The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (6 page)

His father finished this tale and he looked at Il-han with roguish eyes. “I,” he declared, “have of course always been at your mother’s command. When worse comes to worst, I remind myself that women still cannot do without men, since it is we who hold the secret of creating children for them.”

He had blushed at such frankness and his father had laughed at him. He smiled now, remembering, and a tall country wife, carrying a jar of bean oil on her head, shouted at him.

“Look where you walk, lord of creation!”

He stepped aside hastily to let her pass, and caught a sidewise glance of her dark eyes flashing at him with warning and laughter, and he admired her profile. A handsome people, these his people! He had seen Japanese merchants as well as Chinese. The Japanese men were less tall than his countrymen, and the Chinese men were less fair of skin, their hair blacker and more wiry stiff. A noble people, these his people, and what ill fortune that they were contained within this narrow strip of mountainous land coveted by others! If they could but be left alone in peace, he and his people, to dream their dreams, make their music, write their poems, paint their picture scrolls! Impossible, now that the surrounding hungry nations were licking their chops, impossible now that the civilian tangban had grown decadent and the rebellious soban again were threatening from beneath!

He paused at the south gate, whose name was the Gate of High Ceremony, and inquired of the guard to say at what hour the sun would set, for then the gate would be locked and no one, except on official business, could come in or go out

The guard, a tall man with a cast in his right eye, squinted at the western sky and made a guess.

“Where do you go, master?” he asked.

“I go to see my father,” Il-han replied.

The guard recognized him for a Kim, as who did not, and he lowered his spear and spoke with respect. “You will have time to drink two bowls of tea with your honored one.”

“My thanks,” Il-han said.

When he had passed through the vast gate he paused, as he always did, to look back. This gate was one of eight gates to the city, any of which the people might use for coming and going except for the north gate, which was kept locked, for it was the way of escape for the King if there were war, and the southwest gate, which was for criminals on their way to execution outside the city wall. The southwest gate was known also as the Water Mouth Gate because the river flowed through there. It was also the gate used for the dead on their way to burial. All dead must pass through the gate, except dead kings, who could pass through other gates. The gate was built of wood and painted with colors of red and blue and green and gold. It sat high on the great stone wall and there were two stories, the first one wider than the second, and in the wooden wall of the second story were holes through which arrows could be shot. The roof was tile and the corners were lifted as are the palace roofs and gates of Peking—the better, Il-han had been told as a child, to catch the devils who slide down roofs in play and then falling to the ground are mischievous and enter houses to annoy good folk and bring trouble to them.

Once when he was thirteen years old he had climbed the tower and he found, cut deep into the wood, the letters of an ancient name. It was the name of a boy prince, the second son of the ancient dynasty of Yi who, like all boys, desired to leave his name carved forever on some smooth surface. He remembered that he would like to have carved his own name under that of the prince, but some reluctance had held him back and when he looked up he faced a soldier guard, and he had run away from those hostile soban eyes. He turned away from the memory, and faced the mountains, and soberly he walked the dusty cobbled road while behind him, afar off, his servant followed in secret. The city sat in a valley two or three miles across, the valley encircled by mountains. Here in this city was the center of his country, the heart of his nation, enclosed by the craggy and pinnacled heights of bare rock. Yonder, highest of all, was the Triple Peak, and upon its triad crests the snow still clung in long white streaks. South Mountain, North Mountain, and the city wall wound in and out among the folds of these mountains, beginning at the west gate, which was called the Gate of Amiability—fitting enough, this name, for the Chinese, powerful yet amiable, came from the west—and curving to the east, to the Gate of Elevated Humanity, how wryly named, for out of the east had come from Japan, three hundred years ago, that villain Hideyoshi, that peasant, squat and brutish.

He walked slowly to enjoy the countryside now in the fullness of spring. Along the grassy footpaths between the fields, women and children were digging wild fresh greens for which they hungered after the long winter when vegetables were only dried and pickled. Beyond the fields the gray-flanked mountains were red with clustering azaleas. Even on the mountains there were people searching for fresh foods, the roots of bell flowers to be scraped and pounded and boiled, and then eaten with soy sauce and sesame seed, the delicate lace of wild white clematis and wild spirea, white dandelions, sour dock leaves, wild chrysanthemum tops, all savory with rice or for soups. How well he remembered his mother and her household tricks! Sunia was a clever housekeeper, but his mother had been the old-fashioned woman, unwilling to buy so much as a square of fresh bean curd. He had hung about her as a child, for where she was became the center of activity, and he dabbled his childish hands in the soybeans put to soak overnight in cold water and he helped her turn the mill to crush them in the morning and to strain it and boil it and then curdle it with wet salt to be drained and cut into soft white blocks of bean curd. He had described the process to Sunia, but Sunia had cried out willfully that it was enough to make kimchee at home nowadays and he must let her buy their bean curd.

“Nevertheless,” he protested, “homemade is the best. And my mother’s soy sauce—”

Ah, that soy sauce! The crisp spring air made him hungry to think of it. His mother boiled the soybeans until they were mush, and then pounded them in the old mortar made of a hollowed tree trunk, the pestle a pole with a solid wooden ball at each end so that either end could be used. Then she rolled the beans into balls and netted them into straw ropes and hung them on the kitchen ceiling. On a spring day such as this she fetched them down again and cut them into pieces and soaked them in water spiced with hot red peppers. He would never taste such homemade foods again. His mother had died in the first year of his marriage, and she had not seen her first grandson. It was her dying cry.

“I shall not see my grandson!”

She had tried to stay alive, but death overcame her. Thinking of her, he walked on soberly, forgetting the bright day and the fair countryside, and the afternoon was well along by the time he passed over a bridge that spanned a small river near his father’s house. Along the banks the land women knelt on the earth and pounded the white garments on flat stones, their paddles sounding in crisp rhythm through the pellucid air. The country scene, dear and familiar, the atmosphere of peace, brought an ache to his heart. How long, how long could life remain unchanged?

His father put down his brush pen as Il-han entered. His son had been announced, but the elder did not lift his head until he saw the shadow across the low table upon which he wrote. Il-han then made the proper obeisance, which his father acknowledged by inclining his head and pointing to a cushion on the floor. Upon this cushion Il-han seated himself, a servant taking his outer coat from him.

The elder lifted his frosty white eyebrows at his son. “How is it that you are here?” he inquired. “Are you not supposed to be in attendance at court?”

“Father,” Il-han said, “I have myself come to tell you that your second grandson is healthy and already suckling.”

“Good news, good news!” the old man cried. The wrinkles in his withered face turned upward in smiles and a small gray beard trembled on his chin.

“Yes,” Il-han went on. “He was born before noon yesterday, as you know, and he is well shaped and strong, slightly smaller than the elder boy, but perfectly shaped. That is to say …”

He paused, remembering the child’s ear.

His father waited. “Well?” he inquired at last.

“His left ear is not perfect,” Il-han said. “A small defect but—”

“No Kim has ever had a defect,” the old man said positively. “It must be the Pak blood from your wife’s family.”

Il-han wished to change the subject. He had married somewhat against his father’s wish, who privately preferred the Yi family to the Pak, but no Yi daughter was of the proper age at the time. His father put up his hand to silence him, and went on.

“For example,” he said, pulling at his scanty beard, “I have never heard of a Yi with a defect. High intelligence combined with great physical beauty—these are the attributes of Yi, even to this present day. Nor were they scholars only. This floor, for example”—he struck the floor at his side with his knuckles—“this ondul floor, designed not merely to walk upon, or to sit upon, but warm—”

Il-han listened patiently to what he had heard many times before. His father spoke of the inventions of the Yi dynasty; for example, the ondul floor, now to be found in any house, was laid a foot above the level of the adjoining room which was always the kitchen. From the kitchen fireplace five flues ran through the wall to this ondul room. The flues were made of low walls of rock and sealing clay, across which were laid slabs of rock. These rocks were laid over again with clay and then covered with a layer of sand and lime and over which more cement was spread. Over this again was laid a layer of paper, the last layer very strong and lasting, the paper, called
jangpan
, being made from mulberry wood. A polish made of ground soya beans and liquid cow dung was spread over the jangpan and dried, and the floor was then a light yellow color, of high polish, smooth and easy to clean.

When his father had finished admiring the ondul floor, he would then speak of Admiral Yi’s turtle ships with which he had driven off Hideyoshi. Il-han knew it would come and so it did, and then the loving learned discourse on his country’s history. Il-han recognized the elder’s mood. A great actor lost to the theatre! The familiar glaze would come over his father’s eyes as he spoke of the past, and he would sit in a pose, motionless for a long moment. Then he would straighten himself, his thin face assuming the mask of nobility and hauteur, and he would lift his right arm as though he bore a weapon, and thus he would speak on. As he dwelt on the past even the voice was changed. A young man’s voice came from the sinewy throat. So it continued through half the afternoon, until at last they were back to Admiral Yi and how he saved Korea from Japan.

“We were not conquered,” his father concluded. “Kim or Yi, we shall never be conquered.”

He struck the polished surface of the low table with his clenched fists.

“Then you are on the side of the soban?” Il-han inquired with mischievous intent.

The old man laughed. “You are too sly, you young men! No—no—I am a scholar and a tangban and therefore a man of peace. I learned at my mother’s knee—” Here his father closed his eyes and recited slowly an ancient poem:

“The wind has no hands but it shakes all the trees.

The moon has no feet but it travels across the sky.”

“Then we need not fear the soban now?” Il-han asked.

His father pursed his lips. “I did not say that! The soban are not scholars, but not every man can be a scholar. We need both. It takes something in here to understand the books and the arts. The soban do not have it.”

He tapped his high forehead and fell silent and in the silence, after so much talk, he closed his eyes to signify he had had enough of his son. Seeing his father’s head sink upon his breast, Il-han rose and went quietly away.

And none too soon, he discovered when he left the house, for as he approached the city gates in the twilight an hour later, he saw a cluster of men there, brawling and shouting. He went steadily forward and as he neared the gate he saw twenty or thirty soban beating upon the gate with staves and spears.

They did not notice when he came up to them, so engrossed were they in their determination to break down the gate, a vain hope, for the gate was heavy and bound with iron and barred inside with a length of iron thicker than a man’s arm.

He shouted at them, “Brothers, what are you doing?”

They stopped then and turned to stare at him. A leader stepped out from among them. “That demon of a guard saw us coming and barred the gate against us, although the sun has not set.”

They were pushing about him now, and Il-han felt their hot angry eyes upon him like flames.

“Tangban,” he heard voices mutter. “Tangban—tangban—”

“You are right. The gate is shut too early,” he said calmly. “I shall report the matter to the palace.”

Silence fell upon them for an instant. Then the leader spoke in a voice yet more rough.

“We need no tangban help! We smash the gate down!”

They crowded against the gate again and jostled Il-han into their midst and he smelled for the first time in his life the sweat and the stink of male animal flesh. A shiver of fear, insensate and cold, ran through his veins. At this moment his servant pressed through the crowd, and Il-han knew that the man had disobeyed him and had followed him all the way, and he could only be glad.

“Master,” the servant said, “I know the guard at the gate. I will knock at the wicket and he will let me through when he knows you are here.”

So saying, he went to a small wicket gate at the side and made a special sound upon it with a stone that he picked up from the road. The gate opened a small space and the servant went in. A moment later the great gate itself opened suddenly and the soldiers fell in through it in a heap. While they were gathering themselves from the dust, Il-han passed by without their notice and went his way to his home, the servant following again in silence.

Spring moved gently toward summer, Sunia rose from the bed of childbirth and took her place again in the household. All went well. Her breasts were filled with milk and the child thrived. Her elder son, now that his mother was restored to him, was in better mood and with him clinging to her hand one fine morning, she sauntered into the garden of mulberry trees. The leaves were full and green, yet tender, and it was to discover their ripeness for the silkworms that she had left the house. Silkworms were only her pleasure, for the work of silk-making was done outside the city on the family lands and by the land people. Yet ever since she was a child and in the care of her old nurse, she had loved the art of making silk, from the moment when the web of tiny eggs, no bigger than the dots of a pointed brush on a paper card, were hatched in the warm silkworm house to the last moment when the silk lay in rich folds over her arms. Thus, though the weaving was done in the country, she kept a small loom of her own in a service house here in the compound, and with her women she performed the ceremony each year of making silk. It was more than a pleasure. It was also a duty. Even the Queen at this season must cultivate silkworms and do her share of spinning, while the King must till a rice paddy.