The Court Dancer

by Kyung-Sook Shin

She must have fallen asleep.

  Jin lowered her arm from her forehead. She opened her eyes, and the room was dark. Had she slept until the sun set? She had sat knee-to-knee with Suh, deep in talk, when Jin coughed. Suh said she had just made some shikhye rice drink and went to get it, during which Jin must have dozed off. The floor was so warm with the Korean-style ondol heating, and she had laid down on it, just for a moment. The heat had immediately seeped through her entire body. It felt like a moment ago, but a good deal of time must have passed. Suh had come and gone; there was an old wooden tray with a white bowl of shikhye on it. Suh also must have taken off Jin’s silk hat, carefully placed it next to the tray, and covered her with a blanket. Jin sat up and brought the bowl to her lips. She smelled its sweet scent. Jin drank it without leaving a single drop. She licked up the grains of rice that remained stuck to the bowl. She sat and stared at the bowl for a long time before standing up.

  She was carrying the tray and bowl to the kitchen when she stopped.

  Eight children were gathered underneath the date tree that was just beginning to sprout green leaves. A man, his back to Jin, stood facing the children. Each child held a bamboo flute in their hands. Jin wondered what was going on until she heard the sound of the man’s flute. She immediately straightened her back. The children repeated what the man played, their notes all over the place. There was always one child who held on for a beat too long. But the music continued. The children’s fingers seemed to dance on the flutes in the dim light. Jin thought of the musicians at Bon Marché and smiled. Sometimes the attendants would form musical groups and hold concerts after the store was closed, making an impromptu stage of the floor. They were very good. Jin once went with Jeanne to watch Vincent, who played the cymbals.

  The music the children played was familiar. Jin’s eyes trembled. It was a composition that Yeon used to play for her when they were growing up in Banchon. The children were so cacophonous that she hadn’t been aware of it at first, but the man’s melody was clear and true. The song ended as Jin approached the children. The man held up his index finger, meaning they should play it one more time. The second time around, their sound was more unified. By their fifth try, they were more than serviceable. Then the man did a solo. Could the bamboo flute make such a sound? Then Jin realized he wasn’t playing the smaller flutes like the children were. This was the daegeum. Because the man had his back to them, she hadn’t seen him switch instruments. What an amazing sound. The children, who had been so serious as a united orchestra, began dancing joyfully to his tune.

  —What fun you’re having!

  Bomi had come out of the kitchen at the sound of the daegeum, but when she saw Jin, she quickly took the tray from her hands. Jin smiled at Bomi. It must take great effort to play the daegeum like that. The children jumped and spun, stood on their heads and flipped backward. Bomi shouted, “Be careful!” The children laughed and stuck out their tongues. Jin walked toward them. She wanted to see the face of the man who could make children dance so. The man didn’t notice she was approaching, as his eyes were closed in concentration. The children seemed to know the music well. Aside from the dancing children, there were others who had closed their eyes and were enjoying it silently, and those who clung to his clothes as they looked up at him.

  Yeon’s daegeum was said to make rain fall in the middle of a drought.

  In May, Yeon would be off to the marshes to find good reeds. Every year he searched for the best examples, peeled back the protective membrane, and attached them to the daegeum to produce the perfect vibration for its sound. But the music that made the children dance was a different kind. It wasn’t court music or folk music. The man playing the daegeum opened his eyes and met Jin’s gaze. When his music stopped, so did the children’s dancing. The man’s eyes and forehead seemed to form a grimace before his focus wholly concentrated on Jin.

  —Silverbell!

  Yeon lowered his flute and called out to Jin. Bomi was so surprised that she dropped the tray, the bowl rolling on the ground.

  —Sobaek is talking!

  Jin slowly moved through the crowd of children as she walked up to Yeon. Yeon stared at her, not moving until Jin gathered him in her arms. How could I not have recognized you? Jin buried her face in his chest. She could hear Yeon’s hard breathing. It made her remember the moment when she had embraced Maupassant at the morgue. She held Yeon for a long time as Bomi quickly picked up the tray and bowl and rushed back to the kitchen, and the children crowded around them in a group hug.

  They lit an oil lamp in Suh’s room, where the three of them sat around the low meal table that was brought in.

  Jin stared at the table. White bowls filled with steaming white rice mixed with potatoes. There was fermented soybean soup, with the fragrant bean paste mixed in with rice water and boiled with shepherd’s purse. There was also lettuce, wild rocambole mixed with sliced turnip and soy sauce, sautéed fatsia sprouts, well-aged kimchi, and a mugwort jeon omelet. Most of these were offerings from the warm spring earth.

  —Let’s eat.

  Jin and Yeon hesitated despite Suh’s suggestion. Suh picked up a piece of mugwort jeon with her chopsticks and placed it on Jin’s rice.

  —It will get cold. Do eat . . . Remember how you used to love spring food?

  Jin picked up the piece of jeon with her chopsticks and slipped it into her mouth. The lovely taste of young spring mugwort filled her mouth. While Jin ate it, Yeon placed another piece on Jin’s rice. The three of them laughed. It was just as they had done when they lived together. Once the slight but wily shoots of green mugwort broke through the plains of Banchon that were frozen all winter, Suh would go out with her basket to harvest them and make jeon. Little Jin would insist on helping her with the flouring of the dried mugwort and end up with flour all over her forehead and hair. When the lightly fried jeon made it to the table, a scene like the one they had just enacted would occur. Suh would place a piece of jeon on Jin’s rice, then Yeon would place one.

  Jin spread her rice with her spoon and poured in some of the bean paste soup. Yeon was taken aback by how quickly Jin mixed the rice with the soup after having hesitated before the food for so long. Even Suh, as she lifted her spoon to eat, was surprised at the speed with which Jin was eating.

  —Don’t eat so quickly. You’ll get sick.

  Suh stood up.

  —I’ll get you another bowl.

  Her mouth full of soup and rice, Jin could not object as Suh opened the door and left. Yeon slid his bowl of soup toward her. Only then did Jin swallow the food in her mouth and put her spoon down.

  The things that move the heart never change.

  The first thing Jin did as she stepped onto the grounds of their old Banchon house was touch the bark of the apricot tree. Tiny white flowers like snowflakes dotted its branches. Befitting of flowers that had endured the winds of winter, the blooms seemed modest and shy. Jin had been listening during nights when the cold wind blew. It was said that when the winds were loud, there could be no apricot blossoms; hence, the scent of apricot flowers was to be listened for, not smelled.

  She remembered how Blanc and Yeon had stood underneath that very apricot tree that spring evening when little Jin returned home from court on the back of Lady Attendant Lee. Lady Attendant Lee was so surprised that she fell over backward, causing Jin to bite her lip. That was the first time she had seen Yeon, who wore his old gray rags. She remembered the blood she tasted as she stared at him.

  Jin stood underneath the apricot tree and watched the lights go on, one by one, in the woman Suh’s sewing room, Blanc’s old room where he taught her French, and the room Yeon had lived in. Suh had asked Yeon to accompany Jin back to the French legation after dinner. They had walked toward the legation when Jin changed direction to Banchon. Yeon wordlessly followed her lead. Jin walked slowly through Banchon. The children came out to their gates and stared at her. The people lined up at the butcher’s also turned to look at her. The women washing clothes at the stream s
eemed to think, Who could that be? No one recognized Jin. They greeted Yeon with a nod and continued to stare until they were out of sight.

  —“Does anyone live in the house now?”

  They were the first words Jin spoke to Yeon since she’d come back.

  Yeon nodded. Only then did Jin step away from the tree and enter the house. A house falls quickly into disrepair without a constant human presence. Jin looked into every room where Yeon had lit a lamp. They were all empty save for the room Yeon used, where a futon was neatly folded in the corner. She peered into the yard in back where Suh had once heated water and washed the boy Yeon in a large earthenware jar. Bamboo leaves still whispered in the spring breeze. The lamps made the house seem cozy despite its emptiness.

  After Jin examined the house, she came to where Yeon sat on the edge of the porch and sat beside him. Jin recalled the letter she had received through Sister Jacqueline. I bought the house in Banchon where we spent our childhood together . . . Please send us word, somehow, to reassure us of your well-being. She had kept the letter in the Oriental Room and read it again and again. He called Suh “Mother.” And mentioned that Suh didn’t know he bought the house.

  Jin opened her bag and took out a long leather pouch. She put it on Yeon’s lap.

  —It’s an oboe. A French wind instrument. It’s a much older instrument than a flute or clarinet.

  Jin wanted to say more but paused. It was useless to talk in terms of flutes or clarinets, as Yeon would never have seen either. She had asked Vincent at Bon Marché to procure an oboe for her. She was happy to have bought something with the money she made from making embroidered fans. She wouldn’t need that money in Korea, so she put the rest in a jar and placed it in Jeanne’s room before leaving Paris. She’d thought of Yeon when she had first seen an oboe being played, by a street musician at the entrance to Luxembourg Garden. Yeon loosened the strings and took out the boxwood oboe.

  —There’s music inside.

  Yeon had learned hymns from Blanc, so Western musical notation was not foreign to him. He turned the oboe this way and that and tried blowing on it. A squawk emerged from the reed and Yeon quickly put it down, with a smile.

  Jin leaned her head against Yeon’s shoulder.

  Yeon again tried the instrument, which resembled the Chinese guan, bringing the mouthpiece to his lips. It was sensitive and high-toned. The reed made a different sound each time. A sound like tearing paper, which changed to something like a note. Yeon thought that, with an instrument like this, his sound wouldn’t be buried in an ensemble, when he paused and set the oboe down gently on his lap. Jin had fallen asleep against his shoulder. Surely it was an uncomfortable position, but he could hear the change in her breathing.

  Frozen still, Yeon looked out at the apricot tree.

  There was once a wandering swordsman who called that tree by a different name: homunmok. The swordsman was one of Suh’s lodgers. He called the tree homunmok, but Suh and Yeon called the man Homunmok, as he never told them his name. They didn’t know how he came to be a vagabond, but he stayed in their house for a year. It took them some time to learn that he was a swordsman. Suh was wary at first because he was dressed like a Chinese person. When she learned Homunmok had been a swordsman in the old army before the new one with its modern weapons took over, she made Yeon kneel before him and begged him to teach Yeon how to use a sword. Suh was always clothing those who owned nothing and inviting all sorts of strangers into the house to give them a warm meal; Yeon was so used to Suh giving to others that it was strange to see her beg for something. Homunmok was silent at first but, four days later, he asked why she wanted a mute to learn sword fighting. Suh replied without hesitation that his being mute was precisely the reason. From that day on, Homunmok had Yeon run with him every morning through the bamboo and pine forest of Banchon. They endured cold water training together at the stream and would sit still and meditate for hours. Sometimes Homunmok would disappear without a trace and Yeon would wander the mountain paths at night alone. It was said that to handle the sword, one first and foremost needed to have his wits about him, second to which one required great strength. And he always needed to have the right heart. One could handle the sword only when one had these three things. But regardless of Suh’s intention with Yeon learning the sword, and regardless of what Homunmok taught him about mindfulness, the only thing Yeon thought of when he trained was Jin. If the sword was to benefit a mute like him, then he was convinced it would benefit Jin too. A year later, Homunmok wanted to leave Banchon with Yeon, to become swordsmen together who used their skill for good. But Yeon did not follow him.

  He sighed deeply and looked down at Jin.

  To not have hope is harder than to have it.

  The woman he thought he’d never see again. The woman he always tried not to love. He thought he was hallucinating when he saw Jin that afternoon standing among the children. He couldn’t believe she was here, not even when she walked through the children and embraced him. It wasn’t because of the satin hat or the leather shoes or her Western dress. He was simply too astonished to see her in Korea to return her greeting. Only when he saw her mix the fermented soybean soup into her rice did he think this was really Jin. His heart was arguing between the hour growing later and his regret at having to wake her. Yeon listened closely to the sound of her breathing.

  The dawn light was breaking when Jin opened her eyes.

  It took her a moment to realize she had spent the night leaning on Yeon’s shoulder while sitting on the porch of the house she grew up in. As she avoided Yeon’s gaze, Yeon took out a fountain pen from his pocket. It was the one Victor had given him. He fished out the small notebook hanging on a string around his neck from inside his tunic and began writing in it.

  You were so deep asleep I couldn’t bear to wake you.

  —Where do you get the ink for that?

  Yeon wrote again.

  The nuns give it to me.

  Jin regarded his writing before she stood up. She thought of Victor, who had gone to see Müllendorf. How he must have waited for her in the night. When she reached the French legation with the hem of her dress damp with dew, Victor was standing at the side gate to their annex, waiting for her. The Jindo dog, which stood waiting with Victor, bounded up to her as she approached.

  2

  A Changed Face

  The Queen was playing a throwing game with some lady attendants in the palace garden.

  There were two teams. Ten steps away was a bronze urn with handles on each side. The game involved throwing arrows into the urn or the loop of the handles. The first to throw 120 arrows into the targets won the game. Cheers resounded in the garden as someone managed to hit a target. Jin listened closely for the sound of the Queen’s voice. The Queen playing a throwing game? It was unthinkable, but Victor, who had never seen the game before, was already regarding the activity with interest.

  —What are they doing?

  —A throwing game. There are winners and losers. Those who win are rewarded, and those who lose must suffer a penalty.

  Lady Suh’s reply was so firm that Victor dared not ask her any more questions. Lady Suh had a grim expression. Jin used to play the throwing game with the Dowager Consort Cheolin when she was a little girl. Whenever the young Jin managed to throw her arrow into a target, the normally reserved dowager consort would clap her hands and cheer. Jin so loved watching her laugh that she would practice with Yeon using sticks and a bottle. The Queen did not enjoy this game. She used to keep her distance. While the young dowager consorts outranked the Queen, the Queen was still more powerful in practice, so the mood of the throwing games tended to be careful. The Queen used to say, “I would sooner read another book than play that silly game.” Seeing as the urn was filled with arrows, the game must have been going on for a long time.

  —I see you may win again today.

  Jin raised her head to see who it was the Queen so generously praised. The one who had just thrown an arrow into the urn was n
ot a court lady but a Japanese woman in a kimono. Jin gave Lady Suh a questioning look, and Lady Suh replied that this was So Chonsil’s daughter, the one who had the favor of the Queen. So Chonsil’s daughter? Jin recalled Paul Choi telling her that she had commissioned scores of the Queen’s portraits. She couldn’t make out her face at this distance, but the kimono made her stand out from the crowd. Everyone was absorbed in the game, unaware that Lady Suh and Jin were approaching. Jin spotted her old roommate Soa. Jin’s eyes trembled and her mouth almost broke into a smile. Across from Soa was Lady Lee, who used to fetch Jin in the morning and carry her back home at night when Jin was with Dowager Consort Cheolin.

  —Lady Attendant Suh, Your Majesty.

  Lady Suh had made the address. Lady Attendant Suh. Jin would always be that to Lady Suh. The ornaments in the Queen’s hair sparkled in the sunlight. The court ladies stopped the game and turned to face Jin. Jin’s clothing drew instant whispers and murmurs from the gathered ladies. The court lady at a distance, poised to throw the next arrow, also stopped to see what the fuss was. This was Soa. The arrow dropped from her hand onto the ground.

  The Queen slowly turned toward Jin. The woman in the kimono to the left of her also stared at Jin. Victor took off his hat and bowed politely to the Queen. The Queen’s narrowed eyes glanced at Victor and lingered on Jin’s face. They moved on to the purple dress Jin wore. The murmur among the court ladies subsided into a tense silence.

  —At ease, Your Excellency. How long has it been!

  —It is an honor to see you again, Your Majesty.

  To Victor, the Queen looked as formidable as ever.

  Müllendorf had told him that the King and Queen were close these days to the Russian legate; they seemed to be trying to use Russia to check Japan’s growing power at court. It was a reasonable policy from the Queen’s point of view. Japan, having won their war with China, would want to use reformation as an excuse to install a pro-Japanese government, a threatening prospect for Korea. Japan wanted to use Korea as a platform for invading Manchuria. The King and Queen could only be glad that Germany, France, and Russia—countries that did not welcome the rise of a new power—were joining forces to put down Japan’s ambitions.