Beasts of a Little Land(48)

Now this is why I’m so worried and can’t sleep. Yes I’m no longer wearing rags but even I know I’m not a perfectly presentable young man the way she put it. Definitely not someone who normally hangs around courtesans. High-class courtesans like her would only have love affairs with rich men. I’m sure she has dozens of lovers who are showering her with gifts and money even as I’m dreaming of her.

For the first time in my life, I’m nervously happy. Usually I’m neither nervous nor happy because I have no expectations about anything. Now I have something I want and suddenly all my decisions matter more.

From my inside pocket I pull out the cigarette case and the ring. I like to look at them sometimes when I’m alone and in a missing mood. They feel cool in my palm like pebbles by the riverbank. My father had held on to these even though he could have bought medicine or chicken broth that would have prolonged his life. He never explained why.

When I was a kid I used to have this belief that these two things were good luck charms that could somehow keep me from harm. My father’s cigarette case and my mother’s silver ring are the only things I have left from them besides my name and my own body I guess. My talismans are the reason I’m not afraid of death which is why I survived through all these years. Now that I’m older I know that life is not about what keeps you safe, but what you keep safe, and that’s what matters the most. When I see Jade tomorrow I want to explain all of this to her and tell her that she’s the one I want to keep safe more than anything else.





12


A Marriage Proposal

1925

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, JADE ROSE FROM BED AND started getting ready for her day. Her maid brought a cup of hot barley tea for her, then she washed her face and settled in front of her vanity inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She patted on finely milled seashells over her skin, and the excess powder bloomed into silky clouds against the morning sun. She drew a kohl pencil over her thin and round eyebrows—plucked according to the current mode—and smudged the same pencil around her eyes. Finally, she carefully painted on the rouge over her lips. When this was finished, her maid combed and twisted her hair up into a chignon that was waved and loosened around the scalp in the Western fashion, securing it with a coral binyuh.

Once Jade looked in the mirror to study the whole effect, she couldn’t help but break into a happy smile at confirming her suspicion that she was indeed quite pretty. Even her teeth had behaved themselves as her features settled down—they were only slightly crooked now. She was at that point in life when a girl is constantly wondering how she appears to others, and whether and how much she is attractive.

Since Jade officially debuted at age fifteen, she’d had a steady stream of admirers who requested her at parties and even sought her out at home. These men spent a fortune on spending a night with her and gave her periodic gifts of money without her even asking, as older and shrewder courtesans were apt to do. While this was going on, she would imagine that these men had true feelings for her, and that she herself was attracted to them. In recent years, there were courtesans who married upper-class men, intellectuals, and artists, and lived out the rest of their lives as beloved wives and mothers in respectable families. Each time this happened, the entire society turned to gossiping about the free-spirited lovers at every gathering, and in newspapers and magazines. Jade hoped she would also fall in love with such a kind and preferably handsome gentleman. But thus far, all the men stopped calling on her after just a few months. Certainly no one wrote letters or gave her anything that could be considered a token. She soon learned that the more eager the men were to end the liaison, the greater their gifts of cash. She also became bashful remembering how, as a child, she had thought it would be so easy to fall in love and receive rings and diamonds as her two foster mothers had. Jade was increasingly weighed down by doubt that she was not beautiful enough or—more critically—that she was not good at giving pleasure, despite the illustrated books that Dani used to teach her and Lotus. If she didn’t secure a longtime patron like Dani had, Jade wasn’t sure how she could pay her own way beyond the age of thirty. Many formerly well-off courtesans fell into desperate positions because they weren’t smart enough or because they were simply unlucky. But this point felt far enough away in the future that the fear was easy to brush aside.

Once she was finished dressing, Jade went to join Dani, Lotus, Luna, and Hesook for lunch. Dani was retired now; at thirty-nine, even the most sought-after grand courtesans stopped going out to parties and taking new lovers. The Judge had passed away in 1922, and Dani spent her nights all alone. She was still as graceful as ever, always immaculately made-up and perfumed whether she went out or stayed in. She busied herself with drinking coffee, reading, gardening, playing with Hesook, and knitting sweaters—a new hobby—and never showed any signs of missing her previous life. When Jade walked in, she was reading the newspaper on the new sofa, in a navy sweater that she’d made herself and a slim charcoal skirt that fell just below her knees; a lit cigarette dangled precariously between her fingers.

Luna was seated across from Dani, watching Hesook play with a toy on the floor. Some girls who are extraordinarily pretty at fifteen or sixteen grow up to be merely normal or even unattractive women. That was not the case with Luna, whose shocking beauty as a young girl had matured into a soft, full radiance. Jade thought that she was less cruelly perfect and more alluring, with raven hair and rounded ivory cheeks like seashells. Men paid dearly for the privilege of sitting next to Luna at banquets and studying her celebrated figure up close.