The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [118]
Now the Dear Leader smiled. “That’s the best part,” he said.
He led Ga to the end of the curving hall, where there was a staircase. They took metal stairs down several floors, with the Dear Leader trying to hide a limp. Soon, seeps of water ran down the walls, and the metal rail became rusted and loose. When Commander Ga leaned over the rail to see how far down the steps went, there was nothing but darkness and echoes. The Dear Leader at last stopped on a landing and opened a door to a new hall, this one much different. Here, each door they passed had a small, reinforced window and a swing-arm lock. Commander Ga knew a prison when he saw one.
“Seems pretty lonely down here,” he said.
“Don’t feel that way,” the Dear Leader said without looking back. “You’ve got me.”
“What about you?” Ga asked. “You come down here alone?”
The Dear Leader stopped before a door and pulled out a solitary key. He looked at Commander Ga and smiled. “I’m never alone,” he said, and opened the door.
Inside the room was a tall, skinny woman, her face hidden by shaggy dark hair. Before her were spread many books, and she was writing by the light of a lamp whose cord disappeared into a hole in the cement ceiling. Silent, she gazed up at them.
“Who is she?” Commander Ga asked.
“Ask her yourself. She speaks English,” the Dear Leader said, then turned to the woman. “You bad girl,” he told her. He had a grand smile on his face. “Bad, bad, bad girl.”
Ga approached and crouched down, so they were at eye level. “Who are you?” he asked in English.
She eyed the gun on his hip and shook her head, as if revealing anything might bring harm upon her.
Here, Ga saw that the books before the woman were English versions of the eleven-volume Selected Works of Kim Jong Il, which she was transcribing into notebooks, stacks of them, word for word. He cocked his head and saw she was transcribing a tenet from volume five, called On the Art of the Cinema.
“ ‘The Actress cannot play a role,’ ” Ga read. “ ‘She must, in an act of martyrdom, sacrifice herself to become the character.’ ”
The Dear Leader smiled in approval at the sound of his own words. “She’s quite the pupil,” he said.
The Dear Leader motioned for her to take a break. She set her pencil down and began rubbing her hands. This caught Commander Ga’s attention. He leaned in close.
“Will you show me your hands?” he asked.
He extended his own hands, palms up, to demonstrate.
Slowly, she revealed them. Her hands were thick with gray, pitted calluses, rows of them, right to the pads of her fingertips. Commander Ga closed his eyes and nodded in recognition at the thousands of hours at the oars that had made her hands this way.
He turned to the Dear Leader. “How?” he asked. “Where did you find her?”
“A fishing boat picked her up,” the Dear Leader said. “It was just her alone in her rowboat, no friend in sight. She’d done a bad thing to her friend, a very bad thing. The captain rescued her and set the boat ablaze.” With some delight, the Dear Leader pointed a finger of naughtiness at the girl. “Bad girl, bad,” he said. “But we forgive her. Yes, what’s past is past. Such things happen, it can’t be helped. Do you think the Americans will visit now? Do you think the Senator will soon regret making my ambassadors eat without cutlery, outside, among dogs?”
“We’ll have to get many specific items,” Commander Ga said. “If our American welcome party is to succeed, I’ll need the help of Comrade Buc.”
The Dear Leader nodded.
Commander Ga returned to the woman. “I hear you’ve talked to whale sharks,” he said to her. “And navigated by the glow of jellyfish.”
“It didn’t happen the way they say it did,” she said. “She was like my sister, and now I’m alone, it’s just me.”
“What’s she saying?” the Dear Leader asked.
“She says she’s alone.”
“Nonsense,” the Dear Leader said. “I’m down here all the time. I offer her comfort.”
“They tried to board our boat,” she said. “Linda, my friend, she fired flares at them; it’s all we had to defend ourselves with. But they kept coming, they shot