Beasts of a Little Land(12)
The merchant pulled out a sheet of folded paper from inside his sleeve and offered it to her with two hands. Silver drew a sharp breath and broke open the seal.
As always happened when she saw the general’s writing, her hands holding the edges of the paper trembled lightly. She read the letter quickly, drinking his words with her eyes. He thanked her for the money she’d sent last summer and told of the victories and losses in the Siberian hills. His troops followed him into any battle, cold and unequipped as they were in contrast to their enemy. Some of them had brought their wives and children over to Vladivostok, and their happy reunions made him long to see her and Luna’s faces. “She must be beautiful if she takes after you. But I fear I’ll never see our daughter again before I die,” he wrote.
She carefully folded the letter and hid it inside a book on her table. She would reread it again, slowly, when alone and free to dwell on every character.
“Thank you, Master Chun. When I heard Master Baek was killed, I thought this letter would have been found and all would be lost . . . our own lives and those of our men in Vladivostok. I waited all the rest of winter, expecting the worst . . . I slept with a knife by my bed, prepared to end my own life if they came, and yet they didn’t.”
“Those bastards left his body without searching it—if they had, everything surely would have gone the way you feared,” Chun said. “My uncle was planning on luring them to our forces in the mountains, and killing a police chief and high-ranking officers would have been an immense victory . . . But either he truly lost his way in the snow, or our men weren’t at their meeting place.” Neither Chun nor Silver voiced what they both knew—that if the independence fighters didn’t take advantage of trapping a group of lost Japanese soldiers, they may well have been killed off themselves in another unrecorded battle.
“And your uncle’s body was untouched until you got to it?”
“No, Madame. I was myself ignorant of what had happened, as I was all the way South at the time. But there was a villager who picked up his body and prepared it for burial. A poor widower with three small children, on the brink of starving to death but an honest man nonetheless. He kept all my uncle’s belongings for me until I got there for the funeral, and nothing was missing or tampered with, even his coins.”
“What good fortune that was,” Silver muttered. She opened her vanity chest and took out two drawstring pouches—one white and the other red, both heavy with solid gold ingots.
“The white one is for your troubles,” she said, handing the pouches. “The red one is for the cause. Do you trust the man who will carry this across the border?”
“Madame, it will be no different than when my uncle was living,” Chun said. “We lowly merchants love gold as much as any others, but even we have honor.”
“I know that well, Master Chun. You should know too that what I give you now isn’t just from me, but from almost all PyongYang courtesans. It’s the money we made pouring drinks and lying with men, and the jewelry we’ve hoarded for our retirement.”
Master Chun bowed his head curtly in lieu of a response.
“How long will you stay in town? And when will you come back?” Silver asked.
“I will leave tomorrow at first light. I may be back by fall if I am lucky.”
“You should spend the night here, it will be far more comfortable than the inn.”
“Thank you, Madame, but that would attract undue attention. And there are my guild brothers waiting for me at the inn . . .” Chun said, already rising. “I should get going.”
“Wait, I almost forgot,” Silver said. “That poor man who recovered Master Baek’s body . . . If you pass by his village on your way out of the city, would you give him something from me?” Silver opened her chest again and picked up this or that trinket. She’d sold her best jewelry and turned them into gold, which the merchant had already tucked safely into his pack. Finally, she pulled off her silver ring and gave it to Chun, smiling wanly.
“Please tell him that it’s not very expensive, but that it was my favorite,” she said, her lovely voice hesitating only slightly. Master Chun bowed his head once more before taking his leave.
All of her most expensive trinkets combined had meant far less to her than giving up this silver ring. But life had to be kept in balance: she had to do what actually felt like a sacrifice. She would gladly trade her life itself for the safety of the people she loved—the general, Luna, and Lotus. If those three were trapped in a burning house, she would pour a bucket of water over her head and jump into the fire to carry them out. That was the meaning of her love, she declared in her head. But her hand grieved, even as Chun went out the city gates the next morning to deliver the ring to the house of the hunter.
2
Luna
1918
THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY TURN OF EVENTS BEGAN WITH A DROP OF a pin, an aberration stealing by no more dramatically than a stray dog. One morning, Jade woke up and discovered that all classes had been canceled. She ran outside to greet the air, like a new bee emerging from its cocoon in warm weather. The day was full of early-June vigor. The trees were singing their notes of green, and their freshness could be heard by the eyes. The girls were let loose in the garden like calves, and even Jade wasn’t sorry about taking a break from books. When she plopped down to play cat’s cradle with Lotus, the reason for such leniency became clear: Silver and Luna, both dressed in their loveliest outfits, were heading out for the day. As they crossed the courtyard, little girls with envious round faces crowded around, all silently yearning for an outing of their own. Jade alone pulled back, unwilling to annoy Silver with neediness. But Lotus came forward and ventured to say, “Mama, I want to come too,” in the sad voice of a child knowingly playing up her childishness.