The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [128]
He asked, “Am I the occupying force in this story?”
She turned his cup slowly in her hands, awaiting the proper infusion. Before handing it to him, she cast her breath once upon the tea, rippling the surface. The cape of her choson-ot spread in a shimmer around her. She passed him his tea and then bowed, down to the wooden floor, the full form of her body displaying itself.
Her cheek against the wood, she said, “It was only a movie.”
While Sun Moon retrieved his finest uniform, Ga drank and listened. In the sideways light, the windows to the west gave the illusion that he could see all the way to Nampo and the Bay of Korea. The song was elegant and clean, and even the children’s off notes made the music pleasingly spontaneous. Sun Moon dressed him, and then standing, pinned the appropriate medals to his chest. “This one,” she said, “came from the Dear Leader himself.”
“What was it for?”
She shrugged.
“Pin it at the top,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows at his wisdom and complied. “And this one was presented by General Guk for unspecified acts of bravery.”
Her attention and beauty had distracted him. He forgot who he was and his situation. “Do you think,” he asked, “that I am brave and unspecified?”
She buttoned the breast pocket of his uniform and gave a final pull on his tie.
“I do not know,” she said, “if you are a friend of my husband or an enemy. But you are a man, and you must promise to protect my children. What almost happened today, it can’t happen again.”
He pointed at a large medal she had not pinned on him. It was a ruby star with the golden flame of Juche behind it. “What’s that one?” he asked.
“Please,” she said. “Just promise me.”
He nodded, and he did not leave her eyes.
“That medal was for defeating Kimura in Japan,” she said. “Though really it was for not defecting afterward. The medal was just part of a package.”
“A package of what?”
“This house,” she said. “Your position, other things.”
“Defect? Who would leave you?”
“That is a good question,” she said. “But at the time, my hand was not yet Commander Ga’s.”
“So I beat Kimura, huh? Go ahead and pin it on me.”
“No,” she said.
Ga nodded, trusting her judgment.
“Should I wear the pistol?” he asked.
She shook her head.
Before leaving, they stopped to regard, behind a casing of glass and illuminated by a spotlight, the Golden Belt. The display was positioned to be the first thing a visitor noticed when entering the house. “My husband,” Sun Moon said … but did not finish the thought.
Her mood lightened in the car. The sun was going down but the sky was still pale blue. Ga had driven only trucks in the military, but he got the hang of it, despite how the Mercedes engine jammed the little Lada gearbox. The interior, though, was beautiful—mahogany dash, mother-of-pearl gauges. At first, Sun Moon had wished to sit in the backseat by herself, but he talked her into the front, saying that in America the ladies drive with their men. “Do you like this car, the Mustang?” he asked her. “The Americans make the best cars. This one is quite revered there.”
“I know this car,” she said. “I have been in it before.”
“I doubt that,” Ga said. They were winding down the mountain, driving just fast enough to elude the dust cloud behind them. “This is surely the only Mustang in Pyongyang. The Dear Leader had it custom built to embarrass the Americans, to show them we could make their own car, only better, more powerful.”
Sun Moon ran her hands across the upholstery. She flipped down the passenger visor, looked at herself in the mirror. “No,” she said. “This is the car I was in. It was a prop in one of my movies, the one where the Americans are repelled and MacArthur is caught fleeing. This was the car the coward tried