Beasts of a Little Land(13)
Silver glanced at her younger daughter as if organizing her jewelry box and discovering a memento of an uncertain vintage—amused and slightly embarrassed, but ultimately indifferent. After a moment she said, “Luna is herself only getting her photo taken at fifteen. I will take you too when you’re older.” She ignored Lotus’s crestfallen face with her customary hauteur and climbed onto the rickshaw after Luna, her silk skirt billowing lavishly out of her seat.
An outing was a rare treat for even Luna, who kept sticking her head dangerously far out of the rickshaw and hovering at the edge of her seat. As they moved farther away from their house, Luna gradually lost sight of the things which were familiar to her, until everything around her was new and strange. Passing this or that landmark, her mother explained to her, “That’s the new rubber shoe factory that Mr. Hong set up this year. He’s already had sales of two thousand won,” and “that’s the secondary school—you’d see the boys later, but now they must all be in class,” or “that sharp pointy thing there is where the Christians worship. They sing too, though not like we do.”
“Mama, do you know any Christians? I heard that they were all secretly loyal to the Yankees,” Luna said.
“I don’t know any Christian who would be patron or friend to us courtesans,” Silver said, frowning. “But how can you not become servants to Yankees when you believe in their God? It’s not natural.”
The rickshaw stopped in front of the studio and the women descended from the carriage, using their fans to shield their pale faces from the sun. The studio door jingled cheerfully as they walked in. The photographer greeted them and led them to the shooting area, which had velvet-upholstered chairs against a plain gray backdrop.
According to the photographer’s directions, Silver sat on an armchair and Luna stood with her hands on her mother’s shoulder. The photographer lit a lamp to one side of the camera and instructed them not to blink. He counted to three, then a bright flash went off, causing Luna to briefly go blind; then the faded Western-style chairs and props in the studio came back into focus, crowding her world once more. She had a very strange sensation like waking up after a long nap and not knowing whether it’s dusk or dawn. It was a little lapse in her one long, continuous, uneventful existence—a skipped heartbeat, the meaning of which was as yet unclear.
As they prepared to leave, the doorbell jingled again and a pair of Japanese officers came in.
“Welcome back, sir,” the photographer said loudly in Japanese. “Your photos are ready.” At the same time Silver slipped by quickly, leading Luna by the hand. The officers cast a long look at the women as they rushed out and drove away in the rickshaw.
“Here they are. The photos turned out very nicely. I hope you’ll be pleased, Major Hayashi,” the photographer said, offering an envelope containing some photos of the officers, which he had been called to take after the town’s Japanese photographer suddenly died of tuberculosis the previous year. But Major Hayashi barely even looked at the photos, asking instead, “Who were those two women?”
“My old friend and her daughter,” the photographer replied nervously, looking over Hayashi’s shoulder at his associate who, though dressed in a Japanese officer’s uniform, was undoubtedly Korean.
“Sir, that was a famous courtesan named Silver, known as the most beautiful in PyongYang,” the Korean man said in perfectly manicured Japanese. Then, with an eagerness that these spontaneous encounters effect in even the most coldhearted, he added, “I hadn’t seen her in many years but recognized her immediately.”
*
WHEN SILVER SENT STONEY to pick up the prints from the photographer, Luna was disappointed that they wouldn’t go out again themselves. The drive had been most refreshing, and she liked seeing new sights. Most of all, she’d felt a secret thrill at the look that the officers had given her. It made her want to dress up in fine clothes and ride around town all day; she giggled, imagining how tiresome that would be for the poor rickshaw driver. Then she thought that she didn’t want to sleep in her mother’s chamber anymore, and was guilty for feeling that way because she knew how much her mother loved her.
Soon, it became so hot that the women took to sleeping out on the cool wooden floor of the covered porch. Luna gave the heat as an excuse and also joined in with the others. The women laid out their cots together so that they made one long bedding on the floor. To ward off mosquitoes they burned sweet-scented wormwood incense that snaked up to the pitch-black sky. The younger girls, excited by this changing of routine, whispered all night, lying in a row like a string of chatty pearls.
One night in bed, Luna said, “Hey, Lotus, I’m dying for some cold, sweet watermelon. Go cut up the one in the kitchen.”
“Why should I? I’m not your maid,” Lotus said, tucked in her place far away from her sister.
“Because I’m your older sister, you brat. Go do it now, or I’ll tell Mama.”
Sensing Lotus was about to get into another hopeless fight with Luna, Jade quickly got up.
“I’ll go get it,” she said, pulling on her slippers. She went round the back courtyard to the kitchen. Inside, there was a large wooden bucket filled with cold water, where the maid had put the watermelon to keep it cool. Jade placed it on the chopping block and stood examining it with a knife in her hand, like an executioner. A creeping sense of malaise came over her.