Tales of a Korean Grandmother (17 page)

THE
ROOSTER
AND
THE
CENTIPEDE

P
AINTED
in bright colors on a square tablet of wood, a fierce rooster hung on the edge of the veranda in the Inner Court.

"It drives the centipedes away," Halmoni often explained to the children. "But you must keep watch for them just the same," she always added.

Those long crawling creatures, with their many legs moving like the oars of a boat, were feared by everyone in the Inner Court. None in the Kim household would ever forget the time when Yong Tu picked one up in his hand, nor how nearly its poisonous bite came to sending him off to the Distant Shore.

"That centipede was twice as long as my hand," the boy told his friends. "My hand and my arm grew very fat. Only when the
mudang
made charms over me, did the pain go away."

Halmoni had watched the
mudang's
every move. The sorceress danced and screamed at the poison spirit that had entered the little boy's body. The Korean grandmother, however, thought the rag soaked in wine, which she herself put on the bite, had a good deal to do with the cure.

"Why does the centipede fear the rooster, Halmoni?" Ok Cha asked one afternoon.

"Because of the rooster's sharp beak, of course, child. Then, too, the rooster and the centipede have been enemies for ten thousand years. There are many tales about that."

"Could you remember one now?" the little girl asked eagerly.

"I can remember the one about the young man and the woman who once had been a centipede. That was a curious happening. It took place many hundreds of years ago, probably right here in our own city of Seoul.

"The man came of a family whose name was Chu. He was young and well-mannered, and he earned his rice by finding customers for an important silk merchant. So polite a manner had Chu that when he stood on the street and asked people to buy, many followed his beckoning into the silk shop.

"'Buy silk! Fine silk! No better silk in all the land!' Chu was crying this one day when the maidservant of a rich widow walked by. Under his persuasion she bought of the best the silk shop afforded, and she paid for her purchase with shining gold coins out of her embroidered belt pocket.

"Not many days later, the maidservant came to the Street of Silk Merchants again. Though young men from other silk shops begged her to enter, she waited for Chu. And again she bought much. A third time, and a fourth time, she came to the silk shop. The silk merchant was pleased, and it meant good earnings for Chu.

"One afternoon the widow's maidservant politely requested Chu to accompany her home. Her mistress wished to talk with him about some special silk she wished to buy for a screen. Now this lady was a widow, and Chu himself was a widower, his young wife having died when the Spirit of Smallpox entered his courts. Both were young. Both were handsome. It is not strange that before long the widow and Chu were married, and the young man went to live with her in her rich home.

"All went well. Chu was happy. Never had he known so kind and so pleasant a woman as his new wife. He had fine coats of silk, and each meal was as bountiful as an Ancestors' Feast.

"When he walked abroad, Chu usually crossed the 'Chicken Bridge' near his home. One evening as he stepped upon it, he heard a voice calling his name. 'Chu, Chu, my son!' the voice said. 'Your father speaks. Your father warns you of danger. That person in your house, that woman, brings you bad luck. You must put her to death. Crush her as you would a centipede that crawls near your foot.'

"'How should I kill my beautiful wife?' Chu replied to the voice that came from under the bridge. 'She is good. She is kind. She has brought me only good luck. I could never do her harm.' And he went on his way.

"The next time the young man crossed over the Chicken Bridge, the voice of his dead father came to him again. 'Kill that person in your house, my son. Your father's spirit commands you. She is a demon in woman's form. If she does not die before close of the fifteenth day, your own spirit will ride the winds to join me here on the Distant Shore.'

"Now the young man was troubled. The voice that gave him this dire command sounded just like that of his own father. He was a good son who always had obeyed the words of his parents. But when he thought of the comfort and kindness which he had got from his good wife, he knew he never would kill her.

"His heart was heavy. The fifteenth day dawned, and the hours passed one by one. At evening he went into the Inner Court. His wife did not move towards him as usual. She only sat on the soft white mat on the floor, as if lost in a dream.

"As Chu watched in silence, her face turned first to dead white, then to pale green. The woman began to groan and to shiver. The man was spellbound. He did not dare touch her or call out her name, for he could see she was bewitched. At last, however, the sickness passed away from his wife's face. Joy filled Chu's heart when her skin cleared. She opened her eyes, and she began to speak to him.

"'Why did you not kill me, as the voice under the bridge commanded you, Master of my House?'

"'What strange words do you speak? What is their meaning?' Chu replied to her. 'How did you know about the voice under the bridge?'

"I will tear the paper out of the windowpane of your understanding so that you may see clearly into the heart of that curious happening under the bridge,' Chu's wife said to him. it is a strange story, but it has a golden ending. By your kindness and your faithfulness you have released me from a terrible prison.

"'You must know that, in an earlier life, the Jade Emperor of Heaven decided to punish me for some misdoing. He changed me from a woman into a centipede, and he set a great rooster to torment me. Through one life after another, that rooster has pursued me. Only after a thousand years had gone by, was I permitted to take on my former shape and become a woman again. But still my enemy followed me.

"'Once I had become a woman, I was too large and too strong for the rooster to kill all by himself. His only hope was to persuade some man to perform the dreadful deed for him. It was the rooster's voice you heard, my husband, imitating your dead father. And it was your good heart that kept you from obeying that false command.

"'This day ends the time that was given the rooster to destroy me. My spirit was fighting with his spirit when you came into the Inner Court this afternoon. As you see, I won the battle. Now, forever, am I free of him. Always and always, now, I may remain a woman and your wife. Peace lies before us.'

"Next morning when Chu came to the Chicken Bridge, he climbed down to the spot whence the strange voice had come. There on the ground he found an enormous white rooster. Old, very old, it was. And as tall as Yong Tu. The rooster was dead, quite dead, my children. Never again did Chu's wife have to fear him. But to this day, a rooster will attack a centipede whenever the two meet."

THE
ROCK
OF
THE
FALLING
FLOWER

W
HY
does our Jade Emperor let those 'little men' from Japan come into our land? No good will come of it." Halmoni shook her old head, and a frown darkened her calm face. Kim Hong Chip, her eldest son, had just returned from the Korean seaport of Fusan, and he had been telling his mother of the many Japanese he had seen there.

It was not hard to recognize the Japanese. They had the same narrow eyes as Koreans, and the same broad high cheekbones. But their olive-skinned faces were darker, and they were not nearly so tall.

Ever since the Emperor had signed the "paper of peace," permitting Japan to trade in the Hermit Kingdom, more and more of these "little men" came every year. Yong Tu's father even pointed them out to him as they walked together on the streets of Seoul. The boy looked at them, half curiously, half in fear. Halmoni had told the children about terrible things that had happened in the past when the Japanese armies crossed the sea to try to conquer their land. There were tales of people killed and cities burned.

Worst of all, Yong Tu thought, was the story about the thousands of pickled Korean noses and ears which the Japanese soldiers took home with them after one of their visits. In the Japanese city of Kyoto, Halmoni said, these Korean noses and ears were put in a tomb. There was even a tablet set up to boast about the cruel deed.

"A shrimp between whales is our Little Kingdom," the old woman declared again and again. "The great whale of China has often tried to swallow us up. But we made friends with China, and, like an elder brother, China helped us keep off the other whale called Japan. That island country of Japan has learned the strong magic of men from the Western Seas. It has grown very powerful.
Ye,
Japan wants to conquer the wide eastern world. It would make our little land a steppingstone to get at its giant enemy, China.

"Ai-go! Ai-go!
Not always will our tortoise ships turn back the Japanese fleet." The Korean grandmother spoke firmly, shaking her old head up and down.

The story of Admiral Yi and his ironclad ship, shaped like a tortoise, was one of Yong Tu's favorite war stories. And it was a true story.

"Nearly three hundred years before you were born, Yong Tu," Halmoni used to say to the boy, "the Japanese Navy set sail once again. Its ships were ferrying many thousands of soldiers across the sea to attack us. But this time a surprise was awaiting those ships. Coming to meet them from our Korean shore was a vessel whose like they never had seen. Shaped like a giant tortoise it was, with flame spurting forth from its sharp dragon's head. Flames burst from its sides also, from gun openings cut just above the holes for the oars.

"Strangest of all, its curved tortoise back was covered with thick plates of strong iron. The shots from the Japanese guns bounced off this armor, falling harmlessly down into the water. None could destroy this ironclad tortoise ship. The Japanese soldiers and sailors were sure it was a spirit ship.

"But the flaming shots from the tortoise ship which dropped on their decks quickly set the wooden Japanese war vessels afire. Its sharp dragon's head rammed holes in their sides. Soon all were destroyed. And the signal fires on the mountains told the King that our enemy had been driven away once again."

Halmoni was telling her grandson about the very first iron-clad ship ever invented. The name of its maker, the clever Korean admiral, Yi Sun Sin, was honored throughout the entire Kingdom. It seems strange that more of these tortoise warships were not built, but the peaceful people of this Land of Morning Calm were content with their victory. "We can always build more tortoise ships when the need comes," they said, for they thought they had so frightened the Japanese that they would never attack them again.

Ok Cha's favorite war story also told of a victory over the Japanese. In this story a young Korean, Nonga, the singing girl, danced a cruel Japanese general into the deep river and helped save her country.

"But that happened before the coming of the tortoise ship, blessed girl," Halmoni explained. "It was when a great battle was being fought on the land. The dwarf men from Japan had come with ten thousand times ten thousand soldiers. They carried battle axes and long swords, daggers and spears, and they roamed over our country, killing our people and destroying our homes.

"Ai,
that was a bad time. Our tiger hunters and our other soldiers made a brave fight, but they were not strong enough. There was no general in all Korea so fierce as that one who led the Japanese Army, if we could only kill the General, our luck would turn,' the word went through the land.

"As if he were a fierce Mountain Uncle, the tiger hunters set traps for the Japanese General. But he was too wary. The
mudangs
made their loudest charms, and the
pansus
chose lucky days for our attacks. But not one was successful.

"The Japanese General and his officers at last had conquered the whole country, ending with the little city of Chinjoo to the west. In spite of its double walls, they entered the town. They killed the Korean general who had defended Chinjoo, and they cut off the heads of the judge and the other city officials. The soldiers and tiger hunters scattered and fled, hiding themselves high up in the hills.

"'Now we can rest,' the Japanese General said to his officers. 'What better place is there to celebrate victory than here in this pleasant valley?' Chinjoo was built on the banks of a fair, sparkling stream, where the water deepened and widened to form a true river. From the rocks along the river bank there could be seen many fine fish swimming about in the crystal clear waters. And it was the resthouse on that river which the Japanese General chose for his merrymaking.

Ok Cha's favorite war story was about Nonga, the singing girl who danced the Japanese General into the deep river.

"Hué,
there was noise in that place when those 'dwarf men' celebrated their victory over our land. There was drinking and singing. There was laughing and shouting.

"When the merriment was at its greatest, a girl dressed in the garb of a
gesang
appeared at the door of the resthouse. She was as fair as a silver moon in a starlit sky. Never had that Japanese General seen one to compare with her for beauty and grace.

"'How is it you are here?' the General said to the singing girl. 'How dare you brave the enemies of your country like this? All your men are away, hid in the hills. There is none to defend you.'

"I have come to thank the Great General for killing the judge of this city of Chinjoo,' the singing girl said, I am called Nonga, the
gesang.
My father was a good man, but a neighbor wrongly accused him before the judge. The cruel judge ordered that my poor father be paddled, and they beat him and beat him until they beat him to death. I vowed then that I would reward any man who should help me take revenge on that judge. You have cut off his head, and I have come here to keep my vow. I shall dance for you my best dances and sing for you my sweetest songs.'

"The General gave the fair Nonga a seat at his side. He ordered tables of food and bowls of wine brought. Nonga's singing delighted him, and he wished her also to dance. 'There is a flat rock down there on the river bank,' the
gesang
said to the General. 'The air is cool and fresh, and one can look far, far down the green valley. Let us go to the river bank. There I will dance for the Honorable General.'

"The beauty and grace of the
gesang
seemed to have bewitched the Japanese General. He followed her down to the water's edge and across the curious rocks which lay along the river bank. The girl led the way to a great table rock that rose high, high out of the water into the air. And she seated the General upon it, giving him more and more wine to drink from the bottles she had brought along in her basket.

"Then Nonga began to dance. Her full, gay-colored sleeves floated in the soft air, and her graceful posing was like that of a flower bending in the summer breeze. The General nodded his befuddled head in time to her singing. Then he rose up to dance with her.

"This was what Nonga had plotted and waited for. Winding her arms round the General's waist, she danced with him nearer and nearer the edge of the cliff. Then with one mighty leap she jumped off into the deep water, taking her country's enemy with her.

"The Japanese soldiers on the bank of the river saw the hands of the General reaching out of the water toward the rock. But they saw, too, that the arms of the brave singing girl held his waist fast. As they watched, she dragged him down with her to the watery kingdom of the River Dragon."

"What happened then, Halmoni?" Ok Cha could scarcely wait for the happy ending of the story.

"Why, I suppose the River Dragon rewarded the good singing girl, Nonga, for her courage and her self-sacrifice. Perhaps the Dragon himself ferried her to the Heavenly Shore. Or perhaps he sent her back to earth again to marry a prince, like the girl in the story of Sim Chung, the blind man's dutiful daughter.

"But the death of that Japanese General was indeed the turning point of that war. When they heard the news, the scattered Korean soldiers gathered once more. The tiger hunters returned from the hills. Then the signal fires on the mountains told the King that his land was saved once again from the dwarf men from Japan.

"In Chinjoo a shrine was set up to honor Nonga, the
gesang.
People say once a year, on the date of her death, the water of that little river turns as red as blood in memory of her noble death. Some call this place the 'Righteous Rock,' but my grandmother always spoke of it as the 'Rock of the Falling Flower.'"