At the Glory of Mount Paektu Housing Block, I didn’t bound up the twenty-one flights to my parents. I took the stairs slowly for once, feeling the labor of each step. I couldn’t get that brand out of my mind. I saw it scalding red and bubbly across Commander Ga, I imagined its scars, ancient and discolored, running down the thick backs of all the old Pubyok, I saw Q-Kee’s perfect body disfigured by it, a burn from neck to navel, splitting the breasts toward the sternum, the belly, and below. I didn’t use my Pubyok badge to board the subway’s priority seating car. I sat with the average citizens, and on all their bodies, I couldn’t help but see “Property of” in raised pink letters. The mark was on everyone, only now could I finally see it. It was the ultimate perversion of the communist dream I’d been taught since childhood. I felt like retching the turnips in my stomach.
I was almost never home in the middle of the day. I took the opportunity to remove my shoes in the hall and ever so silently slip my key in the lock. Opening the door, I lifted up on the knob, so the door’s hinges wouldn’t squeak. Inside, the loudspeaker was blaring, and my parents were at the table with some of my files open and spread before them. They were whispering to one another as they ran their fingers across the pages, feeling the file labels and paper clips, the embossed stamps and raised department seals.
I knew better than to leave important files at home anymore. These were just requisition forms.
I pushed the door shut behind me. It squealed in its arc until the lock clicked tight.
The two of them froze.
“Who is it?” my father asked. “Who’s there?”
“Are you a thief?” my mother asked. “I assure you we have nothing to steal.”
They were both looking right at me, though they seemed not to see me.
Across the table, their hands sought one another and joined.
“Go away,” my father said. “Leave us alone, or we’ll tell our son.”
My mother felt around the table until she located a spoon. She grabbed the handle and held it out like a knife. “You don’t want my son to find out about this,” she said. “He’s a torturer.”
“Mother, Father,” I said. “No need to worry, it is I, your son.”
“But it’s the middle of the day,” my father said. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” I told him.
I walked to the table and closed the files.
“You’re barefoot,” my mother said.
“I am.”
I could see the marks on them. I could see that they’d been branded.
“But I don’t understand,” my father said.
“I’m going to have a long night,” I told them. “And some long tomorrows to follow. I won’t be here to cook your dinner or help you down the hall to the bathroom.”
“Don’t worry about us,” my mother said. “We can manage. If you have to go, go.”
“I do have to go,” I said.
I walked to the kitchen. From a drawer, I removed the can opener. I paused there at the window. Spending my days underground, I wasn’t used to the midday brightness. I observed the spoon and pan and hot plate my mother cooked with. I stared at the drying rack, where two glass bowls caught the light. I decided against bowls.
“I think you’re afraid of me,” I said to them. “Because I’m a mystery to you. Because you don’t really know me.”
I thought they’d protest, but they were silent. I reached to the top shelf and found the can of peaches. I blew on the lid, but it hadn’t been there long enough to gather much dust. At the table, I took the spoon from my mother’s hand and sat, the items before me.
“Well, you won’t have to worry ever again,” I told them. “Because today you’re going to meet the real me.”
I sank the opener into the can and began to cut a slow circle.
My father sniffed the air. “Peaches?” he asked.
“That’s right,” I said. “Peaches in their own sweet liquor.”
“From the night market?” Mother asked.
“Actually, I stole them from the evidence locker.”
My father inhaled deeply. “I can just see them, plain as day, the thick juice they’re in, the way they glow in the light.”
“It’s been so long since I’ve tasted a peach,” my mother said. “We used to get a coupon for a can every month in our ration book.”
My father said, “Oh, that was years ago.”
“I suppose you’re right,” my mother answered. “I’m just saying that we used to love peaches, and then one day you couldn’t get them anymore.”
“Well, allow me, then,” I told them. “Open.”
Like children, they opened their mouths. In anticipation, my father closed his milky eyes.
I stirred the peaches in their can, then selected a slice. Passing the bottom of the spoon across the edge of the can, I caught the dripping syrup. Then I reached and slipped the slice into my mother’s mouth.
“Mmm,” she said.
I fed my father next.
“That, son,” he said, “was a peach.”
There was silence, except for the blaring loudspeaker, as they savored the moment.
In unison, they said, “Thank you, Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.”
“Yes,” I said. “You have him to thank.”
I stirred the can again, hunted down the next slice.
“I have a new friend,” I said.
“A friend from work?” my father asked.
“Yes, a friend from work,” I said. “The two of us have become quite intimate. He’s given me hope that love is out there for me. He’s a man who has true love. I’ve studied his case very closely, and I think the secret to love is sacrifice. He himself has made the ultimate sacrifice for the woman he loves.”
“He gave his life for her?” my father asked.
“Actually, he took her life,” I told him and popped a peach in his mouth.
There was a quake in my mother’s voice. “We’re happy for you,” she said. “As the Dear Leader says, Love makes the world go ’round. So don’t hesitate. Go find that true love. Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine. We can take care of ourselves.”
I spooned a slice into her mouth. It caught her by surprise and she coughed.
“Perhaps, from time to time,” I said, “you have seen me writing in my journal. It’s actually not a journal—it’s a personal biography. As you know, that’s what I do for a living, write people’s biographies, which we keep in what you might call a private library. A guy I work with, I’ll call him Sarge, says the problem with my biographies is that no one ever reads them. This brings me to my new friend, who told me that the only people in the world who would want to read his biography were gone.”
I dished out new slices with ample syrup.
“People,” my father said, “meaning the lady that your friend loves.”
“Yes,” I said.
“The lady that your friend killed,” Mother said.
“And her kids,” I said. “There is a tragic aspect to the story, there’s no denying it.”
I nodded my head at the truth of that. It would have made a good subtitle for his biography—Commander Ga: A Tragedy. Or whatever his name was.
The peaches were half gone. I stirred them in their can, selecting a new slice.
“Save some for yourself,” my father said.
“Yes, that’s enough,” my mother said. “I haven’t tasted sweet in so long, my stomach cannot handle it.”
I shook my head no. “This is a rare can of peaches,” I said. “I was going to keep them for myself, but taking the easy way, that’s not the answer to life’s problems.”
My mother’s lip started to quiver. She covered it with her hand.
“But back to my problem,” I said. “My biography, and the difficulty I’ve had writing it. This biographer’s block I’ve been suffering from—I see it so clearly now—came from the fact that deep down, I knew no one wanted to hear my story. Then my friend, he had the insight that his tattoo wasn’t public, but personal. Though it was there for the world to see, it was truly for no one but himself. Losing that, he lost everything, really.”
“How can a person lose a tattoo?” my father asked.
“Unfortunately, it’s easier than you’d think,” I told them. “It got me thinking, though, and I realized I wasn’t composing for posterity or the Dear Leader or for the good of the citizenry. No, the people who needed to hear my story were the people I loved, the people right in front of me who’d started to think of me as a stranger, who were scared of me because they no longer knew the real me.”
“But your friend, he killed the people he loved, right?”
“It’s unfortunate, I know,” I said. “There’s no forgiving him for it, he hasn’t even asked. But let me get started with my biography. I was born in Pyongyang,” I began, “to parents who were factory workers. My mother and father were older, but they were good parents. They survived every worker purge and avoided denunciation and reeducation.”
“But we already know these things,” my father said.
“Shh,” I told him. “You can’t talk back to a book. You don’t get to rewrite a biography as you’re reading it. Now, back to my story.” As they finished the peaches, I relayed to them how normal my childhood was, how I played the accordion and recorder at school, and while in the choir, I sang high alto in performances of Our Quotas Lift Us Higher. I memorized all the speeches of Kim Il Sung and got the highest marks in Juche Theory. Then I began with the things they didn’t know. “One day a man from the Party came to our school,” I said. “He loyalty-tested all the boys, one at a time, in the maintenance shed. The test itself only lasted a couple of minutes, but it was quite difficult. I suppose that’s the point of a test. I’m happy to say I passed the test, all of us did, but none of us ever spoke of it.”
It felt very liberating to finally speak of this, a topic I could never commit to paper. I knew suddenly that I would share everything with them, that we’d be closer than ever—I’d tell them of the humiliations I suffered in mandatory military service, of my one sexual encounter with a woman, of the cruel hazing I’d received as an intern of the Pubyok.
“I don’t mean to dwell on the subject of this loyalty test, but it changed how I saw things. Behind a chest of medals might be a hero or a man with an eager index finger. I became a suspicious boy who knew there was always something more beneath the surface, if you were willing to probe. It perhaps sent me down my career path, a trajectory that has confirmed that there is no such thing as the right-minded, self-sacrificing citizen the government tells us we all are. I’m not complaining, mind you, merely explaining. I didn’t have it half as rough as some. I didn’t grow up in an orphanage like my friend Commander Ga.”
“Commander Ga?” my father asked. “Is that your new friend?”
I nodded.
“Answer me,” my father said. “Is Commander Ga your new friend?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But you can’t trust Commander Ga,” my mother said. “He’s a coward and a criminal.”
“Yes,” my father added. “He’s an imposter.”
“You don’t know Commander Ga,” I told them. “Have you been reading my files?”
“We don’t need to read any files,” my father said. “We have it on the highest authority. Commander Ga’s an enemy of the state.”
“Not to mention his weaselly friend Comrade Buc,” my mother added.
“Don’t even say that name,” my father cautioned.
“How do you know all this?” I asked. “Tell me about this authority.”
They both pointed toward the loudspeaker.
“Every day they tell some of his story,” my mother said. “Of him and Sun Moon.”
“Yes,” my father said. “Yesterday was episode five. In it, Commander Ga drives to the Opera House with Sun Moon, but it’s not really Commander Ga, you see—”
“Stop it,” I said. “That’s impossible. I’ve made very little progress on his biography. It doesn’t even have an ending.”
“Listen for yourself,” my mother said. “The loudspeaker doesn’t lie. The next installment is this afternoon.”
I dragged a chair to the kitchen, where I used it to reach the loudspeaker. Even after I tore it from the wall, it was connected to a cable that kept it squawking. Only with a meat knife was I able to shut it up.
“What’s happening?” my mother asked. “What are you doing?”
My father was hysterical.
“What if the Americans sneak-attack?” he asked. “How will we receive the warning?”
“You won’t have to worry about sneak attacks anymore,” I told them.
My father moved to protest, but a stream of saliva ran from his mouth. He reached for his mouth and felt his lips, as if they had gone numb. And one of my mother’s hands was showing a tremor. She stilled it with her other hand. The botulism toxin was beginning to bloom inside them. The time for suspicions and arguments was over.
I remembered that horrible picture of Comrade Buc’s family, crumpled beneath the table. I was resolved that my parents wouldn’t suffer such indignities. I gave them each a tall glass of water and placed them on their cots to await the fall of night. All afternoon and into the twilight, I gave them the gift of my story, every bit of it, and I left nothing out. I stared out the window as I spoke, and I concluded only when they’d begun to writhe on their cots. I couldn’t act until darkness arrived, and when it finally did, the city of Pyongyang was like that black cricket in the fairy tale—it was everywhere and nowhere, its chirp annoying only those who ignored the final call to slumber. The moon shimmered off the river, and after the eagle owls had struck, you could hear nothing of the sheep and goats but the clicking of their teeth as they chewed grass in the dark. When darkness was total, and my parents had lost their faculties, I kissed them good-bye, for I could not bear to witness the inevitable. A sure sign of botulism is a loss of vision, so I only hoped they’d never know what had struck them. I looked around the room a last time, at our family photograph, my father’s harmonica, their wedding rings. But I left it all. I could take nothing where I was going.