The Queen of Tears (5 page)

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.”

Dong Jin laughed. “You are going to be a star!”

He opened the box and pulled out a short, simple-looking knife. Its blade was covered by a silver sheath. It was obviously made by a more primitive culture. “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

“It’s a knife, an old one at that.”

“Has your teacher told you about the tradition of the ‘silver knife?’”

Kwang Ja nodded. “Yes. In the old days, it was given to young women as both decoration and protection. A young virgin was always to wear it. But the tradition died, yes?”

Dong Jin nodded. “Yes. In fact, this knife is an artifact. It has been in my family for hundreds of years. But now I give it to you.”

Kwang Ja frowned. She couldn’t imagine carrying around a knife like some kind of cutthroat. “But who do I need to protect myself from?”

“We all need protection. Sometimes from strangers, mostly from acquaintances, and always from ourselves. But please, think of this as more of a symbol. It is a gift that symbolizes the fact that you are no longer the helpless girl I found in the streets. I have armed you.”

Kwang Ja pulled the knife from its sheath. The silver blade drew in the light from the sun and shot it in her eyes. She tightened her grip around its hilt, and tested the blade. It was sharp. She wondered if it had ever been used. Suddenly she felt strong. Her fears disappeared. Yes, she was no longer the scared child starving in the streets of Seoul. She looked up at Dong Jin. “Thank you for the gift.”

He smiled. “Keep it in the box. It’s an antique. Now, let’s talk about your future as an actress. You and I will go to Pusan, where you will be trained in the theater. You will also be taught more Western philosophies there…”

Kwang Ja put the sheath back on its blade and placed the knife back in the box. He was right, it was a symbol, an artifact more than an actual weapon.

“Are you listening?”

She closed the box. “Yes.”

It would be years before she would open the box again. And only twice more.

The next day, in the streets of Seoul, with envious eyes focused on her, Kwang Ja and Dong Jin asked a whore/fortuneteller about a new name. She was a woman in her forties who spent her days on the streets seeing the future, and spent nights trying to insure that she herself would have one. Kwang Ja thought it strange that a rich man like Dong Jin would choose such a fortuneteller. But he simply said, “The ones who have lived tend to be the ones with the most vision.”

The fortuneteller scribbled down what little information Kwang Ja could tell her about her heritage. The woman then threw a handful of beans onto a thin layer of sand in front of her. She carefully studied the arbitrary formation, and Kwang Ja wanted to laugh, but the whore/fortune-teller’s manner of seriousness prevented her from doing so. Suddenly, the woman looked up. “Soong Nan. Your name now will be Soong Nan. It will be a very lucky name for you.”

The fact that this whore/fortuneteller was living on the street in rags told the newly named Soong Nan that she didn’t know the least bit about luck. So she took the name with trepidation. The next day, Park Soong Nan went to Pusan, leaving Cho Kwang Ja buried in the fortuneteller’s shallow sand.

THE INSTITUTION

chapter three