The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [155]
Mother helped peel my clothes off in our rooms while Cook, Kira and Unsook stoked both stoves to boil vats of water for an immersion bath and to make a medicinal soup: dried antler to strengthen the blood, simmered with ginseng to restore strength. Once again I became her child as Mother helped me bathe, spent hours on my hair and scalp, dressed me, urged me to eat and coddled me in blankets until, at last, I felt warm. Along with warmth came the weight of an exhaustion I hadn’t known I had, and I slept.
Evening approached, bleak and still. Mother lit a lamp, stoked the brazier and prayed quietly, steadily. Her voice rose and fell in and out of my consciousness. I heard fragments of modulating scripture and prayer, but my mother’s breaths between verses and her passionate tone restored me far more than if I’d been fully awake and able to comprehend the words.
Unsook brought steaming bowls, but I couldn’t eat and returned to the silent womb of dreamless sleep. When I next awoke, Mother still sat nearby, her table spread for letter writing, her tranquil profile outlined in lamplight. “You’re awake,” she said. “It’s evening. You should sleep until morning.”
I sat up and rubbed my head, appreciating her earlier thorough combing that had at last rid my scalp of nits. “I’m rested, Umma-nim. I’m grateful—” My voice broke and I wept while Mother held my hand and murmured, “Praise God, praise God.”
When my tears were finished I sat silently for some time staring at the coals in the brazier, feeling its heat on my face. I folded the bedding and said, “I’ll go and see Father.”
“Daughter, you should know— Najin-ah, there is bad news.”
I saw my father being struck by the rifle and waited to hear more. I remembered on nights of torture the visions I’d had of my father being hung by his thumbs, his lax body bloodied and broken, and when he finally came home, his deadened eyes. A cold gust rattled the windows. I shivered.
“We will move to Seoul in twenty days.”
I didn’t understand and looked at her.
“They came last night, waved papers at Dongsaeng. The government is taking this land, this house for officers’ quarters—Major Yoshida and his cadre.”
I saw the pain in my mother’s eyes and slowly understood that all I’d known of my childhood, my family’s entire world, was obliterated with this news. “Umma-nim,” I gasped.
“Yes, it’s true.” She spoke with a firmness I’d never heard before. “Father went to see Watanabe-san. He asked him how this could happen, after years of generous and regular gratuities. That man said he never claimed influence with the Japanese military. They give us twenty days to vacate. Father has yet to finalize his decision, but it’s likely that we’ll go to Seoul to live with Imo. Dongsaeng suggested trying to locate Father’s brother in Manchuria, but your father, rightly so I believe, refuses to leave the country. Besides, there isn’t enough time to learn where he might be, or even if he is alive. There is war now. We must trust God.”
I was overcome with the news, and through my exhaustion felt a hard kernel of unbearable remorse beginning to form.
“There is much to do. Your father is beginning to fall ill from the upset. We have to sell what we can and let the servants go.” My mother stopped to let me grasp this. “Your father is growing ill,” she repeated.
I looked blindly at the fire. “It’s my fault.”