Chapter 9
For the next few days, Haewon waited, feeling as though her family teetered on the brink of ruin. Yet by the end of the week, she realized that by some great fortune, no rumor had spread of Yeonhee’s indiscretion. Her family had been spared from irrevocable disgrace—for now.
“You see, yeobo,” Scholar Shin declared to his wife over their meal of soup, barley, and fish, “everything worked out in the end, as I said it would.”
Haewon was determined to believe her father; what good could come from tormenting her mind with what-ifs, from living life fearing what lay around the bend in the road?
The dark cloud of anxiety finally lifted from her, Haewon found herself in particularly good spirits the next morning.
The house was blessedly empty, which was rare, and so Haewon took advantage of it.
She reached for her notebook kept at the bottom of a chest. It had a heavy cover with thick red stitches along the spine, binding that was as sturdy as the strings of a gayageum.
She opened it, then paused. A dried flower she had placed between the pages was missing.
That was odd.
It must have fallen out the last time she’d opened this notebook.
Shaking her head, she flipped through the book of letters from Black Lotus, to the very first letters she’d received.
Dear Magpie,
She still felt a frisson of excitement, recalling when she had first received the letter, how she had crawled across her thick blanket bed to show Jade, her voice and hands trembling. Black Lotus wrote back! She’d suppressed a squeal. She doesn’t reply to anyone except Wol!
My apologies for the delayed response. Firstly, why this bird sobriquet?
I am of the understanding that one’s hoching is often based on one’s hometown, or signifying markers of where one lives.
Secondly, to answer your question, it is impossible to write.
I keep thinking to myself … Why should I write at all?
Since you wrote freely, allow me to write freely, too.
Each time I pick up my brush, I am guilt ridden, thinking, “What a waste of time this is!” How can I continue writing a work that is of so little value? It will not stand the test of time; I am certain of that.
So why should I keep writing?
We only live one life. I have my mind bent on learning, on continuously cultivating myself. I want to live correctly. And this desire to write feels like the young antlers of a deer. They grow out of its own body and ultimately threaten the deer’s life. How can they not be troublesome?
Hence, while your offer to be of service to me and my work at this time I greatly appreciate, I shall not need to trouble you, although it is comforting to know that I may write to you.
Please burn this letter after reading.
She had, following Black Lotus’s request, burned the letter—though only after transcribing the contents into her notebook.
Haewon hadn’t realized, then, that their correspondence would become a space in which they could reveal their true selves to each other.
She perused letter after letter, some no more than a brief note, others that spanned pages.
She paused before one of her favorite ones:
Dear Magpie,
You asked whether I actually visited the places I’ve written about.
To answer your question, I am nearing twenty and have not been to any of the places like the Nakdong River or the West Lake, or anywhere at all, for that matter.
I imagined these real places while staring out at the little lotus pond that can be viewed outside my residence.
Imagination has become my escape when life becomes unbearable, as you yourself shared.
Growing up, I only studied the classics, but when I saw the world map again in my later years, I realized I was the frog in the well who sees only a portion of the sky and thinks it knows the universe.
And then I read Yeolhailgi—have you read it?
It moved me to tears. And that was when I felt gripped by a need to write, like I was being possessed by a ghost.
Indeed, I remain a frog in a well, writing about a universe I will never see in its entirety. But I see glimpses of it above my dark and dreary enclosure, and it sets a burning in my heart, a painful humility and awe that the universe cannot be fathomed by any man—or frog—but how I want to try.
I am filled with sighs as I write this.
Please, burn this letter, too.
She set the notebook down as a new concern wove through her thoughts.
Something Yeonhee had said continued to bother her; she had equated transcribing to treason.
It wasn’t that Haewon hadn’t considered the danger of transcribing books.
She had been very aware. She had even written to Black Lotus about her concern, wrestling with her guilt on paper.
She had, nevertheless, continued her work.
She had confessed to have transcribed Chugyoyoji, the first Catholic catechism, and Seonggyoyoji.
Nearly a dozen copies of each, all circulated and returned tattered and worn.
She had shared about having found both books outrageous, offensive and yet fascinating.
To confront foreign ideas had been like peering over the walls of her own enclosure.
She didn’t need to agree with the teachings, but surely there was no harm in knowing that the world was vast and complex, filled with places that were unfamiliar to her and ideas that were different from hers.
She had therefore chosen to transcribe such works for this simple reason. Was it still wrong, though? What if some ideas were, indeed, too dangerous?
The etiquette books she’d grown up reading would have agreed that it was.
Pages after pages had warned her not to think for herself, and certainly not to create.
It does not befit a woman to actively compose poetry was a line from such a book, carved into her memory, let alone to circulate it outside of home.
The authors of etiquette books would have, without a doubt, trembled with outrage if they knew what she was doing. For what she wrote was far more scandalous than poetry.
I wonder the same thing, more often than I care to admit, Black Lotus had written in response to her concerns.
I fear it as much as you, perhaps even more.
Am I committing a moral transgression? Ought I to stop?
I have no answers, but I promise you this: If ever you are discovered, if the world turns against you, write to me at once.
You will never be friendless. You will never be entirely alone.
All concerns drifted away, as they always did whenever she perused Black Lotus’s letters. Pressing the notebook against her chest, Haewon fell back against the thick blanket, warm in the pool of sunlight. The window was open, and the cool spring breeze carried in the sound of birds.
“And neither will you, Black Lotus,” she whispered. “You will never be friendless.”