The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [9]
Haejung’s father, former governor of the Hamgyeong Province and an esteemed Confucian scholar in the town of Nah-jin, had converted to Christianity when she was a child. At that time the religion was spreading rapidly, albeit cautiously, throughout Korea, partly because Christianity’s emphasis on ritual, its high moral standards and doctrine of responsibility toward social justice were analogous to Confucianism, making it easy to adopt.
The governor raised his children to be devout believers, and when Haejung grew to a marriageable age, he sought a Christian husband for her. And so, the yangban scholar Han, in order to join with a family as auspicious as his own lineage, had willingly converted. He had even learned to pray with the same fervor as Reverend Ahn, and being an artist, sometimes his prayers were more poetic than the minister’s. Nevertheless, Han carefully referred to all church business as “hers.” Like the token of the lesser quality wine and tobacco, Haejung knew it was his way of maintaining a semblance of Confucian orthodoxy.
Luckily there were no catastrophes in the news that week, no unsettling property conscriptions, no acquaintances accosted by the police, and mercifully, Najin for once had obeyed and behaved like a young lady around her father. On Friday evening Haejung went to her husband’s sitting room with sewing in hand. The slight shift in his features, as if the lamp had flared, showed his pleasure with her company, and she found his mood to be jovial. He smoked and read, and they talked off and on about the expanded train service, the increasingly reliable mail and this church member’s new grandson, that one’s sick wife. He said their farm had met the government’s first quota, and that it might be time to increase timber production from their forestlands in Manchuria. He would write to his uncle who oversaw the vast property that had long been in his family. By nearly shutting down production more than a decade ago during the Russian occupation of Manchuria, and with bribes, his family had held on to the timber forests.
Haejung showed him a mild questioning look, and he responded, “No, we’re fine, but there’s the building fund at your church.”
“Thank you,” she said. Her quiet tone belied the warmth of feeling this news brought. She never needed to ask for anything from her generous and considerate husband. They were like-minded—except, perhaps, regarding their daughter. She prayed for the right words to raise the subject of schooling for Najin, and instantly knew God must have heard her, because her husband said, “Hansu’s father is letting him go to that new school.” Chang Hansu, the neighbor’s son, was a few years older than Najin. The two sometimes played together in the gardens and by the pond.
Before she could say “How enterprising!” or something equally positive about the neighbor’s decision, her husband said, “I can’t understand how any educated man could send his son to those teachers. Think of the lies they’ll learn!” His volume and intensity grew, and the more he said, the more she knew her cause was lost. “Think of the propaganda those saber-wearing quacks will spew. The pirate teachers—peasants and shopkeepers—coming here for free land and opportunities stolen from our countrymen. Think of their maps—colonist geography! Their books— imperial revisionist history! And surely nothing classic will be taught. They mean to raise a nation of ignorant collaborator sheep. And what do we do? We turn our eyes aside, we forget our responsibility to the nation and send our sons to learn what to think—like sheep to this usurping shepherd, the emperor—pfah!”
She hid disappointment beneath her practiced composure and sewed. Disturbed by his analogy of the emperor as shepherd, she prayed to Jesus, the shepherd of men, to forgive his angry words. Keeping her body serene, she sighed internally. Of course it had been foolish