The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea

by Pearl S. Buck

  Sung-man stared at his tall friend. He himself was a short stout man, not handsome, and clumsy of hand and foot.

  “Is it you?” he exclaimed.

  “I feel strange to myself,” Yul-han acknowledged, “as though I were my own grandfather.”

  Nevertheless thus garbed he walked to the church, Sung-man at his side and taking two steps to his one. So they arrived at the church and went in. The benches were already full of people, men on one side, women on the other. On the platform the missionary stood waiting, dressed in black, and a foreign music came from somewhere, of a sort Yul-han had never heard. He walked up the central aisle looking neither to right nor left, Sung-man behind him, and the missionary motioned to them to stand at his right on the platform. While they stood there waiting suddenly the gentle music changed to loud clear music, very joyous, and Yul-han saw Induk coming up the aisle beside her father. In front of her walked two small boys, her brother’s children as Yul-han knew, scattering flowers as they came, and behind her walked her mother and older sister. But it was at Induk that he looked. She wore a full skirt of pink brocaded satin and a short jacket to match, and her face was half hidden behind a veil of thin white silk. She walked steadily toward him and up the two steps while he waited, trying not to look at her and yet seeing her all the way until she was at his side.

  Of that strange marriage ceremony he remembered not a word, except that when he was asked by the missionary if he would have Induk for his wife he replied in a loud voice that he would indeed, and it was only for this purpose that he had come. He was surprised to hear stifled laughter from some women in the audience and he wondered if he had said something he should not have said. The missionary went on, whatever he had said, and in a few minutes, before he could recover himself, he heard the missionary pronounce them man and wife. He hesitated, not knowing what came next, but Induk guided him gently by her hand in the curve of his elbow and he found himself walking down the aisle with her, arm in arm.

  He had all but forgotten his parents in the agitation of the ceremony but when he reached the door he saw his father standing at the end of the last bench and passed him near enough to touch his shoulder. Father and son, they looked at each other, the one in gravity, the other in amazed gratitude.

  Now he and Induk were at the door and now they had passed through into the outer air. It was over. Yul-han was a married man.

  “Why should you build a house?” Sunia demanded. “Our ancestral house is empty of children. When we die it will be yours.”

  Yul-han and Induk exchanged looks. How could they explain to his mother that they were different in this generation? Sunia had come to her husband’s house when she was a bride, the house was the home of their ancestors, and where else could she go, or indeed where else would she want to go?

  She continued, addressing herself to Induk. “It is because you think I will not have a Christian in my house?”

  “Surely not, Mother,” Yul-han said quickly.

  But Induk reflected. “Mother, you are right—and wrong. Being Christian does indeed make me different from other young women. You are kind, but you would find me irksome in your house.”

  “How are you different?” Sunia demanded, doubtful but determined still to have her own way.

  Induk turned to Yul-han. “How am I different?”

  He stroked his head, considering. “I have not had time to find out, but different you are.”

  Sunia yielded then, complaining privately to Il-han. “She wants to take care only of her husband. Is that a good daughter-in-law? Who brought her precious husband into this world? Who but me?”

  “You forget that I—” Il-han began thus but Sunia stopped him.

  “Oh you men,” she cried, “you never think whether what you do will produce a child. Yes, yes, you are necessary, else why would a woman spend her life taking care of you? But it is we who create the child and with no more from you than a few drops of water upon an open flower.”

  “Peace,” he said with dignity. “Tell me what you want and I will see if it is possible, but do not make me promise that they live with us under our grass roof. These are new times. And I myself do not know whether I want a Christian under the same roof with me.”

  The compromise was that Yul-han was to build a house attached to his father’s but with a separate entrance. During the summer months of his great happiness with Induk thereafter Yul-han began the building of his own house. With the help of the one man servant he brought gray stones from the mountains and he cut cedar trees from the forest lands for the pillars to holdup the roof, but to his father’s annoyance Yul-han employed a Japanese roof company to make the roof of tile instead of thatch.

  “What,” Il-han exclaimed one day when as usual he walked into the garden to see the new house, “do you buy tiles of the enemy instead of using the good thatch grass from our own fields?”

  “Father,” Yul-han replied, not pausing in the work of making a window, “the thatch must be renewed every three or four years, whereas this red tile will last for a century.”

  “You are too hopeful,” Il-han retorted. “It is enough to look ahead for a few years. Who knows whether any of us will be alive beyond that?”

  “You are too hopeless,” Yul-han retorted gaily.

  The house-building was only for the summer until such time as the schools were open after harvest. He must continue his teaching and so must Induk, she at least until she had a child, and in this summer he and Induk lived in a part of the ancestral home, and it was during this time that they both began to understand the sufferings of their people. In the village near which they lived Yul-han heard one night a great wailing of a woman screaming and crying for help. He was working late and alone and was about to break off his labor, for the mosquitoes were singing about his ears, when this voice came to him in waves of agony, borne upon the rising night wind. He put down his plastering trowel and listened.

  What he heard were the sobbing words repeated again and again, “O-man-ee, O-man-ee, save me!”

  Someone, a girl, was calling on her mother. He listened and then he went to find Induk. She was in the small porch outside the kitchen, pounding his clean clothes smooth on the polished ironing stone. Beside her was a jar of heated charcoal, upon which rested her small, long-handled, pointed iron. He paused to enjoy the picture she made, kneeling on the wooden floor in the light of a paper lantern, the wind blowing her hair as she pounded with two wooden clubs, one in each hand, the folded garment, his shirt as he could see. This wife of his, when she was about her housewifery, could seem the simplest of women. The sound of women pounding the garments smooth was the rhythm and the beat of the Korean countryside.

  Without seeing him, Induk lifted the iron from its bed of hot ashes and he spoke.

  “A woman is wailing in the village. Something is wrong.”

  She put aside the hardwood ironing clubs and the iron. “Let us go,” she exclaimed.

  Here was her difference. Where a usual woman would have said it might be dangerous to interfere in another’s troubles and thereby bring down trouble on one’s own house, her thought was only to go and help.

  They walked down the road quietly but quickly. The screams had subsided to low moans and these came from one of the village winehouses. Small as the village was, there were three winehouses in it where, before the invaders came, there had been none. These winehouses were places where men came to drink and to seek women. In the deep poverty of the landfolk it was easy to buy girls for such places and few indeed were the girls who dared to rebel when such employment was all that kept their families from starving.

  “Let me go in alone,” Induk said when they reached the door of this lowly house of pleasure.

  “I will not let you enter such a place alone,” Yul-han declared.

  Together then they went in. A slatternly old woman came toward them from behind the gate.

  “We are neighbors,” Induk explained, “and we heard someone wailing and we thought
you might need help.”

  The old woman peered at them from smoke-blinded eyes and replied not a word. Before Induk could go further a young girl ran out of the house, her garments half torn from her body, her hair in disarray and her face scratched and bleeding. A man ran after her. Induk put out her arms and caught the girl, and Yul-han stood between her and the man.

  This man did not at first recognize Yul-han since he had lived in the city for the later years of his life and the man pushed up his sleeves and made as if to attack Yul-han.

  “Take care of yourself,” Yul-han said to him with calm. “I am her husband.”

  The man was taken aback by this and he stared at the two of them.

  “Then why are you here?” he demanded.

  Induk stepped in front of the girl and it was she who answered. “We heard a cry for help.”

  The man looked at her insolently. “You must be Christians!”

  “I am a Christian,” Induk said quietly.

  The man sneered at her, showing his teeth like a dog. “You Christians! You are everywhere that you should not be. One of these days something will happen to all of you.”

  “Are you Korean?” Yul-han demanded. “How is it that you speak like a Japanese?”

  The man looked at him sullenly. “I paid money for this girl. She belongs to me.”

  The girl now spoke for herself. “I belong to no one. I was cheated! You told me I had only kitchen work to do—not that—ha, I spit on you!”

  With this she spat on the man full face, and he bellowed at her and lunged for her but Yul-han pushed him aside and he fell to the ground.

  “Do not forget that I am the son of my father,” he said sternly.

  The man clambered out of the dust and stepped back. “One of these days,” he muttered. “One of these days …”

  He brushed his clothes and turned his back on them and Yul-han led the way out of the gate and to his own house, in silence. He was too prudent not to inquire of himself what they should do with this girl. She was the daughter of a farmer, he supposed, perhaps even of a man on their own land, and he knew that this incident might bring trouble down on him from the capital. The Kim family was too famous to escape notice, whatever they did. Only his father’s continued absence from the city and from the King had made them safe. Now he, Yul-han, had married a Christian, and it could not be imagined that this was not known to the authorities, for they knew everything and penetrated to the smallest village and to the last corner of every house. Even the man at the winehouse might be in the pay of the authorities, for there were many spies among the Koreans, low fellows who would do anything for money.

  When they reached the house, Induk bade the girl wash herself and smooth her hair.

  “What shall I do now?” the girl asked.

  “Wait for me in the kitchen,” Induk told her.

  With this Yul-han and Induk went aside into the bedroom to consider what they had done. Neither knew how to begin. It was Yul-han who spoke first.

  “The time has come,” he said thoughtfully. “I must declare myself on one side or the other. Either I am a Christian or I am not a Christian. If I am to follow you into every trouble where your religion guides you, then I must share your religion. When we are summoned, as sometime we shall be, I cannot say that you are Christian and I am not. They will ask me why I allow you to interfere in the lives of others, for you will continue to interfere, I can see that.”

  Tears came into Induk’s eyes. “But we are told—it is the command of Christ that we must bear the burdens of the weak!”

  “So we will bear them,” Yul-han said resolutely. “Otherwise we shall be parted, you and I—you driven by your conscience in one direction and I—what? Prudently staying at home, I suppose! Then sooner or later you will hate me—or I may hate you. This is a Christian marriage. You make it so by being what you are.

  “You are not to be Christian because I am,” she insisted.

  “I am Christian because I must be, if I am your husband,” he retorted. “Otherwise our paths diverge, and that I cannot accept.”

  She let tears fall now. “You make a monster of me,” she sobbed.

  He took her hand and put the palm to his lips. “Not a monster,” he said, “only a Christian.”

  He drew her to him by this hand. “I shall not enter blindly into your religion, I will study and understand. I must be convinced as well as converted. Now cease these tears. You should be happy.”

  “I want to be a good wife,” she whispered against his breast. “I would die before I bring you into danger.”

  He did not reply for awhile as he smoothed her dark hair. Both knew what she meant. In the last few days they had heard fresh news of the increasing harshness of the ruling government toward the Christians. Whenever Christians sought to work against some evil circumstance, the rulers declared that by so doing they rebelled against the authorities, until all over the country helpless simple Christians were seized and accused of rebellion when what they did was only against an evil which, according to their doctrines, they must oppose, whatever the government.

  “It is better if we face danger together,” Yul-han said.

  At this moment a voice spoke from the door. It was the girl, who had grown weary of waiting. She stood there, her two feet planted widely apart, her bare arms hanging at her sides, her hair neat and her sun-browned face red with scrubbing.

  “What do you want me to do next, mistress?” she demanded.

  Yul-han and Induk parted and Yul-han turned his back properly on the girl.

  “What shall we do with you?” Induk countered. “Shall we not send you home again to your parents?”

  “If you send me home,” the girl said, her country accent thick on her tongue, “the wineshop owner will only get me back again, since he has paid for me. He has a license from the Japanese police. How can we escape him? I will stay here with you and do your work if you will feed me.”

  Induk was perplexed. She had saved the girl and now must be responsible for the life she had saved!

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “I am called Ippun,” the girl said, and stood waiting, her eyes, small above her high cheekbones, beseeching and helpless and her big mouth hanging open.

  What could they do then but let her stay? Therefore she slept in a corner of the kitchen at night, and by day she worked without rest, as devoted as a dog to its owners. Not knowing what else to do, Yul-han and Induk accepted her as a member of the household.

  “Though you call it a gospel of love, yours is a hard doctrine,” Yul-han said one morning in late summer.

  He was seated on a chair beside a high table in the vestry of the Christian church in the city. The missionary sat opposite him, the book open before him, and Yul-han thought secretly that he had never before seen so craggy a face, or one so ugly in features and yet so noble in spirit, the blue eyes deep-set under brushy red eyebrows, the pitted white skin, the high nose broken, it seemed, in the bridge, the wide mouth and big teeth. Altogether the face was formidable and so were the huge hairy hands and the strong hairy neck. Under its clothing, was that thick strong body also covered with red hair?

  “So you think Christianity is hard,” the missionary said.

  “It is,” Yul-han replied, “hard even in its doctrine of love. What is more cruel than the command to turn the right cheek to the enemy when a blow has been struck on the left?”

  “What is hard about that?” the missionary demanded.

  East and West faced each other across the table. “Imagine to yourself,” Yul-han said earnestly, “if I am struck on this cheek”—he put his narrow, aristocratic hand to his right cheek—“and I turn this cheek”—he turned his head—“what am I doing to the man who strikes me? I am saying to him without words that I am his superior, one far above him in spirit. I am compelling him to examine himself. He has given way to evil temper—I am daring him to do so again and thus prove how evil he is. What can he do? He will be ashamed
of himself, he will slink away, condemned by his own conscience. Is this not cruel? Is this not hard? I think so.”

  The missionary shook his head. “You make me see things I have not seen before.”

  He was silent for a while and then he took up the book and read aloud from the sayings of Paul. Yul-han listened and after some time he held up his hand for pause. He repeated the lines which he had just heard.

  “‘Dare any of you, having a matter against his neighbor, go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?’ Do you not see what burden this places upon your innocent Korean Christians?”

  “Burden?” the missionary repeated.

  “It puts them in danger of death,” Yul-han said bluntly.

  “Death?”

  “Do you think the rulers will be pleased when our people come to you instead of to them?”

  “There are many Christians in Japan,” the missionary said.

  “Ah, but there the Church is ruled by Japanese Christians, some of them of high rank. Here it is true that the Church is composed of Koreans—how many did you say? two hundred and fifty thousand—a good number, but the Japanese do not rule the Church here. And my people when they become Christians are altogether devoted—there is too little else in our life nowadays. I feel the need in myself for enrichment and faith and some sort of inspiration. There seems no hope ahead. Some of us, like my father, find refuge in writing poetry and studying ancient literature. But what of those who have no such learning and no such talent? They are finding their interest in the Christian Church and in strong men from the West like you, through whom they seek connection with that outer world, a stream of culture new and modern from which we are cut off by the invaders.”

  The missionary was listening, his blue eyes fixed on Yul-han’s face with intensity and comprehension.

  “Go on,” he said, when Yul-han paused.

  “Look at my town,” Yul-han said. “Say there are some eight or nine thousand people there, such a town for example as Syunchun. Half of the people there are Christian. The church and the mission school are the largest buildings and the best. A thousand, two thousand people, go to church and to your other meetings. In the surrounding villages there are many Christians, too. What do the Japanese rulers think when they see the vast crowds of Christians and these meetings in which they themselves have no part? They smell rebellion and revolution and so they send their spies to the meetings to listen and to report. These spies hear your Christians singing ‘Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war.’ What was that song you bade them sing in the church this morning? ‘Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the Cross.’ And what did you preach, you American soldier of the Cross? You told us the story of a young man named David, who with a small sling and a few pebbles killed the powerful evil giant, Goliath. And how was it that David could kill the giant and whence had he his power? Weak as he was, young as he was, his heart was pure, his cause was just, and so with God’s help he prevailed. This is what you teach us. And we, hopeless as we are, crushed and lost, how can we but believe you, since we have nothing else in which to believe, our past useless, our future hopeless?”