“Tell us,” the magistrate commanded him, “how it is you have achieved such independence.”
The man was a small timid fellow and, surprised, he could only stammer a few words, explaining that he did not know what all this was about and he was obeying his wife, who bade him always to avoid crowds.
His father finished this tale and he looked at Il-han with roguish eyes. “I,” he declared, “have of course always been at your mother’s command. When worse comes to worst, I remind myself that women still cannot do without men, since it is we who hold the secret of creating children for them.”
He had blushed at such frankness and his father had laughed at him. He smiled now, remembering, and a tall country wife, carrying a jar of bean oil on her head, shouted at him.
“Look where you walk, lord of creation!”
He stepped aside hastily to let her pass, and caught a sidewise glance of her dark eyes flashing at him with warning and laughter, and he admired her profile. A handsome people, these his people! He had seen Japanese merchants as well as Chinese. The Japanese men were less tall than his countrymen, and the Chinese men were less fair of skin, their hair blacker and more wiry stiff. A noble people, these his people, and what ill fortune that they were contained within this narrow strip of mountainous land coveted by others! If they could but be left alone in peace, he and his people, to dream their dreams, make their music, write their poems, paint their picture scrolls! Impossible, now that the surrounding hungry nations were licking their chops, impossible now that the civilian tangban had grown decadent and the rebellious soban again were threatening from beneath!
He paused at the south gate, whose name was the Gate of High Ceremony, and inquired of the guard to say at what hour the sun would set, for then the gate would be locked and no one, except on official business, could come in or go out
The guard, a tall man with a cast in his right eye, squinted at the western sky and made a guess.
“Where do you go, master?” he asked.
“I go to see my father,” Il-han replied.
The guard recognized him for a Kim, as who did not, and he lowered his spear and spoke with respect. “You will have time to drink two bowls of tea with your honored one.”
“My thanks,” Il-han said.
When he had passed through the vast gate he paused, as he always did, to look back. This gate was one of eight gates to the city, any of which the people might use for coming and going except for the north gate, which was kept locked, for it was the way of escape for the King if there were war, and the southwest gate, which was for criminals on their way to execution outside the city wall. The southwest gate was known also as the Water Mouth Gate because the river flowed through there. It was also the gate used for the dead on their way to burial. All dead must pass through the gate, except dead kings, who could pass through other gates. The gate was built of wood and painted with colors of red and blue and green and gold. It sat high on the great stone wall and there were two stories, the first one wider than the second, and in the wooden wall of the second story were holes through which arrows could be shot. The roof was tile and the corners were lifted as are the palace roofs and gates of Peking — the better, Il-han had been told as a child, to catch the devils who slide down roofs in play and then falling to the ground are mischievous and enter houses to annoy good folk and bring trouble to them.
Once when he was thirteen years old he had climbed the tower and he found, cut deep into the wood, the letters of an ancient name. It was the name of a boy prince, the second son of the ancient dynasty of Yi who, like all boys, desired to leave his name carved forever on some smooth surface. He remembered that he would like to have carved his own name under that of the prince, but some reluctance had held him back and when he looked up he faced a soldier guard, and he had run away from those hostile soban eyes. He turned away from the memory, and faced the mountains, and soberly he walked the dusty cobbled road while behind him, afar off, his servant followed in secret. The city sat in a valley two or three miles across, the valley encircled by mountains. Here in this city was the center of his country, the heart of his nation, enclosed by the craggy and pinnacled heights of bare rock. Yonder, highest of all, was the Triple Peak, and upon its triad crests the snow still clung in long white streaks. South Mountain, North Mountain, and the city wall wound in and out among the folds of these mountains, beginning at the west gate, which was called the Gate of Amiability — fitting enough, this name, for the Chinese, powerful yet amiable, came from the west — and curving to the east, to the Gate of Elevated Humanity, how wryly named, for out of the east had come from Japan, three hundred years ago, that villain Hideyoshi, that peasant, squat and brutish.
He walked slowly to enjoy the countryside now in the fullness of spring. Along the grassy footpaths between the fields, women and children were digging wild fresh greens for which they hungered after the long winter when vegetables were only dried and pickled. Beyond the fields the gray-flanked mountains were red with clustering azaleas. Even on the mountains there were people searching for fresh foods, the roots of bell flowers to be scraped and pounded and boiled, and then eaten with soy sauce and sesame seed, the delicate lace of wild white clematis and wild spirea, white dandelions, sour dock leaves, wild chrysanthemum tops, all savory with rice or for soups. How well he remembered his mother and her household tricks! Sunia was a clever housekeeper, but his mother had been the old-fashioned woman, unwilling to buy so much as a square of fresh bean curd. He had hung about her as a child, for where she was became the center of activity, and he dabbled his childish hands in the soybeans put to soak overnight in cold water and he helped her turn the mill to crush them in the morning and to strain it and boil it and then curdle it with wet salt to be drained and cut into soft white blocks of bean curd. He had described the process to Sunia, but Sunia had cried out willfully that it was enough to make kimchee at home nowadays and he must let her buy their bean curd.
“Nevertheless,” he protested, “homemade is the best. And my mother’s soy sauce—”
Ah, that soy sauce! The crisp spring air made him hungry to think of it. His mother boiled the soybeans until they were mush, and then pounded them in the old mortar made of a hollowed tree trunk, the pestle a pole with a solid wooden ball at each end so that either end could be used. Then she rolled the beans into balls and netted them into straw ropes and hung them on the kitchen ceiling. On a spring day such as this she fetched them down again and cut them into pieces and soaked them in water spiced with hot red peppers. He would never taste such homemade foods again. His mother had died in the first year of his marriage, and she had not seen her first grandson. It was her dying cry.
“I shall not see my grandson!”
She had tried to stay alive, but death overcame her. Thinking of her, he walked on soberly, forgetting the bright day and the fair countryside, and the afternoon was well along by the time he passed over a bridge that spanned a small river near his father’s house. Along the banks the land women knelt on the earth and pounded the white garments on flat stones, their paddles sounding in crisp rhythm through the pellucid air. The country scene, dear and familiar, the atmosphere of peace, brought an ache to his heart. How long, how long could life remain unchanged?
His father put down his brush pen as Il-han entered. His son had been announced, but the elder did not lift his head until he saw the shadow across the low table upon which he wrote. Il-han then made the proper obeisance, which his father acknowledged by inclining his head and pointing to a cushion on the floor. Upon this cushion Il-han seated himself, a servant taking his outer coat from him.