Tales of a Korean Grandmother Page 15

  "'How should I kill my beautiful wife?' Chu replied to the voice that came from under the bridge. 'She is good. She is kind. She has brought me only good luck. I could never do her harm.' And he went on his way.

  "The next time the young man crossed over the Chicken Bridge, the voice of his dead father came to him again. 'Kill that person in your house, my son. Your father's spirit commands you. She is a demon in woman's form. If she does not die before close of the fifteenth day, your own spirit will ride the winds to join me here on the Distant Shore.'

  "Now the young man was troubled. The voice that gave him this dire command sounded just like that of his own father. He was a good son who always had obeyed the words of his parents. But when he thought of the comfort and kindness which he had got from his good wife, he knew he never would kill her.

  "His heart was heavy. The fifteenth day dawned, and the hours passed one by one. At evening he went into the Inner Court. His wife did not move towards him as usual. She only sat on the soft white mat on the floor, as if lost in a dream.

  "As Chu watched in silence, her face turned first to dead white, then to pale green. The woman began to groan and to shiver. The man was spellbound. He did not dare touch her or call out her name, for he could see she was bewitched. At last, however, the sickness passed away from his wife's face. Joy filled Chu's heart when her skin cleared. She opened her eyes, and she began to speak to him.

  "'Why did you not kill me, as the voice under the bridge commanded you, Master of my House?'

  "'What strange words do you speak? What is their meaning?' Chu replied to her. 'How did you know about the voice under the bridge?'

  "I will tear the paper out of the windowpane of your understanding so that you may see clearly into the heart of that curious happening under the bridge,' Chu's wife said to him. it is a strange story, but it has a golden ending. By your kindness and your faithfulness you have released me from a terrible prison.

  "'You must know that, in an earlier life, the Jade Emperor of Heaven decided to punish me for some misdoing. He changed me from a woman into a centipede, and he set a great rooster to torment me. Through one life after another, that rooster has pursued me. Only after a thousand years had gone by, was I permitted to take on my former shape and become a woman again. But still my enemy followed me.

  "'Once I had become a woman, I was too large and too strong for the rooster to kill all by himself. His only hope was to persuade some man to perform the dreadful deed for him. It was the rooster's voice you heard, my husband, imitating your dead father. And it was your good heart that kept you from obeying that false command.

  "'This day ends the time that was given the rooster to destroy me. My spirit was fighting with his spirit when you came into the Inner Court this afternoon. As you see, I won the battle. Now, forever, am I free of him. Always and always, now, I may remain a woman and your wife. Peace lies before us.'

  "Next morning when Chu came to the Chicken Bridge, he climbed down to the spot whence the strange voice had come. There on the ground he found an enormous white rooster. Old, very old, it was. And as tall as Yong Tu. The rooster was dead, quite dead, my children. Never again did Chu's wife have to fear him. But to this day, a rooster will attack a centipede whenever the two meet."

  THE

  ROCK

  OF

  THE

  FALLING

  FLOWER

  WHY does our Jade Emperor let those 'little men' from Japan come into our land? No good will come of it." Halmoni shook her old head, and a frown darkened her calm face. Kim Hong Chip, her eldest son, had just returned from the Korean seaport of Fusan, and he had been telling his mother of the many Japanese he had seen there.

  It was not hard to recognize the Japanese. They had the same narrow eyes as Koreans, and the same broad high cheekbones. But their olive-skinned faces were darker, and they were not nearly so tall.

  Ever since the Emperor had signed the "paper of peace," permitting Japan to trade in the Hermit Kingdom, more and more of these "little men" came every year. Yong Tu's father even pointed them out to him as they walked together on the streets of Seoul. The boy looked at them, half curiously, half in fear. Halmoni had told the children about terrible things that had happened in the past when the Japanese armies crossed the sea to try to conquer their land. There were tales of people killed and cities burned.

  Worst of all, Yong Tu thought, was the story about the thousands of pickled Korean noses and ears which the Japanese soldiers took home with them after one of their visits. In the Japanese city of Kyoto, Halmoni said, these Korean noses and ears were put in a tomb. There was even a tablet set up to boast about the cruel deed.

  "A shrimp between whales is our Little Kingdom," the old woman declared again and again. "The great whale of China has often tried to swallow us up. But we made friends with China, and, like an elder brother, China helped us keep off the other whale called Japan. That island country of Japan has learned the strong magic of men from the Western Seas. It has grown very powerful. Ye, Japan wants to conquer the wide eastern world. It would make our little land a steppingstone to get at its giant enemy, China.

  "Ai-go! Ai-go! Not always will our tortoise ships turn back the Japanese fleet." The Korean grandmother spoke firmly, shaking her old head up and down.

  The story of Admiral Yi and his ironclad ship, shaped like a tortoise, was one of Yong Tu's favorite war stories. And it was a true story.

  "Nearly three hundred years before you were born, Yong Tu," Halmoni used to say to the boy, "the Japanese Navy set sail once again. Its ships were ferrying many thousands of soldiers across the sea to attack us. But this time a surprise was awaiting those ships. Coming to meet them from our Korean shore was a vessel whose like they never had seen. Shaped like a giant tortoise it was, with flame spurting forth from its sharp dragon's head. Flames burst from its sides also, from gun openings cut just above the holes for the oars.

  "Strangest of all, its curved tortoise back was covered with thick plates of strong iron. The shots from the Japanese guns bounced off this armor, falling harmlessly down into the water. None could destroy this ironclad tortoise ship. The Japanese soldiers and sailors were sure it was a spirit ship.

  "But the flaming shots from the tortoise ship which dropped on their decks quickly set the wooden Japanese war vessels afire. Its sharp dragon's head rammed holes in their sides. Soon all were destroyed. And the signal fires on the mountains told the King that our enemy had been driven away once again."

  Halmoni was telling her grandson about the very first iron-clad ship ever invented. The name of its maker, the clever Korean admiral, Yi Sun Sin, was honored throughout the entire Kingdom. It seems strange that more of these tortoise warships were not built, but the peaceful people of this Land of Morning Calm were content with their victory. "We can always build more tortoise ships when the need comes," they said, for they thought they had so frightened the Japanese that they would never attack them again.

  Ok Cha's favorite war story also told of a victory over the Japanese. In this story a young Korean, Nonga, the singing girl, danced a cruel Japanese general into the deep river and helped save her country.

  "But that happened before the coming of the tortoise ship, blessed girl," Halmoni explained. "It was when a great battle was being fought on the land. The dwarf men from Japan had come with ten thousand times ten thousand soldiers. They carried battle axes and long swords, daggers and spears, and they roamed over our country, killing our people and destroying our homes.

  "Ai, that was a bad time. Our tiger hunters and our other soldiers made a brave fight, but they were not strong enough. There was no general in all Korea so fierce as that one who led the Japanese Army, if we could only kill the General, our luck would turn,' the word went through the land.

  "As if he were a fierce Mountain Uncle, the tiger hunters set traps for the Japanese General. But he was too wary. The mudangs made their loudest charms, and the pansus chose lucky days for our attack
s. But not one was successful.

  "The Japanese General and his officers at last had conquered the whole country, ending with the little city of Chinjoo to the west. In spite of its double walls, they entered the town. They killed the Korean general who had defended Chinjoo, and they cut off the heads of the judge and the other city officials. The soldiers and tiger hunters scattered and fled, hiding themselves high up in the hills.

  "'Now we can rest,' the Japanese General said to his officers. 'What better place is there to celebrate victory than here in this pleasant valley?' Chinjoo was built on the banks of a fair, sparkling stream, where the water deepened and widened to form a true river. From the rocks along the river bank there could be seen many fine fish swimming about in the crystal clear waters. And it was the resthouse on that river which the Japanese General chose for his merrymaking.

  Ok Cha's favorite war story was about Nonga, the singing girl who danced the Japanese General into the deep river.

  "Hué, there was noise in that place when those 'dwarf men' celebrated their victory over our land. There was drinking and singing. There was laughing and shouting.

  "When the merriment was at its greatest, a girl dressed in the garb of a gesang appeared at the door of the resthouse. She was as fair as a silver moon in a starlit sky. Never had that Japanese General seen one to compare with her for beauty and grace.

  "'How is it you are here?' the General said to the singing girl. 'How dare you brave the enemies of your country like this? All your men are away, hid in the hills. There is none to defend you.'

  "I have come to thank the Great General for killing the judge of this city of Chinjoo,' the singing girl said, I am called Nonga, the gesang. My father was a good man, but a neighbor wrongly accused him before the judge. The cruel judge ordered that my poor father be paddled, and they beat him and beat him until they beat him to death. I vowed then that I would reward any man who should help me take revenge on that judge. You have cut off his head, and I have come here to keep my vow. I shall dance for you my best dances and sing for you my sweetest songs.'

  "The General gave the fair Nonga a seat at his side. He ordered tables of food and bowls of wine brought. Nonga's singing delighted him, and he wished her also to dance. 'There is a flat rock down there on the river bank,' the gesang said to the General. 'The air is cool and fresh, and one can look far, far down the green valley. Let us go to the river bank. There I will dance for the Honorable General.'

  "The beauty and grace of the gesang seemed to have bewitched the Japanese General. He followed her down to the water's edge and across the curious rocks which lay along the river bank. The girl led the way to a great table rock that rose high, high out of the water into the air. And she seated the General upon it, giving him more and more wine to drink from the bottles she had brought along in her basket.

  "Then Nonga began to dance. Her full, gay-colored sleeves floated in the soft air, and her graceful posing was like that of a flower bending in the summer breeze. The General nodded his befuddled head in time to her singing. Then he rose up to dance with her.

  "This was what Nonga had plotted and waited for. Winding her arms round the General's waist, she danced with him nearer and nearer the edge of the cliff. Then with one mighty leap she jumped off into the deep water, taking her country's enemy with her.

  "The Japanese soldiers on the bank of the river saw the hands of the General reaching out of the water toward the rock. But they saw, too, that the arms of the brave singing girl held his waist fast. As they watched, she dragged him down with her to the watery kingdom of the River Dragon."

  "What happened then, Halmoni?" Ok Cha could scarcely wait for the happy ending of the story.

  "Why, I suppose the River Dragon rewarded the good singing girl, Nonga, for her courage and her self-sacrifice. Perhaps the Dragon himself ferried her to the Heavenly Shore. Or perhaps he sent her back to earth again to marry a prince, like the girl in the story of Sim Chung, the blind man's dutiful daughter.

  "But the death of that Japanese General was indeed the turning point of that war. When they heard the news, the scattered Korean soldiers gathered once more. The tiger hunters returned from the hills. Then the signal fires on the mountains told the King that his land was saved once again from the dwarf men from Japan.

  "In Chinjoo a shrine was set up to honor Nonga, the gesang. People say once a year, on the date of her death, the water of that little river turns as red as blood in memory of her noble death. Some call this place the 'Righteous Rock,' but my grandmother always spoke of it as the 'Rock of the Falling Flower.'"

  EPILOGUE

  — MANY,

  MANY YEARS

  LATER

  OK CHA'S

  STRANGEST

  STORIES

  MY GRANDMOTHER always said no good would come of letting the Japanese into our land. And she spoke wise words." Ok Cha said this to her own grandchildren again and again in her old age. Many, many years had passed since she was a little girl, playing in the calm Inner Court of the Kim household. When she was fifteen years old, she had been put into the emerald-green dress of a Korean bride. With richly packed, brassbound chests going before, she journeyed in the gaily decked bride's chair to the Inner Court of her husband's family. Here her children and her grandchildren had been born. Here she hoped to live until the end of her life.

  Few remembered that her girlhood name had been Ok Cha. Now she was "Halmoni" to all the children in the household. It was about her that they gathered when they came home from school. Her face was even more wrinkled than that of her own grandmother had been. She, too, loved her grandchildren, and her bright eyes beamed with pleasure when they came now to her asking for a story.

  "The tales I tell you about tokgabis and animals that could talk came to me from my grandmother," Ok Chu often told the children. "They are strange tales, but they do not .seem half so strange to me as the things I have witnessed with my own eyes here in our Land of Morning Calm."

  Ok Cha had lived to see the end of World War II. She had lived to see Korea free once again after its long years of being the prisoner of its Japanese conqueror.

  And what changes she had seen in her long life! The children of her family all went to school now. girls as well as boys. Swinging their brass rice bowls in little string bags, they started off gaily each morning. The lessons they learned were very different from those which her brother, Yong Tu, used to repeat in his grandmother's apartment. In addition to the wise sayings of the ancient Chinese teachers, they studied geography, history, science, and arithmetic, just like the children of Western lands.

  These modern young Koreans knew all about streetcars, airplanes, and radios. They had ridden in busses and automobiles and even in trains, which some old people still called "fire wagons." It amused these children greatly to hear their old grandmother tell of the early times when such things were first brought into their country.

  "Open the door to one stranger, and a hundred rush in," Ok Cha often said, going back in her memory to the days when Korean ports were first opened to foreign trading ships. "I well remember my first sight of a man from America. I was riding with my mother in our sedan chair, and I was peeping out through the curtains. Ai, I was frightened by his sickly white face, his fuzzy hair, and his pale eyes.

  "Soon there were many Western Sea men like that one here in Korea. They traveled to our land from Europe, as well as from America. But it was the people from America we liked the best. They were our friends, especially the 'Jesus-believers' who had only good will in their hearts. They told us of their God. They set up schools for our girls as well as for our boys. I went to one such 'wake-up' school for a whole year. I stopped because my old-fashioned grandmother did not approve. She quickly arranged with the go-between for my marriage to your grandfather.

  "Best of all, the Americans brought us their magic medicine. It drove out the spirits of sickness far better than the charms of the most skillful mudang. Many a Korean life was saved by the Americ
an doctors in their 'sick-houses.'

  "Thousands of men and women here followed the teaching of those 'Jesus-men.' The pocket I am sewing into this suit I am making for my brother, Yong Tu, is a 'Bible pocket.' It was invented by the followers of these 'Jesus-men' for carrying their precious unmun Bible. Yong Tu himself is not a 'Jesus-believer,' but a pocket like this is useful for other things besides a book.

  "I can remember, too," Ok Cha would say, "the very first jinriksha the Japanese brought to our city of Seoul. We called it illukku in Korean. The chair porters liked to run between its small shafts. Its light seat, set between the two smoothly running wheels, was far easier to manage than a sedan chair slung between heavy poles. One man could easily pull a jinriksha, even when a fat yangban sat in it. The chair porters even preferred this new kind of vehicle to the ancient monocycle of the oldtime high officials. As they said, two wheels are always better than one."

  "And bicycles, Halmoni?" one of Ok Cha's grandsons asked. "What did you think when you first saw a bicycle?"

  "We called it a 'go-by-itself-wheel' because it needed no one at all to pull it. But the bicycle was not entirely new in our part of the world, at least my grandmother said so. She knew an old story about just such a two-wheeled affair that was invented long, long ago across the mountains in China.

  "The bicycle in that story had two parts upon it, a 'go-part' and a 'come-back part,'" the Korean grandmother explained. "A man who owned such a bicycle was busy one day repairing the come-back part, which he had taken off. Now his old mother was curious about this strange riding machine. She greatly wanted to try it. And when she saw it leaning up against the open gate, she mounted upon its seat and rode away down the street. On and on, over the countryside she went. She had a fine ride, but when the sun dropped down behind the western mountains, she wanted to return home. Of course she could not, for the come-back part had been taken off the riding machine. The old woman was never seen again in that town. And that's why the dangerous 'go-by-itself-wheel' was given up in old China."