The Orphan Master's Son (33 page)

He'd watched this movie with the others, projected onto the side of the prison infirmary, the only building that was painted white. It was Kim Jong Il's birthday, February 16, their one day off work a year. The inmates sat on upended pieces of firewood that they'd beaten free of ice, and this was his first look at her, a woman luminous with beauty who plunges into darkness and simply won't seem to return. The sisters speak on and on, the waves build and break, the patients in the infirmary weakly moan as
their blood-collection bags fill, and still Sun Moon will not surface. He wrings his hands at the loss of her, all the prisoners do, and even though she eventually surfaces, they all know that for the rest of the movie she will have that power over them.

It was that night, he now remembered, that Mongnan saved his life for the second time. It was very cold, the coldest he'd ever been, for work was what kept them warm all day, and watching a movie in the snow had allowed his body temperature to dangerously fall.

Mongnan appeared at his bunk, touching his chest and his feet to gauge his aliveness.

“Come,” she said. “We must move quickly.”

His limbs barely functioned as he followed the old woman. Others in their bunks stirred as they passed, but none sat up, as there was so little time for sleep. Together, they raced for a corner of the prison yard that was normally brightly lit and watched by a two-man guard tower. “The bulb to the main searchlight has burned out,” Mongnan whispered to him as they ran. “It will take them a while to get another, but we must be quick.” In the dark, they crouched, picking up all the moths that had fallen dead before the lamp had died. “Fill your mouth,” she said. “Your stomach doesn't care.” He did as he was told and soon he was chewing a wad of them—their furry abdomens drying his mouth, despite the goop that burst from them and a sharp aspirin taste from some chemical on their wings. His stomach hadn't been filled since Texas. He and Mongnan fled in the dark with handfuls of moths—wings slightly singed but ready to keep them alive another week.

GOOD MORNING
,
CITIZENS!
In your housing blocks, on your factory floors, gather 'round your loudspeakers for today's news: the North Korean table-tennis team has just defeated its Somali counterpart in straight sets! Also, President Robert Mugabe sends his well wishes on this, the anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea. Don't forget, it is improper to sit on the escalators leading into the subways. The Minister of Defense reminds us that the deepest subways in the world are for your civil-defense safety, should the Americans sneak-attack again. No sitting! And kelp-harvesting season will soon be upon us! Time to sterilize your jars and cans. And, finally, it is once again our privilege to crown the year's Best North Korean Story. Last year's tale of sorrow at the hands of South Korean missionaries was a one-hundred-percent success. This year's promises to be even more grand—it is a true story of love and sorrow, of faith and endurance, and of the Dear Leader's unending dedication to even the lowliest citizen of this great nation. Sadly, there is tragedy. Yet there is redemption, too! And taekwondo! Stay close to your loudspeakers, citizens, for each daily installment.

THE NEXT MORNING
,
my head was foggy from the sedative. Still, I raced to Division 42, where we checked on Commander Ga. As is the law of beatings, the real hurt came the day after. Rather ingeniously, he had stitched up the cut over his eye, but by what means he'd improvised a needle and thread we couldn't tell. We would have to discover his method so that we could ask him about it.

We took Commander Ga to the cafeteria, a place we thought would seem less threatening. Most people believe that harm won't come to them in a public space. We had the interns fetch Ga some breakfast. Jujack fixed a bowl of
bi bim bop
, while Q-Kee heated a kettle for
cha
. None of us liked the name “Q-Kee.” It went against the professionalism we were trying to project at Division 42, something sorely missing with Pubyok wandering around in forty-year-old suits from Hamhung and bulgogi-stained ties. But since the new opera diva started going by her initials, all the young women were doing it. Pyongyang can be so trendy that way. Q-Kee countered our complaints with the fact that we wouldn't reveal our names, and she was unmoved when we explained that the policy was a holdover from the war, when subjects were seen as possible spies rather than citizens who had lost their revolutionary zeal and gone astray. She didn't buy it, and neither did we. How could you build a reputation in an environment where the only people who got names were the interns and the sad old retirees who clamber in to relive the glory days?

While Commander Ga ate his breakfast, Q-Kee engaged him in some small talk.

“Which
kwans
do you think have a shot at the Golden Belt this year?” she asked.

Commander Ga simply wolfed his food. We'd never met someone who'd made it out of a mining prison before, but one look at how he ate told us all we needed to know about the conditions at Prison 33. Imagine
stepping from a place like that into Commander Ga's beautiful house on Mount Taesong. His view of Pyongyang is suddenly yours, his famed rice-wine collection is suddenly yours, and then there is his wife.

Q-Kee tried again. “One of the girls in the fifty-five-kilo division just qualified using the
dwi chagi ga
,” she said. This was Ga's signature move. He'd personally modified the
dwi chagi
so that now its execution required turning your back to the opponent to lure him in. Ga either knew nothing of taekwondo or he didn't take the bait. Of course this wasn't the real Commander Ga, so he should have no real knowledge of Golden Belt—level martial arts. The questioning was a necessary step in determining the degree to which he actually believed he was Commander Ga.

Ga horsed down the last swallow, wiped his mouth, and pushed the bowl away.

“You'll never find them,” he said to us. “I don't care what happens to me, so don't bother trying to make me tell you.”

His voice was stern, and interrogators aren't used to being spoken to that way. Some of the Pubyok at another table caught wind of this tone and came over.

Commander Ga pulled the teapot to him. Instead of pouring a cup, he opened the pot and removed the steaming teabag. This he placed on the cut over his eye. He squinted at the pain, and tears of hot tea ran down his cheek. “You said you wanted my story,” he told us. “I'll give it to you, everything but the fates of the woman and her kids. But first, I need something.”

One of the Pubyok pulled off a shoe and advanced upon Ga.

“Stop,” I called. “Let him finish.”

The Pubyok hesitated, shoe high.

Ga paid this threat no mind. Was this a result of his pain training? Was he accustomed to beatings? Some people simply feel better after a beating—beatings are often good cures for guilt and self-loathing. Was he suffering from these?

In a calmer voice, we told the Pubyok, “He's ours. Sarge gave his word.”

The Pubyok backed down, but they joined us at our table, four of them, with their teapot. Of course they drink
pu-erh
, and they stink of it all day long.

“What is this thing you need?” we asked him.

Commander Ga said, “I need the answer to a question.”

The Pubyok were beside themselves. Never in their lives had they heard such talk from a subject. The team looked my way. “Sir,” Q-Kee said. “This is the wrong road to go down.”

Jujack said, “With all due respect, sir. We should give this guy a sniff of the towering white flower.”

I put my hand up. “Enough,” I said. “Our subject will tell us how he first met Commander Ga, and when he is finished we will answer one question, any question he wishes.”

The old-timers looked on with seething disbelief. They leaned on their hard, ropy forearms, their knotted hands and bent fingers and misgrown fingernails squeezed tight with restraint.

Commander Ga said, “I met Commander Ga twice. The first time was in the spring—I heard he would be visiting the prison on the eve of his arrival.”

“Start there,” we told him.

“Shortly after I entered Prison 33,” he said, “Mongnan started a rumor that one of the new inmates was an undercover agent from the Ministry of Prison Mines, sent there to catch guards who were killing inmates for fun and thus lowering the production quotas. It worked, I suppose—they said fewer inmates were maimed for the sport of it. But the guards thumping on you—when winter came, that was the least of your worries.”

“What did the guards call you?” we asked him.

“There are no names,” he said. “I made it through winter, but afterward I was different. I can't make you understand what the winter was like, what that did to me. When the thaw came, I didn't care about anything. I would leer at the guards like they were orphans. I kept acting out at self-criticism sessions. Instead of confessing that I could have pushed one more ore cart or mined an extra ton, I would berate my hands for not listening to my mouth or blame my right foot for not following my left. Winter had changed me—I was someone else now. The cold, there are no words for it.”

“For the love of Juche,” the old Pubyok said. He still had his shoe on the table. “If we were interrogating this idiot, there'd already be a funeral team on its way to retrieve that glorious, glorious actress and her poor tots.”

“This isn't even Commander Ga,” we reminded him.

“Then why are we listening to him whimper about prison?” He turned
to Commander Ga. “You think those mountains are cold? Imagine them with Yankee snipers and B-29 strikes. Imagine those hills without a camp cook to serve you hot cabbage soup every day. Imagine there's no comfortable infirmary cot where they painlessly put you out of your misery.”

Nobody ever dropped bombs on us, but we knew what Commander Ga was talking about. Once we had to go north to get the biography of a guard at Prison 14-18. All day we rode north in the back of a crow, slush spraying up from the floorboards, our boots freezing solid, the whole time wondering if we were really going to interrogate a subject or if that was just what we'd been told to lure us to prison without a fuss. As the cold froze the turds inside our asses, we could only wonder if the Pubyok hadn't finally pulled the lever on us.

Commander Ga went on, “Because I was new, I was housed next to the infirmary, where people complained all night. One old man in there was a particular pain in the ass. He wasn't productive because his hands no longer worked. People might have covered for him, but he was hated—one of his eyes was cloudy, and he only knew how to accuse and demand. All night the guy would moan an endless series of questions.
Who are you
? he'd call to the night.
Why are you here? Why won't you answer
? Week after week, I'd wonder when the blood truck would finally come to shut him up. But then I started to think about his questions. Why was I there? What was my crime? Eventually, I began to answer him.
Why won't you confess
? he'd call out, and through my harmonica barracks, I'd shout,
I'm ready to confess
,
I'll tell everything
. These conversations made people nervous, and then one night, I got a visit from Mongnan. She was the oldest woman in the camp, and she'd long ago lost her hips and breasts to hunger. Her hair was cut like a man's, and she kept her palms wrapped with strips of cloth.”

Commander Ga continued with his story of how he and Mongnan sneaked out of the barracks, past the mud room and water barrels, and if we perhaps didn't say it, we all must have been thinking that the name Mongnan meant “Magnolia,” the grandest white flower of them all. That's what our subjects say they see when the autopilot takes them to the apex of pain—a wintry mountaintop, where from the frost a lone white blossom opens for them. No matter how their bodies contort, it is the stillness of this image they remember. It couldn't be so bad, could it? A single afternoon of pain … and then the past is behind you, every shortcoming and failure is gone, every last bitter mouthful of it.

“Outside, past my rising breath,” Commander Ga continued, “I asked Mongnan where all the guards had gone. She pointed toward the bright lights of the administration buildings.
The Minister of Prison Mines must be coming tomorrow
, she said.
I've seen this before. They'll be up all night cooking the books
.

“
So?
I asked her.

“
The Minister is coming
, she said.
That's why they've worked us so hard
,
that's why all the weak have been thrown in the infirmary
. She pointed to the warden's complex, every light burning bright.
Look at all the electricity they're using
, she said.
Listen to that poor generator. The only way they can light this whole place is with the electric fence off
.

“
So what
,
escape?
I asked.
There's nowhere to run
.

“
Oh
,
we'll all die here
, she said.
Rest assured. But it won't be tonight
.

“And suddenly she was moving across the yard, stiff-spined but quick in the dark. I caught up with her at the fence, where we squatted. The fence was two fences, really, a parallel line of concrete posts strung with cables on brown ceramic insulators. Inside was a stretch of no-man's-land, teeming with wild ginger and radishes that nobody lived to steal.

“She moved to reach through the wires.
Wait
, I said.
Shouldn't we test it?
But Mongnan reached under the fence and pulled out two radishes, crisp and cold, which we ate on the spot. Then we began digging the wild ginger that grew there. All the old ladies in camp got placed on grave detail—they buried the bodies where they fell, just deep enough that the rain wouldn't seep them out. And you could always tell ginger plants whose tap root had penetrated a corpse: the blooms were large, iridescent yellow, and it was hard to jerk loose a plant whose roots had hooked a rib below.