The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [207]
“What’s happening?” my mother asked. “What are you doing?”
My father was hysterical.
“What if the Americans sneak-attack?” he asked. “How will we receive the warning?”
“You won’t have to worry about sneak attacks anymore,” I told them.
My father moved to protest, but a stream of saliva ran from his mouth. He reached for his mouth and felt his lips, as if they had gone numb. And one of my mother’s hands was showing a tremor. She stilled it with her other hand. The botulism toxin was beginning to bloom inside them. The time for suspicions and arguments was over.
I remembered that horrible picture of Comrade Buc’s family, crumpled beneath the table. I was resolved that my parents wouldn’t suffer such indignities. I gave them each a tall glass of water and placed them on their cots to await the fall of night. All afternoon and into the twilight, I gave them the gift of my story, every bit of it, and I left nothing out. I stared out the window as I spoke, and I concluded only when they’d begun to writhe on their cots. I couldn’t act until darkness arrived, and when it finally did, the city of Pyongyang was like that black cricket in the fairy tale—it was everywhere and nowhere, its chirp annoying only those who ignored the final call to slumber. The moon shimmered off the river, and after the eagle owls had struck, you could hear nothing of the sheep and goats but the clicking of their teeth as they chewed grass in the dark. When darkness was total, and my parents had lost their faculties, I kissed them good-bye, for I could not bear to witness the inevitable. A sure sign of botulism is a loss of vision, so I only hoped they’d never know what had struck them. I looked around the room a last time, at our family photograph, my father’s harmonica, their wedding rings. But I left it all. I could take nothing where I was going.
There was no way Commander Ga could attempt the arduous journey ahead with an open wound. At the night market, I bartered my Pubyok badge for some iodine and a large compress. Crossing the city in the dark, headed for Division 42, I felt the stillness of the big machine at rest. There was no thrum of electricity in the wires overhead or gurgle of water in the pipes. Pyongyang was coiling in the dark to pounce upon the next day. And how I loved the capital springing to life, morning wood smoke in the air, the smell of frying radishes, the hot burn of trolley brakes. I was a city boy. I would miss the metropolis, its hubbub and vitality. If only there were a place here for a person who gathered human stories and wrote them down. But Pyongyang is already filled with obituary writers. And I can’t stand propaganda. You’d think a person would get used to cruel fates.
When I appeared in Commander Ga’s room, he asked, “Is it morning already?”
“Not yet,” I told him. “There’s still time.”
I tried to minister to Commander Ga as best I could. The iodine turned my fingers red, making it look as if I were the one who’d brutalized the man before me. But when I placed the bandage on Commander Ga, the wound disappeared. I used the whole roll of tape to secure it.
“I’m getting out of here,” I told him. “Would you like me to bring you along?”
He nodded.
“Do you care where you’re going, or about the obstacles ahead?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said.
“Are you ready? Do you need to do anything to prepare?”
“No,” he told me. “I’m ready.”
I helped him up, then sailor-carried him across Division 42 to an interrogation bay, where I rolled him into a baby-blue chair.
“This is where you gave me an aspirin when I first came,” he said. “It seems like so long ago.”
“It won’t be a bad journey,” I told him. “On the other side, there won’t be Pubyok or cattle prods or branding irons. Hopefully, you’ll get sent to a rural farm collective. Not an easy life, but you can start a new family and serve your nation in the true spirit of communism—through labor