The Orphan Master's Son (8 page)

Jun Do leaned over the side and watched one descend, following it down with his parabolic. The water crossing the shark's gills would revive its mind and perceptions. They were above the trench now, almost four kilometers deep, perhaps a half hour of free fall, and through his headphones, the background hiss of the abyss sounded more like the creeping, spooky crackle of pressure death. There was nothing to hear down there—all the subs communicated with ultralow-frequency bursts. Still, he pointed his parabolic toward the waves and slowly panned from bow to stern. The ghost broadcast had to come from somewhere. How could it seem to come from every direction if it didn't come from below? He could feel the eyes of the crew.

“You find something down there?” the Machinist asked.

“Actually,” Jun Do said, “I lost something.”

Come first light, Jun Do slept, while the crew—Pilot, Machinist, First Mate, Second Mate, and Captain alike—spent the day crating the shark fins in layers of salt and ice. The Chinese paid in hard currency, and they were very particular about their fins.

Jun Do woke before dinner, which was breakfast time for him. He had reports to type before darkness fell. There had been a fire on the
Junma
which took the galley, the head, and half of the bunks, leaving only the tin plates, a black mirror, and a toilet that had cracked in two from the heat. But the stove still worked, and it was summer, so everyone sat on the hatches to eat, where it was possible for the men to view a rare sunset. On the horizon was a carrier group from the American fleet, ships so large they didn't look as if they could move, let alone float. It looked like an island chain, so fixed and ancient as to have its own people and language and gods.

On the longline, they'd caught a grouper, whose cheeks they ate raw on the spot, and a turtle, unusual to hook. The turtle would take a day to stew, but the fish they baked whole and pulled off the bone with their fingers. A squid had also snagged on the line, but the Captain wouldn't abide them on board. He had lectured them many times on the squid. He considered the octopus the most intelligent animal in the ocean, the squid the most savage.

They took off their shirts and smoked, even as the sun fell. The
Junma
was pilotless, cantering in the waves, buoys rolling loose on the deck, and even the cables and booms glowed orange in the oven-colored light. The life of a fisherman was good—there were no endless factory quotas to fill, and on a ship there was no loudspeaker blaring government reports all day. There was food. And even though they were leery about having a listening officer on board, it meant that the
Junma
got all the fuel coupons it needed, and if Jun Do directed the ship in a way that lowered the catch, everyone got extra ration cards.

“So, Third Mate,” the Pilot said. “How are our girls?”

That's what they called Jun Do sometimes, the Third Mate, as a joke.

“They're nearing Hokkaido,” Jun Do told them. “At least they were last night. They're rowing thirty kilometers a day.”

“Are they still naked?” the Machinist asked.

“Only the girl who rows in the dark,” said Jun Do.

“To row around the world,” the Second Mate said. “Only a sexy woman would do that. It's so pointless and arrogant. Only sexy Americans would think the world was something to defeat.” The Second Mate couldn't have been more than twenty. On his chest, the tattoo of his wife was new, and it was clear she was a beauty.

“Who said they were sexy?” Jun Do asked, though he pictured them that way, too.

“I know this,” the Second Mate said. “A sexy girl thinks she can do anything. Trust me, I deal with it every day.”

“If your wife is so hot,” the Machinist asked, “how come they didn't sweep her up to be a hostess in Pyongyang?”

“It's easy,” the Second Mate said. “Her father didn't want her ending up as a barmaid or a whore in Pyongyang, so he pulled some strings and got her assigned to the fish factory. A beautiful girl like that, and along comes me.”

“I'll believe it when I see it,” the First Mate said. “There's a reason she doesn't come to see you off.”

“Give it time,” the Second Mate said. “She's still coping. I'll show her the light.”

“Hokkaido,” the Pilot said. “The ice up there is worse in the summer. The shelves break up, currents chum it. It's the ice you don't see, that's what gets you.”

The Captain spoke. Shirtless, you could see all his Russian tattoos. They looked heavy in the sideways light, as if they were what had pulled his skin loose. “The winters up there,” he said, “everything freezes. The piss in your prick and the fish gore in your beard. You try to set a knife down and you can't let go of it. Once, we were on the cutting floor when the ship hit a growler. It shook the whole boat, knocked us down into the guts. From the floor, we watched that ice roll down the side of the ship, knuckling big dents in the hull.”

Jun Do looked at the Captain's chest. The tattoo of his wife was blurred and faded to a watercolor. When the Captain's ship didn't return one day, his wife had been given a replacement husband, and now the Captain was alone. Plus, they'd added the years he was in prison to his service debt to the state, so there'd be no retirement now. “The cold can squeeze a ship,” the Captain suddenly said, “contract the whole thing, the metal doorframes, the locks, trapping you down in the waste tanks, and nobody, nobody's coming with buckets of hot water to get you out.”

The Captain didn't throw a look or anything, but Jun Do wondered if the prison talk was aimed at him, for bringing his listening equipment on deck, for raising the specter that it could all happen again.

When darkness fell and the others went below, Jun Do offered the Second Mate three packs of cigarettes to climb atop the helm and shinny the pole upon which the loudspeaker was mounted.

“I'll do it,” the Second Mate said. “But instead of cigarettes, I want to listen to the rowers.”

The boy was always asking Jun Do what cities like Seoul and Tokyo were like, and he wouldn't believe that Jun Do had never been to Pyongyang. The kid wasn't a fast climber, but he was curious about how the radios worked, and that was half of it. Jun Do had him practice pulling the cotter pin so that the directional antenna could be lifted and pointed toward the water.

Afterward, they sat on the winch house, which was still warm, and smoked. The wind was loud in their ears. It made their cigarettes flare. There wasn't another light on the water, and the horizon line separated the absolute black of the water from the milk dark of the star-choked sky. A couple of satellites traversed above, and to the north, tracers of shooting stars.

“Those girls in the boat,” the Second Mate said. “You think they're married?”

“I don't know,” Jun Do said. “What's it matter?”

“What's it take to row around the world, a couple years? Even if they don't have husbands, what about everyone else, the people they left behind? Don't those girls give a shit about anybody?”

Jun Do picked some tobacco off his tongue and looked at the boy, who had his hands behind his head as he squinted at the stars. It was a good question
—What about the people left behind
?—but an odd one for the Second Mate to ask. “Earlier tonight,” Jun Do said, “you were all for sexy rowers. They do something to piss you off?”

“I'm just wondering what got into them, to just take off and paddle around the world?”

“Wouldn't you, if you could?”

“That's my point, you can't. Who could pull it off—all those waves and ice, in that tiny boat? Someone should have stopped them. Someone should have taken that stupid idea out of their heads.”

The kid sounded new to whatever heavy thinking was going on in his
brain. Jun Do decided to talk him down a bit. “They already made it halfway,” he pointed out. “Plus, they have to be some pretty serious athletes. They're trained for this, it's probably what they love. And when you say boat, you can't be thinking of this bucket. Those are American girls, their craft is hi-tech, with comforts and electronics—you can't be picturing them like Party officials' wives rowing a tin can around.”

The Second Mate wasn't quite listening. “And what if you do make it around the world—how do you wait in line for your dormitory toilet again, knowing that you've been to America? Maybe the millet tasted better in some other country and the loudspeakers weren't so tinny. Suddenly it's
your
tap water that smells not so good—then what do you do?”

Jun Do didn't answer him.

The moon was coming up. Above, they could see a jet rising out of Japan—slowly it began its great veer away from North Korean airspace.

After a while, the Second Mate said, “The sharks will probably get them.” He flicked his cigarette away. “So, what's this all about, pointing the antenna and all? What's down there?”

Jun Do wasn't sure how to answer. “A voice.”

“In the ocean? What is it, what's it say?”

“There are American voices and an English-speaking Russian. Once a Japanese guy. They talk about docking and maneuvering. Stuff like that.”

“No offense, but that sounds like the conspiracy talk the old widows are always trading in my housing block.”

It did sound a little paranoid when the Second Mate said it out loud. But the truth was the idea of conspiracy appealed to Jun Do. That people were in communication, that things had a design, that there was intention, significance, and purpose in what people did—he needed to believe this. Normal people, he understood, had no need for such thinking. The girl who rowed during the day had the horizon of where she came from, and when she turned to look, the horizon of where she was headed. But the girl who rowed in the dark had only the splash and pull of each stroke and the belief that they'd all add up to get her home.

Jun Do looked at his watch. “It's about time for the night rower to broadcast,” he said. “Or maybe it's the daytime girl you want?”

The Second Mate suddenly bristled. “What kind of a question is that? What's it matter which one? I don't want either of them. My wife is the most beautiful woman in her housing block. When I look into her eyes, I
know exactly what she's thinking. I know what she's going to say before she says it. That's the definition of love, ask any old-timer.”

The Second Mate smoked another cigarette and then tossed it in the sea. “Say the Russians and Americans are at the bottom of the ocean—what makes you think they're up to no good?”

Jun Do was thinking about all the popular definitions of love, that it was a pair of bare hands clasping an ember to keep it alive, that it was a pearl that shines forever, even in the belly of the eel that eats the oyster, that love was a bear that feeds you honey from its claws. Jun Do visualized those girls: alternating in labor and solitude, that moment when the oarlocks were handed off.

Jun Do pointed to the water. “The Americans and Russians are down there, and they're up to something, I know it. You ever hear of someone launching a submarine in the name of peace and fucking brotherhood?”

The Second Mate leaned back on the winch house, the sky vast above them. “No,” he said, “I suppose not.”

The Captain came out of the pilothouse and told the Second Mate he had shit buckets to clean. Jun Do offered the Captain a smoke, but when the boy had gone below, the Captain refused it. “Don't put ideas in his head,” he said, and walked deliberately across the dark gangway to the high-riding bow of the
Junma
. A large vessel was creeping by, its deck carpeted with new cars. As it passed, likely headed from South Korea to California, the moonlight flashed in rapid succession off a thousand new windshields.

A couple of nights later, the
Junma
's holds were full, and she was headed west for home. Jun Do was smoking with the Captain and the Pilot when they saw the red light flash on and off in the pilothouse. The wind was from the north, pacing them, so the deck was calm, making it seem like they were standing still. The light flashed on and off again. “You going to get that?” the Pilot asked the Captain.