The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [36]
Jun Do said, “How about you tell me what you’re doing here?”
“I told you,” he said. “I wanted to show you my wife—she’s very beautiful, don’t you think?”
Jun Do just looked at him.
The Second Mate went on, “Of course she is. She’s like a magnet, you know, you can’t resist her beauty. My tattoo doesn’t do her justice. And we practically have a family already. I’m a hero now, of course, and it’s pretty much a lock that I’ll make Captain someday. I’m just saying, I’m a guy who’s got a lot to lose.” The Second Mate paused, choosing his words. “But you, you got no one. You’re on a cot in the kitchen of a monster’s house.” The woman outside made a gesture of beckoning, but the Second Mate waved her off. “If you’d just punched that American in the face,” he said, “you’d be in Seoul by now, you’d be free. That’s what I don’t get. If a guy has no strings, what’s stopping him?”
How to tell the Second Mate that the only way to shake your ghosts was to find them, and that the only place Jun Do could do that was right here. How to explain the recurring dream that he’s listening to his radio, that he’s getting the remnants of important messages, from his mother, from other boys in his orphanage. The messages are hard to dial in, and he’s awoken before with his hand on the bunk post, as if it were his UHF fine tuner. Sometimes the messages are from people who are relaying messages from other people who have spoken to people who have seen his mother. His mother wants to get urgent messages to him. She wants to tell him where she is, she wants to tell him why, she keeps repeating her name, over and over, though he can’t quite make it out. How to explain that in Seoul, he knows, the messages would stop.
“Come,” Jun Do said. “We should get you to the Captain for some stitches.”
“Are you kidding? I’m a hero. I get to go to the hospital now.”
When the Junma left port again, they had new portraits of the Great and Dear Leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. They had a new galley table, and they also had a new commode, for it was not right for a hero to shit in a bucket, though heroes of North Korea have endured far worse and done so without complaint. They also had a new DPRK flag, which they lowered eleven kilometers from shore.
The Captain was in high spirits. On deck was a new locker, and with a foot upon it, he called the crew together. From the locker, he first produced a hand grenade. “This,” he said, “I have been given in the event the Americans return. I am to drop it in the aft hold and scuttle our dear ship the Junma.”
Jun Do’s eyes went wide. “Why not drop it in the engine room?”
The Machinist gave him a screw you look.
The Captain then threw the grenade into the sea, where it made not so much as a zip as it went under the surface. To Jun Do, he said, “Don’t worry, I would have knocked first.” The Captain kicked open the locker to reveal an inflatable life raft, clearly taken out of an old Soviet passenger jet. It had once been orange, but was now faded to a dull peach, and next to its red handle was an ominous warning against smoking during deployment. “After the grenade goes off, and our beloved vessel slips below the waves, I have been ordered to deploy this, lest we lose the life of our resident hero. I don’t have to tell you the trust that has been placed in us to receive such a gift.”
The Second Mate stepped forward, almost as if he was afraid of the thing, to inspect the Cyrillic writing. “It’s bigger than the other one,” he said.
“A whole planeload of people could fit in that raft,” the Machinist told him. “Or the greatness of one hero.”
“Yeah,” the First Mate said. “I for one would be honored to tread water next to a raft that contained a true Hero of the Eternal Revolution.”
But the Captain wasn’t done. “And I figure it is time to make the Third Mate an official member of our crew.” He withdrew from his pocket a folded piece of waxed paper. Within this were nine fine sewing needles, cauterized together. The tips of the needles were blackened from many tattooings. “I’m no Russian,” he told Jun