The Calligrapher's Daughter (29 page)

When the actual sun rose well above the bamboo, I greeted Father and sat with him to wait for Calvin Cho. He peered over his book and said sporadically, “Too much red on your cheeks … A decent man … We shall see.” He cleared his throat often in his deep digestive way.

After Mr. Cho had spent a respectable ten minutes saying hello to my parents, Mother nudged us to the gardens. I carried a bundle packed with a padded jar of precious hot tea, hand towels, a stacked
bento
box carrying tiny dumplings, steamed balls of fish, rice rolled in seaweed and a single perfect persimmon with a bamboo knife. That one fruit had probably cost as much as everything else. Of course my mother knew that I would give it entirely to him. Embarrassed by the luxurious food, I wondered what had been sacrificed.

By the time the house was out of sight, we’d discussed the weather and much of the surrounding flora. He did most of the talking, which made it easy for me to conceal my anxiety. I wondered if talkativeness was his
antidote to nervousness. The sky shone translucent blue, dotted with high, dry clouds, and the air was balmy and fragrant with occasional perfect breezes. His comments about the gardens were followed by a stiff silence. It seemed to be my turn to say something, but all I could think about was how tangled and knotted my tongue felt. I remembered he was going to America, and asked, “How many cities will you—” at the same time he said, “What do you think about—,” and our laughter released some of our formality and discomfort.

“You first,” he said, mirth in his eyes.

“How many cities in America will you see?”

“In three years of study, perhaps I’ll see ten. I’m very eager to visit New York City. Perhaps someday you’d like to visit New York?”

“Oh, yes!” I immediately blushed and lowered my head to diminish my outburst.

“Why, perhaps one day you will,” he said easily. “I’ll write and tell you about what I see and learn. Then you can decide for yourself if you’ll come. May I do that?”

“Yes, thank you.” My heart jumped inexplicably against my ribs. Was it the idea of foreign travel or something else that made me feel as if I’d swallowed a bucket of air? “Three years abroad! Won’t your family miss you?” I refused to guess what his appraising look sought, and gripped the picnic bundle to arrest a strange tingling in my fingers.

“I’ve been at school for many years, and at this point, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be very different. Much depends on the work I can find during my studies. But yes, I will miss them terribly. My mother’s blood is as weak as my father’s is strong. And,” he said obliquely, “I have just met your family. What a time to be going to America!”

I understood, and felt again the thud behind my ribs. Did he walk a little closer to me? Yes. I was sure that he did.

We approached a low granite bench at the edge of our pond circled with willows. Dotted with lily pads and lotus buds, the water smelled green and earthy, the shaded grove active with dancing light and flitting insects. I untied and spread the carrying cloth on the cool stone seat, arranged the red lacquer bento box and unstoppered the tea. “Please sit and eat a little.” I poured tea into the two cups nested under the padded jar, filling mine halfway.

“Thank you. How pleasant it is here!” His voice shook a tiny bit from nerves, which only made me more nervous. A silence followed. It was too soon to start serving lunch. I tried to think of something natural to say and almost asked if he’d had gardens like these to play in as a child, but remembered at the last minute that his family were commoners.

“I—I often did my schoolwork here when I was young,” I said at last, uncomfortably stuck between the awkward pause and the impropriety of talking about myself.

“I can see why.” He sipped tea—somewhat noisily—and seemed to come to a decision. “Well, then. It’s the trees. These trees remind me of a willow we had in the schoolyard when I was a boy.” He smiled. “I’m afraid I was quite a lazy boy.”

Relieved, I sensed a story coming and sat receptively.

“In sixth grade, there was a difficult class where we had to recite the most complex Chinese letter writing—very hard to comprehend. The teacher insisted we memorize the readings. He said those who doubted the accuracy of their memory should bring three sticks for punishment in the event they failed to recite properly.”

“Cruel,” I murmured, thinking I’d never struck a single student in my charge. I opened the bento boxes and spread the linen towels, charmed to see they were from the set decorated with Seoul’s gates that I had crafted with Imo. Though many years had passed since those days, sitting beside this man I felt as naive as I was that afternoon with the princess and the young Japanese guard. I fingered the golden-brown embroidered images, and unexpected sadness tightened my throat for the brief yet treasured friendship and a past that could never be revisited. The willow tendrils sighed, and I focused on listening to Mr. Cho.

“Not at all. That was the style at the time,” he was saying. “Instead of memorizing the readings, I went to the schoolyard and found dead willow branches, like these, and peeled off the bark so they’d break at the slightest touch. In class, instead of reciting, I offered these branches to the teacher. As expected, he used them to whip me. But each time they broke as soon as they touched me, and I received three whippings to no ill effect!”

I laughed. “You were a clever boy.”

“A clever, lazy boy, I’m afraid.”

“And now?” I dared.

“I’ve found God.”

Thinking I should have anticipated this sort of answer from a future preacher, I nodded and offered him a lunch box. After saying a simple grace, Mr. Cho ate so fast that I thought he must’ve been starved. “What a feast,” he said between mouthfuls. “Please excuse me. I know I eat quickly, but this is superb.”

I picked up my box and noticed that he’d eaten all of his whitefish. “Why, you must have more,” I said, dividing my food to give him half, and in my haste I nearly thrust my box onto his lap. A miniature dumpling popped out and fell on his lap towel. I sat back as if Father had cried out, “Clumsy oaf!” but Mr. Cho said “Aha!” He picked up the dumpling with his chopsticks, tossed it in the air and swallowed it in a single chew. Both shocked that he’d play with food and amazed that he caught it between his teeth, I laughed, covering my mouth, and noticed, as he laughed too, the handsome line of his Adam’s apple jumping like a fish.

“Excuse me, have some more,” I said, laughing, head sideways, mouth covered.

“Miss Han, what a wonderful lunch!”

The tea released its flowery steam, the scent in harmony with the willowy setting. He sighed, finished eating and thanked me again. I was thinking that I hadn’t laughed like that since being with Imo, and before the end, with the princess. Taking tiny bites of dumpling and rice, and feeling oddly protective of what remained in my lunch box, I wondered if it was his nature to always devour food so robustly. With this thought came a strong sense of his masculinity, and my body flushed from neck to knee.

“Please excuse me and let me explain myself a little,” he said. “When I was young, there were years when there was no food. My mother taught me how to eat the mudworm. Do you know what it is?”

I shook my head.

“This is a small worm, just one or two centimeters long. It lives in the silt of riverbeds and streams. In such places there are no fish, not even scorpions, but the mudworm is a strong survivor.”

He sounded like he was sermonizing, but I also acknowledged that he told a good story. I poured him the remainder of the tea and put my last rice roll in his box.

“At the stream my mother and I—at the time I was just a little boy, perhaps four—she showed me how to scoop bowlfuls of the mud and silt. We put five shallow scoops into one large bucket filled with clear water from the stream. It was quite hot out and I remember enjoying wading in the mud. After a while, when I looked in the bucket, there were hundreds of tiny brown mudworms in the clean top of the water, spitting mud out with each wiggle when they swam.”

“
Aiu
!” I said, horrified.

“I presume you don’t much like snakes and worms.” He swallowed his tea as quickly as he’d eaten his—and my—lunch.

“Hundreds together? No.” My back thrilled with a small terror. “Excuse me for being rude. I’m sorry, go on.”

“Not rude at all. An honest reaction.” He smiled and my back thrilled in a different way. I listened to his story and focused on skinning the persimmon, its orange flesh firm within my palm, the thin peels delicately curling around and tickling my fingertips, the rare bitter-flower smell scandalously tempting me to lick my juice-anointed fingers, which of course I resisted doing. I listened to Mr. Cho.

“My mother and I scooped the top mudworms and put them in another bucket of clean water, and they would again spit out their mud as they swam around. We changed the water six times until the worms were almost white, and then we strained them and spread them on a mat to dry in the sun. My mother fried them and we ate them with barley. They tasted of the stream and gave us protein. Such an insignificant creature that lives in the beds of streams, yet God gives vital purpose to each thing, no matter if it’s as lowly as the mudworms who suffered for the mother and her family who survived starvation because of them.”

“Amen,” I said, struck by his story and the degree of poverty he’d known. Remembering the earlier cue about his religiosity, I added, “You have made it a gift from God.”

“That’s why I enjoy eating so much!”

I thought of the mudworms’ suffering, as he put it, and it brought to mind Teacher Yee, March First, my father’s torture and West Gate Prison. It seemed that people were scooped from their lives as indiscriminately as those worms. I wondered aloud, “But is all suffering to be a gift from God?”

I heard appreciation of my question in his tone. “Think of how many stories in the Bible tell how the grace of God comes as a result of suffering. Think of Christ’s example.”

I found this answer to be too glib and stole another glance at his expression. He seemed relaxed, and his eyes searched the far edge of the pond as if open to any answer the day might offer. I struggled a moment with the guard of proper behavior at my lips, but struck it down, weak as it was, and asked, “But why must the cost of grace be human suffering?”

I felt his appraising look and refused to accept the prick of shame that needled as a result of my boldness.

He spoke somewhat perfunctorily about evil and not judging God, then his words trailed into contemplation. I was glad he grew quiet because this response, again, seemed too easy, like the obvious answer to a math problem. I wondered if pastors and their wives had these kinds of discussions, but couldn’t go further with this thought that hinted being this future pastor’s wife was a wish that lay like a fold in my desires, waiting to be exposed.

Whirring insects and the lissome willows swishing in the breeze calmed me, and as I waited for him to say more, I understood, as my mother had predicted, that it was his relaxed thoughtfulness that also gave me calm.

“Perhaps
cost
isn’t the right word,” said Mr. Cho, referring to my original question. “Human suffering can be endured by having grace. We are lifted from suffering by God’s gift of grace. Among the Protestants there are different viewpoints about man’s suffering and the existence of evil, and how we find redemption from it, or the degree to which we can overcome our flawed humanity.”

I was impressed with his intellectualism and seriousness, but even more, I was amazed and pleased that he would engage me in this type of conversation. “Do you mean Original Sin?”

“Yes. My namesake, John Calvin, believed our flaws were predetermined, that we are miserable beings, doomed to suffering; that we are degradations of God’s gift of life, and we should be overwhelmed with shame because of our basic human failure.”

I couldn’t help but react. “That’s so hopeless!” and I wondered why he was named after this man.

He raised a finger. “Until we find salvation.”

“Of course,” I said, embarrassed, sure that I’d exposed my ignorance and agnosticism.

“God gave us Christ as a human example of the divine, and intelligence to examine and accept our core of human failure, for only then can we understand that he was merciful to have let us continue to exist. In this way, we can truly appreciate God’s gift of his son.”

I remembered, as a child, that Mother had said the Chinese family who helped Father on March First were good Christians even if they were Buddhist. I thought of Teacher Yee, who I believed was in heaven despite the church’s insistence that suicides were denied this glory. The question that had formed those many years ago still remained: was this church doctrine or true religion? Was it all just theory to be batted about in study and debate, like the classics that had been interpreted and reinterpreted for centuries upon centuries, only to now have as much meaning as ink washed from paper? It was impossible to discuss this question with Mr. Cho on our first outing. Knowing that my mother would be aghast if she were to hear our conversation, I tried to lighten the subject, “Is this why you’re named Calvin? Did you choose it?”

“No!” He laughed. “My teacher and mentor Dr. Sherwood suggested it because I enjoy discourse and theory. He expected me to become a leader in theology. He has far too much confidence in me, I’m afraid.”

Absorbed in our talk, I spoke spontaneously, “I doubt that.”

“You flatter me, Miss Han.”

Then I blushed thoroughly, remembering that he was not only a man but a marriage prospect as well. My apology died on my lips as I was made wordless by his dazzlingly warm smile. I turned to fold an already folded towel and sliced the persimmon, which Mr. Cho proceeded to devour.

I began to pack the containers, fitting them together in the clever puzzle way of the Japanese, and was shocked when he handed me the lid and gathered the cups. Never before had I seen a man help at the table this way! Its oddness made the repugnancy resurface. “Here, I can do that. You’re distracting me with the cups.”