The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [36]
Books, New and Old
AUTUMN 1920
ALTHOUGH IT GALLED HAN THAT SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS HIS daughter’s walk to school could threaten his family, he warned Najin to give the police station wide berth. During his walks to town, he noted the increased number of Japanese “businessmen”—who, ridiculously, all wore black trench coats and gray fedoras—meaning the ranks of Thought Police in Gaeseong had multiplied. New spirals of barbed wire, glittering in the sun, topped the fortified concrete walls of the police station, behind which he heard trucks rumbling and the unison shouts of troops exercising.
In the marketplace, posters seeking certain men fluttered in the fall wind. He strode to the bookseller, his outer vest flapping, his head wrapped with a headband and topped with a horsehair hat despite their odd appearance on his shorn hair. A gnarled street sweeper crossed his path, causing him to wonder how such a man of low birth could feed himself since the price of rice had doubled. It made him consider his younger brother’s choice with less rancor.
Han’s only brother, Chungduk, had married the sole child of a logging family in Manchuria; wealthy landowners, yes, but commoners all the same. Chungduk had taken the position of eldest son in that family and declared that his wife’s family was as honorable as the Hans, who owned similar Manchurian forestlands. He claimed his status exactly matched that of the Han uncle who managed those lands. Chungduk added, scornfully, that at least someone in the family would be making real money.
Years before, after their father had died, just as Chungduk began his studies in Seoul with an old tutor from the closed Confucian Academy, it fell to Han to find his younger brother a wife. Han assumed that Chungduk would be married shortly after his studies, and hoped that a few seasons at home together would redefine their boyhood camaraderie on a scholarly level. He couldn’t have guessed how much change would occur in the three years of Chungduk’s absence, including dissolution of the yangban class, rise of a new intelligentsia spurred by multifarious newspapers and patriotic clubs, and Chungduk’s decision to attend the Methodist college. As soon as Han had adjusted to his head-of-household responsibilities, his new wife and her Christian religion, his mother died. At that time Han understood the Japanese at court coveted his paintings, but he believed that only the highest ministers, or the king himself, had authorized the commissions for his work. He continued to study the old texts, painting and writing calligraphy in classic style, refusing to see that the outside world encroached like wind and rain lapping at sandstone, eroding the once-solid ground that generations of Han men had stood upon to guide their lives.
Han ambled across the market square, passing a row of shops that included a photographer’s studio. He recalled the day Chungduk returned from Seoul, waving a photograph of a young woman. Han had greeted his brother warmly, taken aback by Chungduk’s height and strong features shed of adolescent ambiguity. But the familiar dimple appeared on Chungduk’s right cheek when he flashed the same broad smile, his eyes as mischievous as ever.
“Hyung-nim, Elder Brother,” Chungduk had said, flapping the photo. “I’ve decided to spare you the headache of finding me a wife. Wait until you meet her. She’s completely perfect!” He mentioned the woman’s family name and described their business in Manchuria.
Shock and disappointment had erased the joy of seeing Chungduk. “You couldn’t wait for me to find you a suitable wife. Instead you choose to dishonor this family by lowering yourself!”
And now, even as he felt a breeze penetrating his Western-barbered hair, Han refused to regret his decision. He could acknowledge,