The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [144]
When the oversized portrait of the Dear Leader was removed, Commander Ga found an old shelf recessed in the wall. A laptop computer occupied most of it, but on the top shelves, he found a brick of American hundred-dollar bills, vitamin supplements, protein powder, and a vial of testosterone with two syringes.
The onions had sweetened and clarified, turning black at the edges. He added an egg, a pinch of white pepper, celery leaves, and yesterday’s rice. The girl set out the plates and chili paste. The boy served. The mother emerged, half asleep, a lit cigarette in her lips. She came to the table, where the children suppressed knowing smiles.
She took a drag and exhaled. “What?” she asked.
Over breakfast, the girl asked, “Is it true that you went to America?”
Ga nodded. They ate from Chinese plates with silver chopsticks.
The boy said, “I heard you must pay for your food there.”
“That’s true,” Ga said.
“What about an apartment?” the girl asked. “Does that cost money?”
“Or the bus,” the boy asked. “Or the zoo—does it cost to see the zoo?”
Ga stopped them. “Nothing is free there.”
“Not even the movies?” Sun Moon asked, a little offended.
“Did you go to Disneyland?” the girl asked. “I heard that’s the best thing in America.”
The boy said, “I heard American food tastes horrible.”
Ga had three bites left, but he stopped, saving them for the dog.
“The food’s good,” he answered. “But the Americans ruin everything with cheese. They make it out of animal milk. Americans put it on everything—on their eggs at breakfast, on their noodles, they melt it on ground meat. They say Americans smell like butter, but no, it is cheese. With heat, it becomes an orange liquid. For my work with the Dear Leader, I must help Korean chefs re-create cheese. All week, our team has been forced to handle it.”
Sun Moon still had a little food left on her plate, but with the talk of the Dear Leader, she extinguished her cigarette in the rice.
This was a signal that breakfast was over, but still the boy had one last question to ask. “Do dogs really have their own food in America, a kind that comes in cans?”
The idea was shocking to Ga, a cannery dedicated to dogs. “Not that I saw,” he said.
Over the next week, Commander Ga oversaw a team of chefs constructing the menu for the American delegation. Dak-Ho was enlisted to use props from the Central Movie Lot to construct a Texas-style ranch, based on Ga’s drawings of the lodgepole corral, mesquite fences, branding hearth, and barn. A site was chosen east of Pyongyang, where there was more open space and fewer citizens. Comrade Buc acquired everything from patterns for guayabera shirts to cobbler molds for cowboy boots. Procuring a chuck wagon proved Buc’s greatest challenge, but one was located at a Japanese theme park, and a team was sent to get it.
It was determined that a North Korean Weedwacker would not be engineered since tests showed that a communist scythe, with a 1.5-meter razor-sharp blade, was the more effective tool at clearing brush. A fishing pond was constructed and filled with eels from the Taedong River, a most voracious and worthy opponent for the sport of fishing. Teams of volunteer citizens were sent into the Sobaek Mountains to capture a score of rock mamushi, the nation’s most poisonous snake, for target practice.
A group of stage mothers from the Children’s Palace Theater was enlisted to make the gift baskets. While calfskin could not be found for the making of gloves, the most supple replacement—puppy—was chosen. In place of bourbon, a potent snake whiskey from the hills of Hamhung was selected. The Junta in Burma donated five kilos of tiger jerky. Much debate was given to the topic of which cigarettes best bespoke the identity of the North Korean people. In the end, the brand was Prolot.
But it wasn’t all work. Each day, Commander Ga took a long lunch at the Moranbong Theater, where, alone, he watched a different Sun Moon movie. He beheld her fierce resilience in Oppressors Tumble, felt her limitless capacity to suffer