The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (31 page)

The crowd stopped, men looked at one another, and then one by one they went away, the looters to loot and those who had committed the deed to escape so that none was known to be guilty. When all were gone and only Il-han was left, he went into the room where the Queen lay alone and he looked down into the lovely face he knew so well, still the same lovely face though aged now with the years during which he had not once seen her. He crouched down beside her and took her hand, still warm. Blood flowed from her left breast and from her smooth neck and he lifted the edge of her wide silk skirt and held it to the wounds. The silk was crimson and it did not show the stain except that the stuff turned a deeper crimson.

So he sat in the empty palace until sunrise and he sat on into the morning until at about the ninth hour a gardener came to the door, barefoot, so that Il-han did not hear his footsteps. He peered in and saw Il-han, whom he did not know, so long had Il-han been absent from the palace.

“Who are you, brother?” he asked.

“I am her servant,” Il-han said.

The man came near and stared down into the pale face of the dead Queen. “She liked white lotus flowers,” he said at last, “and now her face is as white as any lotus flower. What shall we do with her, brother?”

“Have you a cart?” Il-han asked.

“I have an oxcart,” the man said.

“Bring it to the nearest door and help me lift her into it,” Il-han said.

The man went away and in a short time came back again and they lifted the Queen, so slender that her weight was nothing for the two men, and they carried her to the cart and laid her there and the man covered her with the straw that filled the cart. Then he climbed up and the ox drew the cart away while Il-han followed far behind and slowly, for his hip was swollen and tears ran down his face for pain. Yet even this was not enough. Before the cart had reached the gate the dead Queen was discovered by soldiers and ragamuffins and they dragged her body out from under the straw and hacked it to pieces with swords and knives and piled the straw about the pieces and set all afire.

It was time for Il-han’s heart to break. He covered his face with his hat and hobbled away from that fire and into the street. His horse was gone, but the oxcart was there and he climbed into it, and bade the man take him home.

… Of that beautiful queen all that was left, he heard afterward, was the little finger of her right hand. This escaped the flames and was found by the man when he went back next day at Il-han’s command to see what bones were there, so that he might bring them together and give them honor. No bones were there, for dogs had wandered freely throughout the palace, but under a stone lay the little finger. The man took it up tenderly and wrapped it in a lotus leaf he had plucked from the lake. Then he took it to the King’s palace and demanded entrance and was received.

“I went into the King’s palace,” he told Il-han when all was done, for Il-han had said he would pay him well if he came to his grass roof with the whole story. “I went into the audience hall and the King sat on his throne surrounded by his ministers, and the old Prince-Parent sat there again at his right hand. The King listened to what I told him and he covered his eyes with his hand and he would not receive the lotus leaf from me. But he bade a minister take it and embalm it in a golden box and he said the Queen must be given a great funeral and a tomb must be built.”

Sunia was there while all this was told, and when the man was gone she took Il-han’s hand and held it and said not a word, but only sat beside him in silence, her warm hand clasping his.

So they sat until at last Il-han gave a great sigh and he turned to her and said, “My wife—my wife of great heart.”

Then he put her hand away and returned to his books.

… Two years passed before the astrologers could fix upon the place for the Queen’s tomb and then they fixed upon a stretch of land a few miles beyond the city wall. A thousand acres were here sequestered by the King and all houses were removed, for the tract held villages as well as mountains, hills, brooks and fields. Thousands upon thousands of young trees were planted upon the King’s command and fortunes spent in making a beautiful garden such as the Queen loved when she was alive. Her tomb was built upon the highest spot, a tomb of marble, encircled by a carved balustrade of marble. Before the tomb was a great table of white marble polished to shine like glass, and this was for making sacrifices to the spirit of the Queen. Beside the table stone lanterns miraculously carved were set into rock, and marble figures stood in graceful reverence.

When all was finished to his content, the King announced the day for the funeral, a fine fair day, and people came from far and near. In spite of all her whims and ways, the people had loved their Queen for her beauty, for her merriment, for her courage and her brilliant mind and even for her stubborn will. For them, now that she was dead, she remained as a symbol of what their country once had been and could no more be. Already the victorious conquerors were at work to stamp out the ancient ways, the language and traditions of the Koreans.

Il-han stood far off and alone, and he watched the splendid scene. With the Queen gone, could his nation survive? He asked the question and could make no answer. His heart lay dead within him. He could not feel its beat. The Queen whom he had reverenced, the woman whom he had—had he loved her? He did not know. Perhaps Sunia knew better than he, but if she did, he would not ask her. Let the secret lie within the tomb of all that was ended and could not live again. He had no faith in resurrection.

T
HE YEAR WAS 4243
after Tangun of Korea and 1910 after Jesus of Judea. The season was near the end of winter, the day was the tenth of the first moon month, the hour was midnight.

Il-han woke sharply and by habit now well established. He rose, taking care to be quiet so that Sunia would not wake as he crept from beneath his quilt. The ondul floor was cold. Fuel was too scarce to bank fires at night and the only warmth was from the quick flame of dried grass when the evening meal was cooking. He went into the next room, his stockinged feet noiseless, and there he poured cold water into a basin set on the table and washed his face and hands. Then he unwound his hair, oiled and combed it and coiled it again on top of his head. This hair he had kept short ever since he had been in America, against Sunia’s complaints that women would think he was not married, but when the Japanese rulers moved into the capital he felt compelled to let his hair grow in defiance of the command of the Japanese Prince, now Resident-General. He had sent out a decree declaring that no reforms could be made in Korea until the men cut off their topknots, for he maintained that in this stubborn coil of hair was the symbol of Korean nationalism which must be utterly destroyed since Korea had become a colony of imperial Japan. The Governor-General then announced that the King had cut off his coil of hair and that he, the King, commanded his subjects to follow his example. This the Koreans had at first refused to do, saying that the King had not cut his hair by his own free will but had been forced to do so by his Japanese masters. In the end many had refused to obey, including Il-han, and so his hair was long again.

He slid open the doors now and looked out into the night. A slight mist of rain was falling and the darkness was deep. He lit the stone lantern that stood by the door, and he waited until he saw those whom he expected. A man came out of the night leading some twenty children of different ages, all boys. They walked in silence until they reached him. The man looked left and right and then spoke in a low voice.

“We saw a distant light.”

“In what direction?” Il-han asked in the same low voice.

“To the north.”

“A moving light?”

“Yes, but only one. Yet one spy is enough.”

“I will keep the children here until dawn. Then I will send them away separately,” Il-han said.

The man nodded and disappeared again into the mist. Il-han led the children into the house, looking into each face. Accustomed to silence, they walked gravely past him and into the room. He followed them, first putting out the light in the stone lantern. Then he drew the doors shut and barred them fast. By now the boys were seated on the floor. He took his place before them on his floor cushion and opened his book and began to speak, his voice still low.

“You will remember,” he said, “that last night I spoke of King Sejong. I told you of his greatness, and how under his beneficent rule our country grew strong.”

He continued to speak of history for half an hour. Then he closed his book and recited poetry. For tonight he had chosen a famous poem of the late Koryo times, written in the Sijo style.

“And this,” he explained to his pupils, “is a special style because those times were like our own, troubled times when poets could not write long poems in the ancient Kyonggi style. Therefore they put their feelings into short intense form. There are only about ten of these Sijo poems left to us, and among them I have chosen the one written by Chong Mungju, who was a minister of Koryo, loyal to his King. Listen to me, children! I will chant the poem for you, and then line by line you will chant after me.” He closed his eyes and folded his hands and began to chant:

          
“Though this frame should die and die,

          
Though I die a hundred deaths,

          
My bleached bones becoming dust,

          
My soul dead or living on,

          
Naught can make this heart of mine

          
Divide itself against my King.”

He opened his eyes and repeated the poem line by line, the fresh young voices repeated them after him, and he observed how muted these voices were from the habit of fear. For what he now did was forbidden. The alien rulers had changed the schools so that even the language was no longer Korean but Japanese, and the books were Japanese. Unless scholars like Il-han taught the children in secret in the darkness of the night they would grow up ignorant of their own language and their own past and cease at last to be Korean.

When they had learned the poem, which they soon did, each child intent to learn what was forbidden, he expounded the meaning of the poem and how they all, like that minister in the past, must be loyal to the King, even though he lived now in duress and was only King in name.

“Our King’s heart is still with us,” he told them, “and the proof of his being with us is in the disbanding of our army. The Resident-General of the Japanese Imperial Army commanded our army to be disbanded in a very rude and dishonorable manner as you know, and our King was forced to sign the order for the disbandment. Yet only a few days later our King appeared at his Japanese coronation, wearing the uniform of the disbanded army. Meanwhile our disbanded soldiers are wandering everywhere telling the people of their dishonor, which some day we must erase.

“Remember, children, lest it be not written down. Two years ago our army, seventy thousand men, was dismissed by the invaders. Each man was given ten yen and told to go home. Most of them went to other countries to wait until the time comes for our freedom and many thousands went to Manchuria, where there is land.”

In this way Il-han, and many like him, informed the young of the greatness of their ancestors and the disgrace of their present, and how they, the young, must not cease to rebel in their hearts against the island invaders who had seized the country.

“We are far higher than these petty foreign rulers,” Il-han went on. “Though they treat us as serfs and slaves, we are not what they hold us to be. Nor should we in justice believe that all Japanese are as small as these who rule us. They have not men enough to govern their own country with greatness and they cannot spare us their highest men. Here we have the low fellows, the ignorant, the greedy, and we must suffer them, but the day will come when they will be cast out.”

“By what means?” a lad inquired.

“That is for you to decide,” Il-han replied.

“Why should they come here and take our country?” another lad inquired.

He was a rebel born but Il-han was too just a teacher not to present to such a lad the other side of truth.

“Alas,” he said, “there is always another face to everything. Imagine yourself a lad in Japan. Then you would be taught that it is essential for Japan to control Korea, else our country is like a dagger pointed to her heart. Russia, too, wants Korea—Russia has always wanted Korea, you remember. Ah, but you are a Japanese lad, imagine, and so your teacher would be saying, ‘We Japanese cannot tolerate the Russians so near us in Korea and that is why we fought the war with Russia, we Japanese, and we won, and all the world acclaimed us. It was necessary in that time of war to send our armies across Korea!’”

“They could have taken them away again when the victory was won,” a lad interrupted.

Il-han put up his hand. “Remember now, we are Japanese for the moment. The Japanese teacher says, ‘Had we taken our armies out of Korea, Russia would have come back in secret ways. No, we must hold Korea as our fort. And besides, we need more land for our growing people, and we need new markets.’”

He broke off and gave a great sigh. “I cannot go on with such imagining. We are Korean patriots!”

“Why did we not fight the Japanese?” a bold lad demanded.

“Alas,” Il-han said again, “our sin was in our many divisions. We quarreled over how to defeat our enemies, how to keep our freedom. One family clan against another has divided our nation and for centuries. Divided we fell. Our own people rose against our own corruption. Well, it is over. Gone are the great families, the Yi, the Min, the Pak, the Kim, the Choi, and besides them the Silhak, the Tonghak and every other such division. Now we are united in our longing for our lost independence high and low, and we have only the Japanese to hate instead of one another. Perhaps it will be easier.”

So the hours sped on. Listening always for unknown footsteps, his eyes watching the door, Il-han taught them the Korean language and its hangul writing until dawn stole across the foothills and the mountains and the sun rose. He had meant to let them sleep for a while at least but the day came too soon. Sunia was astir in the kitchen and one of the two old servants left to them put in his head at the door to warn Il-han of sunrise. Il-han looked up, surprised.