The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (59 page)

“Come in,” she said. “I saw you in the front row. It was for you I danced, after I saw you.”

He came in and she closed the door.

“I was not sure whether you saw me,” he said at last.

“You know I did,” she said simply.

“Now I know,” he had replied, and remembered what the abbot had told him. Total awareness, total understanding! This was what he and Mariko had, each of the other, from that first moment face to face.

She was leaving the stage now, and he rose before the crowd filled the aisles and walked rapidly through the lobby. There he saw Sasha making his way to the stage door, but again Sasha did not see him. He left the theatre and walked westward past the Bando Hotel for ten blocks until he came to the gate of her house. The gateman let him in and he sat in the moonlit garden until she could arrive, although the night was chill. He did not like to enter her house until she came home, lest it seem a presumption that he was her lover.

“Shall I bring your tea here, master?” the gateman asked.

“If you will,” Liang replied with courtesy.

What the two servants thought of his presence here he did not know or indeed care. He was scrupulous, leaving always within an hour after she reached home. The ritual was the same. She changed into Japanese or Chinese dress, as her mood was, preferring Chinese, and then she took a light supper which he might share or not as he pleased. They had never spent a night together, yet each knew that at some time this was inevitable although when it would be neither knew. They had discussed it only once and quietly, as they had discussed marriage, without conclusion. He supposed that in the past she had had lovers, but he was sure in the state of total awareness in which he lived, that she had no lovers now.

He heard her car at the gate, a Rolls-Royce, and he put down his tea bowl and rose as she came into the gate, still in her theatre costume but a coat of Russian sable wrapped about her. When she saw him she came to him and took his hand between both her own.

“I am late,” she said. “Sasha insisted on staying after the others were gone.”

“Sasha!” he exclaimed. She dropped his hand and laughed uncertainly and without mirth.

“It is cold in the garden tonight, is it not?”

She spoke unexpectedly in English and he was aware that she was afraid.

“Sasha has threatened to follow you,” he said.

“Yes.”

She linked her fingers in his and drew him with her toward the house. At the door her woman servant knelt to take off their shoes.

“You told him he could not come?”

“Of course. I told him I had a guest.”

“And he asked if the guest were I?”

“Yes, but I lied to him. I said it was Baron Tsushima.”

She could lie as easily as a child and confess it in the same breath. He was puzzled, for he himself could not lie, and yet he understood the necessity of lies in her complicated life, where men continually pursued her, and he did not reply to this. They went into her sitting room, the wall screens were closed, the curtains drawn, and on the low table steam rose from silver dishes of food.

“Excuse me,” she said, “and please sit down.”

She drifted out of the room so gracefully that she seemed not to walk and he waited. A maidservant entered with a Japanese robe and took off his coat and helped him to slip into the robe. He sat down then, only to rise when a moment later she came in wearing a soft French negligee of green chiffon, the full skirt floating about her.

“Ah, you are too polite,” she said, smiling. “Rising to meet me? It is only you who persist in such courtesies.”

“Let me have my way,” he replied.

They sat down on their floor cushions, opposite each other as usual, and were alone. The first moment was always the same. Each searched the other’s face. This, she said, was to learn what each was feeling, and what had passed since they last met. Then she put out her hands, palms upward and he clasped them. Into each palm he pressed his lips and as he did so, she took his palm, one after the other, and pressed her lips there.

She drew back her hands after this and she laughed softly.

“Now I know,” she said, “and all is well with me, too. Let us eat. I am hungry. The dance was difficult tonight. I felt there were too many people. They crowded onto the stage behind me. I have forbidden it, but still it happens. Then I feel caught between the crowds in front and the crowds behind.”

“They love you,” he said gently.

“Yes, they love me, but it means nothing to me,” she said quickly. “So much love—from nameless persons, none of whom I shall ever know!”

A small silver pot filled with hot soup stood before each of them, and he poured the soup from hers into a silver cup, and then poured his own cup from his pot.

“Better than hate,” he said.

“Oh, I have had hate, too,” she retorted. “In Peking I saw a theatre full of people suddenly hate me. I had to escape for my life while they screamed after me that I was Japanese. You don’t hate the bit of Japanese in me?”

“I hate nothing in you. I love everything in you,” he said gravely.

A long moment hung between them, luminous and silent He broke it unwillingly.

“Drink your soup while it is hot. Meanwhile I must tell you I have a duty tonight. I have made a promise concerning you, which you are not compelled to keep.”

She lifted her delicate eyebrows at this.

“When you go to the United States next week,” he said, “I ask you to carry some messages.”

“Yes?”

“Of two kinds,” he went on. “My grandfather has a few American friends. And the missionaries we know have also relatives and friends. Our government-in-exile is there. You will take messages to them.”

“Yes?”

She held the silver cup in both hands, warming them, the delicate eyebrows still uplifted above eyes so glorious in size and shape and depth that he was all but stifled by the breath caught in his breast.

“Please—” he said, his voice low. “Please do not look at me like that until I have finished!”

She laughed sudden clear laughter and changed her look. That face of hers, so exquisite, so mobile, quivering and alive—he looked away and went on.

“The purpose of these messages is to prepare everything here in our country for the coming of the Americans—and to prepare the Americans for us, when they come.”

She put down her cup. “The Americans!”

“They will come, I assure you. If there is any danger to you here, because of the messages, then stay away—stay in America or in France, wait until the victory when we have taken back our country. Then I shall arrange such a welcome for you as a queen would have. My grandfather loved a queen once, and my grandmother is jealous to this day. But no one knows that I have a queen of my own!”

He looked up at her now. They leaned across the narrow table and kissed. She had taught him the kiss.

“Touch my lips,” she had said to him suddenly one evening as they sat like this across the table.

He had been stupid and only stared at her.

“Like this,” she had insisted, and taking his hand she had kissed it.

“But how your lips?” he had inquired.

“With your lips,” she had whispered, and had pursed her lips into a waiting flower.

He had of course seen kisses in western motion pictures but he had taken it as a strange western custom. Nevertheless at her bidding he had leaned forward until his lips rested on hers, and had let them so rest for a short space. Then he had sat back.

“Pleasant?” she had inquired with mischief.

“New,” he had said reflecting, “very new—”

“You are not sure you like it?” she had inquired.

“Not quite,” he had confessed, somewhat embarrassed.

“Shall we try again?”

She made this suggestion in so calm a voice that he had tried again and had made conclusion.

“Very pleasant!”

She had laughed outrageously at him then and the scene had made cause for laughter many times thereafter. He would not allow many kisses in an evening, however, and tonight not until he had finished his duty. He had no wish to use her as a prostitute. It might be that she had been so used but he had never inquired. In the reserve and delicacy of his spirit he did not want to know. What had been could not be changed. She was what she now was and he had complete faith in her. His comprehending instinct discerned no impurity in her.

“I shall not be able to refuse Sasha forever,” she said suddenly.

He waited, aware of a quick anxiety. She helped herself to chicken and with a pair of silver chopsticks put a tender bit into his bowl.

She went on when he did not speak. “What shall I tell this cousin of yours? He is very fierce—not like you—” She broke off.

He spoke out of a fear such as he had never felt. “How can I answer until I know how you feel?”

“I am afraid of him,” she said in a low voice.

“Why?”

She shook her head. “He has a power in him.”

“Over you?” he asked.

A long pause then, while she ate, bit by bit, daintily, not lifting her eyes. Then she put down her silver chopsticks.

“I feel him,” she confessed, “and I am afraid.”

“Of him?”

“Of myself, too.”

He met her pleading eyes gravely. “I have not finished my duty. Do we speak now of Sasha or shall I go on with what I must say?”

She sat back and folded her hands together. “Please go on.”

Against all his being he went on. “You are to take certain letters to certain persons whose names and addresses I will give you. Do not entrust the letters to anyone else, but put them yourself into the hands of those who should receive them.”

“Are these persons Americans or Koreans?”

“Most of them are Koreans but a few are Americans. It is essential that the important persons in Washington should know that we have a government ready to perform its duties and that when the American army arrives it is we who will receive our country from their hands and not our Japanese rulers.”

She listened closely and without coquetry or graceful movement until he had finished. “Must I know all this?” she asked.

“You prefer not to know?”

“It is safer for me not to know. Let me be the innocent bearer of these messages.”

He had now to face the truth. He was putting her life into danger. Upon the slightest suspicion of what he was asking her to do she might be arrested or, more likely, simply shot when she came on the stage, or as she left the theatre or in her own garden or anywhere in the world where she happened to be, in any country, in any city.

To such death they were accustomed. An unknown assassin, a murderer never found, meant that no attempt need be made for justice. And who more reasonably killed than a beautiful woman whom many men loved?

He groaned aloud. “What man was ever compelled to make such a choice—between his love and his country!”

She smiled and suddenly was all woman again. “Do you know,” she said softly, hands clasped under her chin, “I have never seen you troubled. Now you are troubled—and for me! So I know you love me. And I shall be safe. Do you know why? Because I shall be very careful—very, very careful—to come back alive and well and safely to you. I will take no chances. So you need not make the choice. I will take the messages. I will deliver them, but I will not know what is in them. I do not ask. I will only see that they are received. It will not be difficult. I have many American friends. Some are famous and powerful. They will all help me. Say no more—say no more! Some moment before I leave, at one o’clock six nights from now, after my performance, give me the letters. Let me go alone to the airfield. There will be many people there to see me off, but you must not be there. And now that is enough.”

She looked at him sidewise. “If this is not the night, sir, my love, then you had better go.”

She tempted him heartlessly and with all her heart every night, and every night he went away. There would be a night when he stayed but it was not yet and it was not this night. He trusted to the clairvoyance he knew he possessed but which he could not explain. Somewhere far away, but still within the realm of his own being, he had instincts that he believed were old memories for he felt them rather than knew them. He heard no voices but he was directed through feeling and he had learned long ago as a small child in his grandfather’s house that when he disobeyed this feeling he was sad, and when he obeyed, he lived in harmony with himself. He did not think of it as evil or good but as harmony or disharmony.

Now with all his strong and passionate nature he longed to say to her that he would stay and he did not, for he knew indeed the time was not yet. They rose together, he went to her side, hesitating, not trusting himself to touch her lips. Instead he took her hand and pressed his lips into the warm soft palm, scented as her whole body was always scented, with Chinese kwei-hua, a small white flower of no beauty except in its undying fragrance.

… He slipped through the gate and into the quiet street. The hour was late and if he met a watchman he would be questioned. There was always that danger. He braced himself then when at the left turn of the street a man came toward him through the twilight of a clouded moon. Then he saw that it was no watchman but Sasha, wrapped in a capelike cloak. They met and stopped and he saw Sasha’s face, pale and staring.

“What is it, Sasha?” He made his voice calm and usual

“I followed you,” Sasha muttered. “I have been waiting for hours.”

“Why have you waited? Why did you not knock on the gate and come in?”

“It is you,” Sasha said in the same muttering. “You are why she would not let me come! Baron Tsushima! What Baron are you? You and she—you and she—”

Liang stopped him. “Sasha, what you are thinking is not true. We are not lovers.”

“Then why are you with her in the night?” Sasha demanded.

Liang waited for a long moment before he replied. Then it became clear to him what he must say. He took Sasha’s arm.

“Come with me!”

In silence the two men walked the dim streets, empty except for beggars who crept through the night looking for refuse or shelter. Of these there were more than a few but they did not accost the young men, fearing these two, well dressed and strong. By law, beggars were forbidden and it was only at night that they could prowl about the streets, knowing that the Japanese were asleep and the watchmen were Koreans. On the two walked until they came to the hospital where he had his room. Many nights Sasha had stayed here with him, sometimes in sleep, sometimes in talk. They were cousins, but they were not always friends. Something new, something strange, was in Sasha. Whether it was the ancestry of his northern mother, whether it was the rudeness of his upbringing and the harshness of the Siberian climate, Liang did not know. With his peculiar genius, he understood Sasha, but not as part of himself.