“Do not speak her personal name — not yet,” Sunia commanded. “Time enough when she is my daughter-in-law.”
Yul-han yielded, smiling, and took up his chopsticks again.
“I shall be late for school,” he said, and he ate his rice and kimchee quickly and bade them farewell.
He walked quickly and gaily along the country road toward the city. In spite of the evil times he felt lighthearted. The truth had been told. His parents knew that he had chosen his own wife. Until they knew, he had not felt free to break with tradition and approach Induk for himself. They had never even been alone, but in the teachers’ meetings they had spoken to each other, and then, when he found out that her family was Christian, he had on several Sunday mornings gone to the Christian temple on the main street of the city. Men and women sat separately but he discovered that the Choi ladies sat in the second row from the front and he went early to sit as near Induk as possible. He saw only her smooth nape and the coil of her dark hair. Yet when she sang the hymns, sometimes he saw her profile, the small straight nose, the parted lips, the round, cream-white chin. She was tall for a woman, but slender, and she always wore Korean dress. Last Sunday he had lingered at the church door, watching for her, and had been waylaid by the American missionary. This man, a rugged priest, his hair and eyebrows and beard a rusty red, had taken him by the hand and then had spoken in a booming voice.
“Friend, you have been here several times. You are welcome. Do you want to know Jesus?”
Yul-han had been embarrassed by the question and he could only smile. At this moment Induk herself came out of the door and seeing what was happening, she approached and introduced him.
“Dr. Maclane, this is Kim Yul-han, a teacher in the boys’ school.”
“Does he want to be a Christian?” the missionary boomed again.
Induk laughed. “Let me find out,” she said.
Her eyes, dark and lively, exchanged a look with Yul-han’s.
“Good — good,” the missionary said heartily, his small blue eyes already following other persons, and he released Yul-han and hastened away.
From this moment of understanding, the two had moved quickly to meeting alone one afternoon in a deserted classroom. By chance Induk was walking through a corridor on her way home and Yul-han, seeing her in the distance, had followed her.
“Miss Choi!”
She turned, saw him, and waited.
“Should you not begin to make me a Christian?” he inquired with mischief.
He enjoyed her fresh free laugh.
“Do you want to be a Christian?” she asked.
“Do you think it would improve me?” he countered.
“I do not know how good you are, as you are,” she replied, teasing.
He liked her frankness, her humor, and he had walked with her, both of them self-conscious in their determination to be modern. It was not easy to break down the wall of tradition between man and woman. He was too aware of Induk as a woman, dazzled by the whiteness of her skin, the sheen of her dark hair, the loveliness of her small ears close set against the handsome head, her lithe body moving gracefully in step with him, her fragrance, the sweetness of her breath. Everything about her was feminine, warm and strong.
They halted involuntarily at the open door of an empty classroom and moved by the same impulse, they went in and sat down in the back of the room. The door was open but anyone passing could not see them. Dangerous it still was, but they could not part, not yet in this their first enchantment. What they had said in those few minutes alone was simple, even inconsequential, and yet he remembered every word.
“Do you like teaching girls?” A stupid question he knew as soon as he had asked it, for whom would she teach if not girls?
“I like teaching,” she said.
“So do I.”
They had paused. Then it was she who began.
“Do not be a Christian unless you wish. One should follow his own heart.”
“What is the advantage of being Christian?” he asked.
She hesitated. “It is hard to say. My family is Christian, and I have grown up Christian. We believe in God, and we are comforted. In the church we meet with others who believe.”
“What are the doctrines?”
“I cannot explain to you in a few minutes. Have you read the New Testament?”
“I have read nothing Christian. To me Christianity is a foreign religion.”
“Nothing that teaches us about God can be foreign. I will bring my New Testament to school tomorrow and you can read it. Then we will talk. Now we must go.”
She rose and he could only follow. When they parted at the door, he walked away in a daze, and was already dreaming of tomorrow. Yet the next day he did not see her. On his desk was a small parcel addressed to him. He opened it and found the book. There was no letter with it.
He began to read it that same evening and now was nearly at its end. One more evening, he told himself as he came to the city gate, and tomorrow he would find her and tell her.
“I have read the book,” he would tell her. “Now we must talk.”
When their son was gone, Sunia turned to Il-han. “You must go privately into the city and see for yourself this family of Choi. See where they live, what sort of house it is, what the neighbors say — and which Choi it is. Choi is a name of the North. Shall we of the South accept a daughter-in-law of the North?”
Il-han had been deeply disturbed by all that Yul-han had said before she came in. He could not forget the accusations that his mild son had made against his father’s generation, and he longed to make even small amends.
“Sunia,” he said, “I will go. I will look at the house. I will consult the neighbors. But it is time to forget who is from the North and who is from the South. Let us only remember, North or South, that we are Koreans.”
Since Sunia gave him no peace once her mind was set on some goal, he went three days later to the city where for so long he had not been. It was as Yul-han had said. The streets were new and clean, and there were many changes. Everywhere he saw new shops where Japanese merchants sold their goods, and this he had heard was true throughout the country in town and village. But what he saw first was that of all parts of the city the quarter where the Japanese lived was the most prosperous and that it had grown from a cluster of houses to a city within a city. And when he asked of passersby, he was told that the Japanese Legation was now the house where the Governor-General lived, the gardens enlarged and made beautiful, as he could see when he looked into the open gates, but guarded by Japanese soldiers.
“Pass on, old man,” the soldiers cried when he lingered. “No one is allowed to stop at these gates.”
He went on. Opposite to this new-made palace other new buildings were built on a low hill and here he lingered again.
“What are these new buildings?” he inquired of the guard.
“These are the offices and headquarters of the Governor-General, the noble Count Terauchi,” the guard replied. “Do you not know the Tokanfu when you see it? You must be a countryman.”
Il-han did not reply. What the ignorant guardsman himself did not know was that this place where the center of government now was, a foreign government established by invaders, had once before been the site of a castle belonging to these same invaders.
In the time of Hideyoshi during the invasion of Taiko Sama, one Kato Kyomasu, his most able lieutenant, had built a castle here. The castle had been destroyed when the invaders were repulsed, but they had returned and now here again was the seat of that same government over a proud people but subject, his own people.
Could this be accident or was it fate?
… “How could you see so little?” Sunia inquired when he returned.