… “Dr. Blaine, this is my cousin, Sasha.”
The American stopped in the corridor of the big new hospital. “I didn’t know you had a cousin.”
He put out his hand. Sasha looked at it and Liang laughed.
“He has not known Americans. Sasha, put out your hand, please, like this!”
Sasha put out his hand and felt the warm, strong, foreign hand. The American turned to Liang.
“Did you take that throat culture yesterday, Liang? The woman’s fever is up this morning.”
“The report is on your desk, sir.”
“Good.”
He hurried away, and the two young men went on. Sasha had never been in a hospital before but he was too proud to say so. He looked at everything as though he had seen such things, until at last they came to a ward of young men.
“This is my special ward,” Liang said. “I am responsible for these men. They are all wounded either by accident in some industry or in a political battle.”
“Battle!” Sasha exclaimed.
“Many battles,” Liang said. “We have our underground war. This patient, for example—”
He stopped by the bedside of a haggard boy of seventeen or eighteen. “How were you wounded, Yu-sin?”
“I am a student, sir. Our school went on strike with the factory workers — who get paid only half what Japanese workers get — we were marching — they attacked us with bayonets — we had only sticks we held over our shoulders, symbols of the guns forbidden to us.”
“He has a fractured skull, his right arm broken, three ribs — and a strip of flesh torn from his right hip.”
They went from bed to bed, Liang telling one story after another. In one bed a man lay near death and Liang sent for a nurse and a hypodermic, then called his superior. It was too late. The man ceased to breathe. Liang covered him with the sheet.
“No one knows who he is,” he told Sasha when they were outside again. “He was in the underground and would give no name, either his own or another.”
“How will they know he is gone?” Sasha asked.
“They know,” Liang said. “And another has already taken his place.”
Yul-chun seemed to live in idleness for many months after he returned to his father’s house. This was partly to deceive the Japanese police and partly to allow himself time to decide what he should do. It was true also that he found himself weary after so many years of danger and hardship. He had been plagued by pains in his joints while he walked south with Sasha, but he had not spoken of it, knowing he was under surveillance, and now he decided to return to writing while he waited for the war to end with victory for the western nations, as end it must since the Americans were using their vast national machinery for war. It was a bold decision. As long ago as the end of the war with Russia, Japan had forbidden such Korean newspapers as were not favorable to Japanese. When she annexed Korea in the Christian year 1910, all Korean newspapers were stopped. Only the underground newspaper upon which Yul-chun had worked during the Mansei Demonstration could not be stopped. Ten years later, however, three newspapers were allowed if they did not speak of political matters. The year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, these were stopped. There were now no newspapers in Korea except those Japanese. He prepared to publish as soon as possible not a newspaper but a magazine, wise, clever, subtle, which to an ignorant Japanese would show no hint of subversion, but to an intelligent Korean would convey information. It was not to be a magazine for the merchant, the trades, the landfolk or the seafolk. It was for the intellectual, for the thinkers, for the planners. He would take time for its conception, its preparation. He would choose his associates carefully, and none should be of his own family.
Yul-chun now assumed the life of a recluse and a scholar, traditional for one who had retired from public and political life. He put aside his western clothes and the trousers and jacket of the Chinese and wore the white robes of the Korean gentleman. He bought a horsehair hat, he let his beard grow, he seldom left his father’s house.
Il-han could only be delighted. He assigned two rooms for Yul-chun’s use and gave orders to the household that his son was not to be disturbed, which orders Sunia disobeyed whenever she felt that Yul-chun should be given food and tea. They were poor these days, and she had trouble to arrange for the delicacies she wished him to have, but Ippun was crafty and when she went to the markets she brought back more than she paid for, and Sunia asked no questions. In these times theft was right and lies were necessary.
The household settled itself around the two newcomers, and outwardly all was well enough so long as they were careful not to seem concerned with government. For Il-han this was easy. Age was creeping into his bones and marrow, and he lived in the past. He was typical of his people, conciliatory and peaceful, inclined to resignation. He quoted old proverbs more and more often to express what he could not put into words.
“Can one spit on a smiling face?” he inquired; or he said, “Vengeance cannot last a night’s sleep.” His only reproach to a lazy servant or an idle farmer on the land was a handful of gentle words. “The man who lies under a persimmon tree with his mouth open may never get food, however long his patience.” Most of the time he slept — the sudden short slumbers of the old. Only Sunia did not sleep or rest. She grew old very thin, but the handsome outline of her bones gave strength to her face and bearing. Only her voice did not change. Clear and strong, scolding or tender, to hear that voice without seeing her one would say she was a young woman.
Among these three, the young men lived a life of their own. The difference between them, Yul-chun reflected, was of communication. Sasha could not explain himself to others, nor could he understand beyond the sound of their words to him. But Liang moved in total comprehension. There was a genius in him, and it sent forth a shaft of light between him and every human being. He scarcely needed to speak, it seemed, for in the wholeness of his comprehension of the feelings, the thoughts, the very being of others, they gave him their confidence in return. Enlightenment, the Buddhists called it, and had Liang been Buddhist he would have been a high abbot, or if Tibetan, then a Dalai Lama, an incarnation. The result of this difference between Liang and Sasha was that Liang lived in peace and without apparent struggle, as though when he was born he had already climbed his mountain, while Sasha, imprisoned within himself, fought against the bonds of his own wayward moods, and could not climb beyond himself.
Yet Yul-chun was troubled. The joyful recognition which Liang had given him in babyhood was not renewed. Open as Liang was with him, ready always for talk or service, the special moment did not come and Yul-chun found himself waiting for it as though for ascension.
… In his quiet room in the house of his ancestors Yul-chun now began to spread the net which was to cover not only his own country but other countries as well. His purpose was twofold; first to prepare the Koreans for victory so that when the moment came and the Japanese were expelled, the nation would have its own government ready to function; and second, he planned to hasten victory by rousing the Koreans in other countries, and especially in the United States. Somewhere in the periphery of his mind and consciousness was the warning that Russia must be watched. For hundreds of years Russia had wanted Korea for its seacoast, its treasures of metals and minerals hidden in the mountains, its fisheries, the power of its rushing rivers and high tides. He did not believe that the heart of Russia was changed. Her ambitions might even be sharpened and intensified by a new government of hungry men, whose ancestors had been half-starved peasants. It was now their turn to grow fat and grow rich.