The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [123]
Climbing hand over hand up the galvanized steps, those of us with children tried to keep focus, but the interns, always the interns think they are invincible, right? Q-Kee led the way with her headlamp. When she stopped and looked down at the rest of us, we all stopped, too. We looked up at her, a halo of light above us.
She asked, “Ryoktosan defected?”
We were all silent. In the quiet, you could hear Buc preaching about children being stoned and hanged, going on and on.
Q-Kee let out a groan of pain and disappointment. “Ryoktosan, too,” she said, shaking her head. “Is there anyone left who’s not a coward?”
Then the pumps kicked in, and thankfully, we couldn’t hear anything.
WHEN Commander Ga returned to Sun Moon’s house, he was wearing the Western pistol on his hip. Before he could knock on the door, Brando alerted the house to his presence. Sun Moon answered in a simple choson-ot—its jeogori was white and the chima was patterned with pale blossoms. It was the peasant-girl dress she’d worn in the movie A True Daughter of the Country.
Today, she did not banish him to the tunnel. He’d been to work and now he was home, and he was greeted as a normal husband returning from the office. The son and daughter were standing at attention in their school uniforms, though they hadn’t been going to school. She hadn’t let them out of her sight since he’d arrived. He called the girl girl and the boy boy because Sun Moon refused to tell him their names.
The daughter held a wooden tray. On it was a steaming towel, which he used to wipe the dust from his face and neck, the backs of his hands. Upon the boy’s tray were various medals and pins placed there by his father. Commander Ga emptied his pockets onto the tray—some military won, subway tickets, his Ministry ID card—and in the commingling of these everyday objects, the two Commander Gas were one. But when a coin fell to the floor, the boy flinched in fear. If the ghost of Commander Ga was anywhere, it was here, in the worried posture of the children, in the punishment they seemed convinced was continually at hand.
Next his wife held open a dobok like a drape, so that he could disrobe before them in privacy. When the dobok was cinched, Sun Moon turned to the children.
“Go,” she told them. “Go practice your music.”
When they were gone, she waited for the sounds of their warm-up scales before speaking, and then, when their notes seemed too soft, she made for the kitchen, where the loudspeaker was playing, and she was sure not to be overheard. He followed her, watched her cringe when she recognized that over the loudspeaker the new opera diva was singing Sea of Blood.
Sun Moon relieved him of his weapon. She opened the cylinder and assured herself the chambers were empty. Then she gestured at Ga with the butt of the gun. “I must know how you came by this pistol,” she said.
“It’s custom made,” he said. “One of a kind.”
“Oh, I recognize the gun,” she said. “Tell me who gave it to you.”
She pulled a chair to the counter and climbed atop it. She reached high to place the gun in the top cupboard.
He watched her body elongating, taking a different shape under her choson-ot. Its hem lifted to show her ankles, and there she was, the whole weight of her balanced upon poised toes. He regarded that cabinet, wondering what else it might contain. Commander Ga’s pistol was in the backseat of the Mercedes, yet he asked, “Did your husband carry a gun?”
“Does,” she said.
“Does your husband carry a gun?”
“You’re not answering my question,” she said. “I know the gun you brought home, we’ve used it in a half-dozen movies. It’s the pearl-handled pistol that the cold-blooded, cowboyish American officer always uses to shoot civilians.”