“He is honest,” she told Yul-han, “and he is incorruptible. Moreover, he is for our people. He risks himself for our sakes.”
Beyond this she did not go, except to say her parents wished her to be married with the Christian ceremony, and she also wished this to be. But they had very little time to talk. It was difficult to meet, for old tradition still held in many ways, and if they were seen alone together, tradition might compel those above to dismiss them from their schools on the pretext that their conduct could lead their pupils into unseemly freedom. For this reason Yul-han had urged immediate marriage. Afterwards, as husband and wife, they could discover each other’s minds and hearts in mutuality.
“Father,” Yul-han now said, “I need your good advice.”
Il-han made a dry smile. “Unusual, is it not, in these days, to hear such words? I try to be useful, nevertheless.”
Yul-han ignored this irony natural to age. “What I have to tell you will not shock you, Father, for you know these new times, but I fear for my mother.”
Here he paused so long that Il-han was impatient.
“Well, well, well?” he said sharply.
Yul-han forced himself on. “Her family is Christian, Father, and she wishes to be married with their ceremony.”
He had said it, and properly he had not spoken Induk’s personal name. Sitting motionless on the floor cushion, he took courage to lift his head and look at his father across the low table between them. What he saw was not comforting. His father’s eyebrows were drawn down and beneath them the eyes were narrow under lowered lids. His father’s long thin hand moved to stroke the scanty gray beard.
“Why have you waited to tell me?” Il-han demanded.
“Father, would it have made a difference if I had told you early?”
The long thin hand fell. “You are saying that you would have married her anyway.”
“Yes, Father.”
Father and son gazed into each other’s eyes.
“You two,” Il-han said at last, “you and your brother, inside you are alike. You are both stubborn and willful, he with outbursts of temper and wild words, and you Confucian, always mild in speech. Seemingly without temper, you are the worse of the two. I am always deceived by you.”
“I am sorry, Father,” Yul-han said.
“Sorry! Does that mean you will change yourself?”
“No, Father.”
“I suppose you will be Christian too.”
“I do not know, Father.”
Il-han closed his eyes. He took a black paper fan from his sleeve and fanned himself for a while.
“These Americans,” he said at last, eyes still closed, the fan still moving to and fro. “Do you know that they betrayed us? Have you forgotten that they broke their treaty with us? When we were invaded, they favored the invader. Do they speak now against our oppressors? They do not. They preach their religion, they declare that we must submit ourselves. They say they are not anti-Japanese. They even adjure us to do justice to our oppressors. They bid us remember Korea is the most exposed part of the Japanese empire. Japanese empire, mind you, no longer our country! The Russian base, Vladivostok, is very near, they tell us; it borders Manchuria and by steamboat it is only a few hours from the Chinese port of Chefoo. Therefore Japanese must be allowed to rule Korea!”
Yul-han interrupted. “They won the war with Russia, and—”
Il-han interrupted in turn. “The causes for that war still exist. Russia has no ice-free port on the Pacific.”
“Father,” Yul-han pleaded, “we were talking only of my marriage. Why are we quarreling about governments?”
“Nothing is private nowadays,” Il-han retorted. “If you marry into a Christian family, you undertake their burdens. Do not forget that among the twenty-one Koreans who tried to kill the Prime Minister of Japan who was visiting here, eighteen were Christians!” Here Il-han paused to point his long forefinger at his son. “What was the result? Count Terauchi was sent to rule us without mercy, because he believed that desperate men among us were hiding themselves among the Christians. He surrounds himself with military officers and soldiers. When he goes into our peaceful countryside — I saw it with my own eyes. Only the other day he passed through our villages on his way somewhere, an army swarming about him. Your mother was wailing. She thought they were coming after me. I am not so important any more, I told her.”
“I will not argue with you, Father,” Yul-han said. “I ask only one question. Will you come to my wedding?”
Il-han’s eyebrows shot up. “You insist upon this marriage?”
“Yes, Father,” Yul-han said, very steady.
“Then I will not come,” Il-han declared. “Nor will I allow your mother to come.”
Father and son, they exchanged a long, last look
“I am sorry, Father,” Yul-han said. He made deep obeisance and went away.
… He met Induk the next day, a holiday. The date was the seventeenth day of the fourth lunar month and the sixth day of the sixth solar month. By tradition this day was for the transplanting of rice seedlings from dry earth into watery fields, and though this was done only by landfolk, the day was celebrated by city folk, too, for rice is the food of life.
They had grown wise, these two, in their knowledge of the city and where they could meet, and today they planned to walk outside the gates and along some country road. Their meetings until now had been brief and they had always to be careful of being seen. Today, however, they would be in no haste for they would be far from all who knew them. They met by the west gate, and Yul-han paused to buy two small loaves of bread for their noon meal. Then they turned toward the mountains and away from city and field alike. The sun was already hot as they climbed the unshaded flanks of the bare mountains.
“Here is shelter at last,” Yul-han said.
He left the narrow path and stopped beneath an overhanging rock. Under it they could escape from the burning sun. He smoothed away small stones and lifted moss from the shallow cavern behind the rock and spread it as a floor cushion for her to sit upon. They sat down then, side by side but not too near, each shy of the other in this new loneliness, around them the noble stillness of the mountain and above them the deep and passionate blue of the sky.
In silence Induk poured a small bowl of tea for Yul-han from the bottle she had put in the basket and then one for herself. It was cool and refreshing, they sipped it, and gazed down upon the city they had left. The landscape was splendid, the high rocky mountains guarding the jewel of the city set deep into the green circle of a valley. The sun glittered on the roofs and hid the poverty of huts and crowded streets.
“I am hungry,” Yul-han said.
She gave him bread and broke a loaf in half for herself, and they ate. He felt a peace he had never known before. She was so near that he could put out his hand and take hers, but he had no need to touch her. They were together, committed to a long life ahead, always together. Nothing must be hurried or transient. They were laying deep foundations for the future, even in this silence. He ate his fill and leaned against the bank beneath the rock in profound content.
It was Induk who spoke first. “I have not told you what your mother said when I told her my family is Christian.”
“Tell me,” he said without urgency, his eyes on her calm face.