So she made it to Seoul and found that it was neither kind, beautiful, nor magical. It was a broken city, like a shattered piece of china. The great stone wall that surrounded the city was knocked down in many places. Once-beautiful temples with their majestic, sloping roofs were partially burnt or simply piles of bricks. Poor people crowded the streets, and they all seemed in a rush with indifference towards each other. The air was filled with the harmonization of screaming Koreans and honking horns. Female vendors were desperately trying to sell pickled eggs and pinbae duk, a Korean pancake with vegetables cooked in it, to all passersby. Occasionally, sputtering cars, with chassises made completely out of American beer cans, would make their ways through the thick crowds.
Two-story buildings were surrounded by beggars, young hustlers, and prostitutes with clothes a lot nicer than hers. Sometimes these buildings pushed the people so close together that it seemed as if there was a river of black hair separating the two structures. The smell of kim-chee mixed with exhaust fumes made Kwang Ja feel sick. But worst of all, the mountains surrounding the city were not green. In fact, they looked very much the same as the mountains she’d passed during her great walk. As for the city itself, when the North Korean army had attacked Seoul over a year before, it had definitely left its mark.
So Kwang Ja was alone in this great city and all she had with her were hard-callused feet, a golden tan, the knowledge that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and a promise to herself that she’d commit suicide before she’d go back north. But despite all of this, she felt lucky that no one seemed to suspect or care that her blood had been tainted.
-2-
Luck struck again. After two days in Seoul, half-starving in the streets and running out of hiding places to wait out American-imposed curfews, Cho Kwang Ja was hit by a car. She’d been running away from an old woman accusing her of stealing some rotten grapes from her fruit stand, which Kwang Ja was guilty of, when the fancy black car hit her. It didn’t hit her hard; it glanced her just enough to knock her off her feet. Still scared of the woman, she slowed her breath and relaxed all her muscles. She let her mouth gape slightly. She closed her eyes, but made sure her lids were not closed too tight. She knew it would be better to look limp rather than stiff. She’d seen people dying before, and she knew that the stiffness came later. She would have looked completely lifeless, except her hand was still gently clenched around the six grapes she had stolen. She was so hungry; she unconsciously refused to let them go. The woman stood above her and shrieked, telling her she’d gotten what she deserved.
The doors of the car opened then slammed shut. A man’s deep voice chastised the angry lady. When she felt a pair of arms lift her up, she tried as hard as she could to feel like dead weight. She let her arms dangle and her neck stretch back as far as it could. Nothing alive likes to expose its neck, so she fearlessly exposed it. Someone slapped her in the face. She didn’t move. She was slapped again. The few who stopped and were actually interested were murmuring, “She’s dead; she’s dead.”
She wanted to smile. She was proud of herself. She was really good at this. This pride suddenly melted when she felt a hand on her breast. She wasn’t good enough to make her heart stop, but if she were, she would have done it right there. She would have died. Her attempts at motionless suicide were interrupted by the laughter of a man. Knowing the ruse was over, but still refusing to open her eyes, Kwang Ja heard the laughing man say, “What we have here is an actress.”
She didn’t open her eyes. But she felt herself being put into the fancy black car. At first, the leather seat cooled her arms and hands. But then the seat and her skin grew hot, and she felt drops of sweat roll down her forehead. As the car drove on, she listened to the treads of the tires pick up tiny pebbles and hurl them against the metal of the car. She wondered if she should try to sneak a rotten grape or two into her mouth. “Look at all the refugees,” the man said. “From the north, from Seoul to Pusan, now back to Seoul. Even I almost had to run to Pusan. I must go there today. Where are you from?”
Kwang Ja didn’t move.
About an hour later, the car stopped. She was pulled out by what she guessed were small female hands. She still did not open her eyes. She realized that they knew she was not dead, but decided to feign injury just in case. The man who had picked her up spoke to the woman who held her up. He instructed the woman to take care of her, and said he would call later to give further instructions. The car door slammed shut, and Kwang Ja heard the car drive away.
She opened her eyes. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. The house was tall and made of a dark, almost reddish wood. Its roof was like those she’d seen on the burnt temples in Seoul, sloping downward from the center. Behind the house stood a mountain of pure green. It was so unlike the balding mountains of North Korea and Seoul that Kwang Ja could not believe she had traveled so far in just an hour drive. It was as if she flew from the sun to the moon. Then she looked at the woman holding her up. It was a familiar figure; short, slumped over, hunchbacked. It was the body of a woman who, for years, carried tremendous weight. It was a woman who was so used to bowing to men, carrying their children on her back, and holding the weight of an entire house on her shoulders that her back was permanently bent. Women like this lived in North Korea, too. It was Confucianism at its worst. Kwang Ja no longer felt as far away as she’d have liked.
She walked from the woman’s arms and went up to the large wooden door. A brass circle which had elaborate engravings of dragons intertwined hung from the door. She rubbed the brass ring, then brushed her fingers on the dragons. Behind her a voice spoke. “So you’re not so sick after all.”
Startled, Kwang Ja dropped the grapes. A couple bounced once, then slowly rolled toward the woman, but the rest splattered on the wooden porch. The woman stooped over to pick up the grapes. Embarrassed, Soong tried to beat her to them. The woman slapped Kwang Ja’s reaching hand lightly. “I got it, I got it. You ridiculous child, you move as if it were diamonds you dropped.”
Kwang Ja stood back up and wondered what diamonds were and what they tasted like.
The woman made Kwang Ja wash her bare feet before she went inside. This woman, who was dressed in simple white clothes and wore white rubber sandals, sighed when she saw the bottoms of Kwang Ja’s callused feet. Then the servant’s old face smiled. She led Kwang Ja into the house.
Kwang Ja saw things in this house that she had never seen before. Things like faucets, toilets, and beds were foreign to her. As were embroidered rugs, framed paintings, glass cases filled with fine china, and wooden tables that shined so much that she could see her reflection in them. But none of these things were as beautiful as the garden beyond the patio in the back. A huge glass door (another thing she’d never seen before) separated the patio from the house, but the glass was so clean that it was like the door wasn’t there. Kwang Ja almost walked through it, but the old woman pulled her back and opened the door for her.
The garden, which was about twenty yards long and ten yards wide, was separated from the mountain by a huge stone wall. It was the same kind of stone she saw as temple rubble in the city. While the vegetation of the mountain grew beautifully green, but wild, the garden was meticulously cared for. Each blade of grass seemed of exact equal length. A tiny river ran through the center of the garden where koi, fish wearing beautifully bright and diverse colors, swam above a bed of fine black gravel. Kwang Ja stepped off the patio and walked to the bridge, which was of the same wood as the house. She watched the fish, some bright orange, some white, and some mixed with both colors, swim in the clear water. Their fins fluttered, but they didn’t move forward.
Then she crossed the bridge and inspected the flower garden. Sunflowers, daisies, and roses grew out of the darkest soil she’d ever seen, while several bees buzzed around them. To the right of the garden stood an enormous ginko tree, its yellow blossoms covering every branch. A black and white magpie flew from one of the branches. To the left of the flowe
r garden, several bamboo poles were staked into the ground. Vines of ripe, purple grapes wrapped themselves around the poles. Kwang Ja walked to one of these vines and pulled off a grape. She bit into it and tasted the sweet-sour juice spread on her tongue. This was what the woman meant by diamonds, she thought. Suddenly she felt like crying. This garden, this house was what Seoul was supposed to be to Kwang Ja. To her it was the heart of Seoul. Though the body, the city may be contaminated, the heart was pure. She held in her tears, swallowed the grape, turned around to the old servant woman and asked, “What is expected of me?”
The woman hissed. “Only that you become a lady.”
Kwang Ja wasn’t sure what that meant, but she did not care. She had been tempted effectively, and was willing to pay any price.
It was difficult at first. Kwang Ja had to learn how to read better, not only hangul, women’s writing, but also han-mun, men’s writing. She had to learn all of the graces of a South Korean aristocratic woman, which meant she had to learn how to ingratiate herself to men, which was difficult considering there were no men at the house. She was forbidden to take one step outdoors so her dark skin would lighten. This meant she did not spend any time in the garden. She had to lose her northern country accent, and cover it with a more genteel one. What they wanted her to do was forget who she was and where she came from. As far as they were concerned, she was reborn during the hot summer of 1952. The Year of the Dragon. And except for not being able to eat the grapes or watch the fish outside, this was all fine with her.
One of the first things Park Dong Jin had done to her was have her calluses removed. Her feet were soaked in water for days, while two women scrubbed the skin off. Every day the soles of her feet were worn down to a bright red, and like a shedding snake, she left a trail of skin wherever she moved.
She also shed her peasant clothes. She was given clothes she didn’t even know how to put on. Layers of thin material of white, green, blue, and pink had to be put on a layer at a time, in a particular order. Covering these layers was the chogori and ch’ima, the loose, long-sleeved blouse and high, wrap-around skirt which hovered less than an inch from the ground. The material was unusually soft, unlike anything she’d ever touched before. Silk canoe-shaped shoes finished the ensemble. Then there was her hair. The matted texture was combed out by the same two women who scrubbed her feet. For the first week, every day, she left tufts of hair in the teeth of combs. But she did not cry. She acted as if it didn’t even hurt, and the two women who combed it believed her. Finally, after her hair was straight and silky, the servants showed her how to make the simple, long braid worn by unmarried women.
For that first year, she didn’t even see Dong Jin, the man who had put her in the fancy black car. But she heard his name constantly. Whenever she did something good, like recite the story of “The Old Man Who Became A Fish,” or “The Old Woman Who Became A Goblin” flawlessly, or commit to memory Newton’s laws of gravity, her sabu, her teacher, a middle-aged man with an unusually long graying mustache, would say, “Master Park will be so proud.”
Whenever she did something bad, like forget to brush her hair, her nurse, the old woman who had led her into the house, would say, “You stupid girl. If you are not careful Master Park will throw you back out on the streets.”
This Master Park for that first year was an entity she’d neither seen nor heard. To her, he became this faceless figure who held her fate in the palm of his hand. He became like that God she had learned about in the book of the white missionaries. He was a deity who could reward or punish in one stroke without even showing himself. At first, because of her atheism, Kwang Ja did not fear or believe it. But as the months rolled by while her skin lightened, her feet and hair softened, and her mind was filled, she knew she was being transformed, and she knew Master Park was the force behind it. At first she felt like a silkworm cocooning herself and changing. But then she realized she wasn’t the power behind her metamorphosis. It was Master Park who cocooned her, and with this thought Kwang Ja felt more like a spider’s meal than a growing butterfly or moth. She didn’t know why, but she was beginning to feel fear. She did not want to be ruled by a god.
On the one-year anniversary of her rebirth, Dong Jin came to her. He quietly entered the house while Kwang Ja was on the patio, playing the kayagum. She was a quick study with everything, but she especially had a knack for playing this twelve-stringed zither, and in just a year, she could play some of the most complex compositions. Through the controlled chaos of floating notes, she heard the glass door slide open. The man she had come to know as a demi-god, along with the two servants who’d scrubbed her once callous-ridden feet, walked and stopped in front of her. And in that first instant of seeing him, the very first time she had, her fear and her perception of him as an all-powerful being disappeared. He was definitely a man, and not an impressive-looking one at that. He was middle-aged and tall for a Korean, but this height was offset by a fat belly and bad posture. A thinning head of hair framed his round face. His eyes were small, his eyebrows bushy, and his nose was broad and flat. His mouth was unusually small, and he seemed to lack a chin. The most impressive thing about this man was the dark, Western-style suit he was wearing. Kwang Ja also noticed he was carrying a strange wooden box with him. When Kwang Ja stopped playing and put her head down, she looked at his shiny black shoes, and it remind- ed her of his car. It seemed that Westerners were obsessed with creating shiny black things and calling them beautiful. It seemed odd to Kwang Ja that they, like their religious men, didn’t seem to like bright colors.
He told her to stand up. He put his hand on her chin and turned her face, looking at each profile. She’d found out she was beautiful only the year before when she’d first overheard the servants commenting on it. Without looking at the servants, he said, “Get us tea.”
Kwang Ja left her kayagum, and they both walked to the other side of the patio. He told her to sit and placed the box on the table. It was a beautiful, lacquered, cherry-colored box. Dragons made of mother-of-pearl shone on the lid. As she stared at it, one of the servants obstructed her view with a kettle and two ceramic cups. They sat cross-legged at the short, wooden table, and he poured her some tea. She carefully put her right hand around the rim and gently held the bottom with her left. She took a brief sip, letting only a few drops into her mouth. Kwang Ja felt Dong Jin staring at her, and refused to look back. “Did you get the chance to taste the grapes in the garden?” he asked.
She nodded, feeling his eyes study her face.
“Who was your father?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I am an orphan.”
“You call yourself Cho Kwang Ja. Whose surname did you take?”
“Cho was the name of a family in the village that I went to after the missionary orphanage was abandoned.”
Dong Jin poured tea in his cup. He picked it up and blew on it. The steam blew in Kwang Ja’s direction, but evaporated before it hit her. “You are beautiful,” he said in a deadpan manner. It was as if he were pointing at a tree and saying, “That’s a tree.” He sipped his tea, then continued. “There is an exotic quality to your look. An almost northern Japanese quality. Do you have Japanese blood?”
Kwang Ja jerked her head up and looked into Dong Jin’s eyes. She was slipping. “No, I don’t.”
Dong Jin smiled. “How do you explain the shape of your eyes?”
“My eyes are the same as anyone else’s. They’re brown,” she said, still looking directly at him, even though she knew she shouldn’t be.
“So they are. But there’s something different,” he said. He looked like he wanted to examine her eyes with a magnifying glass. “Maybe to Westerners, Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans look alike. But I know many people of all of these nationalities. I have never seen eyes like yours in any Korean woman.”
Kwang Ja thought about this for a moment. Then she shrugged and looked down. “Maybe too much sun.”
Dong Jin laughed. “Yes, maybe. You may be scared, but there�
��s nothing to worry about. No one cares if you’re not pure Korean. Not here. In fact, I doubt if that’s what you’re really scared of. You’re at the age where you are supposed to be scared. The world is crazy, especially for a young woman. Do you know why I brought you here?”
Kwang Ja thought about this. She had her suspicions that he wanted to make her his concubine, but felt it would be impolite to say so. She glanced at the box. Perhaps it contained a concubine’s gift. This man, with his questions and assumptions was angering her. Who was he to tell her what she was really scared of? “You brought me here because you feel guilty about hitting me with your fancy black car.”
Don Jin smiled. “Good guess, but no. You see, I make movies. So I brought you here because I am going to make you a star. The way to greatness is found in either creating something new or destroying something old. With you, I plan to do both.”
Kwang Ja looked down. She was taught recently that matter could neither be created nor destroyed. “But I’m just a simple country girl who you accuse of being part foreign. How can I be an actress?”
“You’re already an actress, child. I just want to show everyone else. From now on you’ll take my name. You are a Park. You are from Pusan or Won Ju, who cares, the country is a mess and no one knows who anyone is anymore anyway. You’re a distant cousin of mine whose parents have passed. I am your guardian. We will get you another name, one that doesn’t suggest a peasant upbringing, like Kwang Ja does, from a fortuneteller tomorrow. Do you accept?”
Kwang Ja sipped on her tea and let silence fill the room. She didn’t want to seem too anxious. She put down the cup, sighed, and looked at him again. “I guess.”
The Queen of Tears Page 4