The Calligrapher's Daughter (48 page)

AMONG THE SCORES OF LOSSES THAT HAD MADE HIM ILL FOR A YEAR, Han felt the privation of partitioning most frequently. The sole compensation was his wife sitting by him more frequently, always with some task in hand like the needlework she now held. He nodded to welcome her and saw a modest smile reshape her features with beauty. True, when she had an opinion she could be persistent, but that was a minor complaint. He still acted coolly toward her, as was proper, but he knew she understood his approval, for even through the worst of it, she had been consistently soft-spoken and deferential.

It surprised him how adaptable she’d been in the transition, their lives so suddenly grafted to subservience and—with the house, inadequate as
it was—obligation to his wife’s cousin. He took her resilience to be a measure of her faith. He stretched his legs and took in the now-familiar smells of this room: sawdust, scratched lacquer flooring, the steam of soup and boiled cabbage sealed in its beams. A recurring thought irked him. Was it not a mark of personal failure that so much had been lost during his generation? He wasn’t prone to sin, though pride was a struggle, and he had acted rightly and responsibly all his life. Still, the stain was there and he prayed it was contained in him alone. Others had suffered much more than he. He readily blamed politics and subjugation, but doubt had damaged this assertion and he wondered if his ancestors, or God, measured his accountability.

His wife sewed quietly by the lantern, her frequent glances toward him meaning she had something to say, probably about their lazy son. A sputter of flame, then smoke fouled the air as his mind darkened with thoughts of Ilsun. He maintained an outer appearance of calm reading, his thoughts beginning to burn.

Damn that boy! Ilsun had more talent than he knew. What waste! In his father’s day, Ilsun could have been a renowned calligrapher, perhaps not the greatest of scholars, but a respected artist who might have become as famous as Han’s own teacher. The revered Chang Seungop had been a follower of the venerable Kim Cheonghui, who had founded the Southern School of painting, famous for diverting from Chinese tradition and originating an intense and original style. Scholar Chang was the last man to be designated a Korean Royal Treasure before the Yi Dynasty fell. How his work was lauded! Even China and Japan had recognized his genius. Who knew how many of Chang Seungop’s scrolls now hung in the “sacred” halls of the imperial palace?

As it was, Ilsun would never even reach Han’s level of scholarship. No one cared any more and his son had little awareness of his natural ability. Ilsun’s careless personality, irritating as it was, added spontaneity to his brushwork. Han’s work had tended toward restraint, a quality that had once given him great satisfaction, and that he later came to regard as academic and stodgy compared to the controlled yet vivid expressiveness of Scholar Chang’s brush—living strokes with a vitality also evident in Ilsun’s work.

Where had his son gone off to again? Ready to hear what the boy’s mother had to say, Han exhaled and looked at her.

“Yuhbo.” She kept her eyes on her sewing. “Dongsaeng told Nuna he was going to see Elder Kim about the scroll for his grandson.” The lines in the corners of her eyes bunched when she smiled, as if pointing out her pride for Ilsun.

He said nothing, glad that his hands were in his sleeves, for they twitched with fury. He turned to his book to hide his rage.

After a silence, she said carefully, “That was very enterprising, don’t you agree? He knows it’s distasteful to sell his art, but you yourself said he should apply himself to his work, and it seems he’s showing initiative.”

His anger had nothing to do with the mercantile aspect of his son’s work. Times required that such purism be sacrificed for the sake of food and medicine. Elder Kim, Han knew, was not in town. He had gone to his home village and his mother’s deathbed. A few days ago, Han had chanced upon him outside a photographer’s studio, where Elder Kim had picked up a portrait of his grandson to show his dying mother.

Han cleared his throat to release tightness in his neck. His wife glanced at him, expecting the conversation to continue. In a growing silence, he blindly read while she sewed tiny green knots on the hem of the pillowslip. They waited for Ilsun.

Najin appeared in the doorway with hands clasped, and he nodded to indicate she could enter. No matter how much he prayed, disappointment and anger still grated when he saw her. It made him tired. He knew that the reasons for the loss of the Gaeseong land were far more complicated than her husband’s letters and her imprisonment, but the old reaction of placing blame still flared. It’s not that he blamed her exactly, but rather what she represented in his family, in his country, whose continued existence depended upon the strength of its youth to uphold its history and traditions. Yes, even its women. Yet it was those very traditions that had rendered them unprepared and powerless. They had allowed for— perhaps even bred—corruption and weakness. He wanted only calm in these after-sixty years—years he had once anticipated being rich with poetry, philosophy and art, and in the background of his contemplative hours, a smoothly run house full of grandchildren. He felt the black pull
of the enormity of his loss and failure. But here she was, his daughter, virtually a widow—and admittedly a woman of competence with a medical education that was helpful for Ilsun’s sickly wife.

She slipped to her knees to bow goodnight. The practiced movement soothed him and he remembered that the anger he held at this moment was not with her. He relaxed his shoulders to make his voice even. “What did Dongsaeng say?”

His wife beamed as Najin spoke. “He said that Father said Elder Kim was interested in a calligraphic scroll to commemorate his grandson’s one hundredth day. He said he was going to visit the elder to ask what he wanted.”

Clever, cautious girl
, thought Han. She had kept her eyes lowered and moved not a muscle, betraying nothing of her feelings about her brother’s unacceptable absence on this winter’s night. He dismissed the women with a gesture. His anger revived, he easily ignored the gentling sound of their conversation fading toward their rooms.

Soon he heard Ilsun stamp snow off his shoes and the boy’s mother hurrying to the door. “Your hands are so cold! Come greet your father. I’ll heat soup.”

Han stood as his son entered, trailing wet sock prints. Ilsun bowed and shifted his feet, his eyes quickly scanning the room. “Good evening, Abbuh-nim.”

Satisfied that Ilsun was taken aback to find him standing, Han knew his son would remain awkwardly on his feet until he himself sat down. The collar of Ilsun’s Western suit was turned up around his earlobes, and he rubbed and blew on his hands.
If he insists on wearing Western clothes
, thought Han,
he ought to keep up with his haircuts
. And when had the hunch of his son’s shoulders become so intensely irritating?

He stepped closer, his back erect and sore with old wounds. “You mean ‘goodnight,’ don’t you? Nothing else to say?”

“Forgive me, Abbuh-nim,” he said in the exact intonation of his earlier greeting, infuriating Han. He clenched and unclenched his hands. The silence grew. Ilsun glanced at him nervously.

“Well then. What did Elder Kim say?”

Ilsun’s frightened blink was obvious. Would he have the audacity to
keep up with the lie? “He— They said he was too busy to see me this evening.”

“Liar!” He struck Ilsun with the back of his hand. Ilsun staggered, his hand to his cheek, eyes bursting with tears.

“You bring lies into this house! Where have you been these nights? You shame this family with your laziness! Your mother is relying on you as the man of the house, but you’re useless to her! Useless! Do you hear?”

Ilsun fell to the floor, prostrate. A sob escaped him.

“Yah! Are you crying like a woman? What kind of son are you? No
yang
! Are you even my son? A disgrace. A waste!” Han paced, too disgusted to touch him further.

“I’m sorry, Abbuh-nim. You’re right. Please, please forgive me.”

“Like a woman! Lies and laziness! You ask my forgiveness?
You’re
supposed to be the man of the house.”

“Yes, you’re right. I’m worthless to you.” Ilsun shuddered and huddled on his knees, a wet ball of sour wool.

Han sat and breathed deliberately to slow the beating in his chest. The house was unnaturally still—not even the flame of the lamp flickered. This had to be woman trouble. Ilsun had shown this weakness before at boarding school. His son never knew that the principal had sent more than one humiliating letter to collect overdue fees—money Ilsun had spent in those fancy brothels. With his son’s marriage, Han thought he’d put an end to this problem for good, but it seemed a wife had solved nothing and, in fact, may have made it worse. Yah, how could Unsook be so ill? A crushing realization struck him and he sat heavily. His own will, his hopes, his expectations alone could do nothing to correct Ilsun’s weak character. He had wanted all his life for this son to be something other than what he had actually become, what he had always been destined to be. With sudden despair, Han saw that he had no control over his own blood. And if not his own blood, then what was his to govern?

“Sit.”

Ilsun kneeled and wiped his face with a handkerchief.

Han saw that his son recognized the depth of his disappointment, and it calmed him to see Ilsun’s features drawn with contrition. “Such places are beneath us,” he said.

Ilsun opened his mouth, his lips defensive, then he lowered his head. “I swear, Abbuh-nim, I tried. For years, there was nothing, I swear to you, but you might understand how difficult it’s been.”

Yes, Han had expected too much of the man before him. He had done what he believed was right, what had been left available to him, to make him the man of character he had once prided himself as being. Here was the embodiment of his failure. Like his mother nation, he had failed stupendously. Before him was the proof of his inability to shape the future of his family—and by extension his country—in the right way, the Confucian way, the way that had always guided his life, the only way he knew. Without self-discipline, how could his son master his own household? Without the strength of his family behind him, how could he lead his countrymen? Instead, here was a careless, confused man, born a decade after the annexation, who thought little about the meaning of the world except what it might offer him. It seemed that the Japanese had succeeded in conquering this most basic principle of a father handing tradition to his son.

“It’s impossible that you frequent those places. Who sees you enter and leave? Who else visits there? Not only do you put yourself and your family at risk, you’ve sullied your character. It cannot be.”

“But there’s Meeja. She’s—” His voice was ugly with desperation.

“Have I finished speaking?” So the worst had happened: Ilsun had actually become attached to a whore. Han realized he should have paid more attention to the missed meals, late hours and moping about. A petulant curl spoiled the defined curves of Ilsun’s full lips and strong chin—two of the recognizable features that had reappeared over generations of his family line. But he was still his firstborn son, his only son, and a man with the potential to be among the finest calligraphers in Korea. And was it not his own generation—and he, himself—who had lost stewardship of the world they had been charged to tend for Ilsun and all the world’s sons?

Han settled further into his cushion, his spine sagging. As to the problem at hand, there was no help for it except that Ilsun must finish the thing or be ruined by it. That his son frequently walked the dark streets of unsavory neighborhoods put him at enormous risk for conscription or any number of police troubles. An arrangement must be made, and it
would be costly. Ilsun would have to work as never before. Once the arrangement was discovered, Han knew he would suffer the household’s silent uproar, but more was at stake than the sensitivities of women.

“You can have her,” Han said. Ilsun showed his surprise by staring directly at him, his reddened eyes incredulous.

Han then understood that acquiescence and his acceptance of Ilsun’s whore had two other wholly selfish motivations, but with a slow blink he managed to rationalize them as having Confucian virtue. First was the possibility of an heir. The law had changed to allow sons of concubines to inherit, and besides, should a son be born, he could be officially adopted. It wasn’t possible for the woman to be accepted into the household as in the olden days. Her lowly profession forbade it, not to mention Ilsun’s Christian vows. Han blinked again, and the sad and delicate face of Ilsun’s sickly wife faded from his mind. As for his second motivation for allowing Ilsun his teahouse lover: his sanction of the expensive affair would stimulate his son to work, to develop his artistry despite his persistent laziness. He reached for his pipe, though it had been years since it held tobacco, and the customary motion sealed his resolve. “You’re not to go to her again. She must come to you and only in secret. The neighborhood association is full of busybodies and traitors. No one must see her. No one. Do you understand?”

Han saw Ilsun’s fingers shake as he bowed and pressed his hands to the floor. The house shivered in the winter wind and a shutter slapped open and closed. Cold fresh air cleared Han’s head, but an old man’s weariness blanketed his spirit. Trying to remember the writer who coined the phrase—was it, ironically, the Chinese concubine poet Yang Guifei?— Han said, “When it comes to illicit love there are two kinds of gentlemen: one has restraint, and the other has discretion.” He replaced his empty pipe on its rack, and when Ilsun sat up, he saw how his son’s eagerness for the gisaeng beat at the pulse in his neck. “Clearly you have little restraint, so I insist that you practice discretion. You are forbidden to visit the teahouses again. You understand how risky it is.”

Ilsun nodded.

“You can have her as often as you want, but it’s been obvious by the thinness of the soup that you’ve been neglecting household expenses. You’ve been neglecting your family. It pains me that you must be
reminded to fulfill your primary responsibilities. You may do as you please once your first duty is met. She’ll be a costly night-bride. You’ll have to work very hard.”