The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (45 page)

“There remains only the matter of how to leave one place and enter another,” he observed.

“You are a Christian,” was Sung-man’s quick reply. “You can enter through the missionaries,” and laughing, as though he was telling a joke, Sung-man lifted his empty bowl and pounded the table and bawled to a waiter to fill it again.

… “They can’t go straight to America,” the missionary said to the doctor.

They sat together with Yul-han in the vestry of the church. He had feared that they would not help him, for he knew the orders from their superiors abroad was that they were not to mingle in the affairs of government. Yet these two Americans sat here in homely fashion, talking as calmly as though they discussed a matter of business. Looking from one plain face to the other, hearing the hearty voices, perceiving the good sense, which was their nature, he knew that whatever they were in race and nation, they were his friends and the friends of his people. He listened while they planned how his father and Sung-man would go to Europe and from there secretly to America, and how when they reached their destination, they, missionary and doctor, would see that the two Koreans were met by Christians and taken to private homes. Everywhere they would be met by Christians and sent on to others, and so all was planned to take place immediately.

“How can I thank you?” Yul-han said when he rose to leave.

The missionary clapped him on the back and made him wince. Never could Yul-han be used to such friendly blows, accustomed as he was to the tradition of his own countrymen that one did not lay hands on the person of another.

“We are Christian brothers,” the missionary shouted.

Yul-han went home, much moved by what had taken place, and he found Induk able to sit up, although she could not bear to move from her pillows so sore was her whole body. He knelt beside her and sent Ippun away and he told her everything. She listened, and then she put out her bandaged hand and he took it.

“This is why I was put to such suffering,” she said. “Out of evil good has come.”

He knew she spoke from Christian faith but he was still too new a Christian to believe that it was necessary for one to suffer in order that others might be saved. Yet he would not distress her now with his doubts. Let her have the comfort of her soul, and so he sat holding her bandaged hand.

“The American President is here,” Sung-man said. “We are fortunate. He leaves tomorrow for Boston.”

Il-han drew a deep breath. All morning he had sat waiting in his cramped room in a cheap hotel in Paris, where he had arrived two days ago from India. They had heard contradictory news. Wilson had already gone, he had not gone. He was failing in the Peace Conference, he was not failing. The Fourteen Points were being changed by the Allies, yet he was fighting bravely. No, he was not fighting bravely, he was allowing himself to be swayed. No one knew what was happening. Koreans, exiled in France as they were in many countries, had come together in Paris, anxious and trying to sift out the truth.

Il-han, listening the night before in their meeting here in his room, had said nothing until the end when he had heard everything. Then he had spoken firmly and quietly.

“I will go myself tomorrow, wherever the American President is, and face to face—”

He had been interrupted by half a dozen voices. “Do you think we are the only people? Every small nation in the world has sent its people to speak to Woodrow Wilson! And what will you say that they have not said?”

Il-han was unmoved. He felt dazed by the distance from home, he missed Sunia with a dull ache in his breast which he could not forget, he was homesick and ashamed of it, and yet his will held firm to its purpose. He must see Wilson face to face and tell him—tell him—What would he tell him? Sleepless in strange beds raised high from the floor so that he was afraid to turn himself over lest he fall to the floor, he had tried to plan what he would say.

“When I am face to face with him,” he had told them doggedly, “I shall know what to say. The words will come of themselves out of my heart where they have long been pent.”

So high he looked, indeed so much the noble yangban, that the younger men could say nothing. Sung-man took his part always.

“I know that what our father-friend says is true. He is of the same generation as Wilson and in courtesy Wilson will hear him when he might hurry past us.”

They had agreed to meet early the next morning and wait for Wilson in the lobby of the Crillon Hotel, where he was staying. Again Il-han was restless all night until at last Sung-man rose and lifted the mattress from the two high beds and laid them on the floor and took away the soft hot pillows and laid two books under the bottom sheets instead, and toward dawn Il-han drifted into brief sleep. He woke early and with the urgency of the aged he pressed Sung-man to rise, and so too early they were waiting in the lobby. Yet early as they were, some had come before them. A handful of Polish peasants in their garments of homespun wool embroidered in designs of scarlet were already there, wearing on their heads high hats of black fur. They had brought with them a priest who could speak French, and so could explain that in the new boundaries which had been made by the war, the corner of Poland where they lived had been given to Czechoslovakia, and they wanted their land to be in Poland and not in Czechoslovakia. They, too, in their far part of the world, had heard that the American President was in Paris, he who had said that people should be free to determine for themselves by whom they should be governed. They had lost their way, the priest said, and so they had inquired of a Polish sheepherder, who knew the stars and the way to go. When the sheepherder learned their purpose, he left his sheep and came with them since he too wanted to be free and he watched the stars and pointed out the path. When they reached Warsaw, Polish patriots gave them money and sent them on to Paris and they had come straight down the wide boulevards to this hotel where they were told Woodrow Wilson was staying.

With these Il-han and his fellow countrymen waited, and soon they were joined by still others, all wearing the garments of their own people, refugees from Armenia, land people from the Ukraine, Jews from Bessarabia and Dobrudja, Swedes who yearned to get back the lost Aaland Isles, chieftains from distant clans in the Caucasus and the Carpathian mountains, Arabs from Iraq, tribesmen from Albania and from the Hedjaz. All these and many others who had lost their countries, their governments and their languages now came to the American President as their savior, impelled by the need to pour out upon him their manifold sufferings.

He came at last, the tall thin man, his face desperate with weariness. That was what Il-han saw first as Wilson came through a door, his face, desperate with weariness. He paused, irresolute, he spoke in a low voice to those who were with him. They argued, but he turned and went out through the door by which he had come. A young man spoke to them in English and Sung-man translated for Il-han.

“We are asked to come upstairs to the President’s private rooms.”

“I will walk,” Il-han said. “I will not go up in that small climbing box.”

So he and Sung-man went up the carpeted stairs and into a great room. Wilson stood there by a long table waiting for them, and Il-han, pressing toward the front, saw how his left hand trembled. He was very white, the paleness of his face enhanced by his knee-length black coat and his dark gray trousers. His hair was nearly white, too, and his face was lined. But they all pressed forward, and the peasants kissed the hem of his coat and knelt until their foreheads touched the floor.

Wilson said nothing at first and a man spoke for him, asking that each group put its case through its leader, and they would then proceed in order of the English alphabet, and he begged them to speak as quickly as possible for the Peace Conference waited upon the President. They tried to do what he wished and when it came to Il-han’s turn, he pressed into Wilson’s hand a long paper he had written which Sung-man had translated into English, and he said in his own language, “Sir and most Honored, we have come from Korea. Our people are dying under the invader’s rule. Sir, our country has a written history of four thousand years, and we have been a center of civilization for the surrounding nations, surviving all invasions until now. You—only you—are our hope in all this world and for the ages to come.”

While Sung-man translated, Il-han looked into the sad blue eyes of an aging man, he saw the firm mouth quiver and smile and the lips press themselves together again. Before he could reply, Wilson stumbled as though he would fall and two young men on his staff stepped forward to support him.

One of them said in a low voice to Wilson, “I hope you won’t speak of self-determination again, sir. It’s dangerous to put such an idea into the minds of certain races, I assure you. They’ll make impossible demands on you and the Peace Conference. The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It’s a pity you ever uttered it, Mr. President. It will cause a lot of misery.”

Sung-man took Il-han aside and translated for him and hearing it, Il-han felt a misery creep into his heart and his belly. He turned his head to see what Wilson would say. The American’s face had changed to a greenish hue and he was stammering in a broken voice.

“I am ill—I’m very sorry—I must be excused—”

His young men caught him by the arms then and led him away. When he was gone blankness fell upon them all. They had been strangers at first, these people from many countries. Then for a brief moment they had been comrades in a common cause. Now they were strangers again.

“Let us go home,” Il-han said. “Let us go home.”

Yul-han listened in silence as his father told the long story, his eyes upon his father’s face. Neither he nor his mother had dared to put into words the great change they saw there. Il-han had left home looking a man of his years, thin as all were thin nowadays who were not traitors, but healthy. Now he had come home an old man. Yet he would not allow anyone to blame Wilson.

“He is wise beyond his times,” Il-han declared. “He did not know the world—true, I grant that. He did not know how tyrants rule, and how many long to be free. His dream will shape the world, nevertheless—not for us in our generation but for your children, my son—perhaps for your children. I regret nothing. I looked in his face. I saw a man stricken by his own pity for us to whom he could not fulfill his promises.”

Induk was there, and Sunia, and Induk spoke softly. “He is a man crucified.”

She was well again but she had lost her calm good looks.

Across her neck and face lay a great crimson scar, and Il-han regarded her with a tenderness he had never felt before.

“It has been a lesson for me,” he said. “I know now that we must trust to ourselves only. No one will help us.”

Induk looked at him bravely. “Father, let us trust God!”

“Ah, I do not know your God,” Il-han replied. And thinking the reply too short he added in courtesy, “Ask for his help, if it will comfort you.”

… While his father had been away Yul-han had steadfastly carried out his determination to become a member of the New Peoples Society, but he did not tell Induk. Her nature was timid and delicate, and the torture to which she had been subjected increased these qualities in her. She became even more devoted in her religion, spending much time in prayer, and she began to visit her childhood home. It was not usual for a daughter to cling to her blood family, but Induk now did so, since they were Christian and she found in their presence a support and strength which she did not find elsewhere. Her father was an officer in his church while earning his living by a small silk shop. Her mother was a lady of good family but she had not learned to read until she became a Christian, and then she made great effort so that she could read the Christian Scriptures. Since Induk’s torture, her family had doubled their hours of prayer, and in their despair and terror of what might happen next they became more than ever devout, beseeching God in constant prayers to save them and save their country. To know that Yul-han had become a member of so dangerous a company as the New Peoples Society would have overwhelmed them and he would not tell them.

This company, as he knew, was spread into many countries and had created centers everywhere to work for the freedom of Korea. In America a Korean government-in-exile was in preparation for the day when they could declare themselves free. Secret news of such matters flew around the world by printed page, by written letters, by spoken words. In Philadelphia—

“Where is Philadelphia?” Yul-han asked his father.

The time was evening, at twilight, in a day unseasonably mild for the second solar month of that Christian year, nineteen hundred and nineteen. Four days ago snow was melted and the buds were swelling on the plum trees. Tomorrow it might be winter again.

Il-han had taken to smoking a bamboo pipe since his return from abroad and he paused to draw a puff or two while he searched his memory.

“Philadelphia is a city in the eastern part of the United States near the sea but not on the sea,” he said. “A largish city, yes, but what I remember is a great bell there. They call it the Liberty Bell. I believe it was struck to declare American independence. It stands in a building—a hall named Independence. We were taken to see it.”

“Our people in America are planning a great meeting there,” Yul-han said. “They are writing a constitution which they will read in that hall in the presence of the great bell. And here we have written a Declaration of Independence. I have committed it to memory and destroyed the paper. So we have been commanded to do. Each of us knows it by heart.”

He closed his eyes and began to chant under his breath. “‘We herewith proclaim the independence of Korea and the liberty of the Korean people. We tell it to the world in witness of the equality of all nations and we pass it on to posterity as their inherent right.

“‘We make this proclamation, having behind us 5,000 years of history, and 20,000,000 of a united loyal people. We take this step to insure to our children for all time to come personal liberty, in accord with the awakening consciousness of the new era. This is the clear leading of God, the moving principle of the present age, the just claim of the whole human race! It is something that cannot be stamped out, or stifled, or gagged, or suppressed by any means.