The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea

by Pearl S. Buck

  He had of course seen kisses in western motion pictures but he had taken it as a strange western custom. Nevertheless at her bidding he had leaned forward until his lips rested on hers, and had let them so rest for a short space. Then he had sat back.

  “Pleasant?” she had inquired with mischief.

  “New,” he had said reflecting, “very new—”

  “You are not sure you like it?” she had inquired.

  “Not quite,” he had confessed, somewhat embarrassed.

  “Shall we try again?”

  She made this suggestion in so calm a voice that he had tried again and had made conclusion.

  “Very pleasant!”

  She had laughed outrageously at him then and the scene had made cause for laughter many times thereafter. He would not allow many kisses in an evening, however, and tonight not until he had finished his duty. He had no wish to use her as a prostitute. It might be that she had been so used but he had never inquired. In the reserve and delicacy of his spirit he did not want to know. What had been could not be changed. She was what she now was and he had complete faith in her. His comprehending instinct discerned no impurity in her.

  “I shall not be able to refuse Sasha forever,” she said suddenly.

  He waited, aware of a quick anxiety. She helped herself to chicken and with a pair of silver chopsticks put a tender bit into his bowl.

  She went on when he did not speak. “What shall I tell this cousin of yours? He is very fierce—not like you—” She broke off.

  He spoke out of a fear such as he had never felt. “How can I answer until I know how you feel?”

  “I am afraid of him,” she said in a low voice.

  “Why?”

  She shook her head. “He has a power in him.”

  “Over you?” he asked.

  A long pause then, while she ate, bit by bit, daintily, not lifting her eyes. Then she put down her silver chopsticks.

  “I feel him,” she confessed, “and I am afraid.”

  “Of him?”

  “Of myself, too.”

  He met her pleading eyes gravely. “I have not finished my duty. Do we speak now of Sasha or shall I go on with what I must say?”

  She sat back and folded her hands together. “Please go on.”

  Against all his being he went on. “You are to take certain letters to certain persons whose names and addresses I will give you. Do not entrust the letters to anyone else, but put them yourself into the hands of those who should receive them.”

  “Are these persons Americans or Koreans?”

  “Most of them are Koreans but a few are Americans. It is essential that the important persons in Washington should know that we have a government ready to perform its duties and that when the American army arrives it is we who will receive our country from their hands and not our Japanese rulers.”

  She listened closely and without coquetry or graceful movement until he had finished. “Must I know all this?” she asked.

  “You prefer not to know?”

  “It is safer for me not to know. Let me be the innocent bearer of these messages.”

  He had now to face the truth. He was putting her life into danger. Upon the slightest suspicion of what he was asking her to do she might be arrested or, more likely, simply shot when she came on the stage, or as she left the theatre or in her own garden or anywhere in the world where she happened to be, in any country, in any city.

  To such death they were accustomed. An unknown assassin, a murderer never found, meant that no attempt need be made for justice. And who more reasonably killed than a beautiful woman whom many men loved?

  He groaned aloud. “What man was ever compelled to make such a choice—between his love and his country!”

  She smiled and suddenly was all woman again. “Do you know,” she said softly, hands clasped under her chin, “I have never seen you troubled. Now you are troubled—and for me! So I know you love me. And I shall be safe. Do you know why? Because I shall be very careful—very, very careful—to come back alive and well and safely to you. I will take no chances. So you need not make the choice. I will take the messages. I will deliver them, but I will not know what is in them. I do not ask. I will only see that they are received. It will not be difficult. I have many American friends. Some are famous and powerful. They will all help me. Say no more—say no more! Some moment before I leave, at one o’clock six nights from now, after my performance, give me the letters. Let me go alone to the airfield. There will be many people there to see me off, but you must not be there. And now that is enough.”

  She looked at him sidewise. “If this is not the night, sir, my love, then you had better go.”

  She tempted him heartlessly and with all her heart every night, and every night he went away. There would be a night when he stayed but it was not yet and it was not this night. He trusted to the clairvoyance he knew he possessed but which he could not explain. Somewhere far away, but still within the realm of his own being, he had instincts that he believed were old memories for he felt them rather than knew them. He heard no voices but he was directed through feeling and he had learned long ago as a small child in his grandfather’s house that when he disobeyed this feeling he was sad, and when he obeyed, he lived in harmony with himself. He did not think of it as evil or good but as harmony or disharmony.

  Now with all his strong and passionate nature he longed to say to her that he would stay and he did not, for he knew indeed the time was not yet. They rose together, he went to her side, hesitating, not trusting himself to touch her lips. Instead he took her hand and pressed his lips into the warm soft palm, scented as her whole body was always scented, with Chinese kwei-hua, a small white flower of no beauty except in its undying fragrance.

  … He slipped through the gate and into the quiet street. The hour was late and if he met a watchman he would be questioned. There was always that danger. He braced himself then when at the left turn of the street a man came toward him through the twilight of a clouded moon. Then he saw that it was no watchman but Sasha, wrapped in a capelike cloak. They met and stopped and he saw Sasha’s face, pale and staring.

  “What is it, Sasha?” He made his voice calm and usual

  “I followed you,” Sasha muttered. “I have been waiting for hours.”

  “Why have you waited? Why did you not knock on the gate and come in?”

  “It is you,” Sasha said in the same muttering. “You are why she would not let me come! Baron Tsushima! What Baron are you? You and she—you and she—”

  Liang stopped him. “Sasha, what you are thinking is not true. We are not lovers.”

  “Then why are you with her in the night?” Sasha demanded.

  Liang waited for a long moment before he replied. Then it became clear to him what he must say. He took Sasha’s arm.

  “Come with me!”

  In silence the two men walked the dim streets, empty except for beggars who crept through the night looking for refuse or shelter. Of these there were more than a few but they did not accost the young men, fearing these two, well dressed and strong. By law, beggars were forbidden and it was only at night that they could prowl about the streets, knowing that the Japanese were asleep and the watchmen were Koreans. On the two walked until they came to the hospital where he had his room. Many nights Sasha had stayed here with him, sometimes in sleep, sometimes in talk. They were cousins, but they were not always friends. Something new, something strange, was in Sasha. Whether it was the ancestry of his northern mother, whether it was the rudeness of his upbringing and the harshness of the Siberian climate, Liang did not know. With his peculiar genius, he understood Sasha, but not as part of himself.

  “Sit down,” he said when they had closed the door. The building was modern, and his room had a wooden floor, a table, two chairs and two cot beds.

  Sasha flung off his coat. Like other young Korean men he now wore western clothes. He sat down on the cot bed and began to unlace his shoes.

  �
��Tell me that you stay half the night with a dancer and do nothing but talk and I will not believe you.”

  His voice was sullen, his face dark. He kicked off his shoes and threw himself back on the cot.

  “Believe me or not, it is true,” Liang said quietly. “And it was not only a dancer with whom I talked. It was with a famous artist, who happens to be my friend.”

  “A dancer,” Sasha insisted in the same sullen voice, “and if you have not heard what else she is, you are a fool, and I know you are not a fool. I could tell you what she said to me tonight—yes, we spoke, she and I.” He sat up and stared at Liang with flashing eyes. “I wait for her every night at the stage door. Sometimes she lets me go home with her.”

  He watched Liang to see what the effect of this might be. Liang was sitting in the chair by the table, and there was no change in his face.

  “You don’t ask what she said?” Sasha cried.

  “No.”

  He was about to say more. Then he did not. She had told him she was afraid of Sasha. In a woman fear of a man may be the under edge of admiration, and admiration the upper edge of love. He wondered why he was not angry with Sasha, or even with her, but he was not. The gift he had been given was sometimes heavy to bear, the ability always to understand why the other person was as he was. Wounded, yes, but never angry, and there were times when he longed to feel fierce personal anger. Now, even now, he imagined that it might be possible to strike Sasha a hard blow, wrestle with him in combat, shout at him that Mariko was not to be fouled by his desire and suspicion.

  “She is afraid of you,” he said suddenly and was shocked. He had no intention of such revelation.

  A strange secret look stole over Sasha’s handsome face. His eyes narrowed and he smiled.

  “She told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is enough—for a beginning.”

  Sasha lay back again, his hands behind his head. As clearly as though his eyes could penetrate that skull, Liang knew what was taking place there. A hard simple core of ruthless desire was shaping into a plan. A woman who fears, Sasha was thinking, is a woman who can be taken by force. No more pleading—no more waiting at stage doors! He would enter her house. When she came home he would be there. He would enter by force.

  This was what Liang saw as clearly as though it had already taken place. He felt a sudden uplift of power in him. Was this anger at last? Was this how a man felt when he could strike another man? He leaped up and felt his hand curl into fists. He saw Sasha leap up to meet him. They stood staring into each other’s eyes. As suddenly as it had come, the impulse died in Liang’s body.

  “It cannot be done, Sasha,” he said. “She has guards in her house. You will have to find another way.”

  He sat down again. The loneliness of Sasha, a boy who saw his mother dead under a tree in the forest, whose home was the coldness of an orphanage in Russia, a youth, wandering here and there to earn his living who found his father only to know that they could never meet, a man who had never known what love was in parent or friend or lover. Of what use was it to strike such a man as Sasha? A blow could never change him.

  He felt this as clearly as though he were inside Sasha’s skin, Sasha’s blood running through his veins, and by the instinct in himself which he could never understand, he knew that he must tell Sasha that Mariko now was embarked upon a most dangerous mission.

  “The reason I went to see Mariko Araki tonight was a secret one, but I will tell you what it is. You are a Korean, Sasha, and you are a Kim of Andong. Above all other things that you are, you are first of all Korean of the clan of Kim. Our blood is the blood of patriots. At this time we cannot think of ourselves. We must think of our people, our country. Our grandfather has spent his life for our country. He saved our Queen when she was about to be killed and his lasting grief is that he could not save her in the end. My father died because he was a patriot and my mother suffered and died. And your father has been an exile since his youth, and now he is about to begin the most dangerous work of his life. We, the Kim, are staking all we have and are on the moment when victory is declared and the Americans come to our country. We must be ready for that moment. We Koreans must not be divided as we have been, fighting each other, in the open as we did in the past or in secret as we still do. We must be ready with a united government able to take over our country from the defeated Japanese. The Americans must know we are ready. It is for this that I went to see Mariko. She is to take letters to America.”

  Sasha stood listening, his hand hanging, his mouth ajar.

  “Why Americans?” he demanded. “What have the Americans ever done for us?”

  “They have never taken our land,” Liang replied. “They have never dreamed of empire. Whatever they may have done or may not have done, they are the only people who have declared the ideals of which we have only dreamed. True, we were not saved, but an American, Woodrow Wilson, declared self-determination of peoples.”

  “I never heard his name,” Sasha retorted.

  “He is dead,” Liang said gently, “and I think he died when he found how large his promise was and he knew he could not fulfill it. Yet though dead he lives.”

  Sasha turned away. “You are being religious.” He threw himself on the bed and yawned.

  “Nations, like individuals, can only learn by their own individual experience.”

  Yul-chun paused in his writing. The snow was falling softly but heavily into the garden. It had begun only a few minutes ago, but if it kept up there would be a foot of snow by twilight. The house was silent and he was alone. Yul-han’s house was now his own. He had found himself cramped in his father’s house, and at the mercy of his mother, coming in too often to see if he were cold or hungry or feverish or had he not worked too long, and he had asked for this house. There was also Sasha. To his surprise, Sasha after months of idleness had wished to go to the Christian school so that he might improve his English and go to America. Sometimes Sasha came home at night, sometimes he did not. Last night he came home early with his books, and after he had his meal he went to his room. On the whole, Yul-chun reflected, Sasha was improving, although of late he had shown a sudden hostility to Liang which the latter seemed not to notice. Yul-chun sighed and turned his thoughts resolutely away. Deeper than his longing had once been for Hanya was the constant troubling anxiety he felt for his son. Hanya had been a stranger, but Sasha was part of himself, though how often he too was a stranger!

  Resolutely he took up his pen. “We cannot learn to govern ourselves as a modern nation while we are ruled by another. Yet we must be able to defend ourselves at the moment of victory, lest defenselessness invite new invasion. We must be willing to be poor in order that we can build a navy to protect our shores. On the north we must build bastions and fortresses and maintain a heavy defense to prevent the age-old threat of Russia. To the incoming American Military Government, let me recommend immediate recognition of our provisional Korean government. It was our hope that our own brave Korean soldiers, now in China, could have helped the American army against Japan, our common foe. We would have saved many American lives thereby. Bitter indeed was our disappointment when this was not allowed.”

  Someone knocked and looking up he saw Liang at the door, and with him a small slender woman wrapped in a sable coat, snow glistening on her dark hair. They bowed.

  “We disturb you, Uncle,” Liang said.

  “No—no, I was just finishing an editorial,” Yul-chun replied.

  “Uncle, this is Mariko Araki,” Liang said.

  Yul-chun bowed once, not too deeply, and Mariko bowed deeply several times. Then she allowed Liang to take off her coat. Underneath she wore Korean dress, a short bodice of pale gold brocaded satin, tied at the right shoulder with a bow, and a full skirt of crimson satin. Under the skirt he saw the upturned toes of her little gold shoes and he gazed at her frankly from head to foot. This was the dancer!

  “Come in,” he said. “Seat yourselves. I have some western
chairs. Sometimes I sit in a chair myself to promote circulation in the legs.”

  Mariko laughed. “I do it by dancing!”

  “Ah,” Yul-chun said. “It is a resource, but not for me.”

  She sat down on a chair and Liang took another. After a moment’s hesitation, Yul-chun resumed his seat on the floor cushion beside the low desk.

  “Apologizing, Uncle, for sitting above you,” Liang said with his usual good nature, “but these western clothes allow me too little freedom.”

  He wore a western suit which made him look slim and tall.

  “We shall all be sitting in chairs when the Americans come,” Yul-chun replied.

  Liang and Mariko exchanged looks, and Liang began again. “Uncle, Mariko is leaving tonight for America. I promised that I would bring her to see you before she went. Yet I have put it off until today, I suppose because I have been—I am fearful for her. But she is very brave. She will help us.”

  “I am not brave,” Mariko put in. “I do not want to know anything. I wish not to answer questions. But if you put something in my hand, sir, I will put it in the hand where it should be. That is all.”

  Yul-chun listened, appraising her as she spoke. He was experienced in such appraisal. How often had he not searched one who must be entrusted with a message of life or death! He was satisfied now with what he saw in this charming face. It was an honest face, frank, mischievous perhaps, but a child’s mischief born of gaiety and not of wile.

  “Why are you willing to do this?” he asked.

  She did not hesitate. “I do it for someone I love. He is Korean and so I do it for Korea.”

  She did not look at Liang. Was it he? Yul-chun asked of himself. Was it Sasha? Liang inquired of his heart.

  “That is to say I am only a woman,” Mariko was saying, “and being a woman I do something for a man, not for a country—unless it is his country.”

  Yul-chun waited, still expecting to hear who this man was, but Mariko was finished. She composed herself, folding one hand over the other, her small hands pale against her crimson satin skirt. He opened a drawer in the desk and took out a silver key. With this key he unlocked a compartment hidden in the back of the drawer, and from it he drew three letters.