The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (36 page)

The man was taken aback by this and he stared at the two of them.

“Then why are you here?” he demanded.

Induk stepped in front of the girl and it was she who answered. “We heard a cry for help.”

The man looked at her insolently. “You must be Christians!”

“I am a Christian,” Induk said quietly.

The man sneered at her, showing his teeth like a dog. “You Christians! You are everywhere that you should not be. One of these days something will happen to all of you.”

“Are you Korean?” Yul-han demanded. “How is it that you speak like a Japanese?”

The man looked at him sullenly. “I paid money for this girl. She belongs to me.”

The girl now spoke for herself. “I belong to no one. I was cheated! You told me I had only kitchen work to do—not that—ha, I spit on you!”

With this she spat on the man full face, and he bellowed at her and lunged for her but Yul-han pushed him aside and he fell to the ground.

“Do not forget that I am the son of my father,” he said sternly.

The man clambered out of the dust and stepped back. “One of these days,” he muttered. “One of these days …”

He brushed his clothes and turned his back on them and Yul-han led the way out of the gate and to his own house, in silence. He was too prudent not to inquire of himself what they should do with this girl. She was the daughter of a farmer, he supposed, perhaps even of a man on their own land, and he knew that this incident might bring trouble down on him from the capital. The Kim family was too famous to escape notice, whatever they did. Only his father’s continued absence from the city and from the King had made them safe. Now he, Yul-han, had married a Christian, and it could not be imagined that this was not known to the authorities, for they knew everything and penetrated to the smallest village and to the last corner of every house. Even the man at the winehouse might be in the pay of the authorities, for there were many spies among the Koreans, low fellows who would do anything for money.

When they reached the house, Induk bade the girl wash herself and smooth her hair.

“What shall I do now?” the girl asked.

“Wait for me in the kitchen,” Induk told her.

With this Yul-han and Induk went aside into the bedroom to consider what they had done. Neither knew how to begin. It was Yul-han who spoke first.

“The time has come,” he said thoughtfully. “I must declare myself on one side or the other. Either I am a Christian or I am not a Christian. If I am to follow you into every trouble where your religion guides you, then I must share your religion. When we are summoned, as sometime we shall be, I cannot say that you are Christian and I am not. They will ask me why I allow you to interfere in the lives of others, for you will continue to interfere, I can see that.”

Tears came into Induk’s eyes. “But we are told—it is the command of Christ that we must bear the burdens of the weak!”

“So we will bear them,” Yul-han said resolutely. “Otherwise we shall be parted, you and I—you driven by your conscience in one direction and I—what? Prudently staying at home, I suppose! Then sooner or later you will hate me—or I may hate you. This is a Christian marriage. You make it so by being what you are.

“You are not to be Christian because I am,” she insisted.

“I am Christian because I must be, if I am your husband,” he retorted. “Otherwise our paths diverge, and that I cannot accept.”

She let tears fall now. “You make a monster of me,” she sobbed.

He took her hand and put the palm to his lips. “Not a monster,” he said, “only a Christian.”

He drew her to him by this hand. “I shall not enter blindly into your religion, I will study and understand. I must be convinced as well as converted. Now cease these tears. You should be happy.”

“I want to be a good wife,” she whispered against his breast. “I would die before I bring you into danger.”

He did not reply for awhile as he smoothed her dark hair. Both knew what she meant. In the last few days they had heard fresh news of the increasing harshness of the ruling government toward the Christians. Whenever Christians sought to work against some evil circumstance, the rulers declared that by so doing they rebelled against the authorities, until all over the country helpless simple Christians were seized and accused of rebellion when what they did was only against an evil which, according to their doctrines, they must oppose, whatever the government.

“It is better if we face danger together,” Yul-han said.

At this moment a voice spoke from the door. It was the girl, who had grown weary of waiting. She stood there, her two feet planted widely apart, her bare arms hanging at her sides, her hair neat and her sun-browned face red with scrubbing.

“What do you want me to do next, mistress?” she demanded.

Yul-han and Induk parted and Yul-han turned his back properly on the girl.

“What shall we do with you?” Induk countered. “Shall we not send you home again to your parents?”

“If you send me home,” the girl said, her country accent thick on her tongue, “the wineshop owner will only get me back again, since he has paid for me. He has a license from the Japanese police. How can we escape him? I will stay here with you and do your work if you will feed me.”

Induk was perplexed. She had saved the girl and now must be responsible for the life she had saved!

“What is your name?” she asked.

“I am called Ippun,” the girl said, and stood waiting, her eyes, small above her high cheekbones, beseeching and helpless and her big mouth hanging open.

What could they do then but let her stay? Therefore she slept in a corner of the kitchen at night, and by day she worked without rest, as devoted as a dog to its owners. Not knowing what else to do, Yul-han and Induk accepted her as a member of the household.

“Though you call it a gospel of love, yours is a hard doctrine,” Yul-han said one morning in late summer.

He was seated on a chair beside a high table in the vestry of the Christian church in the city. The missionary sat opposite him, the book open before him, and Yul-han thought secretly that he had never before seen so craggy a face, or one so ugly in features and yet so noble in spirit, the blue eyes deep-set under brushy red eyebrows, the pitted white skin, the high nose broken, it seemed, in the bridge, the wide mouth and big teeth. Altogether the face was formidable and so were the huge hairy hands and the strong hairy neck. Under its clothing, was that thick strong body also covered with red hair?

“So you think Christianity is hard,” the missionary said.

“It is,” Yul-han replied, “hard even in its doctrine of love. What is more cruel than the command to turn the right cheek to the enemy when a blow has been struck on the left?”

“What is hard about that?” the missionary demanded.

East and West faced each other across the table. “Imagine to yourself,” Yul-han said earnestly, “if I am struck on this cheek”—he put his narrow, aristocratic hand to his right cheek—“and I turn this cheek”—he turned his head—“what am I doing to the man who strikes me? I am saying to him without words that I am his superior, one far above him in spirit. I am compelling him to examine himself. He has given way to evil temper—I am daring him to do so again and thus prove how evil he is. What can he do? He will be ashamed of himself, he will slink away, condemned by his own conscience. Is this not cruel? Is this not hard? I think so.”

The missionary shook his head. “You make me see things I have not seen before.”

He was silent for a while and then he took up the book and read aloud from the sayings of Paul. Yul-han listened and after some time he held up his hand for pause. He repeated the lines which he had just heard.

“‘Dare any of you, having a matter against his neighbor, go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?’ Do you not see what burden this places upon your innocent Korean Christians?”

“Burden?” the missionary repeated.

“It puts them in danger of death,” Yul-han said bluntly.

“Death?”

“Do you think the rulers will be pleased when our people come to you instead of to them?”

“There are many Christians in Japan,” the missionary said.

“Ah, but there the Church is ruled by Japanese Christians, some of them of high rank. Here it is true that the Church is composed of Koreans—how many did you say? two hundred and fifty thousand—a good number, but the Japanese do not rule the Church here. And my people when they become Christians are altogether devoted—there is too little else in our life nowadays. I feel the need in myself for enrichment and faith and some sort of inspiration. There seems no hope ahead. Some of us, like my father, find refuge in writing poetry and studying ancient literature. But what of those who have no such learning and no such talent? They are finding their interest in the Christian Church and in strong men from the West like you, through whom they seek connection with that outer world, a stream of culture new and modern from which we are cut off by the invaders.”

The missionary was listening, his blue eyes fixed on Yul-han’s face with intensity and comprehension.

“Go on,” he said, when Yul-han paused.

“Look at my town,” Yul-han said. “Say there are some eight or nine thousand people there, such a town for example as Syunchun. Half of the people there are Christian. The church and the mission school are the largest buildings and the best. A thousand, two thousand people, go to church and to your other meetings. In the surrounding villages there are many Christians, too. What do the Japanese rulers think when they see the vast crowds of Christians and these meetings in which they themselves have no part? They smell rebellion and revolution and so they send their spies to the meetings to listen and to report. These spies hear your Christians singing ‘Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war.’ What was that song you bade them sing in the church this morning? ‘Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the Cross.’ And what did you preach, you American soldier of the Cross? You told us the story of a young man named David, who with a small sling and a few pebbles killed the powerful evil giant, Goliath. And how was it that David could kill the giant and whence had he his power? Weak as he was, young as he was, his heart was pure, his cause was just, and so with God’s help he prevailed. This is what you teach us. And we, hopeless as we are, crushed and lost, how can we but believe you, since we have nothing else in which to believe, our past useless, our future hopeless?”

Here Yul-han stopped, moved by his own words. He struggled against secret tears, his head downcast. When he conquered himself and lifted his head again he saw across the table the missionary gazing at him and in his strange blue eyes was a burning demand.

“Will you be one of us?”

“Yes,” Yul-han said. “I will be a Christian.”

Sunia woke in the night. Someone was creeping along the narrow porch, feeling the latches of the paper-latticed doors. She was suddenly tense, listening. Yes, someone was there. She must wake Il-han. Then she hesitated. He needed sleep, for he had been sleepless for several nights, fearful lest Japanese gendarmes appear at the gate, demanding to know why he gathered schoolchildren into his house after midnight. He had been warned by Ippun that there was such talk in the village.

“It is that wineshop owner,” she had whispered. “He is angry because your son has sheltered me. When I went to the market yesterday he shouted at me that I would soon be back in the wineshop and the Kim family would be in prison.”

Il-han had refused to appear afraid and he had continued his midnight school until two days ago, when Japanese gendarmes had indeed marched into the village to get themselves drunk in the wineshop and lay hold on the girls there. He had then sent word secretly to the parents of his pupils that they must not come again until he told them. But he had remained uneasy even at his books and sleepless at night.

Leaning over him in the moonlight, Sunia saw now how wan his face was and how sunken his cheeks. No, let him sleep. She would go and see who the intruder was. Perhaps it was only a neighbor’s dog. She crept out of bed and stole across the floor in her bare feet and soundlessly she slid back the door screen an inch and peered through the crack. A man stood there, a tall thin figure in a torn garment. She pushed the screen open a few inches more and spoke suddenly and strongly.

“Thief! What are you doing here?”

The man turned to her and she heard his voice subdued and deep.

“O-man-ee!”

Not since her sons were children had she heard herself thus called “Mother.”

“You—you—” She pushed the screen open wildly, it caught and she could not get through the narrow space and she began to sob. “Son—my son—Yul-chun—”

“Hush,” he whispered.

He lifted the screen from its runway and set it to one side, and took her in his arms. She clung to him.

“So tall,” she murmured, distracted, “so much taller—your bones sticking out—and you are in rags—”

She drew him into the house, crying and talking under her breath.

“Where have you been? No, wait, say nothing—I must call your father—here, drink some tea—still hot—no, it is cold—I will heat some food—”

He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Mother, listen to me! I have no time. I must leave before sunrise. I took a risk—dangerous for me and for you both, you and my father. I have been sent here to our country—I cannot tell you why—or where I shall be—I must not come home—perhaps never again—Nobody knows what will happen.”

She was immediately calm. “Why have you not written to us?”

“I dared not write.”

“Where have you been these many years?”

“In China.”

China! She breathed the name of that unhappy country. She had seldom heard it spoken after the murder of the Queen.

“You must tell your father,” she said resolutely and drawing him by the hand she led him into the room where Il-han still slept.

She hated to wake him, yet she must for he would not forgive her if he were not waked. She began with slow soothing touches on his forehead, his cheeks, his hands. He stirred, he opened his eyes. She leaned close to his ear.