Pearl Buck - The Living Reed

“What shall we do with you?” Induk countered. “Shall we not send you home again to your parents?”

“If you send me home,” the girl said, her country accent thick on her tongue, “the wineshop owner will only get me back again, since he has paid for me. He has a license from the Japanese police. How can we escape him? I will stay here with you and do your work if you will feed me.”

Induk was perplexed. She had saved the girl and now must be responsible for the life she had saved!

“What is your name?” she asked.

“I am called Ippun,” the girl said, and stood waiting, her eyes, small above her high cheekbones, beseeching and helpless and her big mouth hanging open.

What could they do then but let her stay? Therefore she slept in a corner of the kitchen at night, and by day she worked without rest, as devoted as a dog to its owners. Not knowing what else to do, Yul-han and Induk accepted her as a member of the household.

“Though you call it a gospel of love, yours is a hard doctrine,” Yul-han said one morning in late summer.

He was seated on a chair beside a high table in the vestry of the Christian church in the city. The missionary sat opposite him, the book open before him, and Yul-han thought secretly that he had never before seen so craggy a face, or one so ugly in features and yet so noble in spirit, the blue eyes deep-set under brushy red eyebrows, the pitted white skin, the high nose broken, it seemed, in the bridge, the wide mouth and big teeth. Altogether the face was formidable and so were the huge hairy hands and the strong hairy neck. Under its clothing, was that thick strong body also covered with red hair?

“So you think Christianity is hard,” the missionary said.

“It is,” Yul-han replied, “hard even in its doctrine of love. What is more cruel than the command to turn the right cheek to the enemy when a blow has been struck on the left?”

“What is hard about that?” the missionary demanded.

East and West faced each other across the table. “Imagine to yourself,” Yul-han said earnestly, “if I am struck on this cheek”—he put his narrow, aristocratic hand to his right cheek—“and I turn this cheek”—he turned his head—“what am I doing to the man who strikes me? I am saying to him without words that I am his superior, one far above him in spirit. I am compelling him to examine himself. He has given way to evil temper — I am daring him to do so again and thus prove how evil he is. What can he do? He will be ashamed of himself, he will slink away, condemned by his own conscience. Is this not cruel? Is this not hard? I think so.”

The missionary shook his head. “You make me see things I have not seen before.”

He was silent for a while and then he took up the book and read aloud from the sayings of Paul. Yul-han listened and after some time he held up his hand for pause. He repeated the lines which he had just heard.

“‘Dare any of you, having a matter against his neighbor, go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?’ Do you not see what burden this places upon your innocent Korean Christians?”

“Burden?” the missionary repeated.

“It puts them in danger of death,” Yul-han said bluntly.

“Death?”

“Do you think the rulers will be pleased when our people come to you instead of to them?”

“There are many Christians in Japan,” the missionary said.

“Ah, but there the Church is ruled by Japanese Christians, some of them of high rank. Here it is true that the Church is composed of Koreans — how many did you say? two hundred and fifty thousand — a good number, but the Japanese do not rule the Church here. And my people when they become Christians are altogether devoted — there is too little else in our life nowadays. I feel the need in myself for enrichment and faith and some sort of inspiration. There seems no hope ahead. Some of us, like my father, find refuge in writing poetry and studying ancient literature. But what of those who have no such learning and no such talent? They are finding their interest in the Christian Church and in strong men from the West like you, through whom they seek connection with that outer world, a stream of culture new and modern from which we are cut off by the invaders.”

The missionary was listening, his blue eyes fixed on Yul-han’s face with intensity and comprehension.

“Go on,” he said, when Yul-han paused.

“Look at my town,” Yul-han said. “Say there are some eight or nine thousand people there, such a town for example as Syunchun. Half of the people there are Christian. The church and the mission school are the largest buildings and the best. A thousand, two thousand people, go to church and to your other meetings. In the surrounding villages there are many Christians, too. What do the Japanese rulers think when they see the vast crowds of Christians and these meetings in which they themselves have no part? They smell rebellion and revolution and so they send their spies to the meetings to listen and to report. These spies hear your Christians singing ‘Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war.’ What was that song you bade them sing in the church this morning? ‘Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the Cross.’ And what did you preach, you American soldier of the Cross? You told us the story of a young man named David, who with a small sling and a few pebbles killed the powerful evil giant, Goliath. And how was it that David could kill the giant and whence had he his power? Weak as he was, young as he was, his heart was pure, his cause was just, and so with God’s help he prevailed. This is what you teach us. And we, hopeless as we are, crushed and lost, how can we but believe you, since we have nothing else in which to believe, our past useless, our future hopeless?”

Here Yul-han stopped, moved by his own words. He struggled against secret tears, his head downcast. When he conquered himself and lifted his head again he saw across the table the missionary gazing at him and in his strange blue eyes was a burning demand.

“Will you be one of us?”

“Yes,” Yul-han said. “I will be a Christian.”

Sunia woke in the night. Someone was creeping along the narrow porch, feeling the latches of the paper-latticed doors. She was suddenly tense, listening. Yes, someone was there. She must wake Il-han. Then she hesitated. He needed sleep, for he had been sleepless for several nights, fearful lest Japanese gendarmes appear at the gate, demanding to know why he gathered schoolchildren into his house after midnight. He had been warned by Ippun that there was such talk in the village.

“It is that wineshop owner,” she had whispered. “He is angry because your son has sheltered me. When I went to the market yesterday he shouted at me that I would soon be back in the wineshop and the Kim family would be in prison.”

Il-han had refused to appear afraid and he had continued his midnight school until two days ago, when Japanese gendarmes had indeed marched into the village to get themselves drunk in the wineshop and lay hold on the girls there. He had then sent word secretly to the parents of his pupils that they must not come again until he told them. But he had remained uneasy even at his books and sleepless at night.

Leaning over him in the moonlight, Sunia saw now how wan his face was and how sunken his cheeks. No, let him sleep. She would go and see who the intruder was. Perhaps it was only a neighbor’s dog. She crept out of bed and stole across the floor in her bare feet and soundlessly she slid back the door screen an inch and peered through the crack. A man stood there, a tall thin figure in a torn garment. She pushed the screen open a few inches more and spoke suddenly and strongly.

“Thief! What are you doing here?”