Pearl Buck - The Living Reed

The man bowed and went away, and in less than an hour by the water clock the foreign doctor entered the room. He was tall and he wore black coat and trousers, and on his face he grew a thick sandy beard. He was indeed a fearful sight, for above the unnatural color of the beard he had strange blue eyes, and short hair. His eyebrows were bushy, and in the candlelight thick hair glinted even on his hands. For an instant Il-han regretted what he had done. How could he trust a man whose appearance was so savage as this? The very odor of the man was wild, a strong meaty reek, like a wolf’s musk.

The man himself was calm. He bowed a short awkward bow to Il-han and then he sat down beside his patient.

“What happened to this old man?” he asked.

He put the inquiry to Il-han in simple Korean such as ignorant people use, but Il-han was surprised that he could speak in any language that could be understood.

He turned to his servant.

“Explain to this foreigner,” he commanded him.

While the man obeyed, Il-han observed the man closely. Though he knew there were these persons in the city, he had never seen one close. This, then, was an American! It was to such a breed that he and his countrymen must look for friendship! What had they in common? Could there be friendship between a tiger and a deer?

When the servant had finished, the man rose to his feet and addressed Il-han. “Your father is suffering from a blood clot in the brain.”

Il-han was so surprised that he forgot himself and spoke directly to the man instead of through the servant, “How can you say this when you cannot see into my father’s skull?”

“I know the illness,” the man replied. “The symptoms are clear. I will leave you some medicine, but I must tell you that it is likely your father will die before the night is over. He is very near to death now.”

Il-han was horrified at such speech. To mention death, to say that it must come, was almost to bring it down by force.

He turned to the servant in cold anger. “Remove this foreigner. Pay him his money and take him outside the gate and draw the iron bar.”

“I ask no money,” the foreigner said proudly, and lifting the small black bag he had brought with him, he took out a small bottle, set it on the low table and strode from the room with such great steps that the servant was compelled to run even to follow him. As for the bottle, Il-han threw it out the window into the pool in the garden.

In the night, two hours before dawn, his father died without waking. The hour of death was exactly known, for upon his father’s mouth Il-han had placed a wisp of soft cotton. Kneeling beside the floor bed he watched the slight stirring of the cotton. Suddenly it stopped, and he spoke to his servant, who marked down on a ready sheet of paper the hour by the water clock.

Il-han rose to his feet and covered his father’s body with a silken quilt. Then he beckoned the servant to his side.

“Instruct my father’s household,” he commanded. “According to custom, there must be no wailing for an hour, so that my father’s spirit be not disturbed in its flight. Meanwhile you are to return to my own house and fetch my sons and their mother and such other persons as are needed to care for them. We will remain here until my father’s burial.”

“Sir,” the servant replied, “before I obey, may I ask for the honor of inviting the illustrious soul to return? I have ready the inner coat of cotton cloth which was prepared for this moment when your father reached his sixtieth birthday.”

Il-han considered this request. It was proper for a member of the household or a distant relative, who had never seen the dead, to perform this rite, and he might have refused his servant except that the man grew up in this house and had cared for Il-han himself as a child and had served him through his youth, leaving only when Il-han himself left to set up his own household after marriage.

“You may do so,” he said.

The man then climbed to the roof of the house and standing exactly over the place where his old master lay dead, he prepared himself for the solemn rite.

The hour was dawn, and rays of the rising sun crept through the mountains in long bright shafts. The wind blew fresh and cooled by the night. It was indeed a beautiful day upon which to die. So thinking, the man lifted up the coat, and holding the collar in his left hand and the hem in his right, he faced the south and waved the coat three times. The first time he announced in a loud voice the full name of the dead nobleman. The second time he announced the nobleman’s highest rank. The third time he announced his death. After this he cried out again, and this time to invite the departed soul to return. When all was done he came down from the roof and placed the coat over the body of the dead, and wailed in a loud voice again and again. Then with the help of others, he lifted the body upon a special bed which faced the south, and he placed around it a paper screen.

After such announcement and invitation, the household prepared for the ceremonies due the dead. Il-han’s father had lived alone after his mother’s death many years before. In spite of loneliness he had not taken another wife, not even a young woman. His servants had cared for him, men and women, and now they set about their sorrowful work. The women put away all jewelry, and men and women let down their long hair. In the kitchen the cook boiled rice into pots of thin soup, for no rice could be cooked dry during the days of mourning. In the death chamber, the dead man’s body was washed with soft white paper and warm perfumed water. His hair was combed and tied loosely, not in its usual coil. The combings from the hair were brushed into the hair, and all that had been separated from the body during the long lifetime and had been saved was now restored, the nail parings, the hair droppings, and four teeth which had been extracted when they caused pain. These were put into two pouches and placed right and left beside the body so that in the next life the person could be whole as when he was born.

The mouth was opened with a spoon of willow wood and into it was placed a pearl, which was held fast by three spoonfuls of gluten rice. This pearl was the death pearl, grown only in the giant clams which are found in the Naktong River, a rare pearl, pure but without luster, found in but one out of ten thousand clams and without fault, for it grows of itself within the shell. Indeed, so rare is this pearl that it is removed before burial and handed down from generation to generation. The pearl in his father’s mouth had belonged to a Kim five generations before and some day it would also be placed in Il-han’s own mouth, and after him in the mouth of his eldest son. When the ritual was finished, Il-han left the room, and the servant finished his duty by putting balls of cotton into the dead man’s ears and covering his tranquil face with a cloth of handspun linen.

Now the household busied itself. New garments must be made for the dead, and a new mattress for his coffin, new blanket and new pillow. The men who serve the dead must be summoned and also the geomancer, whose duty it was to decide upon the place of burial, a place suited to the winds and the waters. The coffin too had to be built, and of pinewood, for the pine tree is evergreen and is a symbol of manhood. It does not wither or cast its leaves until it dies. Serpents and turtles and lizards and all such reptiles will never nest near a pine tree. Nor does the pine tree rot at the core to remain an empty shell. It dies whole, and quickly, and begins another life, and this, too, is good. The old life should not cling to the new and hamper the growth beyond. What is finished is ended and if dust is the end, then may the end come entire when it comes. The parts of this coffin were put together with wooden pegs for nails, and the cracks were filled with honey and resin, the walls and bottom lined with white cloth, and upon this bottom a mattress was laid. Inside the lid the word Heaven was brushed, and at the four corners the word Sea .