Notes.
No notes.
CHAPTER XLVI
"Nobody sees me, now I'm a one man show
I'll do this on my own
We knew it all then now this is all I know
Guess I'm heading home now"
(Alan Walker feat Ruben, english-norwegian artist, "Heading Home")
a. Axiology
Baek Yun-Seo returned from lunch with her former gisaengs comrades at the Spring House shortly before the end of sinsi, and she found her fourteen-year-old son immersed in the reading of an illustrated book whose sumptuous colors were visible from the doorway where she leaned over to announce her homecoming. The book was a gift from Dong Soo for the boy's twelfth birthday, and the kid would dive back into it with a touching regularity, as if he had wanted to memorize its contents and drawings. The boards, Dong Soo had told her, had been painted by Kim Hong Do, who was also the author of wonderful prints of a careful realism and precision for which he had been complimented many times by practically all the yangban families living in the capital, including the Baek.
They had purchased two paintings from him, the first depicting two tigers circling around each other in a forest with trees undulating gracefully as if driven by a light, gentle wind, and the second a scene of everyday life in a courtesan's house, which had brought a nostalgic smile to Yun Seo's lips and now hung on her bedroom wall, while the tigers proudly lurked in her husband's room. She sometimes saw him, in the morning or evening, when he was preparing to leave for the barracks or palace, or when he took off his uniform and left the door of his room open, admiring the canvas with a strange, sustained attention, the exact nature of which she still hesitated about and struggled to understand.
The book consisted in a series of fantastic, marvelous and for some violent tales, without being crude, which depicted the adventures of princes, kings, men of nothing, overcoming physical and moral trials that seemed insurmountable in the eyes of the children to whom these stories were told, but who submitted to them of their own free will for the love of a princess or, more generally, a fair maiden.
Yun-Seo had leafed through the book when Dong Soo had brought it back to offer it to Yoo-Jin, and had enjoyed discovering the interventions of witches with dark and esoteric powers, sometimes celestial creatures, who guided the protagonist towards the safest paths, sometimes evil ones, whose intentions were to lose the hero in a maze of confusion and fear.
The entire bestiary had been drawn by Kim Hong Do, with terrible, airy brushstrokes that captured the predatory eyes, elongated canines and opulent furs with the same accuracy as his scenes of popular life. Only one copy of the book had been produced in the whole country. When they had received the painter for dinner shortly after Yoo-Jin's twelfth birthday, he had revealed to Yun-Seo that he had worked on the volume at Dong Soo's request.
- Your husband, he had stated, had compiled the fables in the book himself. All I had to do was draw.
She had gladly believed him. Dong Soo had looked away while the painter was praising him, and focused his attention on Yoo-Jin, who was reading quietly in a corner of the room, without the slightest concern for the adults around him and the subject of their conversation. At times, Yun-Seo had to remember he wasn't her husband's biological son, and if she had been indifferent to this fact a few years earlier, she regretted it more and more intensely, because Dong Soo, despite the flaws that made him a man like any other, no less bad and no better, was a deeply loving and caring adoptive father, unlike Yoo Jin's progenitor from whom she hadn't heard any news or inquiries about his son.
Most of the time, the gift ideas for Yoo-Jin came from him, and Yun-Seo found that he sometimes spoiled the child a little too much, without complaining about it completely since Yoo-Jin's temper grew by showing a practical restraint and moderation that reassured his mother about the risks of seeing Dong Soo's presents turn him into a demanding and conceited boy.
In addition, she sometimes thought that her husband would bring back his presents with no other desire than to be more loved and accepted from a child who wasn't his own. He wants to fit in, she sometimes said to herself with a wave of tenderness for the man she had married, he just wants to find his place between the two of us, that's all.
She also considered the possibility that Dong Soo might have wished to compensate for his alcoholism and repeated absences from home due to his work with excessive gifts, thus covering up his feelings of guilt and shame with unexpected and charming objects. During their exile in the country, when her husband had lost the favor of the king, he had always more or less managed to find entertaining and pleasant things to bring back to Yoo-Jin.
One day when the three of them had gone to the market in the nearest town to sell some of their crops and milk from their cows, the child had stopped in front of a group of sheep whose unsheared wool coats were calling on passers-by to stick their fingers into the prodigious softness of their filaments. Yun-Seo had noted the way Dong Soo had observed the boy's contemplation, and the hand he had plunged into the wool with a blissful smile.
Two days later, her husband returned, accompanied by a couple of woolly, fluffy sheeps, towards which Yoo-Jin had joyfully rushed.
- But we didn't need them, Yun-Seo had remarked once the sheeps had been settled in the meadow that their herd of cows already occupied.
She remembered laughing as she watched them, bleating at each other, jumping and frolicking in the lush green grass of the meadow, while Yoo-Jin had brought two friends he had made in the village to show them their new acquisition. She had seen them, clinging to the fence that bounded the meadow, passionately discussing a topic she hadn't heard about, but suspected to have been the strength of the sheep in battle, as her son's two friends in the country had been very keen on martial arts, and had managed to arouse Yoo-Jin's interest in the subject.
- I know, her husband had replied, looking satisfied, less doughy than when they lived in the capital. It's just that Yoo-Jin seemed to like them, and I thought it might please him.
He blames himself, Yun-Seo had realized with compassion, with sincere sadness for this imperfect and lovely husband all at once, for this friend who was worth ten lovers. She had squeezed his hand, smiled at him with both playfulness and mischief.
- Well, we'll have wool, she had announced. It will be perfect for winter. And who knows, maybe one day we'll see a little lamb being born ?
They had seen it born, less than eight months later. Yoo-Jin regularly depicted it in his drawings, and he was the one who had baptized it, coming out of his mother's womb, all bloody and fragile, just like Yun-seo's son had been before it.
They had left Inje province a long time ago now, and life in Hanyang had resumed in a more frenetic way than before, when her husband was still just an instructor and had not yet received the distinction of deputy governor or the command of a repression brigade. He was no longer bringing in sheeps, and the lamb had disappeared, sold to another owner in the area, but he kept coming back, sometimes with his hands full of a new gift.
Before he actually took up the position of governor whose services were primarily directed to the Royal Investigation Bureau, which dated from August 1777, when he had announced to Yun-Seo that he would do his utmost to rectify his conduct and provide them with a more decent living environment than that in which they had been living until then, their income had not been sufficient to allow him to ruin himself in luxury purchases for Yoo-Jin, but since he had become truly active in his new position and had additionally required integration into an anti-Gwishin patrol, at any rank, bringing him back the monarch's esteem and trust, they were now earning enough money to have been able to change their old home to a more spacious and lavish one, and to enable him to spend more freely on gifts for Yoo-Jin.
He would also sometimes come home with flowers, candy, or beautiful fabrics that he thought Yun-Seo would like for her clothes. When she kissed him on the cheek to thank him, he would smile, but she found that his smile tended to take a different shape lately, a more twisted and icy appearance, and she was worried about it.
He walked through the door of the house in the early evening, the peacock feather of his military hat folding in half as he entered the central room. They had tripled their living space from their small country hanok, and now had separate quarters for men and women, like all the other wealthy yangbans in the country, whose residences were infinitely more sumptuous and spacious than their own. Yoo-Jin also had his own room, which he had filled with drawings and books.
They had an inner courtyard, a small low wall surrounding the house, a fully equipped kitchen with the latest modern amenities, a main room so large that Yun-Seo felt from time to time that her voice echoed against the walls, a bathroom that she had fallen madly in love with when she had first seen it, and in which she regularly locked herself in for long hot baths. All in all, their lifestyle had improved remarkably since their exile, and they had regained a luxury that had been lost years earlier along with the esteem of the Crown Prince for Dong Soo. Dong Soo had consulted Yun-Seo on all decisions regarding the house move, and continued to seek her advice about his new job. They had searched the house together, made a series of visits, and sometimes brought Yoo-Jin whose advice they took into account.
It was Yun-Seo who had found their current home, which was somewhat isolated in the western district of Hanyang, where most of the nobles and wealthy classes lived. They were no farther from the royal palace than their former home was, and were located in a well-attended and discreet street in the capital, where everyone respected each other's lawns and greeted each other politely without exchanging furious gossip with neighbors a few minutes later, as it was often the case in places where the upper social classes of the population met. Here, they were left superbly alone.
Her husband had to leave after a quick dinner for a night patrol. While his position as governor seemed to suit and satisfy him, Yun-Seo was much more uncertain about his role as brigade captain. He had made the request to the king, who had enthusiastically agreed to it, delighted to have an ally in his fight against the Gwishins who had faithfully protected him during his youth, but the young woman had initially found it difficult to understand his decision, mainly because of (Yeo Woon).
It was once he had explained his reasons to her, sitting with her at the living room table over a cup of tea, that she was able to appreciate the subtle political management of his career that she had not previously expected from her husband, whose upbringing had been more focused on combat and martial obedience. When he had confided in her, almost shyly, openly desiring her approval, she had seen without artifice what few people had noticed in him, or which they greatly underestimated. I'm doing this for him, he had said, because I haven't found any other way at the moment.
For the past four years, he had been moving in the shadows, disguised, indecipherable, with a skill Yun-Seo was proud of and which she sometimes guided, when he came to her for advice on a particular issue. She loved politics, and had never hidden her engagements, although the last few years had forced her to be more moderate in the expression of her thoughts. He drank much less, and while he was still chasing the dragon, his attitude had become respectable and composed enough so that he no longer attracted the wrath of his men or other -Seo's only regret was that her husband, in his recent social and political ascension, seemed to be becoming more distant and cold, and she sometimes missed the vulnerable drunkard.
The cook had prepared the meals and laid them on the table. Yun-Seo had finished eating before her husband's return, so she served him tea and discussed with him about the course of his day, particularly the torture sessions he had to attend periodically because of his responsibilities, which left him bitter, pessimistic and gloomy, in a more extreme and dangerous way than when he was only an instructor and was constantly getting drunk.
When he came back like this, Yun-Seo wanted nothing more than to share his worries and torments with him, and therefore encouraged him to talk to her without any embarrassment, without fear of shocking her. He usually left more soothed, and often kissed her on the cheek to express his gratitude. That evening, while eating promptly, without seeming to take the slightest pleasure in it, he asked his wife the question, as he did every other night.
- Did Iseul come ?
His voice always shook a little when he made his request. They had set up the system three years before, and since then, every day, Dong Soo asked the question when he came home, with an impatient, feverish nervousness, the one of a very young boy. Yun-Seo shook her head with contrition.
- No, husband, she informed him. I'm sorry.
The answer had been the same for three years. She felt bad for him, as she always did. Dong Soo nodded his head briefly, then turned his attention back to his rice, without adding a word. She knew what he was thinking. About whom. There was a letter in her husband's drawers, received in the summer of 1777, which he regularly reread, like Yoo Jin his collection of stories. Everyone has their dreams, Yun-Seo thought, everyone has their hopes.
b. The precautionary principle
She followed Yeo Woon as he directed their steps towards the southwest, crossing the main central road departing from Hanyang and descending towards the coast. Usually, she was the one who tended to take charge of the routes, and when they had decided four years earlier to travel together to Sokcho, she had been more of a leader than a passive walker, obeying someone else's instructions.
In Manchuria, however, things had been a bit different, and had led to an adjustment in their relationship in general, associated with Mago's change in status from companion to student. During their exploration of the vast Chinese territory, they had interchanged leadership roles much more frequently than on their previous trips. The phenomenon was due to the fact that none of them had any real knowledge that could have guided them through the Qing countryside and helped them trace efficient and scrupulous itineraries.
They had traveled completely unknown routes, stopping in villages that sometimes didn't even appear on the maps they had acquired. On more than one occasion, Mago had expressed her disappointment at the poor quality of the documents they had purchased as soon as they had disembarked in Manchuria, after a few hours' journey on board the ship that had found them in the port of Sokcho. Yeo Woon had seemed less bothered by the many inaccuracies they had found in the geographical tracings, and had told the girl that the country was too large and had undergone too much border rectification for cartographers to produce solid and detailed representations of its regions.
As a result, they had been groping for directions together, consulting each other regularly whenever they took a break somewhere to eat, pulling their maps out of the wooden tubes in which they had stored them, laying them out on tables or on their knees when they ate outdoors. Bivouacs, however, had been considerably rarer during their time in China than in Joseon. The main explanation resided in the repression of the Gwishin, which was omnipresent in the territory of the latter and totally absent in the empire.
Since the government of Joseon had from the beginning of the resurrections adopted the will to keep the return of the dead secret, in order to avoid any risk of opportunistic invasion by its enemies from the Qing or Japan, the result was that controls beyond the borders were minimal and far from reaching the levels of exigency and seriousness demonstrated by those who had been deployed by the kingdom to debauch the gwishins.
Upon arrival at the port of Haishenwai, one of Manchuria's main coastal destinations for ships sailing between the empire and Joseon, the soldiers there had just asked for their identity and checked that they were not carrying anything dangerous. They had been much more concerned about the contents of the ship they had crossed the Eastern Sea with, and had even almost clashed with the captain, whom Mago had heard grumbling and shouting about injustice as Yeo Woon was pushing her forward to a small inn just across the street.
During the crossing, they had plenty of time to develop their travel strategy and decide how and where they would travel. Despite confirmations received through the collective consciousness of other gwishins, who had traveled to China in the past to escape persecution, both had expressed doubts about their ability to blend in with the mass of Qing people and go unnoticed, and above all alive.
Their regular meat-based diet, in addition to the absorption of human flesh for both of them (and which they had later discussed at length during their wanderings in Manchuria, raising a host of moral questions and cases of conscience that had sometimes clouded their evenings in terms of mood), had allowed their appearance to become more harmonious and engaging, and unless one really paid attention to the color of their eyes, their skin, or the white strands of hair they had learned to camouflage with ink and black tea, it was strictly impossible for an outsider, unaware of the existence of the Gwishin, to detect their status.
The question of the frequentation of inns and cities in general had thus quickly been raised while the elegant bow of the Sun Quan split the tempestuous waters of the Sea of Japan, and brought them minute by minute closer to the borders of the empire. If they had knowingly favored the avoidance of the towns and the living in Joseon for their survival, the change of country but also of context had pushed them towards more slackening.
Leaning against the railing of the ship, hands clasped together and eyes lost in the contemplation of the waves and eddies hitting the hull of the ship, Yeo Woon had expressed a favorable opinion to stops in taverns, while Mago had been more uncertain.
- We're not sure they don't know one way or another about the Gwishins, she had said, with her back against the railing, examining her companion with attention (and in vain, since he was more often than not as expressive as a grave). After all, at home, everything was done so that other countries would not discover the truth. Who knows if the Emperor didn't apply the same tactic ?
- I don't think that so many Gwishins would have fled Joseon for China if that was the case, Yeo Woon calmly objected. You've heard the echoes as well as I have in the consciousness, and there are other people's accounts. That seems enough to me.
- To say it's safe ?
- Yes.
Mago had found the argument a bit weak, and hadn't been shy about pointing it out. Her companion had simply replied with a lenient smile, and had offered, in order to allay her fears, to consider favoring withdrawal to the Chinese countryside in the event that its population should express, during their trip, an awareness of the phenomenon of resurrections taking place in the neighboring country.
While walking in his footsteps, now back in Joseon, among the tall pines that were gathering in the forests along the mountainsides, Mago thought that she had ended up admitting the validity of Yeo Woon's allegations, since their exploration in Manchuria had been characterized by a jubilant anonymity and a total ignorance of the appearance of the gwishins on the part of the locals they had met, and with whom they had sometimes broken bread, or simply chatted.
Yeo Woon spoke the language better, but it was Mago who had generally animated the conversations with her questions and reflections, to the point that her mastery of the Chinese dialect had been forced to improve. She was now able not only to understand most discussions, but also to converse much more naturally and easily than when they had first arrived in Haishenwai, and on a wider variety of subjects. Her companion had also given her the benefit of his own education, and had taught her terms, expressions and formulas while correcting her sword postures and monitoring the accuracy of her parries.
Within two years, she had not only consolidated her Chinese vocabulary, grammar and syntax, but also her martial arts techniques. She was still congratulating herself today for having fought for several days with her companion so that he would give her a few lessons after his pseudo-promise aboard the Sun Quan, having finally resulted in four years of interrupted teaching, often severe, but also incredibly productive. She called him "master" now, no longer to maintain the cover or as a joke, but because he had undoubtedly become one.
They progressed this way for a little hour, Mago pulling on Danggeum's bridle while flattering the neck of the animal from time to time to encourage her. They had been inseparable since China, and Mago knew that she would be very sad when the mare would die, because they had seen so many things together. She had ridden on her back much more often than Yeo Woon, whom walking for long periods of time never seemed to bother, even though the Gwishins didn't feel tiredness, and she had watched the landscapes pass by high up, almost feeling underneath her body the soothing rolling of Danggeum muscles and the quietness of her pace.
The long, wide roads of the Qing had been an ideal terrain for horseback riding, but the forests of Joseon were too dense to allow a rider to stand comfortably on a saddle. Eventually, they emerged into a sort of large clearing among the fir, ash, beech, larch and maple trees, whose trunks were thin and straight, but whose silhouettes were made more alive and awake by branches that swayed more freely and unevenly.
There, in the center, surrounded by a wooden fence that slumped heavily upon itself like an exhausted man, was a house composed of two hanoks, the first relatively long, and the second much smaller and more modest. Both had straw roofs, and both were in poor condition.
- Who lives here ? Mago asked, looking for the usual signs of life that characterized all houses.
Yeo Woon didn't answer right away. Turning her head towards him, Mago noticed that he was staring at the house, and she found him looking strange, haunted.
- Me, he dropped after a while. A long time ago.
