The Calligrapher's Daughter Part 4

"Except I haven't any milk." I cupped the baby's head as I returned him.

She demonstrated her diapering method, her hands skillful, automatic. "It's simple to learn how to clean and dress a baby. Even to have a baby is a simple earthly thing. Understanding the physical world is nothing. Your father said the man he tried to help was stabbed in the shoulder through to his back. His ribs were caved in on one side as if he'd been kicked or trampled. Two other men helped your father carry the wounded man into a courtyard. They dropped him once because soldiers were beating everyone in sight. He saw a woman being hit with the b.u.t.t of a rifle. Her skull was crushed, but the soldier didn't stop. Aigu! What of her family? What will become of her children?" Mother kissed the baby's forehead, murmuring a prayer for the woman, the dead and wounded. I remembered the smell of my father's s.h.i.+rt, and the heavy perfume of lilacs.

"A Chinese man came out of the house and said he'd hide him and call their doctor. Those are good Christian people, even if they're Buddhist." This impressed me as an odd and curious thing to say. She swaddled the baby. "Najin-ah, alongside such goodness are those who know only evil. It's something you'll need to understand sooner than I'd hoped. I'm sure you'll want to know how such evil can exist, as do I." She spoke tightly with an anger I'd rarely seen. I crushed a diaper, both wanting and not wanting to hear more. Mostly, though, I badly wanted everything to be like before. "We can't know G.o.d's will," she said, "it's not for us to ask. But how can it not be when it's we who suffer?"

"Is it the Devil? Are the ancestors angry?"

Her eyes refocused toward me and her voice quieted. "Yes, certainly the work of Satan in all his evilness, but we can fully trust that Jesus will keep you and your brother safe. You needn't worry. You need only pray with all your heart and behave well. Be respectful and thoughtful of others, especially those less fortunate than us. Take care of your brother and father. Pray for our leaders. Pray for Korea."

"Yes, Umma-nim."

"You must give thanks that Father made it home. The Chinese man also wanted to hide your father, but that wouldn't be right. Your father stayed off the main road and saw nothing else. He said the streets were full of wailing."

Mother cuddled the baby and spontaneously returned his smile. "But here's a happy little boy. Your father can't wait to see you."

"Umma-nim, may I see him too?"

"A little later."

"I picked gosari gosari. He might like that tonight."

"I'll be sure to tell him you picked it just for him. Now see to your studies. I'll bring your father his food, then you and I can have a late supper."

I bowed and reluctantly left. Instead of studying in my lonely room, I took my writing pad to the kitchen, pretending to do homework while I watched to ensure that Cook dressed and sauteed the greens I'd picked for Father to perfection.

NIGHT FELL. AFTER the day's violence the dark seemed thick and ominous, the moon and stars buried in baleful clouds. Brittle winds from the mountains gusted through the house, shaking the windows and leaving behind a hostile chill. I was snuggled deeply in winter quilts when thunder woke me. Not thunder-pounding, metal on wood. j.a.panese shouts. Distant doors and shutters slammed and I heard quick footfalls outside.

Father called in j.a.panese, "One moment! Just a moment!" Then softly, "Byungjo, the gate!" Men banged on the st.u.r.dy wooden door, and the iron latch and hinges shook. "Yes, yes!" Father crossed the front yard, his shoes flapping.

Mother slipped into my room, the baby in one hand, the other pressed against her lips for silence. I couldn't see her eyes. The room felt cold with fear.

The gate slapped open and men shouted Father's name. "You must-"

A scuffle, curses, then I heard my father gasp and moan. More curses, grunts, and the gate clanged shut. From the neighbor's came m.u.f.fled commands, a woman's scream cut short and sounds of breaking wood. Faintly-shouts, screams and slams from other homes. Then silence.

I clutched my blanket and the baby whimpered. Mother opened her nightdress. The sound of his feeding and a far sighing wind in the bamboo left a strained quietude. Mother began to pray. I bowed my head to focus on her hushed sounds, the whispered words, the baby suckling, and nothing more.

"The Lord is my shepherd," began Mother, and I joined her.

It confused me to say, "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." How could anyone feast with one's enemies about? But I understood who the enemy was.

Mother said, "Go back to sleep. I think I must go out. If I'm gone too long, Cook will show you how to feed the baby rice water with honey."

"But I should go with you! Cook can-" I wanted to wrap my arms around her waist and scream that it wasn't safe.

"Not another word. I need you rested to watch your brother. Cook has her own worries." Mother put her finger on my lips. "This is the best way you can help your father." She dressed and took the baby to Cook.

Bundled in my blankets, I stayed sitting up and breathed in the last waft of milky scent as I listened to her pad down the hall and cross the yard to the servants' quarters. I buried my eyes in the darkness of my bedding and prayed, chanted, "Keep her safe. Keep her safe."

I WOKE TO a still house, remembered, and thought it too quiet. There'd be no church on this Sunday. After was.h.i.+ng and dressing quickly, I went to the kitchen where Kira rocked the whimpering baby while Cook boiled down rice water to feed him.

"Where's Mother?" I asked, scared when I saw Cook's face unnaturally red, eyes swollen and wrinkles deeply drawn. For the first time she struck me as being an old woman, but when she faced me, she looked nearly herself again.

"Joong is out with her. She'll be fine. Are your hands clean?"

I nodded.

Kira made room for me on a low bench beside the hearth. "Your mother said to show you how to feed the baby when there's no wet nurse."

I wanted to shout at them. How could they act like everything was normal? "Where did she go? Is- Was Abbuh-nim- Is he-dead?"

"Such crazy ideas!" Cook grasped my shoulders and turned me toward Kira and the baby. "Feed him first, then you can have breakfast." She turned to the stove and stirred honey into her bubbling reduction. "Not dead," she said. "They arrested him last night. Your mother went to find out why, and where. He's done nothing bad, and she's sure to get him released soon. Aigu! This morning the night-soil man said many were taken like that. He heard women crying in the houses. What a time we live in!" She wiped her face with her ap.r.o.n. "You're to stay close to home today. No wandering off. Your mother will want you to take care of your dongsaeng."

I untied him from Kira's back. He began to wail and I held him close. My arms felt heavier than the infant's weight. I watched the two women busy themselves in the kitchen and looked at my hands; their veins seemed filled with mud.

"Hold him thus." Kira repositioned the baby in my lap. He instinctively turned toward my heartbeat and flailed his arms at my chest, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

"Take this and knot it, see?" Kira dipped a twisted cloth into the soupy mix Cook had set before us. "It should be neither hot nor cold. You shouldn't really feel it."

I felt nothing of the moisture Kira dripped on my inner wrist and realized I didn't feel anything at all-not the roundness of the baby in my arms, his fists floundering at my unformed b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the temperature in the kitchen, my own weight on the bench. I took Kira's words to mean that I wasn't supposed to feel anything, and was relieved.

The baby quieted, rhythmically sucking the knot I repeatedly dipped for him. Kira left to replenish the cisterns from the stream while Cook prepared a breakfast of porridge and sauteed greens. I began to feel the kitchen's heat and hoped that this warm day might make my father suffer prison a little less.

I played aimlessly with the baby strapped to my back all morning, wandering through the courtyard and gardens, dawdling by the locked front gate, jealous that besides my brother's need for Mother's milk, he was unaware of our missing parents. I fed him twice more with the cloth and rice-water solution before Mother returned with Joong.

Mother kept her cloak fastened despite the warmth. Rea.s.sured that she acted calm, I saw that she also looked drawn, and fragile. Cook immediately set about preparing food for her. Mother held the baby a moment then gave him back to me. "Wait for me in my room," she said. "Ask Kira to bring bathwater. I have a few more things to take care of before I can feed him."

Mother spent some time in Father's sitting room. I heard her call for Joong, who hurried across the yard swallowing and wiping his mouth.

Between arranging flat pillows beside my mother's eating table and bouncing and tickling the baby to distract him from hunger, I paced the room. From the window I saw Joong again crossing the yard, stuffing letters into his vest. Mother finally came in and removed her cloak, revealing the front of her blouse and skirt stained dark with wetness.

"Is that blood?" I almost screamed.

"Heavens, no! It's milk your poor little brother didn't get to drink. Help me undress and bathe, so I can feed that hungry boy, will you?" She touched my cheek and let me gaze at her calm, tired eyes. "Your father's alive, in jail, although no one can say how he is. I haven't seen him, but the deacon and our friends are working to get him, the minister and others released."

My hands shook with relief as I helped my mother disrobe. I bathed her elegant neck and narrow shoulders, and with each stroke of the washcloth, I felt I was reclaiming a small amount of our lives from before. Mother said she'd keep the baby and rest, that I should thank G.o.d that Father was alive, and pray hard for his quick, safe release.

In my room I knelt on the floor, clasped my hands and squeezed my eyes shut. I tried to do as Mother said, but my head was filled with confusion and angry questions, my body anxious with fears that prayerful words couldn't a.s.suage. The mat felt rough against my ankles, and I wondered if my father's prison cell had flooring. Was he alone or with others? I hoped his stomach wasn't bothering him as it did when he was upset with me. I promised G.o.d that I'd be respectful to my father forever and would always be ladylike, someone who'd never be a bother to him again. I'd never forget he needed elegance and beauty around him, and I'd do all I could to provide that. I would eliminate my gangly manners and unruly ways, if only he would come home safely. The more promises I made, the more I felt alone and incompetent. I knew it was bad to think that G.o.d didn't really care about my family or me, but it seemed an easy truth.

The remainder of the day pa.s.sed with unusual quiet. Joong came and went once more with letters, and Mother kept to her room with the baby, praying. I sat for awhile inside my open doorway and listened. My mother's murmured prayers seeped down the hall and reached my hungry ears, the unintelligible sounds giving me more a.s.surance than any prayer I could voice. When the hallway grew silent, I tried to study for an arithmetic test and eventually fell asleep on papers carelessly scrawled with long division-homework from a time when homework mattered.

SEVEN DAYS Pa.s.sED, the house somber with the relentless strain of not knowing and waiting. A quick look out the gate showed dozens of posters fluttering from tree trunks and fence posts. They p.r.o.nounced a curfew and listed names of agitators. I almost stuck my entire head out to see more, until I saw two soldiers come out of the near alley dragging something across the street. I withdrew and quickly, quietly latched the gate, my chest pounding with what I'd seen.

Mother and I sewed and prayed together for many hours, which simultaneously irritated me, gave me calm and left me sleepy. Sewing was an endless ch.o.r.e. Skirts, pants and tops were deconstructed before laundering so the fabric would fold perfectly flat and we could beat out the wrinkles with two smooth sticks. St.i.tch after st.i.tch, threading one needle after another, I grew resentful of the necessity for Confucian perfection in dress. With Mother's help, I had begun studying the Four Books for Four Books for Women. Women. Though written in Korean, the vernacular was archaic and difficult, and many proper nouns were in Chinese characters. Schoolwork in j.a.panese and Korean had taken precedence over home studies, which left me weak in Chinese writing. I had recently read that a virtuous woman ensured that every member of the household was impeccably and properly clothed according to cla.s.s and family position. As my neck cramped over the exacting work, my head was abuzz with resentment. Who cared about impeccable s.h.i.+rts and virtuous dress when my father was in prison? Though written in Korean, the vernacular was archaic and difficult, and many proper nouns were in Chinese characters. Schoolwork in j.a.panese and Korean had taken precedence over home studies, which left me weak in Chinese writing. I had recently read that a virtuous woman ensured that every member of the household was impeccably and properly clothed according to cla.s.s and family position. As my neck cramped over the exacting work, my head was abuzz with resentment. Who cared about impeccable s.h.i.+rts and virtuous dress when my father was in prison?

Among unnamed errands that made my mother venture daily beyond the gate with Joong, she took as much food as she could carry to the prison. When she returned, her face was always gray, her eyes dark, their expression hidden. There was no way to know if the rice was actually delivered to any of the prisoners. The unusually temperate days and the sweet smells of spring were an affront to our vigil. Playing with Dongsaeng was a distracting, guilty relief. On Monday Mother said the authorities had announced that all businesses must reopen, and children were required to return to school. She refused to let me go. She herself did not visit the market, and we ate dried fish left over from winter storage. I wasn't allowed to leave the estate, and I a.s.sumed that Mother was too afraid to have me outside our walls. In the meantime, we waited for news about Father.

On the seventeenth night after his arrest, I woke to scratching sounds at the front gate. My eyes snapped wide to the fading black of predawn, and I heard my father's muted voice, "Yuhbo-"

Mother rushed by my door, calling for the menservants.

"Wait-" I yanked off my covers.

"Watch the baby!"

The gate creaked open and Mother cried out. Father said things I couldn't discern. I heard Byungjo's and Joong's voices, then receding shuffles. In my mother's room, I tucked myself in beside my sleeping baby brother, telling him not to worry, Father was home now. G.o.d did watch over him after all. All was well, at least for now. "You're safe with me, Little Brother," I said. "I'll never leave you. I'll take care of you always." I said a silent prayer of thanks, whispering that I wouldn't forget the promises I'd made.

In the morning they remained cloistered in Father's rooms. Cook delivered the baby to Mother for feeding, but I wasn't allowed to go in. I broke several rules of protocol by eating breakfast in the kitchen with Kira and Cook, who told me they'd heard that nearly all the town's men who weren't already in jail had since been arrested. Several were missing entirely. Cook said, "It's a lucky thing your family knows how to make influence." She turned her body, but I saw her make a counting-money gesture to Kira.

I was kept from my father for two weeks, until his most p.r.o.nounced bruises healed. When allowed to see him at last, I was warned not to show in my face anything that might indicate his changed appearance, including his head, shaved of its topknot. My mother's instructions on this point were so firm that I barely dared to look at him at all, and it took several days of surrept.i.tious peeks to understand that he'd been severely beaten-far more than the last time. His face wasn't as monstrously swollen as then; his cheeks were gaunt and lax. It was worse. With stooped shoulders and eyes that looked vacantly at me, his presence was wraithlike. His st.i.tched head wound seemed like a careless, forgotten brushstroke. Visible through bandages wrapped like a leper's, his thumbs were enormous and black. The first few times I saw him, his empty stare reminded me of what I had seen outside our gate soon after that joyous and then terrifying day. The two soldiers had dragged from the alley a dead body-bloated, stiff, the color of dirt. Only when I saw the clothes did I know it was a woman. Her gruesome remains, the foul stink, the flies, the utter absence of life in her body, I would never forget.

Although he breathed, ate and slept, even smoked, my father seemed like that the first few times I was allowed to see him. Only when my baby brother was laid in his lap did I see a glimmer of my father, and only then was I not afraid of him.

I finally did go back to the cla.s.sroom several weeks after the command to return to school. I discovered that none of Korea's children had complied with the command, nor had the businesses reopened for some time, and I realized it was defiance that had closed the shops and kept me home.

Over time, we learned that the national demonstration had prompted unprecedented brutality from the military and police. Months later I heard whispered reports at church about ma.s.sacre and carnage: all the men in one village burned alive in a chapel, women and girls humiliated, slashed and shot, countless beheadings, people beaten unconscious and revived to be beaten again. Half of the men from our neighborhood who had gone to Seoul were dead. The remainder were imprisoned, flogged and tortured to reveal the names of the movement's leaders.

Our neighbor, Hansu's father, had also been arrested, beaten and eventually released. When he recovered, he and Hansu's mother traveled to Seoul at great risk and found their son still alive, although wounded, and sentenced to West Gate Prison for eighteen months. They returned to raise money for bribes that could reduce his term or at least improve his conditions. I took all the jeon I'd received for good schoolwork, and a chipped jade comb my mother had given me long ago, and slipped them through the neighbor's front gate wrapped in a piece of paper marked only with his name.

One Hundred Days

MAY 31, 1919.

UNCEASING GRIM NEWS OF THE FAILED MOVEMENT BLANKETED THE city. A solemn household and intermittent rains during three days of preparations for the baby's One Hundredth Day naming ceremony chastened my antic.i.p.ation of the occasion. Earlier, I'd heard my parents discussing the propriety of hosting such a party at all, but Father said, "It's in such times as these that we must rely on our traditions and continue to observe them."

"I worry that we appear to feast when others have suffered much more than we," said Mother.

"We aren't feasting, Yuhbo," he said after a characteristic long pause. "We're flaunting our way. They cannot suppress forty-five centuries of a people in one season of violence."

I had felt renewed purpose then in my search for the tokens that were needed to forecast the baby's future. When Mother had enlisted me to gather the items, she said our paths were carved by G.o.d, not fate or folklore, but this was tradition and harmless. After the naming, the gathered objects would be spread on a table in front of the baby, concealed by a cloth. The cloth would be lifted, and the item the baby chose would foretell his professional destiny. If he grasped the brush in his chubby fist, he would be a scholar. The abacus meant businessman; the brick, a mason; the pen, a clerk; the nail, a carpenter; the coin, a man of wealth; and if he chose the skein of thread, he'd be guaranteed a long life. Mother had added to the list of items a wooden crucifix for pastor, and Father would place on the table a small gift that the Daewongun, Emperor Gojong's father, had given to my grandfather: a polished bronze signet to commemorate his scholars.h.i.+p, painting and calligraphy. This token was what Father himself had chosen on his own One Hundredth Day.

I cleaned the objects, found a suitable length of pale green silk to cover them, and wondered what I would have reached for if Han girls were allowed a One Hundredth Day celebration. Before I delivered the items to Mother, I arranged them on my study desk and tried to spontaneously pick one with my eyes closed. But no manner of turning the table or shuffling the objects blindly in an attempt to fool myself gave authenticity to my choice of the pencil I'd added to symbolize teaching, and I gave up with a sigh.

WHEN THE SUN reached its zenith on the day of the celebration, it melted a haze of cloud and fog. Soon, warm breezes from the south dried the rain-soaked flagstones in the courtyards. Streaks of water evaporated and puddles swirled with wind. The guests arrived. I helped arrange tables and mats, and carried platters from the kitchen. The elders gathered in the rarely used audience room for the naming ceremony, and to witness the forecasting.

I squeezed between the women in the courtyard, who hovered around the younger men on the porch, who in turn jostled for position around the wide-open doors and windows to watch. Seated inside, knee to knee, were men who were fathers, brothers, uncles and grandfathers of victims of Sam-il-the failed March First movement. Many of the older men were dressed in the straw sandals of mourning, their pristine white hanbok a somber backdrop to the food tables stacked with delicacies. Oranges, apples, plums and buns stuffed with sweet bean paste or dates towered in neat columns among platters piled with rice cakes that had been rolled in green, red or beige pulverized peas and powdered grain. Displays of pure white rice cakes the guests would take home were positioned like guards by the doorways and gate. It may have been sinful, but I felt proud when I heard the murmured exclamations over the lavish party food; the men impressed with the cost, the women impressed with the artistry.

Plump as a dumpling, my baby brother sat propped on pillows in silken finery behind a broad lacquer table. His transparent blue peaked silk cap, edged with a gold geometric pattern, bobbed beside vertical piles of pastries, and his rainbow-striped sleeves brushed precariously against carefully arranged fruit. People smiled and slapped their fans open and shut, seeing hope in the boy's puffy cheeks, and as wine was poured, more laughter was heard.

Father asked for a prayer from Reverend Ahn, who appeared weakened from his time in jail. But when he asked G.o.d to bless this new son of our beloved nation, his voice rang clear and true, and with sound and word he delivered a message of pride, strength and perseverance to all who could hear. Old men and women wept. Young men straightened their shoulders, their eyes fierce. Then Father stood with Dongsaeng in his arms and ceremoniously uttered his first son's name: Ilsun. Ilsun. People clapped and called out approvingly. Mother positioned Dongsaeng-as was proper, I would always call him People clapped and called out approvingly. Mother positioned Dongsaeng-as was proper, I would always call him Dongsaeng Dongsaeng, Younger Sibling-in front of the forecasting table. Father swept aside the cloth covering the objects, and a corner of the silk flicked a nearby plate of sorghum b.a.l.l.s, tossing one directly into Dongsaeng's lap. Everyone laughed as the baby raised it to his mouth, so no one but I noticed the fleeting change in Mother's expression. Did she think the sweet was Dongsaeng's choice? What did it mean?

Sunlight sparkled on the surface of the king's signet, and the baby picked it up. Shouts and clapping filled the room. Startled by the noise, Dongsaeng cried. Father grabbed him and swung him high, nodding and smiling to the cheers of the men calling, "Yah-just like his father and his father's father. The emperor's loyal artists, the king's favored calligraphers!"

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 j.a.panese "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 a.s.sumed 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 cla.s.s, 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 j.a.panese 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 cla.s.sic 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, pa.s.sing 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, however, that it had been conceived in anger, particularly since his brother had said, "Better a commoner who can feed his family than a yangban with no position, dwindling funds and no future. Tell me what your old-fas.h.i.+oned education is doing for you now!"

"How dare you speak to me thus!" he'd said to this rebellious stranger in Chungduk's body.

"Hyung-nim, it's 1907! I have the right to choose my own wife."

Enraged that tradition would be sacrificed so quickly for so little, Han had spoken the last words he would utter to Chungduk. He had stood and turned aside. "No brother of mine would ever consider such a thing." But now, as he climbed the few steps to the bookstore, Han saw that his heart believed otherwise, for his mind's eye was full of the laughing dimpled boy he'd taught to swim in the back pond. Perhaps their ancestors or fate-or G.o.d-would intervene.

In the bookstore, Mr. Pahk removed his spectacles and greeted him cordially. Han breathed in the comfortable mustiness of aging paper and ink. The dust held the light as if it were filtered through old trees in a forest glen. "Have a seat," said the bookseller. He produced a stool from behind a narrow counter and slid aside piles of magazines and newspapers. He shook his head, his thick lips gloomy. "I'm afraid more are gone." He made a striking-match gesture.

Han's stomach turned acidic. He said nothing for a time, then swallowed. "Yah, I wondered when they'd find your mother lode."

"They warned me that I must carry only authorized periodicals and books." Pahk wiped his gla.s.ses on his sleeve and rewound them around his fleshy ears. "I know I was lucky for too long." His eyes appeared enlarged through the lenses as he peered at Han. "Now it's up to you."

The two men stroked their beards. Han shuffled through the newspapers and magazines on the counter, then sat upright to examine a slim bound journal printed in Korean. "What's this?"

"Hmpf. 'New cultural policy,' they say. A 'literary' magazine delivered from Seoul this morning. Propaganda written in Korean to fool us." Pahk spat.

Han quickly scanned the bylines. "I've heard of this man. He's an intellectual, and him, too." He shuffled through the pages. "These are all patriots! Have you read any of this?"

Pahk s.n.a.t.c.hed a copy from the counter and pored through it. "I didn't believe the rumors, but it's true. And there's the government stamp. New cultural policy! So that explains all those Korean Christian newspapers from Seoul."