What could Yul-chun say? A dozen years ago he would have leaped to his feet and cried out that he would go with Yak-san. Now he knew that merely to kill a man did not end the evil he had done or that others like him would do. Only to kill was not enough.
“You long to have the comfort of revenge,” he told Yak-san.
“Say so if you like,” Yak-san retorted.
At the next center of Koreans, in Antung, on the border of Korea, Yak-san left him. A coolness had grown between them, but when the last moment came, they looked into each other’s eyes, and suddenly they embraced. They parted then and without looking back each went his way.
… At Antung, Yul-chun was tempted to go without further delay to his father’s house. During the years of his youth he had never been sick for home, but now he was. He longed for the safety of the old house about him, and this though his mind told him there was no safety even there. He longed for his lost childhood and even for his mother’s cookery. He remembered his tutor, their walks in the gardens along the country roads, the many stories his tutor had told him and read to him, and the poetry he had recited to him, the ancient beautiful poetry. His tutor had a sweet singing voice, neither deep nor high but warm with love of country, and as a child he, a stormy, restless boy, would sit in the cool of the evening and listen to this singing, and feel a brief and melancholy peace. Who could have thought in those quiet days and nights that the young poet would have joined the terrorists! His own first doubt of death as a weapon had begun then, when he saw his gentle tutor so changed, a dagger in his hand instead of a lute. It is not only the stabbed who die. He sighed at such thoughts and turned away from his home. No, he would continue his way northward to Siberia. If Hanya were alive he would find her and find his child. If he made a center of his own, he could begin again.
He rested in a small inn for three days and told himself that he would soon set forth on his long and lonely journey into the wide plains and eternal forests of Siberia, forests of pine and birch, stretching endlessly beyond all horizons. But now he waited, making inquiries of any Koreans, as his habit was, to know whether one had seen or heard of Hanya. Some replied with laughter and teasing, asking why he still yearned for a woman he had not met for many years, to which he replied simply that she had his child, who might be a son, to which they replied in turn that any pretty young woman would willingly give him a son. He smiled without mirth, knowing that none could understand his need for Hanya and his own child. And yet after so long a time, would not both be strangers to him? He was irresolute again and lingered still longer in the inn, divided by his longing to return to his father’s house and his wish for his own. He was angry with himself, too, for surely this was no time to indulge his private family longings.
And while he lingered thus, time passing, he perceived that every year, every month and at last every day the ingredients for war were more near to boiling and again in Germany. An ancient and demonic spirit was combining them with present discontent, a mixture resolving into a concentrated surge toward violence and power, waiting only for the voice of some one man to be the vent. The man was found, and in Europe the old turmoil began, the rush and halt, the protests and the justifications, the talk of peace while peace became impossible. All made him know that war was near again, world war, and he must not go north to Siberia, for it was too late and he must not linger.
And yet he did linger, making excuse at last that he should start some schools in the countryside around Antung. The landfolk here were as ignorant, as good and as eager as any he had found in China, and he might never return, and they would in that case remain forever unable to read. In one village and another he set up such schools.
One day in spring he walked back from a village school to the city. Something of the softness of the spring crept into his blood and bones, the lovely and reluctant spring of a northern climate. The Yalu River swelled with spring floods, fruit trees blossomed and weeds grew green on the roadsides. The land women and children came swarming out of their villages to dig the fresh weeds for tonic food. He wandered into the country one day in his irresolution, and an impudent old woman looked up from her digging to remark his good looks.
“Here is the man I look for,” she cackled, “no longer young and not yet old,” and she thrust out the tip of her tongue until it touched the end of her flat nose. Her wicked old eyes twinkled at her companions and they burst into ribald laughter.
Yul-chun smiled. “I might accept your favors, Mother, except that I have a wife. True, I have lost her but I look for her—and for my son.”
Womanlike, they were ready to hear such talk, and they squatted back on their heels and tossed out their questions.
“Where did you lose her?” “Is she young?” “Is she pretty?” “How long ago and why did you let her go?”
He answered, half absently, half playfully, making a romantic tale of it partly for their pleasure, partly to satisfy his own heart. He could not speak of Hanya to his fellows except to say he searched for her, but to these old wives, whom he would never see again, he could speak.
“I lost her long ago,” he said, “and yes, she was young, and yes, she was pretty, and she carried my son in her. I know it was a son. And I lost them both because I did not know I loved her. I thought my duty was elsewhere. She went away one day and I did not go to find her. Why? Because I thought she would surely come back if she loved me so well.”
“Ah ha,” the old woman said, “there you were wrong. When a woman loves whole and is not loved, she must leave the one she loves, or see her heart break slowly day by day. Better to leave him and have it broken, clean and forever.”
Here a small crumpled woman piped up. She had not spoken before but had kept on busily at her weed-digging. “There are many who look for those they have lost—wives looking for husbands, sons for fathers, daughters for sisters and mothers. In these times many are lost and many are looking, especially here in this region between one country and another.”
“Have you heard of a wife looking for her husband?” Yul-chun asked.
She looked up at him sharply and down again. “Not for a man like you,” she said. She sat back on her heels and stared at him. “There is a young man—very young—who comes here in the winters and in the summers he turns north again. It may be that he is already gone north. Coming or going, he passes through our village since the road north runs through it.”
“How old is he?” Yul-chun asked.
She pursed her dry old lips. “Eighteen—say—or something more.”
He refused to believe that any good fortune could be his. Nevertheless he put the next question. “Do you think he has passed through to the north yet?”
“I have not seen him,” she said slowly, still staring at him. “I have not seen him since autumn. But he does not look like you.”
Yul-chun put his hand into his pocket and drew out a piece of money. “I am at the inn at the corner of the first street to the left of the city gate. Bring him to me if you see him, and I will give you twice this much over again.”
He gave the money to the old woman, scornful of himself that he did so. The money was not his to give. It was the scanty precious store that his fellow Koreans sent him from time to time, knowing that he kept watch for them while he lived here in Antung, between Manchuria and Korea, a likely place for news, and he was wise in knowing what such news meant.
“Take this,” they said when they gave him money. “Use it for the cause.” Well, he would pay it back double for the cause some day, when the world war was won.
He returned to the inn, still scornful of himself for dreaming even the smallest faintest dream that this youth might be his son. Yet it was true that many people were looking for others lost and Antung was the place of meeting. Many stayed as he was staying, in hope. He refused to hope but he stayed. He tried to make himself hopeless, it was urgent that he go home, and he stayed on, clinging to his dream of taking Hanya with him and his son. And dreaming of his son, he
thought often of his brother’s son, that child, that babe, that matchless boy who, springing into his arms and embracing him as though he had found one for whom he had long searched, had so astounded them all, that one must now be a young man. Yul-chun’s first question when he heard of his brother’s death, through a spy, had been to ask of Yul-han’s son.
“What of the boy?” he had cried.
“He was safe with his grandparents. He is with them now,” the spy told him.
And there he must be now, growing into that grace and strength that only such a child can have. No, he would wait a few days more. And these days grew into weeks.
Then suddenly, on a midsummer day, war broke across the Western World. Now Yul-chun knew he must go home, even childless, and he prepared himself toward that end and in haste he taught others how to do what he did. He gave a thought or two as to whether he should find the old woman once more. He had seen her every month at least twice, had asked her if—and when she shook her head and cracked her knuckles, he gave her a coin and let her go.
He could not believe what he saw therefore when, a few days before the day he had set to begin his journey, the old woman came to his door holding by the sleeve a tall bone-thin young man who needed to have his hair cut. Long and straight his black locks fell over his forehead and down his cheeks, and he wore Russian clothes, full trousers and high boots and a tunic belted at the waist.
“Here he is,” she said, mumbling through her broken teeth. “He came through our village late this year, after I wasted many days watching for him—good days of work I have missed—and I told the guard at the village gate to wake me if a young man came by, and he must be paid, too, that guard!”
Yul-chun was lying on his bed when she came in, his hands folded under his head, reflecting and regretting, perhaps, the time he had spent here in waiting and watching, and wondering if he should have gone into Siberia to look for Hanya. Many times he had been about to go and had not gone, prevented by his fellow Koreans who said that since it was well known that he had refused to be a Communist, he would be killed if he went upon Russian soil.
“Dead, you will never find your woman,” they argued.
“You must think of your country first,” others argued.
And so he had not gone as he had thought he would when he left China, and now would never go. Yet while he had lingered here, he held together the exiles through the news sheets he printed wherever he went. Thus only he had told the others how the Japanese were victorious in China, and how a month ago in Canton seven thousand Korean conscripts had turned against their Japanese officers and killed them.
Now when he saw the old woman he rose from his bed and went toward the young man she led. He saw no likeness in that sullen face either to himself or to Hanya. Let him be prudent lest he commit himself to a stranger!
“Do you look for someone?” he asked.
“This old woman,” the young man answered, his voice lusty and strong, “this old woman has dragged me here, saying that you are my father, but I see no likeness to what my mother told me.”
They looked at each other with mutual distrust.
“Nor have I reason to think that you could be the son I have never seen,” Yul-chun rejoined.
The old woman set up a clamor. “Where is my money?” she screamed and she thrust her dirty palm up into Yul-chun’s face.
He was on the point of saying that he owed her nothing since this was not his son, then he remembered that his bargain had not included such certainty. He had said that she was to bring the young man to him wherever she found him, however long the search, and he had given up the search. Yet here the young man was! He could only reach into his pocket again and take out two coins and put them in her black-lined palm. She looked at the money coldly.
“Come,” she said, “for how many days I have not worked, spring and autumn, watching at the city gates for this fellow! And because this year he was late, I watched through summer, too!”
At this the young man took umbrage. “You!” he shouted. “You bring me here for nothing! I am set back in my journey. This is not my father. My father is a young man, taller than I am, very handsome—his skin white as milk, my mother said!”
So shouting, he took the old woman by the shoulders, spun her around twice and sent her flying from the door. Then he closed the door and barred it. “These land people,” he complained. “They are too greedy and altogether ignorant. They need a power above them to compel them.”
Yul-chun was not listening.
“Your mother said your father was young—and handsome—and his skin was white? How many years ago did she say that?”
“Many years,” the young man said. “She died,” he added. He gnawed at his lower lip and mumbled. “Died? She was killed.”
“Killed?” Yul-chun’s lips went dry. He sat down on the bed. “How was she killed?”
The young man sat down on the bed beside him. “We lived in a hut on a Russian peasant’s land. It was not his land, but we helped to till it. A nobleman owned the land. Long ago that was—long ago, and everything is changed now. But in those days the winters were endless and we were always hungry before spring came. We dried berries and roots and mushrooms but we always ate everything too soon. That is—I ate too much. I was young and I did not see that she gave everything to me. One day in the spring she stole into the forests of the nobleman to find some early mushrooms, or a few green weeds. She said she knew a hollow where the sun shone warm and where there was no wind. There she went and I followed. She told me to hide among the trees, and so I hid, but where I could see her. It was a quiet place, scarcely the birds were there. Suddenly I heard footsteps and a great crackling of broken branches on the ground. I saw a big man in good clothes, high leather boots and trousers of leather and a loose jacket belted in at the waist, a bearded man, with a whip in his hand. He shouted at my mother that she was a thief and she tried to run but he laid hold of her—and—”
The young man faltered and bit his lip and then went on.
“He beat her when he was finished with her and she did not get up again. She fell in a drift of late snow under a thick pine tree. She did not move when I called. She did not answer. Her eyes were open and staring at nothing. I was afraid and I ran away. I left her there and I never went back. Nor did I ever tell what had happened to her. And I do not know why I tell you now, for no one can do anything.”
“What was her name?” Yul-chun asked.
“I do not know,” the young man said. He frowned. “You will think I lie, but I only called her O-man-ee. And we knew no one except the Russian peasants. They called her Woman!”
It was on the edge of Yul-chun’s tongue to ask the next question. Did she not tell you your father’s name? But resolved against hope, he would not. At this moment the young man shook his hair back and it fell away from his ears. Yul-chun stared. The lobe of the left ear was not perfect. It was the same ear with which his brother Yul-han had been born!
“What is your name?” Yul-chun muttered. His voice would not come out of his throat and his heart beat hard enough to make him faint.
“Sasha,” the young man said.
“Sasha!” Yul-chun exclaimed. “But that is a Russian name.”
“I was born in Russia.”
Yul-chun looked at him with reluctant certainty. The young man got to his feet. “I must be on my way,” he said.
“What is your haste?” Yul-chun asked, to delay him.
“I am a trader,” Sasha said. “I bring furs and woolens here to Antung and I take back brass and silver goods and sometimes a rich man orders celadon dishes and lacquer chests from Korea.”
He was set on going, and Yul-chun could think of no other way to delay except by telling the truth.
“It may be that you—it may be—you are my son,” he stammered.
Sasha paused at the door.
“How do you know?” he demanded.
“You bear upon you a family mark,” Yul-chun replied.
“My blood brother had that same ear you have. It cannot be accident that there should be two such ears.”
He came near to Sasha and lifted the lock of his hair and looked at the ear.
“It is the same,” he said.
But Sasha pulled away from him. “That cursed ear,” he muttered.
“Not cursed, but perhaps most fortunate,” Yul-chun retorted.
“Fortunate? Unfortunate,” Sasha exclaimed. “Too many men tease me for my ear. Did a Russian bear bite me—what woman loves you too well—such things, all stupid!”
Yul-chun, fearful and hopeful, tried to laugh but Sasha looked at him gravely. For an instant the two men exchanged a speculative gaze.
“Do we part?” Yul-chun inquired at last. When Sasha did not answer he stepped back. “It may be you are right. The lobe of an ear—it is no proof. Who knows how many people in the world have the same defect?”
Now it was Sasha who hesitated. Then he spoke. “My mother had something of jade which she valued above all else. Though we starved, she would not use it. What was it?”
Yul-chun answered instantly. “It was a seal of red jade which was once her father’s, before he was killed.”
Sasha could not hide his astonishment. Speechless, he put his hand in the bosom of his tunic and brought out the jade seal.
Yul-chun gazed at it and nodded. “I saw it last in her hand,” he said slowly.
Suddenly he could not hold back his tears. He threw his arms about his son.
“Now we will go home,” he said. “At last—at last!”
… He was a silent young man, this son of his. He must be wooed and coaxed, it seemed, for he could let hours pass in silence. But Yul-chun’s heart melted into constant warm-flowing talk, so moved he was by having his son. For the first few days he held back nothing. He drew his son into his own life and into the life of the Kim family. When he found how ignorant Sasha was of his own people and his own country, he talked of the early history of the Korean people, and how they came to be living here on this long mountainous strip of land hanging from the Russian mainland like fruit upon a vine. He told of the struggles of their people to keep their independence and how they had been compelled through the centuries to play one nation against another, lean first toward this one, and then toward that.
The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea Page 42