The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea

by Pearl S. Buck

  “Do not speak her personal name—not yet,” Sunia commanded. “Time enough when she is my daughter-in-law.”

  Yul-han yielded, smiling, and took up his chopsticks again.

  “I shall be late for school,” he said, and he ate his rice and kimchee quickly and bade them farewell.

  He walked quickly and gaily along the country road toward the city. In spite of the evil times he felt lighthearted. The truth had been told. His parents knew that he had chosen his own wife. Until they knew, he had not felt free to break with tradition and approach Induk for himself. They had never even been alone, but in the teachers’ meetings they had spoken to each other, and then, when he found out that her family was Christian, he had on several Sunday mornings gone to the Christian temple on the main street of the city. Men and women sat separately but he discovered that the Choi ladies sat in the second row from the front and he went early to sit as near Induk as possible. He saw only her smooth nape and the coil of her dark hair. Yet when she sang the hymns, sometimes he saw her profile, the small straight nose, the parted lips, the round, cream-white chin. She was tall for a woman, but slender, and she always wore Korean dress. Last Sunday he had lingered at the church door, watching for her, and had been waylaid by the American missionary. This man, a rugged priest, his hair and eyebrows and beard a rusty red, had taken him by the hand and then had spoken in a booming voice.

  “Friend, you have been here several times. You are welcome. Do you want to know Jesus?”

  Yul-han had been embarrassed by the question and he could only smile. At this moment Induk herself came out of the door and seeing what was happening, she approached and introduced him.

  “Dr. Maclane, this is Kim Yul-han, a teacher in the boys’ school.”

  “Does he want to be a Christian?” the missionary boomed again.

  Induk laughed. “Let me find out,” she said.

  Her eyes, dark and lively, exchanged a look with Yul-han’s.

  “Good—good,” the missionary said heartily, his small blue eyes already following other persons, and he released Yul-han and hastened away.

  From this moment of understanding, the two had moved quickly to meeting alone one afternoon in a deserted classroom. By chance Induk was walking through a corridor on her way home and Yul-han, seeing her in the distance, had followed her.

  “Miss Choi!”

  She turned, saw him, and waited.

  “Should you not begin to make me a Christian?” he inquired with mischief.

  He enjoyed her fresh free laugh.

  “Do you want to be a Christian?” she asked.

  “Do you think it would improve me?” he countered.

  “I do not know how good you are, as you are,” she replied, teasing.

  He liked her frankness, her humor, and he had walked with her, both of them self-conscious in their determination to be modern. It was not easy to break down the wall of tradition between man and woman. He was too aware of Induk as a woman, dazzled by the whiteness of her skin, the sheen of her dark hair, the loveliness of her small ears close set against the handsome head, her lithe body moving gracefully in step with him, her fragrance, the sweetness of her breath. Everything about her was feminine, warm and strong.

  They halted involuntarily at the open door of an empty classroom and moved by the same impulse, they went in and sat down in the back of the room. The door was open but anyone passing could not see them. Dangerous it still was, but they could not part, not yet in this their first enchantment. What they had said in those few minutes alone was simple, even inconsequential, and yet he remembered every word.

  “Do you like teaching girls?” A stupid question he knew as soon as he had asked it, for whom would she teach if not girls?

  “I like teaching,” she said.

  “So do I.”

  They had paused. Then it was she who began.

  “Do not be a Christian unless you wish. One should follow his own heart.”

  “What is the advantage of being Christian?” he asked.

  She hesitated. “It is hard to say. My family is Christian, and I have grown up Christian. We believe in God, and we are comforted. In the church we meet with others who believe.”

  “What are the doctrines?”

  “I cannot explain to you in a few minutes. Have you read the New Testament?”

  “I have read nothing Christian. To me Christianity is a foreign religion.”

  “Nothing that teaches us about God can be foreign. I will bring my New Testament to school tomorrow and you can read it. Then we will talk. Now we must go.”

  She rose and he could only follow. When they parted at the door, he walked away in a daze, and was already dreaming of tomorrow. Yet the next day he did not see her. On his desk was a small parcel addressed to him. He opened it and found the book. There was no letter with it.

  He began to read it that same evening and now was nearly at its end. One more evening, he told himself as he came to the city gate, and tomorrow he would find her and tell her.

  “I have read the book,” he would tell her. “Now we must talk.”

  When their son was gone, Sunia turned to Il-han. “You must go privately into the city and see for yourself this family of Choi. See where they live, what sort of house it is, what the neighbors say—and which Choi it is. Choi is a name of the North. Shall we of the South accept a daughter-in-law of the North?”

  Il-han had been deeply disturbed by all that Yul-han had said before she came in. He could not forget the accusations that his mild son had made against his father’s generation, and he longed to make even small amends.

  “Sunia,” he said, “I will go. I will look at the house. I will consult the neighbors. But it is time to forget who is from the North and who is from the South. Let us only remember, North or South, that we are Koreans.”

  Since Sunia gave him no peace once her mind was set on some goal, he went three days later to the city where for so long he had not been. It was as Yul-han had said. The streets were new and clean, and there were many changes. Everywhere he saw new shops where Japanese merchants sold their goods, and this he had heard was true throughout the country in town and village. But what he saw first was that of all parts of the city the quarter where the Japanese lived was the most prosperous and that it had grown from a cluster of houses to a city within a city. And when he asked of passersby, he was told that the Japanese Legation was now the house where the Governor-General lived, the gardens enlarged and made beautiful, as he could see when he looked into the open gates, but guarded by Japanese soldiers.

  “Pass on, old man,” the soldiers cried when he lingered. “No one is allowed to stop at these gates.”

  He went on. Opposite to this new-made palace other new buildings were built on a low hill and here he lingered again.

  “What are these new buildings?” he inquired of the guard.

  “These are the offices and headquarters of the Governor-General, the noble Count Terauchi,” the guard replied. “Do you not know the Tokanfu when you see it? You must be a countryman.”

  Il-han did not reply. What the ignorant guardsman himself did not know was that this place where the center of government now was, a foreign government established by invaders, had once before been the site of a castle belonging to these same invaders.

  In the time of Hideyoshi during the invasion of Taiko Sama, one Kato Kyomasu, his most able lieutenant, had built a castle here. The castle had been destroyed when the invaders were repulsed, but they had returned and now here again was the seat of that same government over a proud people but subject, his own people.

  Could this be accident or was it fate?

  … “How could you see so little?” Sunia inquired when he returned.

  Her eyes sparkled with indignation. “You go to the city and stay away for hours and then come back only to say that the house looks like every other house, and though the neighbors speak well of this Choi family, you forget to ask where they came from—”
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  “I told you, they said the family has lived in the same house for six generations,” Il-han replied.

  He was very weary but he knew he could have no rest until he satisfied Sunia’s questions.

  “Did you see no one of them?” she asked next.

  “You said I was not to ask to enter.”

  “You could have looked in the gate.”

  “I did look in the gate. I saw two servants and a young woman cutting some flowers.”

  “It might have been she,” Sunia exclaimed.

  “It might have been,” he agreed.

  “Was she pretty?”

  “Now, Sunia,” he remonstrated. “What can I say to that? If I say yes you will not be pleased with my sharp eyesight. If I say no you will blame me for seeing nothing. I can only say that she looked cheerful and healthy.”

  “Round face or long face?”

  “I cannot tell you. It was a face with the necessary features.”

  “Oh me,” Sunia sighed, “am I to have a daughter-in-law who has only a face with necessary features?”

  He laughed and then, because he was so weary and worried with matters which he could not explain to her, he kept on laughing until she was alarmed.

  “Did you drink while you were in the city?” she demanded.

  “No, no,” he said, wiping away tears. “I am only laughing.”

  “At me, I’ll swear!”

  “At women,” he said. “Man’s eternal laughter at woman! That is all—that is all.”

  Sunia sighed. “However long I live with you, I do not understand you!”

  She looked at him earnestly for a moment, and quizzically as if to appraise him. Then she too began to laugh.

  “And what are you laughing at?” he inquired, surprised.

  “At you,” she said. “Am I not allowed to laugh?”

  “Certainly,” he said. “Laugh your woman’s laughter. Why not?”

  He was not pleased, nevertheless, although he did not know why, and he took up his book as a sign that she was dismissed, which sign she obeyed still smiling, and her lively eyes were mischievous.

  Early spring gave way to full spring. Plum trees bloomed and their petals fell and cherry and peach, apple and pomegranate followed, blossom producing fruit, and Yul-han walked in dreams. No longer did he make pretense of accident when he met Induk, and she did not pretend. They met with their eyes when they were in the company of others, but when they met alone they spoke from their hearts. Neither used words of love for none were necessary. Each knew that they had but one thought and it was marriage. He knew that in the West it was the custom for a man to offer himself to the woman, but this was a way too foreign for him and, he was sure, for her. Were the approach so naked, would she not, in modesty, be repelled by him? He thought day and night of what he could say or do to express his love and desire. The new way was too foreign but the old way was too public. A professional matchmaker was only a coarse old woman. Nor did he want his parents to approach her family. The bustle of mothers, the formality of fathers, belonged to a past age. And Induk was Christian and would want a Christian ceremony. It was a grave danger, this marrying a Christian. The Japanese rulers did not like the missionaries or their religion; missionaries were sympathetic with the Koreans, they said, and the religion in itself was revolutionary in content.

  Suddenly it occurred to him one day how to ask Induk if she would be his wife. It was a Sunday afternoon, the first in the sixth solar month. They had met by arrangement in one of the new city parks, and had walked to a quiet pool under hanging willows. He spread his coat on the bench for her to sit upon and together they watched the goldfish darting among the water lilies. Now—now was the moment. He began diffidently, wondering if he dared to touch her hand.

  “Induk, I have something to ask you.”

  She did not turn her head. “What is it?”

  Across the pool a flowering quince tree, growing in the shade of the willows, was still in bloom. He saw the red petals dropping into the water. Goldfish darted up to nibble them and darted away again. He went on slowly, feeling his cheeks burning hot.

  “Will you go with me to a fortuneteller?”

  His voice was so low that he feared it lost in the ripple of the small waterwall at the end of the pool. But she heard.

  “Do you believe in fortunetellers?” she asked, incredulous.

  “To discover whether our birth years agree,” he said.

  She understood. He knew it by her sudden stillness. She neither spoke nor moved. He looked at her sidewise and saw a rose-pink flush mounting from her soft neck to her cheeks. She was shy! She who seemed always so calm, so competent, so sure of herself, was shy before him, and seeing her thus, his own diffidence faded. He sprang to his feet and held out his hand.

  “Come,” he commanded. “We will go now.”

  She looked up at him, hesitating. “Alone? The two of us? Will it not seem strange to the fortuneteller?”

  “What do we care?” he asked, very bold.

  He smiled down into her eyes, infusing her with his own daring. She grasped his hand and leaped lightly to her feet. Hand in hand in the gathering dusk they went through the now lonely park and into a narrow cross street. There in a corner sheltered by an overhanging roof an old fortuneteller sat in the dim light of a paper lantern swinging over his head, waiting for customers. Before him was a small table, upon it the tools of his trade. He peered through his horn-rimmed spectacles at Yul-han and Induk.

  “What do you seek?” he asked, his voice cracked with his sitting in wind and rain, snow and heat.

  “Our birth years,” Yul-han said. “Are they suited for marriage?” And he gave the years in which he and Induk were born.

  The fortuneteller muttered and mumbled over his signs and fumbled in worn old books. They waited, hands clasped and hidden behind the table. At last he looked up, and took off his spectacles.

  “Earth,” he declared. “Both of you belong to Earth. Thus far it is yes. As to which animal …”

  Here he pursed his withered lips and mused aloud while he pondered his books again.

  “I can almost guess by looking at the two of you what your animal years are. People are like the animals under which they are born. You are not pig, or snake, or rat …”

  He fell silent while his long dirty fingernail traced the paper.

  “A-ha!” he cried. “You are safe, both of you! You, the male, are dragon; you, the female, are tiger. Dragon is stronger than tiger, young man, but tiger is strong, and she will fight you sometimes, though she can never win, for the dragon sits above, always in the clouds.”

  In spite of their avowed disbelief in the old symbols both Yul-han and Induk were relieved. Tradition was still powerful and a man may not marry a woman whose animal is stronger than his own, else she will rule him without remorse or tenderness. Yet each was ashamed to show relief.

  “I must fight you, it seems,” Induk said.

  “You will always lose, remember,” Yul-han retorted.

  Induk sighed in pretended despair and Yul-han laughed. Then something occurred to him.

  “Old Fortuneteller,” he said, “are you not shocked that we make inquiry for ourselves?”

  The old man stroked his few gray whiskers. “Not at all,” he said. “Young ones come nowadays to inquire for themselves.”

  They were too surprised to reply to this and they went away in silence. But their joy was increased. When they parted, Yul-han held both her hands for a long moment as they stood in the shadow of a stranger’s gate.

  “So there are many of us,” he murmured before he let her go.

  … As for Il-han, he took no further interest in the marriage, which was, after all, women’s business. Indeed, as he reflected upon it, the wedding might bring only dissension into his house, for the young woman whom Yul-han wished to marry now broke all tradition by coming herself one day to see Sunia, her future mother-in-law, and, to his surprise, himself, for when the girl arrived alo
ne except for an old woman servant, she asked not only to see the house but her future father-in-law. He was disturbed by Sunia, who came breathless into his library to tell him the strange news.

  “She is here,” Sunia exclaimed.

  “She?” Il-han repeated.

  “The woman—the girl—Yul-han—” She paused, not knowing what to say. Betrothed she was not as yet and to use the word “friend” in relation to a son would have evil implication. “Her name is Induk,” she finished.

  “Well?” Il-han asked.

  “What shall we do? She wishes to see us both!”

  “Tell her I am busy,” Il-han said promptly.

  Sunia hesitated. “Will she not think it rebuff? Yet what will the neighbors say if you do see her?”

  Yul-han now arrived by another way, in time to hear these words. He came in and slid the wall door shut behind him. “Father—Mother—” He had been running and he breathed hard. “Remember that everything is different nowadays. She teaches the girls and I teach the boys, but we see each other in the corridors and on the playground in passing. I asked her myself if she would have me and she said yes. She wants our wedding to be modern.”

  “What is modern?” Sunia inquired with some scorn.

  “Well, she does not wish you to give her the usual red and green sets of garments. She says a ring on her finger at the time of our marriage is enough.”

  “How does she mean enough?” Sunia demanded. “The red garments signify the passion any marriage must have for happiness and the green signifies that you will grow together, you two young ones. How will you say such things except through these gifts?”

  Yul-han shrugged his shoulders. He could not explain to his parents how such things were said nowadays.

  Sunia’s sharp eyes saw the shrug and immediately she went on. “Doubtless the girl is not serious. At any rate, we do not know whether the marriage will be propitious. Fortunetellers must be called. We do not even know your two birth years. How can we know the combination of your lives?”

  Yul-han smiled. He went to the garden door and stood there. The summer peonies were in bloom, their red and white flowers were vivid against the young green. In the pond a frog croaked. “Only for fun,” he said, “she and I did inquire of a fortuneteller. We were both born in the year of Earth and though she is Tiger, I am Dragon.”