Yes, at the beginning it had only been a physical desire and a curiosity, and nothing more—he was certain of it. Nevertheless, as he became her favorite driver and saw her several times a week, his regard for her began to acquire a specificity that he’d never felt before. To HanChol, all people belonged to certain categories: family, schoolmates, close friends, other rickshaw drivers, customers, people from whom he might benefit, and so on. He behaved toward anyone according to his or her category without any partiality. But how he thought of Jade defied his normal attitudes toward courtesans, customers, or women in general. She was all those things, but she looked and acted nothing like the others and he only thought of her as Jade.
HanChol caught himself drifting into a reverie and shook his head forcefully. It was close to five; he’d stop by his house and eat a meal, which would be both his lunch and dinner. When he pulled inside the front yard of their thatched-roof cottage, his mother rushed out of the room where she was sewing with one of his younger sisters. The other one was out washing laundry at a creek; the three women together made a meager income by cleaning and mending laborers’ clothes, a sum that amounted to only half of HanChol’s.
“Hurry up and fix your brother’s meal.” His mother turned sharply to his sister, who was still seated inside the open door. The girl was used to their mother’s abuses, but now she looked frightened. There was no more barley after their morning meal; as the oldest daughter, she was continuously called upon to make food out of nearly nothing, yet even she couldn’t make miracles happen. Before sharper rebukes could fall upon his sister for his sake, HanChol stepped in.
“Mother, don’t worry. I already had a bowl of soup at a tavern. Here, that’s for dinner,” he said, handing her the two won. She creased into a smile. “Aigoo, my son. My firstborn.”
She urged him to stay and rest, but he shook his head and went back out with his rickshaw. His mother doted on him as she never did on his sisters; she respected and even feared him as the head of the household since age fourteen, when his father passed. Nonetheless, her constant fixation upon his bloodline, which was some obscure cadet branch of the mighty House of Andong-Kim, made him uneasy around her. Her common refrain was “If your father were still alive, his cousins would have taken us in . . .” and “You must restore our family’s name, you must live up to our honor . . .” The clan still lived in prosperity in the wealthy enclave of Andong, but their family had been living apart since HanChol’s grandfather’s time. They were now no better than peasants, except in their strict observance of formalities and the expectation that HanChol would go to university and enter into a respectable career, lifting them all out of their misery.
The sun was still shining above the buildings, but its warmth was being replaced by an earthy coolness, as happens on fine spring evenings.
HanChol’s next customer was a well-dressed gentleman with round eyeglasses, who sedately read his newspaper the entire time to the new baseball stadium in EuljiRo. When HanChol stopped in front of his destination, he dreamily peeked out from behind the newspaper, hopped off the rickshaw, rummaged through his pockets, and said, “Oh, I didn’t realize I only have ten cents on me. I’m sorry, my fellow.” Before HanChol could say anything, the gentleman gave him a ten-cent bill and disappeared into the crowd. HanChol crumpled up the money in his hand and shoved it into his pocket, disgusted. People!
Hours passed more or less in the same vein. At half past ten, Jade came out of the side entrance, where HanChol was waiting for her as usual. When his eyes found her, his mood brightened immediately. It was the opening week of Jade’s new play, about a girl from a once-genteel family who becomes a courtesan in order to pay for the treatment of her invalid father and gravely ill brother. Tonight she was wearing a pale blue skirt suit with high-heeled pumps. A medium-brimmed navy hat, with a silk satin band in the same shade as the suit, was pressed above her head. She held the strap of her purse with both hands and looked around searchingly, almost exactly like her character when she arrived at the harbor. The effulgence of streetlamps gathered into golden pools of light at her feet. HanChol felt in awe of her loveliness. He pulled the rickshaw toward her slowly so as to resist her effect on him.
Jade was silent as he helped her onto the rickshaw and started heading automatically toward her home. She seemed to be lost in thoughts that had nothing to do with HanChol, and that secretly bothered him. On the rare nights when Jade sat silently with a sad and pensive air, he found himself wanting to know what was wrong and to make her feel better. In the past, Jade had often gossiped cheerfully with Lotus, knowing that the driver could hear them and yet not sparing any details of rich lovers who were paying them court. But since Lotus had moved to a different theater, Jade rode quietly and often in a more subdued state of mind, gazing at the jazz-soaked storefronts and the people walking under the cool white moonlight.