The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [191]
“Is Comrade Buc with the Dear Leader? Do you know where they might be? I have a car, if I knew where she was I could—”
“We don’t tell each other anything,” she said. “That’s how we keep the family safe. That’s how we protect one another.” She snipped a thread, then turned the dress under the needle. “My husband says I shouldn’t worry, that you made a promise to him, that because of your word, none of us is in danger. Is this true, did you give him your promise?”
“I did.”
She looked at him, nodded. “Still, it’s hard to know what the future holds. This machine was a bridal gift. I didn’t imagine making this kind of garment back when I took my vows.”
“When it’s time, when that comes,” he said, “does it matter what you’re wearing?”
“I used to have my sewing machine in the window,” she said, “so I could look out upon the river. When I was a girl, we used to catch turtles in the Taedong and release them with political slogans painted on their backs. We used to net fish and deliver them each evening to the war veterans. All the trees they now chop down? We planted them. We believed we were the luckiest people in the luckiest nation. Now all the turtles have been eaten and in place of fish there are only river eels. It has become an animal world. My girls will not go as animals.”
Ga wanted to tell her that in Chongjin, there was no such thing as the good old days. Instead, he said, “In America, the women have a kind of sewing in which a story is told. Different kinds of fabric are sewn together to say something about a person’s life.”
Comrade Buc’s wife took her foot off the pedal.
“And what story would that be?” she asked him. “The one about a man who comes to town to destroy everything you have? Where would I find the fabric to tell of how he kills your neighbor, takes his place, and gets your husband caught up in a game that will cost you everything?”
“It’s late,” Commander Ga told her. “I apologize for bothering you.”
He turned to go, but at the door, she stopped him.
“Did Sun Moon take anything with her?” she asked.
“A chang-gi board.”
Comrade Buc’s wife nodded. “At night,” she said, “that’s when the Dear Leader seeks inspiration.”
Ga took a last look at the white fabric and thought of the girl who would wear it.
“What do you tell them?” he asked. “When you pull the dresses over their heads? Do they know the truth, that you’re practicing for the end?”
She left her eyes on him a moment. “I would never steal the future from them,” she said. “That’s the last thing I want. When I was Yoon’s age, ice cream used to be free in Mansu Park on Sundays. I would go there with my parents. Now the ice-cream van snatches children and sends them to 9-27 camps. Kids shouldn’t have to contemplate that. To keep my girls away from the van, I boast that peaches are the best dessert, that we have the last canned peaches in Pyongyang and that someday, when the Buc family is at its absolute happiest, we’ll have a feast of peaches that will taste better than all the ice cream in Korea.”
Brando raised his head when Ga entered the bedroom. The dog no longer wore a cape. The boy and the girl were at the foot of the bed, worry on their faces. Ga sat on the floor beside them.
Above, on the mantel, was the can of peaches he would take with him tomorrow. How in the world to tell them what he had to tell them? He decided to just take a breath and begin.
“Sometimes people hurt other people,” he said. “It’s an unfortunate fact.”
The children stared at him.
“Some people hurt others for a living. No one takes pleasure from it. Well, most don’t. The story I have to tell is about what happens when two of these people,