Jade lagged behind the others. Just before rounding the corner at the landing, she turned around and caught a glimpse of a gray-haired man being greeted by Dani. He had the proud bearing of a hale old age, but already seemed to show all the promises of the frailness to come in just five or six years. With his muddy complexion and soft voice, he was not someone Jade had imagined for her lovely and indomitable aunt, who seemed able to make any man fall obediently at her feet. So Dani was just as shrewd as the others in choosing money over feelings. Jade felt with a pang of disappointment that Dani was not, after all, a fantastical creature.
The following day, Dani began giving the girls lessons in music and dance. Lotus had struggled to pass the tests under her mother’s tutelage; under Dani’s guidance she gained enough confidence to discover, for the first time, a remarkable voice that seemed to emanate from her whole body rather than her throat. Luna was interested in learning English, which only upper-class women in the most modern families ever learned. Jade took to dance the way she did to poetry—she discovered that they both originated from the same unfathomable place. She could imitate any movement on the first try; on the second or third try, she made it her own by adding a slight twist of the torso, a tilt of her chin, or a simple breath where there was none. With those nearly imperceptible differences, other girls remained girls while she became a crane, a legendary heroine, a season, an idea. When this happened, Dani perched her chin on a cupped hand and narrowed her eyes severely—whether in approval or displeasure, Jade was never certain.
In October, Dani told the girls that they were to have a special outing. MyungWol, the new restaurant where she’d been booked almost every evening for a fortnight, had asked her and other courtesans in her guild to help advertise its opening in Jongno. She was bringing the two younger girls as well, though Luna couldn’t go in her condition. New costumes were ordered for both Jade and Lotus, and they practiced their routine in their rooms every night before bed. Afterward, Jade felt the injustice of having to sleep when there was so much to do, so much to think about; only after being thoroughly tortured by excitement was she able to fall into a restless slumber.
The week leading up to the appointed day was gray and drizzly, which made Jade miserable with worry. That morning, however, the sun rose brilliantly against a cloudless sky. The girls helped Dani cut the cosmoses in the garden before getting dressed, sharing Hesoon between them. Before fixing the embroidered headdress over the crown of Jade’s head, the maid twisted her long braid into a low chignon and fixed it with a silver binyuh for the very first time. A bridal regalia. The updo marked her as a nonvirgin in status, if not in body. But she was different from normal married women: her wrap skirt opening on the right side indicated her profession. The last step in getting ready was the makeup. When it was finished, Jade saw in the mirror a beautiful stranger—red lips stark against the powdered skin—and was startled to realize that she looked very much like Dani.
“Goodbye, I will miss you,” Jade whispered in the garden as Hesoon opened the gates. She was coming back in a few hours, but nothing would be the same as before. After being seen like this, she could never go back to being a marriageable girl in people’s eyes. She had come into the house as a child, and was now stepping out of its gates as a courtesan.
6
The Parade
1918
AFTER MYUNGBO LEFT, SUNGSOO WAITED TEN MINUTES IN HIS OFFICE before heading out himself. He did truly regret that the meeting with his old friend hadn’t gone as he’d hoped; that instead of reminiscing about their old adventures over food and drink, and reveling in the discovery that someone else remembers you as you once were, and vice versa, they were each shocked at how different the other had become. It was far worse than meeting someone new and failing to like one another. Moreover, no one had called out SungSoo’s faults to him in years. Everyone was eager to please him, his subordinates with deference, his peers with compliments, his wife with adoration. And this universal approval was so unconditional, and so much a part of his reality, that someone telling him to his face that he was wrong shook him to the core.
“Is he right? Am I wrong to not want to renounce my birthright, move to Shanghai, or some mountain village in Siberia, and spend my days target shooting and plotting assassinations?” SungSoo asked himself. He’d heard stories of how these young men—from wealthy and noble families, peasantry, or anywhere in between—gathered in safe houses in these places and swore an oath to give up their lives for the cause. They cut off the tip of their ring finger and signed the pledges in blood, and wore sharply tailored suits and hats in the highest style in order to look dignified when they died, which may be at any moment. It was also said that women fell passionately in love with them.
“But for what? It is all foolish—nothing will be gained from it. Not only that, assassination is murder.” This train of thought was beginning to soothe his angst. “We say the Japanese are murdering our people, but is the right answer murdering them in return? It’s all so barbaric, and no less wrong. No, I won’t contribute to such reckless violence. I won’t be bullied into it, no matter how MyungBo judges me.”
Having thus arranged his reasoning, SungSoo was satisfied. He nearly smiled with the increase in self-respect as he headed out to the streets. The sun was high in the cerulean sky, and there was a cool invigorating breeze. Before long he ran into a friend, a playwright who had also studied in Japan. SungSoo shook hands with him and brought up MyungBo, whom the playwright knew.
“How strange it is to see you both in one day,” SungSoo said. Then, he discreetly communicated that MyungBo wasn’t in good shape physically or financially, that he was in Seoul for a while to ask friends for money, and that SungSoo himself couldn’t agree to it immediately—though he was thinking about it still. All of this, SungSoo made sure to skillfully convey without saying anything directly.
“You did right to refuse him,” the playwright said. “I never could stand him. Thanks for the heads-up—if he asks to meet me, I’ll come up with some excuse.”
As they were thus catching up and walking, they noticed a throng of people just ahead, loudly shouting something.