The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea

by Pearl S. Buck

  Here in the American capital he met the greatest marvels, especially the water, hot and cold, that gushed from the wall, and lamps whose fuel was an invisible gas. Much discomfort there was too. He could not sleep well in a bed high from the floor, and twice he fell out as though he were a child and braised his shoulders, and after such misadventure he pulled the mattress to the floor. The food was unpalatable and tasteless and he missed Sunia’s kimchee, and the spices and the richness of his own foods. Moreover, there were those eating implements, a pronged fork, a sharp knife, and he could not cut the slabs of meat, nor down it running red with blood. He chose a spoon and such foods as he could sup.

  These were small matters, and soon he learned his way about the city, though only with the help of a young naval officer who had been appointed to stay with the delegation from Korea, an ensign named George C. Foulk. Seeing the name printed, Il-han spoke it complete until the young man had laughed.

  “Call me George,” he said.

  This George Foulk had lived four years in China and Japan and once had even spent a few months in Korea, so that he spoke Chinese and Japanese and some Korean. Il-han was fortunate that he himself was not official in rank and could go or not go on official calls. While the others waited here and there, he walked about the city with George and listened with lively interest to what the young man explained of history and science and art in the streets and museums and buildings. All that he, Il-han, saw and heard he stored in his mind, to be used for his own country when the time came.

  Nevertheless, the formal meeting with the President of the country, whose name was Chester A. Arthur, Il-han must attend as special representative of the King of Korea. It took place not in the capital but in the city of New York in a great hotel where the President was staying, for what reason Il-han did not know. Thither they went and were installed in palatial rooms, where they waited for the appointed time. The day arrived and the hour, and Il-han prepared himself. He wore his richest robes of state, a loose coat of flowered plum-colored silk over a white silk undertunic. Over these he put his ancestral belt of broad gold plates. Upon his breast he hung his apron of purple satin embroidered with three cranes in white silk thread, surrounded with a border of many colors. On his head he wore the tall hat traditional for yangban noblemen, made of horsehair woven upon a bamboo frame and tied beneath his chin. Besides himself only Min Yong-ik, the head of the delegation, wore such robes. Two others could wear aprons with one crane embroidered on them. The rest wore no breast aprons but the coats of plum-colored silk and the white silk tunics in blue or green with tall hats.

  Shortly before noon, word came that the President was ready to receive them. He stood in the center of the parlor of his private suite, and Il-han, entering first, saw a thick-bodied man wearing tight gray trousers and a long dark coat cut back from the waist. On his right was his Secretary of State, a man surnamed Frelinghuysen, who stood quiet and apart. On his left was his Assistant Secretary, surnamed Davis, and several others, among them George Foulk. Il-han and his fellow Koreans entered in single file and formed themselves in a line before the American dignitary. Then at a signal from Min Yong-ik they knelt at the same moment, and raising their hands high above their heads, they bent their bodies forward slowly in unison until their foreheads touched the carpeted floor. They remained in this position for moments, and then rose and went toward the President, who, with his suite, had bowed deeply as they entered and so remained until the Koreans had risen.

  Now Frelinghuysen came forward and he led Prince Min to the President and introduced him. The two clasped their hands together, Prince and President, and they looked deeply into each other’s eyes, murmuring compliments, each in his own tongue. One after the other the Koreans were introduced to the Americans, and then the Prince and the President exchanged formal greetings, each in his own tongue, translated in turn.

  After the ceremonies, the Koreans retired, and on that same days they took ship. With the American officers delegated to accompany them, they went to the city of Boston, there to inspect buildings and manufactories.

  Time fails me [Il-han wrote to Sunia in the days following] to tell you of the many sights I have seen. My head is crowded with sights, my mind is enriched, and I shall need the rest of my life to tell you everything. I have seen great farms where machines take the place of men and beasts, and these I have observed most carefully, for you know my concern with the life of our landfolk. Alas, we are centuries behind these Americans! But I have seen the factories where textiles are made, especially in a city named Lowell, and there, too, I perceive how far behind we are with our handlooms. I cannot deny that our stuffs are finer, especially our silks, but can we compete with machines? I have seen hospitals and telegraph offices and shipping yards, the great shops of jewelers and merchants of all kinds. Tiffany in New York is a mighty name in jewelries, and I was glad I had not you beside me as I examined their baubles, else I could not have contained you, or myself for that matter, who wish to give you all you long for. The post office—ah, that we had such speed and exactitude, a letter posted today hundreds of miles away by tomorrow, and this not by foot but by train! And I saw sugar refineries where the whitest sugar is made, all by machines, and fire vehicles, whereby fires in great cities are put out before they destroy a hundred houses, and great newspaper offices, and above all, I saw the military academy at a place on a great river, where young men are trained as officers of the national army here. These and much more I have seen, and when you and I are old, Sunia, and sitting upon our ondul floor together, I shall still have new things to tell you, for a lifetime is not enough for all I have seen.

  When the mission was ended, the Koreans bade farewell to the President in his palace, for they were in Washington again to observe how the government performed its duties. On the last day, they divided themselves. Some went to Europe and homeward by the Suez Canal, some went home directly by the way which they had come, but upon the President’s invitation three went homeward on an American warship, and with these went Il-han, for George Foulk accompanied them, and Il-han wished to stay by this young man and with his help gather more information concerning the history and political life of the western peoples. By now Il-han could read books in English partly by himself, but George Foulk was there to help him when he could not understand, and Il-han made translations of such works for the King to read, and for the Queen, if she would. Only Prince Min would have nothing to do with such works. He declared that Korea could never match the western countries and therefore her strength must remain in her own old ways. So saying, he retired to his cabin on the ship and returned to the Confucian books he had brought with him.

  The warship carried Il-han and three others and George Foulk to Europe, where they disembarked at Marseilles, and for seventeen days they traveled through other new countries and saw still more new sights, until Il-han, fearing that by now one sight would be confused with another, spent every evening writing down what he had seen during the day and where he had seen it.

  It was spring again before he reached home, and indeed all but summer, for it was the last day of the fifth month of the solar year, 1884, when the ship weighed anchor in the harbor at Chemulpo. From there they were escorted to the capital in sedan chairs and on horseback, and Il-han chose a horse, and so did George Foulk. Side by side they rode through the sunlit landscape, but neither saw the surrounding beauty. They talked long and quietly together, and the burden of their talk was Il-han’s fear that Prince Min’s influence might be against reforms.

  “Our only hope,” he said, “is to leave the past and move into the present. I have hope, for I understand now that a small country can grow strong by means of science and machines. We must search out our best young men and send them to your country to learn, and return them here to teach. We must open colleges for our youths. Yet how can I persuade the King when Prince Min is so powerful? And certainly I shall not be able to persuade the Queen, whose relative he is. I make a prophecy and I pray it
will not come true. The Prince, I prophesy with fear and sadness, will pretend to have interest in what he has seen, but it is only pretense. He will pretend to suggest reforms and then he will prevent them in secret. This is my fear.”

  He gazed far across the land as he spoke. The season was the planting of rice and in the valleys the farm families, young and old, were thrusting the young plants into the shallow waters of the rice fields. In the bamboo groves the new shoots were waist-high. So fair a country!

  At the entrance to his own house Il-han descended from his horse and beat upon the gate with the stock of his whip. He was alone, for Foulk had parted from him at the city gate to go to the American Embassy, and the others had stopped earlier at their own homes. Il-han’s house was the farthest and so he was last and he stood waiting. The gate opened a crack and he saw his servant peer through, and then fling the gate wide and fall to his knees to put his forehead in the dust.

  “Master—master—you sent no word! We did not know when to expect you.”

  “I did not know the exact hour or even the day,” Il-han replied.

  He lifted the man as he spoke and then strode through the gate into the gardens and to the house. Silence was everywhere, and he inquired of the servants, who now came running, where their mistress was and his sons.

  “Master, your sons are flying kites on the city wall,” his servant told him, “and our mistress waits upon the Queen.”

  “Does she go often to wait upon the Queen?” Il-han inquired.

  “Indeed she is the Queen’s favorite,” a woman servant put in.

  Il-han could but go to his own rooms then to await Sunia’s return. Meanwhile he sent for bath water and fresh garments and for the barber to shave him, and while he made himself clean, he rejoiced in his return to his own house. All seemed better even than he remembered, and when he was finished with barber and bathboy and servant, he strolled in the gardens, and saw how the trees had grown, how the plants flowered. The blossoms on the persimmon trees were yellow and in full bloom and the goldfish were merry in the pools and a bird sang in the bamboo grove. Here he waited for Sunia, and suddenly he saw her, her full skirts of apple-green silk flying behind her in the speed of her coming. He opened his arms, for none stood by to watch them, the servants hiding themselves kindly, and she ran into his embrace. Oh, good it was to feel her in his arms, her warm body pressing against his, her sweet cheek against his!

  “You should have told me,” she breathed. “I have missed all the expecting. How can I believe you are here?”

  She drew back to look at him, to feel his arms, press his hands, clasp his waist again. “You are older,” she exclaimed. “I think you are thinner.” She paused to stare at him aghast. “You have cut off your hair!”

  He had not told her that he had cut his hair. “I cut it—” he said and was stopped by her stricken look.

  “You mean you are not—you wish you were not—married to me!”

  What could he say? It was true that when a man married it was old custom that on the crown of his head he must erect the coil of his long hair.

  “There are new times,” he said somewhat feebly.

  She looked at him with doubt and then a smile caught the corners of her mouth.

  “You want to look different from other men here, you want to be anything that is willful and stubborn. Oh, you are not changed, not a whit, hair or no hair.”

  They embraced again, with passion, and hand in hand they walked into the house.

  “Before the children come home,” Sunia said, “let me tell you why I am so late.”

  She proceeded then to tell her tale and Il-han listened, marveling how she too had changed and was no longer the shy girlish woman she had been. Here then was the gist of her story.

  While Il-han was in foreign lands, the American General Foote had endeavored to present himself to the King and the Queen, but the Queen had refused to receive him, and she forbade the King to receive him.

  “What,” she had exclaimed to Sunia, “shall the King show himself divided from me? Let the chief of the Foreign Office receive this Foote, not we who are truebone royalty. We are too high for him. Is he a yangban in this country or even in his own?”

  When she was told that Americans had no yangban she grew more willful. “All the more reason,” she declared, “for not receiving one of them in our palaces.”

  Thus it went until Sunia devised a clever scheme of her own. She had become friends with the Queen in her own woman ways, and she perceived that the Queen liked new sights. Thereupon she herself went one day to call upon the female Foote, and quite alone except for a woman servant, she entered the mansion where these Footes lived. All was strange to see. The tables and chairs were high, the floors were covered with thick wool mats, and the walls were decorated with foreign scenes and portraits of unknown persons. The female Foote received her kindly, nevertheless, welcoming her with both hands outstretched and leading her to sit upon one of the high chairs, from which her feet swung clear of the floor, it was so high, and she was afraid of falling off, until the lady Foote saw her distress and bade a servant put a stool under her feet

  This foreign lady could speak some Korean, much to Sunia’s surprise, though with a strange twist of the tongue, and she was free and gay and she asked many questions which Sunia answered, until soon they were two women talking together. The lady then asked Sunia if she would like to see the house, and when Sunia said she would, for her curiosity was sharp, the lady Foote took her everywhere upstairs and down but the worst was when Sunia was compelled to come down the stairs again, which she could do only by sitting and sliding from step to step lest she fall headlong, since never before had she been that high. She saw many things in that house, a machine that could sew fine stitches, another machine that could write letters, beds on posts and surrounded by nets to keep off mosquitoes, an iron cook stove, and such things, more than she could count.

  All this she told the Queen, and when the Queen asked how the lady Foote was dressed, Sunia said, “She wears a full skirt held out by a thin hoop, and her upper body sits on top like a Buddha on a mountain.”

  At this the Queen laughed aloud. Then she looked thoughtful. At last she spoke. “Perhaps I will invite her to come here and show herself.”

  “Majesty, I pray you will do so,” Sunia replied. “It is more diverting than a play to see her walk. Her feet are hidden and one would think she went hither and thither on wheels. And her waist, Majesty! It is small like this.” She measured a little circle with her two hands.

  The Queen marveled.

  “How can that be? Is she divided in two?”

  Sunia had wondered for herself how it could be, and she had inquired privately of a woman servant in that home, who had told her that the lady Foote encased her middle in a steel-enforced box. So she told the Queen.

  “She boxes herself in at the waist, to make herself small.”

  Upon this the Queen could not restrain her curiosity, and the lady Foote was invited and the Queen sent her own palanquin to fetch her to the palace. Alas, as the bearers told everywhere, the lady could not squeeze into the palanquin because of her wide skirts.

  “However high we raised the front of the palanquin,” they told, grinning at every word, “she could not get herself inside. Even her husband stood there laughing, and we all laughed. But she was not put off one bit and, laughing with us, she backed in like a mule between shafts. Then her skirts stood out so far that we could not put down the front curtain and so we carried her through the streets. The thousands stood to watch us, for word flew from mouth to ear everywhere and people ran out from their houses. Some even hid beneath the palanquin and we beat them out with bamboo sticks.”

  Thus the foreigner was carried through the streets until they came to the palace. There she had new difficulty in descending from the palanquin and she must be pulled out and set straight, whereupon her skirts belled out in a vast circle, a pretty sight, Sunia said, for her gown was made of rich
golden silk, long in the back like a tail, and the front was hung about with wide lace and there was lace falling from her sleeves over her hands. Only one part of her was unseemly, and this was her front, where her breasts stood out like hillocks under the silk. This, Sunia concluded, was the misfortune of the foreign women, that they had big breasts.

  At this moment she paused and looked at Il-han sidewise. “And did all the women in America have such swollen breasts?” she inquired.

  Il-han looked sidewise at her in return. “I did not look at them,” he replied.

  So she went on with her tale.

  When the King heard the female Foote was coming he declared that he too must see her, which he could not unless the Queen allowed. She granted his wish, however, and Sunia met the guest in the reception hall and led her through the antechamber and into the throne room, where the King and Queen sat on their thrones, with a nephew prince at their side. Sunia had taught the guest how to salute the truebone royal pair and she, though foreign, performed the salutations very well and then stood while the King and Queen rose. The King wore a long robe of dark red silk, the Queen wore a long flowing skirt of blue silk and a jacket of yellow silk most exquisitely embroidered with multicolored flowers and fastened with buttons of amber and pearl. Her long black hair was fastened in a smooth coil at her neck with pins of filigree gold set with jewels. Upon her nobly shaped head she wore an ornament also of jewels, and from her waist hung jeweled baubles fastened to bright silk tassels.