Black Flower (21 page)

Gwon Yongjun cut him off. He turned to the shaman and asked, “Did you perform a ritual?” The shaman nodded his head. “Yes.” “Why?” “Someone was ill, so I performed a healing ritual. Are such rituals forbidden by law in this land?” “I don’t think so. But this hacendado hates them. Didn’t you know this?” “Yes, I knew. But I didn’t think that he would make such a fuss. Look here, Mr. Interpreter. Ask the master. Ask him what I must do to calm his anger.”

Gwon Yongjun conveyed these words. Ignacio Velásquez flashed a smile and said, “Leave your idols and accept our Lord Jesus Christ. Be baptized and convert. Then let all the others know of your conversion. That is all I ask. The price for a false conversion is death. I swear on my family’s honor that I will kill you. You were caught fleeing the hacienda in the night, so you are considered an escapee. If I kill you, I will be tried in court according to the laws of the Yucatán. But know this. In the Yucatán the judges are hacendados, the prosecutors are hacendados, and the lawyers are hacendados. There is nothing in this world that hacendados hate more than workers who break their contracts and flee.”

Frightened, the shaman closed his eyes and trembled. Gwon Yongjun encouraged him to convert. “You got on that ship because you were tired of being a shaman, didn’t you? Now is your chance to give it up.” The shaman shook his head. “I cannot do that. It is not for me to decide. It would be better for me to die.” Frustrated, Gwon Yongjun strongly urged him one more time. “Just pretend to convert. Who says you have to believe for real? All you have to do is endure it for four years.” The shaman looked at Gwon Yongjun impatiently. “It is impossible to disobey my god. Unless he leaves, I cannot send him away or take anyone else in of my own free will. If I could, do you think I would be here?”

“Then that god is still with you?” The shaman nodded his head. Unable to understand their conversation, Ignacio asked Gwon Yongjun, “What did he say?” “He says that he will not convert. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because it is impossible. He says that the god that is with him must let him go.” Ignacio asked him, “What does this god do?” “He says that he cures disease, and he prophesies. He also calls the spirits of the dead and speaks with them.” Ignacio tilted his head. “Why would a god do something like that?” Gwon Yongjun answered with a mix of Spanish and English. “He says that he must do these things to entertain the god. That is what is called a ritual, and only if he performs rituals can the god be entertained. If the shaman says that he is tired, or if he says that no one asks him to perform a ritual and he does nothing, then the god gets bored and grows angry. He pesters the shaman to play with him. Then the shaman grows very ill.”

“This god is obviously Satan,” Ignacio concluded. Had it been a few hundred years ago, he would have had to call a clergyman specializing in exorcism from Mexico City. But it was no longer that age. One last time, Ignacio urged the shaman to convert. He held out a cross and a Bible and told him to swear on them. The shaman shook his head in frustration. “Did I not tell you that I cannot do that?” Ignacio took a whip from the overseer Joaquín. Gwon Yongjun received his fee from the overseer and left the storehouse. As he lingered outside, he heard the sound of the wet whip striking the shaman’s bare body as he lay on a pile of henequen leaves, and he heard the hacendado shout. Gwon Yongjun thought, I am sick of those dimwitted people! He gave some of the money he had received to his Mayan driver. The driver’s mouth dropped open. The carriage sped off toward Yazche hacienda. Of course Gwon Yongjun knew that just as it was no sin to be born a man, so it was no sin to live as a shaman. The shaman’s only sin was that he had landed in this hacienda. And now the shaman was tied hand and foot in the storehouse and beaten nearly to death. The trunks and thorns of the henequen kept him conscious whenever he was about to pass out. Finally, as his spirit was about to leave him, those who were hitting him grew tired, and when they stopped to rest the shaman’s eyes rolled back in his head and he began to mutter at Ignacio. “When the wind blows from the west, the sun will be hidden even at midday. When the flames move and the sound of thunder is heard, death will come quick. Death!”

That was both a curse and a prophecy. Yet there was not a single person in the storehouse who understood it. When this Cassandra of the Yucatán foamed at the mouth and passed out, Ignacio and the overseers locked the doors of the storehouse, went home, and threw themselves on their beds.

A
FORTNIGHT AFTER
meeting with the diplomat Durham Stevens, Yun Chiho, the Korean vice minister of foreign affairs, found a telegram from Seoul awaiting him at the front desk of the Imperial Hotel: “Depart for Hawaii and Mexico. 1,000 yen sent to the Bank of Japan. Seoul.” He began to prepare for his trip, but Stevens, who came to visit him at the hotel, told him 1,000 yen was only $500—barely enough to travel to Hawaii, let alone Mexico. Yun Chiho’s face turned red from shame at his government’s miserable funds, but he was not deeply troubled. “They’ll surely send more.”

Two days later, Yun Chiho boarded the
Manchuria
in Yokohama. His heart fluttered at the thought of a new journey, but it was also heavy. Hawaii, Mexico . . . it was his first time traveling to both, and this was not a lighthearted trip but a mission to check on the immigrants and resolve their problems. At four in the afternoon, the ship’s whistle sounded. Oba Kanichi, of the Continental Colonization Company, came up on deck and tried to curry favor with Yun Chiho. Though Yun Chiho had always disliked Oba, a typical peddler, he had no choice but to deal with him. Oba launched into a defense of his company. “The reports concerning Mexico are all mistaken. The immigrants are doing fine. The Continental Company is opposed to Korean emigration to Hawaii, but we welcome emigration to Mexico. We have Japanese already working in Hawaii, which might make things difficult, but there are almost no Japanese in Mexico, so we foresee no problems there. If you can correct the erroneous rumors about what has happened in the Yucatán, the company will take care of all your travel expenses.”

Yun Chiho bristled: Does everyone want to pay the travel expenses of an official of a poor nation? Yet there was clearly some truth hidden in Oba Kanichi’s words: even though emigration to Mexico was extremely profitable, the company did not send Japanese there. This alone was enough for him to know that conditions in Mexico were much worse than in Hawaii. Oba was offering a trade: if Yun Chiho returned from Hawaii and Mexico and spoke well of them to the emperor, he would resume sending laborers.

On September 8, 1905, Yun Chiho arrived at the port of Honolulu and met with Governor Robert Carter and Japanese consul Saito Miki. At eight o’clock that evening he met eighty Koreans in a Baptist church. They all cried: they could not have imagined that such a high-ranking official would come to see them. A few days later, Saito met with Yun Chiho again, requesting that he pick up the $242 that had arrived for him at the bank. This was for his travel expenses for the trip to the Yucatán, sent from Seoul. The travel agency told him that the round-trip boat fare was $360. Yun Chiho went to the post office himself and sent a telegram to Seoul. The telegram read: “$300 more needed to go to Mexico.” The telegram cost $18.48. That afternoon, he left Honolulu to meet with the Koreans who were spread out among the various islands.

For twenty-five days, until October 3 of that year, he visited thirty-two sugar plantations and gave forty-one speeches before some five thousand Koreans. He vigorously threw himself at the task. He scolded the lazy, soothed the diligent, and preached to them to believe in Christ. The conditions on the Hawaiian plantations he visited were relatively good; when Hawaii was incorporated into the United States in 1898, the bond slavery system was abolished, so Koreans could move freely between plantations. Many Christians and intellectuals could be found among the immigrants, though they did not adjust well to plantation life. Those who had never farmed went to the cities, like Honolulu, to start businesses and study. Young women back home had agreed to marry men based only on their photographs, and boarded ships to become the brides of men they were meeting for the first time in their lives. From what Yun Chiho saw, there were few problems with the Hawaiian plantations. The work was tiring and difficult, but as a Baptist, he considered labor a blessing from God. The only problems were with those Koreans who had fallen into a debauched life of alcohol and gambling. Here was an opportunity for Yun Chiho to strengthen his convictions about enlightenment. He firmly believed it was his duty to awaken these ignorant and immoral people. The Hawaiian plantation owners enthusiastically welcomed this attitude. They fought with each other to bring Yun Chiho to their plantations, and as time went on he began to seem like a hired lecturer. After his speeches, in which he told the Koreans to work hard, have faith, never fight, never gamble, and never drink, a sudden change would come for a few days. But the non-Christian Koreans quickly went back to their old ways, and the laborers grew derisive of Yun Chiho, who came wearing his black suit and white shirt with empty hands, only to scold them as he rode around all day in the plantation owners’ carriages. “He should work like us for a day,” some Koreans muttered. They had no reason to be pleased to see him.

Yun Chiho returned to Honolulu and checked for messages from Seoul, but there were none. Did he really have to go all the way to Mexico? He was already tired in both body and spirit from touring the Hawaiian plantations, which were all quite similar. And he didn’t have the money. So Yun Chiho boarded the
Manchuria
and headed back to Yokohama.

In Tokyo, he received an imperial grant of 600 yen from the Korean legation. The emperor still wanted him to go to Mexico. Yun Chiho sent a telegram to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Round-trip fare from Japan to Mexico will be 1,164 yen, a hotel will be 400 yen, for a total of 1,564 yen, but the 490 yen I received previously and the grant of 600 yen total 1,090, leaving me 474 short.” He was depressed about having to do petty arithmetic with the imperial grant.

The next day, October 19, Yun Chiho met a slightly haggard Durham Stevens in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel. Stevens bit down on a cigarette and looked around. “There are a lot of Koreans who are threatening to kill me. But I am not concerned. Koreans don’t have the courage.” Everyone now knew that Stevens was actively supporting the interests of Japan, openly declaring that Koreans did not have the ability to rule themselves.

Yun Chiho emphasized the importance of his going to Mexico, but Stevens showed a completely different attitude from when they had last met. He spoke candidly: “I sent a telegram to Seoul saying that you must not be sent to Mexico.” Yun Chiho asked why. Stevens flashed a smile. “The Japanese minister Hayashi and I distrust the emperor. Do you think he is trying to send you to Mexico because he pities his people? Hardly. The emperor wants to let everyone know that he wields independent diplomatic authority. If you were to act as the Korean consul to Mexico while you were there”—he smiled quickly again—“that would be a problem.”

Yun Chiho made no reply. Perhaps Stevens was right: it had been a long time since Korea had been treated as a nation anywhere. The Straight-Forward Society was constantly urging the government to hand over full diplomatic authority to Japan. Yun Chiho sent another telegram: “Fare to Mexico has not arrived. Request permission to return to Korea.”

On November 2, Yun Chiho left Tokyo. After four days at sea, he arrived at the port of Busan; from there he took the newly opened Seoul–Busan Railway. He arrived in Seoul shortly before midnight. On November 8, he had an audience with the emperor. The emperor asked his minister how far he had traveled and where he was living, but there was no strength in his voice. The emperor looked fatigued. Yun Chiho didn’t mention Hawaii, let alone Mexico. Disappointed, he withdrew. The next day, the Japanese ambassador extraordinary, Ito Hirobumi, arrived in Korea. With the fate of the nation and the dynasty in Ito’s hands, the Mexico problem was the least of the emperor’s concerns.

On November 17, Minister of Foreign Affairs Bak Jesun and the Japanese minister Hayashi Gonsuke signed the Second Korea-Japan Treaty, also known as the Protectorate Treaty of 1905, which handed over diplomatic authority to Japan and reduced the Korean Empire to a Japanese tributary. Yun Chiho resigned his position as vice minister of foreign affairs.

F
ATHER
P
AUL WAITED
for the shaman all night, but he did not return. When dawn broke, a number of people gathered at Father Paul’s paja. Choe Seongil calmly lay in bed, pretending not to notice. Children ran in and said that the shaman was locked in the storehouse and had been whipped all night until he had passed out. “What did that interpreter son of a bitch do, anyway?” someone shouted, enraged. “They said he just took his money, got into the carriage, and went back to his hacienda.” “Son of a bitch!” The men clenched their fists. The women began to denounce the hacendado, who had trampled on their ritual. “At this rate, we won’t be able to perform any rituals at all. It’s bad enough that we were deceived into coming here. Are they going to beat us senseless as well?” Several women fell to the ground and wailed. The gathering soon turned into a strike.

Choe Seongil got up, lit a cigarette, and quietly left the paja. Father Paul spoke to the group, haltingly at first, but once he started he grew so impassioned that he surprised even himself. It was almost as if someone were borrowing his body to speak through him. “We came to this place to earn money, not to be whipped. We came to this place because we were hungry, not because we wanted to become the dogs of some mad hacendado. He
is
mad—mad for religion and starving for blood. Let us go and teach him a lesson!”

People armed themselves with machetes and stones. The overseers, who had approached on their horses, figured out what was going on and fled. Now everyone gathered, including the women and children, and ran first to the storehouse where the shaman was. When stones flew and the storehouse windows broke, those who had been guarding the building fled. The men thrust open the doors and ran in. The shaman was asleep, still in chains. When they woke him up he stared at them in wonder. His face was empty, as if he had no idea what had happened. His naked body, striped with wounds like snakes, looked like a captured wild boar.