The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [192]
“Are you talking about taekwondo?” the boy asked.
Ga had to find a way to explain to them how it was he’d killed their father, ugly as that would be. If they left for America believing the lie that their father was still alive, that he loomed as large as the propaganda about him, then, in the children’s memory, that’s who he would become. He’d turn to bronze and bear little resemblance to the real man. Without the truth, he’d be just another famous name, so much chiseling at the base of a statue. Here was the one chance to know who their father really was, a chance Ga never got himself. It was the same with their home—without learning of the hidden DVDs, the contents of the laptop, the meaning of the blue flashes at night, their house on Mount Taesong would turn to watercolor in their memories, becoming as staged as a picture postcard. And if they didn’t know his true role in their lives, he himself would become in their recollections nothing more than a guest who came to stay for some foggy reason, for some vague length of time.
Yet he didn’t want to hurt them. And he didn’t want to go against Sun Moon’s wishes. Most of all, he didn’t want to put them in danger by changing how they might behave tomorrow. If only he could reveal the truth to them in the future, to somehow have a conversation with their older selves. What he needed was a bottle with a message inside that they’d only be able to decipher years from now.
The girl spoke. “Did you find out about our mother?” she asked.
“Your mother is with the Dear Leader,” he told them. “I’m sure she’s safe and will be home soon.”
“Maybe they’re meeting about a movie,” the girl said.
“Maybe,” Ga said.
“I hope not,” the boy said. “If she makes a new movie, we’ll have to go back to school.”
“I want to go back to school,” the girl said. “I had perfect marks in Social Theory. Do you want to hear Kim Jong Il’s speech from April Fifteenth, Juche 86?”
“If your mother goes on location,” Ga asked, “who will watch you?”
“One of our father’s flunkies,” the girl said. “No offense.”
“Your father,” Ga said. “That’s the first I’ve heard you speak of him.”
“He’s on a mission,” the girl said.
“Those are secret,” the boy added. “He goes on lots.”
After a silence, the girl spoke up. “You said you’d tell us a story.”
Commander Ga took a breath. “To understand the story I’m about to tell you, you need to know a few things. Have you heard of an incursion tunnel?”
“An incursion tunnel?” the girl asked, a look of distaste on her face.
Ga said, “What about uranium ore?”
“Tell us another dog story,” the boy said.
“Yeah,” said the girl. “This time make him go to America, where he eats food out of a can.”
“And bring back those scientists,” the boy added.
Commander Ga thought about it a moment. He wondered if he couldn’t tell a story that seemed natural enough to them now, but upon later consideration might contain the kind of message he was looking for.
“A team of scientists was ordered to find two dogs,” he began. “One must be the smartest dog in North Korea, the other the bravest. These two dogs would be sent on a top-secret mission together. The scientists went to all the dog farms in the land, and then they inspected canine warrens in all the prisons and military bases. First the dogs were asked to work an abacus with their paws. Then they had to fight a bear. When all the dogs had failed the tests, the scientists sat on the curb, heads in their hands, afraid to tell the ministers.”
“But they hadn’t checked Brando,” the boy said.
At the mention of his name, Brando twitched in his sleep but did not wake.
“That’s right,” Commander Ga said. “Just then, Brando happened to be walking down the street with a chamber pot stuck on his head.”
Peals of laughter came from the boy, and even the girl showed a smile. Suddenly, Ga saw a better use for the story, one that would help them now, rather than later. If in the story he could get the dog to America by stowing itself in a barrel being loaded onto an American plane, he could implant in the children