The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [211]
After Sun Moon donned her white choson-ot, she hung the red one and the blue one in the back of the Mustang. Ga pulled on his cowboy boots, tucked the can of peaches in his rucksack, and then patted his pocket to make sure he had his camera. The girl chased the dog with a rope to leash it.
The boy came running. “My bird snare’s gone,” he said.
“We weren’t going to bring it anyway,” Sun Moon said.
“Bring it where?” the boy asked.
“We’ll make another sometime,” Ga told him.
“I bet it caught a giant bird,” the boy said. “One with wings so strong that it flew away with my snare.”
Sun Moon stood before the shrine to her husband’s Golden Belt. Ga joined her in contemplating the jewels and golden scrollwork, the way the overall flash of it was bright enough to allow its owner to take any woman in the land.
“Good-bye, my husband,” she said, and turned off the lightbulb that illuminated it. Then she turned to consider for a moment her gayageum case, tall and regal in the corner. So it was pure tragedy on her face when she grabbed instead the simpleton instrument called a guitar.
Outside, he took a photo in front of the bean trellis, its white blossoms open, the tendrils of the girl’s prize melon plant tangling through the white slats. The girl held the dog, the boy a laptop, and Sun Moon the dreaded American instrument. The light was soft, though, and he wished the picture wasn’t Wanda’s, but his.
In his best military uniform, Commander Ga drove slowly away, Sun Moon beside him in the front seat. It was a beautiful morning, the light golden as swallows circled the hothouses of the botanical gardens, their beaks popping like chopsticks at the clouds of insects there. Sun Moon leaned her head against the window and stared with melancholy as they passed the zoo and the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery. He knew now that she had no great-uncle buried there, that she was just a zinc miner’s daughter from Huchang, but in the morning glow, he saw how the rows of bronze busts seemed to ignite in unison. He noted how the mica in the marble pedestals sparkled, and he, too, understood he would never again see such a thing. If he was lucky, he’d get returned to a prison mine. Most likely, he’d be sent down into one of the Dear Leader’s interrogation bunkers. Either way, he’d never again taste spruce sap on the wind or smell the brine of sorghum distilling in roadside crockery. Suddenly, he savored the dust the Mustang kicked up and the pound of the tires when they crossed the Yanggakdo Bridge. He saw the emerald flash of every armored plate defending the roof of the Self-Criticism Pavilion, and he took delight in the red glow of the digital baby counter atop the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital.
To the north, they could see the great American jet steadily circling the airport, looking as if it were on an endless bombing run. He knew he should be teaching the boy and the girl a few words of English. He knew he should be teaching them how to denounce him, should anything go wrong. Yet a sorrow was settling over Sun Moon, and he could attend to nothing but that.
“Have you made friends with your guitar?” he asked her.
She twanged a single, off note.
He held out his cigarettes. “Can I light you one?”
“Not before I sing,” she said. “I’ll smoke when we’re safely in the sky. On that American airplane, I’ll smoke a hundred of them.”
“We’re going on an airplane?” the boy asked.
Sun Moon ignored him.
“So you’re going to sing the Rower Girl’s farewell?” Ga asked her.
“I suppose I must,” Sun Moon said.
“What is the song about?”
“I haven’t written it yet,” she said. “When I start to play, the words will come. Mostly I’m filled with questions.” She took up her guitar and strummed it once. “How long have I known you?” she sang.
“How long have I known you,” the girl responded, singing the line as a lament.
“Seven seas you have rowed through,” Sun Moon sang.
“Seven oceans you have known,” her daughter sang.
Sun Moon strummed. “But now you’re in the eighth sea.”
“The one we call home,” the boy sang, his voice higher than his