The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [108]
The crow unhitched them in the outskirts of Pyongyang, and at the Koryo Hotel, the girls gave him Commander Ga’s usual treatment—the deep soaking and cleansing he sought after every visit to a prison mine. His uniform was cleaned and pressed, and he was bathed in a grand tub, where the girls scrubbed the blood stains from his hands and tried to repair his nails, and they didn’t care whose blood it was that tinted the soapy water, his or Commander Ga’s or someone else’s. In the warm, buoyant water he came to see that at some point in the last year, his mind and his flesh had separated, that his brain had sat high and frightened above the mule of his body, a beast of burden that hopefully would make it alone over the treacherous mountain pass of Prison 33. But now as a woman ran a warm washcloth along the arch of his foot, the sensation was allowed to rise up, up into his brain, and it was okay to perceive again, to recognize forgotten parts of his body as they hailed him. His lungs were more than air bellows. His heart, he believed now, could do more than move blood.
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,