The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea

by Pearl S. Buck

  Yul-chun lived at first among those who still believed in Americans, and from them he learned much that he had not known of those people who had befriended his country through their missionaries and then had betrayed it through their politicians. He hated them for the betrayal, but as he learned of them through the leader of Koreans who had spent many years in the United States, it was not the history or the nature of the Americans that moved him to relinquish some of this hatred. Instead he was moved by their songs. While he was in school in the United States, this leader had learned many songs, especially the songs of the black people who were slaves there, and he had returned to Korea with these songs in his soul and had taught them to schoolchildren. Now, exiled in the vast, heartless city of Shanghai, he taught the songs to his fellow exiles. In the evenings as they gathered in the shabby room they had rented as their meeting place, these Koreans sang the songs of the African slaves in America.

  Yul-chun at first refused to sing, partly because he did not know the songs, but also because he feared anything which might soften his heart so that he could feel pain. Yet in spite of his determination, his heart did soften as he listened to the voices of his fellow exiles, singing the mournful music of slaves. He was haunted by the melodies in the songs, “Old Black Joe,” “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” “Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground.” Melancholy music, tragic words, which somehow comforted their sad hearts, and one night Yul-chun found himself weeping as he sang.

  This weeping frightened him. He had not wept since he was a child in his father’s house and he had long believed that he could never weep again, for he had seen too much of torture and danger and death for weeping. He resolved that he must put such music far away from him, knowing how music could seduce his people. And to this end he left these exiles and joined the terrorists, a small secret group here in the city who had dedicated themselves to killing and destruction.

  It was not the first time that Yul-chun had been with them. His childhood tutor, the gentlest of men, who had trained him in the nonviolence of Confucius and in the merciful compassion of Buddha, when he joined the Tonghak, had become the most reckless of terrorists. It seemed that this kindly and mild young man was compelled to make a sacrifice of himself, and again and again he had committed the most ruthless acts. He had emigrated to Siberia and had formed the terrorist group called The Red Flag, and from there he had gone to Manchuria to take part in the assassination of Prince Ito, after which he himself was captured and put to death.

  Now in Shanghai Yul-chun approached the second terrorist group, the Yi Nul Tan, or Society of Brave Justice. He was with them but not of them—not yet. He could not as yet commit himself wholly to death and destruction as the only weapons of revolution and especially when among these singlehearted young men he found division. For in this winter of the Christian year 1924, the Society of Brave Justice was split into three parts, Nationalist, Anarchist and Communist. He watched this division with growing cynicism, and the more because the most violent of the terrorists were also the most corrupt as men. They wore western dress, they oiled their hair, they made a cult of their appearance, and since most of them were tall and handsome young men, women sought them, and among these the most passionate were women of mixed Russian-Korean ancestry, the daughters of exiled patriots in Siberia.

  One night in early spring Yul-chun walked in the park in the French section of Shanghai where the exiles lived, and he saw how these members of the Society of Brave Justice made rendezvous there with the women, how boldly they exchanged the acts of physical love, how wild these exchanges were and how promiscuous and how quickly forgotten. The fires in his own flesh were strong enough to be stirred and he could understand how young and desperate men, daily face to face with death, were compelled to find relief in brief and violent passion. But this was not his way. His eyes were on the goal of independence for his people and a wise and sensible plan for life. It was time for him to be on his way again, therefore, and he left Shanghai before the spring grew warm, and went south again.

  … He arrived back in the city of Canton in the autumn of the year, at the time of the rice harvest. The fields were gay with cheerful harvesters, the crops were good and food would be plenty for the winter. Again he doubted that these Chinese people could be stirred to rebellion unless there was a war from outside, which was to say unless Japanese military men again dreamed their dreams of empire. Then he reminded himself that he was here for a greater cause than this. He was here to find those who could help him make Korea free.

  … “You have come at last. And alone?”

  This was Kim’s greeting and question. When Yul-chun had given up the magazine at Hanya’s insistence, after he had been ill with a heavy cough, Kim had left Peking in some disgust because, he said, Hanya had spoiled Yul-chun for a revolutionist. With several others he had come to Canton, they had rented two rooms in a house which was in a narrow crooked street where workers in ivory lived and plied their crafts. Tusks of ivory came whole from the jungles of Burma and Malaya and were sold to the craftsmen, who cut them and carved the pieces into ivory gods and goddesses and figures of men and women, into boxes and jewelry and every sort of object for use and beauty. Among these many families the exiles came and went unnoticed, all wearing Chinese dress.

  “Alone,” Yul-chun replied.

  He threw down his knapsack and shook off his worn sandals. The soles were in shreds and he had a stone bruise under his left instep. He sat down, nursing his foot in his hand, while Kim stood looking at him.

  “Did she leave you or did you leave her?”

  “She left me,” Yul-chun said shortly. “And I did not go after her,” he added.

  “You look hungry,” Kim said next.

  “I am not hungry,” Yul-chun replied in the same short voice. “I have been well fed all the way, especially in Shanghai.”

  “Then you have another hunger,” Kim said, laughing. “Easily satisfied, comrade! Though how you could leave Shanghai with that sort of hunger—but we have many comrades here, too.”

  “Who could believe you were ever a monk!”

  Yul-chun nursed his painful foot as he spoke, and looked about the bare room. “Can you put a few boards on two benches for another bed?”

  “I have been expecting you,” Kim said. “I have kept space for you here. No woman could satisfy you forever. I knew that I had only to wait.”

  “How many Koreans are in Canton?” Yul-chun asked.

  “Only about sixty,” Kim replied, “and they belong to the Yi Nul Tan.”

  “Again! I have only just left them in Shanghai.”

  “Russian advisers here are teaching them new methods, and it may be we shall need them in our own country when the time comes.”

  “I have no confidence now in terrorists,” Yul-chun retorted. “They enjoy their work too much—and they leave fury behind them.”

  “We can use them,” Kim said. He was dragging his bed to one side of the room and arranging a place for the other bed.

  “Have you joined the Communists?” Yul-chun asked.

  “Yes! If I am a revolutionist, let me be complete! And you?”

  “No. I must be convinced that it is the best means for getting independence.”

  “You cannot know until you become Communist yourself. Faith first, and then conviction.”

  “That is the difference between us. You must have a faith. Not I! I have no faith in anything or anyone. And I am convinced that the Japanese will never be content with our small mountainous country. What they have been saying ever since the time of Hideyoshi is still true. For them Korea is only a stepping-stone to Asia. And now that I have seen China with my own eyes, the richness of its soil, their great cities, the skills of its people, I am convinced that whoever holds China holds Asia—and perhaps some day the world.”

  He spoke with eloquent energy, and Kim listened, enchanted. “You should talk instead of write!”

  But Yul-chun was not finished and did not hear. He
went on, his eyes blazing his thoughts. “Who can prevent this island dream? Who but us, an independent Korea, blocking the aggression? Who else sees the danger? China is no more than a watchdog, what has she done to prevent Japan? What has any other power done?”

  “You should be a terrorist, my friend,” Kim said. “You would make a good one.”

  And he rose and went to the open door and stood looking out into the growing darkness.

  Behind him Yul-chun sat in silence. Then, overcome with exhaustion sudden and profound, he threw himself on the bed.

  … “The real war,” Yul-chun complained to Kim, “is the war we wage among ourselves.”

  For Yul-chun, after only a few months, discovered that the Korean revolutionaries continued here the feuds they had brought with them from their own country. Those who believed in terror were against those who believed in nonviolence. Those who came from the north were against those who came from the south. Some were Communist and believed that only a total change in ideology could save their people; some were against Communism, saying that an ideology was only an obstacle when independence was the goal. Those who had come from Manchuria separated themselves from those who came from Korea and both were against those who came from Siberia. Beyond such internal division among his compatriots, Yul-chun discovered the enmities between the sects and clans and the Chinese groups, especially the single-minded Chinese Communists who, under their Russian advisers, felt that they should control all, and were cruel to those who did not follow them.

  “We destroy ourselves,” he continued despondently.

  They worked all day at their chosen tasks, Yul-chun again at writing and printing, but at night he and Kim and many others gathered in a large old teashop which they had rented for their meetings. The numbers of exiles grew daily until now hundreds had come to join the Chinese revolutionaries. In a few months there were eight hundred Koreans alone, some four hundred from the Army of Independence in Manchuria, a hundred and more from Siberia, and the rest from Korea. They were all young, under forty years of age, and some as young as fourteen and fifteen. Among them a lad name Yak-san attached himself to Yul-chun, and the two became friends. This boy had put aside the name his family had given him and had chosen the name of a famous terrorist, Kim Yak-san, who had once tried to kill a Japanese Governor-General in Seoul, by the name of Saito. According to legend, the terrorist had borrowed the garments and the mailbag of a follower who earned his living as a postman. In the bag he hid seven bombs and on a day when he heard the Governor-General was to meet in his office with other high Japanese officials, he went there and threw the seven bombs into the room. The officials had already left, but the bombs destroyed much of the building and other Japanese were killed. Meanwhile the terrorist disguised himself again, this time as a fisherman, while the police looked for him in every part of the country. After a few days he escaped to Antung and from there he went to Manchuria.

  When the lad Yak-san heard Yul-chun’s family name he went to him eagerly.

  “Sir, are you Kim of the Kim Yak-san?” he inquired.

  “I am not,” Yul-chun replied. “I am a Kim of Andong, and I am not a terrorist.”

  The lad’s face fell, but he stayed with Yul-chun, nevertheless. For Yul-chun, Yak-san was like the younger brother he remembered in his father’s house, and for Yak-san, Yul-chun was both elder brother and father. Yak-san’s father, the boy told Yul-chun, had been killed by police in a northern city of Korea. He was an only child and, left alone, he had joined others who escaped to Manchuria where he heard the story of the terrorist. With the terrorist he went as far as Shanghai where he had lost him.

  “He did not love me,” the lad said bravely. “He told me not to follow him, and when I said I could not help it, he moved to another part of the city and I could never find him, though I tried for many days.”

  “He could not love anyone,” Yul-chun said to comfort him. “He was afraid that if he let himself love he would not be able to kill.”

  The boy looked thoughtful for a while. Then he spoke. “May I follow you?”

  “Certainly you may,” Yul-chun replied.

  Now in the teashop he sat beside Yul-chun on a low stool and listened to all that was said.

  “We must achieve unity, at least in the core of our group,” Yul-chun went on. “We should gather together those who believe in unity as we do and make the core.”

  “And thereby create only another clique,” Kim retorted.

  “To be a terrorist is most simple,” Yul-tan, the present leader of the terrorists, announced.

  “When you have killed everyone,” Yul-chun argued, “what will you have? Terrorists who will then begin to kill one another!”

  “Nevertheless,” the terrorist maintained, “we are the most unified of all the groups. We agree among ourselves that all our enemies must be killed, one by one if necessary. Houses must be burned, palaces destroyed, governments overthrown, armies deceived.”

  As usual, they talked far into the night. Indeed, there were times when Yul-chun believed that talk was their chief occupation. Yet through the interchange of thought and argument slowly, as form is shaped from stone, he perceived that a certain unity was built.

  After a year of such argument and still against his doubts, Yul-chun at last accepted the terrorists as the center of this unity, since they were the only ones who agreed upon one simple principle of action, that of destruction, and it might be true that destruction there must be before construction could take place. He would not accept them without compromise, however. He demanded that the terrorists promise, for their part, to give up their name of Yi Nul Tan and take instead the name of Korean National Independence. Through this core of unity Yul-chun maintained connection with all other Korean independence groups in many countries, in preparation for the day when their country could be free. That day, it was now finally agreed, could only be after the next great world war, already appearing upon the horizons of time.

  He might have grown a heart as hard as stone during these years had it not been for the lad Yak-san, and two others, a man and wife who worked together in the group. Yak-san followed him like a young faithful servant, listening to what he said, obeying his every wish, and watchful that he ate his food and drank tea when the day was hot. Unwilling as Yul-chun was to allow himself to feel emotion, yet he could not but be touched by the loyalty of this lonely orphan boy. Something of the old family feeling stirred in him again and he wondered if his own child had been a son. He would be beyond babyhood now, a boy of four years. Had Hanya told him who his father was and who his grandfather? He had never heard of her since she walked away that day in Peking, he had not received a letter, nor did he know where she was. He might not have thought of her except that among those with whom he worked there were also these two, husband and wife by the name of Choi, who taught him unwittingly by their devotion what love could be between man and woman. Both were Korean, the woman a young widow whose old merchant husband had been killed on the day of the Mansei. The man was the son of a landowner, and he had been in the streets and part of the battle when he came upon the young woman, trying to lift the body of her dead husband. He had helped her, and together they brought the dead man into his house, and later he helped her to find a burial place and to buy a coffin. When the funeral ceremonies were over, he asked the young widow if she had loved her husband and she had said simply that she had not, but she wished to do her duty to him nevertheless. He asked if this duty meant that she would always be a widow and she replied that she would like to love a man. Moreover, she had no family by marriage since her husband’s parents were dead and he had been an only child. Nor had she children, and her own family had moved away to Siberia. She had begged her husband to go there, too, but he had refused, saying that since he was only a merchant and his business good, it was not likely that he would be mistaken for a rebel. On that day of his death, however, he had been so mistaken and a Japanese soldier had shot him through the head because he went i
nto the street to see where the crowds were going.

  All this Choi heard with lively interest and when she had finished he asked her if she could love him. She had looked at him thoughtfully, his tall frame, his handsome head and brilliant dark eyes, and then she said that she thought she could love him. He took her by the hand and led her away and they were married by the new code and had remained together in perfect happiness ever since, living first in Siberia and Manchuria and then coming south to help the Chinese.

  These two, as he saw them always together, persuaded Yul-chun into new reflection upon marriage and he allowed himself to remember Hanya and to wonder about her. In his desire to remain free he had asked her nothing about herself. Whatever she had told him had come from her in the few times of peace between them. At night after love, she had curled herself against him and out of her quiet would come now and again fragments of her memories.

  “Such peace as this I used to feel when I climbed the mountain behind my father’s house,” she told him. “To climb, to climb, and then to reach the crest of the mountain and know I could go no higher—that was peace. I lie on my back upon the rock and I gaze into the blue sky. Up there the sky is very blue.”

  He listened and did not hear, drowsy with his own peace.

  “My father was shot,” she said one day.

  She was making duk, a steamed bread such as one could not buy in Peking. He had been impatient when she spent time on such cookery, but now he remembered with a reluctant tenderness how she had bought glutinous rice and pounded it to flour and steamed it in a sealed jar, and then pounded it again and rolled it out and cut it into circles which she filled with sweetened crushed beans, and how carefully she had brushed each cake with sesame oil. He had complained when she brought the cakes for him to eat to celebrate a holiday, but she had laughed at him.