The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [89]
The medics began tearing strips of tape in preparation.
He was about to witness the darkest of trades, but the cigarette calmed him.
Just then, something caught his eye. He looked up to the blank wall above the doorway. It was completely empty—there was simply nothing there. He pulled the camera from his pocket. And while the guard and the medics were discussing the merits of various tobacco brands, Jun Do snapped a picture of the empty white wall. Understand that, Wanda, he thought. Never in his life had he been in a room without portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il above the door. Not in the lowliest orphanage, not in the oldest train car, not even in the burned-out shitter of the Junma. Never had he been in a place that did not merit the gaze of the Dear and Great Leaders’ constant concern. The place he was in, he knew now, was below mattering—it didn’t even exist.
While he was pocketing his camera, he caught the old woman staring at him. Her eyes were like those of the Senator’s wife—he felt she was seeing something he didn’t even know about himself.
One of the medics yelled at Jun Do to grab a crate from the corner, where there was a stack of them. Jun Do took a crate and met the medic at the bedside of a woman who had her jaw tied shut with strips of cloth that circled her head. One medic began unlacing her shoes, which were just rotten tire treads wrapped with wire. The other began unwrapping tubing and intravenous lines, all precious medical supplies.
Jun Do touched the woman’s skin, which was cool.
“I think we’re too late,” he told them.
The medics ignored him. They each ran a line into a vein in the tops of her feet, then attached two empty blood bags. The old photographer appeared with her camera. She called to the guard for the woman’s name, and when he told her, the photographer wrote it on a gray slate and placed it on the woman’s chest. Then the photographer unwound the strips of cloth from the woman’s head. When the photographer removed the woman’s cap, most of her hair came off with it, lining it with a black swirl.
“Here,” the photographer said, slipping the cap to Jun Do. “Take it.”
The cap looked heavy with ground-in grease. Jun Do hesitated.
“Do you know who I am?” the old photographer asked. “I’m Mongnan. I take the pictures of all who arrive and depart from this place.” She shook the cap insistently. “It’s wool. You’ll need it.”
Jun Do pocketed the cap as a way to shut her up, to stop her and her crazy talk.
When Mongnan took the woman’s picture, the flash awakened her for a moment. She reached from the cot to Jun Do’s wrist and clenched it. In her eyes was a very clear desire to take him with her. The medics yelled at Jun Do to lift the head of the cot. When he did so, they kicked the crate underneath, and soon the four blood bags were filling nicely.
Jun Do said to the medics, “We’d better work fast. It’s getting dark, and that driver said he doesn’t have headlights.”
The medics ignored him.
The next person was a teenager, his chest cool and pale blue. His eyes were drawn, so that they turned with labor, in increments. One of his arms hung off the cot, outstretched to the rough-hewn floorboards.
“What’s your name?” Mongnan asked him.
His mouth kept making a motion as though he was trying to wet his lips before speaking, but the words never came.
Soft and tender, with the voice of a mother, she whispered to the dying boy.
“Close your eyes,” she said, and when he did she snapped the photo.
The medics used the strips of medical tape to secure the blood lines, and the process repeated itself. Jun Do lifted the cot and slid the next crate under it, the boy’s head gently lolled, and then Jun Do was left carrying the warm bags to the cooler. The life of the boy, the true life of him, had literally drained warm into these bags that Jun Do held, and it was like the boy was still alive in the bags until Jun Do personally snuffed him by dropping them into the ice water. For some reason, he expected the warm bags of blood to float, but they sank to the bottom.
Mongnan