—Yes.
—The Latin Quarter.
—I shall.
—To the opera.
Jin’s eyes remained closed as her lips recited the place names of Paris, its buildings, and its parks. Victor was astonished. When had she learned these names, names like beads strung on a necklace? She spoke as if she had lived in Paris and was remembering all the streets that she had walked and the places she had been. The Luxembourg Garden, the Champs-Élysées, Les Invalides, the Île de la Cité . . . Victor stopped the musical recital of the place names with a kiss.
—I shall go anywhere in the world with you.
Jin took her hands off his face and released her hair from its tight bun. Her braid fell to below her shoulder. Victor took his clothes off and embraced Jin as if he would never let her go. Her luscious hair touched his chest.
Victor’s lips slid from her earlobes, her neck, the cleft of her breasts, her belly, her hips, and back to her breasts. Victor buried his face in them again and lay still as if to hear her breathing. How could he have known he would fall so hard for her, for this Korean woman with dark eyes? Just as he had slid into the charm of her beauty, Victor slid into her warm body. The fallen leaves from the phoenix tree blew into the middle of the courtyard and were tossed to and fro.
Jin was the first to open her eyes at dawn. The early light lit the paper sheets of the screen doors aglow, and the room was as calm as if it were underwater. She had become used to waking up to the fragrance of drying flowers by her bedside, but now that fragrance was mixed with the scent of the ocean. She had never slept undressed before. The bedclothes Suh had sewn for her remained crumpled next to the futon. Suh had made them for their first night together, but she hadn’t had the chance to wear them or to place them underneath her to catch the spots of blood as was their purpose. Victor, who must have been uncomfortable sleeping on a futon instead of a bed, had a faint smile on his lips in his sleep. His neat mustache made her recall the events of the night before, and she blushed. The touch of it, both as rough as a calligraphy brush and also as soft, had grazed her face, her lips, her breasts, and even her toes. Victor breathed deeply. Jin made to get up before he woke. But Victor, whom she thought was asleep, whispered, “My bluebird!” and pulled her back underneath the covers.
It was a year before the Eiffel Tower, in commemoration of the centennial of the French Revolution, stood tall by the Seine River in Paris.
1
The Reading
Your Majesty,
The city’s market is arranged like a go board. There are goods, strange and luxurious, stacked like clouds. The great number of customers that crowd about them attest to how rich the city is. Scattered like stars throughout Paris are ponds, exotic flowers, odd trees, and lush forests. They say it wasn’t always like this. A hundred years ago, the houses were low and small, the paths so crooked you couldn’t see far beyond where your feet were planted. Napoleon changed things when he returned to France after conquering several European countries. He razed the old city and altered everything within ten li’s from the Tuileries Palace. Twelve roads radiate from the Arc de Triomphe, with palaces, houses, and grand structures like the Palais-Royal rising along them. Museums stand next to botanical gardens and prisons. Trees provide shade along the avenues where carriages run day and night. The West looks to Paris as a model city, and there are new inventions every day. From its cuisine to its clothing, children’s toys to adult games, the entire world seems to love Parisian creations. Electricity is part of daily life, and trains and steamships take you everywhere. And so, Paris is called not a city of France but a city of the world.
There’s a happiness to the smells of the morning.
Jeanne, the servant, baked bread downstairs. The smell of fresh bread crept in through the slender gap of the doorway. Victor would greet the scent of bread in the morning with a smile of contentment. The scent brought home the fact that he was back in France. That, as well as the taste of wine and cheese.
In the high-ceilinged room, Jin put on her light blue dress, sat down before her escritoire, dipped her feather pen into an inkwell, and started a letter. Next to her atop its linen wrapping was the French-Korean dictionary, the first thing she had packed upon leaving Korea. It had been handled so many times that its yellowed pages were barely clinging to the spine. Roses were embroidered along the tasteful décolletage of Jin’s dress, and the lines of her corseted waist flexed gracefully each time she moved. Her skirt skimmed her hips and widened as it fell toward her ankles before covering her feet. The white nape of her neck was revealed underneath the upsweep of her hair, which was pinned into a chignon.
Jin wrote, Your Majesty, and stared down at the letter.
Morning light shone through the rose-pattern lace curtains and made her writing paper glow. She couldn’t understand why the words Your Majesty felt suddenly unfamiliar. Was it because several months had passed since she had spoken the honorific out loud? A suspended drop of blue ink fell from the tip of her pen onto the paper. Jin removed the spoiled top sheet and began again on the one below.
Your Majesty,
It has already been five months since my arrival. I was blinded by the sunlight when I first stepped foot on the harbor at Marseilles, but now the season has come when water turns to ice. The French are excited about the upcoming Christmas holiday. They say it is the birthday of Jesus, whom we call “Yaso” in Korea. It is a month away, but they are already preparing for the Christmas Eve feast. They call this feast the Réveillon, and they drink their best wine. Victor is carefully choosing which wine to drink on Christmas Eve. He is filled with plans, as he hasn’t celebrated it in his home country in a long time.
I wonder whether you’ve forgotten me. Or whether you think of me from time to time.
Although it took me this long to write, I have thought of Your Majesty every time I see something I have never seen before.
It took sixty days to reach Marseilles from Jaemulpo. We transferred to a steam ship in Shanghai and made our way to Saigon. Except for our six days in that city, we lived on the water as we sailed through Singapore, Colombo, the Suez Canal, and the port of Alexandria. It was a long and difficult journey. Seasickness left me clinging to the edge of the deck. Nausea and dizziness took away my initial excitement in setting sail for a new world, replacing it with despair for the voyage ahead. I imagined how it would be if Your Majesty had come on board. Not even the storms would’ve made you waver. Thinking of your steadfastness gave me strength. While I suffered in our cabin, Victor read to me from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. They say the author is from Nantes and wrote the book after sailing the wide oceans of the world on a yacht christened Saint Michel, which was only thirty ja long. There were days when I endured only by focusing on these tales of mysterious creatures that lived in the ocean deep. Several passengers had come aboard healthy only to be carried out on the backs of others; my seasickness was on the less serious side. For even on the nights I felt my very organs turn, there came the mornings where I could still watch the red sunrise.
Jin dipped her pen again but hesitated as she hovered over the paper.
She felt lost. What would the Queen think of her penmanship, when she had seen only Korean writing done with a brush? She was also bothered by how she referred to herself as I instead of your servant. But after a pause, Jin corrected only her grip on the pen and did not correct the I’s to your servant’s.
Only a boat that endures the storm may reach the harbor.
After their long voyage to the other end of the world, they had finally reached the harbor at Marseilles. Illustrating Victor’s point that one could sail from Marseilles to anywhere in the world, its blue waters were busy with tugboats towing ships from Morocco, England, Penang, America, Singapore, Shanghai, and Japan. One of the books Jin had read at the French legation as she waited for the Queen’s summons was The Count of Monte Cristo. She struggled over almost every line but was so taken by the story that time
flew by. The novel opened with Edmond Dantès arriving at Marseilles, revenge burning in his heart. When Jin took her first step on the shore, she consoled herself by thinking that unlike Dantès, she was not there for revenge but love. She became determined to not cage herself in but to explore as much of her new world as she could.
The bustling port of Marseilles, awash in the smells of fresh fish, baking bread, produce, and seaweed, was much larger than any of the other harbors Jin had visited on her voyage. The first thing she noticed was the different shades of skins and hair of the people who were waiting for the ships at the docks. There were all kinds of races: Europeans, Africans, Asians, Arabs . . . but Jin, in her Parisian dress, still stood out. Everyone looked at her, from the white women spreading their parasols against the sun to the Northern African laborers on the docks. Their Algerian carriage driver kept glancing at Jin as he drove them to the train station. Jin did not avert her eyes. Instead, she looked directly back at them. She looked directly at everything, not wanting to miss her first impressions of her new country: carriages she had never seen before, the island of If upon the blue water where Dantès was imprisoned for fourteen years for a crime he didn’t commit, the thick steam of the steamships from around the world, the bright sun, the people of many races. And the statue of Mary atop a cathedral spire, shining in the sun.
Your Majesty,
The reason it took me so long to write is that Victor fell ill as soon as we arrived in Paris. He would often suffer from laryngitis in Korea, but this time the condition was accompanied by fever. A fever that assaulted him five or six times a day. We were worried he would die. We knew his illness was a culmination of the fatigue of his years of living overseas, unleashed by the relief of having come home, but then his inflammation worsened, and he could not speak, eat, and at one point, almost couldn’t breathe. He had to be hospitalized. Even then his fever wouldn’t abate, which worried us all. Thankfully, the hospitals here are very good. They are similar to the Gwanghyewon but much larger. There are tens, no, countless nurses and doctors. Hospitals here are not mere places of healing. They seem to be realizations of the Catholic ideals of charity. Dr. Allen of the Gwanghyewon is, as Your Majesty is well aware, himself both a doctor and a missionary.
Jin paused and glanced at the silver pocket watch on her escritoire. Victor had forgotten his watch again. Nine-twenty. Her history tutor, Simone, was always punctual. She would ring the doorbell in exactly forty minutes.
Jin stood up, drew back the curtains, and looked down at the square.
A carriage stood waiting in front of the house across the beech grove. It seemed that a lady of the house was about to set out.
Jin never felt more like she was in a foreign country as when she viewed the houses of her neighborhood in Paris. Each four-story building was a single house, with floors connected by stairways. Sixty houses stuck side by side surrounded a square-shaped plaza. Each house had windows overlooking the square with its beech grove, fountain, and wooden benches. On hot summer nights and sunny autumn days, the people of the houses came out to enjoy the spray of the fountain’s cool jets of water or to read and doze on the benches.
The first floors of the buildings formed a gallery of shops that was fringed with a continuous canopy. A shopper could make a full circle around the square underneath it, sheltered from rain. The shops sold all sorts of daily necessities such as bread, fruit, meat, wine, fabrics, and vegetables.
Jin sometimes accompanied the apple-cheeked servant girl Jeanne when she went about the shops. This astonished Jeanne, but Jin enjoyed looking at the variously shaped cheeses, the red cuts hanging in the butcher’s, the sweet fruits and colorful vegetables, and the shoes and fabric store with its unimaginable variety of textiles. As the servant women haggled in their rapid French, Jin was reminded of the time she went out to Mapo Harbor to buy fish with the legation cook.
Something caught Jin’s eye as she looked down at the shimmering square.
Their young charge, Vincent, walked quickly through the beech trees. He held a bouquet in his hand. He must have gone to the morning flower market. Jin tilted her head. Buying flowers was Jeanne’s task. Were they meant for Jeanne? Jeanne would blush and deny this, but Jin knew how fond the young man was of Jeanne, who in turn didn’t seem too reluctant to accept his attentions. Vincent disappeared underneath the canopy of the shops. Jin poked her head out the window, straining to see what flowers Vincent was holding. All she got was an eyeful of the canopy glowing in the sun.
She sat back down and looked over what she had written so far. How could she convey the speed of the locomotive that had brought them from Marseilles to Paris? The inadequacy of her own words gripped her like a physical thirst. Jin took up her feather pen and dipped it into the ink once more.
Your Majesty,
Here I am, learning of France.
My French has improved, and I now learn about philosophy, history, literature, and music. It still saddens me to remember the late Bishop Blanc, who first taught me French. He was worried for me right up to his passing. He told Victor several times that he must always believe in me, and that he must love me as he loves Korea. I’m told Bishop Mutel is to take his place. He should have arrived from France by now. Victor seems to have known him from before and says he will be very good for Korea. That he will realize Bishop Blanc’s plans for building the Jonghyeon Cathedral and establish a new school, just as he has in France. I am aware Your Majesty is not enamored of the Catholic faith so please forgive me for mentioning these things. The people here may not attend church often, but most call themselves Catholic and defer to the faith’s tenets. Cathedrals take pride of place in every town. Paris has a cathedral that happens to be hundreds of years old and is a proud symbol of their history.
Jin was so absorbed in her writing that only a firm knocking sound made her look up.
Vincent stood outside the door, holding a bouquet of red roses. Roses were said to be a flower that bloomed in the morning with a thousand hopes. The people here loved roses, especially red ones. They planted them everywhere, their vines growing not only in small gardens but often in the most unlikely of places. The morning flower market was largely a rose exhibition. There were always buckets of them no matter the season. Vincent’s cheeks were flushed; the air outside must have been cold. His brown curls tumbled over his forehead as he offered the bouquet of red roses to Jin.
—What’s this for?
Jin, uncertain, took the bouquet from him. Vincent was much taller than Jin and looked down at her from far above. He took off his cap. His hair underneath was soaked in sweat. He must have run a great distance. He smiled shyly. He was really just a boy despite the considerable stubble that grew back every night, and the shyness of his smile matched his youth. One of his suspenders had fallen off his shoulder.
—I have a request, Madame.
—What is it?
—I hear you are going to the reading room at Bon Marché.
He must have heard it from Jeanne. Victor had already said he could come straight from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was an event organized by Monsieur Planchard, one of Bon Marché’s proprietors. The invitation said that there would be a reading followed by a viewing of the sculptures in the gallery next to the reading room.
—Madame!
Vincent dropped to his knees before Jin. Taken aback, Jin tried to get him on his feet.
—What’s the meaning of this! Stand up at once!
Jin gave an involuntary glance around the room.
—It is my wish to head a department at Bon Marché someday.
Jin already knew this from Jeanne, who had also told her that because of Vincent’s low birth, he would never be an attendant at Bon Marché, much less a manager.
It’s a foolish dream. The attendants there are full of pride for their positions. Even the young bourgeois men living along the Seine wish for nothing more than to work there. But a cheesemonger’s son being a manager at Bon Marché? Unheard of, Madame!
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Despite her adamant refusal to take his dream seriously, she didn’t seem too put off by his ambition.
—Do you want me to do something for you, Vincent? At least get up, first.
—Only if you promise to grant my request.
—How can I grant a request I haven’t heard yet? Please get up.
Vincent slowly rose from the floor.
—Now, what is it?
—Monsieur Planchard was here for your salon recently, Madame. He is one of the proprietors of Bon Marché. Could you please put in a good word for me?
—You bought me flowers just to ask me this?
Jin’s amused smile made Vincent grin in relief.
—You would put in a good word for me, Madame?
—But I do not know Monsieur Planchard very well. I’ve only met him that once!
Vincent blinked his long-lashed eyes innocently. When one is young, all you need for happiness is the prospect of a future. Jin had never known Vincent to be so passionate about anything. He began speaking to her in a voice as excited as if he had come aboard a ship about to sail.
—But, Madame! The people who came to the salon that evening were completely taken with you. Your every word, the Korean food you prepared . . .
Vincent closed his eyes, reminiscing, then opened them again.
—They were mesmerized by your dancing. I almost dropped my tray. I’ve never seen dancing like that. It was as if you had shouted to everyone in the room, “Freeze!”
His earnest expression made Jin laugh. French dancing was swift and fluid, but Korean dancing was stately and had pauses. That must have been what he was referring to as Freeze!
—You silenced everyone. Even the Minister of Foreign Affairs could not take his eyes off you. He promised to hold a ball and begged for you to attend. I’ve never seen such rapt faces. They looked as if they had made a new discovery. Monsieur Planchard was the most taken of all. I think you were the only one unaware of it. He never left your side! If you ask him, I am sure he would not refuse.