Beasts of a Little Land(81)

“This was the way we took to walk home from the theater. Hundreds of times. Do you remember that spring? It was more than six years ago now. We’ve spent so much time together.” She smiled, and a tear loosened from her eye.

“I know. I could never forget our walks—my first true memory of happiness. Every minute I’ve been with you, I’ve been so happy.”

“So have I,” she said, and he gathered her frozen hands in his and pressed them to his lips.

“You will become the most successful man in Seoul, I’m sure of it. It will only bring me the greatest happiness to know of your good fortune. When that happens, just remember that I believed in you before anyone else,” she continued. “I will walk home alone the rest of the way. Goodbye.”

“Let me at least see you home safely.”

“No, we’ve had our talk. It all has to end at some point. Goodbye,” she said again, and began walking resolutely toward the horizon where the black sky met the white earth.





20


The Dreamers

1937

EVERYONE DREAMS, BUT ONLY SOME PEOPLE ARE DREAMERS. THE NONDREAMERS, by far more numerous, are those who see the world as it is. Then there are the few dreamers, who see the world as they are. The moon, the river, the train station, the sound of rain, and even something as mundane as porridge become something else with many layers. The world feels like an oil painting rather than a photograph, and the dreamers are forever seeing hidden colors where others just see the top shade. The nondreamers look through glasses, and the dreamers through a prism.

This is not a quality determined by intelligence or passion, two things most often conflated with dreaming. Dani, the most intelligent and passionate person Jade had ever known, had a vision that was as crisp and sharply outlined as her mannerisms and principles. Dani was not interested in the unfathomable when there were wrongs to be righted, preferably with utmost grace and aplomb. When Jade stopped dancing and acting, she felt as if all the colors had gone out of her life. She was now in the world of the nondreamers, a strange and suffocating place, and felt lonelier than she’d ever been; but Dani acted as though she just had to accept reality and move on.

“It’s the depression,” Dani said one morning, poring over her newspaper through her magnifying glass. “People don’t have money to spend at movie theaters. Many restaurants are closing now, too. You can’t be too hard on yourself.”

“But, Auntie, you know Hong GilDong just came out and it’s a hit. And last fall, the remake of One Lucky Day. It’s been only six years since the original, did they have to make a new one already?” Jade said, picking at her breakfast of pine nut porridge. “It sold out every night for almost six months.”

“That’s because it’s a talkie. People are mad for anything new. Your studio should have foreseen that. Can’t you talk to them?”

Dani folded her newspaper in half and looked up at Jade as though nothing could be simpler. Despite the trauma of her arrest and her heartbreaks, Dani didn’t understand defeat. To her, failure was like stockings with holes: it could happen to anyone, but if you allowed it to show in public then you were to blame. Taking care to contain and discard your failures was as much a matter of good manners as high principles. It was a kind of cool, aristocratic sensibility that made Dani a better role model than a friend. So Jade hadn’t been able to talk about her studio’s bankruptcy or her dwindling savings at thirty, the precise age at which she was supposed to be wealthy and independent, because her value as a woman had reached its logical expiration.

The only person who would understand her predicament was Lotus. Even though they hadn’t seen each other in months, Jade was certain that her friend would make her feel better. They would laugh about the old days, their girlhood dreams of becoming celebrated courtesans, the many handsome and rich lovers they were each supposed to have by this age. She even felt that they could take this moment of vulnerability to renew their friendship and plot out the future, whatever that may be. For all her faults, Lotus had always had an inspiring appetite for life. Whereas others thought of the world as a vast insidious sea or some such field of battle, Lotus took the approach that it was all just a game or a basket of fruits—to be played and to be tasted. That was her virtue—and she often had the effect of transferring her attitude to whoever was around her. Her thoughts thus gathered, Jade put on her hat and started walking toward Lotus’s house.

It was a lovely day, hot in the sun and cool in the shade, and she strolled on the road half dappled with shadows of the storefronts. People were ambling along, students were just getting out of school and flocking to the sweets shop. Delivery men whipped past on their bicycles. Light danced off the glass windows of the department store, and pasted on its walls were posters for new talkie films and singers. There were tables displayed outside the bookstore and she stopped here to leaf through the titles. These were mostly novels and periodicals, and in one literary magazine she found some names she knew from Café Seahorn. She flipped to a random page and found an illustration by the painter in the crimson velvet dress. It was not a drawing of women’s liberation and free love, which she was known for, but a painting of a little girl wearing a yellow headband, entitled Daughter. Jade closed the magazine and kept walking.

When she reached Lotus’s house, an unfamiliar housekeeper answered the door.