A Note to My Readers

I have re-edited Chapters 1 and 2 slightly. The other chapters are unchanged.    

                                                                                                               3 March 2019

Chapter 14: The Cottage in the Woods

The weather was wet and humid for a week, hovering between scorching sunshine in the mornings, and thundery showers in the afternoons. We did not go down to the Valley of Dreams again, for Hyuk was preoccupied with officials and important-looking visitors who came and went, and he would stay with them behind the closed door of his office for hours, emerging for a quick lunch, and then return to the pressing matters at hand that required his immediate attention. In the evenings, he would finish his work for the day and have dinner with me. The Empress Dowager kept to her chambers, laid low by the flu, a summer bug, the doctor said, nothing that sleep and rest and plenty of liquids wouldn't cure, and she spent most of the week in bed and had her meals brought up to her on a tray, and I could not help, but be vastly relieved that that frigid presence would not be my dining companion for a week. 

It had been an awkward and uncomfortable affair, having meals with her without the reassuring company of Hyuk on days that he was tied up with work. It was easier when he was with me, for he would soothe over the ripples of tension, and divert his mother's attention from my gaucherie and discomfort. He knew that I turned into another person in her presence, a tongue-tied, gawky schoolgirl, who could not converse in more than one sentence without uttering something idiotic, my stumbling speeches peppered with schoolgirlish expressions, words I never used except in moments like these. "Oh, wow. Gee. Gosh. Awesome. Super." They tumbled off my tongue, and the more ill-at-ease I became, the more they trooped out, horrifying me, so that I would lapse into silence to curb that errant tongue, and the Empress Dowager would look upon me with incredulity and disdain in those eyes of her. She could not understand me, this strange, uncouth creature that her wonderful son had married, but I bungled on in desperation, pasting a fixed, false smile upon my lips that was too bright, too artificial, and lapsing into sudden bouts of silence, stricken dumb, unable to speak further, and my mother-in-law's cold eyes would flick over me dismissively, and I would know at once that she had misconstrued my silences as sullenness. She would look at me, a frown between those refined brows of hers, bewilderment in her eyes, and I knew that she found me wanting, and pathetic, and did not understand what her beloved Hyuk had seen in me to want to marry me. It was depressing, seeing myself in her eyes, and I had come to dread meal times, and so it was with a sense of relief that I greeted the news of her indisposition, and felt a weight lift from my shoulder almost immediately.

I would lean out of my window, and look down upon the rose garden, and my thoughts would wander to the fork in the woods, where the path branched into two. They would carry me down that steep path, away from the Valley of Dreams, through the woods to a deserted cottage. The cottage that I had not seen nagged at me, for some strange reason. I wanted to forget it, but the memory of Hyuk's closed face, his hands tight around my arm, gripping me in an iron hold, his face tight, played in my mind, as I lay awake, listening to Hyuk's gentle breathing beside me, his eyes closed in silent, dreamless sleep. "Not that way," he had said shortly. "It leads to a cottage in the woods. It's abandoned and empty," he had said, in a voice that brooked no dissent, no disagreement, and steered me away to the other path, the path on the left. The memory of his face, his voice, disturbed me, and I knew, with a certainty, that he did not wish to go down the right path, and had no wish for me to go down it, either.  Somewhere, at the back of my mind,  a furtive seed of curiosity grew, slowly, stealthily; the more I suppressed it, the more powerful it became, a forbidden fruit that beckoned to me in the days and nights following the visit to the Valley of Dreams. It could not, would not be denied.

I chatted with Ah Young as she brushed my hair and attempted to endow it with more life, a dismal effort, for it only made it look limper, and lankier than before.

"I was caught in the rain last week," I said. "It's made my hair all flat."

"Perhaps so," she said comfortingly. "I'll just rub more of this nourishing oil into your hair, Your Majesty, and perhaps, you could try another shampoo, something that would give your hair more volume?"

"All right," I said. "Rub in that oil. Perhaps I should perm my hair. Or colour it." I stared at myself in the mirror doubtfully.

"Perhaps you could give it a trim, Your Majesty," she said, rubbing the strands of my hair between her fingers briskly, and massaging my scalp. "A trim could work wonders, lighten the hair and give it a bounce. My mother used to cut her hair every time she quarrelled with my father; she said that she'd get rid of all her anger, a bit at a time, with each snip of the scissors, and when that snipping's all done, her anger's all gone, it's all lying there with the hairy pile on the floor."

"That sounds wonderfully relaxing," I laughed. "I should get a trim one of these days then."

"How were you caught in the rain, Your Majesty, if I may be so bold as to ask?"

"The Emperor and I went for a walk in the woods," I said. I felt a flush rise to my cheeks, thinking about Hyuk and me in the woods that day.

"Did you go to the valley, Your Majesty?"

"Yes, we did. It's so beautiful and untouched," I said.

"Oh, indeed it is, Your Majesty," she said.

"I heard that there is an abandoned cottage nearby," I said casually. "How curious."

"Oh, you must mean the cottage in the woods, Your Majesty. It belonged to the late Empress."

"Oh," I said, and I felt a strange feeling, as if I had suddenly stopped breathing. 

"Yes, Your Majesty," she said. "She would stay there for weeks at a time, and have friends stay over all the time, and they would have parties, barbeques, there."

"Oh," I said again. "Did - Did the Emperor join her at these parties?"

She frowned a little, and said, "I don't think so, Your Majesty. I never saw him there, and I went there a lot, to deliver food from the kitchen and drinks, and things like that, but I never saw him there, not once."

"But when she was at the palace, they were always together. They were really devoted to each other. They made such a striking pair, both of them so tall and dark and goodlooking. Oh," she stopped talking, and clapped a hand over and said, "Here I am, prattling on with my nonsense. I do apologize, Your Majesty," she said, her face turning slightly pink with embarrassment. 

The next morning, I had my breakfast at nine. Hyuk was holed up in his office as usual. I heard the low hum of voices as I walked past it, a straw hat in my hands.

"Oh, Mrs. Kim," I said casually. "I think I'll take a walk in the gardens. I'll be back in an hour or so."

"Yes, Your Majesty. I shall get an Imperial guard to accompany you."

"Oh, please don't bother," I said. "I'll be perfectly all right. I'm just going to walk in the gardens."

I walked out hurriedly without waiting for her reply.

The gardeners were working on the lawns; one was t a hedge, while another was loping off an overhanging branch. They paused in their efforts, and bowed to me, saying respectfully, "Good morning, Your Majesty", and I smiled back politely, nodding at them, and walked on, and they went back to their work. The lawns were fresh and green, and newly mowed, and smelled of summer. A bee droned above my head, and I took off my straw hat and flicked at it. A thrush flew across the lawns, and I could see its reflection in the glass windows glinting in the sunshine, gliding swiftly and then rising gracefully to the clear blue sky;  I turned, and walked across the lawns, taking the route that Hyuk and I had taken, humming a little tune to myself, pretending that I was at ease, just taking a little walk on a sunny summer morning, without any reason to feel guilty or deceitful at all, no, not in the slightest. Soon, I came upon the trees and the roots and the undergrowth. I stopped and looked back, and the lawns were behind me. I walked on until I reached the fork where the path branched into two. My heart was thudding. Turn back, a part of me said, turn back now, and it will be as it was, and Hyuk will never know; but the other part, the curious part of me that could not be denied, took over, and I stepped on to the path on the right, that path that would lead me back to Hyuk's past, the path that he did not wish me to take. The trees were dark here and close together; there were no azaleas brushing the path. It was silent and still, the only sound the crunching of my shoes on the wooded path as I placed one foot ahead of the other, every step leading me closer and closer to the object of my obsession.

And then I saw it. The long, low cottage, built of stone, at the end of the path. My shoes made an odd crackling sound on the dry leaves, strewn across and along the narrow path that led all the way to the cottage. The grass was long and overgrown, and had encroached upon the stone steps. The windows were boarded up. There was a barbeque grill on the right, the iron gratings coated with rust, and the rungs had broken off in parts, leaving jagged rusty edges in their wake. I walked up the stone steps. No doubt  the door was locked. I turned the handle of the door. It was coated with a thick layer of dust. To my surprise, it was unlocked; the door creaked open stiffly, and I stepped into the cottage.

The room was furnished, and ran the whole length of the cottage. There was a desk in the corner, a table and chairs, and a sofa bed pushed against the wall. There was a tiny kitchenette, too, with cups and plates stacked neatly in a corner. There was a row of books on a shelf nailed to the wall. Dust and dirt were everywhere, and a thick layer of dust lay on the floor. There was an airless, musty smell about the room, and cobwebs stirred like filmy ghosts on the low ceiling, fluttering in the soft wind that drifted in from the open door. No one lived here. No one came here. The rain started to fall outside, and it pattered quietly on the roof with a hollow sound, and tapped against the boarded windows. The sofa bed had been nibbled by rats; I could see gauzy fabric peeping from the jagged holes and the frayed edges. It was dark in the cottage, and damp and cold. I did not like it. I had no wish to linger a moment longer. The rain pattering on the roof seemed to echo in the room itself, and I heard the water dripping in a corner which was covered with mould and grime.

I saw another door at the end of the room, and I went to it, and opened it reluctantly, filled with a sudden chill, an unexplainable feeling of dread that I might see something that I did not want to. It appeared to be a storeroom of sorts: there was a rusty tin of paint in a corner and a ball of rope beside it. A rusty pen knife lay on a shelf, and a dusty vase stood next to it. Beneath the shelf, pushed into a corner, was a sack of charcoal chips; it had grown mouldy about the edges. Next to it sat a carton of beer cans, unopened, and a box of green soju bottles, their glass surfaces dull, and coated with dust. Long furry caterpillars of dust lay along the edges of the boxes, thick, ash-coloured. Next to it was a door. I opened it, and saw a bathroom. Green mould had stained the toilet bowl, the floor tiles and the walls, and thick dust caked the closed shutters. There was a window overlooking the back of the house and the wooden board had broken off in the lower part of the window, and I looked out and drew in my breath sharply. The backyard was a rioting, proliferating sea of yellow freesia flowers, wild, overgrown, unkempt, spilling out, spreading all over, tangled and interwoven with weeds and straggly grass and rotting petals and dead leaves; somehow they had not only survived but were thriving in this barren, desolate landscape of dust and rust; brilliant, vividly alive, golden as the sun.

I walked out of the cottage hurriedly, not looking behind me, trying not to see the torn sofa bed and the dusty plates and the cobwebs on the ceiling. I closed the door and walked down the steps; the rain dripped and made an awful hollow sound against the rusty, broken shell of the abandoned barbeque grill, and I could hear the dull echoing of it in my head all the way home. Hyuk was already sitting at the dining table, and looked at me with surprise as I entered. "I'm almost done," he said. "Where have you been?" "I went for a walk," I said, and kissed him. "I'm starving." I ate at breakneck speed, trying to forget what I had seen just now, trying to erase the images of the rot and the rust and the brokenness from my mind. "You'll get indigestion if you eat so fast," Hyuk laughed. "Uh huh," I mumbled, shovelling more food into my mouth, and gulping down a glass of cold water to get some of that bitter taste, the taste of dust and dirt and decay and emptiness out of my mouth.

Hyuk and I took a walk in the gardens after lunch. It looked as if it were going to shower again. 

"So where did you go?" he asked.

"I decided to try the other path." I didn't know why, but my face was flushing with guilt, even though I didn't know what it was that I had to be guilty about.

"What other path?" he said.

"The other path, the path that turned to the right...," He didn't say anything, so I continued to speak, "the path that led to the cottage."

"I went to the cottage in the woods this morning," I said, and I heard the little quiver of nervousness in my voice.

There was a sudden stillness, a tension; it rose from my words and hovered in the air between us.

"Was the door open?" he asked sharply.

"Yes, I pushed it open," I said.

"Why on earth would you want to go there?" he asked.

"I - I just wanted to see what was inside," I said.

"I see," he said shortly. We continued to walk.

"That door is supposed to be locked. Did you see anyone else there?" he said.

"No," I said. "No one else was there, but me. The place looks deserted, quite untouched. There was dust everywhere. The books, the chairs, the sofa bed - they're all covered in dust, and there are rats too, they've eaten away parts of the sofa bed."

Hyuk did not reply. He started to walk fast, very fast. He walked at a tremendous pace, and I had to hurry to catch up with him. 

"Why are you walking so fast?" I asked. "I can't keep up with you. I'm tired. My legs are aching."

"You wasted your time walking all that way to that bloody cottage and now you're grumbling because you're tired," he said.

"I'm not grumbling," I said. "Anyone, even if they had legs of steel, would be tired walking at this pace. You're just making up an excuse."

"My dear girl, what do you mean by that? What excuse was I trying to find?" He stopped and stared at me.

"Oh, let's just drop this," I said. 

"No, please go on. You started it. Tell me, excuse for what?"

"Excuse for not wanting me to go to the cottage, I suppose," I said wearily.

"And why would I not want you to go to the cottage? Tell me, since you're so adept at reading my mind."

"How would I know? I could see it in your face, that's all," I said.

"See what in my face?"

"I've already told you. I could see that you did not want me to go.  Let's end this, please. I'm sick and tired of this," I said.

He looked at me, his face hard. 

"All right, you want me to say it, so I'll say it. I didn't want you to go to the cottage. Are you satisfied? Are you happy now?" he said harshly. "I never go near that damned cottage, and if you had my memories, you would not want to go there either, or talk about it, or even think about it. There, I've said it, what you wanted to hear, and I hope it satisfies you." His face was white and strained and his eyes were filled with that terrible bleakness and darkness that I had seen that day on the rocky outcrop.

I put out my hand to him, I took hold of his, holding it tightly. "Please, Hyuk, please," I begged.

"What's the matter?" he said roughly.

"I don't want you to look like that. It hurts too much. Please, let's forget all that we said. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It was just a silly argument. Please, don't look like that."

"We should never have come back here," he said. "We should have gone somewhere, anywhere else but here. I was a fool to come back."

He pulled away from my grasp, and strode past me, even faster than before, and I had to run to keep pace with him, catching at my breath, tears very near the surface. We reached the lawns, and Hyuk went across them to the front entrance of the palace without a word. He went straight into the hall, and on to the library without looking at me.

Mrs. Kim was in the hall. "We want tea at once," he said, and he shut the library door.

I fought to keep back my tears. Mrs. Kim must not see them. She would think that we had been quarrelling, and she would go to the servants' hall and say to all of them, "They had an argument, I think, and the Emperor went into the library and shut the door on the Empress. He looked very angry and she was crying. It looks as though things are not going very well. And them being married barely two months." Everybody would cluck their tongues sympathetically, and shake their heads and someone, the chef perhaps, his face hot and ruddy from the oven, would say wisely, "She's too young for him; he needs a wife who's older and mature, not that young slip of a thing." And the rest of them would nod their heads in agreement. "How true." "Indeed."

I turned away so that she could not see my face.

"Did you enjoy your walk in the gardens, Your Majesty? It's rather stifling this afternoon. Not a very pleasant afternoon for a walk, I'm afraid."

"No," I said. "No, it wasn't very nice."

"I'll go and get the tea, Your Majesty."

"Thank you, Mrs. Kim," I said.

I stood in front of the library door for a while, hesitating, biting my nails. I could not decide whether to go up to my room or to follow Hyuk to the library. I did not know what it was that made me look up, a feeling of unease, a prickly sensation like a cold finger trailing down the back of my neck, a sense that I was being watched; I lifted my head, and saw the black figure standing at the top of the staircase, the hollow eyes watching me intently from the white skull's face. How long had she been standing there watching me? Had she seen us walk into the hall, Hyuk's face white and angry, me running behind him, with trembling lips, on the verge of tears? Had she seen him stalk into the library and shut the door on me? Had she seen me standing outside the door, biting my nails, clasping and unclasping my hands? I felt a chill, and looked round for the warm, comforting presence of the kindly Mrs.Kim, but she had already left the hall and gone down the corridor toward the kitchen to get the tea, and I was alone with the nanny in the empty hall. She stood motionless, her hands folded before her, her eyes never leaving my face, and this time, there could be no mistakening it; they looked upon me with a curious mixture of pity and of scorn, and something else: dislike, malice. I had to get away from those eyes, that malevolent presence. Blindly, I opened the door to the library and went in.

Hyuk was sitting in his deep chair. He was staring into nothingness. The newspaper lay folded on the arm of his chair beside him. I went and knelt down by his side and looked up at him. "Don't be angry with me anymore," I whispered, "I can't bear it."

He took my face in his hands and looked down at me with his tired, strained eyes. 

"I'm not angry with you," he said.

"Yes, you are," I said, choking back a sob. "It's all my fault. I shouldn't have done what I did. I've made you angry and you're unhappy because of me. You're hurting inside because of me, because of what I did. I can't bear to see you like this. I love you so much."

"Do you?" he said, his eyes desperate, uncertain. "Do you?"

He reached out and held me very tightly, like a child lost, a child in fear, in pain, seeking solace, comfort.

"What is it?" I cried. "Why do you look like that?"

I heard the door open before he could answer, and I sank back on my heels, pretending to look at my hands, as Mrs. Kim came into the room bearing a tray with a pot of tea and two teacups, followed by a palace maid with a tray laden with cakes and sandwiches. They laid the table with a white tablecloth and arranged the pot of tea, the plate of cakes and the platter of sandwiches in the middle of the table and the pretty saucers and teaspoons and dainty forks at the sides. They left, and closed the door softly behind them. Five minutes had passed, and we were alone again, and when I looked at Hyuk, I saw that he looked himself again, the colour had returned to his face, the tired, lost look was gone, and he was calmly reaching for a sandwich. It was as if the agonized man who had held me so desperately in his arms barely ten minutes ago had never existed and had been a figment of my imagination. 

"I'm just tired," he said, "and a bit stressed from all that piled up work. I'm sorry for being such a brute to you." He ruffled my hair and kissed me on the top of my head. He broke a piece of chocolate cake and put it in my mouth. He smiled at me over his cup of tea, and then reached for the newspaper on the arm of his chair. The smile was my reward. Like a pat on the head to a child. Good girl, eat your cake, don't bother me anymore. Everything was back to where it was before. Hyuk wasn't angry anymore. It was over, the sudden spurt of rage, his striding ahead like a maniac, ploughing blindly through the gardens as if the devil were at his heels, the fear and desperation in his eyes, the way he had clung to me like a lost, fearful child - the whole episide was finished, forgotten, buried, never to be spoken of again.

I chewed on the cake and swallowed it. I wasn't very hungry. It tasted a bit too bitter for me. Perhaps So Hyun had liked her chocolate cake that way; strong, bitter. I felt weary, in a dull, spent way. I looked at Hyuk but he was reading his paper; he had flipped it over to the next page.