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1. The Castle
“Seo Hyerang,” says Doaeng. “What do you want?”
Doaeng’s voice and face are perfectly flat: this is the way she’s talked to both Hyerang and Okgyeong for years now. It hasn’t much bothered Hyerang. Doaeng hits her marks onstage, where it matters. Offstage, until recently, she hasn’t been relevant.
Now, Hyerang smiles at her, the way she smiles at her on stage in the shows where she has to courageously charm the villainous Doaeng into some act of folly. Doaeng’s mouth gets a little flatter. “I only came to tell you that I’m leaving town for a while. My daughter and I could use a change of scenery.”
She emphasizes the word daughter, watching Doaeng’s face, but Doaeng just says, “That’s probably a good idea.” From the tone of her voice, Hyerang is suddenly sure that Doaeng knows all about it. She can picture it now, the director wearily sitting in her office, telling her niece all about how far Maeran’s idol has fallen -- or maybe it was that little brat Jeongnyeon, maybe she ran back and shouted in her ruined voice about how she saw Hyerang falling apart in that big, empty house. “But I don’t know why you felt the need to tell me,” Doaeng says, now. “You’re not a member of this troupe anymore, and you’re free to go where you like.”
It’s not so hard to suppress her shame and fury, not so hard to keep the smile on her face. Not for nothing did she spend all those years as Maeran’s princess. “Well, of course, I’m only here as a courtesy,” she says, sweetly. “I don’t need your permission for anything, but I thought perhaps you’d like mine.”
Doaeng’s eyebrows go up. “If you want to argue over the rights to your promotional images, you know that’s part of the contract that we all --”
“The house, Doaeng.” Hyerang drops the smile, drops the sweetness. She’s tired and she doesn’t want to play anymore. “I know you have to sell the building. I’m offering the troupe the use of our house.”
For once, she can see shock on Doaeng’s face. That’s at least a little satisfaction. After a moment of silence, Doaeng says, slowly, “Why?”
“Why not? I won’t be using it.”
“So you’ve decided, suddenly, to be altruistic.”
“You sound like you’ve seen the sun rise in the west.” Hyerang arches her eyebrows. “What are you imagining, that I’ve put booby traps in the corners? Snakes in the beds? If I didn’t already know what you think of me, I’d be offended.”
Doaeng regards her, her flat mouth turned down at the corners. “For a long time, I thought at least this of you – that you wanted the troupe to succeed.”
“And then?”
“Then Okgyeong left, and ruined us.”
Anger flashes out. “And you think I’m the same as her?”
“You also left.”
Hyerang stares at her. “Are you trying to pretend you don’t know why? The director --”
“Yes, I know,” says Doaeng. She looks at Hyerang, coolly. “But she would have changed her mind, if you had saved us.”
“If I had saved us!” Hyerang laughs out loud at that, and hears it ring high and shrill in her own ears. “And what was I supposed to do, that would save us? You think the crowds would have come to see me, without her? Are you delusional?”
“They might have,” says Doaeng. “They love you, too. With a lead from another company – or Yeongseo, or Jeongnyeon – and you on stage with them, to sell the transition, we would at least have had --”
“They would have hated it,” snaps Hyerang. “They would have hated it, and they would have hated me for it – for performing with someone who wasn’t her. I’m her princess, don’t you understand?”
“I understand that you were afraid,” says Doaeng.
“Afraid!”
“If you’d wanted to leave, like Okgyeong, fair enough. But you didn’t want to leave, did you? You did everything you could to hang on, dug your fingernails in until you drew blood from all of us – and then at the end, when it mattered, you just let go. For the number of times you said you were the greatest there ever was,” says Doaeng, a little scorn showing through, “I really did think you’d try a little harder.”
Hyerang’s fists clench at her sides. “We were the greatest. We were, Okgyeong and I. You know it’s true. You never came near us, Baek Doaeng. But she broke that, and look what’s left of me!”
She throws out a hand, and lets it hang there, shaking. Despite everything, she knows how to hold the eye with a gesture; that’s been drilled into her for years, even if she can’t keep the stillness right now, the perfection that the role demands. She’s not had a drink for a week now. That didn’t used to be anything worth noting. Ah, it’s not easy, it’s not easy. Sometimes she thinks she didn’t give Okgyeong enough credit for those difficult times, all those years ago, when the opium stopped. But more often, she thinks: damn you, Moon Okgyeong; it was easy for you, you had me to help you, and I don’t have anyone at all.
She drops the shaking hand. She lifts her chin, with the hauteur her roles so often demand. “If you think I could go on-stage, at my absolute worst, and play lover to a child -- if you think I could let some teething infant like Jeongnyeon steal the stage from under me while the audience laughs at the faithless old hag -- well, then I’m sorry, but your expectations really were a little too high, don’t you think?”
“It seems so,” says Doaeng. She does not seem moved to pity by Hyerang’s demonstration of weakness. She leans back in the office chair, folding her arms behind her head; her mouth twitches. “I guess I just thought, after all those years, that you were at least on my level.”
Hyerang presses her lips together. All those years, indeed. At the beginning, once or twice, Doaeng did compete with Okgyeong for the leads, but it soon became clear it was pointless. Okgyeong’s charisma was too obvious, too effortless – and, rapidly, too profitable. So then: second leads, loyal retainers, enemy generals, villains. Secondary romance plots, seduction scenes with up-and-coming trainees – and if the trainees got too good, they didn’t stay; Hyerang made sure of that. Maeran didn’t need a second princess. But it did – one had to admit -- need Doaeng. It needed Doaeng to be defeated every night, outshone every night. And every night she got up there and let it happen.
Once, Hyerang remembers, she had made half an effort to fascinate Doaeng. Doaeng was good-looking, after all, and she’d thought it might be fun. That was before Hyerang had learned that she couldn’t make Okgyeong jealous in any way that mattered. But it had come to nothing; Doaeng had never risen to the bait. Was it after that that Doaeng had started sounding so flat when she talked to her?
“No,” she says. She means it to come out scornful; instead, when she hears her own voice in her ears, she just sounds sad. “I’m obviously not.”
“You won’t believe me,” says Doaeng, “but you know, I wouldn’t trade your career for mine. Not if you paid me. To say you can’t act if you’re not looking in the right person’s eyes – maybe I wasn’t one of the greats, but I always stood on my own.” She picks up some papers from the desk, taps them into a pile and smiles down at them. “At the end of the day, Seo Hyerang, I have more pride than you.”
“Good for you,” says Hyerang. Spiteful anger is rising again in her chest. “If only all that pride had come with enough talent to save Maeran.”
The smile disappears. “And you had it, and didn’t save us anyway. So? What’s worse?”
“I am saving it,” snaps Hyerang. “I told you, I’m giving you the house. Use the space! No rent to pay! Nothing to spend the money from the building sale on except launching your new little child stars – and you can pay those idiots a tenth of what Okgyeong and I made, and they’ll thank you for it. Surely even you can figure out how to turn a profit, under those circumstances.”
“It’s a very generous offer.” Doaeng’s face and voice are controlled again. “It will leave us in a difficult spot, if you suddenly decide to rescind it.”
“I’m not as petty as that,” says Hyerang, shortly. Doaeng’s face looks like she politely begs to disagree. Hyerang represses the urge to scratch her. “Look – I’ll put the agreement in writing, if you want. But you should accept it. Don’t think of it as coming from me, if it makes you feel better. Think of it as Okgyeong’s apology.”
“Ah,” says Doaeng, softly. “Cleaning up after her again.”
“Yes,” says Hyerang. “I’m cleaning up after her again.”
And now, she thinks, grimly, she’ll see the pity in Doaeng’s eyes at last – but no. It doesn’t come. Doaeng just looks at her levelly, and then pushes herself to her feet, arms folded. “All right,” she says. “We’ll accept. But Hyerang – don’t think this makes the score even.”
A familiar position, to have Doaeng looming over her. It’s happened a hundred times in a hundred plays; she’s good at looking like a much taller person than she is. Hyerang looks up at her, and says, “What do you mean?”
“I’ve stood on stage with you a hundred times,” says Doaeng, in an eerie echo of her own thoughts. “I know what you’re worth and what your talent’s worth. It’s a lot more than a house.”
“The house,” says Hyerang, gently, “is extremely big. As for my talent, now, without Okgyeong --”
“Okgyeong, Okgyeong, Okgyeong! I don’t,” says Doaeng, “give a single fuck about Okgyeong anymore.” Now, at last, Hyerang can see anger in Doaeng’s face to match her own. In a certain way, it’s satisfying. She’s been so angry, and so alone, and pity and pity and pity is all anyone’s given her. “You cared. You’re here. The house isn’t Okgyeong’s apology; it’s yours. And I’m telling you, it’s not enough. But I’ll take it. Just don’t think that gives you leave to give up.”
Hyerang can’t help it; she laughs. “Doaeng! Don’t you think I’ve given up already? Don’t you think I should have done it long ago?”
“If you had,” says Doaeng,” I don’t think you would be here.” And while Hyerang is still figuring out how to respond to that, she adds, suddenly businesslike, “Now take a seat, will you? Let’s draw up some paperwork.”
2. The Heirs
Hyerang and Eunjae stay in the countryside for three months. They rent a lovely villa in a small town by the sea where, as far as Hyerang knows, Okgyeong has never set foot. They eat a lot of oysters. Eunjae learns to swim. When Hyerang goes out, nobody knows her; no admirers run after her shouting her name. The locals they meet call her “Eunjae’s mother.”
It reminds her – not entirely happily -- of her own childhood, in a similar town on the northern coast. Similar, but not quite the same, and she’ll never see the people there again, which is all right; she came to terms with that years ago, during the war. But during the war, she had Okgyeong. She’d thought then that she’d always have Okgyeong.
Still, for the first month, she thinks that perhaps she can play this role for a good long run. If Eunjae is her only audience, so be it: she’s the only one that should really matter, anyway. But in the second month, as the quiet country nights stretch long, she finds herself lying in bed longer and longer. It’s harder to think of a reason to get out of it. Towards the end of the third month, she sits down on the beach, with yet another lunch of delicious fresh oysters, and asks Eunjae if she wants to stay here or go back home.
Eunjae frowns, like she’s worried about giving the wrong answer. Hyerang has seen this look of hers too often; it makes her heart break. She waits, keeping the attentive smile on her face. “It’s very nice here,” Eunjae says, finally, politely. “But the bugs are very loud at night.”
They pack up their bags, and go back to Seoul.
Not, of course, back to the house. Doaeng has already moved the troupe into the house. Let Moon Okgyeong haunt them. Instead, Hyerang takes a modest apartment in the center of town, on a busy street, near the theaters. Eunjae likes to watch the comings and goings out the window, but it’s still not so easy for Hyerang to find a reason to get out of bed. So on the second week in their new place, she bows to the inevitable and buys herself and Eunjae tickets to the Maeran’s new show.
Maeran is operating out of a smaller theater now, with a smaller cast. The sets are quite minimal. There’s a gap, an obvious gap: the production seems to beg for a level of spectacle that it can’t quite attain. Still, the performance is – objectively, she can be objective; she’s an expert if anyone is, she should have a critic’s eye – pretty good. Jeongnyeon is playing Hong Gildong, Yeongseo the corrupt king whose reign is destabilized by Gildong’s heroic banditry. Chorok is Hong Gildong’s wife. She’s competent, but her role is quite small: mostly Jeongnyeon and Yeongseo sing their rivalry and defiance passionately at each other from across the stage. Like two young bulls, thinks Hyerang. Bulls preparing to charge each other in a field. All power, no delicacy. Youngseo has her moments of subtlety, but she’s always too quick to put on a swagger. As for Jeongnyeon – well, never from the moment Jeongnyeon arrived at Maeran did Hyerang fear for her own position from Jeongnyeon.
When the show ends, the young girl students cheer Jeongnyeon and Youngseo wildly. Chorok gets applause, too, but not so much. The theater is perhaps three-quarters full.
As they leave the theater, Hyerang asks Eunjae, “Did you like the show?”
“I thought,” Eunjae says. “I liked it okay, but.” She frowns again, a little line appearing in her forehead. What a serious child Hyerang has raised. Okgyeong taught her nothing of carelessness. “Eomma, was there no princess in the show because you were with me instead?”
A sharp pang, which Hyerang, with growing practice, ignores. She smiles at her daughter. “Did you want to see a princess?”
“I mean,” says Eunjae, sounding concerned. “I thought a show is supposed to have a princess.” And then, more concerned yet, tugging on her mother’s hand: “But I still liked it okay. I would still like to go see more shows with eomma, please, even if there is no princess.”
“Of course, Eunjae,” says Hyerang. “Now we’re back in Seoul, we’ll see lots more shows.”
The next day, she invites Park Chorok out to lunch with her.
Chorok spends the first ten minutes of their lunch shoving food into her face. Only after she’s eaten her fill of expensive beef does she draw a deep breath, sit up straight and announce, “Just so you know, Hyerang-seonbaenim – just so you know -- I know what you did to Jeongnyeon!”
Hyerang arches her eyebrows and smiles. “And so? The whole troupe knows what you did to Hong Jooran when she broke her arm. What do you want to say to me about it?”
Chorok turns beet red. “Okay, well, I just – respectfully, I just meant that if you wanted me to help you sabotage Jeongnyeon again, I won’t. I absolutely won’t. Respectfully.”
“Is that really why you think I asked you here?” says Hyerang, genuinely more fascinated than offended. “And if that’s so, and you’re so adamant, then my goodness, why did you come?”
“Of course I came!” Chorok stares at her, open-mouthed, face round, eyes round. “You’re Seo Hyerang! You’re the princess of Maeran!”
It’s nothing new, the way Chorok looks at her. All the trainees have always looked at her more or less that way. Before this past year – before Jeongnyeon, before Okgyeong – she hardly even saw it anymore. Either they found their suitable place beneath her in the chorus, or they got good enough to look at her as a challenge rather than an idol, and then she made sure they left.
It’s remarkable, the way that dime-a-dozen expression of hero-worship on Chorok’s face is registering to her now like something that actually matters. Oysters in the city, rather than oysters by the seaside. My, how her life’s changed from what it used to be!
She folds her hands in front of her, and says, precisely, “I’m not Maeran’s princess anymore. You are. Or rather, you should be.”
“Oh,” says Chorok, and settles back in her seat, in a kind of glum relaxation. “Oh, that’s why you wanted to talk to me.” She sighs, and shakes her head, with a world-weariness that’s profoundly absurd in a well-fed seventeen-year-old. “I’m disappointing you. Well, I know, all right? I’m disappointing myself too, but it’s not my fault!”
“Of course it’s your fault,” says Hyerang.
Chorok sits up straighter, chin jutting out. “Excuse me! No it’s not! It’s the parts --”
“If the director and Doaeng aren’t choosing shows with a strong female lead,” says Hyerang, sharply, “it’s because they don’t feel there’s a strong enough female lead. You can’t simply sit around and wait for parts to fall into your lap. You have to be so compelling that it’s impossible for them not to feature you.”
“But Jeongnyeon and Yeongseo --”
Hyerang flicks her fingers, dismissively. “The male lead will always have louder fans. They’re fantasy objects, that’s simply the nature of gukgeuk.”
“I know that! It’s not --”
“As the female lead, you have to become their other half. If they never say one star’s name without the other, that’s how you see success.”
(Okgyeong and Hyerang, Hyerang and Okgyeong. It works perfectly, until one star decides to sail out of the firmament.)
“It’s not that!” says Chorok, irritated. “I chose to focus on female lead roles! I’m not afraid to stand up against Jeongnyeon and Yeongseo! But they have each other to compete against, you know? So they’re always challenging each other, and getting better all the time, and the audition is always a big deal, and people come to see it and everything. And for the female lead it’s just, oh, well, Chorok will do it, so nobody cares! And I never improve!” She scowls, lower lip jutting out. “You know, when Jooran left, Jeongnyeon and Yeongsoo both acted like it was the absolute end of the world, but what does it matter to them? They haven’t lost anything! They still have a fantastic female lead! I’m the person who’s suffering the most, actually!”
“Forgive me for reminding you of this twice in one conversation,” says Hyerang, “but again, as I recall, you did break that girl’s arm.”
“I was young then,” says Chorok, morosely. “I didn’t understand. To reach my full potential, I need a rival.”
Hyerang opens her mouth to say that she never tolerated a rival and she reached her potential perfectly well. Then she shuts it again. She tilts her head, studying Chorok, feeling again a strange kind of fascination. When Park Chorok arrived at Maeran, Hyerang had mentally categorized her as a born comic side character and paid her no more attention. It’s rather remarkable that she’s gotten so far. But clearly Chorok has always had the conviction that she would get so far, and Hyerang knows that conviction is half the battle. That’s what always held Doaeng back. It’s not just that nobody else thought Doaeng could beat Okgyeong; it’s that Doaeng never did either.
This whole business of needing someone to compete against has never made any sense to Hyerang, not when Okgyeong said it back then and not when Chorok says it now. Still: Maeran does need a female lead who can hold her own. It’s not a surprise that Doaeng doesn’t see it. Doaeng’s never once tried a female role, and she doesn’t understand.
She leans back in her seat. “Jooran,” she says, sweetly, “was quite good.”
“Not good enough that you bothered to sabotage her voice,” says Chorok, and then covers her mouth, looking shocked at herself.
Hyerang can’t help it: she laughs. Whatever else one might say about Park Chorok, she’s the most entertainment Hyerang has had in weeks. “It’s true. I didn’t worry about either one of you.” In an ordinary year, she might have turned some attention to Hong Jooran. She might have taken a little effort to push the fledgling out of the nest, into the welcoming arms of a worse gukgeuk company where she wouldn’t be any kind of threat. But this had not been an ordinary year. “Still -- if she came back tomorrow, you might lose to her right away and find yourself back in supporting roles. Is that what you want?”
Chorok lifts her chin even higher. She looks like a determined frog. “I’m not afraid.”
On stage she’s beautiful. Hyerang has seen her. She acts like she’s beautiful, and makes you believe it. There is potential here. “Very well,” Hyerang says, abruptly making her decision, and raises her hand for a waiter to bring the check.
“Very well what?”
“I’ll get you Hong Jooran back,” says Hyerang. “Hopefully you don’t regret it.” She rises, and includes her head graciously to Chorok. “My daughter and I will be watching to see you improve.”
“Seonbaenim – wait – what?” says Chorok, but Hyerang is already paying out the bill, with graceful fingers, and walking out the door.
*
Hong Jooran’s wedding is scheduled for next month, which doesn’t leave very much time. That suits Hyerang perfectly well. If she’s under a deadline, then she can’t spend long mornings lying under the covers, putting everything off. First, she reaches out to her contacts in the newspapers – she still has one or two who haven’t thrown her under a bus, and are happy to provide some dirt on a wealthy businessman who’s bought himself a young bride-to-be. Then she composes a message for Jooran’s future mother-in-law.
Hyerang considers this letter rather a masterwork. She speaks eloquently of her close relationship with Jooran when she was an up-and-coming trainee at Maeran. She references her own fame, casually and disparagingly, and drops the names of a few acquaintances that she thinks might be guests at the wedding. Hyerang does of course actually think any of these people will be guests at this wedding -- Jooran’s in-laws-to-be are certainly not important enough for that – but imagine if they could be!
And then she offers to lend her voice – she, the famous Seo Hyerang, now formally retired from public life – to sing at the event, as a wedding gift to her young friend.
This is the biggest lie of all, the worm with which to bait the trap. Sing pretty songs at a social climber’s wedding? After singing opposite Moon Okgyeong for fifteen years? Hyerang would simply die first. She would climb into the tub and slit her wrists, like Okgyeong, rather than let anyone she’d ever known see her selling herself and her voice this way. How ironic, really, that Jooran’s respectable in-laws think gukgeuk inappropriate for their prospective daughter-in-law. How opposite to everything that’s really degrading, really shameful.
Whatever Jooran’s future family thinks of gukgeuk, fame opens every door. The worm wriggles temptingly; the bird eats it. Jooran’s mother-in-law is delighted for Hyerang to come to her house, and talk about the wedding, and what she might sing there.
For an interminable half hour, Hyerang makes light conversation with the future mother-in-law, while Jooran stares at her with huge tragic eyes. Finally, Hyerang manages to send the mother-in-law off to prepare more tea – the famous Seo Hyerang is, of course, very exacting about her specifications for tea – and leave her alone with Jooran in the garden.
She opens her mouth, but Jooran gets there first. With stumbling determination, she demands, “Why did you tell all those lies in your letter? You -- you can’t really be planning to sing at my wedding.”
“Of course not,” says Hyerang. “Don’t be absurd. If you have a wedding, I wouldn’t go near it with a ten-foot pole.”
“I’m going to have a wedding,” says Jooran. Her voice is shaking. She looks down at her teacup, and repeats, quietly: “I’m going to have a wedding. It’s already decided.”
“You know,” says Hyerang, “that your sister’s treatment has already been paid for, don’t you? And not by your intended, either.” She watches Jooran sharply, as Jooran jerks her gaze up, wide-eyed, to meet Hyerang’s. “Or did your mother not tell you that?”
“I – no,” says Jooran. “I didn’t know.” Her eyes drop again down to her hands, fingers folded together around her knee. “I got Jeongnyeon’s letter, saying that Yeongseo was willing to use her inheritance – but I told them not to. I told them it would be a waste for Yeongseo to use her inheritance that way, when my, my, my husband --”
“Well, it seems the two little princes couldn’t be stopped from playing hero.” She can almost keep the bitterness entirely out of her voice, as she adds, “It must be nice to be so loved.”
Jooran’s eyes lift up again. She looks almost terrified. “I told them I wasn’t coming back!”
Hyerang catches Jooran’s gaze, and holds it. “Poor little Hong Jooran,” she says, softly. “Why are you so afraid? Is it because of the way that your heart beats on stage, when one of your little princes takes you in her arms? Are you afraid, maybe, of what might happen after that? Are you ashamed to want it?” She can see Jooran’s pulse fluttering a panicked rhythm on the side of her neck. She takes a sip of her stone-cold tea, not dropping her eyes from Jooran’s, and then, slowly, smiles. “Because, you know, it’s not frightening. Really, it isn’t. And it’s far less shameful than selling yourself into safety, and squandering your talent out of fear.”
Jooran mumbles something.
“Excuse me?” says Hyerang.
“Of course I’m afraid,” says Jooran, her face and voice suddenly clear. “I said, of course I’m afraid. This, this kind of – Hyerang-nim, didn’t it ruin you?”
The smile drops off Hyerang’s face. She hasn’t expected such a blow from soft little Hong Jooran, of all people, and she’s not guarded against it. She sets her teacup carefully down, and then says, “How do you think it ruined me?”
“I know you loved Moon Okgyeong more than anything,” says Jooran. “More than your daughter, more than the troupe, more than – even more than your own talent, I think. Didn’t you? And that made you --”
“Made me what?” says Hyerang, brightly, when Jooran doesn’t continue.
“Well -- obsessive,” says Jooran. “And – cruel.”
Hyerang finds another smile from somewhere, brittle and cold, and plasters it on. “Plenty of girls, I assure you,” she says, with precision, “manage to shove their fingers inside each other and remain the silly, smiling, selfless, self-centered fools they always were.” Jooran’s face turns jujube red. Hyerang goes on, “I imagine that you and your little princes back at Maeran will be just the same, once you get your hands on each other. How arrogant you are, Hong Jooran! Do you really think that you could compare yourself to me? So I ruined myself --” She stops, hearing the words hang stark in the air, and then pushes herself to go on. “So I ruined myself for Moon Okgyeong. So what? You’re about to ruin yourself for nothing. Because you’re afraid of being like me? You’re nothing like me. You’re a child, you’re afraid like a child.”
Though, even as she says it, she hears Doaeng’s voice, flat and accusing: I understand that you were afraid.
Jooran is staring at her, mouth a little open. Hyerang, outburst over, remembers belatedly that she is meant to be luring Jooran back to Maeran, not pushing her away. It’s a new role for her, and she doesn’t have much time to do it in, either. She sighs and says, irritably, “Well, don’t think about me, think about our virtuous Miss Doaeng. Is she ruined?”
Jooran’s eyes go wide. “Doaeng-sunbaenim is --?”
Hyerang scoffs. “Do you think she goes about looking like that by accident?”
Jooran is looking like a jujube again. She says, “Well, I – well, but --” and then visibly rallies herself. “Well, but -- not to be rude --”
“Oh,” says Hyerang, “we’re well past rude.
“-- but why do you have any interest in what I do, anyway? You went to a lot of effort to come here, for me. I don’t understand why.”
“I’m not here for you in the least,” says Hyerang. “I’m here for Maeran. And,” she adds, conscientiously, “for Park Chorok.”
“For Chorok?” says Jooran, baffled, and then scrambles hastily to her feet as the garden door starts to creak open, a large tray wobbling round the edge of it. “Eomeonim! Let me help, please --”
Hyerang, of course, does not stand up or move to help. Nonetheless, the tea finally arrives, and she endures another excruciating fifteen minutes of conversation before begging her leave. As she stands, she looks at Jooran. “You’ll think about what I said.”
Jooran hesitates for a long moment, then, finally, nods.
3. The Throne
Eunjae likes Jooran’s portrayal of Queen Inhyeon. The skirts she wears are very big and sparkly and Eunjae approves very much. Hyerang smiles and agrees, though inwardly she thinks Jooran is going a little overboard with the tragic eyes again, and the performance is in danger of feeling one-note. Jooran will have to push herself a little if she wants to defend against Chorok, whose portrayal of the villainous Lady Jang is certainly the best thing that Hyerang’s seen her do. There aren’t many gukgeuk shows that give their female villains more to do than the male villain. Doaeng, thinks Hyerang, has made an interesting choice at last. Maybe she’s underestimated her talent as a director.
The show has a successful run. Hyerang and Eunjae go to see it several times. It’s interesting to see how Jooran and Chorok evolve their interpretations over the run of the show, and Eunjae never tires of the sparkle and the spectacle. Then it closes. The morning after the last night, Hyerang wakes up with a familiar feeling of emptiness – which is, frankly, absurd. It’s not like she was performing. She was barely even involved. Still, without the anchor of performance tickets, it’s harder to track the hours passing. When she takes Eunjae out for a walk, the makgeolli vendors catch her eye, and she pulls Eunjae along faster, tugging too hard and too quick on her daughter’s small hand. She can’t be like this again. She can’t.
But when they get back to the house, Hyerang finds that someone has left a note at her door.
Seo Hyerang,
Please, if you have time, come see me at the house.
Director Kang Sobok
“The house?” says Hyerang, out loud, and laughs. “Whose house? It’s my house!” She crumples the note up in her hand, and throws it in the trash.
But it is, after all, something to do, and she’s curious. So the next day, she puts on her new green dress suit – the one she’d bought herself the first time she went out with Eunjae after she threw out all the liquor in the house, the day she’d told Eunjae to call her ‘mother’ – and hires a taxi to drop her, like a guest, at her house. Her own house, where she’s fairly sure she’ll never live again.
In the months since she’s been there, it’s changed a lot. There’s washing lines all over the beautiful exterior, with Maeran practice uniforms flapping inelegantly in the breeze. One of the gardens has been paved over and turned into a practice ground where two girls are running through a series of staff exercises. Both of them stop to stare at Hyerang as she walks by.
Hyerang ignores them magnificently, as she ignores the girl sweeping the front steps, and the girl weeding the ornamental flowers by the door – though she likes these girls better; Moon Okgyeong had run through staff drills in the garden sometimes too, but she had never weeded, or swept.
Of course it’s that girl Jeongnyeon who opens the door.
Hyerang feels a spike of panic. She’s grateful for her spiked heels, which make it easy to look down her nose. “I understand,” she says, haughtily, “that the director wanted to see me.”
Jeongnyeon stares at her for a moment, then jumps and shakes her head, and steps back to let Hyerang through. “Please – come on,” she says, in that soft, husky voice – the voice that Hyerang ruined, although admittedly the student fans don’t seem to find it a drawback. “I’ll tell the director.”
Hyerang stalks inside, folds her arms, and waits. Jeongnyeon turns to go up the stairs, then hesitates and turns back.
Whatever it is, Hyerang wants to get it over with. “What is it?” she snaps.
“I just wanted to say – thank you,” says Jeongnyeon. “For Jooran.” Shockingly, she gives Hyerang an awkward but heartfelt bow. Then she smiles at her -- one of those huge beaming besotted country-idiot grins that Hyerang has always found unbelievably annoying -- and then she turns around and flies up the stairs, running so fast that Hyerang is frankly amazed she doesn’t slip and fall and kill herself.
“Well!” says Hyerang, left behind alone in her own anteroom, and coughs out a startled, scornful little laugh. “Well! The infants are enjoying themselves!” How nice to be an ingenue, in the first flush of young love. Little Hong Jooran must really have gotten over herself spectacularly, for Jeongnyeon to thank Hyerang about it, of all people – for Jyeongnyeon, it seems, to have forgiven --
“They’re working hard,” says Doaeng, interrupting her thoughts. “The infants, I mean. Hyerang, will you follow me?”
She brings Hyerang to the room that had once been Moon Okgyeong’s private room – not her bedroom, but her office, where she answered what little correspondence she cared to answer, and read all the modern scripts she’d been so desperate for Maeran to stage. Hyerang’s shoulders stiffen as she enters, but all of Okgyeong’s foreign art is gone from the room now, and the director sits at her own familiar desk, clearly brought over from the Maeran complex.
Park Sobok regards Hyerang steadily as she walks in. Her voice is soft, as she says, “Thank you for answering my note.”
“You could have come to see me, if you wanted,” says Hyerang, “rather than forcing me to come here.”
“I wanted to give you the choice.” Park Sobok folds her hands on the desk. “But since you came, and since you’re here – Seo Hyerang, I’m asking you to take a role with us.”
Hyerang stares at her. “What?” she says. She hears her voice climbing higher, shriller -- a register, incidentally, that Yoon Jeongnyeon will never be able to reach again. “Is this a joke? You made it very clear, director --”
“I did,” says the director, quietly. “And I’ll admit, even when Doaeng asked me, I was hesitant. But once Jooran returned to us --” She takes in a deep breath, and then releases it, in a long, slow sigh. “We’re a different troupe now. I think – I hope – that perhaps you’re also a different actress.”
“And the role,” says Doaeng, cutting in, “is a different role.” Hyerang jerks her head over to look at Doaeng, leaning back against the wall with her arms folded. She looks every inch the confident male lead: ironic, given that she’s now moved on from playing roles altogether. “We’ve been offered a script that’s a new retelling of the story of Queen Seondeok. It strongly emphasizes the role of Seondeok’s political enemy – Lady Mishil.”
“Ah,” says Hyerang. “You want me to play the old hag.”
“I want you to play the villain,” says Doaeng. “Really, it’s quite fun.” She smiles, sudden and sharp. “Honestly, I’ve been thinking it’s a pity that you never had the chance before.”
Hyerang looks away from the unmistakable challenge in Doaeng’s eyes, trying to compose herself. “And who, hypothetically, would I be partnered with?”
The director says, “As Queen Seondeok? We don’t know yet. We’re going to have Jooran and Chorok audition.”
“I meant the male villain.”
“There’s no male villain in this show,” says Doaeng. “Seondeok has her two male leads, but Mishil is the main antagonist. She has to carry it completely, by herself. That’s why I want you.” She leans forward. “You’re a draw, Hyerang. The audience will come to see you do this. If this show is a success, it will give us the kind of chance we haven’t had since before the joint performance. I think we can do it. We can get back on our level.”
Hyerang’s throat is dry. “Maeran can’t afford my salary anymore.”
Doaeng and her aunt exchange glances. Then Doaeng says, deliberately, “If you want to use that as an excuse, then fine. I’ll know your answer. We’ll try something else.”
Hyerang’s lips thin. “Doaeng, if you’re trying to dare me into doing this against my financial interest, then you should know I think that’s really very childish --”
Doaeng looks amused. “Hyerang,” she says, “you’re letting us use your entire house, for free, instead of selling it for the absurd sum it’s worth.”
“And you told me,” Hyerang flashes back, “that my talent was worth more than the house.”
“All right – so let’s say I am daring you. Do you want to do it, or not?”
Hyerang closes her eyes, and composes her face. She tries to imagine being on stage without Okgyeong, and finds it nearly impossible. Her heart is beating panicked in her chest. Doaeng is right. She’s afraid. She’s terrified.
But as long as she’s scared, she’s awake. She’s not lying in bed, as the undifferentiated hours pass, and dark turns to light turns to dark.
“Not everyone is Yoon Jeongnyeon,” she says. “Not everyone can come back from being ruined.”
“Maybe not,” says Doaeng. Her voice is lightly mocking, with something that might almost be affection. “But you’re the best that ever was. Aren’t you?”
Hyerang opens her eyes again. She looks at Doaeng, and the director.
To succeed, you have to believe it.
She takes a breath. She sets her shoulders; she lifts her chin; she smiles. Gracious dignity, to go with the pose: always, the proud princess. If she says yes – when she says yes – she’ll be doing them a favor, and they’d better know it.
“Well, Doaeng, that’s true,” she says. “I am.”