The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea

by Pearl S. Buck

  Here Yul-han stopped, moved by his own words. He struggled against secret tears, his head downcast. When he conquered himself and lifted his head again he saw across the table the missionary gazing at him and in his strange blue eyes was a burning demand.

  “Will you be one of us?”

  “Yes,” Yul-han said. “I will be a Christian.”

  Sunia woke in the night. Someone was creeping along the narrow porch, feeling the latches of the paper-latticed doors. She was suddenly tense, listening. Yes, someone was there. She must wake Il-han. Then she hesitated. He needed sleep, for he had been sleepless for several nights, fearful lest Japanese gendarmes appear at the gate, demanding to know why he gathered schoolchildren into his house after midnight. He had been warned by Ippun that there was such talk in the village.

  “It is that wineshop owner,” she had whispered. “He is angry because your son has sheltered me. When I went to the market yesterday he shouted at me that I would soon be back in the wineshop and the Kim family would be in prison.”

  Il-han had refused to appear afraid and he had continued his midnight school until two days ago, when Japanese gendarmes had indeed marched into the village to get themselves drunk in the wineshop and lay hold on the girls there. He had then sent word secretly to the parents of his pupils that they must not come again until he told them. But he had remained uneasy even at his books and sleepless at night.

  Leaning over him in the moonlight, Sunia saw now how wan his face was and how sunken his cheeks. No, let him sleep. She would go and see who the intruder was. Perhaps it was only a neighbor’s dog. She crept out of bed and stole across the floor in her bare feet and soundlessly she slid back the door screen an inch and peered through the crack. A man stood there, a tall thin figure in a torn garment. She pushed the screen open a few inches more and spoke suddenly and strongly.

  “Thief! What are you doing here?”

  The man turned to her and she heard his voice subdued and deep.

  “O-man-ee!”

  Not since her sons were children had she heard herself thus called “Mother.”

  “You—you—” She pushed the screen open wildly, it caught and she could not get through the narrow space and she began to sob. “Son—my son—Yul-chun—”

  “Hush,” he whispered.

  He lifted the screen from its runway and set it to one side, and took her in his arms. She clung to him.

  “So tall,” she murmured, distracted, “so much taller—your bones sticking out—and you are in rags—”

  She drew him into the house, crying and talking under her breath.

  “Where have you been? No, wait, say nothing—I must call your father—here, drink some tea—still hot—no, it is cold—I will heat some food—”

  He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Mother, listen to me! I have no time. I must leave before sunrise. I took a risk—dangerous for me and for you both, you and my father. I have been sent here to our country—I cannot tell you why—or where I shall be—I must not come home—perhaps never again—Nobody knows what will happen.”

  She was immediately calm. “Why have you not written to us?”

  “I dared not write.”

  “Where have you been these many years?”

  “In China.”

  China! She breathed the name of that unhappy country. She had seldom heard it spoken after the murder of the Queen.

  “You must tell your father,” she said resolutely and drawing him by the hand she led him into the room where Il-han still slept.

  She hated to wake him, yet she must for he would not forgive her if he were not waked. She began with slow soothing touches on his forehead, his cheeks, his hands. He stirred, he opened his eyes. She leaned close to his ear.

  “Our son is here—our elder son!”

  His face, bewildered, changed to consciousness. He sat upright in his bed. “What—where—”

  “I am here, my father,” Yul-chun said. He knelt beside his father and Il-han looked into his face.

  “Where have you been?” he asked as Sunia had.

  “In China, Father—with the revolutionists.”

  Il-han rubbed his face with his hands and stared afresh at his son. “You,” he said at last—“had you anything to do with the death of the old Empress? Was she murdered there as the Queen was murdered here?”

  “No, Father. She died of old age.”

  “They overthrew the Dragon Throne, those revolutionists!”

  “Father, it had to be overthrown. The dynasty was dead. The rulers were corrupt. The old Empress held the empire together by her two hands.”

  “Who are the rulers now?”

  “The revolutionists will set up a republic like the American republic. The people will choose their rulers.”

  Il-han was suddenly sharply awake and angry. “Folly! How can people choose a ruler when they are ignorant of such matters? I have been in America and you have not. Their people know how to choose—they vote—they—they—”

  Sunia interrupted. “You two men, you have not seen each other, father and son, for how many years? Yet you quarrel over governments! Il-han, this son of ours has only a little while to stay with us. He must be on his way—”

  “Where?” Il-han demanded.

  “I cannot tell you, Father.”

  “You are a spy?”

  “I have a mission.”

  “Then you are a spy!”

  “Call me what you wish,” Yul-chun said. “I work for Korea.”

  Il-han got out of bed and tied his robe about him and coiled his hair as he went on talking. “You will be caught and killed. Do you think you are more clever than these rogues who have spies in every winehouse? Count yourself dead.”

  “I have stayed alive all these years, Father.”

  “I do not know how,” Sunia put in. “You look starved.”

  With this she hurried out of the room and to the kitchen to heat food.

  “Come into the other room,” Il-han said. He led the way to his library and took his usual place on the floor cushion behind the low desk table.

  “Now,” he said. “Tell me all that you will.”

  Yul-chun knelt on the opposite floor cushion, his knees bare through his rags.

  “Father,” he said in the low hurried half-whisper which seemed now his habit, “I cannot tell you anything. It is better for you to know nothing. If one day you are asked if I am your son, say that you have never seen me.”

  Il-han’s eyes opened wide. “That I will never do!”

  The haggard, troubled face, the face of his son, softened. For a moment Yul-chun looked as young as he was. He forgot to whisper.

  “Do you remember how we used to walk in the bamboo grove, you and I, Father, when I was so small that you held my hand?”

  “I remember,” Il-han said, and his throat tightened with pain. How had that soft childish face changed to this man’s face? He tried to clear his throat. “That was long ago—you can scarcely remember.”

  “I do remember,” Yul-chun said. “I remember the day my brother was born, and I broke the bamboo shoots, and you told me they would never come up again. You were right, of course, those broken shoots did not grow again. Hollow reeds, you called them. I felt my heart ready to break at what I had done. But then you told me that other reeds would come up to take their place. And every spring I went to the bamboo grove to see if what you said was true. It was always true.”

  Yul-chun rose to his feet and Il-han rose, too. Face to face, at the same height, they gazed into each other’s eyes.

  “What do you tell me?” Il-han demanded.

  “This,” Yul-chun said, “that if you never see me again, or never hear my name again, remember—I am only a hollow reed. Yet if I am broken, hundreds take my place—living reeds!”

  He hesitated, looking at his father as if he had something to say and would not say it. Then suddenly he did speak, but leaning forward close to his father and in the half-whisper.


  “I cannot come again—not soon, perhaps never. But sometimes you will find under the door in the morning a printed sheet—read it and burn it.”

  He looked about him uncertainly then and muttered to himself. “The sun is rising. I must be gone.”

  The sun was indeed creeping over the earthen wall, and with these few words Yul-chun was gone.

  A moment later Sunia came in weeping. “I had his food hot and ready for him, but he went away hungry. Oh Buddha, why was I born in these times?”

  Who could answer the question? Il-han could only summon her to his side, and there they sat, hand in hand, an aging man and woman whose children had been swept away from them. They were alone in a world they did not know.

  A dry hot summer after the rainy season led into autumn. The grass on the mountains ripened and the land people cut it with short-handled sickles and bound it into sheaves for winter fuel. Against the shorn flanks of the mountains again the tall narrow poplar trees burned like golden candles. Under their grass roof Il-han and Sunia lived each day like the one before, and each night Il-han taught his pupils. He seldom saw his second son, for Yul-han and Induk returned to the city during their days of teaching.

  “Shall we not tell our second son that his elder brother returned to us?” Sunia asked.

  Il-han had already asked himself the question and his answer was ready. “We do not know this woman he has married. A Christian? She is like a foreigner. No. It is better if no one knows that our elder son is alive. Let him be forgotten by all except his parents. He is safe with us.”

  In silence then Il-han and Sunia lived their lives, and when Yul-han came to visit them in duty they were courteous and made inquiry of how he felt and how he liked his work in his new school, and when he inquired of their health they said they were well and as for happiness, who could have happiness now?

  In the eighth month of that moon year, the tenth month of the sun year, two days after the season date of Cold Dew, a fresh trouble fell upon the people. The Japanese Governor-General, Count Terauchi, then on a journey toward the north, barely escaped death at the hands of a Korean assassin at the railroad station in the city of Syun-chun. The news spread to every ear and silence fell upon the people, silence of dread and terror. All remembered the murder of the first Resident-General, Prince Ito, before Korea had been formally annexed to the Japanese empire. Though that prince was a kindly man and one who endeavored to make his rule gentle and even just, insofar as he was able, he had been killed by a Korean exile in the city of Harbin in the country of Manchuria. In reprisal the Japanese put the whole of Korea under military rule. Each Governor-General was now surrounded wherever he went by a bodyguard of soldiers, ruthless in their duty to preserve his life.

  In spite of this, however, it seemed that the Korean conspirators did all but succeed in their goal. There was a great gathering of people to greet the Governor-General upon his arrival at Syun-chun. Schoolboys from both Christian and public schools were in line on the platform among other Koreans and some Japanese. All Koreans were searched by police for weapons concealed on their persons before they were allowed on the platform. Yet, in spite of precautions, a man was able to hide a revolver somewhere on himself, or had another given to him after he was searched. Who could know?

  The Governor-General walked up and down the lines of students, he shook hands with the school principals, among whom were two or three missionaries from Christian schools, one of them American. When he turned to enter the special armored train upon which he traveled, a slender tall man appeared suddenly from among the Christians, in his uplifted right hand a revolver. A shot pierced the air but too high to reach its target. Soldiers swarmed upon the students, pushing them helter-skelter, but none could discover who the assassin was, or whether he was in student uniform. All in the vicinity were arrested, both students and others, in the hope that one would confess the deed. They were thrown into prison, guilty or not, and there waited until trial was held.

  This was the news, and Il-han learned of it from the small sheet he found one morning under the door. Ever since Yul-chun had left, Il-han had risen before dawn while Sunia slept to see if there was such a sheet of paper under the door. One morning there it was, a bit of cheap paper, the printing blotted. Who was the assassin? Was it Yul-chun? For this purpose had he returned to his own land? Il-han pondered the dreadful question in his own heart and could find no answer. He resolved that he would not divide his burden by telling Sunia. Let her live her woman’s life, make her kimchee and mend their winter clothes! And if Yul-chun were locked in some cold prison throughout the winter, at least he was alive and safe. Safe? How could he speak the foolish word? His son would be beaten and tortured when he would not confess.

  Now Il-han understood the lesson of the hollow reed. When one died, another took his place—if one must die!

  Throughout the winter Il-han kept his own silence. His flesh fell away from his bones and Sunia fretted by day because he would not eat and by night because he could not sleep. He took to hiding himself from her when he washed or when he changed his inner garments, for she cried out when she saw him.

  “Oh, your poor bare bones,” she mourned. “When I remember you on our wedding night—”

  “Be quiet, woman,” he said. And then when he saw her face he tried to laugh. “If I do not please you, look elsewhere.”

  It was a grim joke, an aging man and woman, exiles in their own country, hair graying, faces lined, alone in their house.

  Still he did not tell Sunia his burden, nor did he tell his second son.

  The winter wore on. Through snow and ice his pupils came in the black of the night, but now not every night. The attempt to assassinate the Governor-General had set the rulers into such fury that everywhere more spies roamed among the people. No village was free of them, no country road lonely enough to escape them. Even women were seized and questioned and punished, and this at first because they were Christian.

  There was some reason here, for the girls in the Christian schools were more daring than others, and again it was in the news sheet that Il-han read the story, without date or place:

  In a Christian day school, in another city, the girls resigned their places. The American woman who was their principal was troubled when they did so, but her pupils laughed and said they would not have her whom they loved punished for what they might do. That same evening she was summoned by the Chief of Police. She made haste to go to his office and he led her to the main street and there were her pupils, waving banners they had made, demanding the release of the prisoners who were accused of plotting to assassinate the Governor-General. The girls had stirred up the citizens and men had joined them and began to shout against the Chief of Police.

  Not all Japanese were cruel, and this Chief was in distress. “I cannot arrest them all,” he exclaimed. “The prison is already full.”

  The missionary went out and pleaded with the girls to go home, but they only embraced her and greeted her with cheers, and they would not listen.

  “Arrest me, then,” she told the Chief of Police. “I will take their place.”

  He was a man of good heart, however, and he refused, for the missionary was a small old woman, her hair white, her pale face wrinkled and her eyes very blue and brave.

  “I will tell them you will arrest me if they do not go home and I demand that you arrest me if they do not obey,” she declared.

  What could her pupils say when she stood before them, her white hair blowing in the winter wind? They looked at each other, and their leader said to those men who had gathered to help them, “You men, fight on! At least we have shamed you into battle.” And so saying, she led them home.

  This story Il-han read in the early dawn, forgetting to shut the door while he read, and the cold wind blew through his thin garments and chilled the marrow in his bones. He took the sheet and put it in the kitchen stove and lit a match and held his hands to warm them over the quickly dying flame. All that day he thought of the
woman Yul-han loved, and in spite of himself his heart softened toward his son because of the brave schoolgirls who were Christian.

  Not all women were treated so kindly by the police. Students continued in many cities to rebel and girls were beaten and kicked by police wearing heavy boots. The printed sheets lay almost daily now under Il-han’s door.

  “I was cross-questioned three times,” a girl student said. “A police officer accused me of wearing straw shoes. I said my father was in prison and for me it was as though he were dead, and I wear the shoes of mourning.

  “‘It is a lie,’ the officer said and with his hands he pulled my mouth so wide that it bled. Then he forced me to open my jacket to show my breasts and he sneered at me, saying, ‘I congratulate you.’ Then he slapped me and struck my head with a stick until I was dazed, and he said, ‘Did the foreigners teach you to rebel?’ I told him I knew no foreigners except the principal of the school. Then he yelled at me that I was pregnant and when I said I was not, since I was not married, he ordered me to take off all my clothes. He said he knew the Christian Bible, and it teaches that if people are sinless they may go naked. Were not Adam and Eve naked in the Garden of Eden? Only when they sinned did they hide themselves. He tried to take off my clothes and I fought him. And while he said these vile things the Korean interpreter stood sorrowfully by, refusing to speak, so that the officer had to use his own broken Korean, and he was angry and ordered the Korean to beat me, but the Korean said he would not beat a woman and he would bite his hand off first, so the officer beat me with his own fists.”