“You are an artist, SungSoo . . . How can you close your heart to the rest of the world?” MyungBo muttered bitterly.
“On the contrary, it is because I am an artist that I must concern myself with art. Politics are the concern of politicians, like yourself,” SungSoo replied. What was next? Was he supposed to feel sorry for the cows toiling in the fields? Each being had its place in the universe.
“Fine, then, I can’t force you to do anything. Just think how much you spent setting up a house for that geisha in Tokyo, and what that money could have done for the young fighters who only ask for a gun and bullets to serve our country.”
“Really, MyungBo, I need time to process all this.” SungSoo suppressed his irritation as politely as he could. “It’s too bad you didn’t want to eat lunch, that we had to get into this talk without even a drop of liquor. But there, we had it all out, and now we can talk of something else.”
“No, I see that I’ve made you uneasy. I’ll get going now. But please, for all of our memories together, if you have even a bit of affection for me, would you think about it?”
“I promise, I promise,” SungSoo said, and felt the most vivid relief as MyungBo put on his hat and walked out of the office.
*
DANI’S HOUSE WAS IN YEONGEON-DONG near the ChangGyeong Palace Zoo, where many old and noble families had their ancestral homes. There was an excess of space: Dani alone occupied the ground floor of the two-story building, and there was even a charming pavilion across the courtyard. Each of the girls was given her own room on the second floor of the main house, where the maid and the housekeeper also slept. It was the finest home Jade had ever seen, filled with leather sofas, velvet curtains, and even a Steinway piano; and ensconced in the courtyard garden were strange and lovely plants from faraway places. With her characteristic poetic whimsy, Dani assigned flowers to each of the girls based on their qualities. Lotus was given summer sunflowers because they were bright, wholesome, and happy. Luna got Dani’s favorite flowers, fall cosmoses, which she claimed were not much to look at singly but sublime when bunched together in a bouquet.
Jade was matched with the winter camellia, a southern-flowering tree that she had never seen in the frigid North. Dani assured her, somewhat more warmly than usual, that the camellia was a very lucky flower for a woman. Its mate was the lovely, pale green camellia bird, which drank only its nectar and visited no other blossom. And at the end of its season, the camellia didn’t brown or blow away petal by petal as other flowers do; it fell down unblemished and intact, bloodred and velvety like a heart. As beautiful on the ground as on the day it first opened. “What all women want—an unchanging love. It’s what I see for you,” Dani said with a curious smile. Jade thought that her foster aunt had an intuitive streak of a born creative, somewhere between the levels of an artist and a clairvoyant. Sometimes her aesthetic fancy could get carried away and take on the shape of a small prophecy. Whether or not Dani actually had a feeling for the future, her enthusiastic delivery was what made it feel real.
“But Aunt Dani, what kind of flower would you be?” Lotus asked.
“I know,” Jade said before Dani could answer. “She could only be the regal spring rose.” As if on cue, the two little girls linked hands and made a ring around Dani, and ran in a small circle shouting “Queen Rose! Queen Rose!” until she burst out laughing. But even in the height of their amusements, Jade felt guilty when she saw how Luna continued to stay quiet. Nothing seemed able to make her speak, smile, or even get angry and scold the little girls.
ONE GRAY DAY IN EARLY FALL, Luna finally broke her months of silence. The rain was falling softly, casting everything in indigo. The three girls crawled back into their cots after lunch and listened to the downpour in a state of melancholy. Jade begged their maid Hesoon to tell them stories of her childhood in Jejudo, the magical southern island where there were trees without any branches and wild horses running freely under a snowcapped mountain. Hesoon said her mother and her four sisters were all seawomen who dove in the water to harvest abalones, holding their breath for two minutes at a time.
“That’s impossible, you’re making it up!” Lotus giggled.
“It’s all true. Jejudo women dive even when they’re pregnant. My mother almost gave birth to me in the sea but she swam out just in time for me to be born on the beach. She caught me with her own hands and wiped me off with kelp,” Hesoon said. She was always telling these unbelievable stories, about mountains breathing fire and ice and long-winged birds that nested in the waves. When Jade closed her eyes, she could see women who turned to fish in the sea and babies rocked to sleep in the shallows, anchored in place by seaweed ropes.