Waxing Moon Read online
Page 6
Mrs. Wang noticed a trace of a milky rice wine mustache above Jaya’s upper lip.
“My child, that’s out of my hands. I can’t force Mr. O to do what you would like him to do. By the way, your potatoes are sublime.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wang. Those potatoes go to Mr. O, along with the rice and corn and beans every year. We pay our share for their land. And here I am, sustaining their bloodline with my milk, sacrificing my own son. What on earth am I to do with a roll of silk anyway?” Jaya rolled her eyes.
“Sell the silk in the marketplace if you don’t want to save it for your future daughter-in-law,” Mrs. Wang advised her.
“Mrs. Wang, my husband’s in the field the whole day. I take food three times daily to the field for the farmers, carrying Mr. O’s daughter on my back, while my son takes his naps. When should I go to the marketplace to sell the silk? Who would buy the silk from me? People would think I had stolen it. And they would want a steal of a price! Last night, my husband and I were talking about how nice it would be if we got ourselves a patch of land, just enough to grow corn and potatoes. I would raise Mr. O’s daughter as my social superior.” Jaya’s red face was covered with beads of sweat. Now that she had spilled the truth, she felt worse, because she so badly wanted a piece of land, and Mrs. Wang didn’t seem interested in making her happy.
“She is your superior as long as you live on the property of the O family. About the land, as long as you live here and pay your dues, no one is taking it away from you. It is practically yours. Why does it matter to have your name written on a piece of paper? When you die, you don’t take the deed with you,” Mrs. Wang said weakly. She was also exhausted from the heat, and annoyed by the loud nonsense of the woman whose face was dripping sweat profusely. Most of all, she was hungry, still very hungry after three large potatoes. They were not that large, actually.
“Mrs. Wang, we are hard up these days. My mother-in-law, you know her, she’s gone crazy, and my sister-in-law doesn’t want to live with her any longer. She is hitting her mother sometimes, I hear. Anyway, to make a long story short, my mother-in-law might have to move in with us. When she moves in, she will be another baby to take care of, another mouth to feed. Of course, whom should I blame but myself? I was born with so few blessings. It’s all my fault,” Jaya said pathetically, inspecting Mrs. Wang with her apple seed eyes. But there was no reaction; actually, Mrs. Wang was dozing off. Jaya got up, leaving the infant on the floor, and brought out the jug of rice wine and poured some into Mrs. Wang’s bowl.
Mrs. Wang opened her eyes wide and sat up straight.
“His uncle doesn’t drink all that much. If I keep it in the kitchen, too much will go to my husband, who shouldn’t be drinking anyway. He’s got this really evil habit of drinking and then wailing afterward. I can’t stand it anymore,” she said, forcing a smile.
Rubbing her stomach, Mrs. Wang said, “One should coat the stomach before alcohol. Don’t you have a slab of fat or something?”
“Let me check. I think I have a little something here in the jar.” Jaya disappeared into the kitchen and came out with a piece of pork fat and a few raw quail eggs.
Mrs. Wang ate the quail eggs and gobbled up the pork fat. She said it was very well seasoned, the pork fat. She drank the rice wine and said that she felt like a little nap, if that wasn’t too much of an imposition. So the two women took a nap with their mouths open, the two babies in between them. Flies hovered about Mrs. Wang’s unappeasable mouth, sometimes landing on her face, but she slept like a corpse. The afternoon slowly passed, and then the baby boy woke up and whimpered.
Jaya got up, rubbing her eyes and wiping drool off the corners of her mouth. Her hair was matted. She offered her breast to her baby boy. Mrs. Wang snored rhythmically.
Dubak entered then, filthy and sweaty and tired. The wife pointed to Mrs. Wang with her chin, but he, showing no acknowledgment, went straight to the kitchen and came out. He looked about, moving his eyes quickly. His wife said, “What are you looking for?”
He took the jug, which normally contained rice wine. Only a few drops came out.
“There is a little left in the kitchen in the cupboard,” she said, lowering her voice.
He went back to the kitchen and didn’t come out for a while. The wife, leaving their son on the floor, followed him in and found her husband sitting by the clay stove and drinking.
“Don’t drink it all up. Your uncle’s coming,” Jaya pointed out.
The man pulled his wife close and tried to grab her by her thigh, but she shrilled and stiffened and pushed him away, grinning vulgarly.
“We have a guest,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “She is being difficult, though.”
Her husband fell into silence. She could see the concentration on his forehead. She didn’t like the sudden shift of interest from her plump thigh to something else in his head. He went to a meeting every night with some of the other peasants and talked until late about silly things. “All the aristocrats, can they be aristocrats on their own? No, only because we exist as peasants are they aristocrats. There is no such thing as noble blood. Under the skin, we are all the same. Without us sweating in the field, they would not survive. There would be no rice for them. We are not the leeches, living off of them, as they would have us believe: it’s they who live off of our lives.”
Those were the words frequently uttered, reported Jaya’s friend in the field when all the women got together to pluck the soybeans out of the pods. Her husband had hosted several of the meetings at their house.
Dubak gulped rice wine again and said, “I am going to Seoul to get a job.” He furrowed his forehead.
“Oh, do shut up,” Jaya snapped, snatching the jug out of his hand.
“Is this how you talk to your husband?” He went berserk, ready to throw something at his wife, except that he didn’t see anything nearby to throw.
“I thought we are all the same under the skin, husband. I shall go to the capital city to get a job if you don’t give me the credit I deserve. You should think about what would happen if I left you for the capital city!” she said and left the kitchen. Both babies were crying at the tops of their lungs.
“Heavens! Gods! What is the matter, my babies?” said Jaya theatrically. Her voice finally woke Mrs. Wang. She sat up and combed her hair with her fingers, feeling indifferent at finding herself at someone else’s place.
“I need to go and check on Chilpal’s wife. Her baby has breeched, and I need to turn it before it gets too late,” Mrs. Wang said, standing up and looking around to make certain she wasn’t forgetting anything.
“Mrs. Wang, please put in a word for us. My husband threatens to go to the capital city to look for a job,” the woman said forlornly, nursing both babies.
Mrs. Wang looked at her and the babies and wondered what Jaya was talking about. She hadn’t come out of her sleep completely yet. But she remembered why she had gone there in the first place.
“By the way, I want you to call the baby Mansong, Ten Thousand Pine Trees. Hopefully, with that name, she will live longer than her mother did,” Mrs. Wang said.
Dubak came out of the kitchen. He opened a hemp sack and proudly showed Mrs. Wang the fat corn he had brought from the field. “Look here. These are sweeter than sweet potatoes. Take a few, please.”
Mrs. Wang said, “Thank you very much, but I don’t eat corn. It gets stuck between my teeth and that drives me crazy.” And she left.
Without saying goodbye to Mrs. Wang, Jaya pouted and pried Mansong’s mouth open to release her swelling purple nipple. The surprised baby didn’t cry, but held her foot in her hand and gazed up at her wet nurse.
“I need to feed my son first,” Jaya said, as if threatening her.
A patch of dark clouds was approaching rapidly. Dubak looked up to the sky, stopping his work of pulling the husks an
d hairs from the corncobs. He had expected another scorching summer, so he couldn’t believe his eyes. A sudden gush of wind came, blowing away the pile of cornhusks and hairs. Large drops of rain hit the earth, and his wife rushed out to collect laundry from the clothesline. By the time she came in with a mountain of laundry, she was already wet on her shoulders. The rain possibly meant no uncle in the evening. This was the night she should sit with her husband and straighten out his thoughts on not wanting to farm and going to the capital city instead. These ideas only made him miserable. And if he left, the gods only knew when he would return!
10
Mistress Yee was in bed, delirious. The trip to the temple had drained her. Mirae sat near her mistress and fanned not her face but her feet: her mistress didn’t want to see Mirae’s nostrils. Mistress Yee moaned at intervals. Nani brought in a tray full of nourishments, including Mistress Yee’s favorites, candied lotus roots and poached pears in rice liqueur. But Mistress Yee waved the food away.
Mr. O, after seeing off an old friend, arrived at Mistress Yee’s quarters. He cleared his throat outside the door, and Mistress Yee began to moan more dramatically. Mirae sprang up to open the door.
“How is everything?” Mr. O inquired, looking about the room and at the tray of food.
Mirae just dropped her head, folding the fan she held.
“Leave us,” Mr. O said. He never wanted the maids to be around when he was with his wife. Mirae departed, leaving the tray of food, for she knew that her mistress might ask for food very soon. She didn’t want to be summoned again.
Mr. O waited until Mirae had closed the door behind her and scurried away before he sat near his wife.
“How is everything?” he asked again, taking a piece of snow white rice cake. His mind was involuntarily pondering upon the words of his friend from a neighboring village, who had said that the peasants were out of control, some of them demanding their share of the land. Mr. O’s friend, also a landowner, had called them ungrateful bastards. They had lived off of his land for generations but now what they wanted was to bring him down to shame. His friend was completely wrought up. Do any of my tenant peasants feel this way? No, impossible, Mr. O was convinced. His people would not want to see him bankrupt. That would mean their bankruptcy as well. His people weren’t that stupid. They were family people, responsible people who put rice on their tables at every mealtime.
Mr. O took a bite of white rice cake, and Mistress Yee moaned louder.
Mr. O put his hand on her buttock. “How is everything?” he inquired once more, collecting himself.
“Send a messenger to my family. Let them know I am ill. I would like to say goodbye to them before I go,” Mistress Yee said feebly, looking up at her husband sideways, who was still chewing on a piece of rice cake.
“Let me massage you,” Mr. O said. He began to knead her thigh. But his wife pushed his hands away, sobbing.
“My little lamb, sit up and I will feed you something. I heard you haven’t had dinner yet,” Mr. O said, as if talking to a child.
“No one cares about me around here.”
“The visitor had so much to say, and I just couldn’t get rid of him quickly. He is my childhood friend. He feels quite at home here. By the way, he sends his best regards to you,” he consoled her.
Mistress Yee just snorted and sat up and shot a fierce glance at her husband.
“Now, now, anger is the root of all miseries. Ease your mind,” Mr. O said softly. He was tired and wanted to lie down with his wife, who often faked illness but was as strong as a horse.
“You don’t understand. The head monk at the temple, he insulted me,” she said resolutely.
“What do you mean?” Mr. O asked.
“When I was done with my kowtows, I realized Mirae was no longer with me. I was so preoccupied I didn’t know she had left. She is such a busybody and pokes into everything. Anyhow, I went out to see where she was. And there she was, in front of Sari-tower, conversing with the head monk.” Mistress Yee hesitated a few moments. “I can’t tell you the rest, because if I did, you would stop the annual donation to the temple. And I don’t want that to happen,” she said in a saddened voice.
“Tell me, my dear. You can trust me.”
“Well, it’s obscene. Noble blood streams in your veins; you must not hear such talk.”
“But it concerns you. I must know it,” he urged with a strain in his voice.
Her eyes glared, reflecting the flame of the candle light on the low table. Mr. O felt that his wife was hiding something from him to protect him. He grabbed her small hand.
Slowly, quietly, she spoke, as if resigned, as if she were seeing the event once again: “The head monk was fumbling under Mirae’s shirt. I didn’t want to attract their attention because I was so ashamed to have witnessed such foul, abominable vice. I wanted to step back into the main hall so as to hide myself, but as I started walking backward, I fainted. I think the head monk picked me up and carried me because when I opened my eyes, I found myself lying on the floor in the main hall. The head monk was looking down on me, breathing hard. I was frightened, so I asked for Mirae. He assured me that I was in good hands. Mirae didn’t come for a while. I didn’t know where she was. I sat up, feeling sick. The head monk mentioned something about desire being one of the three poisons in life, obviously referring to his own contaminated mind, and perhaps he was pleading with me not to reveal any of the things I had seen. But you are so persistent. And I can’t lie, as you know. So there you have it, the truth. But I don’t want you to act upon it hastily. We all make mistakes, monk or not.”
Mr. O considered the whole confession gravely.
Many years before, his father had taken him to the temple when the head monk was eleven years old. The father wanted to show his son what the unusually talented boy could do with stones. The boy was hard at work chiseling a piece of granite without looking up at the visitors. He was in the process of turning it into a statue of Buddha. He had started at the waist, which was smooth and curvaceous to perfection. It wasn’t until he got older and married that Mr. O realized the sensual quality of the art. Mr. O’s father praised the incontestable skill of the obvious genius, The Little Monk, as he was called then. That was the last time Mr. O had visited the temple.
At his deathbed, his father had Mr. O promise that he would make the annual tribute to the temple. So the son honored the wish of his father, and he would until his own death.
Mr. O was sure that the head monk at the temple was the same person that he was thinking of. Now that he knew what had happened to his wife and maid, he didn’t quite know what to make of it. Once again he remembered the touch of the granite’s cool surface. The waist of Buddha himself. If he were to pick out the single most unforgettable moment of his life, it would be that time when he had touched the unfinished statue of Buddha.
Mistress Yee sat there, holding her breath, thinking that at any moment her husband would explode, determined to murder the head monk. Then she would have to plead, she would have to visit the temple again to advise the head monk how to escape the wrath of her husband. She would have to punish Mirae properly and teach her to behave and to be loyal to her mistress forever.
“How does the head monk look?” Mr. O asked.
“Do you think I look at other men directly in the face? I fainted! I was ill. I almost died at the temple. They didn’t serve me lunch when they knew well the distance I had to travel back! Can you just collect yourself and do something about it?” Mistress Yee said, baffled and irritated.
“What happened today is, if it’s true, intolerable. It’s an insult to me. And to my father,” he said thoughtfully.
“If it’s true?” Mistress Yee repeated. She knew very well that it was not the right moment to lose her temper. Her tale didn’t seem to have disturbed him, as she had hoped.
�
�I don’t mean it that way. I met that monk many years ago. My father revered him. He was the best sculptor alive. I saw part of his work when he was eleven. It was divine,” he reminisced. “Perhaps next time you should go to the temple with another maid. You need to teach your maid—what’s her name—proper behavior. If she could tempt a monk, she is unlimited in what she might do next,” Mr. O said with a benign smile.
“I am not going there ever again!” she wailed.
“That’s not a bad idea. As my father once said, one doesn’t need a temple to see Buddha. And one doesn’t need to see Buddha to learn what one already knows.” He sighed, thinking of his father.
“Then, may I ask why you encouraged me to go to the temple?” Mistress Yee asked haughtily.
“My father went to the temple frequently. I asked him the same question that you are asking now. He simply replied that there are other things you learn by doing things you already know. But I encouraged you to go because you wanted to go. When an expectant mother wants to go to the temple to pray, to celebrate the future event, to practice focusing her mind—whatever it was that you intended to do—no husband would advise her not to go,” he said, getting up slowly. “I am tired tonight. Mr. Chang drained me with his stories.” He walked over to the inner quarters where their bed was prepared.
Mistress Yee sat there, feeling miserable and defeated. The rain subsided; only a few drops fell from the roof onto a puddle every now and then. Tears welled up in her eyes. She thought of her mother’s words, Don’t ever give up on getting what you want. Life is a battle. But it’s all in your mind. If you don’t want to be trampled, you need to trample those who might trample you.
She kept telling herself that there was no reason to worry. And there really was no reason to worry. But another voice, loud and persistent, kept whispering into her mind’s ear.