Beasts of a Little Land(68)

He lay on top of her, panting and resting his tired head on her chest as she stroked his damp hair. He caught her hand and brought it to his lips, and she glimpsed him smiling unconsciously, as though he couldn’t believe his good luck.

“Your skin . . .” he said, melting into softer, fluttery kisses over her chest. And she knew exactly what he meant; the feeling of his bare skin against hers was so comfortable yet intense that she felt hungry for it even in the moment. Without speaking, they shifted positions to touch each other as much as possible, and then laughed at their silliness.

“I can hear your heart beating,” he muttered. She could also feel his heart pulsing hard above her stomach. No one else had said this to her, but then no one else had made it worth noticing. Feeling his heartbeat was something she knew she would treasure for the rest of her life.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

“Yes, I love you,” HanChol said simply. “I really do.”

“Why? Since when?”

“Since I first saw you outside the theater. Why? Because you were you, standing there, and I was also standing there . . . It’s that simple and that complicated. But it couldn’t have been otherwise.” He sighed and turned his face so that his right cheek pressed into her chest.

Ever since then, nothing else mattered to Jade more than loving and being loved by HanChol. She rarely spent time dwelling on her estrangement with Lotus or her success in theater. She knew she had the most important thing, something so pure and rare. When she came to Silver’s house, all she’d imagined for herself was becoming a maid. Then later, she wondered whether her fate was to lie with men toward whom she had no feelings except revulsion, until cast aside for younger women and newer amusements. But by some miracle her reality was now better than anything she’d ever dreamed. In a relatively short amount of time, it turned her into a different person. The change was mostly internal, although as happens when there is a seismic inner shift, her physicality changed as well. She would sit in front of her mirror and be startled that her eyes or her nose looked strangely different than just half a year before. She now felt so well adored that her soul itself had transformed, and her features had shaped themselves to reflect that. Jade had always been charming yet imperfect, with a narrow forehead and regular, unremarkable eyes laced with thin lashes, but now those flaws were unnoticeable. She was used to attracting attention, but never so much as now—she felt people’s eyes following her as she walked down the street or went onstage. None of that mattered to her, however. She only cared about being beautiful in his eyes.

Women, more so than men, are apt to polarize love as either giving or receiving. A wider expanse exists between those women who understand love as selfless caring, and others who cannot abide by a relationship through which they don’t somehow benefit. To Jade, even the idea of gaining something through HanChol would have tainted their love. None of the gifts and money Jade had received from her patrons had made her as happy as when she was thinking of ways to help HanChol. She had more than enough money to support him while he finished school. After losing his biggest customer, Jade, HanChol was having trouble making enough money. But Jade knew that he would have a hard time accepting her help. When she brought it up, HanChol looked offended for the first time in her presence.

“I could never take your money,” he said tautly. “I’m a man who knows how to make his own money—not take it from a woman.”

“Don’t think of it that way,” she pleaded. “I am older than you. Think of it like this: in life, there are times when you should accept help from people who are perhaps older and in a better position. And then when you’re successful, you return the favor and help out those who need it. You can’t keep going like this, spinning wheels! There has to be something that lifts you up out of the muck, and now I’m saying I want to be that something.”

She was looking at him with such loving and innocent eyes. She was completely selfless in her offer, and wasn’t seeking anything in return. He kissed her hands and said, “I don’t deserve you.”

He had been considering dropping out of night school altogether rather than struggling for another six or seven years, just to get a shot at university. He had been looking at a lifetime of driving rickshaws or, when those became obsolete, becoming a hard laborer carrying bricks on his back seven days a week until his death.

Jade not only paid for his school fees, but also covered the living cost for him and his family. Unable to explain that a courtesan-actress was his benefactress, he told his mother that he’d won a scholarship. She replied, “At last you are starting to live up to your potential. But don’t become arrogant and slack off. You mustn’t rest until you’re admitted—our family depends on your success.”

HanChol went to school nine hours a day and studied at home even longer, often until after the night birds fell silent. Sometimes he found himself reading until sunrise. But after running around the city every day for years, simply learning in his seat was something he could do gladly. He caught up on several years’ worth of education in just a year and finally took the university entrance exam.

The results were announced in the newspapers, and when he saw his name near the top out of all the students in the country, he was exhilarated to the point of tears by two things: first, that his life could have gone the path of abyss or that of success, and that it had taken a decisive and irrevocable turn toward the latter; second, that he had done this all on his own.