The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [197]
“It’s in the car,” she said.
The Dear Leader smiled.
“Where were we in our series?” he asked. “I can’t remember our tally.”
“When we left off, I think I was down a few games.”
“You weren’t letting me win, were you?” he asked.
“Assure yourself, I show no mercy,” she said.
“That’s my Sun Moon.”
He wiped the residue of her tears.
“Compose a song of departure for our Night Rower. Please sing her away from us. Wear that red choson-ot for me, won’t you? Tell me you’ll wear it. Just try it on, try it on and tomorrow we’ll send that American girl back to whatever forsaken place it was that bred her.”
Sun Moon cast her eyes downward. Slowly, she nodded.
The Dear Leader, too, slowly nodded. “Yes,” he said softly.
Then he lifted a finger, and who should briskly arrive astride a forklift but Comrade Buc, sweat dripping from his brow. Do not gaze upon him, citizens! Avert your eyes from the puppetry of his traitorous smile.
“To guard the modesty of Sun Moon,” the Dear Leader said, “she’ll need some type of changing station at the airport.”
Comrade Buc took a deep breath. “Nothing but the finest,” he said.
The Dear Leader took her by the arm and turned her toward the lights and music.
“Come,” he said. “I have a last movie to show you. The American visit has got me thinking about cowboys and frontier justice. So I have composed a Western. You’ll play the long-suffering wife of a Texas cattle driver who’s being exploited by capitalist landowners. When a corrupt sheriff accuses the cattle driver of rustling—”
She stopped him.
“Promise me nothing bad will happen to him,” Sun Moon said.
“Who? The cattle driver?”
“No, my husband. Or whoever he is,” she said. “He has a good heart.”
“In this world,” the Dear Leader told her, “no one can make such a promise.”
COMMANDER GA smoked on the balcony, eyes narrowed to the dark road below, searching for any sign of the car that might return Sun Moon to him. He heard the faraway bark of a dog in the zoo, and he recalled a dog on a beach long ago, standing sentinel at the waves for someone who would never return. There were people who came into your life and cost you everything. Comrade Buc’s wife was right about that. It had felt pretty shitty being one of those people. He had been the person who took. He’d been the one who was taken. And he’d been the one left behind. Next he would find out what it was like to be all three at once.
He extinguished his cigarette. There were stray celery seeds on the rail from the boy’s bird snare. Ga rolled them under his finger as he gazed upon a city whose surface was black, but below was a labyrinth of brightly lit bunkers, one of which, he was certain, held Sun Moon. Who had thought up this place? Who had concocted its existence? How ugly and laughable was the idea of a quilt to Comrade Buc’s wife. Where was the pattern, with what fabric, would someone sew the story of life in this place? If he had learned anything about the real Commander Ga by living in his clothes and sleeping in his bed, it was the fact that this place had made him. In North Korea, you weren’t born, you were made, and the man that had done the making, he was working late tonight. The stray seeds on the balcony rail led the way to a mound of seeds. Ever so slowly, Ga extended his hand to them. Where was it, he wondered, that Comrade Buc’s wife got her calm in the face of it all? How was it she knew what had to be done? Suddenly, a twig twitched, a stone fell, a thread tightened, and then a little noose cinched itself around Ga’s finger.
He searched the house, looking for information—for what purpose, of what kind, he didn’t know. He went through Commander Ga’s rice-wine collection, laying hands on each bottle. He stood on a chair, and with the use of a candle,