Il-han’s eyes opened wide. “That I will never do!”
The haggard, troubled face, the face of his son, softened. For a moment Yul-chun looked as young as he was. He forgot to whisper.
“Do you remember how we used to walk in the bamboo grove, you and I, Father, when I was so small that you held my hand?”
“I remember,” Il-han said, and his throat tightened with pain. How had that soft childish face changed to this man’s face? He tried to clear his throat. “That was long ago — you can scarcely remember.”
“I do remember,” Yul-chun said. “I remember the day my brother was born, and I broke the bamboo shoots, and you told me they would never come up again. You were right, of course, those broken shoots did not grow again. Hollow reeds, you called them. I felt my heart ready to break at what I had done. But then you told me that other reeds would come up to take their place. And every spring I went to the bamboo grove to see if what you said was true. It was always true.”
Yul-chun rose to his feet and Il-han rose, too. Face to face, at the same height, they gazed into each other’s eyes.
“What do you tell me?” Il-han demanded.
“This,” Yul-chun said, “that if you never see me again, or never hear my name again, remember — I am only a hollow reed. Yet if I am broken, hundreds take my place — living reeds!”
He hesitated, looking at his father as if he had something to say and would not say it. Then suddenly he did speak, but leaning forward close to his father and in the half-whisper.
“I cannot come again — not soon, perhaps never. But sometimes you will find under the door in the morning a printed sheet — read it and burn it.”
He looked about him uncertainly then and muttered to himself. “The sun is rising. I must be gone.”
The sun was indeed creeping over the earthen wall, and with these few words Yul-chun was gone.
A moment later Sunia came in weeping. “I had his food hot and ready for him, but he went away hungry. Oh Buddha, why was I born in these times?”
Who could answer the question? Il-han could only summon her to his side, and there they sat, hand in hand, an aging man and woman whose children had been swept away from them. They were alone in a world they did not know.
A dry hot summer after the rainy season led into autumn. The grass on the mountains ripened and the land people cut it with short-handled sickles and bound it into sheaves for winter fuel. Against the shorn flanks of the mountains again the tall narrow poplar trees burned like golden candles. Under their grass roof Il-han and Sunia lived each day like the one before, and each night Il-han taught his pupils. He seldom saw his second son, for Yul-han and Induk returned to the city during their days of teaching.
“Shall we not tell our second son that his elder brother returned to us?” Sunia asked.
Il-han had already asked himself the question and his answer was ready. “We do not know this woman he has married. A Christian? She is like a foreigner. No. It is better if no one knows that our elder son is alive. Let him be forgotten by all except his parents. He is safe with us.”
In silence then Il-han and Sunia lived their lives, and when Yul-han came to visit them in duty they were courteous and made inquiry of how he felt and how he liked his work in his new school, and when he inquired of their health they said they were well and as for happiness, who could have happiness now?
In the eighth month of that moon year, the tenth month of the sun year, two days after the season date of Cold Dew, a fresh trouble fell upon the people. The Japanese Governor-General, Count Terauchi, then on a journey toward the north, barely escaped death at the hands of a Korean assassin at the railroad station in the city of Syun-chun. The news spread to every ear and silence fell upon the people, silence of dread and terror. All remembered the murder of the first Resident-General, Prince Ito, before Korea had been formally annexed to the Japanese empire. Though that prince was a kindly man and one who endeavored to make his rule gentle and even just, insofar as he was able, he had been killed by a Korean exile in the city of Harbin in the country of Manchuria. In reprisal the Japanese put the whole of Korea under military rule. Each Governor-General was now surrounded wherever he went by a bodyguard of soldiers, ruthless in their duty to preserve his life.
In spite of this, however, it seemed that the Korean conspirators did all but succeed in their goal. There was a great gathering of people to greet the Governor-General upon his arrival at Syun-chun. Schoolboys from both Christian and public schools were in line on the platform among other Koreans and some Japanese. All Koreans were searched by police for weapons concealed on their persons before they were allowed on the platform. Yet, in spite of precautions, a man was able to hide a revolver somewhere on himself, or had another given to him after he was searched. Who could know?
The Governor-General walked up and down the lines of students, he shook hands with the school principals, among whom were two or three missionaries from Christian schools, one of them American. When he turned to enter the special armored train upon which he traveled, a slender tall man appeared suddenly from among the Christians, in his uplifted right hand a revolver. A shot pierced the air but too high to reach its target. Soldiers swarmed upon the students, pushing them helter-skelter, but none could discover who the assassin was, or whether he was in student uniform. All in the vicinity were arrested, both students and others, in the hope that one would confess the deed. They were thrown into prison, guilty or not, and there waited until trial was held.
This was the news, and Il-han learned of it from the small sheet he found one morning under the door. Ever since Yul-chun had left, Il-han had risen before dawn while Sunia slept to see if there was such a sheet of paper under the door. One morning there it was, a bit of cheap paper, the printing blotted. Who was the assassin? Was it Yul-chun? For this purpose had he returned to his own land? Il-han pondered the dreadful question in his own heart and could find no answer. He resolved that he would not divide his burden by telling Sunia. Let her live her woman’s life, make her kimchee and mend their winter clothes! And if Yul-chun were locked in some cold prison throughout the winter, at least he was alive and safe. Safe? How could he speak the foolish word? His son would be beaten and tortured when he would not confess.
Now Il-han understood the lesson of the hollow reed. When one died, another took his place — if one must die!
Throughout the winter Il-han kept his own silence. His flesh fell away from his bones and Sunia fretted by day because he would not eat and by night because he could not sleep. He took to hiding himself from her when he washed or when he changed his inner garments, for she cried out when she saw him.
“Oh, your poor bare bones,” she mourned. “When I remember you on our wedding night—”
“Be quiet, woman,” he said. And then when he saw her face he tried to laugh. “If I do not please you, look elsewhere.”
It was a grim joke, an aging man and woman, exiles in their own country, hair graying, faces lined, alone in their house.
Still he did not tell Sunia his burden, nor did he tell his second son.
The winter wore on. Through snow and ice his pupils came in the black of the night, but now not every night. The attempt to assassinate the Governor-General had set the rulers into such fury that everywhere more spies roamed among the people. No village was free of them, no country road lonely enough to escape them. Even women were seized and questioned and punished, and this at first because they were Christian.
There was some reason here, for the girls in the Christian schools were more daring than others, and again it was in the news sheet that Il-han read the story, without date or place: