The Spirit of the Dragon

by William Andrews

  “Does she have to be gone that long?” Mother asked.

  “She will go for as long as Hwan-gi needs her,” Father replied.

  “Perhaps I should go, too,” Mother said.

  “No, I need you here.” There was a pause. Then Father said, “You are worried about your sister-in-law.”

  Mother nodded. “Suk-bo, we should tell you about your aunt Bo-sun. She is . . . eccentric in many ways. She has dangerous ideas and strange behaviors. She says the spirits talk to her and that she can see the future. You must be careful what you believe.”

  “I would not say her ideas are wrong,” Father said with a glance at Mother, “although it is true that sometimes she says strange things. Listen to your mother, Suk-bo. You must be careful with your aunt.”

  We said nothing more, and when we had finished eating, I packed a rucksack of clothes for my stay.

  It was another rainy day when I walked to my uncle’s house. By the time I got there, I was wet, and mud caked my shoes. My head hurt. When she saw me coming, my aunt came out of the house with a blanket and threw it over my shoulders. “You should have waited to come until the rain stopped,” she said.

  She led me inside the house. Soo-hee and Jae-hee were waiting at the door. “Look, Soo-hee,” Jae-hee squealed, “it is Cousin!” The girls grinned at me.

  “Leave Suk-bo be,” my aunt said. “She needs to get dry. Go to the other room. You can see your cousin later.” Disappointment crossed the girls’ faces, but they did as they were told and left. My aunt went to the stove and lit a fire. I huddled in front of the flames. Though it was warm, I was shivering. My aunt put a kettle of water on and tossed in some herbs. She looked at me with a worried expression. She opened my rucksack and took out a change of clothes. “Take off those wet things,” she said. “Put these on.”

  I put the dry clothes on, and she hung my wet ones on a hook next to the stove. She served me the brew of herbs, which warmed me. I no longer shivered. But now, my headache was worse. After a few minutes, my eyes grew heavy. My aunt went to a room and came back with a mat and another blanket. She placed the mat in front of the stove and I lay on it. She covered me with the blanket. Soon, I was asleep.

  I couldn’t say how long I slept. When I awoke, Jae-hee was standing above me, staring. “Ummah, Cousin is awake!” she squealed.

  “How do you feel?” my aunt asked.

  “Better, I think,” I said.

  Jae-hee slid up to me and showed me her doll. It had on a blue-and-white silk hanbok. An elaborate gold binyeo held the doll’s hair in place. “This is Cor-ee,” she said. “She is the empress of Korea. Someday I will be an empress, too.”

  “Let Suk-bo wake up, Daughter,” my aunt said from the stove. “You can show her Empress Cor-ee later. Go and do your studies with Soo-hee.”

  Jae-hee pouted but took her doll and disappeared into the other room.

  I sat up and looked around. My uncle’s house was much larger than my parents’ house. It had a maru—a large open main room with a kitchen, eating area, and family sitting area. The floor was polished wood plank, much smoother than ours. A chest with brass hinges stood against a wall. The kitchen had an iron cookstove, a sink under a window, and a Chinese hutch. Sliding latticed doors led to other areas of the house.

  “Where is Uncle?” I asked.

  “He is helping a neighbor butcher a shoat,” my aunt replied, stirring a pot. “We will have pork for the next few days.” She stood straight with her shoulders back. She wore her usual half smile. I thought she might be embarrassed to see me since I’d seen the police humiliate her. But she showed no sign of embarrassment, as if she was above being embarrassed.

  “You took a chill on your walk here,” Aunt said. “Rest today and you will be well tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Sookmo,” I said, calling her by the respectful name for my mother’s brother’s wife. “I feel better having slept.”

  She studied me from across the room. “You talked in your sleep,” she said. “You said things.”

  “I did?” I was surprised. I’d never talked in my sleep before. Or at least no one ever told me I did.

  “Tell me,” my aunt said, looking into the pot she was stirring, “who is Hisashi?”

  I tensed. I wasn’t sure if I should tell my aunt that the officials might make me marry a Japanese man. My parents had told me to be careful what I said to her. “He’s someone . . . I met,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more.

  “I see,” my aunt said. “Hisashi is a Japanese name. He is Japanese?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he your age?”

  “Two years older, I think.”

  “Is he handsome?”

  “Please do not tease me, Sookmo,” I said.

  My aunt took the pot from the stove and sat next to me. “I hear there is a new rule that some Korean women will have to marry Japanese men. This man who you met, is he married?”

  “No.”

  “I see,” she said with a slight nod. “You don’t want to talk about this Japanese man who is two years older than you and is not married.”

  I didn’t know if this was a question or a statement. It was as if she was scolding me for something terrible I’d done. I thought I should apologize, but I didn’t know what I would be apologizing for.

  My aunt went to the stove. “Hwan-gi will be home soon and he will be hungry. I was able to get a chicken. Hwan-gi hasn’t had meat in many days. He works so hard. You should play with the girls. They would enjoy that. It is important that families stay close.”

  An hour later when my uncle came trudging through the back door, muddy and wet, I was feeling normal again. His daughters and I greeted him with a bow. My aunt helped him change out of his muddy clothes, and we all sat at the low table and ate chicken with a handful of rice. My uncle had my mother’s well-defined chin, only he looked younger, and he was thinner. He looked like he needed a long rest. He said, “The rain will clear tonight and the sun will be out tomorrow. We have a lot to do, Suk-bo. The cabbage and beans need weeding, and we must finish harvesting the winter daikons. I will need help with the roof. Some of the tiles slipped during the winter.”

  “Yes, Sookbu,” I said. He nodded to me, and I could tell he was grateful that I was there to help. It sounded like he would need me for several days, and I worried how many more questions my aunt would ask about Hisashi.

  When we’d finished the meal, my aunt put both children to bed. Shortly after, I curled up on a mat in a room off the back of the house and fell fast asleep.

  I woke in the middle of the night and didn’t know where I was. I’d been dreaming. I sat up in a fog. I shook my head. Eventually, my mind cleared and I saw the dark outline of the room. I remembered I was in my uncle’s house and I breathed again. I tried to recall if I’d been having a nightmare. Perhaps I had been dreaming about living in the Saito house, a married woman. Maybe I was dreaming about fighting the Japanese with my father in Manchuria. Though I couldn’t remember it, my dream left me with a sense of foreboding.

  I was going to have a long, hard day, and I had to get more sleep. I took a few breaths to calm myself, lay down and pulled the blanket over me, and closed my eyes.

  I heard something move—shuffling feet and muttering. It was my aunt’s voice. The muttering was angry and tense, and I thought she was arguing with someone. I pushed off the blanket and put my ear to the door. I heard her say, “Why is it so?” and “Leave me be!” I slid the door open a crack and peeked into the main room. There in the shadows, my aunt paced back and forth like a ghost in nightclothes. She was alone. She waved her arms and shook her head. She looked at something in her hand and said, “I do not want this thing.”

  I stepped from behind the door. “Sookmo,” I said, “what is wrong?”

  She snapped her head around and her eyes flashed. She rushed to me. She grabbed my shoulders and brought her face inches from mine.

  “You cannot marry him, this Japanese man!” she whi
spered. Still holding my shoulders, she turned her head to the side. “But you have to marry him, don’t you?”

  She took a step back and seemed to be thinking something through. Her breathing returned to normal, and her eyes no longer flashed. Finally, she said, “I am sorry for scaring you, Suk-bo,” as if she’d suddenly realized what she had done. “Come. We must not wake Hwan-gi.”

  I wanted to go back to my mat, to crawl under the covers as if nothing had happened. But the vision of my aunt angry and confused wasn’t going to let me sleep. So I followed her outside to the front of the house. We sat on the veranda. It was warm for the middle of the night. The clouds had moved away, and the stars twinkled in the night sky.

  “This man,” she said after a while. “Tell me about him.”

  I was reluctant to tell her about Hisashi. She had said I couldn’t marry him, and then for some reason, she said I had to. I wanted to know why. So I told my aunt how I had met Hisashi and how his father, the director-general who lived in Sinuiju, might make me marry his son. I told her that I believed Hisashi was kind, that he had given me strawberries and spoke to me in Korean. I said we had not yet heard if they had chosen me.

  “What does he look like?” my aunt asked.

  “He is not tall like a Korean, but he is not short, either. His hair is shiny. He has a pleasant face.”

  “He sounds nice,” my aunt said. “But he is Japanese. Most families are refusing to give up their daughters. I think most Japanese men don’t want to marry Koreans, either.”

  “Mother thinks I should marry him. Father thinks that we should flee to Manchuria. Who is right, Sookmo?”

  In her white nightclothes and with her hair down, my aunt looked like a mudang, a shaman who talks to spirits. I sensed spirits all around her. They must have been who she was talking to earlier. “Oh, my niece,” she said softly, “it is more complicated than you can know. The spirits of our ancestors speak to me. They cry for Korea. They beg us to fight for our country. But the spirits give me vision, too. I see what will happen if we fight.”

  “What will happen?”

  She shook her head. “Many will suffer and many will die. So this is the question you must answer: Is it better to fight for Korea and die quickly? Or is it better to surrender and die slowly?”

  With her strange aura and even stranger words, I now understood what my parents had said about my aunt. It seemed like she was speaking in riddles. Surely my decision to accept marriage to Hisashi—if and when it would come—or to resist and flee to Manchuria, was not as grave as she indicated. How could I, a sixteen-year-old girl, help save Korea by resisting? And why would I die if I surrendered?

  Finally, I said, “With respect, Sookmo, I do not think the decision I make will matter much.”

  “I see,” my aunt said. “Let me show you something.” She held out her hand and, though it was dark, I saw she held a comb with an ivory inlay of a two-headed dragon. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  “It was given to me by my grandmother,” my aunt replied. “The dragon’s spirit speaks to me. It also gives me vision.”

  I looked at the comb in my aunt’s hand. In the dark, the two-headed dragon seemed alive. It stared at me. I thought I heard it speak.

  My aunt said, “When this comb with the two-headed dragon came to me, it was a sign that I was chosen to speak for the spirit of Korea. The spirit tells me to fight for our country. But the vision it gives tells me what the cost of fighting will be. It prevents me and Hwan-gi from joining the rebels with our girls. But you, you have a different choice. Your father’s way is dangerous. You could be killed. But your mother’s way will be no less perilous. If we yield to Japan, our country will die. And then we will all be cursed by the two-headed dragon.”

  My aunt sighed. “I do not know. Maybe your mother is right. Maybe it is lost already.”

  “You cannot lose a fight you do not take,” I said. “Mother told me that a few days ago.”

  “Huh, yes,” my aunt said, nodding. “She would say something like that. But consider this. Maybe you lose something more important if you do not.” She faced me. “Know this, Suk-bo. If you marry this man, you invite the curse of the two-headed dragon. It will not be easy to bear the curse. It might kill you just as surely as the Japanese would kill you for being a rebel.”

  She closed her hand around the comb. “You are the only one I have told about this comb, Suk-bo. I do not know why I did. Please keep it a secret. I have sworn to protect it.”

  She looked at me, and her half smile grew sad. “Come,” she said. “You must sleep. You have hard days ahead.”

  I went to my room and lay on the mat. But the image of the two-headed dragon floated in my mind, and I did not sleep well that night.

  EIGHT

  The decision from Sinuiju came while I was working for my uncle. After six days of hard work, I was so tired I didn’t even think to ask about it when I got home. But after I’d rested for a day, I noticed there was tension in the house like after Mother and Father had a bad argument. In the morning, Father left through the front door instead of going to his shed. Mother hunched over the low table and looked at nothing. I asked where Father was going.

  “He’s going to buy a mule,” she said.

  “A mule? What for?”

  “He is taking us to Manchuria,” Mother replied without looking up.

  “We are going to Manchuria?”

  Mother looked at me and I could see that she had been crying. She said, “While you were gone, the administrator came. He said Mr. Saito wants you to marry his son.”

  I was stunned. So many days had gone by since I had met Mr. and Mrs. Saito that I was certain they had not chosen me. But now that I knew they had, I didn’t know how I felt. Of course, I was thrilled that they thought enough of me to have me join their family. But I remembered what my aunt had said about the decision I had to make—to be killed for fighting the Japanese or to be cursed by the spirit of the two-headed dragon. The more I thought about what she had said, the more I hoped that they wouldn’t choose me so that I wouldn’t have to decide. Now I had to. Then again, it appeared that Father had already made the decision for me.

  “What will we do in Manchuria?” I asked.

  “Your father says he knows someone there who will give him work, but I do not believe him. I think he wants us to join the rebels.” Mother shook her head.

  So, we were going to be rebels in Manchuria. I’d heard that the rebels there were hardscrabble men and women with guns who fought for Korean independence. Their stories were full of bravery and heroism and gave us all hope, although in hushed conversations, most people believed that independence was just a fantasy.

  My aunt had said that fighting the Japanese could cost me my life but that it would save Korea. I remembered the story of my father’s brother and how the police had shot him in a street in Seoul. I remembered that they had arrested Mr. Pak, and he still hadn’t come back. I remembered how the police had treated my aunt at the Dano festival. I saw how hard all the people of my village worked and how little the Japanese gave back. I remembered the two-headed dragon on my aunt’s comb and how it seemed to speak to me. And though I liked the thought of being with Hisashi, and living in the big house in Sinuiju would be exciting and glamorous, it felt like fighting was the right thing to do.

  “When will we leave?” I asked.

  “Tonight,” Mother answered. “We must travel in the dark.”

  “Ummah,” I said, “I do not know for certain, but I think maybe, Father is right.”

  Mother gave me a look. “You have been talking to your aunt,” she said. “Go. Pack your rucksack with clothes. Do not take too much. It is a long way to Manchuria.”

  I went to the sleeping room and gathered clothes, a hairbrush, and several of my books. When I thought about how far we had to travel, I put half of the books back. Then, I put them all back. I couldn’t think of why a rebel woul
d need books. I wondered what the rebels would have me do when we got to Manchuria, how I would help with their fight. Perhaps they would make me cook or sew or learn how to be a nurse. Maybe they would ask me to fight with a gun. I had never shot a gun before. In fact, I had never even butchered a chicken.

  I heard Father come through the front door. Mother didn’t greet him. “I bought a mule,” he said. “I will get the beast tonight so we do not raise suspicion. We will leave when it gets dark. We have to make many miles before the sun comes up.”

  I went to finish packing my rucksack. When I finished, I left the house. Father was in his shed, putting some of his tools into a canvas bag. I snuck around the side so he wouldn’t see me and went into the garden.

  The morning promised a hot afternoon. The heavy air didn’t move, and the earth started to slow its pace. As I strolled through the napa cabbage and carrots, I thought about what we were going to do. I remembered my brother told me he had read that Manchuria had fields of grass as far as the eye could see. It was so cold there in the winter that horses froze solid and they could do nothing with the carcass until it thawed in the spring. In the summer it was so hot that no one worked during midday. Manchuria had rivers much wider than the widest part of the Yalu River and mountains taller than any in Korea. But the strangest thing of all was there were no Japanese.

  It sounded like a strange place indeed, nothing at all like my forest and village. I would miss this place dreadfully—the gossipy blacksmith’s daughters, Soo-sung and Mi-sung; old Mrs. Choi; the farmers, Mr. Kim and Mr. Pak, and their families. I’d miss my aunt and uncle and my cousins. And I’d miss the forest—picking strawberries, watching the water deer step so lightly on the forest floor it was like they were stepping on eggs, listening to the birds sing their songs. I realized how much I loved this place and I didn’t want to leave. I thought about Hisashi and how exciting it would be to live in Sinuiju. It made me sad that I wouldn’t see him again. But a young woman like me wasn’t supposed to argue with her father. We had to go to Manchuria.