“You may do so,” he said.
The man then climbed to the roof of the house and standing exactly over the place where his old master lay dead, he prepared himself for the solemn rite.
The hour was dawn, and rays of the rising sun crept through the mountains in long bright shafts. The wind blew fresh and cooled by the night. It was indeed a beautiful day upon which to die. So thinking, the man lifted up the coat, and holding the collar in his left hand and the hem in his right, he faced the south and waved the coat three times. The first time he announced in a loud voice the full name of the dead nobleman. The second time he announced the nobleman’s highest rank. The third time he announced his death. After this he cried out again, and this time to invite the departed soul to return. When all was done he came down from the roof and placed the coat over the body of the dead, and wailed in a loud voice again and again. Then with the help of others, he lifted the body upon a special bed which faced the south, and he placed around it a paper screen.
After such announcement and invitation, the household prepared for the ceremonies due the dead. Il-han’s father had lived alone after his mother’s death many years before. In spite of loneliness he had not taken another wife, not even a young woman. His servants had cared for him, men and women, and now they set about their sorrowful work. The women put away all jewelry, and men and women let down their long hair. In the kitchen the cook boiled rice into pots of thin soup, for no rice could be cooked dry during the days of mourning. In the death chamber, the dead man’s body was washed with soft white paper and warm perfumed water. His hair was combed and tied loosely, not in its usual coil. The combings from the hair were brushed into the hair, and all that had been separated from the body during the long lifetime and had been saved was now restored, the nail parings, the hair droppings, and four teeth which had been extracted when they caused pain. These were put into two pouches and placed right and left beside the body so that in the next life the person could be whole as when he was born.
The mouth was opened with a spoon of willow wood and into it was placed a pearl, which was held fast by three spoonfuls of gluten rice. This pearl was the death pearl, grown only in the giant clams which are found in the Naktong River, a rare pearl, pure but without luster, found in but one out of ten thousand clams and without fault, for it grows of itself within the shell. Indeed, so rare is this pearl that it is removed before burial and handed down from generation to generation. The pearl in his father’s mouth had belonged to a Kim five generations before and some day it would also be placed in Il-han’s own mouth, and after him in the mouth of his eldest son. When the ritual was finished, Il-han left the room, and the servant finished his duty by putting balls of cotton into the dead man’s ears and covering his tranquil face with a cloth of handspun linen.
Now the household busied itself. New garments must be made for the dead, and a new mattress for his coffin, new blanket and new pillow. The men who serve the dead must be summoned and also the geomancer, whose duty it was to decide upon the place of burial, a place suited to the winds and the waters. The coffin too had to be built, and of pinewood, for the pine tree is evergreen and is a symbol of manhood. It does not wither or cast its leaves until it dies. Serpents and turtles and lizards and all such reptiles will never nest near a pine tree. Nor does the pine tree rot at the core to remain an empty shell. It dies whole, and quickly, and begins another life, and this, too, is good. The old life should not cling to the new and hamper the growth beyond. What is finished is ended and if dust is the end, then may the end come entire when it comes. The parts of this coffin were put together with wooden pegs for nails, and the cracks were filled with honey and resin, the walls and bottom lined with white cloth, and upon this bottom a mattress was laid. Inside the lid the word Heaven was brushed, and at the four corners the word Sea.
Into this final home Il-han, in his position as master of mourning, now helped his father to lie and the coffin was lifted into the place of honor on a raised platform. By this hour neighbors and friends and relatives knew of the death and they came to mourn. With each guest Il-han made the wail of mourning the suitable number of times, and then the guests were served with wine and food. The next day at sunrise Il-han, still as master of mourning, lit the early incense and again wailed in mourning, and food was brought for the dead as though he were living. So it was again in the evening until all ceremonies were performed according to ritual.
Then Il-han sat alone in the room where as a child he had studied his Confucian books with his old tutor, and while he waited for Sunia, he was aware of a new loneliness. His mother’s death remained in him still as a wound too deep, for he was her only child. But she had long been ill and feeble. His father was his family in those days, and his closest friend, and there had been no estrangement between them, for the elder man had declined political posts and had retired more and more deeply into his books as the years passed. To Il-han he had often said that he could not share the strife and dissensions everywhere, the struggles for power between this man and that, the treacheries of court life, the enmities between surrounding nations. He was content to keep his own spirit pure, and he believed that he could do nothing for his fellow patriots that served them better than to remain untouched by deceit and private profit. Yet he did not judge these faults in others, nor did he change the traditions. He did not, for example, consider sharing the Kim lands with the peasants who tilled it. When Il-han, in his impetuous youth, declared that his father should rectify those sins of the past whereby the Kim clan had, like other yangban clans, seized great portions of the nation’s land, his father had merely replied that each generation must take care of its own sins, and he believed that he himself had committed no sins.
It was past noon of the next day when Sunia arrived with her retinue of children and servants. Il-han met her at the entrance and he saw her face was pale, but she allowed herself no outbreak of weeping. Instead she directed the children to embrace their father, and he lifted them into his arms, first the elder and then the younger. Their eyes were large and frightened and he comforted them, saying that he was glad they had come and that their grandfather could not speak to them now, but they might run into the garden and play with the little monkey chained there to a tree, and he could come to them later. Then he returned to his room and Sunia followed.
“Sunia,” he said, as soon as they were alone. “You must wait upon the Queen, announcing my father’s death. Tell her I will wait upon her myself as soon as the rites are fulfilled.”
She was looking at him with tender and sorrowful eyes, but at these words her tenderness changed.
“Even now you think of her first,” she said.
“Because it is my duty,” he told her.
“Go to her yourself, then,” she said.
With these words she turned away from him and walked to the end of the room which opened upon a small private garden. There in a pool no larger than a big bowl a few goldfish swam in the clear water, and the sun glinted on their ruffled fins.
Il-han was suddenly seized with rage for all women. Queen and commoner alike, they thought first of themselves and of whether they were loved by men. His reason told him that he was unjust, for surely women must think of love, else how can children be born? It is children they desire and for this they seek men’s love above all else. Yet Sunia had no cause to complain of him for lack of love or of children. So his angry heart exclaimed, and then his reason reminded him that he had been many months away from home, and since his return his mind had been much troubled, and Sunia was quick to discern that his whole self was not with her. Yet, because he feared to rouse her jealousy—still inexplicable to him, for how can a woman be jealous of a queen—he had not explained to her the weight upon him, now that he had seen his country whole and the people clinging to its earth and scratching its surface for their food.
He turned his back on her, too, and thus they stood for minutes until his heart took hold again—yes, and his reason. L
et these two meet, his wife and his Queen, this time in the palace, and let each take the measure of the other. Surely Sunia would come home to him again and know the depths of her folly. And he was stronger than Sunia, and as man should be stronger than woman he should make peace first.
With such feelings and reasonings, he went to her now and put his hands on her shoulders and turned her about to face him. Her eyes filled with tears and her lips quivered as she looked up at him.
“Do what I ask of you,” he said. “Go and see for yourself. She is your Queen as well as mine.”
His gentleness melted her as it always did, and he went on.
“I left her presence in anger, Sunia, such anger that I was about to ask for immediate audience with the King. Then I thought I should come to my father first, since it was he who had access to the King. When I came here, I found him—as you know. I cannot return to the Queen now, with my mind divided and my heart in sorrow. Do this for me, my wife.”
She put up both her hands then and stroked his cheeks with her palms and he knew she would obey. When she went to prepare herself, he ordered his servant to precede Sunia and ask for audience with the Queen, declaring the emergency, and he ordered her palanquin to be made ready and to be hung with streamers of coarse white cotton, signifying a death in the family.
When she had gone, he escorting her to the gate and seeing her into her palanquin and the curtain lowered which hid her from public view, he returned to his father’s house and gathered together the head servants. When they were assembled, standing before him while he sat on the floor cushion behind the table, he gave his commands.
“I have decided for reasons of state that we must hasten the burial of my honored ancestor. He would not wish to imperil the nation because of his death and our national affairs are not yet settled, although the Queen has returned to us. Therefore the burial must not be later than the ninth day after his death, for as you well know, it must then be delayed for three months. In that time it is possible that we may have war. Therefore we must arrange the funeral for the seventh day.”
The servants looked at one another, stricken. They were elderly men, the four of them, long in the service of his father, and now that their master was dead they were afraid to disobey his son and heir. Yet they wished to do honor to their dead master and they wanted no undue haste.
“Young master,” the eldest said, “to show such haste as this is unworthy of your honored ancestor, our master. In common families, yes, seven days are enough to make a few worthless mourning garments. But in this house it would be unseemly. The longer the delay between death and burial, the higher the family. It is only yesterday that he—left us. Only today is the priest of the dead here, and at this very moment he is binding the sacred body with the seven ceremonial cords.”
Il-han interrupted him. “I trust this priest knows his business.”
“He does, young master,” the servant replied. “I stood by him while he bound the cords about the shoulders, elbows, wrists and thumbs, hips, knees, calves and ankles, all in proper order. True, I had to remind him of the evil spirits that enter even into such a house as this when the master dies. Under my own eyes then he looped the cord at the waist in the shape of the character sim, which—”
“I know, I know,” Il-han said impatiently.
The servant, because of his age, continued inexorably slowly. He remembered Il-han as a lively mischievous small boy and an impetuous youth, and though his surface was courteous, his mind continued stubborn.
“As to the mourning, young master, consider what must be made. The cloth is to be bought and sewn into garments for the family, even to the eighth cousins removed, and after them for the household servants. I have written all this down—”
“Read it to me,” Il-han demanded.
The head steward beckoned to the next in rank, who took a scroll of paper from his bosom which he unrolled and read aloud in a deep loud voice.
“For the chief mourners, yourself, young master, and your two sons, undergarments of coarse cotton, leggings of coarse linen, shoes of straw. On the upper body, a long coat of the same coarse cotton, a girdle of hemp about the waist, a hat of bamboo, a headband of coarse linen, and a face screen of coarse linen, one foot long and half as wide, upheld by two bamboo sticks. I trust, young master, that your two sons are able to hold the screens before their faces, but if not—”
“Proceed,” Il-han said shortly. These old men were making a festival of his father’s funeral!
The man obeyed. “The ladies of the first generation will wear coarse linen and straw shoes. Their jeweled hairpins must be taken away and they will be given wooden pins. As for the next female relatives, their mourning will be the same. They need not wear hats of bamboo and shoes of straw or headbands and their waist cords may be white. Distant relatives need wear only the leggings and a hempen twisted cord. But all must wear white. No colors, of course—even on children.”
Il-han could endure no more. “In Buddha’s name,” he exclaimed, “how can all this be done?”
The four old men were wounded. They fixed their eyes on the wall behind his head and waited for the chief steward to reply.
“Master,” he said with dignity, “all will be ready on the fourth day after death, which is the day of putting on mourning.”
“Then let the burial be on the seventh day,” Il-han commanded and he clapped his hands together to signify they were dismissed.
Meanwhile, Sunia stood before the Queen. She had upon her arrival been ushered into the anteroom, and there she waited a long time, too long she felt with indignation, and she believed it was because the Queen was making an ado over her apparel and jewels and hairdress. If so, she could not blame the Queen, for when she appeared at the end of an hour or more, she was beautiful indeed. Sunia had more than once begged Il-han to tell her how the Queen looked in her royal robes, and Il-han had always refused.
“How do I know how she looks?” he had replied. “I try never to look higher than her knees, and if possible no higher than the hem of her skirt.”
“But you do look higher,” Sunia had insisted, teasing and serious at the same time.
“Not if I can help it,” he said sturdily.
“But sometimes you cannot help it?”
At this he had been angry or pretended to be.
“Whatever you are trying to make me say I will not say it,” he had declared.
Now Sunia saw the Queen in full splendor, and it was as if it were for the first time, so changed she was by her royal robes and in her palace. The Queen entered, leaning upon the arms of two women, though she needed to lean on no one. She was not taller than most women are but she held her head regally. Her features were perfect and in proportion, the nose straight, the cheekbones high, the mouth delicate and yet full, the chin round, the neck slender, her eyes large and black, their gaze direct and fearless. Her skin was white as cream, her cheeks were pink as a young girl’s, and her lips were red. She was too beautiful even for a Queen and yet Sunia was comforted, for it was a high, proud beauty, willful and passionate, of a sort that demanded a man’s service rather than won his heart. Relieved somewhat of her jealousy, she looked at the Queen with lively interest, and suddenly they were two women together.
The Queen smiled. “I used to imagine you before I saw you in your house, but I was always wrong.”
Sunia laughed. “What did you imagine, Majesty?”
“I thought you would be a small woman,” the Queen said, gazing at her. “Small and soft and childlike. Instead—we could be sisters!”
Oh, what a clever woman, Sunia said to herself, how clever to destroy the distance between us, how subtle a way to win my heart! And yet in spite of this self-caution, how successful the way was, for against her own judgment, which indeed was never to trust a queen, she found herself drawn to this woman. Could a queen be so without pretense as this, and yet who but a queen could be so fearlessly frank?
“Majesty,” she said, remember
ing. “I have come in obedience to my children’s father. He has sent me here to announce the death of his own father.”
The Queen waved her two women away and came close to Sunia. “Oh no,” she breathed. “I heard the rumor and I did not believe it, thinking he would come at once to tell me, somehow—”
“He has his duties as only son,” Sunia said. “And he asks forgiveness for sending me in his place.”
The Queen came down the two steps into the waiting room and sat down beside the sparrow table, a square table of the time of Koryo. It was covered with embroidered silk, whose corners were hung with streamers of silk.
“Sit here beside me,” she commanded Sunia. “Tell me everything.”
Sunia obeyed, except what was everything?
“Death came yesterday, suddenly,” she said. “Luckily he—my children’s father—had just entered his father’s house, and so he went at once to the bedside. Physicians were called, both our own and the western one.”
“Not American!” the Queen gasped. “I cannot believe that my faithful courtier would—”
“He wished to try everything, Majesty. And the foreigner, though he could not prevent it, foretold the death.”
“He would, he would,” the Queen exclaimed, and she pulled a silk kerchief from her sleeve and wiped her eyes. “And how is he?” she inquired.
“He?” Sunia asked innocently.
“My courtier.”
“My children’s father is in mourning, but he knows his duty to you, Majesty.”
Sunia spoke with some coolness and made as if she would rise to end the audience, but the Queen took both her hands and pulled her down again.
“You shall not leave me yet,” she said. “Let us be friends. Let us be sisters. Do you know I am alone here in the palace? I have no friend except the Queen Mother, and she is old and lives only in ancient times. So do I, too, live alone, by my wish, but I am not allowed peace. I am told by him—your—your lord—that everything is changed and that I must be wary and alert from day to day, and even that I must receive a new ambassador from the West—an American. Does he tell you all these secrets?”
The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea Page 14