“I understand,” Yul-han said quietly.
“You appear to be a sensible man,” the Japanese said. “Therefore I will allow you to transfer your post.” He drew the papers toward him again and with his fountain pen wrote something quickly on the top. “Of course,” he continued as he folded the papers and fitted them into the envelope, “I shall count on you to let me know whether you discover rebels among the Christians. You may report to me in secret and safely.”
Yul-han heard this and debated with himself as to what he should answer. He decided to answer nothing, for though he had not attended the trials, he knew that Christians had suffered the heaviest judgments. He put out his hand and took the envelope and bowing, he went away.
On the next Sunday he was baptized. The day was cloudy and cold, the winds of late autumn blew leaves from the trees and wrenched persimmons from their stalks. Children in ragged garments ran to save the fruit and stood under dripping eaves sucking the sweet juice and shivering in the chilly air. The reek of fresh kimchee hung like an atmosphere over city and country.
Yul-han walked through the streets to the church, Induk following decorously behind. He saw everything with new intensity this morning, as though his entire being were alive and aware as it had never been, as though he were separating himself from all that had gone before, all that now was. The dusty street, the sad-faced people, the children merry in spite of cold and poverty and even in spite of the ubiquitous police ready to rebuke them whatever they did, and behind the crowded busy city the mountains soaring into a darker gray against the gray sky, barren and beautiful — all this pressed upon his mind and heart. As he entered the church, he knew that he would come out of that door a different man for he was taking his place today among those who were separate. No longer would he be only a Korean. He would be a Korean Christian and which would be the greater part of him, Korean or Christian, he did not know, or perhaps there would not be two parts in him, but one whole, a Korean permeated with the new religion.
He did not wish to speak and in silence he went to the men’s side and Induk went to the women’s side. Among the men he sat, a stranger to himself. He was giving himself away to a God he had not seen and yet he felt a dedication he had never known. The ceremony was beginning now and as usual with music. A man played upon a small western organ, and he played well. Yul-han loved music as all his people did, and he was easily moved by it, as they all were. Music was woven into the texture of their souls and some of the attraction for them in the new religion was the part that music had in worship, the grave organ music and the communal singing. Already Yul-han knew the hymns they sang and he recognized the one the man was playing—“Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, Oh Lamb of God, I come to Thee—” Mystic words, symbolizing what he was about to do!
The missionary came into the church from the vestry and above his long black robes, his upstanding red hair flamed like a burning crown upon his head. He prayed silently before the gold cross under the window. Prayer — that Yul-han had not yet achieved. He had made tentative efforts when he was alone to come into this communication, but he had not found the way. No one answered.
“Do not expect to hear a voice,” the missionary had told him when he inquired as to whether he had prayed properly. “Simply cultivate the habit of prayer and after a while you will find answer in the content it brings to your heart and the direction it brings to your mind. Wait upon the Lord.”
“These are also the instructions of the Lord Buddha,” Yul-han had said, remembering what his father had told him of the monks in the monasteries of the Diamond Mountains.
To his surprise the missionary had shown anger and he made retort.
“It is not at all the same. There is only one God and he is not Buddha. He is Jehovah.”
Yul-han had considered reply, for did it matter, if it was true that there was only one Being, whether his name was Buddha or Jehovah? But he was peaceable by nature and he kept question and answer to himself.
The missionary turned now to the people. The church was crowded and men stood leaning against the walls. Women sat close together, many of them with children in their arms. Why were they here except to seek comfort and encouragement in their sorry lives? The missionary looked at them and his rugged face took on a rugged tenderness.
“Let us sing,” he said. “Let us praise the Lord.”
The church was filled with the music of human voices. His people could sing, Yul-han knew, and he listened to the mighty chorus. Tears suddenly filled his eyes. These men and women, these poverty-stricken, oppressed people of his, singing! With all their hearts they were singing, in harmony, in rhythm, born singers and lovers of song, singing like children in the dark and to the unknown God. Out of his heart spontaneously a cry rose to his lips.
“Oh God, whatever your name, help me to help my people, for I love them—”
He heard no voice, but words sprang clearly into his mind, “For God so loved the world—”
Immediately he too began to sing, his powerful voice leading the melody. Well-being surged through mind and body as he sang through the hymn. The missionary spoke in his usual simple Korean, struggling to convey great thoughts through imperfect language and the people listened, rapt, the intense silence broken only by the occasional cry of a restless child. What was this sense of health and calm in himself? For the first time Yul-han was sure that he had decided rightly in becoming a Christian. He was not sure what it meant in entirety but he believed now that he could learn and grow. He was humble as he had never been before. There were many poor people in the church, those who were ignorant and who were not yangban. At first he had been reluctant to think that he must mingle with these people and call them his brothers, he who was born of a proud and ancient clan. Now he was cleansed of that pride. It did not exist in him, swept away in a moment and by what means he did not know, except that it was not there. He belonged here, and these were truly his brethren.
The hour passed and he heard the missionary ask those who were to be baptized to come forward and, half dazed, he stumbled to his feet and went forward with a dozen others, men and women. He bowed his head as the missionary prayed and his heart beat fast. This was the moment that committed him wholly to the unknown future.
“You may suffer persecution,” the missionary was saying. “You may be called upon to die even as Christ died on the cross.”
Yes, it was true. There had been such crucifixions by the Japanese gendarmes. In a village in the north three Christians had been crucified.
“I baptize you,” the missionary was saying, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”
He felt a trickle of cold water on his bare head. It ran down his cheeks and fell on his coat but he did not wipe it away.
“And Jesus took bread and blessed it and brake it and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat, this is my body—’
“And he took the cup and gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink ye all of it—’”
The deep voice of the missionary intoned the words and Yul-han felt the unleavened bread dry upon his tongue and he tasted the sharp acid of the red wine. It was done. By a strange mystic ceremony, he was born again into a Christian, as surely as long ago he had been born into the family of Kim.
Yul-han had stayed away from the trials of the conspirators against the Governor-General’s life, and this at the beseeching of Induk. He had yielded to her not for his own sake, but because she insisted that her parents and brothers and sisters would also be in danger if by any chance he were seen there as a Christian. This wife of his, so brave where a good deed was to be done, could be as frightened as a child of police or soldiers or any official person. She shrank at the sight of a gun, and would walk far out of her way to avoid any man in uniform. Nevertheless Yul-han read of the trials assiduously each day in the newspapers and on the walls, for on the walls there was more than news. In spite of watchful police, always during the night some rebel would steal to the wall and in the darkness he would scrawl secret messages. If Yul-han went early, he could read before the police washed the words away. Thus he learned how the trials went and how all prisoners made the same confession of guilt one day and denied it the next, saying that they had been forced to give false testimony under torture. On the day after his Christian ceremony he read of the man now called the Living Reed.