The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (17 page)

“You tell me this—”

“I tell you because I must. We must have a friend to take China’s place, for if we have not, Japan will encroach and possess us.”

“Japan never! Remember that we drove back Hideyoshi three hundred years ago!”

“Will you never forget Hideyoshi? The Japanese are stronger than we are now.”

“They were stronger then than we were but our Admiral Yi used his cunning brain and his iron turtle ships—”

“When will you forget those turtle ships? The Japanese have new iron ships and western weapons and they have not made a hermit nation of Japan as we have of our country. They have visited western countries and learned from them. And they are preparing to fight China—I so prophesy!”

“I cannot believe that a handful of islands could dream such folly against a vast continent—”

He interrupted her. “Majesty, I am no Christian, but the Christians have a quaint story about a giant whom no one dared to kill until a shepherd lad with a sling let fly a pebble with such good aim that the stone sank into the giant’s forehead and ended him. Today it is not size that means strength—it is the youth with the pebble. Some day, Majesty, the new nations will devise a weapon no bigger than a child’s playing ball, and that weapon will destroy a continent.”

“Do not tell me about Christians,” she retorted. “They are wanderers and troublemakers wherever they are. We should always put them to death.”

“There are too many of them now, it is true,” he agreed. “They swarm everywhere, and they carry the pebbles of revolution. But we can no longer kill them, Majesty. We must accept them, not because of their religion, but because they come from the West and they bring western learning to us. Let them come, Christian though they are. We must learn everything of them except religion. We cannot go to their country, therefore we must let them come here, for our own sakes.”

“If they come,” she declared, “I will not receive them. And I will see to it that the King does not receive them. They must live as exiles.”

He gave her a long look, and she returned it. Then she rose. “I am more weary than I thought,” she said. “You are dismissed.”

And so saying, she clapped her hands and her ladies came out from the next room and led her away.

He stood there irresolute. He had made her angry and he was chilled to think so. But he had done his duty. There remained now the King. What of the King? Should he ask for audience? Was it possible that his father had already been in audience? He thought quickly, and decided that he would go to his father and see how far apart they were, father and son, before he asked audience with the King.

When he arrived at his father’s house an hour later, unexpected, he was frightened to discover that his elder was ill. He was announced at the gate and his father’s chief servant himself drew back the bar and bowed before him.

“Sir,” he said, “we have been looking for you. Your father was preparing to go to the King this morning, at command, but when he had taken food, he suddenly fell unconscious and we have not been able to rouse him. The doctor is here—”

Il-han brushed the man aside strongly and strode through the gate and to his father’s bedroom. Everything fled from his mind except the fear of what he might see. His father was old, and yet somehow he had never thought of death, so strong was his father’s spirit, a brave stubborn spirit, difficult and yet one to be loved.

He entered the room and saw about the bed the servants weeping, and the doctor kneeling beside his father and feeling for the thirty-seven ways of the pulse. Il-han did not interrupt him. He stood waiting until the doctor rose and bowed.

“Sir,” the doctor said, “your illustrious father is suffering from the fatigues of old age and drying of the blood. He needs a healing stimulant. I prescribe a brew of
sanghwatung
. Do not scorn it because it is cheap. There is no better restorative for chill and fatigue. Your father rose before dawn to prepare for the royal audience. It is no wonder that at his age he became unconscious.”

Since all had long known the value of this brew, Il-han accepted the doctor’s decision, and he sent word to Sunia that he would remain with his father until the elder became conscious again, his soul returned safely into his body. As the day wore on, however, the old man did not waken. Instead his left side became rigid in paralysis and he breathed in great gasping sighs. Even though he was moved into another room for benefit of change, he did not waken or improve. Il-han became more alarmed with every hour, and at last he decided upon the extreme measure. He summoned his servant who was waiting outside in the gatehouse.

“It appears to me,” he told the man, “that my father is growing worse and not better. He is not able to swallow and therefore he cannot drink even the sanghwatung. You are to go now to the western doctor, that American who lives by the east gate. Invite him to come and give his opinion.”

The servant was horror-struck. “Surely, master, you dare not—”

“I dare anything if it may save my father’s life. Go, and do not reply to me,” Il-han commanded.

The man bowed and went away, and in less than an hour by the water clock the foreign doctor entered the room. He was tall and he wore black coat and trousers, and on his face he grew a thick sandy beard. He was indeed a fearful sight, for above the unnatural color of the beard he had strange blue eyes, and short hair. His eyebrows were bushy, and in the candlelight thick hair glinted even on his hands. For an instant Il-han regretted what he had done. How could he trust a man whose appearance was so savage as this? The very odor of the man was wild, a strong meaty reek, like a wolf’s musk.

The man himself was calm. He bowed a short awkward bow to Il-han and then he sat down beside his patient.

“What happened to this old man?” he asked.

He put the inquiry to Il-han in simple Korean such as ignorant people use, but Il-han was surprised that he could speak in any language that could be understood.

He turned to his servant.

“Explain to this foreigner,” he commanded him.

While the man obeyed, Il-han observed the man closely. Though he knew there were these persons in the city, he had never seen one close. This, then, was an American! It was to such a breed that he and his countrymen must look for friendship! What had they in common? Could there be friendship between a tiger and a deer?

When the servant had finished, the man rose to his feet and addressed Il-han. “Your father is suffering from a blood clot in the brain.”

Il-han was so surprised that he forgot himself and spoke directly to the man instead of through the servant, “How can you say this when you cannot see into my father’s skull?”

“I know the illness,” the man replied. “The symptoms are clear. I will leave you some medicine, but I must tell you that it is likely your father will die before the night is over. He is very near to death now.”

Il-han was horrified at such speech. To mention death, to say that it must come, was almost to bring it down by force.

He turned to the servant in cold anger. “Remove this foreigner. Pay him his money and take him outside the gate and draw the iron bar.”

“I ask no money,” the foreigner said proudly, and lifting the small black bag he had brought with him, he took out a small bottle, set it on the low table and strode from the room with such great steps that the servant was compelled to run even to follow him. As for the bottle, Il-han threw it out the window into the pool in the garden.

In the night, two hours before dawn, his father died without waking. The hour of death was exactly known, for upon his father’s mouth Il-han had placed a wisp of soft cotton. Kneeling beside the floor bed he watched the slight stirring of the cotton. Suddenly it stopped, and he spoke to his servant, who marked down on a ready sheet of paper the hour by the water clock.

Il-han rose to his feet and covered his father’s body with a silken quilt. Then he beckoned the servant to his side.

“Instruct my father’s household,” he commanded. “According to custom, there must be no wailing for an hour, so that my father’s spirit be not disturbed in its flight. Meanwhile you are to return to my own house and fetch my sons and their mother and such other persons as are needed to care for them. We will remain here until my father’s burial.”

“Sir,” the servant replied, “before I obey, may I ask for the honor of inviting the illustrious soul to return? I have ready the inner coat of cotton cloth which was prepared for this moment when your father reached his sixtieth birthday.”

Il-han considered this request. It was proper for a member of the household or a distant relative, who had never seen the dead, to perform this rite, and he might have refused his servant except that the man grew up in this house and had cared for Il-han himself as a child and had served him through his youth, leaving only when Il-han himself left to set up his own household after marriage.

“You may do so,” he said.

The man then climbed to the roof of the house and standing exactly over the place where his old master lay dead, he prepared himself for the solemn rite.

The hour was dawn, and rays of the rising sun crept through the mountains in long bright shafts. The wind blew fresh and cooled by the night. It was indeed a beautiful day upon which to die. So thinking, the man lifted up the coat, and holding the collar in his left hand and the hem in his right, he faced the south and waved the coat three times. The first time he announced in a loud voice the full name of the dead nobleman. The second time he announced the nobleman’s highest rank. The third time he announced his death. After this he cried out again, and this time to invite the departed soul to return. When all was done he came down from the roof and placed the coat over the body of the dead, and wailed in a loud voice again and again. Then with the help of others, he lifted the body upon a special bed which faced the south, and he placed around it a paper screen.

After such announcement and invitation, the household prepared for the ceremonies due the dead. Il-han’s father had lived alone after his mother’s death many years before. In spite of loneliness he had not taken another wife, not even a young woman. His servants had cared for him, men and women, and now they set about their sorrowful work. The women put away all jewelry, and men and women let down their long hair. In the kitchen the cook boiled rice into pots of thin soup, for no rice could be cooked dry during the days of mourning. In the death chamber, the dead man’s body was washed with soft white paper and warm perfumed water. His hair was combed and tied loosely, not in its usual coil. The combings from the hair were brushed into the hair, and all that had been separated from the body during the long lifetime and had been saved was now restored, the nail parings, the hair droppings, and four teeth which had been extracted when they caused pain. These were put into two pouches and placed right and left beside the body so that in the next life the person could be whole as when he was born.

The mouth was opened with a spoon of willow wood and into it was placed a pearl, which was held fast by three spoonfuls of gluten rice. This pearl was the death pearl, grown only in the giant clams which are found in the Naktong River, a rare pearl, pure but without luster, found in but one out of ten thousand clams and without fault, for it grows of itself within the shell. Indeed, so rare is this pearl that it is removed before burial and handed down from generation to generation. The pearl in his father’s mouth had belonged to a Kim five generations before and some day it would also be placed in Il-han’s own mouth, and after him in the mouth of his eldest son. When the ritual was finished, Il-han left the room, and the servant finished his duty by putting balls of cotton into the dead man’s ears and covering his tranquil face with a cloth of handspun linen.

Now the household busied itself. New garments must be made for the dead, and a new mattress for his coffin, new blanket and new pillow. The men who serve the dead must be summoned and also the geomancer, whose duty it was to decide upon the place of burial, a place suited to the winds and the waters. The coffin too had to be built, and of pinewood, for the pine tree is evergreen and is a symbol of manhood. It does not wither or cast its leaves until it dies. Serpents and turtles and lizards and all such reptiles will never nest near a pine tree. Nor does the pine tree rot at the core to remain an empty shell. It dies whole, and quickly, and begins another life, and this, too, is good. The old life should not cling to the new and hamper the growth beyond. What is finished is ended and if dust is the end, then may the end come entire when it comes. The parts of this coffin were put together with wooden pegs for nails, and the cracks were filled with honey and resin, the walls and bottom lined with white cloth, and upon this bottom a mattress was laid. Inside the lid the word
Heaven
was brushed, and at the four corners the word
Sea
.

Into this final home Il-han, in his position as master of mourning, now helped his father to lie and the coffin was lifted into the place of honor on a raised platform. By this hour neighbors and friends and relatives knew of the death and they came to mourn. With each guest Il-han made the wail of mourning the suitable number of times, and then the guests were served with wine and food. The next day at sunrise Il-han, still as master of mourning, lit the early incense and again wailed in mourning, and food was brought for the dead as though he were living. So it was again in the evening until all ceremonies were performed according to ritual.

Then Il-han sat alone in the room where as a child he had studied his Confucian books with his old tutor, and while he waited for Sunia, he was aware of a new loneliness. His mother’s death remained in him still as a wound too deep, for he was her only child. But she had long been ill and feeble. His father was his family in those days, and his closest friend, and there had been no estrangement between them, for the elder man had declined political posts and had retired more and more deeply into his books as the years passed. To Il-han he had often said that he could not share the strife and dissensions everywhere, the struggles for power between this man and that, the treacheries of court life, the enmities between surrounding nations. He was content to keep his own spirit pure, and he believed that he could do nothing for his fellow patriots that served them better than to remain untouched by deceit and private profit. Yet he did not judge these faults in others, nor did he change the traditions. He did not, for example, consider sharing the Kim lands with the peasants who tilled it. When Il-han, in his impetuous youth, declared that his father should rectify those sins of the past whereby the Kim clan had, like other yangban clans, seized great portions of the nation’s land, his father had merely replied that each generation must take care of its own sins, and he believed that he himself had committed no sins.