as they savored the moment.

In unison, they said, “Thank you, Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.”

“Yes,” I said. “You have him to thank.”

I stirred the can again, hunted down the next slice.

“I have a new friend,” I said.

“A friend from work?” my father asked.

“Yes, a friend from work,” I said. “The two of us have become quite intimate. He's given me hope that love is out there for me. He's a man who has true love. I've studied his case very closely, and I think the secret to love is sacrifice. He himself has made the ultimate sacrifice for the woman he loves.”

“He gave his life for her?” my father asked.

“Actually, he took her life,” I told him and popped a peach in his mouth.

There was a quake in my mother's voice. “We're happy for you,” she said. “As the Dear Leader says,
Love makes the world go 'round
. So don't hesitate. Go find that true love. Don't worry about us. We'll be fine. We can take care of ourselves.”

I spooned a slice into her mouth. It caught her by surprise and she coughed.

“Perhaps, from time to time,” I said, “you have seen me writing in my journal. It's actually not a journal—it's a personal biography. As you know, that's what I do for a living, write people's biographies, which we keep in what you might call a private library. A guy I work with, I'll call him Sarge, says the problem with my biographies is that no one ever reads them. This brings me to my new friend, who told me that the only people in the world who would want to read his biography were gone.”

I dished out new slices with ample syrup.

“People,”
my father said, “meaning the lady that your friend loves.”

“Yes,” I said.

“The lady that your friend killed,” Mother said.

“And her kids,” I said. “There is a tragic aspect to the story, there's no denying it.”

I nodded my head at the truth of that. It would have made a good subtitle for his biography—
Commander Ga: A Tragedy
. Or whatever his name was.

The peaches were half gone. I stirred them in their can, selecting a new slice.

“Save some for yourself,” my father said.

“Yes, that's enough,” my mother said. “I haven't tasted sweet in so long, my stomach cannot handle it.”

I shook my head no. “This is a rare can of peaches,” I said. “I was going to keep them for myself, but taking the easy way, that's not the answer to life's problems.”

My mother's lip started to quiver. She covered it with her hand.

“But back to my problem,” I said. “My biography, and the difficulty I've had writing it. This biographer's block I've been suffering from—I see it so clearly now—came from the fact that deep down, I knew no one wanted to hear my story. Then my friend, he had the insight that his tattoo wasn't public, but personal. Though it was there for the world to see, it was truly for no one but himself. Losing that, he lost everything, really.”

“How can a person lose a tattoo?” my father asked.

“Unfortunately, it's easier than you'd think,” I told them. “It got me thinking, though, and I realized I wasn't composing for posterity or the Dear Leader or for the good of the citizenry. No, the people who needed to hear my story were the people I loved, the people right in front of me who'd started to think of me as a stranger, who were scared of me because they no longer knew the real me.”

“But your friend, he killed the people he loved, right?”

“It's unfortunate, I know,” I said. “There's no forgiving him for it, he hasn't even asked. But let me get started with my biography. I was born in Pyongyang,” I began, “to parents who were factory workers. My mother and father were older, but they were good parents. They survived every worker purge and avoided denunciation and reeducation.”

“But we already know these things,” my father said.

“Shh,” I told him. “You can't talk back to a book. You don't get to rewrite a biography as you're reading it. Now, back to my story.” As they finished the peaches, I relayed to them how normal my childhood was, how I played the accordion and recorder at school, and while in the choir, I sang high alto in performances of
Our Quotas Lift Us Higher
. I memorized all the speeches of Kim Il Sung and got the highest marks in Juche Theory. Then I began with the things they didn't know. “One day a man from the Party came to our school,” I said. “He loyalty-tested all the boys, one at a time, in the maintenance shed. The test itself only lasted a couple of minutes, but it was quite difficult. I suppose that's the point of a test. I'm happy to say I passed the test, all of us did, but none of us ever spoke of it.”

It felt very liberating to finally speak of this, a topic I could never commit to paper. I knew suddenly that I would share everything with them,
that we'd be closer than ever—I'd tell them of the humiliations I suffered in mandatory military service, of my one sexual encounter with a woman, of the cruel hazing I'd received as an intern of the Pubyok.

“I don't mean to dwell on the subject of this loyalty test, but it changed how I saw things. Behind a chest of medals might be a hero or a man with an eager index finger. I became a suspicious boy who knew there was always something more beneath the surface, if you were willing to probe. It perhaps sent me down my career path, a trajectory that has confirmed that there is no such thing as the right-minded, self-sacrificing citizen the government tells us we all are. I'm not complaining, mind you, merely explaining. I didn't have it half as rough as some. I didn't grow up in an orphanage like my friend Commander Ga.”

“Commander Ga?” my father asked. “Is that your new friend?”

I nodded.

“Answer me,” my father said. “Is Commander Ga your new friend?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But you can't trust Commander Ga,” my mother said. “He's a coward and a criminal.”

“Yes,” my father added. “He's an imposter.”

“You don't know Commander Ga,” I told them. “Have you been reading my files?”

“We don't need to read any files,” my father said. “We have it on the highest authority. Commander Ga's an enemy of the state.”

“Not to mention his weaselly friend Comrade Buc,” my mother added.

“Don't even say that name,” my father cautioned.

“How do you know all this?” I asked. “Tell me about this authority.”

They both pointed toward the loudspeaker.

“Every day they tell some of his story,” my mother said. “Of him and Sun Moon.”

“Yes,” my father said. “Yesterday was episode five. In it, Commander Ga drives to the Opera House with Sun Moon, but it's not really Commander Ga, you see—”

“Stop it,” I said. “That's impossible. I've made very little progress on his biography. It doesn't even have an ending.”

“Listen for yourself,” my mother said. “The loudspeaker doesn't lie. The next installment is this afternoon.”

I dragged a chair to the kitchen, where I used it to reach the loudspeaker.
Even after I tore it from the wall, it was connected to a cable that kept it squawking. Only with a meat knife was I able to shut it up.

“What's happening?” my mother asked. “What are you doing?”

My father was hysterical.

“What if the Americans sneak-attack?” he asked. “How will we receive the warning?”

“You won't have to worry about sneak attacks anymore,” I told them.

My father moved to protest, but a stream of saliva ran from his mouth. He reached for his mouth and felt his lips, as if they had gone numb. And one of my mother's hands was showing a tremor. She stilled it with her other hand. The botulism toxin was beginning to bloom inside them. The time for suspicions and arguments was over.

I remembered that horrible picture of Comrade Buc's family, crumpled beneath the table. I was resolved that my parents wouldn't suffer such indignities. I gave them each a tall glass of water and placed them on their cots to await the fall of night. All afternoon and into the twilight, I gave them the gift of my story, every bit of it, and I left nothing out. I stared out the window as I spoke, and I concluded only when they'd begun to writhe on their cots. I couldn't act until darkness arrived, and when it finally did, the city of Pyongyang was like that black cricket in the fairy tale—it was everywhere and nowhere, its chirp annoying only those who ignored the final call to slumber. The moon shimmered off the river, and after the eagle owls had struck, you could hear nothing of the sheep and goats but the clicking of their teeth as they chewed grass in the dark. When darkness was total, and my parents had lost their faculties, I kissed them good-bye, for I could not bear to witness the inevitable. A sure sign of botulism is a loss of vision, so I only hoped they'd never know what had struck them. I looked around the room a last time, at our family photograph, my father's harmonica, their wedding rings. But I left it all. I could take nothing where I was going.

There was no way Commander Ga could attempt the arduous journey ahead with an open wound. At the night market, I bartered my Pubyok badge for some iodine and a large compress. Crossing the city in the dark, headed for Division 42, I felt the stillness of the big machine at rest. There was no thrum of electricity in the wires overhead or gurgle of water in the
pipes. Pyongyang was coiling in the dark to pounce upon the next day. And how I loved the capital springing to life, morning wood smoke in the air, the smell of frying radishes, the hot burn of trolley brakes. I was a city boy. I would miss the metropolis, its hubbub and vitality. If only there were a place here for a person who gathered human stories and wrote them down. But Pyongyang is already filled with obituary writers. And I can't stand propaganda. You'd think a person would get used to cruel fates.

When I appeared in Commander Ga's room, he asked, “Is it morning already?”

“Not yet,” I told him. “There's still time.”

I tried to minister to Commander Ga as best I could. The iodine turned my fingers red, making it look as if I were the one who'd brutalized the man before me. But when I placed the bandage on Commander Ga, the wound disappeared. I used the whole roll of tape to secure it.

“I'm getting out of here,” I told him. “Would you like me to bring you along?”

He nodded.

“Do you care where you're going, or about the obstacles ahead?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Are you ready? Do you need to do anything to prepare?”

“No,” he told me. “I'm ready.”

I helped him up, then sailor-carried him across Division 42 to an interrogation bay, where I rolled him into a baby-blue chair.

“This is where you gave me an aspirin when I first came,” he said. “It seems like so long ago.”

“It won't be a bad journey,” I told him. “On the other side, there won't be Pubyok or cattle prods or branding irons. Hopefully, you'll get sent to a rural farm collective. Not an easy life, but you can start a new family and serve your nation in the true spirit of communism—through labor and devotion.”

“I had my life,” Commander Ga said. “I'll pass on the rest.”

I grabbed two sedatives. When Commander Ga declined one, I took them both.

From the supply cabinet, I flipped through the diapers until I found a medium.

“Would you like one?” I asked. “We keep some on hand for when VIPs come through. It can save some embarrassment. I have a large right here.”

“No thanks,” he said.

I dropped my trousers and secured mine, using the adhesive tabs.

“You know, I respect you,” I said. “You were the only guy who came through that never talked. You were smart—if you'd told us where the actress was, they'd have killed you right away.”