A musty damp smell seemed trapped by the tall colorful ceiling, and the walls painted with decorative patterns and peacock murals were faded and peeling. Dignitaries and ministers and their wives sat on floor cushions in order of rank around the perimeter. The emperor sat in a chair on a raised platform made of red lacquer and mother-of-pearl. He had changed his clothes to a Western-style military dress uniform studded with medals and festooned with gold braid, and as I neared I thought irreverently that he looked stiff and awkward sitting on a gold-leafed chair placed in the center of a cinnabar-colored riser. The chair didn’t belong on a platform designed to be directly sat on. To the right of the platform the empress also sat stiffly on a chair, and on the other side, the chamberlain sat on a floor mat at a table, announcing the name of each person as he or she stepped forward and bowed. Several officials clustered nearby, some with obvious roles, such as the secretariat who recorded every word the emperor uttered, and others, Japanese men—wearing white gloves and what I later learned were tuxedoes—who stood near the walls and behind the platform looking stern.
“Han Najin,” cried the chamberlain. I approached and carefully bowed. He announced I was the daughter of the calligrapher Han, the Gaeseong scholar and literati-artist from the Gwangmu reign. I dared to steal glances at the emperor’s face as I approached, and was reminded of what I had once overheard two ladies-in-waiting say, that his eyes were as empty as a broken pail. They didn’t look empty to me, but melancholy and simple, like Princess Deokhye’s, and with a sweetness that comes from such simplicity. He had the same pale soft cheeks as his half-sister. I found his presence neither commanding nor particularly regal except in posture and dress.
The empress said with just enough volume for me to discern it, “Your Imperial Highness knows the young lady’s father’s scrolls.”
What an honor that she would mention this! I stayed in position and kept my head bowed.
“We remember it. An excellent screen.” His high voice had richness to it, as if his words floated on a river of seed oil. “It was greatly favored and is now on display at Seokjo-jung.” This structure at Deoksu Palace was an enormous and hideous Greek revival that an Englishman had started to build. The Japanese had recently finished its construction and made it
into a public art museum. Years later I would remember this conversation with the emperor, when I learned that the best Korean art in that museum had been shipped to Tokyo, and could only conclude that my father’s screens were among that conscription.
I bowed again to the emperor’s recognition, although I wasn’t sure if my father would be pleased or find fault with public display of his work. A pause ensued. The emperor’s features were placid, and it seemed he might be waiting for me to speak. I sneaked a look at the empress, who nodded imperceptibly. “Thank you,” I said, using the elaborate idiom reserved exclusively for the emperor, “for Your Imperial Highness’s kindness to this person’s worthless family.”
“Ah, now we remember that our little sister favors your company. We are glad for your companionship to her.” He smiled beneath his mustache, and I was awed.
“Your Imperial Highness has blessed this person’s family with his generous kindness and affection. May the bounty of heaven on Chuseok bring good health, prosperity and long life to Your Highnesses.” I rose and retreated, bowing, trembling with excitement, and grateful that Imo had taught me so well.
AND SO NEARLY two years passed. I wrote home frequently and received as many letters from Mother, who reminded me always to be considerate of my aunt, respectful to the royalty, kind to the servants, and to read my Bible and study hard. As the seasons changed, she described which bushes had blossomed, when the maple tree turned red then brown, and how much snow filled the courtyards. She kept me updated on Dongsaeng’s progress with his tutor, and when Ilsun came of age and was required to attend public school, that Father had enrolled him in the missionaries’ lower school for boys. She mentioned how proud my father was of Dongsaeng’s calligraphy, and told me consistent good news about Father’s health. I didn’t expect that she would say more, but wondered how angry he was with me, and if he was still angry with her.
During my stay with Imo I saw the emperor more than a dozen times, on holy days and festivals, and he always remembered me and was consistently kind. Because of Imo’s companionship with the empress, I saw Empress Yun more often, and she was most attentive and affectionate. In
those years I finished upper school and helped Princess Deokhye with homework from her tutors, particularly the sciences that she found boring, but which fascinated me. Someone was always nearby, even when she slept, which made the hours we spent together, playing, studying or sewing, formal. Only rarely did we find a chance to speak intimately.
One such opportunity came late in April 1926 on a sultry afternoon. Princess Deokhye and her retinue, including Madame Bongnyeong, her mother, were going to the large pond in Biwon Garden to see the cherry blossoms. We had visited the garden weekly to enjoy the various stages of bloom, and the flowers were now in final decline, a stage considered by many to be the finest. Servants had gone ahead to prepare the south pavilion with mats, pillows and refreshments. Two Japanese guards accompanied us: one in front near the princess being carried piggyback by a maid, and the other trailing me at the rear. The princess wasn’t allowed to leave Sugang Hall without protection, and these two guards were often in our company. In a basket I carried bamboo propellers to toss and paper to make flowers. We all walked slowly in single file enjoying the petals, windblown like snowflakes and coating the path with pink. I smelled the cherry blossoms’ delicate perfume and idly twirled a propeller in my hand. A broken flagstone made me trip, my hands flailing. I caught my balance, but somehow the propeller flew from my fingers and hit the face of the guard behind me. “Ow!” He stopped and covered his right eye.
“I’m so sorry!” I said, alarmed that I’d struck a Japanese guard. He grimaced, and my manners automatically surfaced. “Sir, are you hurt?”
“It’s nothing.” He picked up the propeller and gave it to me, and I studied his face for damage. Tears streamed from his reddened eye. He smiled. “You’ve made me cry.”
“I’m sorry!” Startled, I turned back to the path. The ladies ahead were around a corner and out of sight. My glimpse of him registered a teasing, youthful smile and handsomely hollowed cheeks. I stopped to look at him again, to be sure I’d understood him correctly. Had it been a painful or furious grimace? His expressive eyebrows, one up and one down, clearly showed a mix of pain and joviality. “Don’t rub it! You’ll make it worse.” It must’ve been because he reminded me of Hansu that I spoke to him with such familiarity—and then gave him my handkerchief.
He blotted his eye, then stiffened, his hand midair, caught between
using my handkerchief again and returning it. “My apologies. I shouldn’t have used it.”
First teasing, then politeness! His tears continued and he winced rapidly, so I knew I’d scratched his eye. “No, it’s completely my fault. Please keep it.” A vision of Imo’s alarmed-and-dismayed expression at this enormously inappropriate exchange dropped like a curtain between us, and I turned and hurried up the path, certain he could see my neck aflame. When I reached the line, I heard the lady ahead talking to me midsentence about the loveliness of the garden, not knowing I had just reappeared. I clutched the guilty propeller, thinking only of the guard with the tearing eye—and with my good linen handkerchief—following behind. My head spun.
The princess sat beside a wide window in the pavilion cantilevered over the largest pond in the gardens. Newly flowered azaleas and green-budding trees colored the surrounding terraces. In the pavilion’s corners lay swept piles of fallen petals, which an occasional breeze fluffed, then let settle, as if they breathed their last of spring. The maids served water, southern strawberries and apricots, while Madame Bongnyeong read from a Japanese novel. I half listened to the story of love, fate and social pressure—a typical romance. The walled-in pond was brimful with flat and standing lily and lotus leaves. Dark pond water glistened artfully between the floating leaves, and dragonflies skimmed the surface with singing wings. We folded paper flowers that would decorate the towers of ceremonial food for the princess’s fourteenth birthday the following month, then most of the group walked farther around the pond and north beyond a gateway to the big pavilion that was once a library and classroom for princes. I breathed a bit easier seeing the red-eyed guard follow them.
We sent the propellers whirring out the window and into the pond until my basket was empty. A eunuch wielded a long-handled net to fish the bamboo toys out, amusing us by reaching far and pretending to almost fall in. Princess Deokhye fell silent, and I sat back to unravel the confusing incident with the guard.
“Are you not well, Your Highness? Is it the heat?” said Madame Bongnyeong.
“No, Madame, I’m fine. Is it too hot for you? Are you comfortable?”
Both the empress and Princess Deokhye were overly polite and solicitous to Madame Bongnyeong. Custom dictated that a wise woman would maintain harmony in the household by treating a lower concubine— typically a commoner who had once attracted the favors of the king— with respect, and to fully educate the woman’s offspring, even though the sons were barred from the civil service examinations and thus any future official rank. Daughters of concubines, therefore, fared better than sons, since being fully educated they could achieve higher status through marriage.
“No need to worry about me. I’ll manage.” Madame Bongnyeong’s responses typically called attention to herself in this way, an indication of her lack of refinement.
To distract the princess and to try to chase the sadness from her eyes, I invited her to lean out the side window with me to feel the sun on our cheeks and to let the petals fall on our hair. We watched the servant scooping propellers around the blossoms and sat companionably listening to his splashes and the buzzing insects. I murmured, “I have something to tell you later.” She would be amused by the propeller-and-guard story, and I could omit the handkerchief part.
She smiled and mouthed “wait,” then turned to Madame Bongnyeong. “Madame, I’d be delighted if you’d please read another chapter to us.”
She seemed happy to oblige. After a page, the princess gestured with mischievous eyes to turn toward the window, and she looked at me expectantly, our faces inches from each other.
With Madame Bongnyeong’s droning covering our whispers, I couldn’t help myself and told Princess Deokhye the whole scandalous story, which she loved. It helped me to see the incident for what it was—a little accident, meaningless—yet I couldn’t seem to erase the guard’s charming smile from behind my eyes.
Involved in the novel, Madame Bongnyeong turned another page. Princess Deokhye whispered, “You think he’s handsome!”
“No! I—”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve noticed him too, mostly because he’s young and not as stern as all the others. They only send us the educated boys. Of
course, I wasn’t ever going to say so. Can you imagine? So I’m happy you agree!”
“The princess is too kind—”
“Silly. You’re my friend.”
“This person is honored.”
She sighed and glanced at Madame Bongnyeong. “No, Hyung-nim, I’m grateful. I didn’t know how lonely I was until you came.”
Surprised and flattered that she used the intimate and respectful word for friend, I bowed my head. “Your Highness.”
Madame Bongnyeong finished the chapter and said, “Shall I continue?”
“Yes, if you’d be kind enough to indulge us. Your reading is very soothing.” The princess picked up a paper flower and gazed at the gardens. “Now I will tell you a secret.” I leaned closer and she smiled smugly. “Do you know the lord steward? He’s the tall one with glasses and the pointed nose. Skinny, like you. He has elegant manners, and maybe if he took off his glasses, he could be very handsome for an old man.”
“I’ve seen him from far away.” Knowing what she would soon reveal, I said, “He looks regal. I think he has strong features—quite good-looking and distinguished.”
She leaned closer. “I’m secretly engaged to his nephew.”
I acted appropriately surprised. “Since when? Have you ever met your betrothed?”
“Of course not. His family doesn’t even live in Seoul. Since I was seven and he was four.”
“So early!”
“Yes.” She unfolded and refolded the paper flower. “Do you know about my fourth brother, Prince Uimin?”
“The one who went to study at Tokyo University?”
She nodded. “Lady Yun told me that because he was the heir apparent, they made him go to school in Japan. When my family learned he had become engaged to a Japanese princess, they betrothed me right away. They wanted to be sure I’d marry someone appropriate.” By
appropriate
I knew she meant Korean.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I thought I understood her bouts of melancholy. For such a young and always-watched girl, her family’s complicated
circumstances undoubtedly made life hard to bear. In light of this and my foolish propeller story, I said, “I’m ashamed I told you about the guard.”
“No, don’t be. It’s partly why I’m telling you this. She was very nice— my brother’s wife, Princess Masako of Nashimoto—very good to me, kind and beautifully poised. We call her Princess Bangja.”
“When did you meet her?”
“A year after they married, they came home to visit.” Princess Deokhye tore a corner of the crimson paper flower and shredded it. A breeze floated the pieces until they landed on the lotus leaves. “Maybe they shouldn’t have come, because their son got sick and died here. Only nine months old—too sad!” She scattered the last tiny pieces on the pond, where they melted like drops of blood.
“How sad!” I echoed sympathetically.
“He would’ve been heir. I heard gossip from mean people that it was just as well—better than having a half-Japanese heir. But the emperor mourned as much as the parents.”
As it had been with Imo, I felt helpless and could think of nothing to say. I handed her another paper flower and leaned a little closer to her. We sat quietly, watching cherry blossom petals fluttering to the pond, and listened to Madame Bongnyeong’s steady reading. The other group climbed noisily down the path toward our pavilion. Princess Deokhye touched my hand and said, “Princess Bangja couldn’t have been more refined and affectionate to me, even in her grief. And some of the guards—like yours—”