Notes.
Okay, so I know I said that this arc would be between fifteen and twenty chapters, except I just realized we're already at chapter 11, and I still haven't evoked half of the things I wanted to talk about. So just in case, I modify the lenght of this arc to more than twenty chapters (I'm so sorry, it's becoming endemic).
CHAPTER LII
" But I love ghosts : I never heard that the dead had made in six thousand years as much harm as the living do in a day."
(Alexandre Dumas, french writer, "The Count of Monte Christo")
a. Haecceity
Lying on his side, one arm folded under his pillow, Dong Soo was observing the wall of the room without distinguishing its colors, decoration, or roughness. In fact, it was more appropriate and suitable to point out that he could hardly see the wall in front of him, but nevertheless had his eyes attached to it for the simple reason that there was no other closer surface on which to concentrate his gaze while his thoughts were unfolding freely and unreservedly, emerging in a disordered, crazy way, despite the common theme that brought together most of their contents and the feelings of agitation, exhilaration, but also uncertainty that had been grafted onto them.
Next to him, Yun-Seo had been sound asleep for about half an hour, and her husband, whom the lull brought by sleep persisted in fleeing like the plague, for his greatest displeasure and his most intense frustration, was turning over and over on the yo they were exceptionally sharing for the first time in exactly thirteen years of marriage, unable to keep his thoughts on a leash for a moment and prevent them from coming to tense his muscles and thus disturb his rest.
He and Yun-Seo had never been chambermaid partners since he had married her in 1768, or at least not according to the strictly traditional roles of husband and wife finding themselves together in the conjugal bed. The wish had been shared, determined and put into effect as soon as possible from the day he had proposed to her to become his wife.
At the time, Yun-Seo was already well advanced in her pregnancy, and while Dong Soo liked to come and touch her belly and put his ear against its bulging surface to see if the baby reacted (he had reacted, giving him a great kick in the ear one night that he was probably feeling jolly), the prospect of, as his wife loved to put it with a not-so-subtle smile on her face, "maneuvering in murky waters" with this condition had seemed to him as undesirable as a fatal infection.
Dong Soo, looking at the wall without seeing it, thought that he loved his wife. He was absolutely certain about that. He loved her as much as he could, within the limits of his possibilities and availability, as sincerely as he was able to, and without lies or regrets about their union or his choice. Yun-Seo was perfectly aware of this fact and had never asked for more, since she herself felt a similar affection for him that led her to consider him more as a friend and companion than as a husband and lover.
This perception was widely shared by Dong Soo and had never caused him any problems, in the sense that he had never expected his wife to be completely submissive, to fulfill her so-called marital duties, or to take on the role of housewife, which seemed to be the pride of the vast majority of married women whose paths or interests they had crossed during the decade that their hymen had so far lasted. It had to be said, however, that the conditions under which the wedding had been thought out and then established had been very different from those that usually made up a wedding and then weighed on the spouses for the rest of their lives, unless one of them died.
On the yo, he glanced briefly over his shoulder at Yun-Seo. She was turning her back to him, and he could only see her shoulders rising in rhythm with her breathing. Her hair was loose, cascading like a dark stain on the white of the pillow, and Dong Soo had gotten lost in their contemplation a couple of times, confusing them, replacing them, giving them another texture and another owner, who was resting in the hanok opposite to the one where he and his wife were sleeping, and which were basically Dong Soo's quarters.
Younger, he had also turned his head in his bed, prey to other insomnia, other alarms, other anxieties, and laid his eyes on the thick black mass of Woon's hair. There was absolutely nothing extraordinary about it. It was the most common, dark, mostly smooth and unoriginal hair, except that it curled furiously whenever the weather was a little damp, which was the case almost constantly in the country, where even foreigners from neighboring countries complained of the moist climate which they attributed above all to the mountains and, for the most superstitious, to a very nebulous conjunction between the deep nature of the residents of Joseon and its atmosphere in general.
Joseon, thought Dong Soo, subject to that appallingly wobbly humor that had always been part of his sleepless nights, its mountains, its views, its humidity, its dead coming back to life. He doubted that the kingdom would have been able to make the latter phenomenon a national specialty. The king, in any case, wasn't particularly fond of jokes lately, and besides, the country already had a long list of qualities, among which the intensive hunting of a population under the pretext that it was infringing the supposed laws of nature, but also the kimchi, which had nothing to do with the previous element, except for the fact that Dong Soo was too exhausted nervously to establish a smooth transition between the two.
He had never found anything remarkable in Woon's hair, not even fantastic or unique. On the other hand, he had wished on more than one occasion that these long, dark strands of hair would wrap around his throat, take his breath away, enter his nose and eyes, go up to the depths of his brain and pierce its gelatinous surface, like a needle through any tissue. All in all, nothing unusual, except perhaps when compared to other boys his age who were also at the training camp at the time.
When they visited the entertainment houses in the area, or more simply when they saw a silhouette that could evoke a female individual, most of them mentioned their desire to untie their lovers' hairdos in thought, if not in reality, to dip their hands in it, to breathe in its perfume. Dong Soo remembered Tae Yong who had once evoked, when they should have been studying and were unable to concentrate because of the heat, the long satiny hair of a gisaeng he had seen bathing in a stream, for which he had conceived a very lively craving, and not frankly focused on the composition of poems or spirituality in general.
Their companion had described to his audience, sitting around him, how the young woman's hair was a river of ink, a river of black silk, how he would have liked to touch it, massage it, weigh it, lift it, see it flowing freely around her beautiful face and move with it. Dong Soo had said nothing, but he could never help but compare these capillary inclinations to his own.
All his comrades were burning to possess the hair of their conquests. He, for his part, would have liked to let himself be swallowed up by it, to drown under it, to let it annihilate him, to strangle him with atrocious gentleness, with blessed compassion, to see it fill his veins and insinuate itself into his blood, strand by strand. Nothing abnormal, nothing shocking, nothing too extreme. But he had never opened himself up to anyone for all that. There were some things which, as soon as they deviated a little from the usual conventions, tended to provoke in people the appearance of an outraged and incomprehensible look, and Dong Soo had felt very early on that he had neither the time nor the energy to bear the sight of it or even try to attenuate it.
Sometimes he would help Yun-Seo with her hair. He didn't touch her one inch in the bed, kept his hands carefully away from her breasts or crotch, not out of disgust, but because he simply didn't consider her from that angle, in the same way that he would never approach Jin Ju or Min So in that way, and yet he didn't refuse her contact under friendly and harmless circumstances. Yun-Seo, for her part, took him by the arm from time to time when they went for a walk, squeezed his shoulder or kissed him on the cheek, as he could do, but had never, in a decade of marriage, demanded more from him, like Dong Soo.
The terms of the contract they had established between them had remained wonderfully unchanged and respected, and the birth of Yoo Jin had greatly encouraged them in the pursuit of a balanced and well-defined relationship, without ambiguity or secrecy. Dong Soo was always aware of his wife's desire to have an affair, advised her a few times, arranged meetings for her whenever it was possible, and let her do whatever she wanted without asking her for an account, for the simple reason that she had no one to answer to but herself.
Likewise, Yun-seo never said anything about his visits to the entertainment houses, even introduced him to sisters with special talents, and she hadn't said anything about Woon when he had returned, first after his resurrection, and then that evening after four years in Qing. On the contrary, she seemed to find the situation quite acceptable, and had made few protests about Woon's sex or his status as a Gwishin after meeting him. Perhaps because she feels that we are much more equal this way, she with her loves, me with mine, Dong Soo envisaged, as he had in the meantime put himself on his back, and was admiring the ceiling with the same constancy as the wall.
When he dwelt long enough on the subject, he concluded that he and Yun-Seo, by marrying not out of love but out of necessity, had probably avoided that old poisonous enemy of tenderness and attachment that was the will to possess, both the other and the situation formed with the other.
He had came to feel that this indifference, and even the indolence he felt towards his wife's affairs, towards her independence of mind and body, towards her choices which were not always in line with his own, an opposition which never failed to scandalize the military fathers with whom Dong Soo sometimes had lunch or dinner at the barracks, and tirelessly led them to repeat that the man was the head of his household, that he had to be obeyed, that his wife was subject to him in everything because that was the way things had been designed, and, for those of them who had the most convictions, that a husband had the right of life or death over his wife and children.
They spoke of love, assuring that they adored their brides, with a few exceptions which, if not respectful, were at least more honest, and yet Dong Soo continued to hear in their speeches only attempts to possess, to dominate, to keep under control a limited environment in a society where everything else went away without even caring about them and their permanent need for fixed points of reference. He talked and listened to them as Yun-Seo talked and listened to other military wives or bureaucrats. At the end of the day, the problem was the same as it was when he was a teenager, when he was in training camp, after Woon's betrayal.
Dong Soo was looking at the ceiling of his wife's bedroom, whom he loved and admired, with whom he got along, and with whom he wasn't in love, or at least not in the sense that the public usually understood. He glanced in front of him, towards the bedroom door, towards the inner courtyard of their new and beautiful house, towards the quarters he had lent to Woon and his student.
He thought of Woon's hair in his throat, against his tongue, tickling his palate. He saw them again as they had appeared to him when he had seen him in a corridor of the palace, white as snow, or as clouds. He thought about what Yun-seo had once said to him, in a slightly bitter, angry tone. We do not fit into any convenience, husband, into any box, into any label, she had stated.
She had told him that one of the wives of bureaucrats she had once conversed with, whose husband was in the same office as Dong Soo (having surely contributed to his banishment to the miserable office they had assigned to him), had told one of her acquaintances, in a disdainful tone, that they were an "anomaly in the system". At the time, she knew nothing about Woon, although she probably suspected something.
Dong Soo thought back to all the times his comrades had talked about their fantasies, to the distance he had felt between them and him, and that he still felt with his colleagues in the military or the Royal Investigation Bureau. Maybe the problem isn't not belonging to a label, he thought to himself. Maybe the real problem, in the end, is to absolutely want to belong to one.
b. The Corycian Cave
Dong Soo's bedroom had a painting of a couple of tigers with gold stripes and black ink hanging on one of its walls, and Woon, before going to bed in the large yo that their host had unfolded for him and Mago, had lingered on its observation, without being fully able to determine why, except that the painting was reviving in him memories of other objects, other animals, of a massive gold incense burner that he had owned fourteen years earlier in his apartments at the Heuksa Chorong headquarters, and which featured the tortuous curves of the bodies of two dragons embraced together at the base, the outlines of the scales of which could be clearly seen, then gradually moved away to make way for the receptacle of the ashes of the incense sticks, finally standing opposite each other, claws out, mouths parted open, as if in a cry of distress that would have resulted from their separation.
He had acquired the burner at twenty-one, after having been appointed Human Lord and having obtained more spacious quarters than his former small room in a guild corridor, with more freedom to furnish them and choose the decoration. The burner had been made by two Chinese craftsmen whose attention to detail was admired by their customers, and who had been dealing with Heuksa Chorong ever since Chun, after discovering them on the advice of an acquaintance in the Qing, had ordered a few pieces from them for his own enjoyment.
They had been in Joseon during the summer following the death of Crown Prince Sado and the betrayal of Woon, and had been previously received by Ga-Ok, to whom they had shown several of their latest creations, not for commercial purposes, but simply because she had asked for it, being an admirer of beautiful things, of refined work.
Woon was then sitting at the same table with them, following the exchange in a distracted manner, obeying more the demands of his new title towards the guild guests than a genuine interest.
Nevertheless, when the two men had finally put the incense burner on the table, with a muffled noise as the weight of it was heavy with gold, he had hardly taken his eyes off it during the entire conversation between the craftsmen and Ga-Ok, scrutinizing with sustained and almost obsessive intensity the reliefs of the creatures' scales, the tiny claws, although their power and dangerousness could not be denied, the fawn glow of the canines, the long golden whiskers that flowed down to the ground like a waterfall, and above all the fierce embrace in which the animals were bound, but also something engraved in their yellow and motionless eyes, a desire for reunion, for ferocious mating despite the distance imposed on them by the ash tank, which had plunged into him, had seized him, and had refused to let him go.
He had bought the burner at the end of the meeting, surprising Ga-Ok, the latter having never seen him until then ask for anything like that, much less such an imposing and pompous thing. The piece in general was closer to Chun's taste in ornament, as he liked the extraordinary and the visible, the exotic and the extravagant, yet its sumptuous and delicate level of detail tended to bring it closer to what Woon usually preferred.
And the two dragons, languorously wrapped around each other, had exerted on him all the attraction necessary to the emergence of a desire to keep the object for himself alone, and to reserve the examination of it solely for his eyes, his reflections and his pleasure. He had no idea what had become of the burner after his death. He hadn't found it in the ruins of Heuksa Chorong's headquarters, and thought that it had probably been stolen, or removed by the armed forces who may have discovered the location of the guild.
Not a sound was audible in the room, and Woon had, as on many other nights, his eyes glued to a ceiling that he couldn't see, because it was too dark to distinguish even its contours. Mago, lying next to him, had immersed herself as usual in the collective consciousness, with the aim of obtaining more information on the recent situation of the gwishins or, failing that, to continue to train her mastery of the different levels that made up the consciousness.
A little less than two hours earlier, they had met up with Dong Soo on the main road to the northern gates of Hanyang, and the latter, with a simple light pressure on Woon's arm, had led them towards the interior of the city. Mago had for a moment refused to approach the gates, pretexting that the soldiers were still there, that it was too risky, that she finally preferred to stay outside.
Woon had seen a sharp fear invade her large dark eyes, despite the night and the difficulty it caused to clearly perceive the expressions of the others, and he had remembered the face of his pupil when she told him, on the roads of Qing, in the inns, about her encounters with Joseon's army and her repeated escapes from capture and decapitation, then immolation.
She had seen gwishins being decimated, while Woon had been relatively preserved from the violence perpetrated against the dead, both because of his late resurrection but also because of the rapid protection of Gyo Hui Seon and then Dong Soo. Nevertheless, he kept vivid reminiscences of the hanging tree shown to them by Captain Seo, of the legs in the air, of the heads sewn with thread to hold the bodies in place along the branches.
He had to admit, however, that he had felt a concern probably very similar to Mago's when Dong Soo had made them walk with him towards the gates, in front of which the two guards they had seen before were still stationed. The difference, however, resided in the fact that, unlike Mago, he knew Dong Soo, and didn't doubt (really ?) his devotion to him nor his willingness to get them into the city safely.
Dong Soo, realizing Mago's distress and Woon's perplexity, had then exposed his strategy which, undoubtedly in the haste to put it in place, he had omitted to evoke to the two gwishins.
- There's no danger, he had affirmed in a confident tone. These soldiers aren't enemies of the Gwishins. They have been members of the Yeogogoedam network for a long time, and Yun-Seo and I know them well.
While approaching the gates, and making sure to address both Woon and his student, who was holding Danggeum's bridle in her clenched fist, Dong Soo had explained the first steps of the maneuver he had deployed to get them inside the capital's walls.
- I spend all day rushing after seeing you, he told them, but his smile was enormous, and expressed no regret, except pride. I've been thinking about it for years. Yun-Seo and I have been in contact with the Yeogogoedam for about three years. They have become very discreet since the strengthening of the repression, and they act mostly in the shadows, but they remain very active, and they are much more numerous than the government would like to pretend. They have gained a lot of support in Hanyang in recent years, even though we never hear about them.
Upon arriving at the gates, he nodded to the two guards again, and they asked no questions, asked for no identification, in other words had absolutely no reaction to Woon or Mago, an attitude that provoked their astonishment despite Dong Soo's previous statements.
They only smiled, and let him open the small door hidden in the larger wooden structure of his more official sisters, through which he had gone out a few moments earlier.
- The way is clear, one of them had simply indicated, wearing a thin moustache over thin lips. Just be careful if you go through the main streets, as usual.
Dong Soo had thanked him warmly, and had exchanged a few quick and quiet words with them, the content of which Woon had been unable to hear, before returning to the two gwishins, who were waiting for him to continue moving forward.
They had then crossed the threshold of the door, and set foot in one of the streets of Hanyang that Woon had been unable to identify, but which was completely deserted at this time of night, and surrounded by hanoks pressed against each other.
- What do you mean, as usual ? Mago had asked as soon as Dong Soo was again at their side, inviting them to start walking again.
- It's not the first time that Gwishins have entered Hanyang in this way, he had informed them, smiling. Since the surveillance was set up at the entrance to the city, the Yeogogoedam have counter-attacked by placing members in strategic positions, both in the government and in the army, but this time being careful not to put forward their affiliation. People are increasingly questioning the repression, including the soldiers. Before, they used to let it happen because they weren't affected, but since the introduction of the fire test and all the other measures, there is a kind of general overflow, lots of people are getting tired of not being able to move freely, and the Yeogogoedam have played on this to allow as much as possible for the gwishins to remain among the living, or at least to offer them some way out.
They had moved briskly towards Dong Soo's house, the latter meticulously avoiding the main alleys like when Woon had left four years earlier, looking all around him, and holding up a torch with which he opened the way for them, sometimes asking them to stop and wait until he had checked the frequentation of certain streets. They almost came across a patrol of about ten soldiers who were coming from the barracks and making a round in the capital.
Hearing them coming, Dong Soo had immediately pushed them behind the wall of a hanok to hide them from the brigade's view, and stood right next to Woon, his arm grazing against his, as he stuck his head out and watched the soldiers gradually move away.
- These ones aren't yours ? Mago had observed.
- No.
He had told them that he had first met the two soldiers at the north gate at a clandestine meeting of the network's members a few years earlier, which he and Yun-Seo, who had just joined the movement, had attended after being informed of its location by another member, which Yun-Seo knew, since he had been her lover, and through which they had quietly integrated the network in 1778, joining the ranks of an organization much larger than it had appeared, and made up of all classes and a wide variety of professions.
- Door guards took regular shifts, as in the anti-Gwishin brigades, Dong Soo had taught them. After I left you, I went to inquire about those who were to be assigned to the northern gates. They are the ones who generally have the fewest soldiers on guard. Of course, two other guys were scheduled, so I had to find a way to clear the place and then put the ones I wanted. They were supposed to hold the south gate that night, but only as reinforcements, so they weren't necessary. What's convenient is that the soldiers assigned to the gates usually eat there before they go on duty, and get rations from the barracks. I managed to put a laxative in those who went to the northern gates. It's simple, but it's always the least risky solution when you want to incapacitate someone with food. It took effect at the very beginning of sulsi, and replacements had to be found urgently. And the rest, well, you know about it.
While listening to his story, they had come to a long residential street where the houses were delimited by low walls, and obviously belonged to wealthy families. Dong Soo had continued almost to the end of the alley, finally stopping in front of a house that was a little set back from the others, which nevertheless looked just as pleasant, and into which he had entered without hesitation.
Woon and Mago followed him, the first in the grip of total incomprehension, while his pupil seemed on the contrary to enjoy the luxury of the home. Dong Soo led them into the long main hanok that had been facing them when they had entered the inner courtyard, and they discovered inside Baek Yun-Seo, who had visibly waited for them and, after checking with her husband that nobody had spotted them, addressed a smile full of gentleness to Woon and Mago.
I'm so relieved to see you are safe, she had said to him, putting her hand on his, Dong Soo and I were very worried. Mago had almost gone shy, in the sense that she had remained essentially silent. Danggeum had been installed in the small stable where Dong Soo's horse was already staying, and then Dong Soo and his wife had prepared the room for them, saying that they had no problem sleeping together to give them some space.
- Yoo-Jin is sleeping, he had told Woon, but you will see him tomorrow, he has grown up a lot, and he remembers you.
Even though the night was well advanced, Yun-Seo had asked them if they wanted to eat something before going to rest, and they had unanimously answered in the negative, both because they felt embarrassed about disturbing their hosts further, but mostly because they weren't hungry at the moment. They then agreed that they would speak more the next day, and Dong Soo promised to explain to them the latest events that had occurred in the kingdom, related to the situation of the gwishins.
Before joining his wife in his quarters, he had pressed Woon's hands into his own, and said, "I'm so happy you came back, Woon-ah". Woon had then wanted to pull on the blue fabric of his garment, draw him close, feel his lips on his own as in the gardens of the Spring House, as years before, in the mountains, amidst the ochre and gold of the (autumn leaves).
Lying on the yo, his hands flat on the blanket, he still felt the warmth of Dong Soo's palms.
