The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [172]
Commander Ga and Sun Moon had been speaking in abstractions and half notions, dancing around the facts of the very real thing they had set in motion. He wanted to put a name to what they were doing, to call it escape, defection. He wanted to outline the steps, to memorize them and practice out loud how they would go. Like a script, he said. He asked her to say she understood that the worst could happen. She would speak of none of this. Instead, she remarked on the crunch of the gravel under her feet, of the groan of the river dredges as they bent their rusty booms below the surface. She stopped to smell an azalea as if it were the last azalea, and as she walked, she wove fine purple bracelets from wisteria. She wore a white cotton choson-ot that outlined her body with shifts in the breeze.
“I want to tell the children before we leave,” he said.
This, perhaps because it seemed so preposterous to her, moved her to speak.
“Tell them what?” she asked. “That you killed their father? No, they’re going to grow up in America believing that their dad was a great hero whose remains rest in a faraway land.”
“But they have to know,” he said, then was silent a moment as a brigade of soldiers’ mothers passed by, shaking their red cans to intimidate Songun donations from people. “Those kids have to hear it from me,” he went on. “The truth, an explanation—these are the most important things for them to hear. This is all I have to give them.”
“But there will be time,” she said. “This decision can be made later, when we’re safe in America.”
“No,” he told her. “It must be now.”
Commander Ga looked back at the boy and the girl. They were watching this conversation, even though they were too far away to make out the words.
“Is something wrong?” Sun Moon asked. “Does the Dear Leader suspect something?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said, though the question conjured the Girl Who Rowed in the Dark and the notion that the Dear Leader might not relinquish her.
Sun Moon stopped by a cement water barrel and lifted its wooden cover. She drew a ladle and drank, her hands cupping the silver dipper. Commander Ga watched a trickle of water darken the front of her choson-ot. He tried to imagine her with another man. If the Dear Leader didn’t let go of his Girl Rower, then the plan was off, the Americans would leave in outrage, and something bad would soon happen to Commander Ga. As for Sun Moon, she would become a prize once more, to whatever replacement husband was found. And what if the Dear Leader was right, what if over the years she came to love this new husband, real love, not the promise of love or the potential for love—could Commander Ga leave this world knowing her heart was destined for another?
Sun Moon plunged the ladle deep into the barrel to get the cool water at the bottom before holding the dipper for Ga to drink. The water tasted mineral and fresh.
He wiped his mouth. “Tell me,” he said to her. “Do you think it’s possible for a woman to fall in love with her captor?”
She observed him a moment. He could tell she was looking for signs as to how to answer.
He said, “It’s impossible, right? The idea is completely insane, don’t you think?” He saw in his mind a parade of all the people he’d captured, their wide eyes and abraded faces, the white of their lips when the duct tape was torn off. He saw those red toenails rearing to strike. “I mean, all they can have is contempt for you, for taking everything