Pearl Buck - The Living Reed

“I shall die while you are away,” Sunia said.

“You will not,” Il-han said.

It was the middle of the night. They were in their own room and the house was silent about them. Outside in the garden pools the young frogs piped their early song of love and summer. He had told Sunia that he was going to America at the King’s command. She had listened without a word, and now she said simply that she would die.

She did not answer his denial. There beside him she lay, her hands locked under her head. He looked down into her face, pale in the moonlight.

“You will not have time to die,” he went on. “While I am gone, you must take my place with the Queen. You must visit her, hear her complaints, advise her, watch over her, consider her.”

“I will not,” Sunia said.

“You will, for I command you to do it,” Il-han replied. “Moreover, you are to become acquainted with the wife of the new American ambassador. You are to know her, you are to present her to the Queen as your friend.”

“I do not know even her name,” Sunia said, not moving.

“She is Madame Foote,” Il-han said.

Sunia heard this and suddenly she laughed. “You are making jokes! Foot? No — no—”

He let her laugh, glad of the change in her mood, and she sat up and wound her long hair around her head. “How can I call her Madame Foot? I shall laugh every time I see her. The female Foot! How did the man Foot look?”

“Like any man,” Il-han said, “except that he had a short red beard and red hair and red eyebrows over blue eyes.”

He was glad that Sunia was diverted, and he went on to describe the Americans, their height, their high noses, their great hands and long feet, their trousered legs and clipped hair.

“Were they savage?” Sunia asked.

“No,” Il-han said, “only strange. But they understand courtesy and they seem civilized in their own fashion.”

In such ways he led her to accept the matter of his crossing the sea and entering into foreign countries. It was no easy task, nevertheless, and all through the summer months, while preparation was made, she busy with his garments both for heat and cold, with sundry packets of dried foods and ginseng roots and other medicinal herbs, there came dark hours in the night when she clung to him, weeping. She insisted that at least his coffin must be chosen before he went, lest he die while he was abroad and his body be sent home with no place to rest. So to humor her he chose a good coffin of pinewood, and had it placed in the gatehouse, while he laughed at her and told her he would come back healthy and fat and far from dead.

The day of departure drew near, in spite of everything, and Il-han made his last visit to the palace, appearing before the Queen and then the King. To the Queen he commended his wife Sunia.

“Let my humble one take my place, Majesty,” he said. “Accept her service, and let her do your bidding. Tell her what you would tell me, for she is loyal and has a faithful heart. I have only one request to make for myself, before I leave.”

“I shall not promise to grant it,” the Queen said. She was in no good mood on this last day, for she did not favor friendship with the Americans and had mightily opposed the journey.

Il-han ignored her petulance. He proceeded as though she had not spoken.

“I ask, Majesty, that you invite the wife of the American ambassador to visit you here in your palace.”

At this the Queen rose up from her throne. “What,” she cried. “I? You forget yourself!”

“The time will come when it must be done, Majesty,” he said with patience. “Better that you act now with grace and of your own accord than later by compulsion.”

She walked back and forth twice and thrice, her full skirts flowing behind her. On the fourth time she drew near to the end door of the audience hall which led into her own private rooms. There, without looking back at him, or pausing to speak one word, she disappeared.

For a long time he waited and she did not return. Then a palace woman came out and bowed to him and folded her hands at her waist and spoke like a parrot.

“Her Majesty bids you farewell and wishes you a safe journey.”

She bowed again and turning went back from whence she had come. Il-han left the palace then, amazed that in his breast he felt a strange sore pain of an unexpected wound struck by one he loved. He hid it deep inside himself, and refused to allow himself to examine his own heart. He had no time, he told himself, to fret about a woman’s ways, queen though she was. He bore the monstrous burden of his people and carrying this burden always with him, he bade his household farewell, accepting the anxious hopes for his safe return. The last moments he spent alone with Sunia and their sons and to comfort her he stood before the ancestral tablets and together they lit incense and she prayed, her voice a yearning whisper.

“Guard him all the way,” she besought those dead. “Keep him safe in health and bring him home again living and with success.”

The second son, whom Il-han held in his arms, began suddenly to cry, but the elder stood as stiff as any soldier and said nothing. There was no time left for child or wife. Il-han held Sunia to him for a long instant and tore himself away. He stepped into his palanquin while a crowd stood by to watch and cry farewell. Then he felt himself lifted from the ground and borne swiftly on his way.

On the fifteenth day of the ninth month of that solar year, Il-han and his fellow compatriots arrived at the capital city of the United States. During the long sea journey he had studied the language of these new people, the only one so to learn, for the others saw no need to know a language they would never use. But he, with the help of a young Catholic interpreter, shaped his lips to the unusual syllables, and when he reached Washington, a city named for the first President of these people, he was able to read signs and the large print of newspapers and even to understand a few words spoken.

Already Il-han knew that his own people had much to learn from the Americans. Even the ship in which they traveled had been dazzling in marvels and he had made friends with the captain, a bearded man whose life had been upon the seas. With this man he had climbed upon the bridge and watched the turning of the wheel that steered the ship, and he descended into the bowels of the ship and saw the great furnaces where naked men threw coal into the monstrous maws to make steam that drove the ship with power. The train in which they had crossed the continent had provided further marvels, the engine powered by the same steam, and at such speed that even he was dizzied, though not vomiting as his fellows did. Five days they sped across mountain and plain, and he was overwhelmed by the vastness of the country, and astonished at the fewness of its people.

Here in the American capital he met the greatest marvels, especially the water, hot and cold, that gushed from the wall, and lamps whose fuel was an invisible gas. Much discomfort there was too. He could not sleep well in a bed high from the floor, and twice he fell out as though he were a child and braised his shoulders, and after such misadventure he pulled the mattress to the floor. The food was unpalatable and tasteless and he missed Sunia’s kimchee, and the spices and the richness of his own foods. Moreover, there were those eating implements, a pronged fork, a sharp knife, and he could not cut the slabs of meat, nor down it running red with blood. He chose a spoon and such foods as he could sup.

These were small matters, and soon he learned his way about the city, though only with the help of a young naval officer who had been appointed to stay with the delegation from Korea, an ensign named George C. Foulk. Seeing the name printed, Il-han spoke it complete until the young man had laughed.