The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [129]
Talk of movies had fouled her mood, he could tell.
They drove alongside the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery. The Songun guard with their golden rifles had gone home for the day and in the long shadows cast by the bronze headstones moved occasional men and women. In the growing dark, these ghostly figures, keeping low and moving quickly, were gathering all the flowers from the graves.
“Always they are stealing flowers,” Sun Moon remarked as they passed by. “It sickens me. My great-uncle is in there, you know. Do you know what that says to our ancestors, how it must insult them?”
Ga asked her, “Why do you think they steal the flowers?”
“Yes, that’s the question, isn’t it? Who would do that? What’s happening to our country?”
He stole a brief glance, to confirm her disbelief. Had she never been hungry enough to eat a flower? Did she not know that you could eat daisies, daylilies, pansies, and marigolds? That hungry enough, a person could consume the bright faces of violas, even the stems of dandelions and the bitter hips of roses?
They crossed the Chongnyu Bridge, drove through the south of the city, and crossed again on the Yanggakdo. It was dinnertime, and there was wood smoke in the air. In the twilight, the Taedong River reminded him of mineshaft water, ore-dark and cold. She instructed him to take Sosong Street toward the Putong, but amid the thick apartment buildings that lined Chollima, something slammed onto the hood of their car. A gun had gone off, that’s what he thought at first, or some kind of collision. Commander Ga stopped in the road, and he and Sun Moon got out, leaving their doors open.
The road was wide and unlit, there were no other cars. It was the time of evening when blues and grays grew together. People had been grilling turnips at the curb—a band of bitter smoke stood in the air, waist high. They congregated around the car to see what had happened. There on the hood was a baby goat, its horns just stubs and its eyes loose and wet. Some people looked up to the rooftops where other animals continued to graze as the first stars appeared above. There was no gore, but you could see the goat’s little eyes go milky and fill with blood. Sun Moon covered her face, and Ga put his hand on her shoulder.
Suddenly, a young woman broke from the crowd. She snatched the baby goat and bolted down the street. They watched her run, the goat’s bouncing head, its blood-spittle streaking down her back. The crowd, he realized, was now staring at him. He was a yangban in their eyes, with his fancy uniform and beautiful wife.
They arrived late to the Grand People’s Opera House, empty save for a few dozen couples in small groups, their conversations reduced to murmurs by the huge ceilings and cascades of black silk curtains and mulberry-colored carpets. In one of the upper balconies stood a tenor. With his hands clasped, he sang “Arirang” while below, despite the drinks and delicacies, the guests attempted to find some pleasure in the hollow time before they were rewarded with the Dear Leader’s spirited company.
“Arirang, Arirang,” the tenor sang, “ah-rah-ree-yoh.”
“That,” Sun Moon said, “is Dak-Ho. He runs the Central Cinema Studio. But his voice, no other man’s is his match.”
Commander Ga and Sun Moon moved watchfully toward the couples. How beautiful she was crossing the room, taking quick, small steps, her shape so perfectly implied in the drape of Korean silk.
The men were the first to acknowledge her. In their dress uniforms and Assembly suits, they showed their gold smiles as if Sun Moon hadn’t been absent from the yangban set for so long. They seemed indifferent to the cancellation of her movie premiere or to her arrival with a strange man in her husband’s uniform, as if all these weren’t signs they’d lost one of their own. The women, however, broadcast open scorn—perhaps they believed if they closed ranks against her, Sun Moon might not transmit to them the malady they feared