The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (2 page)

King Sejong also modernized Korean music and theory with the help of the famous musical theoretician, Pak Yon. Any visitor to Korea today realizes how extraordinarily talented the people there are in all the arts but especially in music. Perhaps the emphasis which Confucius placed upon the disciplines of music in the formation of moral character influenced King Sejong to provide for the publication of many books of music and for the arrangement of court music into beautiful compositions with divine themes.

Yet King Sejong did not suppress Buddhism. In his liberal spirit and under his personal approval, Buddhist scholars revised the Buddhist works of the previous dynasty and translated them into hangul and thus made them comprehensible to the people. As the centuries passed, the Yi dynasty grew in glory and achievement. The creative spirit of the people expressed itself in a vital literature. In this dynasty, too, the first western invasions took place. Catholicism entered in the seventeenth century, and French priests were murdered on Korean soil, as were shipwrecked sailors from foreign countries. Korea had had enough of invaders, and she asked only to be left a hermit nation, growing within her own skill. It was a wish that could not be fulfilled. Western expansionism was forcing the old nations of Asia into chaos. Portugal and Spain were engaging in active trade with Japan, and the crews of their ships, wrecked by typhoons in the Yellow Sea, often found refuge in islands off the southern coast of Korea.

Russia, too, was expanding. In the middle of the seventeenth century, a Russian regiment forced its way along the Amur River and fought the Chinese in Manchuria, near Korea. And Korean records tell us that in 1653 thirty-six “men of strange appearance,” unknown before, with “blue eyes and yellow hair and high noses,” staggered ashore from their wrecked ship. They were Dutchmen, and they were taken to Seoul, the capital of Korea, where they joined the army, married and lived for the rest of their lives, although in 1666 eight of them went back to Holland, and one of them, Hendrik Hamel, wrote of his life in Korea and so provided the first book about Korea in a western language.

In 1860 China went to war with Great Britain and France to protect her own sovereignty and her rights, with the result that Russia acted as mediator, and with the peace demanded a reward and was given the Maritime Provinces. This meant that at the northeastern tip of her peninsula Korean soil touched Russian soil—a significant portent for the future. In 1866 an American ship, the
General Sherman
, sailed up the Taedong River and relationships began between Korea and the United States, not always wise, not always peaceful, but established in 1883 by a treaty of amity and commerce.

It is shortly before that fateful year that my novel,
The Living Reed
, begins. The reader may well ask, as the story unfolds, how much of it is fact and how much is fiction. The basic Korean family is true in the sense of factual material passed through the creative process of a writer’s brain. The historical material, however, is all factual, including the trial of the conspirators, the fire in the Christian church, and other such incidents—even, I add in sorrow, the events of the day the Americans landed at Inchon after the second world war. All American and other diplomatic persons, including Koreans, are factually presented. The political events are taken from history. The character of Woodrow Wilson is based on fact well documented, and whatever he says in the novel he said first in life. The way his words gripped the imaginations of the people of Asia is authentic, and a Korean delegation did call on him in Paris as did emissaries of other small nations. But I have allowed my imagination, dwelling in Korea, to develop my Korean characters as I have known them on their own soil and as I saw them in the years when I lived in China and knew them there. To the Koreans, wherever we meet them in my book, I have tried to be true.

PEARL S. BUCK

March, 1963

T
HE YEAR WAS 4214
after Tangun of Korea, and 1881 after Jesus of Judea. It was spring in the capital city of Seoul, a good season for a child to be born, and a fair day. Il-han, surnamed Kim, of the clan of Andong, sat in his library waiting for the birth of his second child to be announced. It was a pleasant room, larger than most rooms, and since the house faced south, the sun climbing over the walls of the compound shone dimly through the rice-papered lattices of the sliding walls. He sat on satin-covered floor cushions beside a low desk, but the floor itself was warmed by smoke ducts from the kitchen stove, after the ancient
ondul
fashion. He tried diligently to keep his mind on his book, open before him on the low desk. Three hours had passed since his wife had retired to her bedroom, accompanied by her sister, the midwife and women servants. Three times one or the other of them had come to tell him that all went well, that his wife sent him greetings and begged him to take nourishment, for the birth was still far off.

“Far off?” he had demanded. “How far off?”

Each time the answer had been a shake of the head, a vague smile, a retreat, behavior typical of women, he thought somewhat scornfully, at least of Korean women, silken sweet on the surface, but rock stubborn underneath. All except his beautiful and beloved wife, his Sunia! He would have been ashamed to show to anyone, even to her, how much he loved her, and this although he had never seen her before their wedding. For once matchmakers had not lied and fortunetellers had been correct in the forecasting of signs and dates. Sunia had fulfilled every duty as a bride. She had not smiled once throughout the long day of the wedding, in spite of the ruthless teasing of relatives and friends. A bride who could not control her laughter on her wedding day, it was said, would give birth only to girls. Sunia had given birth to a son, now three years old, and if the fortuneteller was right again, today she would have another. Il-han’s home, his family, made a center of peace in these troubled times of his country. But when had times not been troubled for Korea? In four thousand years there had been scarcely a century of peace for the small valuable peninsula hanging like a golden fruit before the longing eyes of the surrounding nations, proud China demanding tribute, vast Russia hungry for the seacoast she did not have, and Japan, ambitious for empire.

He sighed, forgetting home and family, and rose to walk impatiently to and fro across the room. It was impossible to keep his mind fixed on books, although he was a scholar, not the scholar his father was, poring over ancient volumes, but a scholar for all of that. His book today was a modern one, a history of western nations. His father would not have been pleased had he known that he, Kim Il-han, the only son of the Kim family of Andong, was engaged in such learning, his father who lived in the classics of Confucius and in dreams of the golden age of the dynasty of Silla! But he, Il-han, like all young men of his generation, was impatient with old philosophies and religions. Confucianism, borrowed from China, had isolated this nation already isolated by sea and mountain, and Buddhism had led the hermit mind of his people into fantasies of heaven and hell, gods and demons, into anything, indeed, except the bitter present.

He paced the tiled floor of his library, a tall slender figure in the white robes of his people, and he listened for the cry of his newborn child while he mused. Then, burning with restlessness at the delay and suddenly feeling himself hot, he slid back the latticed wall. The clear sunshine of the spring morning poured its rays across his low table desk. The desk had been his grandfather’s, a solid piece of teak imported from Burma, made after his grandfather’s own design, and decorated with fine Korean brass.

“This desk shall be yours,” his father had told him upon the grandfather’s death. “May the thoughts and writings of a great statesman inspire you, my son!”

His grandfather had indeed been a great man, a premier of the still existing Yi dynasty, and from the Yi rulers he had absorbed the doctrine of isolationism and the emotions of pride and independence.

“Situated as we are, surrounded by three powerful nations, Russia, China and Japan,” his grandfather had memorialized the Throne half a century ago, “we can only save ourselves from their greed by withdrawal from the world. We must become a hermit nation.”

His father had often quoted these words and Il-han had listened to them with secret scorn. The absurdity of his elders! He had kept his own secrets even from his father, his share in the first revolt against the Regent, Taiwunkun. He, Il-han, had been only a boy but a useful boy, carrying messages between the rebel leaders and the young Queen. The Regent had married his son, King Kojong, to her when he was far too young for marriage, and because he was young the Regent had chosen a daughter of the noble clan of Min, older than the King, a choice he had cause to rue, for who could believe the beautiful graceful girl was strong and of such brilliant mind, and determined that she could plot to set the Regent aside? He, Il-han, had seen her at first only by candlelight, at midnight, in stolen conference with the rebel leaders, he waiting at the door for a packet thrust into his hand which he must take to the young King when he went to play chess with him the next day. Even then he had known that the Queen was the one who must rule, and that the King, his gentle and amiable playmate, could only be the buffer between the arrogant Regent and the Queen.

But Il-han had told his father nothing. What could his father do, the handsome aging poet, dreaming his life away in his country house and his garden? For his father, unwilling to wound his grandfather, who had served the Regent, by taking the part of the young Queen who loved China, had early withdrawn from the royal conflict. Queen Min, it was said, though how truly none knew, was herself partly Chinese and her most powerful friend was Tzu-hsi, the Empress Dowager now ruling in Peking. From that capital the Queen still insisted upon buying the heavy silks and satin brocades she enjoyed wearing, and though some censured her for extravagance, he, Il-han, had not the heart to blame her for anything she did. Now in the joy of awaiting the birth of his second child, he thought of the Queen’s only son, heir to the throne, who had been born of feeble mind. In the center of her being, proud and beautiful and brilliant as she was, there was emptiness, and he knew it.

His absent mind, always pondering affairs of state, was presently controlled by his attention focused at this moment to hear the cry of his child fighting to be born. He paused, listening for footsteps. Hearing none, he returned to his desk, took up a camel’s-hair pen and continued to write a memorial he had begun some days before. Were this document to be presented to the King, he would have been compelled to use the formal Chinese characters. It was written not for the Court, however, but for the secret perusal of the Queen, and he used the symbols of the phonetic Korean alphabet.

“Furthermore, Majesty,” he wrote, “I am troubled that the British have moved ships to the island of Komudo, so near to our coasts. I understand that they wish the Chinese armed forces to leave Seoul, with which I cannot agree, for Japan is demanding that she be allowed to send troops to Korea in case of emergency. What emergency can arise in our country which would need Japanese soldiers? Is this not the ancient and undying desire of Japan for westward empire? Shall we allow our country to be a stepping-stone to China and beyond China to Asia itself?”

He was interrupted by the opening of a door and lifting his head, he heard his son’s voice, a subdued wail.

“I will not go to my father!”

He rose and flung open the door. His son’s tutor stood there, and his son was clinging to the young man’s neck.

“Forgive me, sir,” the tutor said. He turned to the child. “Tell your father what you have done.”

He tried to set the boy on his feet but the boy clung to him as stubbornly as a small monkey. Il-han pulled the child away by force and set him on his feet.

“Stand,” he commanded. “Lift your head!”

The child obeyed, his dark eyes filled with tears. Yet he did not look his father full in the face, which would have been to show lack of respect.

“Now speak,” Il-han commanded.

The child made the effort, opened his mouth and strangled a sob. He could only look at his father in piteous silence.

“It is I, sir, who should speak first,” the tutor said. “You have entrusted your son to me. When he commits a fault, it is my failing. This morning he would not come to the schoolroom. He has been rebellious of late. He does not wish to memorize the Confucian ode I have set for him to learn—a very simple ode, suitable for his age. When I saw he was not in the schoolroom, I went in search of him. He was in the bamboo grove. Alas, he had destroyed several of the young shoots!”

The child looked up at his father, still speechless, his face twisted in a mask of weeping.

“Did you do so?” Il-han demanded.

The child nodded.

Il-han refused to allow himself pity, although his heart went soft at the sight of this small woeful face.

“Why did you destroy the young bamboos?” His voice was gentle in spite of himself.

The child shook his head.

Il-han turned to the tutor. “You did well to bring him to me. Now leave us. I will deal with my son.”

The young man hesitated, a look of concern on his mild face. Il-han smiled.

“No, I will not beat him.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The young man bowed and left the room. Without further talk Il-han took his son’s hand and led him into the garden, and then to the bamboo grove by its southern wall. It was plain to see what had happened. The young shoots, ivory white and sheathed in their casings of pale green, were well above ground. Of several hundreds, some tens were broken off and lying on the mossy earth. Il-han stopped, his hand still clasping the small hot hand of his son.

“This is what you did?” he inquired.

The child nodded.

“Do you still not know why?”

The child shook his head and his large dark eyes filled with fresh tears. Il-han led him to a Chinese porcelain garden seat, and lifted him to his knee. He smoothed the child’s hair from his forehead, and pride swelled into his heart. The boy was straight and slim and tall for his years. He had the clear white skin, the leaf-brown eyes, the brown hair of his people, different from the darker Japanese, a living reminder that those invaders must not be tolerated in Korea.