The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [38]
As he worked, the Captain wondered aloud to himself. “What should the Third Mate know of his new wife?” he mused. “Her beauty is obvious. She is from Pyongyang, a place none of us will ever see. She was discovered by the Dear Leader himself and cast in A True Daughter of the Country, the first North Korean movie. How old was she then?”
“Sixteen,” the First Mate said.
“That sounds about right,” the Pilot said. “How old are you?” he asked the Second Mate.
“Twenty.”
“Twenty,” the Pilot said. “That movie was made the year you were born.”
The roll of the ship seemed not to bother the Captain at all. “She was the darling of the Dear Leader, and she was the only actress. No one else could star in a movie, and this went on for years. Also, despite her beauty, or because of it, the Dear Leader would not allow her to marry, so that all of her roles were only roles, as she did not know herself of love.”
“But then came Commander Ga,” said the Machinist.
“Then came Commander Ga,” the Captain repeated in the absent way of someone lost in fine details. “Yes, he is the reason you don’t have to worry about Sun Moon being placed too deeply in your heart.”
Jun Do had heard of Commander Ga—he was practically preached in the military as a man who’d led six assassination missions into South Korea, won the Golden Belt in taekwondo, and purged the Army of all the homosexuals.
The Second Mate said, “Commander Ga even fought a bear.”
“I’m not so sure about that part,” the Captain said, outlining the subtle contours of Sun Moon’s neck. “When Commander Ga went to Japan and beat Kimura, everyone knew that upon his return to Pyongyang, he would name his prize. The Dear Leader made him Minister of Prison Mines, which is a coveted position, as there is no work to be done. But Commander Ga demanded possession of the actress Sun Moon. Time passed, there was trouble in the capital. Finally, the Dear Leader bitterly relented. The couple married, had two children, and now Sun Moon is remote and melancholy and alone.”
Everyone went quiet when the Captain said this, and Jun Do suddenly felt for her.
The Second Mate threw him a pained look. “Is that true?” he asked. “Do you know that’s how she ended up?”
“That’s how all wives end up,” the Captain said.
Late that night, Jun Do’s chest hurt, and he yearned to hear from the girl who rowed in the dark. The Captain had told him that seawater would keep the tattoo from getting septic, but Jun Do wouldn’t take the chance of going up top for a bucket and missing her. More and more, he felt as if he was the only one in the world who understood her. It was Jun Do’s curse to be nocturnal in a nation without power at night, but it was his duty, too, like picking up a pair of oars at sunset or letting the loudspeakers fill your head as you sleep. Even the crew thought of her as rowing toward dawn, as if dawn was a metaphor for something transcendent or utopian. Jun Do understood that she was rowing until dawn, when with weariness and fulfillment she could pack it in for sleep. It was deep into the night when he finally found her signal, faint from traveling so far from the north.
“The guidance system is broken,” she said. “It keeps saying the wrong things. We’re not where it says we are, we can’t be. Something’s out on the water, but we can’t see it.”
The line went quiet, and Jun Do reached to fine-tune the signal.
Then she was back. “Does this work?” she asked. “Is it working? There’s a ship out there, a ship without lights. We shot it with a flare. The red streak bounced off the hull. Is anyone out there, can anyone rescue us?”
Who was attacking her? he wondered. What pirate would attack a woman who wished nothing more than to make her way through the dark? Jun Do heard a pop over the line—was it the pop of gunfire?—and parading through his head came all the reasons it was impossible to rescue her: that she was too far north, that the Americans would find her, that they didn’t even have maps of those waters. All true, but of course the real reason was him. Jun Do was why they couldn’t chart a course