Pearl Buck - The Living Reed

When the festival was over, nevertheless, he ordered the swing taken down and in the night he clasped her close again and again, with renewed passion until she could not bear it, dearly as she loved him, and she cried out at last against his arms so tightly holding her that she felt imprisoned, though by love.

“Let me breathe!” she cried.

He loosed her, but only a little, and she lay in his arms.

“Why are you so silent now?” she asked at last. “Did I offend you?”

“No,” he said. “How could you offend me? I am oppressed by happiness — our happiness.”

“Oppressed?” She echoed the word, uncomprehending.

“How can it last?” he replied.

“It will last,” she said joyously, “it will last until we die.”

Why did she speak of death? It was on his tongue to cry out against the thought that they could die, but he kept silent. Death was what he feared, not the sweet and quiet end of a long life, but sudden death outside their door, death waiting and violent. Yet the difference between Il-han and Sunia was only the bottomless difference between man and woman over which no bridge is ever built nor ever can be. Il-han’s life was centered outside his house, and what went on within the compound walls was the periphery. Joyous or troublesome alike, the household life was diversion from his mainstream. He trusted Sunia with all that went on inside the walls, and when she complained that he did not listen to what she told him at the end of a day, he smiled.

“I know that you do all things well,” he said.

She would not accept this smooth reply.

“What have you to think of, if not of us?” she demanded.

“Is night the suitable time in which to inquire of so large a matter?” he countered, and he made love to her so that he could divert her and be diverted.

Somehow the summer slipped past, the days hot, the nights cool, and Il-han was so perturbed and puzzled by the tangled affairs of the times that he did not count the days or the months.

One morning, waking late and alone in their bedroom, he smelled the sharp autumn fragrance of cabbage freshly cut. Could it be already time again to make kimchee for the winter? He rose and looked out of the window. Yes, there in the courtyard were piles of celery cabbages, brought in from the farm, doubtless, the day before. Two servingwomen were washing the cabbages in tubs of salted water and two more were brushing long white radishes clean of earth while still two others were chopping both cabbages and radishes into fine pieces. At a table set outdoors on this fine clear morning Sunia, wrapped in a blue apron, was mixing the spices. Hot red peppers, ground fresh ginger, onions, garlic, and ground cooked beef she was mixing together, exactly to his taste and according to the Kim family recipe. He knew, for in the first year of their marriage she had made Pak kimchee, so bland a mixture that he had rebelled against it. He had laid down his chopsticks when he tasted it for the first time.

“You must invite my mother to teach you how to make kimchee,” he told Sunia.

Her eyes had sparkled with sudden anger. “I will not eat Kim kimchee! It burns the skin from my tongue.”

“Keep this Pak stuff for yourself,” he had retorted. “I will ask my mother to give me enough kimchee for myself.”

She had shown no signs of yielding but the next year, he had noticed, she made the kimchee according to Kim recipe. Now, by habit, each year he inspected the kimchee and tasted the first morsel. He smiled and yawned to wake himself and then began to wash himself and to prepare for the day. When he was ready, he sauntered into the courtyard and it was here that Sunia continued again her gentle accusations that he was always busy and apart from family life. The women had fallen silent when he appeared and they did not look up or seem to listen while their master and mistress talked, after he had tasted the kimchee and approved it.

“For an example, this morning,” Sunia said, her eyes upon the thin sharp knife with which she chopped the spices, “where do you go now? Day after day you leave after the morning meal and then we see you no more until twilight. Yet you never tell me where you have been or where you will go again tomorrow.”

“I will tell you everything when I come home tonight,” he said. “Only give me my breakfast now and let me go.”

Something in the abruptness of his voice made her obedient. She summoned a woman to finish her task and washed her hands and followed him into the house. In usual silence Il-han ate his morning meal of soup and rice and salted foods, and Sunia kept the children away from him, the elder son given to his tutor, and the younger, now beginning to creep, to a wet nurse. She suckled her children until they were six months old and past the first dangers of life and then she gave them to a wet nurse, a healthy countrywoman, to suckle until they were three years old and able to eat all foods.

This morning she served Il-han alone and when he had eaten she ate her own breakfast quietly, glancing at him now and then.

“You are losing flesh,” she said at last. “Is there some private unhappiness in you?”

“No unhappiness concerning you,” he said.

He wiped his mouth on a soft paper napkin and rose from the floor cushion and she ran to fetch his outer coat and thus, with a warm exchange of looks, his kind, hers anxious, they parted. He dared not tell her what lay upon his heart and mind. His memorial which he had begun in the spring and then put aside as better left unsaid was now finished and in the Queen’s hands, for as he had watched the tide of affairs sweep on he could keep silent no longer. He was now summoned by the Queen to come alone to her palace. At the same time the King had sent a summons to his father. Until now father and son had gone together in obedience to royal command. Did this separation signify a new difference between King and Queen? He did not know and he could only obey.

He left his house, therefore, dressed in his usual street garments, his robes whiter than snow, his tall black hat of stiff horsehair gauze tied under his chin. On so fine a morning it was his pleasure to walk, and he did so with the measured speed befitting a gentleman and a scholar. Many recognized him and gave him respectful greeting, and because of his height and appearance the people parted to give him room, not stopping to show servility or fear. Indeed they had no fear. Accustomed as they were to dangers and distress, since the gods had given them a land which surrounding countries envied and longed to possess, the people were calm but firm in purpose and they were not afraid. They gave their greetings and went about their business while Il-han went on his.

His father was wont to meet him at the palace. When he entered the gate, however, the guard, peering through to see who stood there, opened the gate hastily and closed it at once.

“Is my father here?” Il-han inquired.

“Sir, he is already with the King and has been since dawn,” the guard replied, “but I have orders from the Queen that you are to go alone to her palace in the Secret Garden for audience. Meanwhile your father says I am to tell you that if his audience with the King ends first, he will await you here. If yours ends first, you are to wait.”

Il-han hesitated. It puzzled him that the Queen should send for him privately in such fashion, and what would he say to his father, or even later to the King? Nothing is hidden in palace or hovel and all would know that his father was already in audience with the King while he was only now waiting upon the Queen, an inexplicable division. Yet what could he do but continue to obey the royal command? He followed the guard through the palace grounds without further speech.