When the doctor was finished he saw the boy and smiled at him, and Liang was encouraged to ask a question. He came near and looked up at the American with grave eyes.
“Will you tell Woodrow Wilson to help my mother?”
Yul-han hastened to explain how Liang had made the American President his idol. The doctor listened as he gathered his tools again and nodding toward Induk, who still slept, he spoke to Yul-han.
“Your wife will be well again in a few days but she must rest. Lucky that she did not lose what is in her.”
Then he paused for a moment before Liang, who still stood straight and tall and watching all he did.
“Better not to have idols,” he said and a sad smile trembled about his mouth as he went away.
Late that evening when Induk was still sleeping under the drug which the American had given her, and while Ippun fed his two children and put them to bed, Yul-han went to his father. Il-han was already in his night garments, and when he opened the door, a candle in his hand, the flickering light spread uncertain shadows and Yul-han saw for the first time how age had gripped his father. All his life he had leaned on his father. Even when he was distant from him because of some argument it was only for a while and soon he came back again. Now he stood irresolute. Should he put his woes, too, on his father’s back?
“Come in,” Il-han said. “The candle gutters in the wind.”
Yul-han demurred. “It is too late.”
“No, no,” Il-han insisted.
His need was so great that Yul-han could not resist. He came in and Il-han led him into the library and put the candle on the table.
“Sit down,” he said.
He sat in his usual place but Yul-han was too restless to sit. He stood, looking down at his father, thinking how to begin so that his father would not suffer shock. Suddenly his throat was caught in such a knot of sobbing that he could not say anything. However he tried to control himself he found his body shaking, his face twisting. Il-han was alarmed indeed. This calm son of his!
“Speak out,” he commanded. “Else something will break in you.”
The sound of his father’s firm voice had its old power over Yul-han now as when he was a child, and abruptly, in jerks and pauses, he told the bare story of what had happened to Induk. Il-han listened, his eyes wide, his lips pressed together, and he did not once interrupt. It was soon told. Yul-han felt the lump in his throat melt away. He was able to breathe. He sat down and wiped his face with his white silk kerchief.
“Father,” he said, “I must join the people. I can no longer stand apart.”
“We must both do that which we have never done before,” Il-han replied. He hesitated, debating in himself whether he should not now tell Yul-han of his elder brother, and then he knew he must.
“Son,” he went on, “you spoke of a man who hides behind the name of the Living Reed. That man is your brother.”
“I know, Father,” Yul-han replied, and went on to tell of how Yul-chun had come to him in the night, and Il-han related the details of the trial that he had seen with his own eyes. He told Yul-han why he had not shared his knowledge with him then, nor even with Sunia, for if she had known she would have found ways of taking food and fresh clothing to him in his prison cell, which might have endangered all their lives.
The night wore on toward dawn, and it was a blessing that Sunia had gone early to sleep, else she would have been in and out time and again to ask why they did not go to bed and whether they would have food or drink. But she slept soundly and they talked on, nor was it idle talk. The two men came slowly to a vast resolution, set firm when Il-han suddenly slapped his two hands on the table before him.
“I will go again to America,” he declared. “I will go to see Woodrow Wilson myself. Face to face, I will tell him what our people suffer. He will put a stop to it. He has ways. He is the most powerful man on earth.”
Even this did not astonish Yul-han overmuch, in his present mood. He considered for a moment and then had a sudden thought.
“Father, you speak no English! You have forgotten after these years even what you used to know.”
Il-han would not be discouraged. “Put it that Woodrow Wilson speaks no Korean! No, no—it will not be difficult to find a young Korean to go with me who speaks both languages. Nothing is easier than to learn a language. It is only that I have no time now to learn again. I must go at once. It is not only for the sake of these here in our own country. Everywhere in the world our exiles are waiting for the day of freedom—two million and more abroad, waiting to come home! A million in Manchuria, eight hundred thousand in Siberia, three hundred thousand in Japan, and who knows how many in China, Mexico, Hawaii and America? America. I go there as an old man, a father. Woodrow Wilson will respect my gray hairs.”
“I will go with you,” Yul-han declared.
“You must not,” Il-han retorted.
“But my mother will not hear of your leaving home at your age to go so far!”
“I allow your mother much freedom,” Il-han said with dignity, “but not to decide what duty I am to perform. If evil is to befall me and I die in a strange land, then all the more reason that you, my son, should be here to take my place in our family and our nation. Do not oppose me, my son! The war is near its end. The peace must be carved out for the future. I must have my part in it—why else do I live?”
So the two men came to agreement and Yul-han rose to depart before the sun came up over the wall. The sky was lit already with a rosy opaline light when he bade his father farewell. If they could do all they planned, Yul-han to discover a young man to accompany his father and Il-han to prepare for the journey, within seven days they would be on their way.
“And tomorrow,” Il-han said to his son as they parted, “I will tell your mother. It will exhaust me, but I shall not allow her to change my mind.”
… Yul-han knew the next day that his mother had somehow heard of what Induk had suffered for she came to his house in a quiet solemn mood, such as he had never seen in her before.
“Come in, Mother,” he said when she stood in the doorway.
“What of the child?” she asked Yul-han.
Yul-han supposed she spoke of his daughter. “She seems unharmed, and she is with Ippun.”
“No, no,” Sunia cried at him, “I mean the one not born!”
“She holds it safely in her,” he said, and led the way to Induk’s bed.
Sunia had never been affectionate with her son’s wife, but now she knelt on the floor and gazed tenderly at Induk, her tears flowing down her thin cheeks. She took Induk’s swollen hand and held it gently, and she sobbed once or twice before she could speak.
“How is it here?” she asked softly and laid her hand on Induk’s belly.
“I shielded myself,” Induk said, her voice coming faintly. “I turned myself this way and that when the blows fell.”
“To think that we women go on bearing in such times,” Sunia sighed.
They said little more, the two women, but in the silence they came nearer together than they had ever been, and Sunia rose after a little while, saying that she was brewing a special ginseng soup with whole chicken broth and when it was done she would bring it.
“Sleep, my daughter,” she said, and went away again.
And Induk did sleep, for she could not keep herself awake. Part of her drowsiness was her body’s need to escape but part was the foreign drug which the American doctor had left.
Sunia went to the outer door then, Yul-han following her, and on the threshold they paused for a few words.
“Has my father told you what he will do?” Yul-han inquired.
“He has told me,” Sunia said.
“Can you bear it?” Yul-han asked.
“No,” Sunia said, “but I must.”
With this she went away, and Yul-han watched her as she went and saw how bent her body was these days as though it bore a heavy weight, the head drooping and the shoulders dropped. He remembered her straigh
t and slender and her head held always high.
Yet when she was gone, his mind returned to its work. Whom should he send with his father? He cast about for someone he knew and reflecting upon this one and that his mind fixed on his fellow teacher, Sung-man, and he sent word to him by his father’s servant, inviting him to meet in the teashop where they had met before. He had pondered whether this was the safest place to discuss dangerous matters, but so vigilant were the police that he dared not seem to do anything hidden. Wherever he might go in secret with Sung-man some spy would discover it, either Japanese or a traitorous Korean.
The servant brought back word that Sung-man would meet him the next evening and so they met. In the midst of the full teahouse, and all the busy noise of men coming and going and servants running everywhere with tea and food, Yul-han put it to Sung-man whether he would go with his father to America. Sung-man, who seemed always careless of everything except his food, listened while he guzzled a bowl of noodles. Without changing the careless look on his face or the careless grin he wore as disguise, he filled his mouth and swallowed two great gulps and then, as though he told a joke, he said that he would go whenever Yul-han wished. Moreover, he could provide the money, for although he himself had no money beyond what he earned, yet he knew where money was.
“Are you a member of that—”
Yul-han put the half question, for he would not say the New Peoples Society, but Sung-man nodded.
“They are also in that country you have named,” he added.
The fighters for Korean independence were also in America! Yul-han received this news with surprise and comfort. His father would be among his own countrymen, there would be persons to welcome him and see that he was safe. He looked at Sung-man’s silly face with new respect. How much was hidden behind that grotesquerie!
“There remains only the matter of how to leave one place and enter another,” he observed.
“You are a Christian,” was Sung-man’s quick reply. “You can enter through the missionaries,” and laughing, as though he was telling a joke, Sung-man lifted his empty bowl and pounded the table and bawled to a waiter to fill it again.
… “They can’t go straight to America,” the missionary said to the doctor.
They sat together with Yul-han in the vestry of the church. He had feared that they would not help him, for he knew the orders from their superiors abroad was that they were not to mingle in the affairs of government. Yet these two Americans sat here in homely fashion, talking as calmly as though they discussed a matter of business. Looking from one plain face to the other, hearing the hearty voices, perceiving the good sense, which was their nature, he knew that whatever they were in race and nation, they were his friends and the friends of his people. He listened while they planned how his father and Sung-man would go to Europe and from there secretly to America, and how when they reached their destination, they, missionary and doctor, would see that the two Koreans were met by Christians and taken to private homes. Everywhere they would be met by Christians and sent on to others, and so all was planned to take place immediately.
“How can I thank you?” Yul-han said when he rose to leave.
The missionary clapped him on the back and made him wince. Never could Yul-han be used to such friendly blows, accustomed as he was to the tradition of his own countrymen that one did not lay hands on the person of another.
“We are Christian brothers,” the missionary shouted.
Yul-han went home, much moved by what had taken place, and he found Induk able to sit up, although she could not bear to move from her pillows so sore was her whole body. He knelt beside her and sent Ippun away and he told her everything. She listened, and then she put out her bandaged hand and he took it.
“This is why I was put to such suffering,” she said. “Out of evil good has come.”
He knew she spoke from Christian faith but he was still too new a Christian to believe that it was necessary for one to suffer in order that others might be saved. Yet he would not distress her now with his doubts. Let her have the comfort of her soul, and so he sat holding her bandaged hand.
“The American President is here,” Sung-man said. “We are fortunate. He leaves tomorrow for Boston.”
Il-han drew a deep breath. All morning he had sat waiting in his cramped room in a cheap hotel in Paris, where he had arrived two days ago from India. They had heard contradictory news. Wilson had already gone, he had not gone. He was failing in the Peace Conference, he was not failing. The Fourteen Points were being changed by the Allies, yet he was fighting bravely. No, he was not fighting bravely, he was allowing himself to be swayed. No one knew what was happening. Koreans, exiled in France as they were in many countries, had come together in Paris, anxious and trying to sift out the truth.
Il-han, listening the night before in their meeting here in his room, had said nothing until the end when he had heard everything. Then he had spoken firmly and quietly.
“I will go myself tomorrow, wherever the American President is, and face to face—”
He had been interrupted by half a dozen voices. “Do you think we are the only people? Every small nation in the world has sent its people to speak to Woodrow Wilson! And what will you say that they have not said?”
Il-han was unmoved. He felt dazed by the distance from home, he missed Sunia with a dull ache in his breast which he could not forget, he was homesick and ashamed of it, and yet his will held firm to its purpose. He must see Wilson face to face and tell him—tell him—What would he tell him? Sleepless in strange beds raised high from the floor so that he was afraid to turn himself over lest he fall to the floor, he had tried to plan what he would say.
“When I am face to face with him,” he had told them doggedly, “I shall know what to say. The words will come of themselves out of my heart where they have long been pent.”
So high he looked, indeed so much the noble yangban, that the younger men could say nothing. Sung-man took his part always.
“I know that what our father-friend says is true. He is of the same generation as Wilson and in courtesy Wilson will hear him when he might hurry past us.”
They had agreed to meet early the next morning and wait for Wilson in the lobby of the Crillon Hotel, where he was staying. Again Il-han was restless all night until at last Sung-man rose and lifted the mattress from the two high beds and laid them on the floor and took away the soft hot pillows and laid two books under the bottom sheets instead, and toward dawn Il-han drifted into brief sleep. He woke early and with the urgency of the aged he pressed Sung-man to rise, and so too early they were waiting in the lobby. Yet early as they were, some had come before them. A handful of Polish peasants in their garments of homespun wool embroidered in designs of scarlet were already there, wearing on their heads high hats of black fur. They had brought with them a priest who could speak French, and so could explain that in the new boundaries which had been made by the war, the corner of Poland where they lived had been given to Czechoslovakia, and they wanted their land to be in Poland and not in Czechoslovakia. They, too, in their far part of the world, had heard that the American President was in Paris, he who had said that people should be free to determine for themselves by whom they should be governed. They had lost their way, the priest said, and so they had inquired of a Polish sheepherder, who knew the stars and the way to go. When the sheepherder learned their purpose, he left his sheep and came with them since he too wanted to be free and he watched the stars and pointed out the path. When they reached Warsaw, Polish patriots gave them money and sent them on to Paris and they had come straight down the wide boulevards to this hotel where they were told Woodrow Wilson was staying.
With these Il-han and his fellow countrymen waited, and soon they were joined by still others, all wearing the garments of their own people, refugees from Armenia, land people from the Ukraine, Jews from Bessarabia and Dobrudja, Swedes who yearned to get back the lost Aaland Isles, chieftains from distant clans in the Caucasus and the Ca
rpathian mountains, Arabs from Iraq, tribesmen from Albania and from the Hedjaz. All these and many others who had lost their countries, their governments and their languages now came to the American President as their savior, impelled by the need to pour out upon him their manifold sufferings.
He came at last, the tall thin man, his face desperate with weariness. That was what Il-han saw first as Wilson came through a door, his face, desperate with weariness. He paused, irresolute, he spoke in a low voice to those who were with him. They argued, but he turned and went out through the door by which he had come. A young man spoke to them in English and Sung-man translated for Il-han.
“We are asked to come upstairs to the President’s private rooms.”
“I will walk,” Il-han said. “I will not go up in that small climbing box.”
So he and Sung-man went up the carpeted stairs and into a great room. Wilson stood there by a long table waiting for them, and Il-han, pressing toward the front, saw how his left hand trembled. He was very white, the paleness of his face enhanced by his knee-length black coat and his dark gray trousers. His hair was nearly white, too, and his face was lined. But they all pressed forward, and the peasants kissed the hem of his coat and knelt until their foreheads touched the floor.
Wilson said nothing at first and a man spoke for him, asking that each group put its case through its leader, and they would then proceed in order of the English alphabet, and he begged them to speak as quickly as possible for the Peace Conference waited upon the President. They tried to do what he wished and when it came to Il-han’s turn, he pressed into Wilson’s hand a long paper he had written which Sung-man had translated into English, and he said in his own language, “Sir and most Honored, we have come from Korea. Our people are dying under the invader’s rule. Sir, our country has a written history of four thousand years, and we have been a center of civilization for the surrounding nations, surviving all invasions until now. You—only you—are our hope in all this world and for the ages to come.”
The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea Page 35