“I’m such a burden on you,” Dani said. She was trying to swallow the porridge that Jade was spooning into her mouth without dribbling. But even the control of her facial muscles cost her tremendous effort, and a glistening drop slid down the side of her mouth. “I am like an old, senile woman,” Dani said, smiling painfully.
“You will never be an old, senile woman,” Jade said. “You will always be beautiful. None of us, not even Luna, could ever compare to you.”
“You’re just being kind. But more than kind . . .” Dani blinked, and a tear escaped from her still lovely eye. “Do you remember? In PyongYang, when my sister Silver asked me to take you in, I refused at first. This girl doesn’t have a personality, she’s so bland and boring, I told her. But she said you were a good one. She was right; I was wrong.”
“I was happy to go along with whatever Lotus suggested. She was the vivacious one. I was shy,” Jade said.
“But in hindsight, you’re the strongest one of all of us . . . Even after I die, and after the war is over, you’ll survive—and hopefully, find a good man and settle down.”
“You won’t die! Why are you saying such things,” Jade protested, though she couldn’t stop the tears from flowing.
“I heard the doctor—I wasn’t asleep,” Dani whispered in a fading voice, straining to turn her face. Jade rushed to lower her head down onto the pillow.
“Shh, you must rest now. Don’t tire yourself out by saying such useless things.”
“Don’t pretend it’s not true, because I don’t have a lot of time to waste. Listen to me carefully, Jade. Just two things . . .” She closed her eyes. “First, I want you to have my diamond necklace. No matter what, hold on to it. Don’t sell it right now—use it when there seems to be no other recourse. Of course, this whole house and everything in it will be yours too when I’m gone. But that necklace is itself more valuable than everything else combined, remember that.
“Secondly, I’d like to see two people before I die. They are the only two men I’ve truly cared for in my life. Will you help to bring them here? I don’t think I can even write a letter anymore.”
The next day, Jade wrote and mailed out two letters: one to Lee MyungBo’s home address, and the other to Kim SungSoo at his publishing house.
*
MYUNGBO RETURNED HOME LATE that week after meeting with his comrades in the Coalition. It tied together groups from all points of the political spectrum under the one banner of independence: the Anarchists, the Communists, the Nationalists, the Christians, the Buddhists, and the Cheondoists. He was one of the senior leaders of the Communists, but among their ranks there were those who saw the struggle as primarily between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the rich and the poor, and not between Japan and Korea, as MyungBo had always believed. The Anarchist credo was that any social order was destructive and oppressive. The Nationalists were the conservatives and some of them put more faith in America than in Korea itself. They also opposed the Communists almost as often as they fought the Japanese. Then some of the Christians were Pacifists, although a few of them had gladly assassinated Japanese generals and governors before putting a gun to their own heads. All the groups believed that Japan would send every Korean man to the mines and every Korean woman to the military brothels rather than admit defeat; their opinions diverged on what they could do to implode Japan from within before that point.
When he returned home, MyungBo found out that there was a letter from Dani—and that his wife received it herself from the postman. It lay unopened on top of his desk, but he blushed to the roots of his ears at the thought that his wife, a perfectly sensible woman, would have noticed the neat, feminine handwriting on the envelope. His wife was an old-fashioned gentlewoman who had been taught that a woman’s jealousy was a crime graver than a man’s philandering. If he had brought home a second wife, like so many men of his stature, she would have accepted it without objection. Nevertheless, MyungBo had never deceived her even in secret. It annoyed him that he’d been faithful all these years only to be implicated in something unsavory and beneath his nature. But that he’d felt real passion for Dani at one point was not forgotten. He opened and quickly read the letter, which was dictated to Jade and devoid of any mention of a serious illness. It didn’t take long for him to decide to ignore it.
Unlike MyungBo, SungSoo read Dani’s letter with some warm feeling. Glossed up though he was—for his life hadn’t hardened his exterior as much as sealed it like a glistening, poreless surface—SungSoo could still occasionally recall himself as a young man and fall into a reverie about his lost innocence. Pleasant, spring-scented memories flooded him upon seeing Dani’s letter. He could not fail to acknowledge that some of the most formative moments of his life had involved her. In fact, anytime he wrote a story or a novel, some trace elements of Dani always made it onto the pages. She was the ink of his thoughts. She had been extraordinary in every way.