The 111-Year Prophecy 1-4: A Son Born to the Head House

Section 4 — A Son Born to the Head House

On the fourteenth of the fourth month in the year Gyeongin (1890), a child was born to the Yeon head house of Cheongsugol.

That spring was not like the spring thirty years before, when So-mun was born. Then the old snow had lingered and spring had come slowly; this spring came unusually early. Before the third month the azaleas had spread red over the mountain skirts, and as the fourth month came in the whole valley swelled pale green. In the yard of the head house the old persimmon tree blossomed that spring too. It was the tree that had burst into early bloom at dawn on the day So-mun was born, thirty years before. Its trunk was thicker now and its branches dense enough to cover the sky, but every fourth month without fail it put out its yellowish-white flowers. Around the time those flowers were in full bloom, new life came to the head house.

The pains began in the early evening. Choe Do-hyang had been heavy for seven days and had kept indoors, and that evening the labor began. So-mun heard the news in the men’s quarters. As his own father had done thirty years before, So-mun too sat at the end of the wooden floor, facing the birthing room, and prepared to sit the night out. But his mind was not what his father’s had been that day. If the father of thirty years ago had been simply any father waiting for a first child, So-mun seemed already to know deep in his heart what kind of child this was, the child who had come at last under a roof empty for six or seven years. The moment was approaching when the prayer he had prayed and prayed again before the dawn water would be answered.

As the night deepened, the labor dragged on. This was the first child of a couple long married, and Choe Do-hyang had once lost a child before, so the midwife worried over the mother’s age. A first delivery past twenty-seven would not be easy, she said. From the birthing room the midwife’s urgent voice and Choe Do-hyang’s stifled moans leaked out by turns. So-mun came down from the floor and stood in the middle of the yard. And under the persimmon tree he looked up at the sky and chanted without a sound. *Si-cheon-ju jo-hwa-jeong yeong-se-bul-mang man-sa-ji.* The thirteen syllables that had flowed from the grown-ups’ mouths on the flat rock in the mountains the night they sent off the Teacher, thirty years before, So-mun now chanted praying for the safe birth of his own child. The sound that had sent off a death had become the sound that welcomed a life.

In the night sky hung a moon one day short of full. The moon of the fourteenth of the fourth month was almost round, but one edge was still a little wanting, and that not-quite-full moonlight settled softly on the white flowers of the persimmon tree and lit the yard a pale grey. Looking at that moon, So-mun suddenly thought: the moon wanes and fills again, fills and wanes again. But to wane is not to vanish; it only hides its shape a while, and when the time comes it fills again without fail. Would the fate of this country be so too? Now it had waned without limit and sunk into darkness; would it one day fill again? And would this child about to be born be the seed that filled that filling, like that moon which tomorrow would be whole?

While he was sunk in such thoughts, the child’s cry broke from the birthing room.

It was a lusty cry. Quite unlike thirty years before, when So-mun had cried once and stopped. This child cried as if to bring the world down. The cry was so loud and strong that even So-mun in the yard stopped short, startled. Soon the midwife opened the door and came out, her tired face full of laughter, and called:

“A son! A son with a cry on him like that!”

So-mun went into the birthing room. Choe Do-hyang lay with her face wet with sweat, but with eyes more at peace than he had ever seen them. Beside her a small red child, wrapped in a cotton swaddling cloth, was crying with all its strength. So-mun knelt and took the child up in both hands. It was the very place, the very room, where his own father had held him thirty years before. The child’s weight settled into his two arms. The heaviness his father had felt thirty years ago, So-mun now felt in his own arms. The child was light, but the lightness was heavy, as if the whole house, the whole country, all the hundred years not yet come were laid upon it.

So-mun lifted the crying child and turned its face toward the window where the moonlight came in. And the child stopped crying. The child who a moment ago had been crying to bring the world down, held in its father’s arms and turned toward the faint moonlight beyond the window, stopped short. And opened its eyes. The red, swollen eyes of a newborn slowly opened and sought the father’s face. So-mun stopped breathing. Those were the eyes. The still eyes of one who has come already knowing, the eyes his father said he had seen looking down at him thirty years before. Those eyes had crossed a generation and come down to this child.

Something hot ran down from So-mun’s two eyes. They were tears he had not shed when he was beaten as a believer. Tears he had swallowed when he was dragged off by the runners and interrogated. Those tears now ran uncontrollably before this small life. They were tears that overflowed the vessel the body could hold.

The roof had been empty six or seven years. In that time So-mun had worried over the disordered world and asked himself countless times whether it was right to have a child in this darkness. Even as he prayed and prayed before the dawn water, in a corner of his heart the question had always remained. Was the world this child would be born into and suffer truly a world worth being born into? But now, facing this frail life held in his two arms, all those questions were idle. Because the darkness was deep, this light had all the more to be born. Because the world was in disorder, this life was all the more precious. So-mun laid his cheek gently against the child’s face. The frail warmth of the newborn seeped into his cold cheek. That one warmth warmed six or seven years of waiting.

“You have done well.”

So-mun said it softly to his wife, the child in his arms. Choe Do-hyang saw her husband’s wet face and smiled faintly. Her own eyes were wet too.

“This child…” Choe Do-hyang’s voice was thin but clear. “The moment this child came into the world, I saw something strange.”

So-mun looked at his wife.

“The room went bright as noon. Though the lamp was not so bright… And when this child’s cry filled the room, it was not just a crying sound…” Choe Do-hyang chose her words a moment. “It sounded like a sound that was calling something. As if calling someone who had not yet come.”

So-mun could say nothing. On the day he himself was born, thirty years before, the midwife had said the lamps in the room all brightened at once. Across a generation the same thing was happening again. He shifted the child in his arms more carefully still. And he realized that what name to give this child was already settled in his heart.

When day broke, So-mun carried the child out into the yard.

It was the very yard into which his father had carried him thirty years before. The morning sun hung on the ridge, and the terraced paddies brimmed with water and held the sky. The white flowers of the persimmon tree held the morning dew, and now and then, though there was no wind, one or two dropped into the yard. So-mun stood in the middle of that yard with the child in his arms. The villagers gathered one by one. They were believers, and neighbors, and those who followed So-mun like a teacher. Gopdan was there too. The girl born a slave’s daughter whose life So-mun had saved was now a grown woman, and stood at one side of the yard, as glad of the head house’s good fortune as if it were her own.

So-mun lifted the child high toward the people. Stretching out both arms, he raised his newborn son to the morning sky. The child screwed up its face as if dazzled by the morning sun, then soon looked back at the sky with those still eyes.

“This child’s name,” So-mun’s voice rang across the yard, “is Mu-gung. Mu-gung, which means without end. Mu-gung, which means never exhausted. Yeon Mu-gung.”

People repeated the name softly after him. Mu-gung. Without end. Never exhausted.

“This country is dark now, and this Way is pressed down now,” So-mun went on. “But the will of Heaven is without end and never exhausted. As the waned moon fills again, as the pressed seed sprouts again, it will go on and not be exhausted. This child will carry on that never-ending.”

The people in the yard could not take in the full meaning of those words. They only clapped their hands and offered their blessings, saying a precious son had been born to the head house. Mu-gung, Mu-gung. People liked the name on their tongues. Never exhausted: he will live long, then. Without end: his fortune will be without end. People took the name simply as one that wished the child long life and good fortune. That was enough. The will of Heaven held in the name was something only So-mun and Choe Do-hyang needed to know.

When So-mun happened to turn his eyes toward the window of the birthing room, Choe Do-hyang was looking out at him from inside. Her face was worn by the labor, but her two eyes shone. The look in them seemed to ask: so that man holds our child as dearly as that; what is it in that man’s heart that gives his face so large and heavy a look? So-mun had no words yet to answer that question. Only a foreboding that before long his wife too would come to know the inside of that heavy thing brushed one corner of his chest. But there was something settled in So-mun’s heart that the people did not know. In the moment he spoke the child’s name, something had opened inside his chest. It was a sign such as he had never once felt in thirty years of living. As if the years not yet come were spreading out before him all at once, and so, behind this child’s name, other names, the names of descendants not yet even born, seemed to be lining up one after another.

After the child was born, laughter went round the head house for the first time in a long while.

The world was still dark and the magistrate’s hand still harsh, but one newborn had the power to make all that darkness forgotten for a while. Choe Do-hyang recovered her strength day by day through her lying-in, and So-mun went into the birthing room whenever he had a moment to look at the child. The grave man who led the believers, looked after the village’s great and small affairs, and worried at night over a disordered world, went limp before a newborn like any other father. When the child’s tiny fingers closed on his finger, at that strengthless grip his face looked as though he held the whole world. Choe Do-hyang watched her husband and smiled quietly. That so large a man should grow so small before his own child.

At night So-mun often could not sleep, and kept watch beside the child.

A newborn’s breathing is so faint that So-mun would now and then bring his face close to see whether the child was breathing. Only when the warm breath leaking from the tiny nose touched his cheek did he let out his own. How would something so frail, so small, endure this harsh world? Whenever the thought came, So-mun found he had taken the child’s hand. But at the same time there grew a vague belief that something dwelling in this frail life — something he could not yet name — would protect this child.

One night the child, in its sleep, stretched a small hand into the air. So-mun put his finger to that hand. And the child gripped the finger tight. A newborn’s grip is weak and strengthless, but So-mun felt a strange force in that grip. As if this child, from beyond the years not yet come, were holding on to something and refusing to let go. He looked at the small hand a long time. This was the hand that would one day grow, and hold a brush, and carry on the mission of this family. What this hand would write, what it would protect, what it would not let go of, So-mun could not know; but only looking at it, his chest was full.

Choe Do-hyang, even in her lying-in, would gaze at her husband like that. One night she spoke to him softly.

“These days you seem to become a different man each time you look at this child. There is something in your eyes that is not an ordinary father’s feeling. What is it?”

So-mun could not answer readily. Choe Do-hyang did not press him; she only smiled and shook her head.

“Never mind. Someday I will come to know it too.”

At those words something caught in So-mun’s chest. Only then did he realize that his wife had dimly sensed something.

When the first twenty-one days had passed, the head house held a modest feast.

They could not hold a large one. The magistrate’s eyes were on them, and the world was unsettled. But a precious son had been born to the head house, so they prepared at least a gathering where the believers and close neighbors were called to share white rice cake and seaweed soup. Gopdan took the kitchen work on herself. She offered the child a newborn’s first jacket that she had sewn with her own hands. It was a garment sewn through the night by a woman who, born a slave’s daughter, had never once had anything to give to another. Choe Do-hyang took the jacket and held Gopdan’s hands a long time. The two women said nothing, but in each other’s eyes they read together what it is for a person to treat a person as Heaven.

To that feast came the old man who had watched the dawn of So-mun’s birth thirty years before.

He was bent now, and hard of hearing. He came into the yard of the head house on a stick and looked a long while at the newborn Mu-gung. Then suddenly he looked up at the old persimmon tree in the middle of the yard. It was the very tree whose early blossom he had looked at, thirty years before at dawn on the day So-mun was born, swallowing his ill omen with the words “it has bloomed too prettily.” The old man gazed at the tree a long time, then said quietly to So-mun:

“I watched you born under this tree. The flowers were out just that pretty then too. And now I’m seeing your son born as well. An old man ought to live long, and see.”

So-mun took the old man’s hand. The hand was gaunt as a dry branch, but its warmth was warm.

“You must live long, sir. You must see this child grow, all of it.”

The old man laughed aloud. But at the end of the laugh he looked up at the persimmon tree again and lowered his voice.

“I must. I must, and no mistake… But, So-mun. Maybe this old man’s gone soft in the head, but I keep thinking of that time. The dawn you were born. This tree bloomed so prettily then that I was afraid, inside. When the world is about to turn over, Heaven shows something pretty and strange first. But this time…” The old man could not go on and stopped a moment. “This time I don’t have that fear. It’s only pretty. I only wish this child, this pretty little thing, might live prettily and nothing else.”

At the old man’s words something caught in So-mun’s chest. What the ill omen the old man had swallowed thirty years ago had meant in the end — the Teacher’s martyrdom, the years of being pressed down and hunted, the greater calamity drawing near — So-mun dimly knew. So he also knew how earnest was the old man’s heart, wishing before this child that he might live prettily and nothing else. But So-mun already knew. This child had been born to a fate in which he could not live prettily and nothing else. He could not bring himself to say that to the old man. He only held the old man’s hand tighter, and looked up with him at the white flowers of the persimmon tree. With thirty years between them, under the same tree, looking at the same flowers, the two men stood a long time.

After the feast broke up and the guests went home, So-mun sat alone in the men’s quarters.

The night was deep. From the inner quarters came the low lullaby of Choe Do-hyang putting the child to sleep. Listening to it, So-mun set out brush and inkstone. He meant to write something. That thing that had settled in his chest since the day the child was born — that flicker of name lining up behind name — he wanted to pin down with the brush. But when he actually took up the brush his hand would not move. It was still a foreboding without shape, not yet become words. For several nights he repeated the same thing: wet the brush tip with ink, hover a long time over the paper, and in the end set the brush down without writing anything.

Then came a certain night.

So-mun, who had slept badly for days, was awake late in the men’s quarters that night too. Past midnight, the child’s cry suddenly came from the inner quarters. It was not the fretful cry of other nights. It was a cry that did not stop, as if calling for something with all its heart. However Choe Do-hyang soothed it and gave it the breast, the child would not stop crying. So-mun rose and crossed to the inner quarters. He took the child in his arms. And — as always — the child stopped short. And looked up at its father with those still eyes.

In that very moment, something opened in So-mun’s chest.

The shapeless foreboding he had not been able to pin down with the brush for days took at last a clear shape and pushed into him. It was a sound. No, rather than a sound, it was names. In the moment he looked into the child’s face, at his ear — no, deep inside his body — a series of names rose like a swell of water. Without knowing it, holding the child, he began to let those names flow out of his mouth.