One of the doors of the villa opened and a woman emerged. Even before she turned around, Jade could immediately tell that she was extremely beautiful just from the shape of her back and the particularly graceful distance between her nape and her shoulders. When she showed her face and even deigned to flash a small smile in their direction, Jade felt her insides clamp with yearning. Instead of the more common kind of female beauty that elicited jealousy in other women, this stranger had the much rarer kind that drew them in with a promise of something that might also rub off on them. But underneath an air of general benevolence, she was not easygoing. She seemed to toy with people’s attraction to her, raising their hopes and then watching them cower.
Jade’s mother gave a stiff bow, impervious to the woman’s charms. Even though they were tenant farmers throwing themselves to a tiny plot of land, they were technically of a higher class than the giseng—who belonged to the same ignoble rung as butchers and tanners. Those who made their money in the filth.
“So this is the child?” the courtesan said mildly, and her mother mumbled in response. A cousin’s friend was a servant in this house, which was how Jade was arranged to be taken in as a laundry maid earning two won a month, plus her room and board.
“It’s a long way to be walking in the mud and the snow,” the woman said to her mother but kept her gaze fixed on Jade. Then she sighed, as if seeing something regrettable that could not be helped. Jade imagined that those slender eyes were accustomed to judging the value of finer things, and that her own dry, chapped face was so beneath the mark as to incite pity, like a three-legged dog.
“Auntie, I’m sorry to tell you this. But there’s been a mistake. I didn’t hear anything from you for a fortnight and so I went ahead and hired another girl to help around the house. But since you’ve made this trip, please go and have a meal in the kitchen. Rest a while before heading back,” she said, shaking her beautiful head wreathed in a braided chignon.
“No, how can that be, Madame Silver? We had sent word.” Jade’s mother pressed her hands together in front of her chest. The gesture struck Jade as rustic and off-putting, especially in contrast to Silver’s cool elegance. “Wouldn’t you need another helper in such a big household? My Jade has been taking care of chores since she was four years old. She’s bound to be useful.”
“I have plenty of help as is,” Silver said impatiently. Nevertheless, Jade sensed that the courtesan continued to stare at her with a curious expression in that calm oval face. It was a look of someone who didn’t always deign to respond to others and spoke only when it pleased her to say something.
“But if you want, I can take Jade as an apprentice.” Silver turned to her mother with an air of finality. “One-time payment of fifty won—as much as she would have earned as a maid in two years. Plus her room, board, training, and clothes. After she starts working in a few years and pays me back the fifty won plus interest, she’ll be free to send you whatever she likes.”
Jade’s mother drew a tight line with her mouth. “I didn’t come here to sell my daughter to become a courtesan,” she managed to spit out, overpronouncing the last word in lieu of saying: whore. “What kind of a mother do you think I am?”
“As you wish.” Silver didn’t seem perturbed, but Jade noticed that the corner of her mouth twisted with the tail end of a scornful smile. “At any rate, please help yourself to some soup in the kitchen,” she said, turning around.
“Wait, Madame.” Jade was surprised to hear herself speak. Her mother tapped her shoulder to silence her, but she continued. “I will stay here as an apprentice . . . It’s okay, Mama. I’ll do it.”
“Shush. You don’t know anything about what this is,” her mother said. Had they been alone, she would have poured out salty diatribes about women who made their keep between their legs. In Silver’s presence, she only smacked Jade between her sharp shoulder blades like the folded wings of an unfledged bird.
Silver smiled, as if hearing the unspoken thoughts. “It’s true, this isn’t for everyone. Do you know what we do?”
Jade brightly blushed and nodded. Her friends whose sisters had been married at fourteen or fifteen had told her what had happened on their wedding night. It seemed unpleasant but the thought also made her clutch her thighs. All things considered, whether it happened for free with one man or for money with many men seemed to be of little consequence, physically speaking. Jade would have been married off in a few years anyway to whoever offered the highest price, like the village doctor, who had been tirelessly seeking a bride for his sick son. In spite of her pity, Jade felt anything was preferable to marrying that simple boy with his clawlike hands. She wouldn’t really be his wife, but his sister and then later his mother.