The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online Page A

had held power and the military nobles were subdued to them? Yangban they both were in the dual aristocracy of the ancient Koryo era, and in theory the two divisions of the nobility, civilian and military, tangban and soban, were equal, although in practice the civilian tangban, to which his family had always belonged, were in ascendancy, since the soban could not rise beyond the third level in government service. Yet whenever the ruling house became corrupt the soban, the military, took power by force to end corruption. Thus it had been with the decadent king, Uijong, the eighteenth ruler in the age of Koryo. That king, aided and applauded by his civilian associates, had devoted his life to pleasure and foolish living, and on a certain night, while he was surrounded by women and drunken companions, the soban military leaders seized power and only after fierce struggle had the civilian tangban regained the throne. Now the times had circled again to the ancient struggle between civilian and soldier.
    How had such confusion come about? Suddenly and to his own surprise he was angry with himself that he had not studied more faithfully the history of the past. Perhaps now, when he was a grown man and father of sons, he might begin to believe what his father had so often told him.
    “My son, the past must be known before the present can be understood and the future faced with calm.”
    He had listened without hearing, weary of the past, sick of the adoration bestowed upon ancestors. Even now when his father met with his old friends they discussed nothing but the past.
    “Do you remember—do you remember—” every sentence began with the worn phrase. “Do you remember the golden age of the Koryo? Do you remember how we fought off that Japanese devil, Hideyoshi, who invaded our shores—”
    “Ah yes, but consider the Yi dynasty—”
    Well, it was not too late to mend his ignorance. He would go to his father and listen to him now, and hear.
    … “Sir, surely you will not walk?”
    The servant, holding his black silk outer garment, put the question with mild anxiety.
    “I will walk,” Il-han said.
    The man tied the wide bands of a black silk outer coat at his master’s right shoulder.
    “Shall I not follow you, sir?”
    “It is not necessary,” Il-han replied. “The day is fine, and I will tell my father of my second son’s birth.”
    The man persisted. “Sir, it has already been announced by the red cards. We sent them yesterday.”
    “Be silent,” Il-han commanded.
    He spoke with unusual impatience and the servant, feeling his master’s mood, bowed and followed behind him to the door. There he bowed again, and waiting for a few minutes, he followed at a distance without making himself known, while Il-han walked briskly through the cool spring air, warmed now by the sunshine.
    The stone-paved main street was busy with white-robed men and women, the women moving freely among the men. Once in his youth he had visited Peking. His father had been appointed emissary that year to present tribute to the Chinese Emperor and he, a lad of fifteen, had begged to go with him. Roaming the broad and dusty streets of Peking, he had been surprised to see no women except a few beggars and marketwomen.
    “Have the Chinese no women?” he had asked his father, one day.
    “They have, of course,” his father replied. “But their women are kept in the house where they belong. In our country”—he had paused here to laugh and shake his head ruefully—“the women are too much for us. Do you remember the old story of the henpecked husband?”
    They had been seated at their meal in an inn, he and his father, he remembered, and his father told him the story of that magistrate in Korea of ancient times who suffered because his wife was master in the house. The magistrate called together all the men of his district and explained his predicament Then he asked those men who also were pan-kwan , or henpecked, to move to the right side