The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea

by Pearl S. Buck

  The chief of this bureau was a young man, once an assistant professor in the University at Tokyo, and he had come because the salary here was three times what he had received there and since he had his old parents to support he had not been able to refuse. Now he sat behind a high western desk in an office barren of decoration, but with western chairs and a desk. He wore civilian clothes, western in style, and his hair was cut short and he had gold spectacles with thick lenses. He was courteous when Yul-han came in and invited him to be seated. Then he opened a document which lay on the desk.

  “I note,” he said, “that you have resigned your post at the city middle school. Have you a complaint?”

  “I have no complaint,” Yul-han replied. He hesitated and then said, with a slight smile on his round good-natured face, “I have changed my work because I am about to change myself. I have decided to be a Christian.”

  The young man continued to study the document. “You have been baptized?” he inquired.

  “No,” Yul-han said, “but I shall be baptized on the first day of next month.”

  “By immersion or sprinkling?” the young Japanese asked, still not lifting his eyes.

  Yul-han was surprised. “Does it make a difference?”

  “There is a difference,” the young man said.

  Yul-han summoned his courage and asked a question for himself. “Can it be, sir, that you also are Christian?”

  “I attended a Christian school before I went to the university,” the young man said. “You understand—” Here he pushed the documents aside and lifted his head to look at Yul-han. “You understand that we are not opposed to Christianity, in principle. It is only when rebels hide among the Christians that we must be severe.”

  “I understand,” Yul-han said quietly.

  “You appear to be a sensible man,” the Japanese said. “Therefore I will allow you to transfer your post.” He drew the papers toward him again and with his fountain pen wrote something quickly on the top. “Of course,” he continued as he folded the papers and fitted them into the envelope, “I shall count on you to let me know whether you discover rebels among the Christians. You may report to me in secret and safely.”

  Yul-han heard this and debated with himself as to what he should answer. He decided to answer nothing, for though he had not attended the trials, he knew that Christians had suffered the heaviest judgments. He put out his hand and took the envelope and bowing, he went away.

  On the next Sunday he was baptized. The day was cloudy and cold, the winds of late autumn blew leaves from the trees and wrenched persimmons from their stalks. Children in ragged garments ran to save the fruit and stood under dripping eaves sucking the sweet juice and shivering in the chilly air. The reek of fresh kimchee hung like an atmosphere over city and country.

  Yul-han walked through the streets to the church, Induk following decorously behind. He saw everything with new intensity this morning, as though his entire being were alive and aware as it had never been, as though he were separating himself from all that had gone before, all that now was. The dusty street, the sad-faced people, the children merry in spite of cold and poverty and even in spite of the ubiquitous police ready to rebuke them whatever they did, and behind the crowded busy city the mountains soaring into a darker gray against the gray sky, barren and beautiful—all this pressed upon his mind and heart. As he entered the church, he knew that he would come out of that door a different man for he was taking his place today among those who were separate. No longer would he be only a Korean. He would be a Korean Christian and which would be the greater part of him, Korean or Christian, he did not know, or perhaps there would not be two parts in him, but one whole, a Korean permeated with the new religion.

  He did not wish to speak and in silence he went to the men’s side and Induk went to the women’s side. Among the men he sat, a stranger to himself. He was giving himself away to a God he had not seen and yet he felt a dedication he had never known. The ceremony was beginning now and as usual with music. A man played upon a small western organ, and he played well. Yul-han loved music as all his people did, and he was easily moved by it, as they all were. Music was woven into the texture of their souls and some of the attraction for them in the new religion was the part that music had in worship, the grave organ music and the communal singing. Already Yul-han knew the hymns they sang and he recognized the one the man was playing—“Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, Oh Lamb of God, I come to Thee—” Mystic words, symbolizing what he was about to do!

  The missionary came into the church from the vestry and above his long black robes, his upstanding red hair flamed like a burning crown upon his head. He prayed silently before the gold cross under the window. Prayer—that Yul-han had not yet achieved. He had made tentative efforts when he was alone to come into this communication, but he had not found the way. No one answered.

  “Do not expect to hear a voice,” the missionary had told him when he inquired as to whether he had prayed properly. “Simply cultivate the habit of prayer and after a while you will find answer in the content it brings to your heart and the direction it brings to your mind. Wait upon the Lord.”

  “These are also the instructions of the Lord Buddha,” Yul-han had said, remembering what his father had told him of the monks in the monasteries of the Diamond Mountains.

  To his surprise the missionary had shown anger and he made retort.

  “It is not at all the same. There is only one God and he is not Buddha. He is Jehovah.”

  Yul-han had considered reply, for did it matter, if it was true that there was only one Being, whether his name was Buddha or Jehovah? But he was peaceable by nature and he kept question and answer to himself.

  The missionary turned now to the people. The church was crowded and men stood leaning against the walls. Women sat close together, many of them with children in their arms. Why were they here except to seek comfort and encouragement in their sorry lives? The missionary looked at them and his rugged face took on a rugged tenderness.

  “Let us sing,” he said. “Let us praise the Lord.”

  The church was filled with the music of human voices. His people could sing, Yul-han knew, and he listened to the mighty chorus. Tears suddenly filled his eyes. These men and women, these poverty-stricken, oppressed people of his, singing! With all their hearts they were singing, in harmony, in rhythm, born singers and lovers of song, singing like children in the dark and to the unknown God. Out of his heart spontaneously a cry rose to his lips.

  “Oh God, whatever your name, help me to help my people, for I love them—”

  He heard no voice, but words sprang clearly into his mind, “For God so loved the world—”

  Immediately he too began to sing, his powerful voice leading the melody. Well-being surged through mind and body as he sang through the hymn. The missionary spoke in his usual simple Korean, struggling to convey great thoughts through imperfect language and the people listened, rapt, the intense silence broken only by the occasional cry of a restless child. What was this sense of health and calm in himself? For the first time Yul-han was sure that he had decided rightly in becoming a Christian. He was not sure what it meant in entirety but he believed now that he could learn and grow. He was humble as he had never been before. There were many poor people in the church, those who were ignorant and who were not yangban. At first he had been reluctant to think that he must mingle with these people and call them his brothers, he who was born of a proud and ancient clan. Now he was cleansed of that pride. It did not exist in him, swept away in a moment and by what means he did not know, except that it was not there. He belonged here, and these were truly his brethren.

  The hour passed and he heard the missionary ask those who were to be baptized to come forward and, half dazed, he stumbled to his feet and went forward with a dozen others, men and women. He bowed his head as the missionary prayed and his heart beat fast. This was the moment that committed him wholly to the unk
nown future.

  “You may suffer persecution,” the missionary was saying. “You may be called upon to die even as Christ died on the cross.”

  Yes, it was true. There had been such crucifixions by the Japanese gendarmes. In a village in the north three Christians had been crucified.

  “I baptize you,” the missionary was saying, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”

  He felt a trickle of cold water on his bare head. It ran down his cheeks and fell on his coat but he did not wipe it away.

  “And Jesus took bread and blessed it and brake it and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat, this is my body—’

  “And he took the cup and gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink ye all of it—’”

  The deep voice of the missionary intoned the words and Yul-han felt the unleavened bread dry upon his tongue and he tasted the sharp acid of the red wine. It was done. By a strange mystic ceremony, he was born again into a Christian, as surely as long ago he had been born into the family of Kim.

  Yul-han had stayed away from the trials of the conspirators against the Governor-General’s life, and this at the beseeching of Induk. He had yielded to her not for his own sake, but because she insisted that her parents and brothers and sisters would also be in danger if by any chance he were seen there as a Christian. This wife of his, so brave where a good deed was to be done, could be as frightened as a child of police or soldiers or any official person. She shrank at the sight of a gun, and would walk far out of her way to avoid any man in uniform. Nevertheless Yul-han read of the trials assiduously each day in the newspapers and on the walls, for on the walls there was more than news. In spite of watchful police, always during the night some rebel would steal to the wall and in the darkness he would scrawl secret messages. If Yul-han went early, he could read before the police washed the words away. Thus he learned how the trials went and how all prisoners made the same confession of guilt one day and denied it the next, saying that they had been forced to give false testimony under torture. On the day after his Christian ceremony he read of the man now called the Living Reed.

  “Beware—beware the Living Reed!” the secret message proclaimed.

  In the newspapers under the eyes of the rulers, he read too the full account of what had taken place at the trials on the twelfth day. On that day, the newsmen reported, Baron Yun, a Korean of high yangban family, confessed before the Japanese judge that he was indeed the head of the New Peoples Society.

  Now Yul-han knew this aged noble man very well, for Baron Yun had been a friend of his father’s, and the two had often drunk tea together in the best teahouses of the capital. Yul-han himself could remember such times, when his father had taken him, a boy of twelve or so, to the teashops to meet gentlemen scholars. He remembered Baron Yun especially, for he was such a man that his father would not sit in his presence until Baron Yun insisted upon it. The Baron was a slight man, his face always pale, and he moved and spoke with serene dignity wherever he was. Now in his old age he was on trial for his life. He made his defense in fluent Japanese, for he had studied Japanese in Japan in his youth, Chinese in Shanghai and English in America. He had traveled also to Russia, and upon his return to his own country he had held many high posts, especially as Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs during the Russo-Japanese war. When the invaders entered his country he became a Christian, and was deposed by the newcomers and thereafter took a post in a Christian school.

  It was morning when Yul-han read the story of the trial. He sat at his breakfast table alone, as head of the house. Question by the Court, answer by Baron Yun, he read on, forgetting that he had classes at the school.

  “What were your feelings when you were compelled to retire from the Foreign Service?”

  “I was overwhelmed with grief.”

  “Are you not the head of the New Peoples Society?”

  “I am, but I told the members that I would not perform violent acts.”

  “Yet you must have been indignant at the annexation of your country.”

  “I would never have found myself in this court if I had possessed the power at that time to prevent Japan from becoming lord over my country.”

  “Would it not be reasonable, nevertheless, for you to have formed a plan to change the situation?”

  “I was rather too old to do more than I did, but it is true that I felt bitterly indignant at the position of my country.”

  Yul-han, reading these brave words, could see before his eyes the gallant old gentleman in his white Korean robes, his long white beard streaming over his breast, his staff in his hand, his wrinkled face, his steadfast dark eyes. The warmth of fresh courage, fresh hope, new faith, reached Yul-han’s heart. If young and old among his people could be so fearless, should he be afraid?

  Induk came to the door at this moment. “Do you forget that you must go to your class?”

  “I do not forget,” Yul-han said, “but I have another duty. First I must go to my father.”

  Induk’s hands flew to her cheeks. “What is wrong? Has something happened?”

  “Baron Yun was tried yesterday,” Yul-han said. “He is in prison and he is my father’s old friend. I must tell him—and I must tell him that I am Christian now. I trust it is not too much for one day.”

  … He found his father watering a young apple tree in the east garden. His mother held a hoe with which she loosened the earth so that the roots could drink.

  “You two, my parents,” Yul-han said when he had given greeting. “Do you expect to get fruit from this little tree?”

  “You will get it,” Il-han said, “you and your children. And I am glad you have come. I have a matter to discuss with you.”

  He put down the watering pot and led the way into the house and to his accustomed place. Then he waited, as though he did not know how to begin.

  “Speak, Father,” Yul-han said, when they had sat down.

  “You speak first,” Il-han directed. “What I have to say may have some connection with you.”

  Yul-han took a breath. “Father,” he said. “I have become a Christian.”

  Rain had begun to fall, a slow autumnal rain. It dripped from the eaves and trickled in rills over the stones of the footpath in the garden. Sunia was running toward the kitchen, her apron over her head. Meanwhile Yul-han waited for his father’s anger and with such foreboding that he was almost frightened when he heard his father’s voice come not angrily but with unusual mildness.

  “Had you told me this a short time ago, I would have reproached you for bringing our family into danger. But I have seen such sights and heard such words—”

  And he told of the trials of the Christians, of their wit and courage. Each one he described, young and old, until Yul-han interrupted.

  “Add to the noble list one more name, Father,” he said. “Add the name of Baron Yun.”

  Il-han’s jaw hung ajar. “Not my old friend!”

  “Even he.”

  Il-han hesitated, inquiring of himself whether he should not tell Yul-han of his older brother.

  “That man they call the Living Reed,” Yul-han said, as though he read his father’s mind.”

  Il-han did not move or lift his eyes. “What of him?”

  “Do any guess who he is?”

  “Do you?”

  “I was not there. I did not see his face.”

  Ah, Yul-han did not know! Let him remain unknowing and safe.

  “Why should I know when you do not?” Il-han said. “And for the rest,” he added with pretended impatience, “if you wish to be Christian, then be one.”

  This was all that was left of his anger against his second son.

  The winter of that year passed in dire deep cold. Cold was to be expected but this cold was the chill of death. Each morning the gendarmes collected the bodies of those who had frozen during the night, men, women, and children, and threw them into trucks and carried them away. The earth was too solid to bury them and they
were stored in empty barracks or piled and covered with mats until the spring came. Nor were those who lived better off, for a long drought in the autumn had dried the mountain slopes, the grass was scanty and the rulers would not allow trees to be cut. The mountains, they said, must be covered with trees again as they had been in past centuries, and if a man were caught cutting a tree in the night he was flogged and put in jail. In every house the ondul floors were cold, except for the two brief times, morning and afternoon, when food must be cooked, and since in the past the people had depended upon warm floors upon which they could spread their mattresses and therefore needed no heavy quilts, they were cold as they had never been before.

  The long winter passed into a scanty spring and the time drew near for Induk to give birth to the child, and her mother begged Yul-han to allow her to come to her family home for this event. Yul-han did not know how to reply. If he refused Induk’s mother, that one would be wounded. If he agreed, then Sunia would be displeased. Indeed she was already displeased, for somehow she had wind of the request, and she laid hold of Yul-han one day when he was on his way to school.

  “What!” Sunia exclaimed. “I suppose you think I cannot help my grandchild to be born? I suppose only a Christian will serve?”

  “Mother, I pray you,” Yul-han exclaimed. “Is it a matter for me to decide? Let it be as Induk wishes.”

  This Induk heard from an open window and she came hurrying out.

  “Good Mother,” she said, coaxing Sunia. “The birth is not so important as the hundred-day feast. Will you let us celebrate the feast with you and the grandfather?”

  Sunia, having made protest, was willing to be mollified, and so it was decided. On a stormy night in early spring, Induk went into labor, her mother and her sisters about her. Outside in the main room Yul-han awaited the birth with eagerness and also with mild amusement for Induk had said she wished the first child to be a girl.