And now, in the street, the weight of my brother’s unfound grave hung around my neck. Older Sister, fortunately, had recovered and my promise to her remained. In my robe, even the folded paper bearing his sketched face felt heavy, unbearably so. I carefully withdrew it and held it out for her to see.
“You said you know many people,” I said. “Have you ever seen this person?”
Woorim puckered her lips. “The sketch is so faded I can hardly see how he looks. Don’t you have another picture of him?”
“No, this is all I have.” I looked down at the drawing of him, and I wondered if he still looked as he had more than a decade ago, when he had been only a boy with the pudginess of childhood still clinging to his face. A face as round as the glowing moon, framed by long hair tied loosely at the back, and his puffy eyes filled with a youthful innocence. “He doesn’t seem familiar at all?”
Woorim shook her head. “There are some even I do not know.”
I fell quiet. The sketch of my brother always opened me up to a world filled with echoes, like a faraway stranger calling to me from a mountaintop. I missed his stories about home, a home I had been too young to remember, a home filled with the intensity of affectionate words and the texture of comforting arms around me. Those tales had vanished and had left me feeling hollow, as though I were a wandering spirit.
“So…” Woorim’s voice filled the silence that had opened between us. “How old are you anyway?”
“Sixteen.”
“I am, too!” She grinned. “Since we’re the same age, shall we lower our words?”
To lower our words meant to speak in banmal, “half words,” rather than in formal speech.
“If you’d like,” I said.
Her smile faltered. “Seol-ah, you know that feeling you get, when your skin goes all bumpy like chicken skin, because you sense someone is watching you?”
“Eung. I know that feeling.”
“I feel watched sometimes. No, not sometimes. All the time; whenever I leave the mansion.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know, but I feel it.” Then the concern flew off her face like a flighty bird. Her lips popped into a grin. “Maybe it is a ghost!”
Our conversation ended when we arrived at the residence, a stately mansion on the far edge of the Northern District. The spark of concern I’d felt for Woorim dissipated as I followed her across the courtyard and up stone steps, then took off my sandals.
Standing close to the hanji doors, Woorim called, “Lady Kang, the damo is here to see you.”
A smooth-soft voice replied, “Send her in.”
I stepped into the guest hall, and through my lashes I observed a vast and airy chamber. Blue-gray light shone through the translucent paper panels, framed by wood and used as sliding doors and room dividers. A few steps closer, and I smelled the lady before I even saw her: the warm and sweet scent of clove buds. The scent of nobility. I didn’t look up, yet I could feel her gaze as I prostrated myself.
“Lady Kang,” I said. “I am honored by—”
“Lift your head. I cannot hear you.”
I lifted my eyes, just high enough to see a low-legged table, dragons inlaid and lacquered. Behind the table, a full skirt of crimson silk.
“Let us speak face-to-face.”
I picked myself up—my shoulders and back, then my hands, which I rested neatly in my lap. At last, I saw her, and she looked different today. She had thick, lustrous black hair, braided and coiled neatly at her nape, decorated with pins and ornaments.
“You must wonder why I summoned you,” she said.
“Yes, mistress.”
She placed her elbow on the table and locked her eyes on mine. It is rude to stare at your superiors, my sister’s warning whispered into my ear. I looked away, but the lady’s gaze beckoned me to meet her eyes again. As I did, the heat of my anxiety left me sweating.
“I wish to know if you informed your inspector about those books.”
Books, mere books. “I did not.”
She studied my face so intently, I almost wanted to see my reflection, to see whether my thoughts were somehow written upon my face. Finally, she bowed her head. “I believe you. And your name, what is it?”
“My name is Seol.”
“You have not asked me, Seol, why those books were hidden. Are you not curious?”
“I am, mistress.” I rubbed clammy palms against my skirt as I remained kneeling on the floor, my eyes fixed on her. “But it would be improper to ask, and so…”
“They are all copies of one book, a book that turns life’s bitter and unbearable taste of pain into sweet and delicious pleasure.”
She was speaking in riddles, though riddles I’d heard before from Maid Soyi. Perhaps this was why Catholic women educated their servants, so that they might read these illegal books on their own and understand.
“Pain into something sweet…,” I said. “How is it possible, mistress?”
She paused with consideration, then opened a drawer and pulled out a long, thin pipe made of precious silver. “Come closer. Help me light this.”
I shuffled forward, and with practiced movements, I accepted tobacco from her and added it into the tiny bowl, then used a tinderbox to light it.
“Have you ever believed in something before?”
“Yes, I have, mistress,” I said quietly.
“Such as what?”
“I believe … I believe my family is waiting for me.”
“Then have you ever had a conviction?” she asked, and when I paused, unable to differentiate the two words, she explained, “When we believe, we hold on to what we think is true. But when we have a conviction, that truth holds on to us.”
“Oh,” I whispered, still not understanding anything.
“I am convinced, Seol, that I am passionately loved by our Heavenly Father, and that my life is in his good hands. So though pain and sorrow press in around me, conviction holds on to me and strengthens me. It makes my yoke lighter to carry.”
Conviction. Whoever this Heavenly Father was, Lady Kang trusted in his character, enough that she’d let nothing in life shake that trust. I rubbed the spot over my vest where I’d hidden the norigae ornament, tying the tassel to the strap beneath the layers. I felt the same way about Inspector Han.
Perhaps it was the tobacco fragrance—woody warm, with earthy undertones—rising in white clouds that returned my focus to the task at hand and calmed my nerves enough for me to grasp onto a fistful of boldness. Or perhaps it was the memory of Inspector Han that coaxed the words from me.
“Mistress, would you permit me another question?”
She made a gesture. Do so.
“Begging your pardon, but did you hear of Lady O’s death?”
“I did.” Wisps of smoke curled from her lips. “I was not well acquainted with the lady, but I knew her to be a kind and virtuous woman who died from no sin of her own.”
I considered carefully, afraid I would offend her with my presumption. I forced myself to think of Inspector Han again, brave before the tiger. “There is a rumor that the victim had a lover.”
Lady Kang remained quiet. At length, she said, “It is as you say, a rumor.”