The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [144]
In the narthex he heard voices coming from the sanctuary. If the minister was busy, he’d return later in the day. He decided to check and opened the heavy wooden door. A dozen of the church elders were clustered in the front pews, talking animatedly. Having recently become aware of people’s attire, he noticed that all the men wore suits. He cleared his throat loudly. Deacon Hwang jumped to his feet, as did a few of the others, visibly turning red.
“W-w-we’re glad you c-c-could make it,” said Hwang as hastily as his speech would allow. Han chose to ignore the obvious, and content to see that the minister was not among them, asked for him.
“Please come in, sir, and have a seat,” said the new assistant pastor. He was a young man from the south who had struck Han as being too strident about the need for the church’s outright support of the chaotic independence movement, particularly the uneducated warmongering clansmen leaning toward communism. “The minister was called to the hospital.”
“I see,” said Han. He stood a moment, using his dignity to augment their discomfort at having neglected to include him in their meeting. “Good day, gentlemen.” He heard their dutiful protests, their respectful goodbyes and shuffling of feet as they stood and bowed, and he suspected he wasn’t imagining the relief he heard beneath their parting words.
He climbed down the broad steps of the stone church, his back bent. He noticed nothing in the market on his return trip except for an increasingly painful stitch in his side. By the time he reached the hill home, he was resolved that Ilsun, after marriage, would fight for his point of view in the church community. His dinosaur ways might be discounted in the immediate present, but time would prove that tradition and history could be relied upon as the guide to a national solution. And it’s possible, he thought as he rattled the outside bolt to his gate, that I’m wrong.
HAN GRACIOUSLY PRETENDED that nothing had occurred between himself and the churchmen, who gladly joined in Ilsun’s wedding celebration, which was a quiet affair followed by a meager yet costly banquet in the church hall. The bride, Min Unsook, immediately proved to be an exceptional wife: softspoken, harmonious in her manner, a capable cook and a fine example for Najin, not to mention Ilsun himself. His wife had only good things to say about their daughter-in-law’s contributions to the household. The responsibility for the family’s affairs shifted to Ilsun, who had graduated from upper school with respectable marks, although disappointingly not at the top of his class.
Winter draped the estate in snow and freezing sleet, and Han felt less and less inclined to take his daily walk. Reverend Ahn continued to beseech him to join in their clandestine meetings, and Han continued to send Ilsun in his place. His son reported little from these gatherings, which were held in the guise of Bible study at irregular times and locations. Ilsun merely said they were boring and that the copastor indeed had leftist leanings. Soon, the requirement that all public gatherings be police-monitored and delivered in Japanese language prevented meetings altogether. Still, the men managed to convey news and discuss politics in private social events.
Han said nothing when Ilsun permitted Najin to work at the mission school, and heard from his wife that his daughter was taking courses at the new medical college connected to the hospital. He privately hoped her training would help improve his daughter-in-law’s apparent inability to conceive. Based on the nighttime sounds from Ilsun’s rooms, Han didn’t have to tell his son to work harder toward that goal. He continued to read the newspapers and urged Ilsun to speak for him among the churchmen. Then, by summer, darkening changes made even this simple request too risky, and he told Ilsun to avoid talk of politics altogether.
In July 1937, training exercises on the Marco Polo Bridge just south of Peking escalated into a skirmish