The Calligrapher's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 to think he’d consider it. After his arrest he had even less tolerance of anything Japanese. She worried every time he went outside the gate that his bitterness and anger would be visible to the police. They had beaten and questioned him, but he hadn’t been tortured—twisting things they did to limbs with ropes and boards, slow drownings—acts still shockingly practiced that she had read about in court narratives of olden days. To further submerge her disappointment, Haejung deliberately brought to mind all she could be grateful for: her smart and spirited daughter, a secure and smoothly run household, her husband’s restored health, and also, that the day of his arrest had exposed the traitorous and thieving nanny who had stolen two gold brooches, a fistful of silver chopsticks and a bolt of cotton cloth before she ran off to inform on an innocuous afternoon party. God’s ways were not always easy to understand. However, that day had taught them caution, and her husband’s life and others’ had been spared. Mr. Suh’s wound healed cleanly and he claimed only minor stiffness in the shoulder—nothing that would impede his journey to the insurgent army rumored to be forming in the north.
    With these thoughts, she could be respectfully deferential to her husband’s reaction to the public school idea, and said goodnight calmly. When she put away her needle and threads in their proper places in her sewing room, she tucked her hopes aside—their proper place for now—and prayed, knowing with the patient and open trust of the faithful that another opportunity would arise.
    THAT OPPORTUNITY CAME a year and a half later, and when she considered how it had once again surfaced in God’s house, she felt renewed in her conviction about the power of prayer. While other women talked toeach other in the aisles, Haejung in her front pew relished her usual semi-private moment. The musty wet-plaster smell of the church, its expansive interior space, the shiny rows of organ pipes and the biblical scenes portrayed in colorful windows filled her with peace. The Methodists had built a single-story sanctuary, complete with a squat bell tower, wide front stairs leading to arched and carved double doors, a high peaked ceiling from which hung six Gothic electric fixtures above modest pine pews, and at front a pulpit, altar and crucifix of polished oak. On this particular day, her body just beginning to round, solid with the security of three healthy months of pregnancy, she thanked Jesus for the comforting certainty that he embraced in heaven the tender souls of the four older siblings Najin never knew: one boy stillborn, another dead within hours of birth, a premature girl who died during delivery and another boy dead with fever before his hundredth day. She renewed her thanks for Najin’s sturdiness, her husband’s steady health and safety, and for those who risked everything to reclaim their country.
    A glorious autumn day, she had allowed Najin to play outside with the few girls who attended the brief Sunday-school session preceding the service, reminding her not to run, shout, play in the dirt or get in anyone’s way. Haejung believed that spending time with other children could help make her daughter less self-centered and willful. This problem had frequently been addressed in her after-worship time, and she now gave thanks to God, who had answered her with this most unexpected blessing of another child. She would soon believe that he had provided more than one answer, for Missionary Gordon approached from the vestry, an eager smile on her strangely