WHEN THE interrogators had left, Commander Ga lay in the dark, smoking. In pain school, they’d taught him to find his reserve, a private place he could go in unbearable moments. A pain reserve was like a real reserve—you put a fence around it, attended to its welfare, kept it pristine, and dealt with all trespassers. Nobody could ever know what your pain reserve was, even if you’d chosen the most obvious, rudimentary element of your life, because if you lost your pain reserve, you’d lost everything.
In prison, when rocks smashed his hands or a baton came down on the back of his neck, he’d attempt to transport himself to the deck of the Junma and its gentle rolling motion. When the cold made his fingers staticky with pain, he tried to get inside the opera diva’s song, to enter her voice itself. He tried to veil himself in the yellow of the Second Mate’s wife’s dress or pull the cloak of an American quilt over his head, but none of them really worked. It was only when he’d seen Sun Moon’s movie that he finally had a reserve—she saved him from everything. When his pickax struck frozen rock, in that spark, he felt her aliveness. When a wall of ore dust would sweep through a passage and double him over with cough, she gave him breath. When once he stepped in an electrified puddle, Sun Moon appeared and restarted his heart.
So it was that today, when the old Pubyok of Division 42 fitted him with the halo, he turned to her. Even before they’d fastened the thumbscrews to his scalp, he’d taken leave of them and was returning to the first day he’d physically stood in the presence of Sun Moon. He didn’t believe that he might actually meet her until he’d made it out of the gates of Prison 33, until the Warden called for the guards to open the gate, and he stepped through its razor-wire threshold and then heard the gate slide shut behind him. He was wearing Commander Ga’s uniform and was holding the box of photographs Mongnan had given him. In his pocket was the camera he’d watched over and a long-guarded DVD of Casablanca. Armed with these things, he walked through the mud to the car that would take him to her.
As he stepped into the Mercedes, the driver turned to him, shock and confusion on his face.
Commander Ga could see a thermos on the dashboard. A year without tea.
“I could use a cup of tea,” he said.
The driver didn’t move. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.
“Are you a homosexual?” was Commander Ga’s answer.
The driver stared at him in disbelief, then shook his head.
“Are you sure? Have you been tested?”
“Yes,” the driver said, confused. Then he said, “No.”
“Get out,” Commander Ga said. “I’m Commander Ga now. That other man is gone. If you think you belong with him, I can take you to him, what’s left of him, down in the mine. Because you’re either his driver or my driver. If you’re my driver, you’ll pour me a cup of tea, get me to a civilized place where I can bathe. Then you’ll take me home.”
“Home?”
“Home to my wife, the actress Sun Moon.”
And then Ga was being driven to Sun Moon, the only person who could take away the pain he’d suffered in getting to her. A crow towed their Mercedes through the mountain roads, and in the backseat Ga looked through the box Mongnan had given him. It contained thousands of pictures. Mongnan had clipped together inmates’ entrance and exit photos. Back to back, alive and dead, thousands of people. He flipped through the box so that all the exit images faced him—bodies crushed and torn and folded in unnatural angles. He recognized victims of cave-ins and beatings. In some pictures, he couldn’t tell exactly what he was looking at. Mostly, the dead looked as if they’d gone to sleep, and children, because it was the cold that got them, were curled up in hard little discs, like lozenges. Mongnan was meticulous, and the catalog was complete. This box, he suddenly understood, was the closest thing his nation had to the phone book he’d seen in Texas.
He spun the box around, and now facing him were all the entrance photos, in which people were fearful and uncertain and hadn’t quite let themselves imagine the nightmare they were in for, and these photos were even harder to look at. When at last he located his own entrance photo, he turned it slowly, seriously expecting to see himself dead. But it wasn’t so. He took a moment to marvel at that. He studied the light in the trees as they flashed by. He watched the motion of the crow ahead, its tow chain tinkling with slackness before snapping taut. He remembered the eggshells spinning whimsically in the crow that had brought him. In his photo, you couldn’t see the dying people on cots around him. You couldn’t see his hands dripping with bloody ice water. But the eyes—it’s unmistakable how they are wide yet refusing to see what is before them. Such a boy he seems, as if he’s still back in an orphanage, believing that all is well and that the fate which befalls all the orphan boys won’t befall him. The chalk name on the slate he held seemed so foreign. Here was the only photo of that person, the person he used to be. He tore it slowly into strips before letting them flutter out the window.
The crow unhitched them in the outskirts of Pyongyang, and at the Koryo Hotel, the girls gave him Commander Ga’s usual treatment—the deep soaking and cleansing he sought after every visit to a prison mine. His uniform was cleaned and pressed, and he was bathed in a grand tub, where the girls scrubbed the blood stains from his hands and tried to repair his nails, and they didn’t care whose blood it was that tinted the soapy water, his or Commander Ga’s or someone else’s. In the warm, buoyant water he came to see that at some point in the last year, his mind and his flesh had separated, that his brain had sat high and frightened above the mule of his body, a beast of burden that hopefully would make it alone over the treacherous mountain pass of Prison 33. But now as a woman ran a warm washcloth along the arch of his foot, the sensation was allowed to rise up, up into his brain, and it was okay to perceive again, to recognize forgotten parts of his body as they hailed him. His lungs were more than air bellows. His heart, he believed now, could do more than move blood.
He tried to imagine the woman he was about to behold. He understood that the real Sun Moon couldn’t be as beautiful as the one on the screen, the way her skin glowed, the radiance of her smile. And the particular way her desires took up residence about the eyes—it must be a product of projection, of some cinematic effect. He wanted to be intimate with her, to harbor no secrets, to have nothing between them. Seeing her projected on the wall of the infirmary, that’s how it had felt, that there was no snow or cold between them, that she was right there with him, a woman who’d given everything, who’d abandoned her freedom and entered Prison 33 to save him. It had been a mistake to wait until the last moment to tell the Second Mate’s wife about the replacement husbands that awaited her, Ga could see that now. So there was no way he was going to let a secret spoil things with Sun Moon. That was the great thing about their relationship: a new beginning, a chance to unburden all. What the Captain had said of getting his wife back would be true of him and Sun Moon as well: they’d be strangers for a while, there would be a period of discovery, but love, love would eventually return.
The women of the Koryo Hotel toweled him, dressed him. Finally, he took a number 7 haircut—the one they called Speed Battle, the Commander’s signature style.
In the late afternoon, the Mercedes climbed the final, winding road that led to the peak of Mount Taesong. They passed the botanical gardens, the national seed bank, and the hothouses that contained the breeding stocks of kimilsungia and kimjongilia. They passed the Pyongyang Central Zoo, closed at this hour. On the seat beside him were some of Commander Ga’s possessions. There was a bottle of cologne, and he quickly applied some. This is the smell of me, he thought. He picked up Commander Ga’s pistol. This is my pistol, he thought. He pulled back the slide enough to see a bullet peek from the breech. I am the kind of man who keeps one in the chamber.
Finally, they passed a cemetery whose bronze-busted tombstones glowed orange in the light. This was the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery, whose 114 occupants, all of whom had died before they could engender sons, gave names to every orphan in the nation. They reached the peak and here were three houses built for the ministers of Mass Mobilization, Prison Mines, and Procurement.
The driver came to a stop before the middle house, and Commander Ga walked through the gate himself, its low slats woven with cucumber vines and the blossoms of a magnificent melon. Nearing Sun Moon’s door, he felt his chest tighten with pain, the pain of the Captain pressing him with inky needles, of the saltwater he splashed on the raw tattoo, of the Second Mate’s wife weeping the infection out with a steaming towel. At the door, he took that breath, and knocked.
Almost immediately, Sun Moon answered. She wore a loose house robe, under which her breasts swung free. He’d seen such a house robe only once before, in Texas, hanging in the bath of his guest room. That robe was white and fluffy, while Sun Moon’s was matted and stained with old sauces. She was without makeup, and her hair was down, falling across her shoulders. Her face was filled with excitement and possibility and, suddenly, he felt the terrible violence of this day leave him. Gone was the combat he’d faced at the hands of her husband. Gone was the look of doom on the Warden’s face. Wiped away were the multitudes Mongnan had captured on film. This house was a good house, white paint, red trim. It was the opposite of the Canning Master’s house—nothing bad had happened here, he could tell.
“I’m home,” he said to her.
She looked past him, peering around the yard, the road.
“Do you have a package for me?” she asked. “Did the studio send you?”
But here she paused, taking in all the inconsistencies—the lean stranger in her husband’s uniform, the man wearing his cologne and riding in his car.
“Who are you supposed to be?” she asked.
“I’m Commander Ga,” he said. “And I’m finally home.”
“You’re telling me you’ve brought no script, nothing?” she asked. “You mean the studio dressed you up like this and sent you all the way up here, and you don’t have a script for me? You tell Dak-Ho I said that’s cold, even for him. He’s crossed a line.”
“I don’t know who Dak-Ho is,” he said and marveled at the evenness of her skin, at the way her dark eyes locked on him. “You’re even more beautiful than I imagined.”
She undid the belt of her house robe, then recinched it tighter.
Then she lifted her hands to the heavens. “Why do we live on this godforsaken hill?” she asked the sky. “Why am I up here, when everything that matters is down there?” She pointed to Pyongyang far below, this time of day just a haze of buildings lining the silver Y of the Taedong River. She approached him and looked up into his eyes. “Why can’t we live by Mansu Park? I could take an express bus to the studio from there. How can you pretend not to know who Dak-Ho is? Everybody knows him. Has he sent you here to mock me? Are they all down there laughing at me?”
“I can tell you’ve been hurting for a long time,” he said. “But that’s all over now. Your husband’s home.”
“You’re the worst actor in the world,” she said. “They’re all down there at a casting party, aren’t they? They’re drunk and laughing and casting a new female lead, and they decided to send the worst actor in the world up the hill to mock me.”
She fell down to the grass and placed the back of her hand against her forehead. “Go on, get out of here. You’ve had your fun. Go tell Dak-Ho how the old actress wept.” She tried to wipe her eyes. Then, from her house robe, she produced a pack of cigarettes. She brazenly lit one—it made her look mannish and seductive. “Not a single script, an entire year without a script.”
She needed him. It was completely clear how much she needed him.
She noticed that the front door was cracked and that her children were peeking out. She hooked loose a slipper and kicked it toward the door, which was quickly pulled shut.
“I don’t know anything about the movie business,” he said. “But I’ve brought you a movie, as a gift. It’s Casablanca, and it’s supposed to be the best.”
She reached up and took the DVD case, dirty and battered, from his hands. She quickly glanced at it. “That one’s black-and-white,” she said, then threw it across the yard. “Plus I don’t watch movies—they’d only corrupt the purity of my acting.” On her back in the grass, she smoked contemplatively. “You really don’t have anything to do with the studio?” she asked.
He shook his head no. She was so vulnerable before him, so pure—how did she stay so in this harsh world?
“So what are you, one of my husband’s new flunkies? Sent to check on me while he goes on a secret mission? Oh, I know about his secret missions—he alone is brave enough to infiltrate a whorehouse in Minpo, only the great Commander Ga can survive a week in a Vladivostok card den.”
He crouched beside her. “Oh, no. You judge him too harshly. He’s changed. Sure, he’s a man who’s made some mistakes, he’s sorry for those, but all that matters now is you. He adores you, I’m sure of it. He’s completely devoted to you.”
“Tell him I can’t take much more of this. Please pass that along for me.”
“I’m him now,” he said. “So you can tell him yourself.”
She took a deep breath and shook her head. “So you want to be Commander Ga, huh?” she asked. “Do you know what he’d do to you if he heard you assume his name? His taekwondo ‘tests’ are for real, you know. They’ve made an enemy of everyone in this town. That’s why I can’t get a role anymore. Just make up with the Dear Leader, won’t you? Can’t you just bow to him at the opera? Will you give my husband that request from me? That’s all it would take, a single gesture, in front of everybody, and the Dear Leader would forgive all.”
He reached to wipe her cheek, but she pulled away.
“These tears in my eyes,” she said. “Do you see them? Can you tell my husband of these tears?” she asked. “Don’t go on any more missions, please. Tell him not to send another flunky to babysit me.”
“He already knows,” he said. “And he’s sorry. Will you do something for him, a favor? It would mean so much to him.”
Lying on the grass, she turned to her side, her breasts lolling under the house robe, snot running freely from her nose. “Go away,” she said.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said. “I told you it’s been a long journey, and I’ve only just arrived. The favor is a small one, really, it’s nothing to a great actress like yourself. You know that part from A True Daughter of the Country, where, to find your sister, you must cross the Inchon Strait, still aflame with the sinking battleship Koryo, and when you wade in, you’re just a fishing-village girl from Cheju, but after swimming through the corpses of patriots in blood-red waters, you emerge a different person, now you are a woman soldier, a half-burned flag in your hands, and the line you say, you know it, will you say it to me now?”
She didn’t say the words, but he thought he could see them pass through her eyes—There is a greater love, one that from the lowest places calls us high. Yes, they were there in her eyes, that’s the sign of a true actress—being able to speak with just her expressions.
“Can you sense how right everything feels?” he asked her. “How everything’s going to be different? When I was in prison—”
“Prison?” she asked. She sat up straight. “How exactly do you know my husband?”
“Your husband attacked me this morning,” he said. “We were in a tunnel, in Prison 33, and I killed him.”
She cocked her head. “What?”
“I mean, I believe I killed him. It was dark, so I can’t be sure, but my hands, they know what to do.”
“Is this one of my husband’s tests?” she asked. “If so, it’s his sickest one yet. Are you supposed to report back how I responded to that news, whether I danced for joy or hanged myself in grief? I can’t believe he’s stooped this low. He’s a child, really, a scared little boy. Only someone like that would loyalty-test an old woman in the park. Only Commander Ga would give his own son a masculinity test. And by the way, his sidekicks eventually get tested, too, and when they fail, you don’t see them anymore.”
“Your husband won’t be testing anyone ever again,” he said. “You’re all that matters in his life right now. Over time, you’ll come to understand that.”
“Stop it,” she said. “This isn’t funny anymore. It’s time for you to leave.”
He looked up to the doorway, and standing there silent were the children—a girl perhaps eleven, a boy a little younger. They held the collar of a dog with thick shoulders and a shiny coat. “Brando,” Commander Ga called, and the dog broke free. The Catahoula bounded to him, tail wagging. It kept leaping high to lick his face, then flattening low to nip his heels.
“You got him,” he said to her. “I can’t believe you got him.”
“Got him?” she asked. Her voice was suddenly serious. “How do you know its name?” she asked. “We’ve kept the dog a secret so he won’t be taken by the authorities.”
“How do I know his name? I named him,” he said. “Right before I sent him to you last year. ‘Brando’ is the word that Texans use to say something is yours forever.”
“Wait a minute,” she said, and all the theatrics were gone. “Just who exactly are you?”
“I’m the good husband. I’m the one who’s going to make everything up to you.”
There was a look on her face that Ga recognized, and it was not a happy one. It expressed an understanding that everything would be different now, that the person you’d been and the life you’d been living were over. It was a tough knowledge to suddenly gain, but it got better with tomorrows. And it would be easier since she’d probably worn that look once before, when the Dear Leader gave her, as a prize, to the winner of the Golden Belt, the man who’d beat Kimura.
In his dark room in Division 42, the smoldering cigarette in Commander Ga’s lips was nearly finished. It had been a long day, and the memory of Sun Moon had saved him yet again. But it was time to put her away in his mind—she’d always be there when he needed her. He smiled a last time at the thought of her, causing the cigarette to fall from his mouth into the well where his neck curved into collarbone. There it burned slowly against his skin, a tiny red glow in an otherwise black room.
Pain, what was pain?