The Calligrapher's Daughter (43 page)

A woman wearing anklets, high heels and a yellow cloth coat brushed by him. “Excuse me, Harabeoji.” She ducked her head and hurried on. It wasn’t the first time he’d been called Grandfather rather than Uncle. Naturally he didn’t mind the misnomer. He attributed it to his appearance, as few men wore Korean clothes anymore. Frowning at the woman’s bare calves and the visible sway of her hips, Han thought that his daughter might be forward thinking, but thank God she dressed with propriety. He passed through the market and noted that the people wearing Korean clothes were grandparents, women, peasants and workingmen. One man, burdened by a tower of straw strapped to his back frame, wore Western trousers with his Korean shirt and vest. Han unconsciously quickened his pace.

In the narthex he heard voices coming from the sanctuary. If the minister was busy, he’d return later in the day. He decided to check and opened the heavy wooden door. A dozen of the church elders were clustered in the front pews, talking animatedly. Having recently become aware of people’s attire, he noticed that all the men wore suits. He cleared his throat loudly. Deacon Hwang jumped to his feet, as did a few of the others, visibly turning red.

“W-w-we’re glad you c-c-could make it,” said Hwang as hastily as his speech would allow. Han chose to ignore the obvious, and content to see that the minister was not among them, asked for him.

“Please come in, sir, and have a seat,” said the new assistant pastor. He was a young man from the south who had struck Han as being too strident about the need for the church’s outright support of the chaotic independence
movement, particularly the uneducated warmongering clansmen leaning toward communism. “The minister was called to the hospital.”

“I see,” said Han. He stood a moment, using his dignity to augment their discomfort at having neglected to include him in their meeting. “Good day, gentlemen.” He heard their dutiful protests, their respectful goodbyes and shuffling of feet as they stood and bowed, and he suspected he wasn’t imagining the relief he heard beneath their parting words.

He climbed down the broad steps of the stone church, his back bent. He noticed nothing in the market on his return trip except for an increasingly painful stitch in his side. By the time he reached the hill home, he was resolved that Ilsun, after marriage, would fight for his point of view in the church community. His dinosaur ways might be discounted in the immediate present, but time would prove that tradition and history could be relied upon as the guide to a national solution.
And it’s possible
, he thought as he rattled the outside bolt to his gate,
that I’m wrong
.

HAN GRACIOUSLY PRETENDED that nothing had occurred between himself and the churchmen, who gladly joined in Ilsun’s wedding celebration, which was a quiet affair followed by a meager yet costly banquet in the church hall. The bride, Min Unsook, immediately proved to be an exceptional wife: softspoken, harmonious in her manner, a capable cook and a fine example for Najin, not to mention Ilsun himself. His wife had only good things to say about their daughter-in-law’s contributions to the household. The responsibility for the family’s affairs shifted to Ilsun, who had graduated from upper school with respectable marks, although disappointingly not at the top of his class.

Winter draped the estate in snow and freezing sleet, and Han felt less and less inclined to take his daily walk. Reverend Ahn continued to beseech him to join in their clandestine meetings, and Han continued to send Ilsun in his place. His son reported little from these gatherings, which were held in the guise of Bible study at irregular times and locations. Ilsun merely said they were boring and that the copastor indeed had leftist leanings. Soon, the requirement that all public gatherings be police-monitored and delivered in Japanese language prevented meetings altogether. Still, the men managed to convey news and discuss politics in private social events.

Han said nothing when Ilsun permitted Najin to work at the mission school, and heard from his wife that his daughter was taking courses at the new medical college connected to the hospital. He privately hoped her training would help improve his daughter-in-law’s apparent inability to conceive. Based on the nighttime sounds from Ilsun’s rooms, Han didn’t have to tell his son to work harder toward that goal. He continued to read the newspapers and urged Ilsun to speak for him among the churchmen. Then, by summer, darkening changes made even this simple request too risky, and he told Ilsun to avoid talk of politics altogether.

In July 1937, training exercises on the Marco Polo Bridge just south of Peking escalated into a skirmish between Japanese and Kuomintang troops. Each nation blamed the other for instigating the event, and Chiang Kai-shek refused Japan’s offers to negotiate, which included demands for an apology. Within a month, Japan overcame the poorly trained northern Chinese in Peking and Tsientsin, then attacked Shanghai. By the end of the summer, just as Han had feared, Japan was at war in northern China. Winter brought newspaper stories of glorious imperial victories in Nanking, but by then the press was once again completely controlled by the Japanese. Missionaries were telling contrasting stories: massive slaughter of prisoners of war, uncountable civilians murdered and shocking atrocities. During the Battle of Nanking, an incident sparked hope that the Americans would become involved, which might soon end the war and free Korea. Japanese planes had destroyed the U.S. gunboat
Panay
in the Yangtze River during the attack. But diplomatic apologies and reparations were offered, accepted, and the Americans kept their distance. It seemed that no one wanted to confront the Japanese, whose might was largely being drawn from the Korean peninsula— Korean rice shipped to feed the Japanese military, raw material churned from Korean mines to feed hundreds of new factories, which smelted the ore into mechanical parts for the war machine. The military presence in Gaeseong multiplied again, newspapers trumpeted imperial propaganda—and occasionally included the drivel of a serial novel—and mail grew increasingly censored, if delivered at all.

Ilsun had come to him once, proposing to invest what little they had in an illegitimate-sounding deal to export ginseng, but Han lost his temper and insisted that his son continue his art and calligraphy with an eye
toward the rest of his formal education, perhaps—after Unsook conceived—at Yonhi College in Seoul. He told his son to save for the tuition. But since Han no longer monitored the household accounts, he had no knowledge that within six months all ready cash had disappeared, nor was he aware of the reason for the rapid depletion. He did know that his son spent too little time with brush in hand, and that he was often not at home.

One winter night late in February 1938, Najin came to Han in his study. As she stood before him, he realized they hadn’t shared this space since she was a child. He looked at the scattered shavings of maple surrounding him like termite’s waste, the scraps of seasoned oak and maple limbs, rough pine boards, chisels, awls and files—a different kind of place than twenty years ago. He rubbed an oiled rag on a spindle that would become part of a shutter, and indicated that she should sit.

She brushed sawdust aside and sat on her knees. “Father, I’ve come to ask your advice about quitting my job.”

Her words were abrupt, but her manner was pleasing enough. She had been teaching middle school for a year or more, and since he knew little about what she actually did every day, he wondered why she sought his advice.
Yah, too bad about her husband
, Han thought. Neither Najin nor the Cho family had heard from Calvin for years, and she was virtually a widow. To be sure, everyone was praying, but there was no way to know if Calvin was dead or alive, or even if he was still in America. Undoubtedly, with Japan at war, it was impossible for him to return. It wouldn’t surprise Han if after all this time the man had married again. The possibility of Calvin returning to Korea had further diminished with tensions growing between Japan, America and England following another diplomatic request for information about Japan’s naval capacity, which the Japanese still refused to supply. A derisive cartoon in the newspaper had appeared that very week, portraying the two Western nations as salivating dogs trying to tear off a Japanese naval officer’s trousers.

He plucked a dry rag from a nearby shelf and cleaned his hands. “Have you talked to your dongsaeng? And what does he say?”

“That we need the money.”

Han soaped and rinsed his hands in the basin Najin held for him, then settled onto his cushion. At these kinds of moments he wished tobacco were affordable and readily available. “And so?”

He could tell she had much to say by the way she waited a moment before speaking. “Abbuh-nim, after last fall’s semester break, the students were required to come back early for ten days of Labor Service. It wasn’t difficult; they swept the yards of government buildings and it was pleasant enough to be outside. But this winter we’ve been required to sew straps onto canvas squares for half the school day. My students don’t complain even though their fingers bleed from punching needles through the rough cloth, and if the school inspectors aren’t around, I use the time to teach Korean grammar. It worries me how little of their own language the girls know. Then yesterday I learned we’re making military kit bags. We’re contributing to their war!” She stopped until her breath quieted. “But that isn’t the main reason I wish to give up teaching. They’ve changed the curriculum again. Korean is forbidden altogether and the Bible is disallowed; we are required to teach that the emperor is god.”

He thought that they chipped away at his country, like he chiseled shaves from blocks of maple—and suddenly he felt his heart fill with hope—from which one day, one optimistic day in the future, might emerge a small work, like a lovingly carved maple panel, of plain beauty. His next thought was to pray that it might happen in his lifetime. He stroked his thinning gray beard. But perhaps not.

Najin continued, “We’ve been swearing the Imperial Oath every morning for some months, but that isn’t the problem. Now they’re saying we have to participate in all-day parades and ceremonies to show our patriotism. Not only that, but for composition the girls will be required to write comforting letters to Japanese soldiers! Two of the ten teachers were forced to quit because they say we need more Japanese instructors. Chang Hansu’s wife wishes to quit her teaching post, but only if I also choose to leave. Abbuh-nim, as much as I advocate education, I cannot be the head teacher in a school that teaches lies.”

He appreciated her calm voice and was amazed to learn that she was the head teacher. “No, I suppose not.” He countered her surprise at his quick response with a prolonged silence. “Get a different job, if the money is truly needed.” How easy it was to speak to her! Then he wondered why it had always been hard. What had changed?

She bowed and left, but not before he caught the gist of her smile. Well, it was good to have a political activist in the house! He sat awhile,
thinking of the many years gone by, of old age, of youth, his youth when he was a young father, and the astonishing innocent trust of his infant daughter’s newly opened eyes, which seemed as deep and dark blue as a winter’s twilit sky. Yes, considering her activist attitudes now, and the practical, resourceful woman she’d become, perhaps he had done right after all by not naming her.

ANOTHER HARVEST SEASON came and still his daughter-in-law, Min Unsook, now two years married, did not conceive. Han only scanned the headlines of newspapers filled with reports of imperial victories and anti-Chinese propaganda. Within a few months, everyone’s identification was recertified and ration cards were issued. Neighborhood competitions were held to see who could contribute the most rubber, wood or metal. If one’s household offered nothing, soldiers were authorized to storm through the house, vandalizing as they wished. Unreported beatings, thefts and rapes were rampant. The government imposed price controls, further inflating the cost of rice. Then in October 1938, when Han read that Canton had fallen, he told Joong to stop bringing the newspapers.

He found his hands seeking chisels and rasps rather than brush or book, and prayed to both God and his ancestors for a grandson. He would rest if he had a grandson. He carved nature’s forms on shutters, doors, cabinet fronts and furniture, and the house became strikingly adorned with his handiwork, the storerooms cluttered with bas-relief panels. Every now and then a shutter would be missing from a window, or he’d see Ilsun carrying a newly sculpted stool out the gate, and rice would take the place of millet, or an egg or a whole fish would accompany the garden vegetables at his meals. He said nothing and continued to carve and stack finished pieces in the storeroom.

One evening toward that winter’s end, he glimpsed a stunning moonrise from his window. So broad and brilliantly pearled was the orb that he left the warmth of his sitting room to regard it from the porch. Its brilliance drew him out to the courtyard in his stocking feet, the iciness of the clear night cutting sharply through his clothes. The moon cleared the treetops and seemed to fill half the sky, and he wondered that in all its enormous beauty it gave no warmth. He tried to capture its portent and breathed in deeply. Tiny icicles of frost broke in his nostrils as he gazed at
the enigmatic features of the luminous sphere, seeking to comprehend its message.

“Yuhbo!” called his wife.

He came in sheepishly. She stirred his brazier, and he was grateful that she didn’t comment on his crazy behavior. Her preoccupied manner hinted at bad news. “Chang Hansu is here. His wife is with us in our rooms. He wants to speak to you.” He rubbed his hands over the coals and sat.

Alarmed by how aged and gaunt his neighbor looked, he called for his daughter-in-law to bring something hot to eat. Unsook assured him that soup and millet were coming for both Hansu and his wife. After eating and extending the usual courtesies, Hansu ran his hand through his unruly hair, suffused with gray, and said, “Uncle, I’ve had to sell the house. Neither my wife nor I have been working for nearly a year now. Sir, I’ve been drafted for labor in Nagasaki.”