Chapter 12: Bad Memories and the Old Wing

I woke up the next morning, and Hyuk was already out of bed and dressed.

He kissed me, and said, "Get dressed, and we'll go down for breakfast. I'm going to be tied up this morning, I'm afraid. I haven't been around for a month and there are a lot of things that I have to go through and settle. I'm sorry, darling, but you'll just have to amuse yourself this morning."

I had thought that my first morning in the palace would be spent with Hyuk by my side, walking hand in hand with him as he showed me the palace and all of its splendour, and strolling through the gardens, smelling the sweet scent of the flowers. I was disappointed, to say the least, but I took a hot shower hurriedly, and changed into a summery frock, brushed back my hair, and then stood back and surveyed myself critically in the mirror: I looked young and uncertain, hardly like an empress at all. 

To my relief, the Empress Dowager was nowhere to be seen.

"She gets up at the crack of dawn," Hyuk said, buttering his toast, a plate of scrambled eggs before him. 

I glanced around, a little overwhelmed by the magnificence of the breakfast on display. There were numerous trays of food on the sideboard, piping hot dishes of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, hash browns, fish, and porridge and beef bone soup in two silver pots, and a spread of side dishes at the side: mini quail egg omelettes, no bigger than my thumb, a slab of moist kimchi, steamed sweet potato cubes, fried dumplings and steamed red bean buns, to name a few, for there were many more, too many for me to recall, fried Chinese noodles and grilled chunks of beef, so tender that they melted in my mouth, two huge urns of tea and coffee, and a tall jug of fresh and creamy milk; there were boiled eggs, too, in a ceramic bowl, and thick slices of bread, white, brown and rye, and various pots of marmalade, jams and honey, while dessert dishes, piled high with fruit and salads, stood at one end. 

I wondered what would happen to the food, the scrambled eggs, the crispy bacon, the fish, the porridge, once breakfast was over. Were there anonymous faces whom I would never know, never see, waiting just outside the kitchen doors, reaching out with eager and grateful hands for the gift of our breakfast, food enough to feed a family of six for the next three, four days? Or would it all be thrown away, discarded into rubbish bags? I would never know, and I would never dare to ask.

"It's fortunate that I don't have a host of relations to inflict upon you," Hyuk said. "My sister and her husband are coming over for lunch with Ari. You met them during the wedding, if you'll recall. You'll like So jin, I think. If she doesn't like you, she'll tell you to your face, she's not the sort to beat about the bush. She's rather protective of me, you see, and I used to run to her whenever I got into trouble when we were kids, like the time I snipped off the heads of the roses in the garden and my mother flew into a rage, and So jin said that she had told me to do it, but it was a lie, and my mother knew it, and we both got a thrashing." He laughed, and my heart sank. What he had said about his sister was hardly comforting, and I wished glumly that she were insincere, for brutal honesty could be so much more painful than false praise, and a protective sister would surely find me wanting, and undeserving of a much-loved younger brother.

Hyuk rose, and said, "Mrs. Kim will take care of you, give you a grand tour of the palace and show you the rooms. I'll see you later."

He looked at me, ruffling my hair, as if I were a child, and said, "You don't mind, do you? You'll be all right?"

"I'll be fine," I said cheerfully. "I can't wait to see the rooms."

I lingered over my breakfast, and started when Mrs. Kim poked her head from behind the service screen, and I realized that it was almost ten o'clock. I sprang to my feet at once, and apologized for sitting there so late, and she bowed politely, and I caught a flicker of surprise in her eyes. Had I done something wrong again? Should I not have apologized? Did it lower her regard of me? Would she whisper to the kitchen maids, "She apologized, what a common thing to do, quite unthinkable for an empress, the late Empress would never have done that..."

Mrs Kim opened the heavy oak door to our rooms, and the palace maids looked up in surprise; one maid was making the bed while another was wiping the dressing table. "Wait outside," Mrs. Kim said to them, and they bowed, and quietly left the room, closing the door softly behind them. I made a note to myself to never return to my room after breakfast; it was not the correct thing to do, not at this hour of the morning. It went against the palace housekeeping routine. Thank goodness Mrs. Kim was with me. If I had returned to my room alone, it would have invited ridicule among the palace maids. I could imagine them saying in the kitchen, putting their aching feet up on low stools in the evening, after a hard day at work, "That new Empress doesn't seem very bright, does she? Imagine her barging in when we were cleaning up her room." And they would laugh among themselves, and the story of my foolishness would spread like wildfire among the servants.

"Is your room to your liking, Your Majesty?" Mrs. Kim said. "His Majesty had the rooms refurbished and redecorated, and we put in new wallpaper and new furniture, and I had a chest of drawers brought in here from the other wing, because I thought that you might find it useful."

She indicated the chest of drawers, nestled in a corner next to the huge king bed.

"The other wing?" I asked.

"Yes, the old wing, on the west," Mrs. Kim said, "the rooms there overlook the Imperial Gardens and the lake..."

Her voice dwindled into silence.

"Do you mean to say that His Majesty used to stay in the west wing?" I asked, and my voice sounded strained, even to myself.

"Yes," she answered, and her eyes were sad, suddenly. "That's where they stayed, His Majesty and the late empress, but after the - the incident at the lake, His Majesty moved here, to the room next to yours." She indicated the room connected to mine by a door.

"His Majesty has stayed here since, and I think that it's a wonderful choice, because the rooms here, though much smaller than those in the west wing, are much brighter and airier, and the rose garden is such a pretty sight. His Majesty spends a lot of time there, and when he was small, he would follow his mother, walking on unsteady legs after her as she snipped off all the dead roses, the Empress Dowager liked to do that, she still does..."

I looked at the king bed, the spacious sitting room with the sofa, the chairs and the writing desk in the corner, the rows and rows of wardrobes in the walk-in section, and the bathroom beyond, and I turned to her and said gratefully, "You've done a marvellous job, Mrs. Kim. It's perfect. Thank you so much."

Her face lightened with pleasure, and she bowed and said, "It has been my pleasure, Your Majesty. Please let me know at once if anything is not to your liking."

Mrs. Kim brought me for a tour of the palace, and I walked beside her, my footsteps sounding loud and clumsy, next to her soft padded tread, intruding upon the shadowy silence of the corridors and the rooms, echoing on the walls on which hung paintings and pictures and ancient calligraphy and weaponry displays; I touched the intricately-carved grand staircase with my hands, as we ascended to the upper floor, and found myself in yet another corridor. We turned a corner, and walked along a broad, carpeted passage and then turned left and up a narrow flight of stairs, and I realized that we were in a different part altogether; here, the rooms were older, larger, the hangings heavier, the air filled with an ancient mossy smell. It was as if I had stepped back into the past, to another world, and the real world that I knew this morning had ceased to exist.

"This is the west wing, Your Majesty, the one that I was telling you about, and over there," she hesitated, indicating two doors at the end of the passageway, "is where they used to stay, His Majesty and the late empress, in two rooms, side by side."

I swallowed, seized by a sudden curiosity to see the rooms.

"May I see the rooms?" I blurted.

Mrs. Kim opened the door of the first room. The room was in total darkness, no chink of light coming in through the closed shutters.

"This was her room, the late Empress So Hyun's room," Mrs. Kim said quietly, but even before she spoke, I already knew whose room it was. I could see dimly, in the centre of the room, the outline of furniture swathed in white sheets. The room smelt musty and stale, an old smell, the smell of a room that had not been used for a long time, as if the air in it had remained little changed, trapped, frozen in time, since the day the heavy curtains were drawn, the furniture obliterated in a single , shrouded under an indifferent sea of white, the door shut, and the room plunged into darkness. Standing there in the darkened, unchanging room, I could imagine a younger Hyuk, a distraught Hyuk, his face ravaged by grief, saying to Mrs. Kim, "Draw the curtains and cover everything inside, and shut the door. I never wish to come into this room again, for as long as I live."

I had a sudden urge to get out of the room, for I could not breathe, and I mumbled an excuse and hurried out of the room, and walked rapidly along the corridor to get away from it, to put it behind me, and I found myself approaching a broad window, where the light came in at last, and I ran to it, and gulped in deep breaths of air, and I calmed down, finally, and my thudding heart slowed to an even pace once more, and I saw before me the smooth grass lawns, the low shrubs and the tall shady trees of the Imperial Gardens, and the pebbled footpath that wound and stretched all the way beyond to the distant shimmer of the lake itself, a deep blue, with white crests, whipped by the wind, the ripples of water lapping at the sides. It was closer than I had thought, far closer; it ran beneath that little cluster of trees beyond the lawns, barely five minutes away. A cloud hid the sun suddenly, and the lake changed colour, becoming black and inky, and the crests turned grey and cruel, no longer the sparkling white of a minute ago, and I drew in my breath sharply and felt a chill: this was where she had drowned three years ago, alone, solitary, sinking slowly beneath the cold dark waters on a silent, moonless night.

Mrs. Kim came up to me, her handphone in her hand, and said that she had just received a call; His Majesty was waiting for me in the Morning Room, and Princess So Jin and her family were with him. It was almost 1 pm, and the morning had passed by so quickly. We hurried to the Morning Room which was located a corridor away from the dining room where I had had my breakfast. It was a cozy room, a lovely room, overlooking a clearing, like a miniature lawn, the grass a smooth green carpet, and in the middle of this, a fountain stood, the tiny statue of a cherub poised, mounted on the crest of a wave in the centre, a drum nestled under his tiny arms, from which gushed a smooth, steady stream of clear water. I heard the murmur of voices as I put my hand on the door knob, and felt the sick feeling of anxiety that I had felt when I drove through the palace gates the day before. A sea of faces turned to look at me as I walked in nervously.

"Here you are at last," Hyuk said. "We were getting worried and I was about to send out a search party for you."

We had met briefly during the wedding, where I had been introduced to Princess So Jin and her family, but we had hardly exchanged more than ten words then. So Jin, sitting across from Hyuk, laughed, and looked at me with bright, curious eyes. She had a look of Hyuk about her, and it was not hard to tell that they were siblings; she had the same jet-black hair and the same dark, sensitive features, and was tall and slim.

She turned to Hyuk, and said, "She isn't what I was expecting at all."

Everyone laughed, and I laughed, too, awkwardly, though I wasn't sure what they were laughing at exactly, whether they were laughing at me or not, and I wondered secretly what she had been expecting. General Lee smiled at me; he looked kind and genial, and there was an expression of relief on his face. I wondered what it was that he was relieved at, but I did not have time to think, for the Empress Dowager walked in the next instant and engulfed little Ari in a hug. We had lunch, and the Empress Dowager fussed over Ari, while Hyuk and General Lee chatted about politics and business and the palace, and when we finished, So Jin stood up and announced that we were going for a walk in the gardens, just her and me. 

I didn't mind, because I liked her, and I was at ease with her.

She linked her hand through mine and said, "You're terribly young, aren't you? I was expecting someone older, a jetsetter kind of girl, you know, but when you came in through the door just now, I was just stunned."

She laughed, but not unkindly, and I did not know whether she was relieved or disappointed with my appearance.

"Hyuk looks so well now," she said, after a moment. "There was a time when he looked like he was on the verge of a breakdown..."

She stared into the distance, her face clouded suddenly, and then brightened up, and said, "He looks so healthy now. He looks happy, and it's because of you."

"The thing about Hyuk is, he keeps all his feelings to himself. He bottles them up inside, and he gets angry maybe once or twice a year, whereas me," she shrugged, and said, "I lose my temper all the time, I flare up, I yell, I scream, and then it's over."

She patted my arm, and said, "But I doubt he'll ever get angry with you; you're such a calm, quiet little thing."

A calm, quiet little thing. I thought how safe it made me sound, untroubled, unruffled; someone who looked at the world through serene eyes, someone who never bit her fingernails, torn by anxiety and self-doubt, someone who never wondered constantly about what was buried deep within her husband's ghostly heart.

"So you're staying in the east wing?" she said.

"Yes, we are. Hyuk had the rooms there refurbished and redecorated," I said.

"It's better this way, I think," she said. "Too many bad memories in the old wing..."

Her voice trailed off, and I said nothing.

"Have you met Ari's nanny?" she asked suddenly.

"Yes, yesterday," I said.

"How did you find her?" So Jin asked, and there was a strange note in her voice, almost as if she wanted to know how I felt.

"Well, I haven't really spoken to her, but, to be honest, she scares me a little," I said. "I've never seen anyone quite like her."

"I don't suppose you have," she said, and added after a short silence, "There's no reason to be afraid of her."

"She's Ari's nanny. She takes good care of Ari, and that's all there is to her. You don't have to worry about her, or anything."

"Okay," I said, and smiled.

"Have you met anyone else interesting?" So Jin asked casually, but her eyes were curiously intent.

"I met this beautiful woman," I said. "She's your mother's aide. Min - Min..."

"Min Yoo Ra," So Jin said, her voice flat. "What did she say to you?"

"Nothing much," I said. "We were introduced to each other, that's all."

"Was Hyuk there?" she said, and there was that odd note in her voice again.

"Yes, he was," I said. "We were having tea with your mother, and she came in, and your mother introduced her to me."

"Ah," she said, and that was all.

"About the nanny," she said slowly, as if she were weighing her words carefully. "I don't suppose you know this, but Miss Seo was So Hyun's best friend."

"What?" I said in surprise.

"They grew up together, went to the same schools, and were best friends, and when So Hyun got married, Seo Kang Hee came with her to the palace, more like a companion than a lady's maid. They were practically inseparable," she said. "If she's cold to you, it's probably because she resents you."

"Resent me?" I echoed like an idiot.

"Because So Hyun died, and Hyuk remarried," she said, and then looked uncomfortable.

"Forget that I said all that," she said. "I talk too much, my husband always tells me that."

She looked at her watch.

"Oh, dear, I have to go," she said. "We have a dinner appointment with some of his army pals and their wives."

She pressed a number on her mobile phone and said, "Miss Seo, we're about to leave. Please come and take care of Ari."

"Ari sleeps in the palace with the nanny," she said to me. "They have a room in the north wing, where my mother stays. My mother spoils Ari dreadfully, but she's getting on in years, and I guess she's lonely."

She patted me on my arm and said, "You may find my mother terrifying, but she's not that bad after you get to know her. She's terribly fond of children, and she was devastated when So Hyun died...she was seven months' pregnant, you know..."

She lapsed into silence, and then continued, "You and Hyuk could start a family, once you're settled down nicely. There's nothing like a baby to bring people together."

The Empress Dowager had retired to her rooms when we got back to the Morning Room, and the nanny was there already, standing motionless at the side of the room, her face blank and still, her hands folded before her, saying nothing, but I was aware of her presence, where she stood in her corner, a dark, silent sentinel, watching us without expression, and listening to everything that we said.

So Jin beckoned to her to take Ari, and she came at once, silently and smoothly.

"Come along, Your Highness," the nanny spoke, and her voice, which before this, had been dead and toneless, had changed all of a sudden; it was as if a different person had spoken, so full of life and animation it was ."It is time for your nap." She took the princess's hand in hers, bending slightly, and when she straightened, I caught a glimpse of her face. There was a spot of colour on the gaunt cheekbones, and she looked lively, happy, pretty almost. The change was so sudden, so unexpected, that I was shocked and confused. The nanny and the child left the room, and the door closed softly behind them.

We went out on to the steps, and Hyuk and General Lee walked on ahead. General Lee got into the driver's seat, still chatting with Hyuk who hovered before the open car door.

So Jin gave me a hug, and I hugged her back shyly.

"I'm afraid that I've been rather rude to you, and asked you a lot of rude questions, and said some things that I shouldn't have. I'm not a very tactful person," she said, and laughed.

"And, as I told you just now, you're not a bit like what I expected." She looked at me directly, and said, very seriously, her smile fading, "You see, you're nothing like So Hyun at all."

That night, Hyuk stayed behind in the library while I went on up to my room first.

"I'll just be a minute," he said. "I'll look through some of these letters first."

In my room, my eyes were drawn to the chest of drawers nestled in the corner, that Mrs. Kim had said had been moved from the old wing. I walked over to it, and ran my fingers lightly over the surface. It had belonged to her, the late Empress. Perhaps she had done this, too, running her fingers idly over the burnished wood as she waited for Hyuk to finish reading his letters in the library. I drew open the first drawer and tentatively reached inside with my fingers. They touched something dry, that crackled, deep in the top drawer, wedged tightly into the joints. I drew it out carefully: a crumpled ball of paper. I smoothened it out carefully, and realized that it was actually two sheets of torn out note paper with black-inked handwriting on each that had been squashed and compressed together. I drew open the second drawer. Once more, I reached inside, and again, my questing fingers found, and drew out another crumpled ball, opened, and smoothened to reveal two more secret, handwritten notes. The third and fouth drawers were empty. 

I read the notes, written in a firm, sprawly handwriting.

To my darling Hyuk

I love you more than ever

To my darling Hyuk

I miss you

To my darling Hyuk

Hurry home

To my darling Hyuk

Stay with me always

Four notes on sheets torn out of a notebook, each ending with the same words: From your Hyun.

Four notes, so intimate, so private, that she had hidden them jealously, crumpled them up, and pushed them deep into a secret place in her room, to protect them from the prying eyes, to preserve them for all eternity, tokens of her undying love for the husband who adored her, who had never recovered from the pain and agony of losing her.

I sat on my bed and stared at the four sheets of paper in my hands. 

Slowly, like a sleepwalker, I tore each of the sheets into many little fragments, and threw them into the wastepaper basket. I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes, but I kept thinking of the scraps of paper in the wastepaper basket. After a while, I got up and went to look in the wastepaper basket once more. Even now, the ink stood on the fragments thick and black, mocking me, taunting me. I opened a drawer and found what I was looking for: a cigarette lighter and an ashtray. Very carefully, I scooped up the fragments of paper, every tiny bit, and pressed them deep into the ashtray. I flicked the lighter open and pressed the lighter button. The flame had a lovely light, staining the paper, curling the edges. The fragments fluttered to grey ashes, and the ashes to feathery dust  I carried the ashtray into the bathroom, and emptied its contents into the toilet bowl, and flushed it once, twice. Then I rinsed the ashtray carefully and dried it with a hand towel. I washed my hands in the sink and walked back to the bedroom. I opened the drawer and kept the lighter and the ashtray in it, and closed it. I climbed back into bed, just as the door opened and Hyuk came in. "What have you been doing?" he said, smiling, and kissing me on the top of my head. "Nothing much," I smiled.

I felt better, much better.

The next morning, I woke up early, and used the palace phone next to my bed, pressing the number 1 for Royal Housekeeping.

"Yes, Your Majesty?" Mrs. Kim's voice came on on the other end, a note of surprise in her tone.

"Mrs. Kim?" I said quietly, taking great care not to wake Hyuk, sleeping soundly beside me with an arm flung over his face. "Could you move the chest of drawers from the old wing out of my room this morning? It's taking up quite a bit of space. Just put it back where it was originally."

"Certainly, Your Majesty," Mrs. Kim said. "We'll have it moved as soon as possible."

I put down the phone.

I felt rejuvenated, renewed, the same way I feel on January 1, New Year's Day, every year.

A fresh start, a new beginning.

I lay down carefully next to Hyuk, closed my eyes and went back to sleep.