—To Korea.
Korea? Jin turned away from Victor’s surprise and continued to walk away from him.
Where was she going now?
Jin did not remember that she left the house every morning at four, nor that she wandered, barefoot, among the dark streets populated only by stark buildings and the smell of the sewer. She also didn’t remember dancing at the Paris Foreign Missions Society or Les Invalides. When Victor told her, she stared at him as if he were describing someone else and answered, “Why would anyone dance there?” Aside from the sleepwalking itself and her inability to remember it, Jin was fine. Rising from her exhausted sleep, she would partake in the breakfast Jeanne prepared them, choose what Victor would wear that day, make the bed, and open the windows to the square to let out the tepid air. She seemed so lucid that Victor almost suspected it was he who was dreaming. When he asked Jeanne after work what Madame had done, she replied that she did ordinary things such as embroider fans, have tea with visitors, or edit Hong Jong-u’s manuscript with the help of her French-Korean dictionary. But each dawn, Jin would slip out of bed as if summoned and walk out the front door.
Did she mean to walk to Korea? Did she think, in her sleep, that the courtyard of the Paris Foreign Missions Society or the plaza at Les Invalides were places in the palace of the Joseon court? His thoughts darkened at this juncture. Victor had thought that Jin was content with her life in Paris. He could feel it in her letters to the Queen. He had come across them long ago and was reading them in secret. He found himself unable to stop. Jin apparently wrote letters to the Queen but never sent them. The neatly folded letters, wrapped in linen inside a drawer, detailed weekly Sunday mass at Notre Dame, the July fourteenth festivities on the anniversary of the French Revolution, and included vivid accounts of trains and engines that ran on steam. The letters also revealed a gradual sense of Jin becoming her own person. There seemed to have been an awkwardness of calling herself I instead of your servant, but now she wrote I freely upon the page.
Victor followed Jin with a heavy heart. Guilt makes one look back on one’s life. He suddenly remembered Veronica, the woman he had run into again at the minister’s ball. Did Jin sense her presence in his life? Watching Jin wander the empty streets at dawn, Victor was lost in self-reproach.
Jin had settled into her life in Paris by learning French history, philosophy, literature, and music from the tutors Victor had hired, soaking it all up like cotton to water. And except for the waltz, Jin’s learning had been effortless. She enjoyed going to the balls at City Hall and led the discussions at salons, her cheeks flush with enthusiasm for debate. She looked peaceful attending mass and listened in with interest on Parisian conversations along the Seine or at cafés. She played chess with Maupassant at a café near the Palais-Royal. Jin’s stories of the East told in her inimitable, charming accent breathed fresh new life into Henri Philippe’s Explorers Club. Naturally, Victor had thought of Jin as a true Parisian woman.
As for her holing up in the Oriental Room after the miscarriage, he had assumed she would feel like herself again eventually. But Korea? Korea was the country that had oppressed her and forced her obedience. He couldn’t believe she wanted to return there and wanted it so much that she wandered the streets of Paris in the night. He tried to remember what had happened in the Bois de Boulogne a month ago.
Spring had brought daily festivities back to the woodland park.
Victor thought Jin would feel better after a picnic there. Upon his return from a five-day trip to Marseilles, Jeanne told him that Jin had not left the Oriental Room during his absence. Victor couldn’t help feeling a burst of frustration. What did Jin want him to do? His shame at such feelings made him insist on the picnic. They left the carriage at the entrance of the forest and began to walk. The Bois de Boulogne was as crowded with people as it was with cedar and mulberry. Sunlight streamed through the canopy of Brazilian acacia and banana trees. The spring blooms were vivid with life. Vendors carrying their wares on long sticks sold tricolored flags, and old men played a game of rolling metal balls to knock against colorful wooden ones. Some languidly rode boats on the water, while others gave children horse rides for a few coins. Still others carried large wicker baskets and spread out a picnic on the shores of the lake.
Jin lingered longest at the menagerie. She smiled at an Indian water buffalo that walked backward, and along with the other people threw morsels at the hippos, orangutans, bears, camels, and kangaroos. She tasted ice cream from a vendor who carted a round container and watched horses as they raced along the tracks.
They left the menagerie and followed the forest path up north. Victor had forgotten that this was where members of an African tribe had been brought in. Jin and Victor walked toward a low fence where people were gathered and found that it was an enclosure containing an entire village. There were as many spectators there as the menagerie. Barely clad men jumped about with their spears as if they were hunting. Women with their breasts exposed carried buckets of water balanced on their heads. Their naked children stared back at the staring people, not blinking an eye. Victor had heard they had moved some Africans into the Bois de Boulogne for the amusement of Parisians, but he never dreamed they’d move an entire village. Jin’s expression, which had relaxed into amusement at the menagerie, became contorted in pain. A naked child went to the toilet on the grass and wiped himself with a leaf, accompanied by laughter from the onlookers. When a woman in the enclosure comforted a crying child, her bare breasts shaking, the spectators jeered obscenely at her.
—Let’s go, Victor.
When Victor looked back, he saw that Jin was already running toward the forest.
He realized his mistake.
Too late, he recalled his own laughter as he watched the people in the enclosure. What Jin hated most were people leering at her as if she were a spectacle. He had told her not to take it to heart, but Jin suffered regardless. She ignored it as much as she could but sometimes murmured, “Did you not say the most highly regarded virtues of this republic were liberty and equality? How highly regarded can they be, when they discriminate and stare so at those who are different?”
Victor could not catch up to her.
She wasn’t at the entrance to the park. He waited for her in the carriage, but she did not come. The picnic was ruined by his having to search for her through the crowds. He finally found her at sunset, sitting on a bench that overlooked the lake. He was so exhausted from his search that he had no thoughts left in his head, not even the sliver of irritation he had felt at having their rare outing ruined. Not even his worry that Jin had suffered an accident by one of those reckless young carriage drivers who seemed to think they were at a race. When Victor sat down beside her, Jin leaned against him. She seemed as exhausted as he was. Victor held her shoulders with one arm.
—Gillin.
She hadn’t called him by his Korean name in a long time.
—Why did you not keep your promise to me?
Victor did not ask her what she meant. So many broken promises. He hadn’t even kept the promise he made in Korea, of holding a wedding for her when they reached Paris.
—You told me we would go to Plancy. Together.
He had said this. He thought he could finally face the town where Marie had drowned, as long as Jin was by his side.
—Why did you not take me there? Don’t you want to go with me anymore?
—Things just happened that way.
—Would it have been different if the baby had lived?
—We can have another baby.
—No, we shall never have a baby together. You don’t know this, but in Korea . . . this has happened before.
That evening, as they rode the carriage home, they did not say a word to each other. It was the first time that had happened.
The sleepwalking Jin stopped at a cemetery. It looked almost like a park. The people on the Rue de Babylone walked their dogs there around dawn and dusk. Jin pushed through a low gate and entered. B
irds sleeping in the trees fluttered away in surprise. When Jin first discovered the cemetery, she had indeed thought it was a park. A boy wearing a pilgrim’s cape was rolling a hoop. The boy’s mother sat on a bench underneath a parasol, reading a book. Jin was surprised to hear from Victor that it was a cemetery. He showed her the weathered headstones hidden in the long grass, standing among the shorter trees: graveyards of the unknown who died more than two centuries ago. The letters on the headstones were so weathered that it was hard to read the names. Some headstones stood with no discernable letters at all.
Was she looking for a place to dance?
Whenever she came to a clearing, Jin would circle within as if to test the feel of it. Then, she would reject it and move on. She took a full turn and came across the bench where the reading woman once sat, her child playing with the hoop nearby. Jin sat down.
The roses blooming between the headstones gave off a sweet scent like that of children’s skin.
Jin slowly got up from the bench.
She stood where the boy with the hoop had been, raised her arms, and turned. Victor thought she would dance again, but all she did was turn and turn. Then, too dizzy to continue, she collapsed to the ground.
—Jin!
Victor broke from his observation and ran to her. His hand clutched her shoulder.
—Are you all right?
He helped her to her feet and guided her to the bench.
—Victor.
Victor listened intently, ready for her to say something, but nothing came. Jin seemed to have fallen asleep. Fearing the coldness of the dew, Victor hoisted her onto his back. He remembered how the women of Korea would carry their children on their backs. Jin drowsily draped her arms around his neck.
—Who . . . who is she?
She sounded as if she were talking in her sleep.
—Who?
But Victor’s question was met with silence.
Was she talking about Veronica? Victor adjusted his hold on Jin as he carried her home. He knew Veronica from before he was posted to China. He hadn’t tried to hide the fact that he’d seen her again, nor was he avoiding the topic. It was just never a good time to bring her up. Veronica was the only child of noble parents who died in a carriage accident. She had survived the crash herself and grown up headstrong. Victor loved that about her, but her strength was also the reason their relationship could not last. Veronica had been afraid of marriage. When he received his orders to go to China, she told him that she wouldn’t follow him. He had noted she hadn’t changed much when he ran into her at the minister’s ball. She was married to a baron for a time but was alone again now and as personable as ever. He continued to run into her at dinners. He later learned she was purposefully seeking him out when he wasn’t with Jin. Supposedly it was because his feelings toward Veronica were largely indifferent, unlike his memories of Marie in Plancy, a state of affairs that stimulated her interest.
A white fog rolled over the dawn streets.
Victor walked through the fog with Jin on his back, his heart heavier than his load.
How could a person weigh so little? And yet her body was warming his back. He frowned as he thought of the promises he had made to her in Korea. He had been unable to convince his mother, who told him he could marry Jin only if he were ready to throw away the Collin de Plancy name, which they had clung to even when they were thrown out of Plancy. She had said he would be better off marrying Veronica. His mother regarded any attempt to wed Jin as a de facto resignation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She could not have helped feeling guilty about his made-up aristocratic family name being a stumbling block whenever he was up for a promotion at the Ministry. Jin was curious about Victor’s mother and wished to meet her, but his mother left her apartment in Paris as soon as she heard Jin was coming to Paris. She had not visited them once in the past three years.
Victor carried Jin home and laid her down on their bed. He thought she was sleeping, but she opened her eyes, slid off of the bed, and lay down on the floor. Unlike Korean floors, the floor in their Parisian apartment was not heated. Victor laid her down on the bed again, but she came back down to the floor and curled up into a fetal position.
Victor covered her with the sheets from the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress, looking down at her.
Quasimodo appeared, breaking through Victor’s sad mood.
The cat stretched out next to the sleeping Jin’s head and looked up at him. Victor, who was about to lie down on the bed, lay down on the floor next to Jin instead. Quasimodo stared at both of them. Victor gently turned Jin onto her back and lay her head on his arm. Jin moved closer toward him. Victor turned to his side and embraced her. She felt delicate in his arms. He ran a hand down her back and stopped. He could feel each vertebra against the palm of his hand. The once beautiful curve of her back was turning into hard edges. The chill from the floor made him pull her closer toward him.
Victor wished Maupassant were still alive. The author would tell her stories about shooting guns in the Franco-Prussian War, being taught by the notoriously strict Flaubert, the boat rides with friends, and the histrionic interferences of his mother. Jin had felt sorry for him whenever he worried about his worsening eyesight. What else could the two of them have talked about? Victor wondered. Maupassant might have understood why Jin wandered the streets of Paris at dawn. But Maupassant was no more. The author had attempted suicide by cutting his wrists on a beach in Nice. Jin was devastated at the news. He was even worried about going bald. Please help him. He was eventually institutionalized at a hospital in the outskirts of Paris, and Jin would take the carriage there to see him. She always took the French-Korean dictionary with her. Victor wanted her to go with Jeanne, but Jin went alone. He would ask, “What do you do when you meet him?” She would answer, “I read him the translations Hong Jong-u left me.”
—He then edits the parts that sound awkward. I also teach him words in Korean.
—Is he lucid enough for that?
Jin seemed surprised at Victor’s question. She said she didn’t know why he was held there when he seemed perfectly clear-headed. No one seems to visit him anymore, not even his family. Then one day, she came home without having seen him. The author had refused to see anyone. He never did leave that hospital on his own feet. Jin read his obituary in the papers in silence. She seemed surprisingly relieved at his death. She only asked, in a sad voice, a single question: “How old was he?” Victor replied, “Forty-three.” Jin murmured the number to herself. Victor thought she took it well, and soon forgot about the author. Jin did not go to his funeral, nor did she visit his grave. When Victor suggested it, she firmly declined, shaking her head. But now that he thought about it, Jin’s state had begun to worsen after Maupassant’s death. She distanced herself from the translation she had been so eager to show Maupassant. It finally occurred to Victor that this was when Jin began to spend her days in the Oriental Room or an armchair in the salon. He recalled her murmuring, “Victor, I think I can understand Maupassant now,” a wisp of a voice coming from the depths of the armchair.
Victor stroked her forehead.
Her weakness wasn’t the only thing he discovered as he followed her for four days. Victor found himself living his life before meeting Jin. She was the center of every thought he had since the moment he met her, so much so that he surprised himself. But now . . . how she still insisted on sleeping on the floor, even after the trouble of creating a Korean room for her in the house . . . he wondered if he had returned to who he was before . . .
Whenever Jin rose from their bed, Victor had assumed she was going to the Oriental Room. He could not have imagined she was wandering the streets of Paris if Jeanne hadn’t told him. Victor sighed and brought his lips to her cold mouth, kissing her in her sleep.
Not long after, Hong Jong-u assassinated Kim Okgyun in Shanghai, and Paris became swept up in the Dreyfus Affair.
1
Reunion
It took fifty days for the voya
ge beginning in Marseille to pass the Suez Canal, Colombo, Saigon, and Shanghai before docking at Jaemulpo.
Spring had come to Jaemulpo, and in contrast to when they left, it was bustling with the Japanese. Japanese signs dotted the storefronts, and there seemed to be more Japanese people on the streets than Koreans. Jin imagined she heard more Japanese being spoken than Korean during their two-day stay in the harbor town. China, which had once treated Korea as a vassal state and declared itself the greatest power in the East, had lost a war with Japan, an underdog keen on using Korea as a platform for its ambitions. China had been no match for Japan’s steam-engine armada and ceded the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan. This allowed the Japanese to invade China’s shores and penetrate deep into the mainland. England supported Japan while China asked for Russia’s help. Korea remained caught in the middle with no escape.
There were new oil streetlamps in front of the French legation building.
The view of the Russian legation building caught Victor’s eye. It hadn’t changed in four years. He couldn’t help but notice it whenever he was by the gate of the French legation. The Russian legation building was built in the Russian style and stood in stark contrast to the black-tiled roofs of the Korean houses that surrounded it. There was a limit to remodeling Korean houses to suit the legations’ purposes. But that was also their aesthetic advantage; one could change the doors and put in glass windows, but the roof and structure still made them immediately recognizable as Korean. The French legation building had been changed as well. The interpreter Paul Choi led them to their temporary lodgings, a new Western-style annex to the left of the main building.
Guérin, who had been acting legate before Victor’s successor Frandin arrived, was now in China. Frandin had returned to France at the news of his mother’s death, and Lefèvre was acting legate in his place. The King requested that the French government appoint a new legate, but the seat was currently unfilled. It was a sign of how little progress had been made in France’s relations with Korea as opposed to China or Japan.