The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [80]
“Then I’m not sure I could ever feel free here,” he said.
“What am I supposed to do with that?” Wanda asked. She seemed almost mad at him. “That doesn’t help me understand anything.”
“When you’re in my country,” he said, “everything makes simple, clear sense. It’s the most straightforward place on earth.”
She looked out toward the desert.
Jun Do said, “Your father was a tunnel rat, yes?”
“It was my uncle,” she said.
“Okay, your uncle. Most people walking around—they don’t think about being alive. But when your uncle was about to enter an enemy tunnel, I bet he was thinking about nothing but that. And when he made it out, he probably felt more alive than we’ll ever feel, the most alive in the world, and that until the next tunnel, nothing could touch him, he was invincible. You ask him if he felt more alive here or over there.”
“I know what you’re saying and all,” Wanda said. “When I was a kid, he was always telling hair-raisers about the tunnels, like it was no big deal. But when he visits Dad’s now, and you get up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, there he is, wide awake in the kitchen, just standing there, staring into the sink. That’s not invincible. That’s not wishing you were back in Vietnam where you felt alive. That’s wishing you’d never even seen the place. Think about what that does to your freedom metaphor.”
Jun Do gave a look of sad recognition. “I know this dream your uncle has,” he said. “The one that woke him and made him walk to the kitchen.”
“Trust me,” she said. “You don’t know my uncle.”
Jun Do nodded. “Fair enough,” he said.
She stared at him, almost vexed again.
“Okay,” she said. “Go on and tell it.”
“I’m just trying to help you understand him.”
“Tell it,” she said.
“When a tunnel would collapse,” Jun Do said.
“In the prison mines?”
“That’s right,” he said. “When a tunnel would collapse, in a mine, we’d have to go dig men out. Their eyeballs would be flat and caked. And their mouths—they were always wide open and filled with dirt. That’s what you couldn’t stand to look at, a throat packed like that, the tongue grubbed and brown. It was our greatest fear, ending up with everyone standing around in a circle, staring at the panic of your last moment. So your uncle, when you find him at the sink late at night, it means he’s had the dream where you breathe the dirt. In the dream, everything’s dark. You’re holding your breath, holding it, and when you can’t hold it anymore, when you’re about to breathe the dirt—that’s when you wake, gasping. I have to wash my face after that dream. For a while I do nothing but breathe, but it seems like I’ll never get my air back.”
Wanda studied him a moment.
She said, “I’m going to give you something, okay?”
She handed him a small camera that fit in his palm. He’d seen one like it in Japan.
“Take my picture,” she said. “Just point it and press the button.”
He held the camera up in the dark. There was a little screen upon which he could barely see her outline. Then there was a flash.
Wanda reached in her pocket, and removed a bright red cell phone. When she held it up, the picture he’d taken of her was on its screen. “These were made for Iraq,” she said. “I give them to locals, people who are friendly. When they think I need to see something, they take a picture of it. The picture goes to a satellite, then only to me. The camera has no memory, so it doesn’t store the pictures. No one could ever find out what you took a picture of or where it went.”
“What do you want me to take a picture of?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Anything. It’s up to you. If there’s ever something you’d like to show me, that would help me understand your country, just push this button.”
He looked around, as if trying to decide what in this dark world he would photograph.
“Don’t be scared of it,” she said and leaned in close to him. “Reach out and take our picture,” she told him.
He could feel her shouldering into him, her arm around his back.
He took the picture, then looked at it on the screen.
“Was I supposed to smile?” he asked, handing it to her.