Beasts of a Little Land(105)
Jade stopped reading this aloud and exchanged dark looks with Lotus.
“How funny life is, that Auntie could have gone to America if she’d have lived a bit longer,” Jade murmured.
“Well, she’s not here anymore. But I am,” Lotus said eagerly. “I could rebuild my life there. I’m so sick of this godforsaken country!”
It struck Jade how Lotus often blamed the entire path of her life on the circumstances of the country. In the weeks since she had returned to the villa, she had shown an avid interest in the misfortunes of others—not because she was malevolent, but because she felt vindicated in her own powerlessness. Upon learning that the beautiful, adulterous painter from Café Seahorn had committed suicide in the final days of the war, Lotus had even looked immensely relieved. Now, Luna’s letter offered a chance to escape the country that brought on her downfall and to start again halfway across the world.
Jade wondered how Lotus could still be so hopeful after all she had been through. Jade herself could never have the courage to leave everything behind—or to believe that something better was still ahead. That was Lotus’s strength, not her own. Jade was content to not reach for anything new in her life. She had had enough heartbreaks.
NINE MONTHS LATER, LOTUS LEFT InCheon on a steamer, all her possessions packed densely in a wooden trunk that was far too heavy for her to carry alone. Her burdensome luggage was brimming with necessities, food, new clothes gifted by Jade, a few sentimental objects, and a lot of hope—but somehow, once she arrived at her new home, she would realize that she had somehow missed the most essential, obvious toiletries or linens. Most new coats, dresses, and hats, specially ordered after much forethought, would be somehow unsuitable in the new country—too heavy, too light, or simply unfashionable. They would languish unworn, and when taken out of the attic years later, they would make the heart tight with pain. But they did not know this just now. Looking at Lotus’s tiny figure waving joyfully from the deck, Jade believed that only good things were now ahead of her—a great peace, like the name of the ocean she was about to cross. Through the crashing waves and the wails of the seagulls, the faintest trace of Lotus’s laughter could still be heard. Despite everything that had happened between them, Jade felt she would recognize that subtle shape of the body anywhere and her mind would be filled with the word friend. As the sea opened up between them, they went from using just their hands to swaying their arms high over their heads. I see you, I still see you. Jade thought: if you really love someone you say goodbye without ever leaving. Neither of them stopped waving until the other became a dot and disappeared over the horizon.
*
“SO WHO CAN TELL ME what the four emotions are?” Jade looked around at the ten-year-old dancers in her class. Several hands shot up in the air.
“Mija.” Jade pointed at the girl near the back.
“It’s joy, anger, sadness, and pleasure,” Mija said, eyes sparkling. Jade smiled, walked to the chalkboard, and added a point to Mija’s group. The girls tittered.
“Yes, those are the four classic emotions that art—including traditional dance—expresses.”
“But, Teacher! What about love?” Mija asked.
“Love?” Jade considered a moment. For her, love was everything in dance. But how she really felt was too painful to talk about with ten-year-olds.
Instead she said: “Does one sometimes feel angry or sad because of love? Does one feel joy and pleasure because of love?” And the children oohed and ahhed excitedly. Their admiration of their teacher knew no bounds. That was her favorite thing about teaching at the Koryo Arts School for Girls: her pupils. They were the reason she stayed in Seoul when half the people around her seemed to be going north.
When Japan surrendered, the Americans coming north from the Pacific and the Soviets coming south from Manchuria finally met on the little peninsula and drew a hasty line at the thirty-eighth parallel. The Koreans had wanted their country to remain one, as it had for the previous thirteen hundred years; their wish was ignored, and henceforth the peninsula was divided into North and South.
All her life, Jade had never concerned herself too much with politics; she had left that to people like Dani and JungHo. (They were both naturally contentious and obsessed with justice—and more alike than they could ever have realized.) But even Jade could see that this North-South division was leading to staggering chaos. Seoul had long harbored Nationalists, Communists, Anarchists, Christians of all denominations, Buddhists, and Cheondoists, many of whom put aside their differences and collaborated under the same goal of independence. Once that was achieved, however, some of them realized they were standing on the wrong side of the line. Several artists Jade knew from those jazz years left for the North. At first, it was easy to cross the border, just like passing from Seoul to InCheon. Eventually the border was closed and guard posts installed, and people disappeared without telling their neighbors and friends, walking across the misty field on a moonless night.
Jade didn’t have any real friends left in Seoul. She hadn’t heard from JungHo since he’d brought her to Lotus. Months later, she found out through the town gossip that he had married a seventeen-year-old girl, a daughter of a successful restaurant owner named Choi YoungGu, who was also apparently JungHo’s childhood friend. Jade’s stomach dropped when she heard the news, she hated every aspect of it.
The girl is twenty-five years younger than him. But it’s not my business—I am glad he has found his match, she said to herself.