“Furthermore, Majesty,” he wrote, “I am troubled that the British have moved ships to the island of Komudo, so near to our coasts. I understand that they wish the Chinese armed forces to leave Seoul, with which I cannot agree, for Japan is demanding that she be allowed to send troops to Korea in case of emergency. What emergency can arise in our country which would need Japanese soldiers? Is this not the ancient and undying desire of Japan for westward empire? Shall we allow our country to be a stepping-stone to China and beyond China to Asia itself?”
He was interrupted by the opening of a door and lifting his head, he heard his son’s voice, a subdued wail.
“I will not go to my father!”
He rose and flung open the door. His son’s tutor stood there, and his son was clinging to the young man’s neck.
“Forgive me, sir,” the tutor said. He turned to the child. “Tell your father what you have done.”
He tried to set the boy on his feet but the boy clung to him as stubbornly as a small monkey. Il-han pulled the child away by force and set him on his feet.
“Stand,” he commanded. “Lift your head!”
The child obeyed, his dark eyes filled with tears. Yet he did not look his father full in the face, which would have been to show lack of respect.
“Now speak,” Il-han commanded.
The child made the effort, opened his mouth and strangled a sob. He could only look at his father in piteous silence.
“It is I, sir, who should speak first,” the tutor said. “You have entrusted your son to me. When he commits a fault, it is my failing. This morning he would not come to the schoolroom. He has been rebellious of late. He does not wish to memorize the Confucian ode I have set for him to learn — a very simple ode, suitable for his age. When I saw he was not in the schoolroom, I went in search of him. He was in the bamboo grove. Alas, he had destroyed several of the young shoots!”
The child looked up at his father, still speechless, his face twisted in a mask of weeping.
“Did you do so?” Il-han demanded.
The child nodded.
Il-han refused to allow himself pity, although his heart went soft at the sight of this small woeful face.
“Why did you destroy the young bamboos?” His voice was gentle in spite of himself.
The child shook his head.
Il-han turned to the tutor. “You did well to bring him to me. Now leave us. I will deal with my son.”
The young man hesitated, a look of concern on his mild face. Il-han smiled.
“No, I will not beat him.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The young man bowed and left the room. Without further talk Il-han took his son’s hand and led him into the garden, and then to the bamboo grove by its southern wall. It was plain to see what had happened. The young shoots, ivory white and sheathed in their casings of pale green, were well above ground. Of several hundreds, some tens were broken off and lying on the mossy earth. Il-han stopped, his hand still clasping the small hot hand of his son.
“This is what you did?” he inquired.
The child nodded.
“Do you still not know why?”
The child shook his head and his large dark eyes filled with fresh tears. Il-han led him to a Chinese porcelain garden seat, and lifted him to his knee. He smoothed the child’s hair from his forehead, and pride swelled into his heart. The boy was straight and slim and tall for his years. He had the clear white skin, the leaf-brown eyes, the brown hair of his people, different from the darker Japanese, a living reminder that those invaders must not be tolerated in Korea.
“I know why you did it, my son,” he said gently. “You were angry about something. You forgot what I have taught you — a superior person does not allow himself to show anger. But you were angry and you did not dare tell your tutor that you were angry and so you came here, alone, where no one could see you, and you destroyed the young bamboos, which are helpless. Is that what you did?”
Tears flowed from the boy’s eyes. He sobbed.
“Yet you knew,” the father continued with relentless gentleness, “you knew that bamboo shoots are valuable. Why are they valuable?”
“We — we — like to eat them,” the child whispered.
“Yes,” the father said gravely, “we like to eat them, and it is in the spring that they can be eaten. But more than that, they grow only once from the root. The plants these shoots might have been, waving their delicate leaves in the winds of summer, will never live. The shoots crack the earth in spring, they grow quickly and in a year they have finished their growth. You have destroyed food, you have destroyed life. Though it is only a hollow reed, it is a living reed. Now the roots must send up other shoots to take the place of those you have destroyed. Do you understand me?”
The child shook his head. Il-han sighed. “It is not enough to learn your letters or even enough to learn the odes of Confucius. You must learn the inner meanings. Come with me to the library.”
He lifted the child from his knee and led him in silence to the library again. There he took from the shelves a long narrow box covered with yellow brocaded satin. He unhinged the silver hasp and lifted from the box a scroll which he unrolled upon the table.
“This,” he said, “is a map of our country. Observe how it lies between three other countries. Here to the north is Russia, this nation to the west is China, and this to the east is Japan. Are we larger or smaller than they?”
The child stared at the map soberly. “We are very small,” he said after a moment.
“Korea is small,” his father agreed. “And we are always in danger. Therefore we must be brave, therefore we must be proud. We must keep ourselves free, we must not allow these other nations to eat us up as they wish always to do. They have attacked us again and again, but we have repulsed them. How do you think we have done this?”
The child shook his head.
“I will tell you,” Il-han said. “Time and again brave men offer themselves as our leaders. They come up from the high-born yangban as we do, or they come from the landfolk. It does not matter where they come from. When the need arises they are here, ready to lead us. They are like the bamboo shoots that must replace those you have now destroyed. They will spring from the roots that are hidden in the earth.”
The child looked up with lively eyes, he listened, stretching his mind to understand what his father was saying. Whether he did understand Il-han never knew, for at this moment he heard the cry of the newborn child. The door opened and the old midwife appeared, her face wrinkled in smiles.
“Sir,” she said. “You have a second son.”
Joy rushed into his heart.
“Take this child to his tutor,” he said.
He pushed the boy into the midwife’s arms, and heedless of his son’s calling after him he hastened away.
… In his wife’s bedchamber they were waiting for him, the maidservants, the women who had come to assist, and above all Sunia, his wife. She lay on the mattress spread on the warm floor and the women had arranged her for his arrival. They had brushed her hair and wiped the sweat of childbirth from her face and hands and had spread a rose-pink silken cover upon her bed. She smiled up at him as he stood above her and his love for her rushed up and all but choked him. Her oval face was classic in beauty, not a soft face, and perhaps more proud than gentle, but he knew well her deep inner tenderness. Her skin was cream white, and at this moment without the high color natural to her. Her eyes, leaf-brown, were drowsy with weariness and content, and her long dark hair, soft and straight, was brushed and spread over the flat pillow.