What then could he do? His heart urged him to leave his grass roof and go to the King and the Queen and offer himself for their service, any service at any cost. Yet he knew this was only the longing to rid himself of the burden of his own knowledge. The King was no fool — he must know very well by now that he could trust no foreigners, the Americans having failed. And the Queen had never trusted them. The country was like a ship at sea, anchor lost, rudder broken, and captain helpless. He and all Koreans could only stay by their ship, wait out the storm, let destiny take its course. In kindness and forgiveness, he hoped that the friendly people in America would not know the opportunity they had lost and which would never again be offered them. Pray Buddha they would not some day be compelled to pay the costs!
“Father!”
Il-han heard his elder son’s voice and was startled, as though he had never heard it before. It was no longer the high voice of a child. It had dropped halfway down the scale, it was cracked and hoarse, the voice of a boy ready to become a man. How had this come about so suddenly? Or was it sudden? He had been too engrossed in the even smoothness of his cloistered days to notice.
“Come in, my son,” he said.
He stared at the lad as he entered the room. Surely he was taller today than yesterday, his hands bigger, his bones heavier. And his face was changed, the features thickening into adolescence—
“Why are you looking at me, Father?” the boy demanded.
“You are growing up.”
“I have been growing up for a long time, Father.”
“Why have I not seen it?”
“Because you are always looking at your books, even when you teach us. Father!”
“Well?”
“I want to go to school in the city.”
“What are you saying?”
Il-han closed his book and motioned to his son to kneel on the floor cushion opposite him.
“You think I am not a good teacher?”
His son faced him with black eyes as bold as ever. “You teach old books, and I want to learn the new.”
Il-han was about to reply sharply and then remembered as sharply. In his youth he had accused his father in the same fashion. In his son’s voice he heard his own again. He kept himself calm. “Are there such schools in the city?”
“Yes, Father, and there are some teachers from America.”
“They are Christians!”
His son shrugged. “There are also schools with Japanese teachers.”
“You wish to learn from Japanese?”
“I wish only to learn,” his son retorted.
What could Il-han say? He was wounded to the heart that his son considered him no longer fit to be his teacher, and yet he would not acknowledge his private hurt. He continued his argument.
“It is all very well to have new learning, but this does not mean the old is without importance.”
His son replied insolently. “We have had enough of this old stuff!”
Il-han forgot himself. His right hand raised itself by instinct and he struck his son a blow on the cheek. The boy’s face grew red, his great eyes flashed. He rose, bowed and left the room.
Il-han heaved deep sighs. He felt suddenly faint and his heart beat too fast. This son — as he strode out of the room he had looked a man, shoulders broad, long legs — ah, he should not have struck his son! What could be done now? Impossible for a father to repent to a son! The elder generation does not ask forgiveness of the younger. And what if the son was right and he was no longer a fit teacher for this time of confusion? What indeed did he himself know now of the world beyond this grass roof?
He pushed aside the book wherein he had been writing a poem. Of late he had found refuge for his troubled spirit in poetry — Oh, heaven, had not his father also taken to writing poetry, and what of the village poet in the grass-roof hut where the Queen had hidden from her enemies? Poetry was a drug, a vice, a cover for helplessness, or perhaps only indolence. He sat for a long time in meditation, searching his soul, accusing himself, submitting his spirit to a humility difficult indeed for a man so proud.
For days after that he did not speak to his son. He conducted the lessons for both sons as usual. The elder son took no part, asked no question, did not look at his father, but he came and took his place and remained in silence. After ten days Il-han told the younger son to leave the room, for he had something to say to the elder. The younger son obeyed and Il-han was left alone with his elder son. He called him by name now, for the first time.
“Yul-chun, I have considered your wish to go to a school in the city. You know I am in exile here in my own house. Is it not dangerous for you in the city when it is known you are my son?”
“No, Father,” Yul-chun said. “I have friends there.”
Il-han was amazed. “How can you have friends when I have none?”
“I have friends,” Yul-chun repeated stubbornly.
The two gazed at each other. It was Il-han who yielded. So his son had friends of whom he knew nothing! A generation earlier a father would have insisted on knowing who his son’s friends were and how they had been made. But this, this was a new generation, one very far from the past, and he did not ask. He could not, for what if the son refused to tell the father? What force had the father now to compel obedience?
“Well enough,” he said at last. “Then go.”
“I shall live with my friends,” Yul-chun said.
“Well enough,” Il-han replied again. “Only let your mother know where the house is. And you will need money.”
He opened the secret drawer of his desk and took out a small leather bag where he kept money for daily needs and gave the bag to his son. “Let me know when you need more.”
He held back the grim words in his mind — with all his independence he takes money from me. There was a bitter comfort in the knowledge and he needed any comfort.
When his son had left the room Il-han went in search of Sunia and found her in the storehouse, standing by the scales to watch the measuring of rice for the household. Her dark hair was powdered with the white dust of the rice, and her eyebrows and eyelashes were white. It is how she will look when she is old, he thought, and for a moment he was saddened. Then he spoke to her in a low voice.
“Will you come aside? I have something to tell you.”
She lingered until the tenant had called out the weight of the grain and then she followed Il-han into the garden where they sat down upon a stone seat in the shade of the bamboo grove.
“Our elder son wants to go to school in the city,” he told her.
She was wiping the rice dust from her face with her kerchief and she did not reply.
“Are you not surprised?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I knew that he would go.”
“And did not tell me?”
“I told him he must wait a year,” she said. “I told him he was not to trouble you while he was too young to leave home.”
“And you think he is not too young?”
“I think he is too old to stay,” she said.
“So,” he said slowly, “so you have known all along! You have kept it secret from me. How many such secrets have you?”
She laughed and then was grave. “I have only one purpose in all I do. It is to keep you at peace. If I told you every vagary and whim and ardor that these two sons of ours have, you would be in turmoil. You could not work.”