Notes.
My inspiration for the couple you'll meet in this chapter comes from Game of Thrones's Brienne of Tarth (it is possible that I may have fallen in love with her really, really hard) and Tormund Giantsbane/The Hound and the Mountain/Ragnar Lodbrok (in Vikings).
CHAPTER XXXVII
" Listen to what I say
keep it in mind
dear son of mine
Remember when you wake
the advice I gave
I hope it keeps you safe
When I am not around "
(Low Roar, american-icelandic artist, "Not Around")
a. Das Unheimliche (strangely familiar)
They returned at nightfall to the House of the Lake, Woon and Mago respectively soaked from head to toe but on the verge of drying due to the benefits of the heat that persisted long after the sun had disappeared, and Yeong-Ja's legs having been modestly covered. They had walked down the beach on their way back, barefoot, the sand sticking to their pale and icy skins. There was hardly anyone left on the shore : the rare wanderers were gisaengs, who took advantage of a moment of peace to come and take a midnight bath, and men in military uniforms, who patrolled as usual along the waves, their fingers firmly wrapped around the handles of their swords.
In the absence of dead to be fished out of the sand, the latter allowed themselves to watch the courtesans with an appreciative eye as they continued laughing and splashing each other with sand and water. Yeong-Ja had swallowed some of it when a wave higher than the others had crashed against her thighs as she hurriedly pulled the silk up her skirt to avoid ruining it : the salt from the water had entered her mouth and nose and she could still taste it, acid, relentless, lingering on her tongue and palate. She wasn't hungry, but decided to drink some tea before leading her two congeners towards Goh Dae-Seong, in order to make the taste go away.
Mago seemed clearly invigorated by her swim, and she had reluctantly pulled herself out of the water when Yeong-Ja had called out to them and told them it was time to go. Even her companion (Yeo Woon) looked better, and that was an understatement about the gwishins who, whatever the conditions, were always abominably pale and sickly. In daylight, Yeong-Ja was almost sure that she could have seen some slight colors on their livid cheeks.
It wasn't always the case, and sometimes those shades looked more like an aberration than a miracle, but the young woman had learned to discern nuances in faces, as any courtesan who was ever taught to recognize worship and servitude in a man's expression and to know how to use it, and she had noticed in many of her peers that she had subjected to an immersion in the waters of the Sea of Japan a relatively recurrent phenomenon of reddening just below the eyes and on the most rounded part of the cheeks, as if, without any reason, the prolonged contact of water marvelously warmed by the sun's rays gave them back some life and heat. It wasn't systematic, and it had happened that the redness appeared and disappeared so quickly that Yeong-Ja then had the unpleasant impression of having dreamed, or of having drunk another mixture from the Herbalist, but she nevertheless stuck to the observations that had awakened in her, the following nights, such lively and unbridled questioning that she had been unable to concentrate on her exercises of consciousness.
She was therefore eager to show her two new congeners the power of the hot springs in the mountain heights. She watched them follow the usual steps, picking up their bags when they returned to the House of the Lake, and then fetching their horse, which by now seemed to have become quite friendly with the three little donkeys in the meadow, which the gisaengs sometimes used as mounts to cross the town or to accompany their customers along the undulating paths between the high, characteristic pines of Mount Seoraksan. Mago had told her that the animal belonged to her companion, but she was obviously happier than he was to have it around, although Yeong-Ja had spent enough time talking to Yeo Woon to suspect that he was at the less talkative and expressive end of the social continuum.
Alive, she remembered being generally uncomfortable with such closed and laconic personalities, but the exposure to a wide variety of gwishins in recent years, and by extension the end of her limited circle of relationships within an entertainment house, had helped to make her more adaptable and to better understand the reasons for introversion. She herself had been like this, to a certain extent, during the year after her resurrection, and remained so at times, whenever she started daydreaming about the past.
When she came out of her grave, she had been so lost and dazed by incomprehension that she felt completely unable to speak to anyone in a casual, mundane way. Some Gwishins managed to do so in a very short time, and she considered herself to be in a respectable average, but others, on the contrary, preferred to isolate themselves completely and to minimize their contacts with people, at the risk of collapsing under the monstrous weight of change and of the gap between their existence and the one which was taking place now, and into which they had been thrown without asking their opinion.
Of all the Gwishins who had stopped at Sochko since she had been there, many had been those who retained manners, expressions, but above all, knowledge that was excessively dated. The world is always changing too fast, for the living and the dead alike, and nothing ever lasts, old Jae-Ji had told her when they were both waiting in the cave for the anti-gwishin patrol to go away, Yeong-Ja curled up on herself, the darkness barely weakened by the glowing embers left over from a fire the shaman had built before the arrival of the gisaeng.
The Gwishins all came, without exception, from another time, from another moment, irremediably from before, and if those having at most ten years to catch up could still follow the events in a harmonious way, the dead for twenty, thirty, fifty or a hundred years were propelled into a society whose principles, organization and foundations they no longer understood. In her discussions with several of her peers, Yeong-Ja had quickly realized that, although they had been born, raised, dead and resurrected on the same territory, the Gwishins as a whole felt confronted with a tragically new and unknown world, in which their ways, which had always worked until then, no longer had any meaning. The profession of gisaengs was far from being the same in 1685 as in 1775, and the changes, whether it was a question of fashion, make-up, or art in general, that had accompanied the state of courtesan represented a considerable challenge for any gwishin who wished to resume her activities.
Yeong-Ja, on the other hand, had essentially been confronted with transformations in style of dress, but also in the arts, especially music, drawing and poetry. Different names were celebrated, methods had changed, and models were no longer the same. Moreover, the hanbok had undergone notable variations relating to the limit of interruption of the fabric of the jacket and starting of the fabric of the skirt. Yeong-Ja had discovered, not without a certain amusement, that her jaegori could now stop hardly below her chest, without it causing a scandal among her customers or her mistress.
Her sisters, on the contrary, regularly joked about the amount of skin made visible by these exhibition tricks and sometimes challenged each other senselessly, trying to find out which one would be the most provocative, and at the same time bringing joy to their clients who, in spite of decency, had nothing against the possibility of being able to admire a little more of what they could never see elsewhere. On the other hand, although her skills in gayageum and composition remained unchanged, they were nevertheless rooted in a tradition of construction and elaboration that was still too old and had required rapid and conscientious updating. Yeong-Ja had therefore studied new developments in painting, music and poetry for a long time, in order to narrow the gap in her knowledge between the time of her death and her rebirth.
All dead gisaengs, if they wished to be hired, had to do the same, to avoid being labeled "old-fashioned" or "archaic". With a little less than a century late, Yeong-Ja still considered herself lucky, and still worried about her much older Gwishin sisters, whose calls in the collective consciousness and requests for information she regularly received. The spiritual network shared by the Gwishins had made it much easier for them to integrate as the waves of resurrections passed, and Yeong-Ja was willing to bet that at least one dead courtesan now resided in every entertainment house in the country.
On the way to the house of Goh Dae-Seong and Ran Gyeong-Ja, after they had long since passed the lake, and Mago and her companion had put on dry clothes, tied their wet hair, and were being led, holding the horse's bridle, by Yeong-Ja between the streets of Sochko to the wealthy neighborhood, Yeo Woon asked her if there was a post office nearby.
- Do you want to send a message to a gwishin ? Yeong-Ja first thought. If that's the case, I could do it for you, or Dae-Seong or her friend will surely be happy to do it, you know. Letters are always risky in our situation.
Nevertheless, he shook his head, and on his face appeared a more opaque, bittersweet expression.
- I would like to contact a living, he finally confessed.
Mago looked surprised, but she didn't say anything, and Yeong-Ja, while adopting a cautious attitude, thought that the girl would probably want to talk about it later with her companion.
- Is it someone you trust ? she asked. Forgive my question, but we are particularly attentive to exchanges with the living, for reasons you know.
- I know. He is someone I trust, an old friend who is aware of my condition and who has always helped me. He's in Hanyang.
- All the more risky, Yeong-Ja observed patiently.
- I promised to write to him, Yeo Woon then objected in a tone that was strangely more urgent. I just want to tell him that I've left Sochko, and that I'm not alone, and that we're thinking of heading northeast. I would remain very vague. I just want to reassure him.
Yeong-Ja assured him that she understood his position and his desire to maintain contact with a supportive companion. In truth, he wasn't the first to ask her the question and he would surely be far from being the last, for the Gwishins weren't necessarily enemies for the whole population of the living, and some, according to the testimonies of the dead that Yeong-Ja had met both in Sochko and during her own travels through the territory, in search of an available place in a house of entertainment and informations, had chosen to accept the return of their loved ones, despite the fear and the risks they could face if the gwishins were unable to feed themselves regularly on meat.
Helped, protected and nourished, the Gwishin were subjects of Joseon like any other, and it was above all the hatred and terror of the living that, by pushing them to hide in the forests to survive, thus reducing their chances of access to regular food, was the cause of the multiplication of attacks and the increased dangerousness of the dead. They have created their own adversaries, as always, Jae-Ji had noted with a disdainful, hoarse and deep giggle, a giggle that carried all the qualities of a tomb. In fact, she had rarely refused to give the post office address to Gwishins wishing to contact relatives, but the conditions were such that she always took the time to check beforehand who the messages were intended for and what they would contain. Betrayals were never excluded, and neither love nor affection had ever really prevented them from being perpetrated.
- Write your letter, she told Yeo Woon, and when you leave, I will give you the address of the post office.
- Why not now ?
- Because you are still in Sochko, she said firmly. And you never know whether the mail is going to be opened or not. In any case, it's better for you to be far away when this letter will be sent.
She saw his black eyes reflect the same understanding as those of all the other Gwishins to whom she had said these words before him. They had travelled a little less than a mile since they had left the House of the Lake, and if the latter had disappeared behind them, swallowed up by the trees and hanoks of the town, the path which now opened in front of them was illuminated by torches, which had been set up regularly along the way, and, for some houses, by candlelight, which had been placed at the entrance of the porches.
Having grown up in the cities, Yeong-Ja knew that street lighting and its level of sophistication was always correlated with the wealth of the inhabitants, and it went without saying that Sochko's great fortunes had largely been able to use their gains in order to arrange a comfortable and secure environment to live in, as they encountered several soldiers, either alone or in pairs, who nodded their heads to them without interrogating them, Yeong-Ja being their main protection against any attempt to arrest them.
They almost reached the end of the path, which then continued to the countryside and the mountains. Here houses became rarer, but they were also larger, and Yeong-Ja made them stop in front of a remarkably well-built residence with a large, elegantly walled courtyard with a gracefully sloping tile-roofed arch and two long hanoks. There was light inside the building on the left, indicating the presence of its inhabitants. You will get along wonderfully with each other, Yeong-Ja claimed with a knowing smile. In the collective consciousness, they are known as the Shield and the Sword. She entered the small hollowed-out alleyway, the two Gwishins on her heels.
b. The Shield and the Sword
The wealth of the owners of the house was evident as soon as they entered the courtyard, which had been tastefully arranged, ordered and conceived more like an ornamental garden than a simple passage. In the center, a small wooden pavilion with a lovely tea table and cushions seemed to be the perfect place for outdoor dining, and broke with the traditional habit of leaving the courtyards completely empty, while bushes and shrubs had been planted all around the buildings, separated by bouquets of blossoming flowers, from which a melancholy and exhilarating scent emanated.
A few large trees provided shade and privacy at the corners of the property, and a small pond had even been installed, embellished with lush vegetation and a collection of clay pots that probably contained herbs or were used to store kimchi. Beyond the walls of the courtyard, Mago suspected it was possible to see the southern part of the city of Sochko, and thus its port and the white peaks of the Seoraksan.
She obediently followed Yeong-Ja and Yeo Woon toward the left wing of the house. The building was long and wide enough to contain at least three main rooms, including the man's room, the woman's chamber, and a living room separating the two. The arrangement of rooms would likely have been the same for the second hanok. The physiognomy itself rarely changed from one house to another, for at least the functions of the rooms were always relatively the same.
Yeong-Ja interrupted her walk just in front of the sliding doors of the building on the left and knocked delicately, as if she feared that her small fist would go through the facade if she put too much force into her solicitations. Mago exchanged a brief glance with Yeo Woon : she was never particularly agitated at the prospect of meeting new gwishins, but she nevertheless couldn't help feeling a kind of almost feverish eagerness.
She blamed it on her impatience to find herself hiding within friendly walls : she had seen too many soldiers in the area to feel truly at ease, and as she watched her, she realized that Yeong-Ja was also glimpsing back towards the entrance porch of the residence, as if to check that no one was following them. No footsteps could be heard on the gravel on the path that had led them to the house, but Mago still listened carefully until the door in front of them slid open and revealed a first figure, which immediately smiled at them when they realized that Yeong-Ja was there.
- Come in, come in ! A man's voice said, and they almost rushed into the house, leaving Danggeum outside, without her seeming to have the slightest problem with it.
Mago, stepping back a little to discover her hosts, found herself face to face with a giant. She had already seen men and women of exceptional physical dimensions, sometimes larger than average, during her travels across the kingdom, but this one was without a doubt the most gigantic individual she had ever seen in her living days, and in her death at the same time. The top of his head almost reached the ceiling, and he only had to tiptoe to touch it. His legs were interminable, and Mago barely reached halfway up his thighs, which she felt immense frustration about, because it was already difficult to be smaller than the vast majority of her peers, and she was getting tired of always having to raise her head to address someone.
The man's body was of vigorous stature, with visibly protruding muscles under his tunic, infinitely broad shoulders, thick arms, enormous hands. Despite his almost bestial appearance, Mago was pleasantly surprised to notice that he had a face with prodigiously soft features, bright and engaging eyes, a square jaw but a well defined and naturally smiling mouth, and ears that were a bit prominent from his protocol bun. I'm Goh Dae-Seong, he taught them with a humble and surprisingly graceful reverence, despite his somewhat rough frame, as if he had been carved out of a rock in a very rustic way, without the slightest care to give him any delicacy. And yet, the moment she saw him bow before them, Mago was convinced that he was one of the gentlest men in the world, incapable of harming anyone, despite having hands large enough to effortlessly crush the bones of his opponents.
A woman joined them, leaving her quarters in the room on the left, and Mago almost collapsed and laughed out loud, for she hadn't expected such a vision. The man was certainly very tall, but his companion, when she approached them in turn, revealed an equivalent figure, barely thinner, who seemed more used to fighting than to taking over household chores.
She was in fact as tall as Goh Dae-Seong, just as muscular, and her rounder face, whose eyes were spectacularly beautiful and well defined, was just as mobile and warm. When she smiled at them and bowed to them under the name of Ran Gyeong-Ja, Mago noticed the similarities between her attitude and her companion's, and wondered if Yeo Woon perceived them too, as they became immediately visible when you had the two in front of you. Her dead counterpart himself seemed somewhat bewildered by the impressive height of the woman, and Mago enjoyed it shamelessly.
- We are accustomed to receive Gwishins in our house, the woman told them in a firm and determined voice, to whom one should rarely refuse anything, after Yeong-Ja gave them more detailed explanations. We are delighted to welcome you for as long as you need.
Needless to say, the expression wasn't to be taken literally, but Mago appreciated the finesse and diplomacy, always welcome in a context where dead visitors were most often unwelcome or invited to leave as soon as possible, in order to limit the risks for both them and their hosts.
- You will feel at home here, the man added, with a welcoming expression written on his combatant features. We have everything you need, several hiding places, food, and the road you saw when you arrived allows easy access to the mountain trails in case you have to lose the soldiers.
Starting with a brief but effective tour of the property, they first showed them several deep holes dug in the ground, some of which were located under wooden traps hidden by vegetation, or even more skillfully under the floor of the two houses. The couple, who had been living there for less than three years, had decided to build them immediately after receiving their first Gwishin guest for a few days, in anticipation of possible controls by patrols.
They weren't officially married, their union having been celebrated with other Gwishins during the trip that had brought them to Sochko, among the coniferous trees of a mountain forest, in the middle of the night, by a former Buddhist monk who had been somewhat moved by the possibility of presiding over the event after having been scorned during his living existence in favor of Confucianism. There had been no structured ceremony or strictly established wedding rites. According to the law, there was nothing valid about their union, yet they liked to present themselves as husband and wife, and everyone accepted them that way, seeing it as a more satisfactory explanation for their closeness than another potentially more degrading situation according to societal norms.
- Yeong-Ja told us that you were serving in the military, Yeo Woon remarked to Goh Dae-Seong, in a polite and strictly observant tone, as the man opened the doors of the second hanok to introduce them to their future residence.
He replied enthusiastically, under Mago's watchful eye.
- It's true. There was a position as chief of an anti-Gwishin brigade that had freed itself after the death of its former holder. I wasn't sure, my plan was rather to integrate as an ordinary soldier and return to a more discreet service, but Gyeong-Ja convinced me that it would be the best thing to do for our people, and she was right.
- You save Gwishins ? Mago then intervened, interested.
- I try as much as I can. It's not always easy, he admitted with regret in his voice. At times, I'm afraid of being seen as a traitor by my own kind. I always have to keep a balance between my living situation and my status as a Gwishin. Gyeong-Ja too, for that matter.
While admiring the comfortable and sophisticated looking furniture inside the second building, which also included two bedrooms separated by a large living room with parquet flooring overlooking the courtyard, Mago allowed herself to question the woman about her activities. She then revealed that she was in charge of training future soldiers in the region, in the barracks, a status she had earned by proving her mastery of the martial arts, her composure and her strength. She had, according to her own words, always preferred the handling of weapons to that of cloths and embroidery needle, and only felt truly comfortable in the military sphere, of which she easily understood the uses, rules and conditions.
When she went to the barracks to apply for the position, even though she had received confirmation from Dae-Seong that the men were short of instructors, she was laughed at, people not realizing that she had witnessed countless similar scenes before, during her entire living existence, and that it would take much more to stop her. She had gone for it, practicing with her husband right outside the doors of the building and arranging to be seen by all. Gradually, as her talent was beginning to be questioned, pretentious young soldiers had come to oppose for her, as a joke. They had all ended up on the ground, stripped of their swords and egos, in less than five minutes. Then came the brigade commanders, who had suffered the same disillusionment, and finally, after nearly seven months, they had agreed, albeit mostly grumbling, to give her a job in the military hierarchy, entrusting her with the teaching of the troops.
- Gyeong-Ja uses a sword like nobody else, her husband told them proudly. And she still beats everyone. If she doesn't win the first time, she learns and wins in the second round.
- I'd rather be on the field, she objected nonetheless. I would feel more useful. I feel like I've been given this position simply because I'm a woman, as if my only function was to raise children.
- I'm sure they'll offer you something very soon, Yeong-Ja assured her while pressing her friend's arm, seeming to take great satisfaction from the presence of a woman, Gwishin on top of that, in Joseon's army. Be patient.
The courtesan agreed to stay with them for a while and have a cup of fresh tea while Mago and Yeo Woon unpacked their luggage in the left room of the hanok, which overlooked the town of Sochko. They then accompanied Gyeong-Ja to settle Danggeum with the couple's two horses in the meadow they shared with other owners, which included a small, well-stocked stable. There were about ten horses there, and Danggeum, with its coat color without any particular shine, was almost unnoticed among them.
That's good, Gyeong-Ja told them with a confident smile, because this way no one will notice that we have visitors. The mare rushed towards her congeners as if she had always known them. Mago would have liked to keep her close, and hoped, like a child, that the other horses would be kind to the newcomer. I'm thinking that for us, she realized afterwards when they came back to the house. Yeong-Ja returned to the House of the Lake after a long discussion with the couple about the latest Gwishin executions and the echoes collected in the collective consciousness, during which she siped her tea with a worried look on her face. She promised to visit them again the next evening, to take them with her to the hot springs after dinner, as it was the custom of the city.
They wished each other a good night at the end of Jasi. Goh Dae-Seong and Ran Gyeong-Ja retired to their apartments, but made sure to be available if their guests needed and Mago did the same, unfolding their yo's on the wonderfully smooth floor, and after a short deliberation decided to open the sliding window wide to contemplate the landscape. Below, the incandescent lights of Sochko gave the impression that the city was on fire. Mago, lying down, watched them for a long time, thinking of her grandmother, the lake, the sea, and the boats she saw sailing across the water like ghosts, moving forward in a deep leaden silence, beyond the limits of Joseon.
