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By Root 1008 0

refined at the palace, but I wouldn’t say so. “In public school, sir.” I’d completed the required two years of upper school and was just then missing the graduation ceremony. I had hoped to apply to Ewha Professional School, but that hope faded with the same smoke that now put Seoul behind me. The school’s original name had been Ewha Women’s College, but as with many other places and positions in Korea, its status had been demoted by the Japanese, who attempted to limit Korean women to vocational training, or believed we weren’t capable or worthy of academic achievement. Ewha was built by the American missionaries in 1886 as Korea’s first girls’ school, and over the years had grown in size and stature as Korea’s only women’s college. It maintained its prestige despite its loss of academic labeling, and though most of the school’s administrators were Japanese, nearly all the teachers were Korean. I longed to attend.

“There, you see?” said the woman. “Not a farm girl. I told you her clothes are too richly made.”

I lowered my eyes, annoyed at being the subject of their guessing game. My blouse and skirt were traditional white, plain, but the linen was finely combed, the stitching tight and invisible, my collar newly sewn in that morning. I thought of the colorful silks and brocades that Imo had insisted I take home, packed in a large old suitcase of hers now on the baggage rack at the end of the car, sure I’d never wear such showy clothes again.

“You see,” said the woman, her voice light and friendly. “You look the same age as his students, yet here you are during examinations traveling alone in first class. And most of his students have the most horrid Japanese. We’ve wondered if Korean girls are capable of speaking properly at all! So you’ve piqued our curiosity.”

The woman’s rudeness made it possible to ask my own questions. “Pardon me, sir, but are you a teacher?”

“At one time, yes,” he said. “Literature and history.”

His wife broke in, “Most recently, dean of admissions at Ewha!”

“How prestigious!” I said to flatter and supplement the woman’s crows of pride. “I’ve wanted to attend—”

“And why not?” The woman clutched her husband’s arm. “Give her your card, won’t you? Such a pretty thing and well spoken! Think how it would be if all the girls were as civilized as she.”

I had often seen this attitude from my schoolteachers and was practiced at hiding my reactions.

“Have you a certificate from secondary school?” The man dug in his chest pocket.

“I graduated this year while visiting my aunt in Seoul. I—I took the Ewha entrance examinations last month.” Imo had urged me to take the exams, saying, “Sown soybeans, reaped soybeans!” She’d given me a box of lead pencils for the occasion as well as the examination fees, which Father had neglected—or refused—to send.

“Good! And did you do well?”

“Yes, sir.” Modesty required silence about my first-place score.

The man watched me carefully. “Very well. I’ll look it up.” He handed me a fountain pen and two little cards. “Give me your name and that of your upper school, then apply as soon as you can. We’re considering applications now.”

I’d seen such pens used, but had never handled one. I opened it, heavy and cold with gold trim, and formally wrote my name in Chinese characters on one of his cards. I relished the pen’s easy flow of ink, and by the third syllable of my name, had mastered its ability to replicate the departure of brush from paper in a delicate swash, despite the bumpiness of the train. I returned the pen and extended the wet card between my fingertips. The man wiped the pen and scrubbed his palms with his handkerchief. “Han Najin,” he said professorially. “Beautifully done, but why don’t you write in Japanese?”

My cheeks flushed. They would be narrow enough to diminish the most ancient and elegant of letterforms in all of Asia, but Japan had perennial—and lately, escalating—problems with China. I remembered the proverb “The lower stream runs as clear as the upper stream,” and swallowed. Besides, it seemed this man—who thoroughly wiped his pen after I had