“Please tell him that it’s not very expensive, but that it was my favorite,” she said, her lovely voice hesitating only slightly. Master Chun bowed his head once more before taking his leave.
All of her most expensive trinkets combined had meant far less to her than giving up this silver ring. But life had to be kept in balance: she had to do what actually felt like a sacrifice. She would gladly trade her life itself for the safety of the people she loved—the general, Luna, and Lotus. If those three were trapped in a burning house, she would pour a bucket of water over her head and jump into the fire to carry them out. That was the meaning of her love, she declared in her head. But her hand grieved, even as Chun went out the city gates the next morning to deliver the ring to the house of the hunter.
2
Luna
1918
THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY TURN OF EVENTS BEGAN WITH A DROP OF a pin, an aberration stealing by no more dramatically than a stray dog. One morning, Jade woke up and discovered that all classes had been canceled. She ran outside to greet the air, like a new bee emerging from its cocoon in warm weather. The day was full of early-June vigor. The trees were singing their notes of green, and their freshness could be heard by the eyes. The girls were let loose in the garden like calves, and even Jade wasn’t sorry about taking a break from books. When she plopped down to play cat’s cradle with Lotus, the reason for such leniency became clear: Silver and Luna, both dressed in their loveliest outfits, were heading out for the day. As they crossed the courtyard, little girls with envious round faces crowded around, all silently yearning for an outing of their own. Jade alone pulled back, unwilling to annoy Silver with neediness. But Lotus came forward and ventured to say, “Mama, I want to come too,” in the sad voice of a child knowingly playing up her childishness.
Silver glanced at her younger daughter as if organizing her jewelry box and discovering a memento of an uncertain vintage—amused and slightly embarrassed, but ultimately indifferent. After a moment she said, “Luna is herself only getting her photo taken at fifteen. I will take you too when you’re older.” She ignored Lotus’s crestfallen face with her customary hauteur and climbed onto the rickshaw after Luna, her silk skirt billowing lavishly out of her seat.
An outing was a rare treat for even Luna, who kept sticking her head dangerously far out of the rickshaw and hovering at the edge of her seat. As they moved farther away from their house, Luna gradually lost sight of the things which were familiar to her, until everything around her was new and strange. Passing this or that landmark, her mother explained to her, “That’s the new rubber shoe factory that Mr. Hong set up this year. He’s already had sales of two thousand won,” and “that’s the secondary school—you’d see the boys later, but now they must all be in class,” or “that sharp pointy thing there is where the Christians worship. They sing too, though not like we do.”
“Mama, do you know any Christians? I heard that they were all secretly loyal to the Yankees,” Luna said.
“I don’t know any Christian who would be patron or friend to us courtesans,” Silver said, frowning. “But how can you not become servants to Yankees when you believe in their God? It’s not natural.”
The rickshaw stopped in front of the studio and the women descended from the carriage, using their fans to shield their pale faces from the sun. The studio door jingled cheerfully as they walked in. The photographer greeted them and led them to the shooting area, which had velvet-upholstered chairs against a plain gray backdrop.
According to the photographer’s directions, Silver sat on an armchair and Luna stood with her hands on her mother’s shoulder. The photographer lit a lamp to one side of the camera and instructed them not to blink. He counted to three, then a bright flash went off, causing Luna to briefly go blind; then the faded Western-style chairs and props in the studio came back into focus, crowding her world once more. She had a very strange sensation like waking up after a long nap and not knowing whether it’s dusk or dawn. It was a little lapse in her one long, continuous, uneventful existence—a skipped heartbeat, the meaning of which was as yet unclear.
As they prepared to leave, the doorbell jingled again and a pair of Japanese officers came in.
“Welcome back, sir,” the photographer said loudly in Japanese. “Your photos are ready.” At the same time Silver slipped by quickly, leading Luna by the hand. The officers cast a long look at the women as they rushed out and drove away in the rickshaw.
“Here they are. The photos turned out very nicely. I hope you’ll be pleased, Major Hayashi,” the photographer said, offering an envelope containing some photos of the officers, which he had been called to take after the town’s Japanese photographer suddenly died of tuberculosis the previous year. But Major Hayashi barely even looked at the photos, asking instead, “Who were those two women?”
“My old friend and her daughter,” the photographer replied nervously, looking over Hayashi’s shoulder at his associate who, though dressed in a Japanese officer’s uniform, was undoubtedly Korean.
“Sir, that was a famous courtesan named Silver, known as the most beautiful in PyongYang,” the Korean man said in perfectly manicured Japanese. Then, with an eagerness that these spontaneous encounters effect in even the most coldhearted, he added, “I hadn’t seen her in many years but recognized her immediately.”
*