Pearl Buck - The Living Reed

“Yes,” Il-han went on. “He was born before noon yesterday, as you know, and he is well shaped and strong, slightly smaller than the elder boy, but perfectly shaped. That is to say …”

He paused, remembering the child’s ear.

His father waited. “Well?” he inquired at last.

“His left ear is not perfect,” Il-han said. “A small defect but—”

“No Kim has ever had a defect,” the old man said positively. “It must be the Pak blood from your wife’s family.”

Il-han wished to change the subject. He had married somewhat against his father’s wish, who privately preferred the Yi family to the Pak, but no Yi daughter was of the proper age at the time. His father put up his hand to silence him, and went on.

“For example,” he said, pulling at his scanty beard, “I have never heard of a Yi with a defect. High intelligence combined with great physical beauty — these are the attributes of Yi, even to this present day. Nor were they scholars only. This floor, for example”—he struck the floor at his side with his knuckles—“this ondul floor, designed not merely to walk upon, or to sit upon, but warm—”

Il-han listened patiently to what he had heard many times before. His father spoke of the inventions of the Yi dynasty; for example, the ondul floor, now to be found in any house, was laid a foot above the level of the adjoining room which was always the kitchen. From the kitchen fireplace five flues ran through the wall to this ondul room. The flues were made of low walls of rock and sealing clay, across which were laid slabs of rock. These rocks were laid over again with clay and then covered with a layer of sand and lime and over which more cement was spread. Over this again was laid a layer of paper, the last layer very strong and lasting, the paper, called jangpan , being made from mulberry wood. A polish made of ground soya beans and liquid cow dung was spread over the jangpan and dried, and the floor was then a light yellow color, of high polish, smooth and easy to clean.

When his father had finished admiring the ondul floor, he would then speak of Admiral Yi’s turtle ships with which he had driven off Hideyoshi. Il-han knew it would come and so it did, and then the loving learned discourse on his country’s history. Il-han recognized the elder’s mood. A great actor lost to the theatre! The familiar glaze would come over his father’s eyes as he spoke of the past, and he would sit in a pose, motionless for a long moment. Then he would straighten himself, his thin face assuming the mask of nobility and hauteur, and he would lift his right arm as though he bore a weapon, and thus he would speak on. As he dwelt on the past even the voice was changed. A young man’s voice came from the sinewy throat. So it continued through half the afternoon, until at last they were back to Admiral Yi and how he saved Korea from Japan.

“We were not conquered,” his father concluded. “Kim or Yi, we shall never be conquered.”

He struck the polished surface of the low table with his clenched fists.

“Then you are on the side of the soban?” Il-han inquired with mischievous intent.

The old man laughed. “You are too sly, you young men! No — no — I am a scholar and a tangban and therefore a man of peace. I learned at my mother’s knee—” Here his father closed his eyes and recited slowly an ancient poem:

“The wind has no hands but it shakes all the trees.

The moon has no feet but it travels across the sky.”

“Then we need not fear the soban now?” Il-han asked.

His father pursed his lips. “I did not say that! The soban are not scholars, but not every man can be a scholar. We need both. It takes something in here to understand the books and the arts. The soban do not have it.”

He tapped his high forehead and fell silent and in the silence, after so much talk, he closed his eyes to signify he had had enough of his son. Seeing his father’s head sink upon his breast, Il-han rose and went quietly away.

And none too soon, he discovered when he left the house, for as he approached the city gates in the twilight an hour later, he saw a cluster of men there, brawling and shouting. He went steadily forward and as he neared the gate he saw twenty or thirty soban beating upon the gate with staves and spears.

They did not notice when he came up to them, so engrossed were they in their determination to break down the gate, a vain hope, for the gate was heavy and bound with iron and barred inside with a length of iron thicker than a man’s arm.

He shouted at them, “Brothers, what are you doing?”

They stopped then and turned to stare at him. A leader stepped out from among them. “That demon of a guard saw us coming and barred the gate against us, although the sun has not set.”

They were pushing about him now, and Il-han felt their hot angry eyes upon him like flames.

“Tangban,” he heard voices mutter. “Tangban — tangban—”

“You are right. The gate is shut too early,” he said calmly. “I shall report the matter to the palace.”

Silence fell upon them for an instant. Then the leader spoke in a voice yet more rough.

“We need no tangban help! We smash the gate down!”

They crowded against the gate again and jostled Il-han into their midst and he smelled for the first time in his life the sweat and the stink of male animal flesh. A shiver of fear, insensate and cold, ran through his veins. At this moment his servant pressed through the crowd, and Il-han knew that the man had disobeyed him and had followed him all the way, and he could only be glad.

“Master,” the servant said, “I know the guard at the gate. I will knock at the wicket and he will let me through when he knows you are here.”

So saying, he went to a small wicket gate at the side and made a special sound upon it with a stone that he picked up from the road. The gate opened a small space and the servant went in. A moment later the great gate itself opened suddenly and the soldiers fell in through it in a heap. While they were gathering themselves from the dust, Il-han passed by without their notice and went his way to his home, the servant following again in silence.

Spring moved gently toward summer, Sunia rose from the bed of childbirth and took her place again in the household. All went well. Her breasts were filled with milk and the child thrived. Her elder son, now that his mother was restored to him, was in better mood and with him clinging to her hand one fine morning, she sauntered into the garden of mulberry trees. The leaves were full and green, yet tender, and it was to discover their ripeness for the silkworms that she had left the house. Silkworms were only her pleasure, for the work of silk-making was done outside the city on the family lands and by the land people. Yet ever since she was a child and in the care of her old nurse, she had loved the art of making silk, from the moment when the web of tiny eggs, no bigger than the dots of a pointed brush on a paper card, were hatched in the warm silkworm house to the last moment when the silk lay in rich folds over her arms. Thus, though the weaving was done in the country, she kept a small loom of her own in a service house here in the compound, and with her women she performed the ceremony each year of making silk. It was more than a pleasure. It was also a duty. Even the Queen at this season must cultivate silkworms and do her share of spinning, while the King must till a rice paddy.

On this morning, bright and calm, she walked under the mulberry trees with her son, and she felt of the leaves and tested them on her tongue for their taste. They were not yet strong or bitter, but no time must be wasted.

“We must set the silkworm eggs today, my princeling,” she told her son, and with him she went to the service house where the eggs had been kept on ice during the winter and through early spring so that they would not hatch before the mulberry leaves were ready. Now she bade her women prepare the large baskets for the eggs, and they made themselves busy, the little boy running between the women here and there and everywhere at once in his excitement.