Beasts of a Little Land(9)

Her mother had also viewed too much schooling as poisonous to young girls. Jade had been allowed just a year of classes at the one-room school for all the village students ranging from ages five to twenty. Even amid that chaos, she’d learned more than just simple sums and rudimentary letters, which was all that her mother would have preferred. Because of school, Jade had stopped feeling like a dutiful part of the household like the furnace or the hoe. She both shrank and expanded with knowledge, and was startled by her own, hazy discontent. This was, of course, why learning was deemed so dangerous in the first place. If she’d said aloud what swirled inside her head, her mother would have pinched and slapped her far more often. This fear even subdued her tears at their farewell, for she didn’t know whether crying would please or anger her mother.

Jade remained silent and docile as she followed Silver along the first-floor porch. But the house called out to her in secret, and she longed to touch the columns made of fifty-year-old pines and painted red with cinnabar. When she passed by, silk lanterns danced under the eaves, somehow evoking both stillness and movement, artificiality and naturalness. That heady atmosphere could be felt all throughout the house, Jade thought as Silver led her down the hallway; but it was most noticeable in Silver herself. Jade had never seen anyone who glided so much as did Madame Silver—she looked barely capable of having such lowly body parts as feet and toes. And yet, Jade thought there was no one who better exemplified the naturalness of a woman. Silver smiled and spoke with the complete ease of someone who was born to be a female and knew it. She stopped gliding a few feet ahead of Jade and slid open a rice-papered door.

“This is the music classroom,” Silver said. All four walls of the large hall were decorated with lavishly painted screens. On one side of the room, there were a dozen very young girls learning a traditional song, repeating line by line after an older courtesan; on the opposite side, eleven-or twelve-year-old girls were practicing the gayageum.

“The girls who are singing are in the first year. In the second year, you begin learning the gayageum, daegeum, and different types of drums. So these are two of the five arts that a courtesan must master—song and instrument,” Silver explained. As she spoke, one of the singing girls jumped up from her seat and scampered toward them. Jade could almost hear Silver knit her brows in disapproval.

“Mama, who is this?” the little girl asked Silver, and Jade tried to hide her surprise. With a round face and undistinguished features, the girl looked nothing like her elegant mother.

“You should never leave class without your teacher’s permission,” Silver said sternly, and Jade was reminded of her own mother. She wondered whether there were any mothers in the world who didn’t greet their daughters with anger.

“The class will be over in just a few minutes,” the girl persisted. “Is she new? Can I take her around?”

Silver hesitated for a second, as though remembering important tasks much more worthy of her time, then dismissed them both with a flick of her hand. The girl took Jade by the elbow and led her along the hallway.

“I’m Lotus. Thanks for getting me out of class.” She giggled. “What’s your name?”

“Jade.”

“That’s a nice name. You probably won’t need to change it,” Lotus said, opening another sliding door. In this room, slightly smaller than the first room, a set of students were practicing watercolor paintings on one side and calligraphy on the other.

“Did Mama tell you about the five arts of a courtesan? Here are three and four: painting and poetry . . . We also take Korean, Japanese, and arithmetics here. You get tested on every subject once a month, and if you don’t get everything correct, you have to repeat that month.”

“Even Japanese and arithmetics?” Jade asked, feeling troubled.

“Aye, especially those two.” Lotus nodded gravely. “I’ve been held back from moving on to second year for a while now. But that means we can be in the same class!”

Lotus giggled and ran up the flight of stairs to the second floor, and Jade followed her, breathless with laughter. Here, Lotus pulled Jade into the biggest classroom she had seen yet. This room was empty, its polished wooden floor shiny with wear. There were masks and colorful robes hanging on the walls; in one corner, stretched-leather drums and other instruments were neatly stacked one on top of the other.

“This room is for the fifth art of a courtesan—dance. You start learning it in the second year,” Lotus said. “So this is it for our school building. Let me show you where you’ll sleep.”

The girls’ dormitory was a single-story villa behind the school. They were crossing the courtyard toward the first years’ bedroom when a dazzlingly beautiful girl came out of the kitchen wing. Jade could see that she was not a servant, however, from her costly outfit and the haughty way she was nibbling on a piece of rice taffy. She caught sight of them and started heading in their direction.

“My older sister Luna,” Lotus whispered. Luna was unmistakably her mother’s daughter. She resembled Silver the way the moon’s reflection on the river mirrored its source.

“You’re the new girl,” Luna said, playing with the end of her braid, which was as thick and fluffy as a leopard’s tail. Her face was so radiant that Jade could only steal glances in bits and pieces, a nose here and a mouth there.

“Yes, I’m Jade,” she answered with a timid smile, and Luna broke into a splendid laughter.