The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [187]
The boy also feigned knowledge of the story. “Yeah, that’s an old one,” he added.
“Let me see if I remember how it goes,” Commander Ga said. “The best scientists got together and built a gigantic rocket. On its fuselage, they painted the blue star and red circle of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Then they filled it full of volatile fuel and rolled it out to the launch pad. The rocket was designed to go up. If it worked, they would try to make the next rocket capable of coming back down. Even though the scientist that piloted it would be declared a martyr, no one was brave enough to climb inside.”
Ga stopped his story there. He sipped his tea, and looked at the children, who could not tell what this story was designed to glorify.
Hesitantly, the girl said, “That’s when they decided to send the dog.”
Ga smiled. “That’s right,” he said. “I knew you’d know the story. Now where was it they found the dog again?”
Once more, there was silence. “At the zoo,” the boy finally said.
“Of course,” Ga said. “How could I forget? And what did that dog look like?”
“He was gray,” the girl said.
“And brown,” the boy said.
“With white paws,” the girl said. “He had a long, slim tail. They chose him because he was skinny and could fit in the rocket.”
“Old tomatoes,” the boy said. “That’s all the mean zookeeper fed him.”
Sun Moon smiled to see her children engage in the tale. “At night, the dog would consider the moon,” was her contribution.
“The moon was his only friend,” the girl said.
“The dog would call and call,” the boy added, “but he never heard back.”
“Yes, it is an old story, but a good one,” Commander Ga said, smiling. “Now, the dog agreed to ride the rocket into space—”
“—to be closer to his friend the moon,” the girl said.
“Yes, to be closer to his friend the moon,” Ga said. “But did they tell the dog he would never be coming back?”
A look of betrayal crossed the boy’s face. “They didn’t tell him anything,” he said.
Ga nodded at the wrongness of this injustice. “The scientists, as I recall, allowed the dog to bring one thing with him.”
“It was a stick,” the boy said.
“No,” the girl said. “It was his bowl.”
And suddenly the two of them were racing to discover the item the dog chose to take into space, but Ga nodded in approval at all their proposals.
“The dog brought along a squirrel,” the boy said. “So he wouldn’t get lonely.”
“He chose to bring a garden,” the girl countered. “So he wouldn’t be hungry.”
On and on they went—a ball, a rope, a parachute, a flute he could play with his paws.
Ga halted them with a hand, letting a silence fall over the table. “Secretly,” he whispered, “the dog brought along all those things, the weight of which changed the course of the rocket when it launched, sending it on a new trajectory …”
Ga gestured up in the air, and the children looked above them, as if the answer would materialize on the ceiling.
“… to the moon,” the girl said.
Ga and Sun Moon now listened as the children spun the rest of the story for themselves, how on the moon, the dog discovered another dog, the one who howled at the earth every night, how there was a boy on the moon, and a girl, and how the dogs and the children began building their own rocket, and Ga watched how the candlelight played on their faces, how Sun Moon’s eyes lowered with delight, how the children relished their mother’s attention, and how they kept trying to outdo one another for it, and how, as a family, they turned that melon to rind, saving the seeds in a small wooden bowl, smiling together as the sweet pink juice ran down their fingers and wrists.
The boy and the girl implored their mother to create a ballad for the dog who went to the moon, and since Sun Moon wouldn’t play her gayageum in house clothes, she soon emerged in a choson-ot whose chima was cut from plum-colored satin. On the wooden floor, she placed the crown of the instrument on a pillow while its base rested sidesaddle on her folded legs. She bowed to the children, and they lowered their heads to her.
At first she plucked