The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [162]
Damn that boy! Ilsun had more talent than he knew. What waste! In his father’s day, Ilsun could have been a renowned calligrapher, perhaps not the greatest of scholars, but a respected artist who might have become as famous as Han’s own teacher. The revered Chang Seungop had been a follower of the venerable Kim Cheonghui, who had founded the Southern School of painting, famous for diverting from Chinese tradition and originating an intense and original style. Scholar Chang was the last man to be designated a Korean Royal Treasure before the Yi Dynasty fell. How his work was lauded! Even China and Japan had recognized his genius. Who knew how many of Chang Seungop’s scrolls now hung in the “sacred” halls of the imperial palace?
As it was, Ilsun would never even reach Han’s level of scholarship. No one cared any more and his son had little awareness of his natural ability. Ilsun’s careless personality, irritating as it was, added spontaneity to his brushwork. Han’s work had tended toward restraint, a quality that had once given him great satisfaction, and that he later came to regard as academic and stodgy compared to the controlled yet vivid expressiveness of Scholar Chang’s brush—living strokes with a vitality also evident in Ilsun’s work.
Where had his son gone off to again? Ready to hear what the boy’s mother had to say, Han exhaled and looked at her.
“Yuhbo.” She kept her eyes on her sewing. “Dongsaeng told Nuna he was going to see Elder Kim about the scroll for his grandson.” The lines in the corners of her eyes bunched when she smiled, as if pointing out her pride for Ilsun.
He said nothing, glad that his hands were in his sleeves, for they twitched with fury. He turned to his book to hide his rage.
After a silence, she said carefully, “That was very enterprising, don’t you agree? He knows it’s distasteful to sell his art, but you yourself said he should apply himself to his work, and it seems he’s showing initiative.”
His anger had nothing to do with the mercantile aspect of his son’s work. Times required that such purism be sacrificed for the sake of food and medicine. Elder Kim, Han knew, was not in town. He had gone to his home village and his mother’s deathbed. A few days ago, Han had chanced upon him outside a photographer’s studio, where Elder Kim had picked up a portrait of his grandson to show his dying mother.
Han cleared his throat to release tightness in his neck. His wife glanced at him, expecting the conversation to continue. In a growing silence, he blindly read while she sewed tiny green knots on the hem of the pillowslip. They waited for Ilsun.
Najin appeared in the doorway with hands clasped, and he nodded to indicate she could enter. No matter how much he prayed, disappointment and anger still grated when he saw her. It made him tired. He knew that the reasons for the loss of the Gaeseong land were far more complicated than her husband’s letters and her imprisonment, but the old reaction of placing blame still flared. It’s not that he blamed her exactly, but rather what she represented in his family, in his country, whose continued existence depended upon the strength of its youth to uphold its history and traditions. Yes, even its women. Yet it was those very traditions that had rendered them unprepared and powerless. They had allowed for— perhaps even bred—corruption and weakness. He wanted only calm in these after-sixty years—years he had once anticipated being rich with poetry, philosophy and art, and in the background of his contemplative hours, a smoothly run house full of grandchildren. He felt the black pull of the enormity of his loss and failure. But here she was, his daughter, virtually a widow—and admittedly a woman of competence with a medical education that was helpful for Ilsun’s sickly wife.
She slipped to