The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [71]
Wanda shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“I met the U.S. Navy before,” Jun Do said. “Lots of those guys are black. And my English teacher was from Angola. The only black man in the DPRK. He said it wasn’t so lonely as long as he gave us all African accents.”
Wanda said, “I heard a story that in the ’70s an American soldier crossed the DMZ, a boy from North Carolina who was drunk or something. The North Koreans made him a language teacher, but had to stop after he taught all the agents to talk like crackers.”
Jun Do didn’t know what she meant by “cracker.” “I never heard that story,” he said. “And I’m not an agent, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
Wanda watched him dig into another rib. “I’m surprised you didn’t take me up on my offer to answer any question,” she said. “I’d have bet you’d ask me if I spoke Korean.”
“Do you?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But I can tell when someone’s muddling a translation. That’s why I figure you’re here as something other than a lowly interpreter.”
Dr. Song and the Minister stood at their picnic table. Dr. Song announced, “The Minister wishes to present gifts to the Senator and his wife. For the Senator, The Selected Works of Kim Jong Il.” Here, Dr. Song produced the bound, eleven-volume set.
A Mexican woman walked by with a tray full of food. “EBay,” she said to Wanda.
“Oh, Pilar,” Wanda called after her. “You’re bad.”
The Senator accepted the gift with a smile. “Are they signed?” he asked.
Dr. Song’s face showed a flash of uncertainty. He conferred with the Minister. Jun Do couldn’t hear them, but their words were flashing back and forth. Then Dr. Song smiled. “The Dear Leader Kim Jong Il would be happy to inscribe the books in person should the Senator visit as our guest in Pyongyang.”
In return, the Senator gave the Minister an iPod loaded with country music.
Dr. Song then began to speak publicly of the beauty and graciousness of the Senator’s wife, while the Minister prepared to offer her the cooler.
The smell of that meat returned to Jun Do’s nose. He set the rib aside and looked away.
“What?” Wanda asked him. “What’s in that cooler?”
This seemed like a turning point somehow, that Dr. Song’s ruses up till now were all in fun, but the tiger ploy was of a different sort—one sniff and the Americans would know that the meat was foul, that some ugly game was being played, and everything would be different.
“I need to know,” Jun Do asked her. “Were you serious?”
“Of course,” she said. “Serious about what?”
He took her hand. With a pen, he wrote across her palm the name of the Second Mate.
“I need to know if he made it,” Jun Do said. “Did he get out?”
Using her phone, Wanda took a picture of her hand. She typed a message using both her thumbs and then pressed Send. “Let’s find out,” she said.
Dr. Song finished his tribute to the loveliness of the Senator’s wife, and the Minister handed her the cooler. “From the citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” he said. “Fresh tiger meat, taken recently from a majestic beast culled from the peaks of Mount Paektu. You can’t imagine how white was his fur. The Minister desires that we all feast of it tonight, yes?”
The Minister nodded with pride.
Dr. Song adopted a wily smile. “And remember,” he said to the Senator’s wife, “when you eat of the tiger, you become like the tiger.”
People stopped eating to witness the Senator’s wife’s reaction to this, but she said nothing. The clouds were thicker now, and the air smelled of rain that probably wouldn’t arrive. The Senator removed the cooler from the table. “Let me see if I can take charge of that,” he said with a businesslike smile. “Tiger sounds like a man’s business.”
The Senator’s wife turned her attention to a dog at her side; she cupped its ears with both hands and spoke sweetly to it.
The gift ceremony seemed to have slipped from Dr. Song’s hands. He was at a loss as to what had gone wrong. He came over to Jun Do. “How are you holding up, son?” he asked. “It’s the arm, it’s hurting quite badly, I can tell, yes?”
Jun Do rotated his shoulder a couple of times. “Yes,