The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [171]
I straightened the files. “I suppose you two have gone deaf, now, as well.”
My mother shuffled to the table with two bowls of porridge, her feet sliding in baby steps lest she stumble in her darkness.
I asked, “But why was the door blocked? You aren’t afraid of me, are you?”
“Afraid of you?” my mother asked.
“Why would we be afraid of you?” asked my father.
My mother said, “The loudspeaker said the American Navy was conducting aggressive military exercises off the coast.”
“You can’t take any chances,” my father said. “With the Americans, you must take measures.”
They blew on their food and took quiet spoonfuls.
“How is it,” I asked my mother, “that you cook so well without your sight?”
“I can feel the heat that comes off the pan,” she said. “And as the food cooks, the smell changes.”
“What about the knife?”
“Using the knife is easy,” she said. “I guide it with my knuckles. Stirring food in the pan is the hardest. I always spill.”
In my mother’s file was a photo of her when she was young. She was a beauty, perhaps the reason she was brought to the capital from the countryside, but what got her sentenced to a factory, rather than assigned as a singer or a hostess, was not in her record. I ruffled the folders, so they could be heard.
“There were some papers on the table,” my father said, his voice nervous.
“They fell to the floor,” my mother said. “But we picked them up.”
“It was an accident,” my father added.
“Accidents happen,” I told them.
“Those papers,” my mother said. “Were they work related?”
“Yes,” Father said. “Were they part of a case you’re working on?”
“Just research,” I said.
“They must be important files if you brought them home,” my father said. “Is anyone in trouble? Perhaps someone we know?”
“What’s going on here?” I asked. “Is it about Mrs. Kwok? Are you still mad at me for that? I didn’t want to turn her in. She was the one stealing coal from the furnace. In winter, we were all colder because of her selfishness.”
“Don’t get mad,” my mother said. “We were just showing concern for the unlucky souls in your files.”
“Unlucky?” I asked. “What makes you call them unlucky?”
They both went silent. I turned toward the kitchen and looked at the can of peaches perched above the top cabinet. I had a feeling the can had been moved a little, inspected perhaps by this blind duo, but I couldn’t be sure of the direction I’d left the can facing.
Slowly, I waved my mother’s file once before her eyes, yet she made no track of it. Then I fanned her with the file, so the breeze moved across her face, surprising her.
My mother recoiled, inhaling with fright.
“What is it?” my father asked her. “What happened?”
She said nothing.
“Can you see me, Mother?” I asked. “It’s important that I know if you can see me.”
She faced my direction, though her eyes were focusless. “Can I see you?” she asked me. “I see you as I first saw you, in glimpses, through darkness.”
“Spare me the riddles,” I warned her. “I have to know.”
“You were born at night,” she said. “I labored all day, and when darkness fell, we had no candles. You came by feel into your father’s hands.”
My father lifted his hands, scarred by mechanical looms. “These hands,” he said.
“Such was the year Juche 62,” my mother said. “Such was life in a factory dormitory. Your father lit match after match.”
“One after another, until they were gone,” my father said.
“I touched every part of your body, at first to see if you were whole and then to know you. So new you were, so innocent—you could have become anyone. It took a while, until first light, that we got a look at what we had created.”
“Were there other children?” I asked. “Was there another family?”
My mother ignored this. “Our eyes do not work. That is the answer to your question. But then as now, we do not need sight to see what you have become.”
ON SUNDAY, Commander Ga strolled with Sun Moon along the Chosun Relaxation Footpath, which followed the river to the Central Bus Terminal. In this public place, they thought they might not be overheard. Old people filled the