The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea by Buck Pearl S

Author:Buck, Pearl S. [Buck, Pearl S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781453267462
Publisher: Moyer Bell and its subsidiaries
Published: 2012-08-20T14:00:00+00:00

Part III

III

“WHY DO YOU FOLLOW ME?” Yul-chun demanded. He bent over the small refractory hand press. It was too old, this press, worn out years ago in an American newspaper office in a country town in Ohio. Without it, nevertheless, the Independence News of Korea could not be published. As it was, the sheet appeared irregularly, although he had been able to keep it weekly after the Mansei Demonstration had been put down at the end of the World War. It was well that the press was small for he had to move it from place to place now that the revolution had to go underground again. Only in America could the Koreans continue openly in rebellion against the invaders.

The bitter tonic of anger and disappointment had invigorated him and others like him. When he left Yul-han’s house that night, he had not gone to China as he had said he would. Somewhere, by someone, he had been betrayed. As he stepped into the street, he had been seized in the dark by rough hands, and bound. He never saw the face of his captors but he knew by their muttered words that they were Japanese although they spoke in Korean. They had beaten him with the butts of their guns until he was insensible. When he woke he was once more in a cell in an old prison, lying on a floor of uneven stones laid on the earth. He did not know why he was not dead, why they had not killed him. No one was within sight or hearing. He heard no sign of voice or footsteps except that once a day a guard brought a bowl of millet and a gourd of water. He saw nothing of this guard except his hands, sliding open an aperture in the iron door. Slowly he had recovered until he was able to think of life again, and escape. Yet perhaps he could never have escaped had it not been for the madness of the Mansei Demonstration. He would not have escaped then except that the guard, handing in his food as usual, handed in a steel file, and still without a word. A steel file! The guard could only be a Korean, a traitorous Korean whose conscience was moved for some reason. He had taken the file without a word and had compelled himself to eat the miserable food to which he was sternly accustomed. He must have time to think. Was the file a trick to tempt him to escape? Were his murderers waiting outside the window?

Then he had heard, far off, like the surf of a distant ocean, the uproar of human voices. That had decided him. He must chance his escape. He worked all day on the thick iron mesh of the hole in die wall that served for light and air, an aperture too small, one would have supposed, for a human body, but he was bone-thin, a collapsible skeleton, he had told himself grimly, and he had forced himself through it in the night, tearing the flesh from shoulders and hips.

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