The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [169]
“True, true,” the Dear Leader said. “Except I don’t want to let her go. Is there a way, you think?”
“If the girl met with the Senator and told him herself that she wished to stay, then maybe there would be no incident.”
The Dear Leader shook his head at that distasteful suggestion. “If only I had another girl rower,” he said. “If only our little killer here hadn’t done away with her friend, then I could have sent home the one I liked the least.” Here he laughed. “That’s all I need, right? Two bad girls on my hands.” He wagged his finger at her. “Bad girl, bad girl,” he said, laughing. “Very bad girl.”
Commander Ga produced his camera. “If she’s going to get cleaned up and fitted for a choson-ot,” he said, “I’ll need to get a ‘before’ photo.” He neared her and squatted low to snap the picture. “And maybe an action shot,” he announced, “of how our guest has documented the amassed knowledge of our glorious leader Kim Jong Il.”
He nodded to her. “Now hold up the book.”
Commander Ga was squinting to make sure everything fit perfectly, the woman and her book, the note to Wanda—everything had to be in focus—when he saw through the viewfinder that the Dear Leader was crouching down and squeezing into the frame, his hand pulling her close by her shoulder. Ga stared at the strange and dangerous image before him and decided it was right that cameras were illegal.
“Tell her to smile,” the Dear Leader said.
“Can you smile?” he asked.
She smiled.
“The truth is,” Ga said, his finger on the button, “that eventually everyone goes away.”
That these words should come from the lips of Commander Ga made the Dear Leader grin. “Isn’t that the truth of it,” he responded.
In English, Ga said, “Say ‘Cheese.’ ”
And then the Dear Leader and his dear rower were blinking together from the flash.
“I want copies of those,” the Dear Leader said, straining to get back to his feet.
I’D STAYED LATE at Division 42; my body felt weak. It was like there was some nourishment I was missing, like my body was hungering for some kind of food I’d simply never run across. I thought of the dogs in the Central Zoo that lived only on cabbage and old tomatoes. Had they forgotten the taste of meat? I felt like there was something, some sustenance that I’d simply never known. I breathed deeply, but the air smelled no different—grilled onion stalks, boiling peanuts, millet in the pan, dinner in Pyongyang. There was nothing to do but go home.
Much of the city’s electricity was being diverted to run industrial rice dryers south of town, so the subway was shut down. And the line for the Kwangbok express bus was three blocks long. I started walking. I didn’t make it two blocks before I heard the bullhorns and knew I was in trouble. The Minister of Mass Mobilization and his cadres were moving through the district, sweeping up any citizen unlucky enough to be out on the street. Just the sight of their yellow insignia sickened me. You couldn’t run—if they even thought you were trying to avoid “volunteering” for harvest duty, it was off to a Redeemability Farm for a month of labor and group criticism. It was, however, the kind of thing a Pubyok badge could get you out of. Without it, I found myself in the back of a dump truck headed to the countryside to harvest rice for sixteen hours.
We drove northeast by moonlight, toward the silhouetted Myohyang Range, a dump truck filled with city folks in professional attire, the driver flashing on his headlamps when he thought he saw something in the road, but there was nothing in the road, no people, no cars, nothing but empty highways lined with tank traps and large Chinese excavators—their orange arms frozen in extension—abandoned by the canals for want of parts.
In the dark, we found a peasant village somewhere along the Chongchon River. We city folk, about a hundred of us, climbed down to sleep on the open ground. I had a smock to keep me warm and my briefcase for a pillow.