Pearl Buck - The Living Reed

“Good work,” the American exclaimed. “I thought for a moment that the artery might slip from your hand. But you’re a born surgeon. I never saw better hands for it.”

The patient was a young man who had been stabbed, the lung pierced and the heart damaged. Liang knew how it had been done. He recognized the man as a leader of the new terrorists. Now he would live again to kill others!

Liang pulled off his rubber gloves. “Thank you, sir,” he said to the American. “You have taught me all I know.”

“I’d like to send you to Johns Hopkins,” the American said warmly. “Some such great hospital, anyway. Techniques for heart surgery are improving every day. Say, I never saw an artery tied like that, though!”

“A Korean knot,” Liang said, taking off his white coat. “It holds fast, but a touch can release it — if you know the touch!”

“You sure have the touch.”

The American clapped him on the shoulder and Liang smiled and went to his office.

By now Mariko must be nearly halfway to New York. The first letter would soon be safely out of her hands. Those little hands, so supple, so graceful in the dance! On that last night she had made her farewell program of old Korean folk dances, the Sword Dance, the climax of the evening. All knew that it was not by chance that she had chosen to perform the story of the famous boy dancer of the ancient Silla Kingdom who perfected himself in a dance, holding a sword in each hand. His fame spread over the whole peninsula until he was summoned to appear before the King of Paekche, the enemy of Silla. There before the throne he danced so well that the audience cried out, beside themselves with pleasure, and the King rose from his throne. At that moment the dancer leaping forward thrust his sword into the King’s heart He was killed, of course, but by his courage he had inspired his own people in Silla and in his memory they preserved the Sword Dance. Mariko had performed it with classical style, even to wearing the mask of a boy’s face, her dance-swords, the blades connected by wires to the handles, striking in rhythm with her flying feet. When she had finished, the audience rose shouting to its feet. She had snatched off her mask to show her own lovely face, and bowed again and again, her eyes fixed, as Liang knew, upon his face. Then she had run away, the ends of her wide golden sash flying behind her, and he saw her no more.

The endlessness of time until they met again! For the first time in his life he, the light of heart, felt his heart heavy in his breast. “Attachment,” Buddha had said, “is the cause of grief.” He pondered the saying, and that night in his room, he wrote it down. After a time he made a poem.

Buddha was both right and wrong.

Attachment with all its pain,

Is now my deepest gain,

My inward Song—

Life long!

He copied it carefully and without writing his name beneath it he put it in an envelope and addressed it to Mariko in New York. They had agreed it would be too dangerous for them to write. But what could a Japanese censor make of a poem?

The American President died suddenly one spring day. The news echoed around the world and into every city and village in Korea. Liang heard it in the hospital and hastened home to announce it to his grandfather and uncle.

Yul-chun drew him aside. “Do you know whether the letter was delivered?”

“I have heard nothing,” Liang replied.

“We cannot know in any case whether the one who takes his place will see the letter,” Yul-chun said, downcast.

“We cannot know anything,” Liang agreed. “We can only wait.”

… Spring passed and summer entered. Liang worked day and night at the hospital and saw little of Sasha until the school year ended. Silence filled the land, a tension of waiting. The end of the war was inevitably near, the world knew it, and yet the mechanism to force that end could not be found. In Seoul the police grew every day more oppressive and all controls were tightened throughout the country. Jails were filled and schools put under surveillance. Germany surrendered and the tension increased. Every Korean now knew that Japan must surrender and every heart was impatient because there was no surrender.

“A blind and stubborn people, the Japanese,” Yul-chun declared.

“The people know nothing of what goes on behind the military screen,” Liang replied.

It was midsummer and they were in the garden for respite from the heat. Sasha was teasing a puppy by dipping it into the goldfish pond, and Liang could not bear to see the small creature’s fright. He walked abruptly to the pool and took the shivering dog into his arms and Sasha threw pebbles into the water to scare the fish.

“I am going to Paris,” he announced.

They heard this in silence. Then Il-han spoke. “I was in Paris once, to see Woodrow Wilson. Many people were there from many countries. He was surprised to see us pressing around him, each begging for his help. I know now he was frightened.”

“Of you?” Sasha asked idly.

“Of himself,” Il-han said.

A roar of thunder rumbled from the mountains to the north, and a naked flash of lightning forked across the twilight sky.

“Come into the house!” Sunia cried at them from the door.

They went in slowly, reluctant to leave the coolness. Sasha lingered alone in the doorway. Suddenly he saw the puppy under a bush and dragging it forth he dropped it into the pool.

… The summer days wore on, hot and long. Liang still heard nothing from Mariko and there was no announced surrender, although the Japanese were losing on every front. People were weary with waiting. Yet they could only wait. One night a man with a gunshot through his leg was brought into the emergency ward and Liang’s duty was to tend the wound. When it was cleaned and bandaged, the man pressed a small square of folded paper into his hand. Accustomed to such messages, Liang said nothing. He turned his back and unfolded the paper. It was addressed to the Japanese people but signed by Americans and it gave the conditions of surrender, warning them also that if Japan did not surrender, eleven cities would be bombed.

He returned to the wounded man now lying on the bed and leaned over him, pretending to adjust his pillow.

“Were they bombed?”

“Six cities.”

“We have not heard of it here.”

“I am just back from Japan.”

“No surrender?”

“None. The Japanese government is split. The peace party has asked Russia to mediate. They ignore the American warning — with scorn.”

“The other cities?”

“They will be destroyed. Millions of leaflets have warned a second time.”

“The people?”

“Dazed, immobile, waiting.”

“What next?”

“The Americans have a new and terrible weapon. It is next — unless Russia acts.”

“Will Russia—”

“No.”

A nurse came near and Liang went away. He hastened to his room, took off his western garments and put on Korean robes. Thus disguised, he left the hospital and the city and returned to his grandfather’s house.

… In the house, meanwhile, there was already confusion. Yul-chun had received a secret message, carried by a fruit vendor from the north. Among his apples and peaches the man had hidden certain objects which could only be Russian, and Yul-chun in the garden recognized them as the man bargained. The man nodded mysteriously when Yul-chun inquired, then drew near to whisper.

“The Russians are pouring into the north!”

These fearful words fell upon Yul-chun’s ears and he hastened to tell them to his father. Il-han was lying in a long chair of woven rattan, smoking his long bamboo pipe as he listened. He knocked the ash from the small brass bowl at one end and filled it with the strong sweet tobacco he enjoyed in his old age.