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.
On this morning, bright and calm, she walked under the mulberry trees with her son, and she felt of the leaves and tested them on her tongue for their taste. They were not yet strong or bitter, but no time must be wasted.
“We must set the silkworm eggs today, my princeling,” she told her son, and with him she went to the service house where the eggs had been kept on ice during the winter and through early spring so that they would not hatch before the mulberry leaves were ready. Now she bade her women prepare the large baskets for the eggs, and they made themselves busy, the little boy running between the women here and there and everywhere at once in his excitement.
“I want the worms to come out now,” he cried impatiently.
Sunia laughed. “They are only eggs! We must let them feel the warmth and then the worm will begin to grow and when the shells are too small for them, they will come out.”
After a few days of such warmth, the child asking a hundred times a day, they did come out, thousands of small creatures, each no more than the eighth of an inch in length, and no thicker than a silken thread, and the women brushed them off gently upon the finely cut leaves of the mulberry trees which now covered the bottom of the baskets. For three days and three nights the women fed the small creatures every three hours, and in the night again and again Sunia arose from her wide bed, while Il-han lay sleeping, and walked softly across the moonlit courtyards to see how her silkworms did. When the three days were passed, the silkworms stopped eating and prepared for their first rest. Now they spun out of themselves silk threads, as fine as hairs, and they fastened themselves upon the mulberry leaves, except for their heads which they held erect. Slowly they changed their color.
“See,” Sunia said to her elder son, “the silkworms are putting on their sleeping robes.”
Heads up, the silkworms slept for a day or two, while Sunia waited with her son.
“What do they do next, these silkworms?” the child asked.
He had refused to study or to stay with his tutor during these days, for he could think of nothing except the silkworms and what they did. They had become creatures of magic to him, fey and enchanting, as indeed they were to Sunia herself, for she could scarcely stay by her infant long enough to suckle him, and she hurried the child to finish without dawdling so that she could thrust him into a servingwoman’s arms and return to the service house.
“Now,” she replied to her son, “the silkworms must push off their old skins, for these skins have grown too small and they are making new ones while they sleep.”
“Shall I push off my skin one day?” the child asked in alarm.
Sunia laughed. “No, for your skin is made to stretch.”
At this moment she heard Il-han’s step, for though silkworms are women’s business and he pretended no interest in them, yet he came a few times to see how they did and to observe the life process of which they are the symbol. He spoke now to answer his son’s question.
“You will grow too big for your skin, too,” he told his son, “and skin after skin you will cast aside, but you will not know it. Without knowing, you will change into someone tall and strong and you will grow hairs on your face and your body. Then you will be a man, inside and out.”
The child listened, and his mouth trembled and turned down ready to weep.
“Why must I grow hair on my face and on my body?” he asked in a small voice.
“You scare him,” Sunia cried and she gathered the child into her arms. “Don’t cry, my little—you will like being a man some day. It is beautiful to be a man and strong and young and ready to make children of your own.”
The child stopped his tears at the wonder of this new thought. “Who will be the mother?” he inquired.
“We will find her for you,” Sunia said, and over the child’s head she met Il-han’s eyes upon her with the look that she loved.
Four times the silkworms ate until their skins grew too small and four times they slept and shed those skins, eating at last so heartily of the mulberry leaves that the trees were stripped and the worms themselves so large that the champing of their jaws could be
heard even in the courtyard outside as they chewed upon the leaves. Meanwhile no man or woman was allowed to smoke a pipe of tobacco near the silkworm house, for such smoke kills the worms.
All this time Sunia hovered over her silkworms. “Oh, you special creatures,” she murmured, in endearment.
At last they became a silvery white, a clear pure color, and this meant that they were ready to spin their cocoons and change to moths. The women prepared twirls of straw rice for the spinning and the spinners began their work, weaving their heads this way and that as they fastened a few threads of the silk to certain points of guidance, and this was the task of shaping the cocoons. They wove their heads this way and that inside the cocoon shape until it was a nest of silk, firm and soft, and each cocoon was made of a filament many thousands of feet in length and each worm became a chrysalid. Now was the time to choose the best and biggest of cocoons to make next year’s seed, and these cocoons were not used for silk but, as chrysalids became moths, they were allowed to cut their way through and lay eggs upon paper cards, each moth laying four hundred eggs before she died. But the other cocoons were dropped into boiling water before the chrysalids were moths, and the cocoons were kept in water, boiling hot, so that the gum which held the filaments together could be melted and the filaments reeled off and spun into thread.
Yet Sunia did not allow these broken cocoons to be wasted either. She bade the women boil them, too, and remove the empty chrysalid skins. When this was done, the women pulled the cocoons into small flat mats of silk. These were dried and used to quilt the linings of winter garments and make them soft and warm. In such ways Sunia tended her household and faithfully she kept the old customs and the family lived as though peace were sure and life eternal, and Il-han watched her as she moved about his house, the wife he loved and mother to them all. He had no heart to tell her of the world outside her house until he must.
The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea Page 5