The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea

by Pearl S. Buck

  … Thus the spring passed in one glorious day after another. The rain fell in good season. The ancient land grew fresh and green and gay with flowers and the people prepared for Tano, the spring festival which falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. True, Il-han was put to much discomfort during the festival, for Sunia was a zealous housekeeper and this festival was the time, by custom, for housecleaning and mending and renewing after winter. The paper on lattice walls must be torn off and fresh paper pasted on, and even the paper covers of the ondul floors must be changed.

  “You must allow me my library,” Il-han said every year and against the complaints of her women, Sunia obeyed him because she loved him and could refuse him nothing.

  “We will watch for a day when he is summoned to court,” she told her women, “and then we will steal into his library and work like magicians and clean everything before he comes back.”

  This was her usual ruse, and meanwhile Il-han enclosed himself among his books while around him the household was in a happy confusion. When the rooms were cleaned and the courtyards swept, the women washed their clothes and then themselves and the children. This was the season, too, when they gave special heed to their hair after the winter, and into the basins they poured the juice of changpo grass, which cleanses and leaves a fragrance exceedingly pleasant and rare, and as they dried the long thick locks they thrust leaves of the grass into their hair and on both sides of their ears. Women less learned than Sunia believed that the changpo grass kept away the diseases which the heat of summer brings, but she declared herself against such superstitions because Il-han would not allow them, although in her heart she did not know what she believed.

  The time of the Tano festival was a time of joy and freedom, a festival of spring celebrated for thousands of years and long before the beginning of written history, and Sunia, though a wife and mother, had kept the girl alive in herself. Thus during the festival she joined in the sport of swinging, which belonged to the day. Il-han, knowing that she loved the sport, ordered the servingmen to hang ropes as usual to make a swing from the branch of a great date tree in the eastern courtyard. There he watched Sunia and her women swinging and she went higher than any of the women, until his heart stopped to see her high in the air, her red skirts flying and her hair, freshly washed, loosening from its braids. What if one day the rope broke and he saw her lying broken on the ground? But the rope had never broken and he tried to believe it never would.

  When the festival was over, nevertheless, he ordered the swing taken down and in the night he clasped her close again and again, with renewed passion until she could not bear it, dearly as she loved him, and she cried out at last against his arms so tightly holding her that she felt imprisoned, though by love.

  “Let me breathe!” she cried.

  He loosed her, but only a little, and she lay in his arms.

  “Why are you so silent now?” she asked at last. “Did I offend you?”

  “No,” he said. “How could you offend me? I am oppressed by happiness—our happiness.”

  “Oppressed?” She echoed the word, uncomprehending.

  “How can it last?” he replied.

  “It will last,” she said joyously, “it will last until we die.”

  Why did she speak of death? It was on his tongue to cry out against the thought that they could die, but he kept silent. Death was what he feared, not the sweet and quiet end of a long life, but sudden death outside their door, death waiting and violent. Yet the difference between Il-han and Sunia was only the bottomless difference between man and woman over which no bridge is ever built nor ever can be. Il-han’s life was centered outside his house, and what went on within the compound walls was the periphery. Joyous or troublesome alike, the household life was diversion from his mainstream. He trusted Sunia with all that went on inside the walls, and when she complained that he did not listen to what she told him at the end of a day, he smiled.

  “I know that you do all things well,” he said.

  She would not accept this smooth reply.

  “What have you to think of, if not of us?” she demanded.

  “Is night the suitable time in which to inquire of so large a matter?” he countered, and he made love to her so that he could divert her and be diverted.

  Somehow the summer slipped past, the days hot, the nights cool, and Il-han was so perturbed and puzzled by the tangled affairs of the times that he did not count the days or the months.

  One morning, waking late and alone in their bedroom, he smelled the sharp autumn fragrance of cabbage freshly cut. Could it be already time again to make kimchee for the winter? He rose and looked out of the window. Yes, there in the courtyard were piles of celery cabbages, brought in from the farm, doubtless, the day before. Two servingwomen were washing the cabbages in tubs of salted water and two more were brushing long white radishes clean of earth while still two others were chopping both cabbages and radishes into fine pieces. At a table set outdoors on this fine clear morning Sunia, wrapped in a blue apron, was mixing the spices. Hot red peppers, ground fresh ginger, onions, garlic, and ground cooked beef she was mixing together, exactly to his taste and according to the Kim family recipe. He knew, for in the first year of their marriage she had made Pak kimchee, so bland a mixture that he had rebelled against it. He had laid down his chopsticks when he tasted it for the first time.

  “You must invite my mother to teach you how to make kimchee,” he told Sunia.

  Her eyes had sparkled with sudden anger. “I will not eat Kim kimchee! It burns the skin from my tongue.”

  “Keep this Pak stuff for yourself,” he had retorted. “I will ask my mother to give me enough kimchee for myself.”

  She had shown no signs of yielding but the next year, he had noticed, she made the kimchee according to Kim recipe. Now, by habit, each year he inspected the kimchee and tasted the first morsel. He smiled and yawned to wake himself and then began to wash himself and to prepare for the day. When he was ready, he sauntered into the courtyard and it was here that Sunia continued again her gentle accusations that he was always busy and apart from family life. The women had fallen silent when he appeared and they did not look up or seem to listen while their master and mistress talked, after he had tasted the kimchee and approved it.

  “For an example, this morning,” Sunia said, her eyes upon the thin sharp knife with which she chopped the spices, “where do you go now? Day after day you leave after the morning meal and then we see you no more until twilight. Yet you never tell me where you have been or where you will go again tomorrow.”

  “I will tell you everything when I come home tonight,” he said. “Only give me my breakfast now and let me go.”

  Something in the abruptness of his voice made her obedient. She summoned a woman to finish her task and washed her hands and followed him into the house. In usual silence Il-han ate his morning meal of soup and rice and salted foods, and Sunia kept the children away from him, the elder son given to his tutor, and the younger, now beginning to creep, to a wet nurse. She suckled her children until they were six months old and past the first dangers of life and then she gave them to a wet nurse, a healthy countrywoman, to suckle until they were three years old and able to eat all foods.

  This morning she served Il-han alone and when he had eaten she ate her own breakfast quietly, glancing at him now and then.

  “You are losing flesh,” she said at last. “Is there some private unhappiness in you?”

  “No unhappiness concerning you,” he said.

  He wiped his mouth on a soft paper napkin and rose from the floor cushion and she ran to fetch his outer coat and thus, with a warm exchange of looks, his kind, hers anxious, they parted. He dared not tell her what lay upon his heart and mind. His memorial which he had begun in the spring and then put aside as better left unsaid was now finished and in the Queen’s hands, for as he had watched the tide of affairs sweep on he could keep silent no longer. He was now summoned by the Queen to come alone
to her palace. At the same time the King had sent a summons to his father. Until now father and son had gone together in obedience to royal command. Did this separation signify a new difference between King and Queen? He did not know and he could only obey.

  He left his house, therefore, dressed in his usual street garments, his robes whiter than snow, his tall black hat of stiff horsehair gauze tied under his chin. On so fine a morning it was his pleasure to walk, and he did so with the measured speed befitting a gentleman and a scholar. Many recognized him and gave him respectful greeting, and because of his height and appearance the people parted to give him room, not stopping to show servility or fear. Indeed they had no fear. Accustomed as they were to dangers and distress, since the gods had given them a land which surrounding countries envied and longed to possess, the people were calm but firm in purpose and they were not afraid. They gave their greetings and went about their business while Il-han went on his.

  His father was wont to meet him at the palace. When he entered the gate, however, the guard, peering through to see who stood there, opened the gate hastily and closed it at once.

  “Is my father here?” Il-han inquired.

  “Sir, he is already with the King and has been since dawn,” the guard replied, “but I have orders from the Queen that you are to go alone to her palace in the Secret Garden for audience. Meanwhile your father says I am to tell you that if his audience with the King ends first, he will await you here. If yours ends first, you are to wait.”

  Il-han hesitated. It puzzled him that the Queen should send for him privately in such fashion, and what would he say to his father, or even later to the King? Nothing is hidden in palace or hovel and all would know that his father was already in audience with the King while he was only now waiting upon the Queen, an inexplicable division. Yet what could he do but continue to obey the royal command? He followed the guard through the palace grounds without further speech.

  It was the season of chrysanthemums, and everywhere the noble flowers lifted their brilliant heads. In the Secret Garden the path was lined with potted chrysanthemums in waves and clouds of color, and thus escorted he came to the steep stone steps which led to the high terrace before the palace. At the carved and painted doorway of this palace he waited until the gate guard announced his presence to a palace guard, who announced it in turn to a palace steward. Then the doors opened and he was ushered into the large waiting room he knew well from other times when he, but always with his father, had been summoned by the Queen. Low tables of fine wooden chests bound in brass and cushioned floor seats gave the room comfort. Upon the wall opposite the door were scrolls painted by ancient artists, and the corners of the room were banked with rare and beautiful chrysanthemums in porcelain pots.

  “Sir, be seated,” the steward said. “The Queen is finishing her breakfast and her women are waiting to put on her outer robes. She will receive you in the great hall as usual.”

  Il-han sat down on a floor seat and gave thanks for the tea which the steward poured from a pottery teapot into a fine silver bowl. The tea was an infusion of the best Chinese tea, the tender new leaves of spring unscented by jasmine or alien flowers, and he drank it with pleasure and slowly. In a few minutes the steward entered.

  “The Queen,” he said in solemn voice.

  Il-han rose and followed the man into the next hall, a vast room bare of furniture except for the throne set upon dais at the west wall, the hall itself facing south. No one was there, but he knew the custom and he stood in respectful waiting, his head bowed, and his eyes fixed upon the floor.

  He had not long to wait. In less time than he could have counted to a hundred, the curtains at the north wall were put aside and the Queen entered. He saw the edge of her crimson robes moving about her feet as she walked to her throne, and lifting his eyes no further until she gave permission, he bowed low three times in silence.

  It was for the Queen to speak first and she did so, and continued thus after suitable greeting.

  “I have received your memorial,” she said, “and doubtless you think it strange that I have sent for you apart from your father. But you are so dutiful a son that if the two of you come together, as you have always in the past, whether I am with the King or alone, your father speaks and you keep silent or you defer to what he says, and do not speak your own thoughts.”

  Her voice was fresh and clear and young. He did not reply, perceiving that she would speak on, and thus she continued.

  “I have read many times your memorial. Why did you send it privately?”

  At this word “privately” he felt hot blood rise up from his breast to his neck and even to his ears, and he cursed the trick his blood could play on him to turn his ears scarlet.

  The Queen’s quick eyes, all observing, now noticed his confusion. “Do you hear what I ask, you with the two red ears?”

  She laughed and it was the first time he had ever heard that gay laughter. He dared not smile or reply and he felt his ears hotter than ever. In his confusion he let his eyes move toward her and saw the tips of her silver shoes beneath the crimson satin of her full skirts. Small silver shoes, so strangely like those of Turkish women. Where had they come from in the beginning? But who knew the wellsprings of his people? In that long struggle, covering how many centuries could not be known, the tribes of Central Asia who were his ancestors had mingled with others, and now these little silver shoes of a Korean queen were a lost symbol of woman’s grace.

  “And dare you dream in my presence?” the Queen now inquired. Her voice was playful but she put an edge into the words.

  He lifted his head, startled, and then blushed anew because inadvertently he had seen her face.

  “You need not turn so red,” the Queen said. “I am old enough to be looked at without fear by a young man.”

  “Forgive me, Majesty,” Il-han said. He fixed his eyes on her rounded firm chin and the royal lips went on speaking softly but with definition in shape and sound.

  “Will you answer my question?”

  “Majesty,” he replied, and because he was angry with himself for his confusion in her presence, and especially for his wayward thoughts concerning her shoes, he made his voice low and stern. “I sent the memorial to you because I know your loyalty to China.”

  He needed not to say what they both knew too well, that he came to her because the King was torn between his father and her. This was to say the King was torn between the Regent’s desire to balance one nation against another and so gain precarious independence for Korea, and the Queen’s resolute faith in China. Therefore he continued to skirt direct speech.

  “You have reason, Majesty, for your faith. Through centuries China has avoided anything that can alienate our people. But now when we must prevent Japan from landing soldiers on our soil can the Empress save us when it may be she cannot even save her own people? Remember the opium wars which China always lost to England, who is friendly to Japan, Majesty, and who will always take Japan’s part. And remember that France has cut a huge slice from the Chinese melon and claimed it for her own—Indo-China, Majesty! And China cannot prevent it or take it back again.”

  Now the silver shoe on the imperial right foot began to tap impatiently.

  “France! What is it? We have only seen French priests, bearing in one hand a cross, in the other a sword! I have heard that they are winebibbers, but they make their wine of grapes, not rice.”

  “I still regret, Majesty, that our people massacred the French Christians,” Il-han said, “and even more, that in our anger we attacked the American merchant ship, the General Sherman. And the worst folly was that we killed the American crew.”

  The Queen waved this off with her right hand. “What right had an American merchant ship in the inner waters of the Taedong River, near so great a city as Pyongyang? Are there Korean ships in the rivers of—of—of—what are some of the American rivers?”

  “Majesty, I do not know,” Il-han replied.

  “You see,” the Quee
n cried in triumph. “We do not so much as know the names of their rivers, much less sail our ships on foreign waters! I see no difference in these wild western peoples, and as for the Americans, who knows what they are? A mongrel people, I am told, made up of the cast-offs, the renegades, the rebels, the younger sons, the landless and the homeless of other western nations!”

  He could wait no longer. “Majesty, they are our only hope, nevertheless. America alone has no dreams of empire. With her vast territories it may be she has no need to dream and so can be our friend.”

  “You hurry me,” the Queen complained, “and I am not to be hurried.”

  “Forgive me, Majesty,” Il-han said.

  His eyes caught sight now of her hands, elegant and restless upon her silken lap, and involuntarily he lifted his eyes and saw her face, this time all in a glance, the dark eyes large and glorious in the light of her intelligence, the black brows straight and clear, the brilliant white of her smooth skin, the red of lip and rose of cheek. He looked quickly at the floor. If she noticed, she did not say so, and she went on musingly and as though to convince herself.

  “These western nations—have they anywhere done justly to other peoples? Their pretense is trade and religion but their true purpose is to annex our land. No, I will have none of these western nations!”

  Il-han continued in steady patience. “I will remind you, Majesty, that when the diplomatic mission from Japan returned only recently from the western countries they reported to their Emperor that these great new western nations would not look with favor on a military coup in Korea by General Saigo. We were saved by the western nations, Majesty!”

  He had gone too far. The Queen rose, took three steps forward, drew a closed fan from her sleeve and struck twice, once on his right cheek and once on his left, as he knelt before her.