One Thousand Chestnut Trees

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He ordered the temple to be built in the grounds of a hermitage to symbolize the lonely and vain path of enlightenment, and to represent inviolate Korean sovereignty. The Min name was to be carved upon the temple pillars. Min Gong-ju ordered one thousand chestnut trees to be planted around the temple for longevity, their eventual lushness and strength were to screen it from enemy detection. The temple was constructed in secret by several of his former serfs, who risked their lives to do so. Soon after its completion, my grandfather died. He never saw the temple.

Since Lord Min’s death, the muscular gables of our ancestral house had lost their air of potency and assurance. The calm and old-fashioned grace within its rooms had also vanished with my grandmother’s spirit. She had died six months after her husband. But the heaviness in the household had set in a few years before, with the unhappy behaviour of Yong-lae, the eldest Min son, now in his thirties.

Yong-lae, it was said, had inherited his father’s good looks, intelligence, and fondness for riding a white horse, but entirely lacked his backbone. Where Lord Min had revelled in the responsibility and dignity of his station, dutifully officiating at dull civic and royal ceremonies wherever he was needed, and lending his attention to humble and humdrum estate maintenance, Yong-lae wrote the occasional poem and spent the greater part of his time visiting his tailor in Seoul.

One year, Yong-lae secretly ordered seventy splendid coats to be made for himself. This was a great mystery to us, because we never particularly noticed his new clothes. When the bill arrived my grandfather was enraged. He confined Yong-lae to the estate grounds for two months, and ordered a servant to burn all of his son’s trousers but one scruffy pair, which he was ordered to wear with his new coats.

But this ploy backfired. Yong-lae’s sartorial appetite remained undiminished. Once the dramatic value of grandfather’s action had faded, Yong-lae genuinely needed new trousers. But a weakness for fine clothing was the lesser of his peccadilloes.

‘Going to his tailor in Seoul’ soon became a euphemism for drinking binges, which began tamely enough, but worsened. Predictably, not even Yong-lae’s marriage to a lovely and sympathetic young woman of a neighbouring clan could keep him away from the bars and taverns of Seoul.

Yong-lae’s drunkenness shamed the family. It was an awful cliché, my grandfather complained to him, for an eldest son to be so irresponsible. But Yong-lae did not smile and promise to reform, as he might have done before. It was now as if his father were discussing someone else, whom he only vaguely remembered.

Grandfather, already shattered by the invasion, could not fully fathom that his right-hand son, traditionally relied upon for support and leadership in parents’ old age, was a sick human being, as useless as a broken leg. Towards the end of Grandfather’s life, the look of disbelief frozen in his eyes was terrible to see. The burden of assuaging Yong-lae’s failure fell to my father, Bong-lae, the second son.

Father was silent now as he pushed his bicycle. Although the big house would always be splendid, a symbol of better times, the farther we withdrew from the grand main house, the happier I felt. The hill rose up a gentle slope to our farm, and soon we were home.

How can I describe it? It was nothing special. And yet to me, it was a paradise. Just a traditional Korean farmhouse of wood and white clay, with a winged, grey tiled roof, set comfortably in a crab apple orchard, watched over by jagged blue mountains. Unlike the big house, we did not have a colony of live-in servants, just a housekeeper, and a tenant farmer and his small family in a nearby cottage to perform heavy chores, tend the livestock and vegetable garden, and help with the prodigious work of preparing food for winter.

Above all, home was green. The green of new rice grasses. The green of ripening fruit. The green of a bride’s gown. Out of my bedroom window, wide verdant fields, thick copses, bamboo groves and gracious trees stretched outwards, uninterrupted on all sides. The teasing mists of the East Sea added enigma to the solidity of the land.

My mother, wearing a pale-blue linen han-bok with white ribbons, descended the step to greet us. My little sister, who was two, followed her out of doors and fastened herself onto my father’s leg. He picked her up and gave her a piece of toffee.

I took off my shoes, entered the house, and thirsty from the journey, went straight into the kitchen to get a drink of water from the well. The enormous kitchen was very much the centre of the house, quite literally the hearth of our home.

It was a two-storey annexe where grain and dry goods were stored above, with an outdoor wing for the chickens and pigs, and below, the furnace and ovens generated our ondol heating – the Korean system of flue pipes which carry heat beneath the oiled, sepia-papered floors of every room so they are warm to sit and sleep upon. Here, behind a large embroidered silk screen, we also bathed, drawing our water from the indoor well which was kept covered with a huge carved wooden lid.

It is the smell of that dark timbered kitchen that I remember still; a sweet and earthy scent of hay and fermenting soya beans. More than any other, this was the smell of my childhood. It also held the transient odours of delicious soups simmering in great iron cauldrons and succulent bulgoki grilling, but the scent of spicy hay was the irreplaceable constant, lingering in the eaves, and deep in my memory.

My mother supervised the making of our own soya sauce, duenjang and kochujang sauces in the grindstones, the slicing of radish and cucumber for pickles and, of course, the hand-manufacture of several varieties of hot kimchi, which were kept in enormous stone urns on the jang terrace in the garden. It was a year-round activity to keep the food stores filled.

My brother, sister and I played boisterous games of hide-and-seek in the storage loft beneath the mighty oak beams, trying not to upset colourful baskets, jars, and sacks of provisions. Jin-ho – showing off that he could read and I couldn’t – called it Ali Baba’s treasure cave, for it held everything we could imagine.

There were baskets of garlic and ginger, brass bowls of whole green chillies, dried red chilli flakes, cold iron cauldrons of soya beans for sprouts and curd, huge sacks of rice, barley, maize, flour, potatoes, sweet potatoes, ceramic jars of dried chestnuts, ginseng root, green and preserved persimmons and crystallized ginger, dried plums, dried mushrooms, anchovies, and stacks of kite-shaped dried cuttlefish – a local specialty. Serried rows of stone flagons stood by the staircase; honey, sesame and fish oil, home-made rice wine and soju, a fiery and disgusting grown-up drink which Jin-ho had been recently sick on.

I drank the cold spring water, and went out to climb the crab apple tree. I amused myself for some time by sitting on the highest bough, pelting my little sister with apple blossoms. At first she loved it, tipping up her face to welcome the petals, but then decided it was all too much, and began to scream.

My mother opened the kitchen door and struck the brass gong. Forgetting our petal fight, Myung-hi and I raced inside for a simple lunch. Afterwards we had our usual nap. I fell asleep dreaming blissfully of rice cakes and bicycles.

By suppertime it was cool outside. My mother closed the papered screen door overlooking the flower garden and lit the dining-room lanterns. We all sat round the low mahogany table keenly looking forward to eating. Jin-ho’s hands, for once, passed inspection, so there was no delay.

My mother ladled out the mandu-guk – dumpling soup – and then we had rice, hot kimchi, steamed bracken stalks with sesame oil, dressed cucumber, radish, spinach and beansprouts, toasted seaweed, and marinated grilled chicken slices dipped in spicy bean sauce and wrapped in fresh lettuce leaves, followed by juicy scarlet strawberries. Our meals were very simple, but delicious, with everything fresh from our farm.

Toward the end of supper, there was a sound outside the door; someone clearing their throat. We all looked up in surprise, and my father got up to slide back the screen. There, accompanied by a maidservant, was Yong-lae’s wife, in tears, black hair loose and flowing. She apologized for interrupting, but said she must speak with us.

Jin-ho and I glanced at each other, electrified with excitement.

‘Of course, of course,’ said my father, standing up. My mother also rose, gently touching her sister-in-law’s forearm and stood before her, shielding her from our inquisitive eyes.

‘Children, go into the library and play, take Myung-hi, and make sure she doesn’t disturb any of your father’s things,’ instructed my mother.

Jin-ho and I bowed obediently, but pouted in our mother’s direction to express our maximum disappointment at this cruel exclusion. I dragged Myung-hi by the arm into the study, leaving the door pointedly open. Jin-ho and I immediately slithered out and regrouped by the dining-room door, which was slightly ajar. Myung-hi sat on her fat bottom in the corridor looking at us quizzically.

Jin-ho stuck his ear to the crack in the door. I shoved him aside to make room for myself, and with a sly tilt to my head, caught a narrow slice of Yong-lae’s wife’s face, twisted in distress. We only rarely saw her. She was very pretty, despite her tears and streaming hair, and wore a sumptuous midnight-blue silk gown edged in white satin. She was unbearably glamorous.

‘… and the groom found him in a ditch, he had been robbed. His pockets were reversed and empty, the horse was nowhere to be seen. Unconscious. The groom had to fetch help from the farmer, and take him on his own horse … He was in Seoul for three days … and there is no more money. Our children are always asking me where he is. What can I do? How shall I manage? … my own family will not give me any money; they know he will just squander it. They say he is making a fool of me,’ said Ok-ja, sobbing into her fine handkerchief.

My mother tried to calm her with soft words, but one could see that the situation was worse than she knew how to cope with. She looked at my father for prompting. My father was silent, his face drawn with worry.

‘Somehow we will help you. Please continue to be brave. For your children too. We will do what we can. I will speak with him, but you must be prepared for him to carry on. You know how he is. But you were right to come to me,’ said Father. My mother handed her a beaker of ginseng tea.

Jin-ho and I looked at each other with coy satisfaction at the quality of entertainment being offered. Then Jin-ho sneezed. My mother rushed to the door hissing admonitions, grabbed our elbows, swooped up Myung-hi, and propelled us into our rooms.

‘Children. You are wrong to listen at doors. Very naughty. You mustn’t repeat to anyone what you have heard, and you must learn to obey your father and me. Where do you learn such habits? This is grown-up business, and that is that. You will soon be old enough to have your own worries, so be glad not knowing.’

‘But I’m not tired, mother, and it’s so interesting,’ said Jin-ho, smiling his most charming smile. A lock of shiny hair caught in his long, blinking eyelashes. You couldn’t help adoring him. Mother told him to go to bed anyway, and not to be fresh, but her anger had disappeared.

‘I’m not tired either,’ I echoed.

‘Oh, yes you are. You went all the way to market today. And you mustn’t argue, Myung-ja! Your father is not happy with the way you imitate your brother’s bad habits. By the way, get up early tomorrow, Jin-ho. We are going to your grandparents’ for the day. No reading all night in bed. No singing and dancing on the mattress either. Up early, Jin-ho, remember.’

Jin-ho shrugged his shoulders and trudged off to bed without saying good-night to anyone. It was true that he’d been more disobedient than usual of late. Mother stroked my cheek absently, and tucked me in after putting Myung-hi to bed. Myung-hi cried again to remind everyone that she still had a point of view, even lying down. I went to sleep looking forward to tomorrow, and wondering about our aunt in the beautiful gown. What would father be able to do for them? Would uncle go to jail for being such a bad husband?

It was a beautiful, mild morning. Jin-ho and I were terribly excited about going to our grandparents’, not only because of the novelty of their seaside household, which was filled with cousins and other exotica, but because the visit would involve a ride in the estate’s glamorous black Packard, which my father would be borrowing for the day. Grandfather Min was the first in the province to have bought a motorcar.

‘Eat more!’ instructed my mother, urging me to finish the rice in my bowl.

‘But I’m not hungry!’

‘You will be – when we’re halfway there. Have more kimchi.’

I frowned, and forced myself to finish breakfast. Jin-ho was already in the car, sitting behind the steering wheel on my father’s lap. Even on my father’s lap, he could not see much over the wheel, so gigantic was the car’s chassis. Jin-ho was not at all mechanically adept, but liked the flattering image of himself as a motor-racing driver.

Once we were out on the dirt road I pretended to be a princess, making a state visit. The landscape floated by in a dream. I waved to the cherry blossoms, pretending they were loving subjects, and bowed my head modestly to the ginko tree courtiers and bracken ladies-in-waiting. Sadly, we were only going six miles.

We drove very slowly up a winding hill encircled by tall pines and zigzagged blue peaks, and there, on a breathtaking clifftop lay my mother’s family estate. Jin-ho and I cheered with excitement, and Myung-hi imitated us, her joy causing a strand of saliva to hang from her chin.

Father drove around to the stables at the back of the house, and parked next to one of the traps. We burst out of the car, and patted the warm muzzles of the horses. The air smelt delicious; sharp and briny from the sea, and fragrant with acacia-blossom. My mother gave Jin-ho a basket of honeyed rice cakes to offer to our grandmother. As we approached the stone steps, Jin-ho pinched off a corner from one of the cakes and ate it with provocative gusto. Father frowned, and meant it.

The house was far less grand than our grandfather Min’s, which had many wings for servants, tutors, guests, and visiting family, courtyards, pavilions, a temple, outbuildings and stables, and serfs’ cottages in separate enclosures. Although simple, our grandfather Kang’s home had the most unforgettable garden and position looking out to sea.

The Kangs were landowning gentry. Unlike Grandfather Min, Grandfather Kang had no burdensome title, and had never been obliged to perform the grinding administrative duties incumbent on men of the Mins’ rank. Kang’s sunny, youthful demeanor reflected the fact that he spent most of his time engaged in his greatest pleasures: gardening, fishing, and eating.

When we arrived, plump, balding Grandfather Kang was out on one of the terraces in his elegant grey linen jugori and white paji trousers fingering the leaf of an azalea bush with rapt consideration. He smiled and waved us down to show us a new addition to his exotic specimens.

Being on a hilltop, his was a many-tiered garden, bordered with stones and flowering pine bushes, che-song-wha. Bright colours vibrated against their deep green setting. Grandfather grew prodigious quantities of pink, white and red peonies, camellias, azaleas, rhododendrons, lilacs, wild beach roses, calla lilies, tiger lilies, white, gold and purple irises. The acacia and wisteria were so heady that the smell made me drunk. There were also the mysterious yellow moonflowers that only blossomed at night. During summer visits my brother, cousins and I told ghost stories at night behind the luminous moonflowers, hiding our faces behind the blossoms, and screaming in the bushes until we were dragged inside to our beds.

Like most Koreans, Grandfather had a deep love of trees. He had a mulberry grove in which which he cultivated silkworms for his tenant farmers to produce silk. He also grew orchards of plum, apple, peach, cherry, pear, and nectarine trees. He had almond and walnut trees, persimmon trees, dates, bamboo, and trellised grapevines, all of which Grandfather complained withstood more hardship from the greedy hands of us childen than from birds or insects. In the autumn it was one of my favourite things to come with my mother and gather fallen chestnuts from beneath the chestnut trees, whose last dying leaves fanned out brilliant orange against the deep blue sky. I loved the earthy smell of the rotting leaves underfoot, and the delight of finding the shining, heavy brown orbs hiding in the damp grass and papery foliage, fishing them out and plunking them into Grandmother’s old straw basket.

Being one of Grandfather Kang’s favourites, I was given the privilege of tending a small row of tiger lilies. These precious lilies I weeded and watered with ostentatious ruthlessness to prove that Grandfather’s trust was not misplaced. Thus began my lifelong love of gardening.

Soon my grandmother, two aunts, and various moppet-headed cousins came out of the house to greet us, amid shouts and laughter. Grandmother, in a cream silk han-bok, was small and deceptively frail-looking, her hair in a tight black bun. Actually, my honoured grandmother was incredibly tough, with a grip like an iron clamp. My aunts, Chosan and Chungsun – thus called by the children because they lived in the nearby towns of Chosan and Chungsun – were dressed more simply in pastel pink and blue linen with white edging.

The elder, Chosan-daek, was fat and newly a Christian, while Chungsun-daek was skinny and underconfident. The beauty of the family, Aunt Pusan, lived a long way away, in the southernmost port of the country, but we were very excited that she was here now, resting indoors from the long railway journey.

Pusan-daek was my favourite aunt, not only because of her easy manner and porcelain beauty, but because she was thrillingly clever and lively. She was also generous; whenever I saw her she let me try on her many pairs of high-heeled shoes and laughed with delight as I clumped round the room in them, turning clumsily to show off the different pumps to their best advantage. I was slightly silly about her shoes, but she never behaved as if I were a nuisance. Although she was as busy as any of my other aunts on her visits, Aunt Pusan always made time to brush my hair tenderly before I went to sleep. This small gesture warmed me to the tips of my toes, and I went to sleep feeling that my head had just been touched by the hands of a fairy princess.

Aunt Pusan had had many proposals of marriage, and ended up marrying the richest and handsomest of the lot. Yet I overheard Grandmother telling my mother that Pusan-daek’s nouveau riche husband had turned out to be too much of a peacock to notice his wife’s qualities. Although, as an uncle, he was senior to me, I thought him a very stupid man indeed.

After the luncheon feast, which my aunts had spent three days preparing, my brother, two boy cousins, Jae-sung and Jae-dal – sons of fat Aunt Chosan – and I announced our intention of going down to the sea, a fifteen minute walk away. However before going off, Jin-ho and I sneaked away to Aunt Pusan’s quarters to catch a glimpse of her, as we had been denied that opportunity during lunch, when Grandmother Kang declared her still too tired to make an appearance.

One of the best things about Grandparents’ rambling, busy household was that we could be naughty for much longer before being discovered. We stood very quietly in the cedar-scented corridor outside Pusan-daek’s room. A muffled but distinct whimpering sound could be heard. Fortunately for us, the door was open a crack, irresistibly inviting us to look through it.

I gasped and covered my mouth. Jin-ho was shocked too. There, sitting in the corner leaning her head against the wall, was Aunt Pusan, wearing a frightening white canvas coat with her arms wrapped round her body so that she couldn’t move.

Jin-ho and I looked at each other in horror. Neither of us had ever seen a strait-jacket. What had happened? Why was she strapped into this diabolical contraption? Her face was downcast, but even so, you could tell that she was utterly altered; her spirit strangled. She was pale, like a crushed moth.

Tearfully, I ran to my mother, leaving Jin-ho dumbstruck at this extraordinary sight. Mother was in the sunny mulberry grove with Aunt Chosan. They were talking animatedly about the plight of Uncle Yong-lae. I told mother what we’d seen. First she was angry that I had been spying again, but seeing how upset I was, she softened.

‘You are too young to understand, but your aunt is not well. She is so sick that she tries to harm herself.’ I looked at my mother blankly. She sighed.

‘Sometimes, my daughter, after a woman has a baby, she becomes very sad like this. So she must rest in this ugly coat, away from other people who would tire her.’

Aunt Chosan nodded her double chins.

‘But she can’t move, mother!’

‘I know … Now that’s enough, Myung-ja. You are too young to understand such things. Go and play. Do as you are told,’ she said, looking unhappy.

‘But it must make her worse to be alone in that scary thing!’

‘Myung-ja! Do you criticize your grandmother’s wisdom?’

I could not reply.

‘Now, you are not to mention this again. Not to your cousins, not to father or Jin-ho. This is ladies’ business. You must promise to be silent now that I have explained this private matter. This is not for small children’s big-mouthed gossiping.’

I promised, and dragged my feet back to the house. Jin-ho was sitting quietly outside Pusan-daek’s door like a faithful dog. Our aunt was now sleeping sideways on the silk mat, her face still pale, but tranquil. Naturally, I told Jin-ho immediately what mother had said. We drew away sadly from Pusan-daek