East Goes West

by Younghill Kang

  I felt subdued and saddened to hear these words from a man I admired so much. The dawn was lightening over the Village, but it now brought sagging and depression. We still stood before Kim’s apartment house, while Kim concluded in serious and earnest tones:

  “You and I came to the West to find a new beauty, a new life, a new religion. But is there any? Alas! we have come at the wrong time. It is too late. Too late to be saved by Dante’s Beatrice, too late to love like Shakespeare in the sonnets, too late to be with Shelley a Plato-republican, too late even to be a Browning individualist or a Tennysonian sentimentalist. The next act is unnamed—”

  “Napoleon in hell?” I suggested.

  Kim smiled. “Well, I have nothing to do with Napoleon . . . in former life I was an Eastern poet . . . but tell me, what now is to be our fate? being unable to go back to that previous existence, being unable to label ourselves in this new world . . . becoming lost within another lost world?” He held out his hand. “Good night. Good luck!”

  BOOK FIVE

  1

  ARRIVING IN BOSTON on a beautiful September day, I immediately engaged a room on Trowbridge Street for $1.50 a week. It was a little attic room with not much in it but a large double iron bed which took up about all the space. And it was very uncomfortable besides, as I found out that night . . . being lumpy and uneven . . . and I had to be very careful to choose the region in it where I lay, or when I got up in the morning too eagerly, I would hit the ceiling a star-raising blow with my head. It only remained to get some kind of scholarship in the University and to start out to earn my way through college by expert salesmanship in between intervals of studying.

  Mr. Lively drew up a handsome contract for me. I was overwhelmed when I read that. It was not like business at all, but was testimony to my outstanding abilities in studies and to my Christian character, adding in a special clause that I did not drink or smoke. And it summed up the whole situation, too, how I was working my way through college. Something there encouraged me considerably—it said that Mr. Lively’s company intended to give me a free scholarship if I could sell the minimum requirement. I had not known of that.

  “Now, my boy, if you have any difficulty in selling,” said Mr. Lively heartily, “just show the customer your contract. Don’t be bashful. Make him read this. And say, ‘Just one more order, please. It will help me so much!’ . . . Wait a minute. That necktie won’t do. I’m glad, my lad, you’re not a dandy, but that tie looks like a string!” He opened the long box which was in his office and was, when closed, just like a seat. I saw it was filled with neckties, handkerchiefs, and all sorts of accessories. He selected a quiet, but vigorous-looking tie, and taking my own off, threw it into the waste basket. “There. That shows more Christian neatness. Look the part. Have faith. And remember,” said Mr. Lively, “speak the speech. . . .” (It was the only quotation that he knew from Shakespeare. Whenever I mentioned Shakespeare to Mr. Lively, he always gave me that. “Speak the speech. . . .”)

  2

  I received word in Mr. Lively’s office that Kim had come to Boston at this time. I found him stopping in the Copley Square Hotel.

  “You seem comfortable, here,” I said, looking around the neat dark bedroom with its easy chairs and spacious writing desk.

  “Yes, but I chose it for the Boston atmosphere,” said Kim, “not for the comfort.” And he pointed out to me the buildings around the hotel, the romanesque-styled granite church with its dark sandstone trimmings, that other church, New South Church in Italian Gothic style, and the gray stone public library which Kim said was Italian Renaissance built to resemble a Florentine palace. Then the college buildings of Boston University all around. “So you see all of Boston is represented here. The churches show the religious side. (They are very exclusive. As in some religious orders of Tibet.) The colleges stand for the educational aspect. And this hotel, staid and substantial, is the dignified commercial side.”

  He asked me what I thought of Boston. I hesitated. “There seems to be an intellectual breathing all over.” (I did not add, except where Mr. Lively was concerned. Though even he appeared to approve Shakespeare.)

  “Yes, here one is conscious of morals and dignity, as if a copy of The Evening Transcript were in everybody’s overcoat pocket.”

  “And sharper air is here, under a bluer, radiant sky. . . . September wind and autumn sun are equally piercing . . . but so far the air does not intoxicate me so as to absorb me in it. Not like New York. It must be a sectional patriotism for Boston that I lack.”

  Kim laughed. But he insisted that it was an interesting city. “Not very genial perhaps. . . . This is the land of Puritanism which only three hundred years ago was engaged in hanging old women for witches and torturing little children by telling them to confess their faith and so be saved from the devil and the flames in hell.”

  He paused to point out the more enlightened example of the Chinese, as expressed in the Ch’un Ch’iu or Spring-and-Autumn Annals, concerning customs from the year 722 to 484 B.C.

  “Do you remember? A certain duke wished to burn a witch as causing a great drought, but his ministers would not allow him, saying, ‘What have witches to do with the matter? If Heaven wishes her to be killed, it would have been better not to allow her to be born. If she can cause a drought, burning her will only make things worse.’”

  Nonetheless Boston seemed to have some kind of fascination for Kim. “If there is any true dignity and sincerity in American democracy one would expect to find it here, where people once would die for their ideals. It is like Peking—guarded by invisible traditions. All except Bostonian natives are foreign here, you know. But now we will go to see some of the representatives of education.”

  Kim took me to call on a professor on Kirkland Street, Doctor Alexander Campbell.

  “I suppose he is almost a native now. He came here as a young man to deliver the commemoration address on the death of Tennyson in 1892. He liked this country so well, he said he would like to stay. When a young man, he used to write poetry, which has appeared recently in The Boston Transcript and in other periodicals. Now he does not write much poetry, for he believes that when a man is young, he writes poetry. In Boston, a man becomes older, and soon a philosopher. But in Professor Campbell, you will find one of the best professors Boston has. He is all made of blood-jumping Utopian stuff.”

  We went to one of those quiet-looking houses on Kirkland Street. Kim had previously called up, and Doctor Campbell himself answered the door. He took us into a room with a big brick fireplace, a room lined with books. It was lighter here than in the hall, and I could see a tall, slender man, as fiery as Mercutio in his look, and with hair the blackest of the black—a little bald on top it was, but combed over from the side. He had a small black moustache and brilliant, fire-darting, black eyes. For the rest, he was very lean, with lean white fingers and a lean, impulsive jaw. I liked him from the start.

  He settled us in comfortable chairs, took a cigar and offered another to Kim.

  “I think you are a little young to smoke, eh?” he said to me. “Cigars, at least.”

  I said I did not smoke.

  “Neither does my boy. My boy’s seventeen.”

  “He’s already a college instructor though,” Kim said to me. “Isn’t that so, Professor Campbell? The youngest instructor in the University, if I am not mistaken.”

  “Yes, yes. The youngest instructor, so I understand. But then he has big feet. He has such big feet, he had to do something, and big feet are just the thing for standing on in a classroom.”

  “Well, this young man was an instructor at sixteen,” Kim said, pointing to me. “He taught Japanese. He also taught mathematics.”

  “Well, well, you don’t say. That’s very extraordinary!”

  Then Professor Campbell told of his respect for the Oriental students he had had, and of his lifelong admiration for Lafcadio Hearn. Hearn, as I wa
s to find out in his course later, was one of Doctor Campbell’s great enthusiasms.

  “Altogether,” the professor told us, “you mustn’t be surprised to see me become a Buddhist any day. I already have a Buddha,” and he pointed to it in one corner of his room.

  Now a neat and quiet maid brought in the tea tray, and Doctor Campbell poured tea; and into his own cup and into Kim’s he put something out of a bottle that he said was rum. “I like it,” he said. “I’m very bad. I like to drink and to smoke—and to swear.” But to me he gave plain tea.

  “Mr. Kim tells me you are from Edinburgh, Doctor Campbell,” I said.

  “Oh yes, but that was very long ago. I came here, met Mrs. Campbell—she comes from Canada—and here I settled down. America is my home.”

  Next day Kim made an engagement for us to lunch with another professor whom he said it was very important for me to see, as Doctor John Lewis Wellington was on the committee for giving university scholarships. He lived in Wellesley Farms, which was in the very region to be monopolized according to the contract drawn up by the Universal Education Company with me. So when I jumped out of bed in the morning—as usual cracking my head—it was to reach for my harness with my clothes. (I had made up my mind that after lunch I would start out to make some money for the coming year.) As I dressed, I realized for the first time what a neat little invention Mr. Lively’s was, for carrying the prospectus. With it, I could start out as a salesman and still be disguised. Each of his salesmen had been outfitted with one of these. It was a kind of sling which strapped to the vest and hung down between the arm and the side. There were two pockets, one for the sales form, one for the prospectus, and both slipped in and out with maximum ease. Thus equipped, I started my double life of scholarship and business that morning.

  We rode on the train and got off in a white, shining village, typical of this part of New England, where some Utopian university atmosphere seemed to penetrate. No dirt, no hidden evils anywhere, no slums. There were winding village streets and many branching trees, mostly elms. In general, houses were of two styles—white frame, simple and staunch, with tidy lawns and white picket fences, or weathered brick houses with wine-colored ivy and shady, cloistered porches behind a berry hedge. One felt that inside each was ordered spaciousness, leisure and many beloved books collected through the years, a gentle, self-sufficient, disciplined life. The air was country air, and full already of autumnal peace.

  Doctor Wellington lived in a brown-shingle house and he seemed to live alone, but I think he had a son somewhere and perhaps other children, from what Kim said. Although so intellectual, Doctor Wellington seemed well balanced emotionally, and most human and unsophisticated in all things. He was in the garden when we found him, a stooped old gentle man with a trowel in his hand. He was wearing a navy-blue serge that was beginning to be pale and seemed only to last him because it was made of such good material. The lapels were smeared with Boston baked beans and his necktie was a string. Although he was over seventy years old, he gave the impression still of a choice maturity rather than of age. His blond skin was eternally smooth and childlike with faint polished pink on the fragile cheekbones. His hair, too, was of the sandy kind that doesn’t change much, even when it goes gray. He had a pointed nose, pointed chin, and wore glasses on a shrinking string. One soon saw that if he did not have that string, he would have lost his glasses. The pipe he had lighted a few minutes ago he could not find until Kim reached into the professor’s pocket and fished it out for him, just as the cloth was smoking. Yes, he seemed a most forgetful sort of man, because his mind was on such intellectual things as why the American turkey is called turkey, and the origin of the word “score.”

  3

  Professor Wellington, Kim, and I ate an early lunch in a pleasant, airy New England inn—early, because the professor had to rush off to keep an engagement in Boston. I saw him and Kim on the train, but said I would look around and observe the country out there a little more. I lingered in the station after the train had gone, wondering who was to be my first customer. I hated to begin without knowing anybody. Mr. Lively had recommended spy-work first. A man’s picture caught my eye. He was on posters all around the station waiting room. “Vote for Lawyer Eliot Norton as next Senator.” Pointing to the posters, I questioned the man at the ticket window. The ticket man was surprised I had not heard of Mr. Eliot Norton, the town’s leading citizen, a famous lawyer, and important politician. “Oh, Mr. Norton is a wonderful man!” I consulted the phone book in the station. Both home and business addresses of Mr. Norton were given there. I wrote down his office number and set out.

  I had no trouble gaining an interview—but then, of course, the prospectus was concealed. And just by moving my straight chair around his desk, I got him in the right light. Mr. Norton was a fine-looking man, of tall, athletic build and thin, keen face, with luxuriant, waving gray hair. I launched upon my sales talk with spirit. He kept interrupting to ask me questions which were off the subject. They were questions about me. But I parried them and got out the prospectus, trying to make that memorized lecture sound as inspired as possible. Again he cut me short—saying he would take an order. He let me put him down for the most expensive binding too. The sale was too abrupt to be quite sporting. Either he bought to help me or to get rid of me quickly. I was more inclined to think he bought to help me, for he asked to see my contract, and drew me on to talk about myself. This would have been a pleasant occupation, but I knew his time was valuable, and so was mine. “Don’t waste it,” so Miss Fulton had said. So I came back to business and asked him if he had any other customers to recommend.

  “Yes,” he said smiling. “You might try Mrs. Norton, my sister-in-law. I’ll give you her address. She’s been to your country and would be interested, I suspect, to meet you.”

  The house I had been directed to was on the outskirts of the town. There were many acres of gardens and lawns around it, and many elms and beech groves. More like a palace, it seemed, than a house. There was even an artificial lake with swans and a big tennis court. With alert, aggressive, American step, I advanced and rang the bell. A big Negro in a white coat answered it. He took it for granted that I had come to call, and ushered me in very politely. “Is Mrs. Norton at home?”

  “Just a moment.”

  I sat down in the rich and spacious living room. An aristocratic lady with a beautiful, smooth, pink face and waving gray hair piled high, sailed in, holding out her hand.

  “How do you do? I’m so glad to see you. I don’t know you yet, but you were sent by a friend of mine, weren’t you? Let me think. Who could it be?”

  I explained that her brother, Lawyer Norton, had sent me.

  “Ah! He knows how interested I am in students from the Far East. I have lived some time in the East myself.”

  She went on, talking fast and asking me questions, until I was so embarrassed I could not bring out the prospectus, even though I knew we were wasting time. The Negro butler came back in. He came to announce luncheon.

  “And, of course, you’ll stay,” exclaimed Mrs. Norton, rising, and leading me toward the dining room by the arm. “I’m so glad you came to look me up. I feel as if I knew you already.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I told her I had just had my lunch—I had lunched with Professor Wellington.

  “Oh, you know him, too? Isn’t he the most delightful man?”

  By this time she had seated me at a luxurious luncheon table, and I was being introduced to Mr. William Norton, her husband, the elder brother of Lawyer Eliot Norton, and to Miss Elizabeth Norton, the youthful image of her mother. Miss Norton, I was told, had just finished her studies at Wellesley. Mrs. Norton announced that I was a Korean student, and her daughter asked me what studies I was interested in most. She herself she said had majored in French. Then the talk turned on how hard it was for Americans to speak foreign languages, and on the Oriental languages I knew, Japanese, Chinese, and Korea
n.

  After luncheon, Mr. Norton had to go back to his office (his business, it seemed, had something to do with ships) and I was left alone with Mrs. Norton again, as her special guest. She showed me her Japanese prints and her lacquerware, and asked me questions about them. She said she had started her collections in the Orient, and what did I think of them? I translated some Japanese words for her, and it was all very chummy, but the more she talked, the more difficult it was for me to begin, as to a stranger, to make her want to buy the unwanted article. Mrs. Norton seemed to sense my discomfiture.

  “Now I know there is something I can do for you,” she said gently, pressing my fingers. “Don’t be shy. You came to the house intending to ask me a favor?”

  I thought, this is an opening Miss Fulton has not listed. Even Mr. Lively had given no rules how to take advantage of that.

  “Come, tell me what it is. I know how proud you Oriental students are. But you must let me be your friend as long as you are here. I know how lonely you must feel, to land in our vast foreign country.”

  At last I stammered that I was intending to work my way through college, and did she know any people who might be interested in three big volumes called Universal Education.

  “Oh, I have heaps of friends. We’ll make them all buy that. Let me see . . . (be sure to use my name in getting in).” She got out pencil and pad to make a list. “I’d buy one myself, but we already have it. Brother Eliot—you know, the one who is your friend—bought those books only last year. Not having any use for them, he left them here with me. Such a nice boy was selling them.”