The snow stopped fully by the time we passed the guardhouse that marked one li before entrance into the city. "We should rest. You should eat to have strength for the remainder of the walk home."
I shook my head.
"Then let's go on."
The mention of food brought the memory of the rice bowl scriptures, and I told her about the interrogations and Major Yoshida's odd study of Christianity.
"Truly you were Jesus's messenger, protected by his watchful angels," said Mother. When she delivered fervent thanks to heaven for my safekeeping, the relief in her tone made me see that I'd forgotten others would've been concerned about my safety and chastity, and because this idea felt strange, I understood that I was changed even if my body was unharmed. I said nothing to my mother about the nights, which I knew would stay with me like the itch of prison filth, pervasive and unreachable.
As we walked in the cold, I gazed a long time at a small crack in the clouds that exposed a pale strip of sky. I thought then that her steps seemed heavy beside me and felt a terrible remorse. "Umma-nim, you came so far every day."
"You are my daughter."
I held on to these words and let them sink slowly into the fog of my heart. I knew instinctively if I heard them wholly, they would pierce with the incomprehensible truth of too much love, too quickly received, and the gratitude given could never be enough.
We passed the snowcapped walls of other family estates on the narrow walkway next to gutters blanketed with clean whiteness, under which I knew was rank trash and frozen sewage. I listened steadily to the freedom of our cold footsteps shuffling in the snow.
We walked up the hill together in silence. The familiar columns of our home gate and the pleasing curve of the tile-roofed archway I'd passed beneath so many times gave me stabs of joy. Dongsaeng, Unsook and all the servants cried out to see me. I heard something splinter in Father's study. Joong rushed in and out to say that Father, hearing us, had accidentally shattered a carpentry project. Byungjo let his tears fall shamelessly while Cook squatted and sobbed into her apron. Kira and Unsook reached out to me, but I warned them not to touch my infested clothes. I noticed the furnace chimneys smoking, the shuttered windows, the house sealed like a package. I had missed much of the winter season. How tiny everything looked, and how beautiful and precise. I was overcome with this blessing-to have all this familiar to me, to know it as home, to feel the mortar of blood and ancestry holding firm its walls. And it had been returned to me. I praised God then and thanked him for this in my life, this joy of belonging, this ability to recognize it.
Mother helped peel my clothes off in our rooms while Cook, Kira and Unsook stoked both stoves to boil vats of water for an immersion bath and to make a medicinal soup: dried antler to strengthen the blood, simmered with ginseng to restore strength. Once again I became her child as Mother helped me bathe, spent hours on my hair and scalp, dressed me, urged me to eat and coddled me in blankets until, at last, I felt warm. Along with warmth came the weight of an exhaustion I hadn't known I had, and I slept.
Evening approached, bleak and still. Mother lit a lamp, stoked the brazier and prayed quietly, steadily. Her voice rose and fell in and out of my consciousness. I heard fragments of modulating scripture and prayer, but my mother's breaths between verses and her passionate tone restored me far more than if I'd been fully awake and able to comprehend the words.
Unsook brought steaming bowls, but I couldn't eat and returned to the silent womb of dreamless sleep. When I next awoke, Mother still sat nearby, her table spread for letter writing, her tranquil profile outlined in lamplight. "You're awake," she said. "It's evening. You should sleep until morning."
I sat up and rubbed my head, appreciating her earlier thorough combing that had at last rid my scalp of nits. "I'm rested, Umma-nim. I'm grateful-" My voice broke and I wept while Mother held my hand and murmured, "Praise God, praise God."
When my tears were finished I sat silently for some time staring at the coals in the brazier, feeling its heat on my face. I folded the bedding and said, "I'll go and see Father."
"Daughter, you should know- Najin-ah, there is bad news."
I saw my father being struck by the rifle and waited to hear more. I remembered on nights of torture the visions I'd had of my father being hung by his thumbs, his lax body bloodied and broken, and when he finally came home, his deadened eyes. A cold gust rattled the windows. I shivered.
"We will move to Seoul in twenty days."
I didn't understand and looked at her.
"They came last night, waved papers at Dongsaeng. The government is taking this land, this house for officers' quarters-Major Yoshida and his cadre."
I saw the pain in my mother's eyes and slowly understood that all I'd known of my childhood, my family's entire world, was obliterated with this news. "Umma-nim," I gasped.
"Yes, it's true." She spoke with a firmness I'd never heard before. "Father went to see Watanabe-san. He asked him how this could happen, after years of generous and regular gratuities. That man said he never claimed influence with the Japanese military. They give us twenty days to vacate. Father has yet to finalize his decision, but it's likely that we'll go to Seoul to live with Imo. Dongsaeng suggested trying to locate Father's brother in Manchuria, but your father, rightly so I believe, refuses to leave the country. Besides, there isn't enough time to learn where he might be, or even if he is alive. There is war now. We must trust God."
I was overcome with the news, and through my exhaustion felt a hard kernel of unbearable remorse beginning to form.
"There is much to do. Your father is beginning to fall ill from the upset. We have to sell what we can and let the servants go." My mother stopped to let me grasp this. "Your father is growing ill," she repeated.
I looked blindly at the fire. "It's my fault."
"Najin-ah, there is no blame. Blaming is pointless. God's will is not comprehensible at times. We are given the greater gift of faith."
The words passed through me like a splinter, a meaningless prick in the heart of a terrible wound. I was responsible. Father would cast blame and he would be justified. I had escaped torture and my husband's letters had doomed my family. Somehow I had failed the test of prison. I had never once considered taking my life, but perhaps I should have.
Mother touched my hand. "We have much to do."
"Yes," I said. This was my true punishment. I would suffer more from a lifetime of guilt than I had suffered the ninety days in my cell.
She talked about what we'd move and where the servants would go. With the exception of a handful of history books, Father had decided to keep his library buried, and would seal the secret pantry. "Who knows?" said Mother. "Perhaps one day ..."
"I should see him now," I said, and Mother nodded.
I combed and knotted my hair, put on a quilted top and went to his study. My father was packing books and scrolls, hand tools and art materials in a shipping crate. I saw a brushstroke of relief wash over his face when our eyes met. He deliberately picked up a planer and wrapped it in a cloth. "Are you well?" His voice trembled, and I couldn't tell if he was relieved or enraged.
"Yes, thank you, Abbuh-nim. This person is home." I bowed fully. There was a long silence. I listened to the cloth being rubbed against the planer.
"Your mother," he began, then silence. I remained low in my bow and smelled sawdust and pine tar in the old floor mat. He cleared his throat. "You're whole and home." His tone said I should rise. I saw his hands shake as he set the planer down.
"I'm grateful, Abbuh-nim, and ashamed. Forgive your worthless daughter."
"You do realize what has happened." He spoke slowly, intensity belying his softened tone. "Your father, your brother, your ancestors-all- can see only loss." He laid his hands carefully on his knees. He continued, his voice husky. "The dust in this room is the same dust breathed by my father, my father's father and his father. By all your ancestors. Numberless generations ..."
In the silence that followed I could only breathe with him.
"Almost five and a half centuries of men buried in the Han mountain graves," he said. "And now, a single daughter ..."
In the ensuing silence, I thought about the two things my father had done over which I had often harbored resentment: he hadn't named me and had wanted me married at fourteen. Yet he had come to accept my desire to learn and work, and had even allowed the thwarted dream of America. I had brought into his household contrariness, unwanted change, and now, immeasurable loss. "I am to blame, Abbuh-nim."
He seemed to want to say something but instead turned aside, his face lined with pain. "Go. Your mother needs you."
I bowed and left. It seemed too easy to get up and walk away, down the familiar hallway with its gleaming dark wood, and past the screen, now folded and tied, the winter air seeping through the walls. The screams of the tortured men surfaced in my ears and I shivered with the cold of the blackest nights in prison. I thought about how I had looked forward to seeing Major Yoshida, though I'd couched it in terms of being grateful for the warmth of the interrogation room. His clean orderliness and cool demeanor were reassuringly civilized and seemed admirable in such a place. I had felt pride in describing Bible stories to him, in God's choice of me to deliver his Word, and in God's watchfulness that had kept me whole. It was because of me that Major Yoshida had noticed our estate. Because of me, Major Yoshida would take from my father, from all of my family, the markers of our ancestry, tradition and history that creaked in the ancient beams, lived in the mortar, the stones and soil, and sang in the trees and stream. And then I thought that man was small, so easily overcome by demons of pride and hatred, but I was less than small, and should have been among those who screamed in the night.
PART III.
Seoul
Empty Pockets
END OF FEBRUARY 1940.
IN AN ICY DOWNPOUR, ILSUN PACED BENEATH A STREETLIGHT ON THE far edge of Poncheong, Seoul's black market district. With hands shoved deep in his pockets, he watched his shadow grow and shrink in the bleak circle of electric light, aware that curfew approached. He had already walked half an hour in snow that had turned to sleet, and his leather shoes were soaked. Across the road, movement in the pink slits of the teahouse's shuttered windows caught his eye. Earlier when he'd called for entry, the proprietor smiled at his familiar face and opened the door wide until he'd failed to slip the customary wad of won into her ready hand. Stung by the slammed door, he'd cried out, "How dare you! I am a Han!" Having welcomed him dozens of times before, she could have shown a hint of courtesy!
He knew it was pointless to trade on his father's name. Nowadays, few knew and even fewer cared who his father was. Ilsun shivered and sighed. He'd have to start working soon. His father had finally acquiesced to the necessity of Ilsun selling his artwork to the Japanese and their collaborators, for they were the only ones who could afford such luxuries. They weren't all heathen. Some were learned enough in art history to know that his father's style would have lasting significance, and others saw that Ilsun's work expanded and modernized his father's breakthroughs. Ilsun enjoyed the attention he received for his work, and had discovered two interesting and ironic facts about his ability for art. The less he cared about the work he was painting, the more it was judged worthy. He was best when he wasn't trying, and for that he knew to thank his ancestors who had cultivated the talent that had culminated in him. The other irony was how long it took to reach the point of not caring, of being free of worry about how the work appeared and to just be doing it. It was the buildup that was the hard work. He suspected that if he worked more at it, the easy part would come sooner, but the hard part was enough of a hurdle to discourage him.
He enjoyed the accolades and he certainly enjoyed the money his art garnered. It wasn't about food-the women mostly took care of that somehow. The responsibility of providing for the household made him feel tired and less apt to work. It was about a man's need for pocket money. The last time he'd seen Meeja behind those shutters had been thanks to Najin. This morning, though, when he'd asked his nuna if she had anything else to sell, the only thing she gave him was a hard look.
Weeks ago, Najin had given him a smoky topaz to buy medicine for his wife. The stone had been a gift from a delighted Japanese jeweler whose wife, assisted by Najin, had successfully delivered a healthy baby boy. Ilsun had accused his sister of hoarding from the family, demanding to know what else she had squirreled away. She ignored his queries and instead listed the medicines, herbs and rich foods needed for Unsook. Nuna told him to use anything left over to buy the manure-and-mud briquettes they used to stretch the coal. On this very street, he had quickly found his most lucrative contact and bartered the topaz for much more than his original estimate of its worth. When he handed his sister the ginseng and goldthread root, cardamom pods, packets of other herbs and a handful of change, he reported that the pharmacist's prices had doubled since medicinal trade from China had all but ceased. Najin said nothing, but Ilsun had never seen such coldness in her eyes. "It's enough for several weeks!" he'd said, raising his voice to assert his authority over such matters. The cash he had put aside to visit the teahouse was none of her business. He did not voice his other thought: that one had to be realistic about Unsook's illness.
It wasn't as if he didn't care. In Gaeseong, she'd been the ideal bride and a perfect wife. Father had complimented him on her tasteful and balanced cooking more than once. She was delicate and bony, and compliant in bed. He could easily admit that he loved her, truly, but a man has needs! And now, since there was still no heir, and none likely because of Unsook's consumption, he knew he was completely justified to go elsewhere. Nuna, an excessive worrier and righteous in her big-sister way, had merely overreacted.
No matter. The criticism Nuna had tried to cast on him withered to nothing during those evenings at the teahouse. The warmth of the memories trembled in his thighs, and he looked again at the shuttered windows from which he faintly heard laughter and singing. This was his favorite teahouse. These ladies boasted lineage to famous courtesans-a status that fit a man of his distinction and talent. He thought it shouldn't matter that his family's wealth had dwindled. Life was worse for everyone, yet Koreans still knew what was important, particularly if it was prohibited, such as their given names. The teahouse ladies had certainly fussed and cooed when he explained how he'd come up with the name Kiyamoto. He'd drawn the Chinese ideographs on a scrap of paper with the proprietress's fountain pen, to show those ignorant girls how Kiyamoto Kiyamoto meant "deep well" or "deep source," a fair iteration of meant "deep well" or "deep source," a fair iteration of Han Han, which meant "ancient dynastic place in time."
When the edict came that all nationals must choose a Japanese name, Father had accepted Ilsun's choice of the Japanese surname Kiyamoto, but refused to officially register at the precinct, saying that task was Ilsun's responsibility as master of the house. It seemed to Ilsun he was master only when it came to dealing with outside affairs. Lately, however, Father kept his door shut more often than not, carving panels out of cheap pine or reading the same tired books from what little was left of his musty old library.
The name-change ruling outraged many. Spontaneous demonstrations by students ended with spilled blood, more arrests, more prison terms. But it warmed Ilsun to think of the name change, for that was how Meeja had caught his eye. Wine had spilled on the scrap of paper and wine-diluted ink dripped on his lap. A woman he hadn't noticed before crouched beside him in an instant with a cloth and a cup of water. She grasped his leg and dabbed at it, saying, "We can't have your prestigious name running down your leg. It will want to go back to the well!" Her wit made him laugh and her touch made him interested. She had coarse hands, the knuckles large and the skin loose, but her fingers were bold yet discreet in exploring where the ink might have fallen. Although her features were unexceptional-eyes too narrow to be alluring and lips too thin to convey ripeness-she had charming ears and a gracefully curved chin. The confidence in her back and neck appealed to him. When she kneeled at his feet, he could smell the perfumed oil in her hair. She wrung the cloth, looking directly at him, and her inviting smile made her eyes darken sensually.
By the lamppost, a chill crept down Ilsun's collar and made his testicles itch. His woolen suit was useless in the sleet, but it corrected an unflattering line in his shoulders, and Meeja had admired it. He hoped for a glimpse of her. One glance and he swore he'd be satisfied. He willed the door to open, or perhaps a shutter would blow wide and her silhouette would be haloed in yellow light as she searched the road for him. He was convinced that she felt his presence nearby, just as he still felt her firm palms pressing him into her. He pictured her closed-eye little frown, the wink of her tongue as her mouth parted, the soft warmth of her energetic hips rising to meet him. Aroused, he stopped pacing. He had spent hundreds on food, dancing and wine for three days before she had allowed him to lie with her. And she had moaned and thrashed, her breathlessness tantalizing, goading him unlike any woman he'd known. He'd been with her twice and felt bewitched. She was all he could deliciously, painfully think about.
The teahouse rang with laughter. "Damn her!" he said, certain she was coyly teasing someone else, "She's just a gisaeng gisaeng-a peasant or bastard's daughter-nothing!" Yet he could see her beguiling chin turned charmingly toward some other man. He kicked the light-pole and scuffed his ruined shoe. Shiang! Shiang! Tapping ice from his hat brim, he turned from the beckoning windows and trudged home, thinking about Meeja, sex, the burden of secrecy and the boring necessity of work. Tapping ice from his hat brim, he turned from the beckoning windows and trudged home, thinking about Meeja, sex, the burden of secrecy and the boring necessity of work.
The Price of Jesus
END OF FEBRUARY 1940.
STUBBORN ODORS OF GARLIC AND PEPPER CLUNG TO THE WALLS LONG after the dinner hour had passed. I closed the sliding door to the sickroom and removed my facemask. Mother neared in the darkening hallway, hands tucked into jacket sleeves, socks swishing on the floor. "Do you know where your brother is?" she asked.
I carefully phrased my answer to avoid lying. "He said Father told him that Elder Kim was interested in a scroll to commemorate his grandson's naming ceremony. He said he would visit Elder Kim to ask what he might want."
Mother's eyes crinkled in approval and I turned quickly. Who could tell what Dongsaeng did on his evenings out? I knew he'd squandered the money from the topaz, but there were no new silk socks or factory-made shirts. I had my suspicions. I'd been doing his laundry ever since my sister-in-law had taken ill, and took precautions to protect Unsook and Mother from learning about his behavior. His clothes reeked with tobacco and drink, and I scrubbed face powder and lipstick stains with fury.
Mother raised an eyebrow toward the sickroom and I held my fingers to my lips. In the kitchen and out of earshot of the sickroom, I said, "She feels cold so I'll stoke the fire. I'm making herb tea and soup." We didn't know when or where Unsook had contracted tuberculosis, but it flowered after she'd caught a cold that Mother said had all the children at the Gaeseong orphanage sniffling during the Christmas play. After that, Unsook's little cough receded and we were preoccupied with moving. Almost three seasons later, two months after autumn equinox, Dongsaeng told us that Unsook was pregnant at last. But this jubilant news was quickly dashed when the doctor reported that she was also chronically ill. Our first doleful Christmas and New Year's in Seoul were further shadowed by Unsook's steady decline.
"Not much coughing today," said Mother.
"Not much blood in her phlegm, either. The new medicine seems to be helping. A better day."
"Thank God. I'll wait up for your brother. He'll be hungry when he gets home. Father's annoyed he had to eat alone again." Her phrasing made me smile. Both of us had eaten supper with Father, but we maintained the pretense of certain traditions. The women's partition had been dispensed with after we moved. The house, a right angle, lined two sides of a large courtyard and a grassy yard, which we turned into a vegetable garden. The sole sitting room took the corner and part of the north-south wing. Then came a tiny anteroom studio followed by Ilsun's room, Unsook's sickroom and an indoor toilet that drained to a side alley sewer. The east-west wing started with the kitchen, then my room, Mother's room, a storage room and Father's rooms, followed by the entryway beside the sitting room. Some of the rooms, like Unsook's, were only big enough for one pallet, while the sitting room could sleep three, and all were close with low, exposed roof beams, traditional ondol ondol floors with built-in flues for heating, and paper walls. floors with built-in flues for heating, and paper walls.
Initially, it was difficult for everyone to eat together-Mother could barely part her lips for fear my father would glimpse the inside of her mouth-but it was both practical and economical, and after ensuring that the men had plenty and started before us, we were able to eat with them without too much embarrassment. However, it would be impolite to speak of it.
Mother took a pillowslip and went to join Father. She looked shrunken, but her back was still straight, narrow and graceful, and her silvery hair framed only the tiniest of wrinkles on her oval face. I pictured Father reading, the lines of his long face stern. He would be cross-legged on the mat and stroking his white goatee, his sharp angles still clothed in his old-fashioned vests. He was thin, as we all were, but his health was now stable, recovered from a dangerous and painful ulcer he'd suffered during the first several months in Seoul. I had found a good pharmacist two tram rides downtown, and while discussing treatment options, discovered he had classical training and a wealth of traditional remedies. But one night not long ago, probably because of his relationships with Chinese herbalists, the pharmacist disappeared. His shop was taken over by a cranky suspicious man who asked too many questions. I felt safer buying the rare plants and powders I needed from Dongsaeng's clandestine and expensive contacts.
I heated broth and tea for Unsook, then went to the outbuilding to fill the scuttle. The Seoul house and a stable full of coal had been gifts from Imo. By the time of my release from prison, it was clear that all of Korea's and Manchuria's resources were being siphoned to feed Japan's war with China. Another new law mobilized hundreds of young Korean men and women to fill a void in manpower caused by the war. They called it voluntary, but I'd heard of missing sons and daughters, and few youths dared to loiter on city streets. Being married and having been recently arrested made me ineligible for "government service." Though I would never forget my imprisonment, I understood it was merely a kink in a tightening noose of government wariness and suspicion. I wasn't sure if I was trying to make myself feel less guilty, but once we'd moved outside of our Gaeseong walls, I saw how fortunate we were to have kept our estate for as long as we did. As we packed and sold furniture, we learned that many other landowners had suffered a similar fate. Downtown, Gaesong's main thoroughfare had become a noisy stream of trucks shuttling troops to China, pushcarts jammed with contents of homes, and foot traffic as thousands of people migrated either forcibly or for safety. We tended the graves a last time and bid painful goodbyes to Kira, Joong, Byungjo and Cook, who would venture north to Nah-jin or farther, if necessary. We prayed we'd meet again, but by now, a year later, I realized there was little hope of that. On our day of departure the Japanese soldiers came, immediately knocked down the gate to widen the entrance for vehicles and razed the front gardens for parking. We left quickly and no one looked back.
In Seoul we fought our way through a train depot filled with people and confusion, blasts of steam and the clamor of trains coming and going, the squalor of refugees and beggars of all ages in pitiful condition. My mother, taking the fifth journey of her life, was admirably fearless and mainly concerned with Father, who could barely walk for the pain of his ulcer. After hiring carts for our possessions, we found Imo's house occupied by a few pieces of heavy furniture, gourds, some crockery and kettles, and an old man from Imo's church who guarded the vacated property. He delivered a letter from Imo, in which she explained her decision to finally leave the capital, fearing that her adopted son, who had recently graduated from college, was vulnerable to the labor draft. She had moved to Busan and purchased a house on the outskirts of the city, away from hubbub and scrutiny. "And so," she wrote, "what a blessing that you have decided to come to Seoul, eliminating for me the headache of trying to sell this house, which is much too large for just us."
It was when she read this letter that I saw Mother cry for the first time since the Gaeseong house was lost. I understood that her tears were for the shame of having to accept Imo's thoughtful generosity, and I felt so undeserving of my own tears of remorse that they remained deeply buried.
I bent to scoop from the diminishing pile of coal and thought about Unsook. The costly orchid infusion had worked well, opening her breathing passages. I didn't dwell on Dongsaeng's folly with the topaz, knowing that my last length of silk would bring a good price. The skirt with embroidered chrysanthemums was one of the few things I hadn't sold when living with Calvin's parents. I had once hoped to wear it crossing the Pacific, but it was pointless to even allow those old memories to surface. The deep green silk would've flattered Unsook's fair complexion, and I had set it aside as a future gift for her, but I had to recognize that Unsook was only getting worse. If Dongsaeng sold the silk, I could also buy powdered milk, kelp and rice for a new mother whose twin boys I had delivered. I wanted to see them thrive. There were rumors about hundreds of male Korean infants being taken from their mothers to be adopted and raised as Japanese. With the mother's grateful permission, I had registered the twins' birth certificates, reporting them as girls.
It was a shame that Unsook couldn't tolerate milk, which might help to strengthen her. I hurried to replenish the firepit that heated the sickroom. At the doorstep I looked to the sky and saw through departing snow clouds the far night blackness speckled with stars. I said to the darkness, to the wonderment of stars, "Thank you for this coal, and please help her gain strength." I lamented that my obstetrics training had done little to prepare me for the slow devastation of consumption. When I first learned about Unsook's baby, something forgotten within me had stirred, and I felt Calvin's absence in a vivid physical way I hadn't ever before. But it quickly dissipated in the crisis of Unsook's illness and the fear of what could only become a tragic pregnancy. I had put thoughts of my husband far behind me, as far away as Gaeseong. I never spoke of him and thought less and less about our reunion. And now the war had spread. There seemed to be no end to Japan's oppressive power and growing strength.
Thoughts of Calvin, of Unsook's baby, of any future at all, were always accompanied by the echoes of my mother's and Calvin's faithful declaration to trust God. In prison, I thought simplistically that God's wisdom would feel unquestionable to me, that my faith would grow resolute. But the refrain that now persisted was the reductive question: how could all of my family's loss be the price for one Japanese major's spotty education about Jesus? And I couldn't reconcile martyrdom and human suffering as models for redemption. Here was Unsook, so lovely that her every movement said beauty. Her body had once held great promise-still held promise-and her faith was so sincere that she accepted illness without complaint, yet she faced a slow and painful death. The price for her was high, too high, and unfair.
The Calligrapher's Design
END OF FEBRUARY 1940.
AMONG THE SCORES OF LOSSES THAT HAD MADE HIM ILL FOR A YEAR, Han felt the privation of partitioning most frequently. The sole compensation was his wife sitting by him more frequently, always with some task in hand like the needlework she now held. He nodded to welcome her and saw a modest smile reshape her features with beauty. True, when she had an opinion she could be persistent, but that was a minor complaint. He still acted coolly toward her, as was proper, but he knew she understood his approval, for even through the worst of it, she had been consistently soft-spoken and deferential.
It surprised him how adaptable she'd been in the transition, their lives so suddenly grafted to subservience and-with the house, inadequate as it was-obligation to his wife's cousin. He took her resilience to be a measure of her faith. He stretched his legs and took in the now-familiar smells of this room: sawdust, scratched lacquer flooring, the steam of soup and boiled cabbage sealed in its beams. A recurring thought irked him. Was it not a mark of personal failure that so much had been lost during his generation? He wasn't prone to sin, though pride was a struggle, and he had acted rightly and responsibly all his life. Still, the stain was there and he prayed it was contained in him alone. Others had suffered much more than he. He readily blamed politics and subjugation, but doubt had damaged this assertion and he wondered if his ancestors, or God, measured his accountability.
His wife sewed quietly by the lantern, her frequent glances toward him meaning she had something to say, probably about their lazy son. A sputter of flame, then smoke fouled the air as his mind darkened with thoughts of Ilsun. He maintained an outer appearance of calm reading, his thoughts beginning to burn.
Damn that boy! Ilsun had more talent than he knew. What waste! In his father's day, Ilsun could have been a renowned calligrapher, perhaps not the greatest of scholars, but a respected artist who might have become as famous as Han's own teacher. The revered Chang Seungop had been a follower of the venerable Kim Cheonghui, who had founded the Southern School of painting, famous for diverting from Chinese tradition and originating an intense and original style. Scholar Chang was the last man to be designated a Korean Royal Treasure before the Yi Dynasty fell. How his work was lauded! Even China and Japan had recognized his genius. Who knew how many of Chang Seungop's scrolls now hung in the "sacred" halls of the imperial palace?
As it was, Ilsun would never even reach Han's level of scholarship. No one cared any more and his son had little awareness of his natural ability. Ilsun's careless personality, irritating as it was, added spontaneity to his brushwork. Han's work had tended toward restraint, a quality that had once given him great satisfaction, and that he later came to regard as academic and stodgy compared to the controlled yet vivid expressiveness of Scholar Chang's brush-living strokes with a vitality also evident in Ilsun's work.
Where had his son gone off to again? Ready to hear what the boy's mother had to say, Han exhaled and looked at her.
"Yuhbo." She kept her eyes on her sewing. "Dongsaeng told Nuna he was going to see Elder Kim about the scroll for his grandson." The lines in the corners of her eyes bunched when she smiled, as if pointing out her pride for Ilsun.
He said nothing, glad that his hands were in his sleeves, for they twitched with fury. He turned to his book to hide his rage.
After a silence, she said carefully, "That was very enterprising, don't you agree? He knows it's distasteful to sell his art, but you yourself said he should apply himself to his work, and it seems he's showing initiative."
His anger had nothing to do with the mercantile aspect of his son's work. Times required that such purism be sacrificed for the sake of food and medicine. Elder Kim, Han knew, was not in town. He had gone to his home village and his mother's deathbed. A few days ago, Han had chanced upon him outside a photographer's studio, where Elder Kim had picked up a portrait of his grandson to show his dying mother.
Han cleared his throat to release tightness in his neck. His wife glanced at him, expecting the conversation to continue. In a growing silence, he blindly read while she sewed tiny green knots on the hem of the pillowslip. They waited for Ilsun.
Najin appeared in the doorway with hands clasped, and he nodded to indicate she could enter. No matter how much he prayed, disappointment and anger still grated when he saw her. It made him tired. He knew that the reasons for the loss of the Gaeseong land were far more complicated than her husband's letters and her imprisonment, but the old reaction of placing blame still flared. It's not that he blamed her exactly, but rather what she represented in his family, in his country, whose continued existence depended upon the strength of its youth to uphold its history and traditions. Yes, even its women. Yet it was those very traditions that had rendered them unprepared and powerless. They had allowed for- perhaps even bred-corruption and weakness. He wanted only calm in these after-sixty years-years he had once anticipated being rich with poetry, philosophy and art, and in the background of his contemplative hours, a smoothly run house full of grandchildren. He felt the black pull of the enormity of his loss and failure. But here she was, his daughter, virtually a widow-and admittedly a woman of competence with a medical education that was helpful for Ilsun's sickly wife.