Beasts of a Little Land(82)

“Is your mistress home?” Jade asked.

“She hasn’t been home for the past three days,” the old woman replied grudgingly, as though Jade had asked the most inconvenient question.

“What do you mean, she hasn’t been home?” Jade frowned, walking in without being told. Looking around her and calling for her friend, she opened Lotus’s bedroom door. A faint ambiguous smell that she’d first detected in the hallway rushed over her like a wave. The room was empty, but that odor—floral and musky like young girls’ clothes just taken off, still warm with body heat—reminded Jade of the last time she’d visited Lotus. It had been a warm spring day, but Lotus had insisted on staying under a thick winter comforter as they talked.

“I want to go out somewhere fun, like we used to in the old days,” Lotus had said then. “But not today. Today I feel tired.”

“Okay, we’ll go out as soon as you feel better, I promise,” Jade had said, and Lotus smiled and grasped her hand. More than anything else, it was that lopsided smile that broke Jade’s heart. Lotus had grinned so much as a child, even while her mother and older sister treated her with disdain. There had been beauty in her innocence—Jade could only recognize that now, as a woman.

The housekeeper was waiting for her in the hallway with a look of annoyance. Jade suppressed the urge to yell and said as calmly as possible, “Did she say where she was going?”

“Not a clue, miss.” The old woman shrugged. “She wasn’t in her right mind for a while, as you know.”

Jade blushed and choked down the anger that was directed toward the housekeeper, but was really meant for herself. Had she really been so blind to how badly her friend had become addicted to opium? It was a common vice, almost as common as drink and tobacco. The most fashionable men and women and the most admired artists made a ritual of visiting the dream world once or twice a week. But the majority of them also didn’t spend their days lying on their cots, wasting away until they were old and weak before their time. It sickened Jade that she had made excuses for Lotus instead of confronting her—simply because she’d had enough problems of her own.

Jade returned to Lotus’s room, hoping to find any hints of her whereabouts. Some of the furniture Jade remembered seeing had been removed, but in the corner above the sideboard, there was a telephone. She picked it up, hesitated for a second, and said, “Operator, President Ma of the Grand Oriental Cinema, please.”

There was a pause as the operator put her through, and Jade felt her heart beat fast. She had never spoken directly to this man, whom Lotus had described with so much infatuation, then possessiveness, and finally, hatred. There was a clicking sound and a male voice answered, “Hello?”

“President Ma. This is Jade Anh—Lotus’s friend,” she said. The silence that followed lasted only a few seconds, but felt much longer and colder.

“Yes, of course,” he said at last. “How can I help you?”

“I’ve just come by Lotus’s house, and she’s not here . . . The housekeeper tells me she hasn’t been home in the past three days.”

President Ma cleared his throat. “Yes, I heard,” he said, and his indifference snapped Jade’s self-restraint.

“Aren’t you worried about her? Are you even looking for her—and what about Sunmi?” she said, noticing as she spoke the child’s absence in the silent house.

“Sunmi is with me. She’ll be going to school in Japan in a couple of weeks.” His voice was not angry, just contemptuous. “If you’re as close a friend as you pretend to be, you’d know that Lotus has always been a terrible mother. Even in the best of times she was not fit to be raising my daughter. Now she’s half out of her mind.”

A nauseating thought came into Jade’s head. “Did you make Lotus leave?”

President Ma laughed mirthlessly. “Can anyone really force another person to leave or stay? But she certainly can’t come back.”

Jade hung up, shivering. The housekeeper was standing by the door, not even hiding the fact that she was eavesdropping. Her face was lit up in the smug smile of servants who discover their employers’ vulgarity.

“Just yesterday, he told me to get the house ready for a new mistress. He’s ordered new furniture for her too. She’s young, and he thinks she’ll give him a son. It is shameful, even for a man like that.” The housekeeper clucked her tongue.

“Never mind about the new woman. She doesn’t concern me,” Jade snapped. The old woman glared at her and then shook her head, swinging her loose jowl side to side.

“It serves you courtesans right to be abandoned—stealing other women’s husbands for a living,” she sneered darkly as Jade walked out the gates.

JADE BEGAN HER SEARCH in the very first place she and Lotus had been in Seoul—the train station—and made her way through all the landmarks of their shared lives, from MyungWol to the Joseon Theatre. She inquired with the staff at each place, but no one could remember seeing Lotus recently. Standing awkwardly outside the theater, she watched the matinee goers leave in groups of three and four, and recalled how Lotus had pleaded to go out and have fun when they last saw each other. She ran as fast as she could to Café Seahorn.

It was already past six thirty when she arrived at the café. Even under the circumstances, she was enveloped by the comfort of its familiar decadence, the intimate air of everyone knowing everyone. But the café had changed since Japan began clamping down harder in the peninsula, spurred by its conquest of vast Manchuria. The guests were whispering in subdued voices, and even the music sounded softer. Jade remembered her first visit to the café, when she’d marveled at the crystal ashtrays on every table. “Aren’t these a little too fine to be left around like this?” she had asked the poet-owner. He had answered cheerfully, tapping his cigarette smartly on the side of an ashtray: “Why, Miss Jade, that’s what true luxury is—using fine things in a casual way.” Those ashtrays were now gone. But more changed than all those things was Jade herself, with her tired skin and unfashionable clothes.