The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [59]
Below in the courtyard, a black Mercedes pulled up. It drove very slowly over the small, rutted fish-cart path and came to a stop in the grass of the courtyard. Two men in blue suits got out.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s happening.”
The men below shielded their eyes and gave the building a once-over. At the sound of their car doors slamming shut, the dogs stood and shook the wet from their fur. She turned to Jun Do. “It’s really happening.” Then she made for the metal door of the stair shaft.
The first thing she did was pull on her yellow dress, and this time there was no asking Jun Do to close his eyes. She moved frantically through the one-room apartment, throwing things in her suitcase.
“I can’t believe they’re here already,” she said. She looked around the room, the expression on her face suggesting that everything she needed was eluding her. “I’m not ready. I didn’t get a chance to cut my hair. I’m not even close to being ready.”
“I care about what happens to you,” Jun Do told her. “And I can’t let them do this to you.”
She was pulling items from a chest of drawers. “That’s sweet,” she said. “You’re sweet, too, but this is my destiny, I have to go.”
“We’ve got to get you out of here,” Jun Do told her. “Maybe we can get you to your father. He’ll know what to do.”
“Are you insane?” she asked. “He’s how I got stuck here.”
For some reason, she handed him a stack of clothes.
“There’s something I should have told you,” he said.
“About what?”
“The old interrogator. He described the guys they picked out for you.”
“What guys?”
“Your replacement husbands.”
She stopped packing. “There’s more than one?”
“One’s a warden in Sinpo. The other guy’s old, a Party official down in Chongwang. The interrogator didn’t know which one was going to get you.”
She cocked her head in confusion. “There’s got to be some kind of mistake.”
“Let’s just get you out of here,” he said. “It’ll buy you some time till they come back.”
“No,” she said, her eyes fixing on him. “You can do something about this, you’re a hero, you have powers. They can’t say no to you.”
“I don’t think so,” Jun Do said. “I don’t think it works like that, not really.”
“Tell them to go away, tell them you’re marrying me.” There was a knock at the door.
She grabbed his arm. “Tell them you’re marrying me,” she said.
He studied her face, vulnerable—he’d never seen her like this.
“You don’t want to marry me,” he told her.
“You’re a hero,” she said. “And I’m a hero’s wife. You just need to come to me.” She took the hem of her skirt and held it out like an apron. “You’re the baby in the tree, and you just need to trust me.”
He went to the door, but paused before opening it.
“You talked about my husband’s purpose,” she said. “What about yours? What if your purpose is me?”
“I don’t know if I have a purpose,” he told her. “But you know yours—it’s Pyongyang, not a radio man in Kinjye. Don’t underestimate yourself—you’ll survive.”
“Survive like you?” she asked.
He didn’t say anything.
“You know what you are?” she said. “You’re a survivor who has nothing to live for.”
“What would you rather, that I die for something I cared about?”
“That’s what my husband did,” she said.
The door was forced open. It was the two men from below. They didn’t look happy about all those stairs. “Pak Jun Do?” one asked, and when Jun Do nodded, the man said, “You’ll need to come with us.”
The other one asked, “Have you got a suit?”
THE MEN in suits drove Jun Do along the cannery tracks before following a military road that wound up and out of the hills above Kinjye. Jun Do turned and watched everything recede in glimpses through the rear window. Through cuts in the road, he could see boats bobbing blue in the harbor and ceramic tiles flashing from the Canning Master’s roof. He saw for a moment the town’s red spire honoring April Fifteenth. The town looked suddenly like one of the happy villages they paint on the side of ration buildings. Going over the hill, there was only a plume of