The Queen of Tears by Chris Mckinney Page B

canoe. “This was my grandfather’s table, and this is the exact spot where his fingernail constantly grazed the surface. He was a nervous man but also a great aristocrat. Many big decisions were made at this table. Most importantly, he decided that our family would not resist the Japanese occupation.”
    Soong thought about the occupation. It was brutal on many Koreans. The Japanese were perhaps the cruelest people in the world at the time of the occupation. But she’d also learned that perhaps those who were the most cruel were the Koreans who acted with the insurgents. She looked at the groove on the table and guessed then that the Park family had collaborated with the Japanese. Only a man lacking a clear conscience could have scratched at a solid surface so hard. “I did not know,” she said.
    “My father was enraged. He went against my grandfather’s wishes. He called him a traitor at this very table. When I was old enough to make my own decision, I opted to side with my grandfather. Because I had made it into the university in Tokyo, and I did not want to forgo my future by chasing some romantic dream my father had of Korean independence.”
    Dong Jin sipped on his tea. “Back then it was almost impossible for a Korean to get to Tokyo for studies. I worked very hard for it. So my father was killed, my grandfather managed to hold on to some money, and I left Tokyo with a degree in philosophy.”
    Soong Nan sipped her tea. “And this is why you’re concentrating on making as many historical dramas as you can? To somehow make up for it?”
    “Now it’s my turn to scratch the table.”
    Soong grabbed his scratching hand and kissed it. “Maybe we should take a break.”
    Dong Jin pulled his hand away. “I can’t.”
    “I’m pregnant again.”
    “You can break.”
    “Not without you. I’ll do one more.”
    Dong Jin stood up. “I just need one good idea.”
    Soong Nan looked into her cup of tea. Then she looked out in the garden at the green mountain behind the stone wall. It was so unlike the dusty mountains of North Korea. She thought about her husband’s guilt about his father. The wind blew in her face. The wind. It was an ancient wind, the same wind the old shamans recognized as the breath of god. The shamans were here before Confucianism and Buddhism were imported from China. It often amazed Soong how old Korea was. Five thousand years. When the wind disappeared, a thought was left in her mind. It was as if the ancient wind brought a seed for her then left. “Maybe you should not look so far back in history,” she said.
    Dong Jin turned around. “What do you mean?”
    “Maybe a movie about the Japanese occupation.”
    “And?”
    “Maybe it should be a movie about a man who defies his family to fight against the Japanese. Maybe this man can have a young wife who begs him not to go. Maybe he dies in her arms.”
    Dong Jin pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket and lit it. Then he began laughing uncontrollably. He laughed so hard, tears welled in his eyes. They poured down his face in streams, his eyes were like mountains filled with rainwater. “Noon Mul Ui Yau Wang,” he said. My Queen of Tears.
    -3-
    The movie took two months to make. By the time they were finished, Soong Nan was six months pregnant. They wrote the pregnancy into to script to add even more to the melodrama. She and Dong Jin worried that the work would have a bad effect on the pregnancy, but it seemed fine. Soong craved grapes again, but because it was winter, they were not in season. She did not bother to try and get them imported because she was too busy. She sometimes felt guilty that she was not providing her second child with the nourishment that she had provided for her first. But she knew her husband needed this movie to be great.
    When they went to the premiere in Seoul, Soong Nan looked at the poster. It was perhaps her greatest. She was holding onto the beige army shirt of her movie husband. Her hands held the material