The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [113]
For Commander Ga, or whoever he really was, he thought he’d finished with a life of tunnels. This tunnel was a small one—large enough to stand inside, sure, but barely fifteen meters in length, just enough to travel under the front yard and perhaps under the road. Inside were barrels of supplies for the next Arduous March. There was a single lightbulb and a single chair. There was a large collection of DVDs, though no sign of a screen on which to view them. Yet he was happy listening to the boy above blow the wobbly notes of his taegum. It was bliss to hear the pluckings of a mother teaching her daughter the melancholy way of the gayageum—he could picture their choson-ots spread wide across the floor as they leaned into the sorrowful notes. Late at night, the actress paced behind the closed doors of the bedroom, and in his tunnel, Commander Ga could almost watch her feet fall, so closely did he follow her movements. In his mind, he mapped the bedroom based on how many steps she took between the window and the door, and by the way she moved around certain objects, he was sure of the location of her bed and wardrobe and vanity. It was almost as if he were in the chamber with her.
On the morning of the fourteenth day, he had accepted that this was how his life might continue for a long time, and he was at peace with that, but little did he know a dove was headed his way with a most glorious message in its beak. Loosed from the capital, the dove’s wings fluttered above the Taedong River, turning in its bends sweet and green, while along the banks patriots and virgins strolled hand in hand. The dove swooped through girls from a Juche Youth Troop, skipping along in their darling uniforms, axes over their shoulders, heading to chop wood in Mansu Park. With delight, the white bird barrel-rolled through the May Day Stadium, largest in the world, then clapped its wings in pride over the great red flame of the Tower of Juche! Then up, up Mount Taesong, bending a wing in greeting toward the flamingos and peacocks in the Central Zoo, before veering wide from the electric fences surrounding the botanical gardens, ready to repel the next American sneak attack. A single, patriotic tear was shed above the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery, and then the dove was on Sun Moon’s windowsill, dropping the note in her hand.
Commander Ga looked up when the trapdoor to the tunnel was opened and Sun Moon leaned down, her robe opening slightly, the glory of a whole nation seemingly enbosomed in her generous womanliness. She read the note: “It is time, Commander Ga, to return to work.”
The driver was waiting to take Commander Ga into the most beautiful city in the world—observe its wide streets and tall buildings, try to find a single item of trash or stray mark of graffiti! Graffiti, citizens, is the name for the way capitalists deface their public buildings. Here are no annoying advertisements, cellular phones, or planes in the sky. And try to take your eyes off our traffic girls!
Soon Commander Ga was on the third floor of Building 13, the most modern office complex in the world. Whoosh, whoosh went the vacuum tubes all around him. Flicker, flicker went the green computer screens. He found his desk on the third floor, then turned his nameplate inward, as if to remind himself that he was Commander Ga and his job was Minister of Prison Mines, that it was he who was in charge of the finest prison system in the world. Ah, there is no prison like a North Korean prison—so productive, so conducive to personal reflection. Prisons in the South are filled with jukeboxes and lipstick, places where men sniff glue and ripen each other’s fruit!
A whoosh dropped a vacuum tube into the hopper