The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea

by Pearl S. Buck

  It was night, too, when, days later, she reached the capital. The streets were empty except for the blind. By law only the blind were allowed to walk abroad at night and now they walked in silence, tapping their sticks in front of them upon the cobblestones. Suddenly her mood changed. She felt alone again and cold. She was returning to the palace, but could it be the same? And what of her servingwoman, who had exchanged garments with her, hiding her Queen in her cotton skirt and jacket and taking on herself the royal robes which meant her death? She had been killed, without doubt, and her gentle ghost would haunt the palace forever.

  “Has the Queen returned safely?”

  It was Sunia’s first question in the morning.

  “She has returned,” Il-han replied.

  Sunia was superintending the arrival of the first plum blossoms sent in from the forcing house in the country. The blossoms were white and all but scentless, except for a delicate freshness. Before she put her question she had sent the two men servants away.

  “You did not want to tell me?” she inquired, busying herself with the arrangement of a branch. Plum trees in the winter, in spring the cherry blossoms, in summer the hanging clusters of the purple wisteria, in autumn the golden poplars, these were the seasons named in flowers and trees.

  “You were sleeping like a child,” he replied. “And you know how I dislike waking even a child. Who knows where the soul wanders in sleep? I once saw a man wake demented because soul had left the body and could not find its way back quickly enough to the body.”

  She laughed. “And you tease me because I believe in the household spirits!”

  The two children entered at this moment, running away from nurse and tutor. The nurse came panting after the younger boy. She caught hold of his jacket and held him fast while Il-han watched.

  “It is time this younger one had a tutor of his own,” he observed.

  “Not until after the next summer, I beg you,” Sunia said.

  The elder son came to her side and leaned against her. He was taller by a head than he had been only a few months ago, but his willful face had not changed. The lively black eyes were still bold. Seeing that his elder brother was with the mother, the younger one approached his father while the nurse stood aside, in silence.

  Il-han took the child in his arms. This was a slender child, gentle as a girl, obedient, smiling as he smoothed his father’s cheek with his small warm hand.

  “Are you going away again?” he asked.

  “Only to the palace,” Il-han replied.

  “Why do you go to the palace?”

  “Because the Queen has come back.”

  The elder ran to him as he spoke. “Shall you wear your court dress, Father?”

  “Yes. That is why I came to find your mother. I wish her to help me.”

  “I will help you,” the child said. “I and my mother.”

  And soon they were busy with his court dress, difficult to wear, and Sunia advised while a man servant and two women fetched the garments and put them on Il-han, standing like an image except that he groaned with impatience. Over his undergarments of white silk they put on him the long blue satin tunic which hung to his ankles and was tied on the right breast by a silk band. The neckband was oval and under it was fastened a collar of white cotton. A belt, rectangular in shape and protruding in front and back, was secured by a strong cord of silk. Below his chest was fastened a plastron finely woven, and made of satin embroidered in solid gold thread. Upon the gold were two cranes in flight, embroidered in silver thread. These two cranes were the symbol of his high rank, for lesser nobles were allowed but one crane. Upon his feet were white cotton socks and black velvet short boots. Upon his head, after his long hair had been combed and freshly coiled, he placed his high black hat shaped like a cone with visor both front and back. At the sides were two winglike ears, symbol of his readiness to hear quickly the royal commands.

  When he was dressed and ready to leave for audience, his two sons were awestruck. They stood before him like two young acolytes before a Buddha.

  Sunia laughed. “Is he your father or not?” she inquired of her sons.

  “He is my father,” the elder one said proudly, but the younger one wept and hid his face in his nurse’s skirts. Meanwhile the tutor had entered in search of his pupil, and Il-han dismissed them all, except Sunia.

  “Leave me,” he said to them. “I must clear my mind and prepare my spirit.”

  When they had gone, he took Sunia by the hand and led her to the tallest plum tree, now in snowy bloom.

  “Sunia,” he said. “Have I your permission to attend the Queen?”

  She looked at him amazed. “Are you teasing me?”

  “No, I am asking you,” he said.

  “And if I refuse? You would go anyway.”

  “I would not.”

  She gave her sudden ripple of laughter. “There is no man in the whole of Korea like you,” she declared.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked, amazed in his turn.

  “Because it is true,” she replied, “and now go tell the Queen I command you to attend her. I push you out of the house, so—”

  And pretending to push him, she sent him off while she laughed. She laughed, but something stung in her heart, for still she knew the Queen had a power over him that she could not comprehend.

  As for Il-han, he went his way in his own palanquin, pondering upon the two women he knew best, his wife and his Queen. In his youth he had known a few women of pleasure, “the accomplished persons,” as they were called, trained to sing and dance and converse with men. They were not indeed women so much as persons, something between man and woman, and apart from both. Yet besides them he had scarcely so much as seen any other woman before he was given Sunia for his wife. Ladies of birth and wealth rode hidden in covered palanquins, and as for the bareheaded women in street and field, no man looked at them unless he wished to be attacked. These common women had a fierce pride in their womanhood and their men stood by them. Only a boy or a man insane would have dared to approach them.

  He sighed at such thoughts and wished that he were to enter the palace of the King rather than the Queen. But to the Queen he was committed and these royal two were as far apart as the Empress of China from the Emperor of Japan.

  … He perceived as soon as he had entered into the Queen’s presence that she was changed. She had grown thinner, and even the fullness of her brocaded skirt and the short loose jacket did not conceal the slenderness of her body. Her face was less round and girlish than it had been and he was awed anew by her beauty, by the gentle sadness in her eyes which he had always seen lively, and by the pallor of her fair skin. She was quiet when he entered, somewhat distant as she sat upon her thronelike cushion while he stood. For the first time she did not bid him kneel or seat himself. She let him stand, keeping him at a distance for her own reasons.

  He made his obeisances nevertheless and gave his greetings and he waited for her to direct what he should say and thus she began:

  “Everything here in the palace is the same. And everything is different.”

  “May I inquire if your Majesty has conferred with the King?” he asked.

  “We have not met,” she replied, “but I have been told that he will send for me today. Therefore I wished first for you to come before me so that I might learn what is the state of the nation as you see it. I know that you will speak the truth. Alas, I can say this of no other living soul. And I know, too, that I can no longer trust even myself. I am not wise enough. Who could have dreamed that I would be forced to flee from my own palace? I have been in a far country far away—very far—very far …”

  She looked about the royal room as though she saw it for the first time.

  “Majesty,” he said, “I cannot wholly regret that you have seen how your people live, in grass-roofed huts, with meager food.”

  “And yet more happy than I am here,” she put in. “The poet’s wife—how fortunate she is to have no greater burden t
han the day’s work in her small house and all for one man whom she loves!”

  “She is fortunate that her life is suited to her nature,” Il-han replied. “And you know very well, Majesty, that you could never live in a small house. You are truebone, and the palace is your home, your people are your responsibility. This is suited to your nature.”

  She sighed and smiled and sighed again. “You will not allow me to envy anyone or even to pity myself. Proceed! Enlighten me! What must I know?”

  Still she did not invite him to be seated and he stood, his head bowed so that he saw only the hem of her full skirt, beneath which peeped the upturned toes of her gold satin slippers.

  “The Regent,” he said, “is now imprisoned in a house in a city not too near Peking. He is comfortable, but he is guarded and he cannot escape. I am in communication with that great Chinese statesman—”

  “Li Hung-chang?” she cried with some anger. “Among all Chinese he is one I do not trust!”

  Il-han replied firmly, “He is only wise enough to see that, while China will not lose her independence, we may lose ours, for she cannot protect us. For this reason, upon his advice, we must accept the newest western country as our ally. The treaty with the United States, which we have let pause, must now be ratified so that the Americans may send a representative here to the court—”

  “You tell me this—”

  “I tell you because I must. We must have a friend to take China’s place, for if we have not, Japan will encroach and possess us.”

  “Japan never! Remember that we drove back Hideyoshi three hundred years ago!”

  “Will you never forget Hideyoshi? The Japanese are stronger than we are now.”

  “They were stronger then than we were but our Admiral Yi used his cunning brain and his iron turtle ships—”

  “When will you forget those turtle ships? The Japanese have new iron ships and western weapons and they have not made a hermit nation of Japan as we have of our country. They have visited western countries and learned from them. And they are preparing to fight China—I so prophesy!”

  “I cannot believe that a handful of islands could dream such folly against a vast continent—”

  He interrupted her. “Majesty, I am no Christian, but the Christians have a quaint story about a giant whom no one dared to kill until a shepherd lad with a sling let fly a pebble with such good aim that the stone sank into the giant’s forehead and ended him. Today it is not size that means strength—it is the youth with the pebble. Some day, Majesty, the new nations will devise a weapon no bigger than a child’s playing ball, and that weapon will destroy a continent.”

  “Do not tell me about Christians,” she retorted. “They are wanderers and troublemakers wherever they are. We should always put them to death.”

  “There are too many of them now, it is true,” he agreed. “They swarm everywhere, and they carry the pebbles of revolution. But we can no longer kill them, Majesty. We must accept them, not because of their religion, but because they come from the West and they bring western learning to us. Let them come, Christian though they are. We must learn everything of them except religion. We cannot go to their country, therefore we must let them come here, for our own sakes.”

  “If they come,” she declared, “I will not receive them. And I will see to it that the King does not receive them. They must live as exiles.”

  He gave her a long look, and she returned it. Then she rose. “I am more weary than I thought,” she said. “You are dismissed.”

  And so saying, she clapped her hands and her ladies came out from the next room and led her away.

  He stood there irresolute. He had made her angry and he was chilled to think so. But he had done his duty. There remained now the King. What of the King? Should he ask for audience? Was it possible that his father had already been in audience? He thought quickly, and decided that he would go to his father and see how far apart they were, father and son, before he asked audience with the King.

  When he arrived at his father’s house an hour later, unexpected, he was frightened to discover that his elder was ill. He was announced at the gate and his father’s chief servant himself drew back the bar and bowed before him.

  “Sir,” he said, “we have been looking for you. Your father was preparing to go to the King this morning, at command, but when he had taken food, he suddenly fell unconscious and we have not been able to rouse him. The doctor is here—”

  Il-han brushed the man aside strongly and strode through the gate and to his father’s bedroom. Everything fled from his mind except the fear of what he might see. His father was old, and yet somehow he had never thought of death, so strong was his father’s spirit, a brave stubborn spirit, difficult and yet one to be loved.

  He entered the room and saw about the bed the servants weeping, and the doctor kneeling beside his father and feeling for the thirty-seven ways of the pulse. Il-han did not interrupt him. He stood waiting until the doctor rose and bowed.

  “Sir,” the doctor said, “your illustrious father is suffering from the fatigues of old age and drying of the blood. He needs a healing stimulant. I prescribe a brew of sanghwatung. Do not scorn it because it is cheap. There is no better restorative for chill and fatigue. Your father rose before dawn to prepare for the royal audience. It is no wonder that at his age he became unconscious.”

  Since all had long known the value of this brew, Il-han accepted the doctor’s decision, and he sent word to Sunia that he would remain with his father until the elder became conscious again, his soul returned safely into his body. As the day wore on, however, the old man did not waken. Instead his left side became rigid in paralysis and he breathed in great gasping sighs. Even though he was moved into another room for benefit of change, he did not waken or improve. Il-han became more alarmed with every hour, and at last he decided upon the extreme measure. He summoned his servant who was waiting outside in the gatehouse.

  “It appears to me,” he told the man, “that my father is growing worse and not better. He is not able to swallow and therefore he cannot drink even the sanghwatung. You are to go now to the western doctor, that American who lives by the east gate. Invite him to come and give his opinion.”

  The servant was horror-struck. “Surely, master, you dare not—”

  “I dare anything if it may save my father’s life. Go, and do not reply to me,” Il-han commanded.

  The man bowed and went away, and in less than an hour by the water clock the foreign doctor entered the room. He was tall and he wore black coat and trousers, and on his face he grew a thick sandy beard. He was indeed a fearful sight, for above the unnatural color of the beard he had strange blue eyes, and short hair. His eyebrows were bushy, and in the candlelight thick hair glinted even on his hands. For an instant Il-han regretted what he had done. How could he trust a man whose appearance was so savage as this? The very odor of the man was wild, a strong meaty reek, like a wolf’s musk.

  The man himself was calm. He bowed a short awkward bow to Il-han and then he sat down beside his patient.

  “What happened to this old man?” he asked.

  He put the inquiry to Il-han in simple Korean such as ignorant people use, but Il-han was surprised that he could speak in any language that could be understood.

  He turned to his servant.

  “Explain to this foreigner,” he commanded him.

  While the man obeyed, Il-han observed the man closely. Though he knew there were these persons in the city, he had never seen one close. This, then, was an American! It was to such a breed that he and his countrymen must look for friendship! What had they in common? Could there be friendship between a tiger and a deer?

  When the servant had finished, the man rose to his feet and addressed Il-han. “Your father is suffering from a blood clot in the brain.”

  Il-han was so surprised that he forgot himself and spoke directly to the man instead of through the servant, “How can you say this when you cannot see into my father’s sk
ull?”

  “I know the illness,” the man replied. “The symptoms are clear. I will leave you some medicine, but I must tell you that it is likely your father will die before the night is over. He is very near to death now.”

  Il-han was horrified at such speech. To mention death, to say that it must come, was almost to bring it down by force.

  He turned to the servant in cold anger. “Remove this foreigner. Pay him his money and take him outside the gate and draw the iron bar.”

  “I ask no money,” the foreigner said proudly, and lifting the small black bag he had brought with him, he took out a small bottle, set it on the low table and strode from the room with such great steps that the servant was compelled to run even to follow him. As for the bottle, Il-han threw it out the window into the pool in the garden.

  In the night, two hours before dawn, his father died without waking. The hour of death was exactly known, for upon his father’s mouth Il-han had placed a wisp of soft cotton. Kneeling beside the floor bed he watched the slight stirring of the cotton. Suddenly it stopped, and he spoke to his servant, who marked down on a ready sheet of paper the hour by the water clock.

  Il-han rose to his feet and covered his father’s body with a silken quilt. Then he beckoned the servant to his side.

  “Instruct my father’s household,” he commanded. “According to custom, there must be no wailing for an hour, so that my father’s spirit be not disturbed in its flight. Meanwhile you are to return to my own house and fetch my sons and their mother and such other persons as are needed to care for them. We will remain here until my father’s burial.”

  “Sir,” the servant replied, “before I obey, may I ask for the honor of inviting the illustrious soul to return? I have ready the inner coat of cotton cloth which was prepared for this moment when your father reached his sixtieth birthday.”

  Il-han considered this request. It was proper for a member of the household or a distant relative, who had never seen the dead, to perform this rite, and he might have refused his servant except that the man grew up in this house and had cared for Il-han himself as a child and had served him through his youth, leaving only when Il-han himself left to set up his own household after marriage.