The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [19]
“When you’re asleep.”
“Oh.” A surging inquisitiveness, which I often felt at school, made me both circumspect and eager. What did she do in those hours that burned her oil lamp dry? What else didn’t I know about the world of my mother? I knew I’d get in trouble, but out it came like water from a broken gourd. “Where does Abbuh-nim go at night?”
“It’s not for you to question your elders!”
Questions burst through the limp walls of my propriety. “Why is everyone whispering so much? Why do we need so many flags? I hear him go out, but where?”
“Hush! Even the stones in the road can hear you. A child of mine would never talk back to her mother!”
I poked at my flag through frustrated tears. In the long quiet that followed, I managed to placate the spirits of curiosity by concentrating on evenly spaced, barely visible stitches.
Mother said, “Here’s another one. You’re working quickly.” Our eyes met briefly, mine grateful and apologetic, hers forgiving and kind. “He goes to church at night.”
A dozen more questions struggled to break through the newly installed guard at my voicebox, and one slipped through. “Is the minister a patriot-friend?”
Mother abruptly shouted for Kira, then louder for Joong, and I jumped. When no one answered, she gestured me closer. Lifting her sewing close to her face, like a cowl, she spoke very softly. “If I explain, perhaps you’ll understand the danger and respect it properly. You’re smart enough, and your curiosity and recklessness could jeopardize us all. I tell you this because I have faith you’ll understand how everyone’s safety depends on your ability to keep it secret.”
Relieved I wouldn’t be punished and subdued by her solemnity, I faced her directly and sat tall. “Thank you, Umma-nim.”
“Did they tell you at school about His Imperial Majesty Gojong Gwangmuje?”
I rarely heard my mother use high court language, and it took a moment to understand whom she meant. Then I nodded, for Teacher Yee had told us last week that Emperor Gojong had died in the middle of January. Dethroned and prohibited from returning to the main palace, he still commanded respect because, though he ultimately failed, at least he had tried to fight Japan’s political assault, and his consort, the beautiful and outspoken Queen Min, had been murdered long ago. After her murder, he and his ministers had changed his status from king to emperor in a futile attempt to match the level of his sovereignty with that of Japan, but they lost the kingdom anyway. Japanese officials had entered the palace with troops, and Emperor Gojong was forced to abdicate to his second son, Sunjong, the only surviving offspring of the martyred queen. From the blackboard, I’d copied the new word abdicate, along with others Teacher Yee explained but didn’t write on the board: sovereignty, protectorate, coerce, annexation, propaganda. Teacher Yee said that the Japanese had responded to public pressure by designating March 4 as the national day of mourning for Emperor Gojong.
Then she told us the noble and thrilling story she’d heard: that the emperor had committed suicide to protest the forced marriage of his son to Japanese royalty, Princess Masako of Nashimoto, which was Japan’s way of saying we were the same country, the same peoples, when obviously it was their attempt to dilute the sovereignty—that new word—of the Korean royal line. Much later, I heard the other more plausible story of Emperor Gojong’s death. Japan wanted him to sign a document asserting his satisfaction with Japan’s union with Korea, which Japanese envoys would present at the Paris Peace Conference. But Emperor Gojong decided to send his own secret emissary to Paris to protest Japan’s annexation, and when the emissary was discovered and killed, the emperor was also killed. Even if I had known this, for a young girl with a colorful imagination, Teacher Yee’s story of honorable, romantic sacrifice was far more captivating.
To keep this dramatic story swirling in my head and not out of my mouth, I tucked a hem edge with a needle, pressed it tightly between