The 111-Year Prophecy 1-6: The Fountain Pen, a Vessel

Section 6 — The Fountain Pen, a Vessel

Deep in the wall cupboard of the head house there was a paulownia box. In one corner of the box an old object wrapped in cotton cloth had long lain asleep; So-mun did not take it out and use it carelessly, but only kept it with care. On the night he wrote the six names down in brush and ink, he glanced for a moment toward the cupboard, then shook his head. Today was not the day to unwrap that object. Only that foreboding lay dimly in a corner of his mind; what the reason for it was, he himself did not know.

So-mun rose, opened the cupboard, took out the box, and set it in the middle of the room. His hands were careful as he opened it. The box had been, until now, the place where he kept a few things he treasured, but from today on it would carry another meaning. He folded the paper neatly and laid it inside. And before closing the lid he stopped his hand a moment and murmured softly:

“This paper now belongs to our house. From me to Mu-gung, from Mu-gung to Dae-han, handed down generation after generation, this prophecy shall be kept. Until the day the last name, Tong-il, is reached.”

Then he closed the box. In its corner the object wrapped in cloth quietly kept the paper company. So-mun only looked at the wrapped bundle for a moment; he did not unwrap it.

What is a record? Kneeling, straightening his collar, So-mun asked himself that. That the Way had not died after the Teacher was beheaded was because someone had copied his word from hand to hand and kept it. A man’s body passes, but the copied letters remain and come back to life at the fingertips of the next man. So what he had done tonight was no trifling brushwork; it was a going-against of death. He took to heart once more his name, the word that comes back to life, and what it asked of him. He dimly felt that all those nights of copying the Teacher’s scripture and this night were joined in a single line.

From that day So-mun built up, one by one, his own rules for how to treat the box. One night, coming home after raising his voice with a believer by day over the sharing out of grain, he put his hand to the cupboard door and drew it back. On a day when his mind was this unsettled, he decided, he would not open it. Instead he went out to the kitchen and drew fresh dawn water. Moonlight trembled on the water in the porcelain bowl. He set it in a corner of the room, straightened his collar, and sat a while in silence waiting for his mind to settle. Only when the lamp had burned low did he at last open the cupboard door and take out the box. No one had told him to do this. Before this paper it happened of itself. The prophetic books and secret writings that drifted about the world were sold for a price in the marketplace or carelessly leafed through, but these six names had not been given to be sold. Prophetic books frightened people and shook them; these names had been given to give the strength to endure. So instead of leafing through them carelessly, he set it for himself that he would open the box only on nights when his body and mind were made clean.

As he was about to leave the room, there was a stir outside the sliding door. It was Choe Do-hyang. She had come near only when she heard the cupboard door close again.

“That box. Did you open it today too?” she asked softly.

“I did,” So-mun answered.

“Is it heavy?”

“It is heavy. But with you here it is a little less so.”

Choe Do-hyang was silent a moment, then turned her eyes toward the room where the child slept and said: “All I do is tuck in the edge of the child’s blanket each night.”

“That blanket edge holds this house up,” So-mun said. “If even you had not known, I could not have borne this box for long.”

A faint smile seemed to pass over Choe Do-hyang’s face. “Then I too am carrying one corner of that box.”

There was only one person in the world who knew this weight with him. The believers, the villagers, even the old believers who had been with the family since his father’s time, did not know the box existed. The only ones who knew were the two of them, husband and wife.

Now, while Mu-gung was still at the breast, was not the time to hand down this mission. Something so weighty could not be carelessly put into the hands of a child who knew nothing. So-mun settled in his heart that when the boy grew and reached twenty, the age of manhood, he would hand down box and mission whole. Until then he would only whisper the six names at the child’s ear each night, so that the sound soaked into his blood. That would be the first rule this house kept from generation to generation. The very first knot in the long road that would cross from Mu-gung to Dae-han, from Dae-han to Dok-rip.

Each night So-mun crossed to the room where Mu-gung slept and recited the six names softly at the child’s ear. So-mun, Mu-gung, Dae-han, Dok-rip, Man-se, Tong-il. Even in sleep the child stirred a little, as if he knew his father’s voice. Beside him Choe Do-hyang tucked in the blanket edge without a word. One night she had asked in a low voice:

“On the day this child is grown and comes to know the meaning of those names, will we be alive?”

So-mun could not answer readily. “I do not know. Only, alive or not, this box will remain.” Choe Do-hyang nodded, and smoothed the child’s blanket again.

Through those years So-mun’s days and nights ran in two layers. By day, as the assembly head who led the believers of Cheongsugol, he taught the Way of serving man as Heaven and looked after those in need; by night he became another So-mun no one knew, and kept the box in the cupboard. Mu-gung passed his first birthday, took his first steps, babbled, and at last came to call his father Father. He grew up bright and healthy. He had his father’s black, deep eyes and his mother’s straight core. The villagers said with one voice that the young master of the head house was no ordinary child. Each time he heard it So-mun laughed it off, but inwardly he thought of the box in the cupboard and one side of his chest ached.

But through those years the world outside grew harsher and harsher.

In the tenth month of the year Imjin (1892), So-mun was passing the mill at the mouth of the village. A clerk from the magistrate’s office had burst in with two runners. In the yard the rice chest stood open, and sacks of grain were being carried out one by one. The master of the house was an old farmer with a head of white hair. Beside him a woman with a small child on her back was stamping her feet.

“From this autumn the land tax falls on that waste field you broke.” The clerk waved a document. “Three *mal* a majigi.”

“Sir, last year we paid the interest on the government grain twice over.” The old farmer knelt in the yard and put his hands together. “When we broke that waste field, did you not promise there would be no tax on it? If we hand over all that is in this chest, what are we to eat through the winter?”

“Too much talk.” There did not seem to be the least hesitation on the clerk’s face. “Open the storeroom. Or you will be charged.”

One of the runners kicked over the old farmer’s A-frame carrier. A sack burst and millet poured onto the dirt. The old farmer tried to sweep it up with his palms, then stopped as the clerk’s foot came down on his hand. The woman’s crying lay low over the yard. So-mun stood outside the wall at a distance and watched. It was not a place where he could step in and stop it, nor one he could turn his face from. Even if he came forward in the name of assembly head, that storeroom would not stay shut today. He only curled his two fists inside his sleeves.

Even after the clerk and his men had heaped the grain sacks on a carrier and gone, the old farmer sat slumped in the yard a long while, picking up the dirt-covered millet grains one by one. So-mun went round the wall and came near, and squatted beside him without a word, sweeping the grains together with him. Only then did the old farmer recognize him, and muttered low: “What good’s it do, the assembly head coming?” So-mun could make no answer; he only laid a handful of grain on that dry, black hand.

It did not stop at that once, that autumn. As winter came on it grew more frequent. In a neighboring village someone sold his ox to pay the tax, and there was talk that a young widow, made to pay a household tax she did not owe in her dead husband’s name, had had her whole household goods seized. An old schoolfellow he met in the marketplace caught So-mun’s hand and poured out his troubles. “At this rate it will be a world where a man cannot live as a man.” So-mun could only hold the hand in return; he had nothing else to say. Each time such stories reached him he thought of the box in the cupboard. On that paper were written the names of a country not yet come: Dae-han, Dok-rip, Man-se. And yet this country, now, was trampling its people in a state that fell short even of those names. Before that gap he would let out a long breath.

That night So-mun sat late in the men’s quarters. Choe Do-hyang cleared the supper tray and sat beside him.

“Your face is not well today,” she said.

“The old man at the mill had his storeroom torn open,” So-mun answered shortly. “Down to the millet for the winter.”

“Could you not stop it?”

“Had I stopped it, that house would have been finished altogether.” So-mun was silent a while, then added: “The name of assembly head is no use at all at such times.”

Choe Do-hyang asked no more. She only sat quietly beside him and laid one more piece of charcoal on the cooling brazier. That night the two of them sat side by side a long time without speaking.

From that day the grievance pierced the sky in Cheongsugol too. Taxes were laid on waste fields; charges were pinned on the guiltless and their goods squeezed from them. Those who appealed to the magistrate’s office were beaten and jailed. Ugly rumors went round the market. In the neighboring districts too, it was said, storerooms were being emptied and the guiltless beaten in growing numbers. Whether Mu-gung knew of such things or not, he grew up playing in the dirt of the yard. Each time the child’s laughter crossed the wall, So-mun would laugh too, and then turn his head toward the cupboard.

The next spring, in the year Gyesa (1893), a circular went round among the believers. Gather at Jangnae-ri in Boeun on the tenth of the third month. The believers of all three southern provinces were to gather in one place and petition the state to acknowledge that the Teacher, beheaded as the chief of a heresy, had in truth been no criminal; that his Way was not a Way that disordered the world but one that gave people life. Boeun was two days east of Cheongsugol. So-mun led thirty believers of Cheongsugol out on that road. They put roasted grain powder in their travel bundles and hung two pairs of straw sandals each at their waists.

When they came to the fields of Jangnae-ri, So-mun stopped. On the broad plain were tens of thousands of people in white. Flags stood with the names of the assemblies of each district, and people were carrying stones to build a wall in the middle of the field. At the sight So-mun’s chest filled. On the flat rock in the mountains where they had sent off the Teacher, barely a dozen had gathered and wept with the sound held in. Now tens of thousands had gathered in broad daylight on an open plain, and were calling the Teacher’s name openly. The believers kept order. They had come not to attack the magistrates but to plead a wrong, so they carried no weapons and raised no careless disturbance. They only wore white, chanted, and asked that the Teacher’s name be cleared. Among them banners calling for the Japanese and the Western barbarians to be driven out fluttered in the wind. Before the dignity of that peaceful multitude, even the magistrates did not dare lay a hand on them.

A young believer stood beside So-mun looking down over the plain and said: “Assembly Head, if all these people rose at once, what would the government troops count for? One provincial headquarters, in a single morning…” So-mun did not hear him out, and shook his head. “We did not gather to rise. We gathered to be heard.” The young believer shut his mouth, but his eyes did not leave the plain.

They camped on the plain nearly twenty days. Men came down from the court and urged them to disperse, and the believers sent up a writing setting out their wrong. But the state never did clear the Teacher’s name. It only dispersed the believers, and did not lend an ear to their plea. Word followed that after the dispersal a secret order had come down to arrest the believers. That nothing could be won by pleading peacefully: the believers learned it so. On the two days’ road home So-mun’s heart was heavy. If tens of thousands gathered and pleaded peacefully and the state would not listen, then where would the resentment of these pressed-down people turn? The faces of the young believers on the Boeun plain, set hard as firewood, kept coming back to him. Would a day not come when those tens of thousands in white, who had pleaded peacefully, took up bamboo spears? And if that day came, how much blood would flow on this land?

Home again, So-mun sat a long time that night before the dawn water. From the room where Mu-gung slept came the child’s even breathing. He thought of the box in the cupboard. Where the six names written inside it would meet those tens of thousands in white, he could not tell.

In the eleventh month of Gyesa, the month of the solstice, a dozen or so believers gathered in So-mun’s men’s quarters. On the faces ringed around a single brazier the look of men who could bear no more was already thick.

“Are we to sit still and starve to death?” The young believer who had spoken of the provincial headquarters on the Boeun plain raised his voice. “We must take up bamboo spears if nothing else. Did you see that clerk’s face? He does not treat us as people. Did you not see at Boeun? Begging gets us nothing.”

“How can a believer take up weapons?” an older believer answered back. “A Way meant to give people life cannot become a Way that stabs people. Did the Teacher not teach us so?”

“Then are we to sit like this and die?” The young believer’s voice cracked. “When they open our storerooms, are we to watch without lifting a hand? Does the Way put rice in our mouths?”

“The day we rise rashly and bring the government troops down on us, this whole of Cheongsugol will burn,” the older believer said again. “Then the one who held a spear and the one who did not die together. What do those with wives and children mean to do?”

“Then the young master at the assembly head’s house will be safe, I suppose.” The young believer shot it out sharply, then, as if realizing he had gone too far, lowered his head. The other believers in the room seemed to glance at one another a moment. So-mun made no reply to it. He only felt the words lodge like an arrow in the middle of his chest.

“Then how long are we to endure?” The young believer struck the floor with his fist. “Next autumn they will take the rice chest itself.”

The room split plainly into two camps. So-mun sat between them and was silent a long time. If man is Heaven, then before a tyranny that tramples Heaven it seemed only right for men to rise. But where was the guarantee that the hand which took up weapons would not trample Heaven in its turn?

“What does the Assembly Head think?” the young believer asked So-mun, with the look of one who could hold back no longer.

Only after a long while did So-mun open his mouth. “As yet… I do not know either.” He could say no more than that. A heavy stillness settled over the room. The brazier fire spat with a crack.

Even after the believers had risen one by one and gone, the heat of the quarrel seemed to linger, not yet cooled, on the floor of the room. So-mun sat alone and looked a long time down at the dying brazier. He who by day taught that man is Heaven and by night held the six names alone in the cupboard had not been able, today, to give an answer to one question in this room. He could not lift his eyes from the brazier. The one sentence the young believer had left behind, the young master at the assembly head’s house will be safe, I suppose, did not leave his ears all night.

That night, after the believers had scattered, So-mun sat alone before the dawn water and asked Heaven’s will. As on the night he received the six names, he hoped for some answer. But this time no name came down, and no direction. Only a heavy silence filled the room. He sat a long time before that silence. Now and then his eyes went to the box in the cupboard. Whether the prophecy asleep inside it would protect this house from the thing that was coming, or be swept away together with it in that great wave, So-mun had no way to know.

Now and then he tried to imagine the one who would come five generations on, the one who would live out the last name, Tong-il. What face he would have, what world he would be looking at, So-mun could not know. Only, when he wondered whether that man, from the place he would reach, might by any chance remember the events of this night, he looked a long time into the bowl of dawn water. How long a road it was to that man he had no means to reckon. Only, that far-off man and he were already joined by these six names.

As the winter of Gyesa drew toward its close, snow fell twice on Cheongsugol and melted, and each time the village’s grievance went a little deeper. And another rumor began to go round. Far away in the district of Gobu in Jeolla Province, it was said, the county magistrate’s tyranny had passed all bounds, and a round-robin letter, the names written in a ring so that no leader could be picked out, had gone secretly among the assembly heads of that district. It was a story that had crossed the three southern provinces on the tongues of peddlers. Each time he heard it, So-mun thought of the voices of the believers who had split apart in his men’s quarters. The young man’s voice saying take up bamboo spears, and the old man’s saying take up no weapons, were still in his ears. To that question he still had no answer.

And at last, in the first month of the year Gabo (1894), when Mu-gung was four, the first news of that approaching thing reached the mouth of Cheongsugol.