“At first,” Induk went on, “she could not believe me. Then she was puzzled and she asked me what it meant to be a Christian. Would it mean, she asked, that we would not let her see the children? Assuredly not, I promised her. I said that everything would be the same except that our children would not go to the temple to worship Buddhist gods. Instead they would go to the Christian church and learn the teachings of Jesus. ‘Who is Jesus?’ she asked. When I told her, she was unhappy. ‘He is a foreigner,’ she exclaimed.”
His children Christian? The thought was new and Yul-han was not sure he liked it.
“I had not considered the matter of children,” he said slowly. Far off against the purple-blue sky an eagle soared upward toward the sun.
“Do you not want them to be Christian?” she inquired.
“How can I tell? I know nothing about this religion.”
“But it is mine!”
“Must it be mine?”
She looked at him thoughtfully, considering how to answer. “Have you read the book I gave you?”
“Some of it.”
“What do you think?”
“It is a strange book,” he said in the same slow voice, almost as though he were dreaming. “When one reads it — well, there is a short story in the last part — a revelation. Someone, I do not know who, says that he ate a small book. He had been told to eat it by a spirit from Heaven — or perhaps from Hell, I could not decide, since it is all a sort of poetry, but this man ate the book. It tasted sweet upon his tongue, but when he had eaten it the sweetness went away and the taste was bitter. That is how it was with me. When I read your book it was sweet to my taste, but as I think about it, I feel bitterness.”
“Oh, why?” she asked softly.
“I cannot say,” he replied. “I only feel. It is dangerous to take a new religion in an old country. It is an explosive.”
He did not wish to tell her now what his father had said, not on this first day of their being alone.
“Do you wish me not to be Christian?” she asked after silence.
“I want you to be yourself,” he replied. “Whatever you are, that is what I want you to be.”
“If you are not Christian, I do not wish to be Christian. I will not be separated from you.”
His heart flooded his being with tenderness. What? She would give up so much for him? He could not allow it but he felt his blood warm in his veins.
“Nothing can separate us,” he said, “nothing — nothing! And I give you a promise. I will talk with the missionary. I will learn more about this God in whom you trust. If I can come to the same faith, I will not hold back.”
“But shall we be married by my religion?”
“Yes! I have none of my own any more. The old beliefs have been taken from us and we have been given nothing in return. Why do I say they have been taken from us? Perhaps they have died of their own age and uselessness. Now let us talk no more of these matters. Time will guide us because we love each other.”
He dared to put out his hand now and take her hand and they sat side by side, shy of more than this and yet yearning for more. But the old traditions held. The palm of a man’s hand, they had been taught, must not touch the palm of a woman’s hand, for the palm is a place of communication, where one heart beats close to another heart. It is the first meeting place of love between man and woman, and for these two it was a virgin experience. From it, love would proceed to consummation.
He sat holding her palm against his until he grew afraid of his own rising passion, to which he must not yield.
“Come,” he said resolutely, “it is time for us to go back to the city.”
… Their wedding day was set for the summer solstice, which is on the third day of the lunar month and the twenty-first day of the solar month. Yul-han sent word to his father, and to his mother, and he gave the name of the church where the ceremony would take place. Whether they would be there he did not know, and no letter came from them by servant or by the postal system which the Japanese had reformed and made useful again. Neither he nor Induk spoke of his parents but both waited during the closing days of their schools. In the few days before the wedding he did not return to the grass roof to visit his father, lest his mother insist that he must bring Induk there to live. For Induk wanted a small house of her own and in his heart he planned that he would ask for some of the land he would inherit from his father. He had saved money enough to build a house but he could not buy land, for the cost of land had risen since the Japanese were buying land everywhere. No Korean was able to buy unless he had influence to help him.
The wedding day dawned in mist. The season called the Small Heat was hotter than usual, and the sun hung in the sky like a silver plate.
“Shall I wear my Korean robes?” he had asked Induk.
She had hesitated. “I have never seen you except in this foreign dress, but yes, I would like to marry a Korean in Korean dress.”
He put on his Korean robes, therefore, and his best friend helped him, a teacher of mathematics, surnamed Yi and named Sung-man, a secret revolutionist but a man of merry nature. Sung-man had never married and he made jokes as he helped Yul-han to put on the white robes, and the boat-shaped shoes made from Japanese rubber, and the scholar’s hat of woven horsehair, the crown high, the brim narrow.
Sung-man stared at his tall friend. He himself was a short stout man, not handsome, and clumsy of hand and foot.
“Is it you?” he exclaimed.
“I feel strange to myself,” Yul-han acknowledged, “as though I were my own grandfather.”
Nevertheless thus garbed he walked to the church, Sung-man at his side and taking two steps to his one. So they arrived at the church and went in. The benches were already full of people, men on one side, women on the other. On the platform the missionary stood waiting, dressed in black, and a foreign music came from somewhere, of a sort Yul-han had never heard. He walked up the central aisle looking neither to right nor left, Sung-man behind him, and the missionary motioned to them to stand at his right on the platform. While they stood there waiting suddenly the gentle music changed to loud clear music, very joyous, and Yul-han saw Induk coming up the aisle beside her father. In front of her walked two small boys, her brother’s children as Yul-han knew, scattering flowers as they came, and behind her walked her mother and older sister. But it was at Induk that he looked. She wore a full skirt of pink brocaded satin and a short jacket to match, and her face was half hidden behind a veil of thin white silk. She walked steadily toward him and up the two steps while he waited, trying not to look at her and yet seeing her all the way until she was at his side.
Of that strange marriage ceremony he remembered not a word, except that when he was asked by the missionary if he would have Induk for his wife he replied in a loud voice that he would indeed, and it was only for this purpose that he had come. He was surprised to hear stifled laughter from some women in the audience and he wondered if he had said something he should not have said. The missionary went on, whatever he had said, and in a few minutes, before he could recover himself, he heard the missionary pronounce them man and wife. He hesitated, not knowing what came next, but Induk guided him gently by her hand in the curve of his elbow and he found himself walking down the aisle with her, arm in arm.
He had all but forgotten his parents in the agitation of the ceremony but when he reached the door he saw his father standing at the end of the last bench and passed him near enough to touch his shoulder. Father and son, they looked at each other, the one in gravity, the other in amazed gratitude.
Now he and Induk were at the door and now they had passed through into the outer air. It was over. Yul-han was a married man.