The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [57]
Despite her strictness, Imo treated me more like a little sister than a student, and we laughed often, demurely of course. Her humor and attention helped alleviate my homesickness. She switched from being playful and finding enjoyment in all that we did to being frustrated and blunt when poise and precision leaked from my body and brain. I stabbed at a morsel of fish with my chopsticks, and she cried, “Rude! Rude!” She glimpsed a tiny part of my tongue when I put rice between my lips. “Disgusting! Dishonorable! Bow your head, you must bend to it!” My foot wasn’t in the proper angle in the second stage of sitting down. “Decorum! Decorum!” My artificial smile was too artificial …
Copying her mannered style, and with her reprimands and reminders, I eventually achieved enough inner silence to present a correct face and posture, and I grew comfortable with the distinct inflection of court language. At home I had read the vernacular translations of the Four Books for Women, but Imo required me to read the original Chinese texts. I also slogged through Instructions for the Inner Quarters, Notable Women, Concise Accounts of Basic Regulations for Women and Mirror of Sagacity, among others. Reading these archaic roots of a thousand rituals was slow, but I persisted, for this study in itself helped prove my virtue, dutifulness and grace, and thus my filial obedience to my family, my father and hence to the emperor. While none of this was entirely new to me, the training was vigorous with seemingly more at stake. I often thought about my father’s devotion to tradition. Certain that my leaving home had enraged him, I hoped this training would one day help to prove my own devotion.
On sunny days we went sightseeing, walking long distances to see ancient Buddhist holy sites and parks, or what remained of the four other palaces in Seoul. Sometimes the crowds were so thick that strangers— both nationals and Japanese—jostled against us, and I clung to Imo like a little girl. Downtown, we walked in the angular shadows of new government buildings and scaffolded steel skeletons. The broad paved boulevards and our occasional rides on the tram recalled my neighbor Hansu’s boyish exclamations about the wonders of the city, but its telephone poles and ugly wires caging the streets, malodorous alleys, clumsy rigid buildings and unceasing noise made me yearn for mountain paths and unfettered skies. In Gaeseong, the Korean language was most often heard on the streets. Here, there were equal numbers of people speaking Japanese and Korean.
On a cloudy day in early June, we went to the north market, an entertainment activity for Imo who always wanted to buy me things, which made me uncomfortable and shy. On the way home we passed Gyeongbuk-gung, the former main palace, whose grounds were now dominated by a large white building with columns, the Japanese government seat. I sensed Imo’s mood growing pensive. The gray day darkened and it began to drizzle. Saving my questions for later, I held on to Imo beneath her umbrella and we trudged home, stepping over streaming muddy gutters and past the concrete facades stained with rain.
It rained steadily into the evening, splashing loudly on the porches. In Imo’s sitting room, Kyungmee served sweet rice tea, sliced pears and the fancy miniature rice cakes that Imo had bought at the market. She seemed subdued still, like an unfluffed cushion, and corrected me perfunctorily, “Two hands, that’s right. Fingers closed when you hold your cup.”
I asked to speak and she nodded. “Imo-nim, if I may ask, is Gyeongbuk Palace where Queen Min died?”
“You mean Her Imperial Majesty Empress Myeongsong. Yes.”
This was the posthumous name and title of the former queen, the second consort of King Gojong