The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [50]
Although Ilsun’s tutor, Khang, was quite old and not at all famed, he was a chinsa, a certified poet-scholar in the old tradition, and a vestige of the crumbling Confucian University in southern Gaeseong. Han had enjoyed a few evenings discussing poetry, history and philosophy with him, confirming that Khang was sufficiently versed to take on Ilsun’s classical education.
Every now and then, during his habitual morning walk through his estate and to town, Han stopped in his son’s study to listen to Ilsun’s lessons. He appreciated the detailed attention Khang Chinsa gave to the T’ang Dynasty classics, and the chinsa’s firm reproaches for Ilsun’s mistakes. Hearing his son’s five-year-old timbre reciting passages with exquisite clarity brought pride that wet Han’s eyes. But his hardest struggle against pride was when he regarded Ilsun’s calligraphy. For one so young, the boy showed remarkable communion with the brush. He had a natural instinct for pressure and stroke, as if his little boy’s arm possessed an ancient sage’s wisdom of the correct life force needed to express harmony between letterform and its meaning.
Yes, Han expected greatness from Ilsun. He refused to lament that Korea might never again be the kind of genteel nation that recognized classical scholarship and artistry. In one mere decade he’d witnessed a dependable and flourishing way of life, which had remained unchanged for centuries, fray like the tail of a kite caught in the razor winds of imperial breath. Winds of such violence could just as easily blow the other way.
Using a sophisticated code of metaphor and nuance that had developed among the yangban resistance, Han ended his sincere response to Chae’s marriage proposal with a poem that reported on the growing presence of Japanese spies and the workings of key individuals in Gaeseong’s independence movement:
Abundant growth in eastern fields shall triple both labor and yield.
In fallow soil the farmers toil, while westbound crane and steadfast mule
Cry songs, sow seeds, and evening’s sun sets five hundred beams upon them.
With this, Han conveyed that the number of Japanese police had multiplied, and revolutionaries with the code names Crane and Mule had traveled west to Shanghai with five hundred won for Rhee’s provisional government. By “songs” and “seeds,” Han alerted Chae to watch for articles published by the men in the national Christian weekly. He felt confident that the unrefined Japanese censors would see nothing hidden in a dreadful sijo about farming! He considered the large sum he’d given to “Crane” for Shanghai. He would have to reduce such contributions, though they never ceased asking for more. Taxes took anything extra from the farm, and it had been months since his last painting commission, a simple calligraphic scroll. Once he saw that a known collaborator in the palace had stamped the commission, he never fulfilled the order. With no income from calligraphy or painting, every donation he made to Shanghai now came directly from the family savings. This was the other reason Chae’s proposal for his daughter’s hand was timely; Han could no longer afford private secondary school for her or, God forbid, fees for Ewha Women’s College.
He called for Joong, who hurried across the courtyard, shoes flapping. His servant crouched in the doorway to receive instructions. Joong, narrow-framed with a chest like a spoon, was yet unmarried at thirty-one. High cheekbones accented the crescents of his eyes and a boned ridge along his brow. His family had been serfs and slaves to generations of Hans. Slavery was abolished by the reforms, but Joong’s mother, uncles, brothers and their wives still tended Han farmlands in a village sixty li north. As part of his household position, Joong received Han’s worn