Читать книгу Tales of a Korean Grandmother - Frances Carpenter - Страница 12

KI JA'S

POTTERY

HATS

ONE afternoon, not long after the Ancestors' Feast, Halmoni and Ok Cha and the others in the Inner Court were startled by a great noise beyond the Middle Gate. The cries and shouts there brought the women out upon the little verandas and sent the small boys running into the Outer Court to see what was the matter.

"It was a fight, Halmoni," Yong Tu reported, coming back, breathless. "A fight between So, the stableboy, and that peddler robber who carried away one of the saddles the last time he came inside our gates. You should have seen them, Ok Cha. Each grabbed the other one by the topknot, and they would not let go. Oh, they were rolling about on the ground in the dust. But the peddler was getting the worst of the fight. It was Uncle Chong Yang who stopped them at last."

"There are far too many fights," Halmoni said, shaking her old head in disgust. "Our Emperor will have to bring back again pottery hats, like those of Ki Ja."

"Pottery hats, Halmoni?" Yong Tu asked, dropping down on the veranda step by his grandmother. He was still out of breath. Besides, he thought these curious words might mean a story.

"Wouldn't pottery hats break?" Ok Cha put in.

"Yé, blessed girl, that is why it was decreed that all in the kingdom should wear them. I think it was when Ki Ja was emperor. Or it may have been during the rule of one of his forty descendants. At any rate, it was long ago when men were even rougher than they are today. In those days they were constantly fighting, pulling one another hither and yon by their topknots. Neighbor fought with neighbor. Band fought against band. Men swung their clubs if only to battle with a mosquito. It was not safe to walk abroad on city street or country road.

"So Ki Ja sent forth the order that every man must wear a broad pottery hat, made of baked clay. Two feet across it must be, and shaped like a mushroom so that it came well down over his ears. There was a reason for that too, but I'll speak of it later.

"On a light framework of straw the wet clay was spread smooth. Then the hat was put into a hot oven to bake hard, just like the . Of course the pottery hats broke easily, as Ok Cha has guessed. The slightest jar would send them flying off into the road where they would lie, broken in pieces. How could men fight with such hats on their heads?"

Yong Tu admired the tall hats, made of fine horsehair, which his father and uncles wore inside as well as outside the house.

"They might have taken them off," Yong Tu said practically.

"No, clever boy, that was against the law," Halmoni replied, smiling. "A pottery hat cost a very large sum to buy, but it cost a larger sum to lose one or break one. A man must not only pay a big fine but also go to prison and be well paddled if he broke his precious hat.

"The Emperor's scheme worked very well. With his topknot hidden safely under the great hat, and not daring to step outside his own courts without one, a man had no chance of taking part in a fight. Ki Ja's pottery hats brought peace once again to this unruly land."

"And the shape of the hats, Halmoni," Ok Cha reminded her grandmother.

"Hé, that was good, too. The great round hats were shaped like a dome, like the mourner's hat Neighbor Yi has been wearing ever since his father rode the dragon to Heaven last year. So big they were that men could not come close enough to one another's ears to whisper in secret. The Emperor knew of plots being hatched to cause him much trouble. With such pottery hats he could be sure that his spies would hear all that went on.

"The people did not like these great burdensome hats, and they wanted to make them smaller," the old woman continued. "Yet I know one tale of how his great hat saved the life of a man. It happened in early spring when the river was still covered with its winter cloak of ice. A man walking across the ice stepped upon a thin place and fell through into the water. He would have drowned if his broad hat had not caught on the edges of the hole.

"Crowds gathered on the bank like ants running to feast on a fishbone. The man's son wrung his hands. He had started forward to pull his father out by his hat. But the village elder cried, 'Wait! Do not tug at his hat. His chin strap will break and he surely will drown.'

"The wise old man told the son to break through the crown of the big pottery hat so that he could grasp his father's topknot. Standing up stiff like a horn, it made an excellent handle. With a firm grip on the topknot the son was able to pull his father safely up out of the water."

"What happened to all those pottery hats, Halmoni?" Yong Tu asked when the old woman paused for a breath.

"Ai, they were probably broken at last, or else turned upside down and used for storing rice or soybeans. To please their customers, the hatmakers first left off the clay covering upon the straw framework. Then they made the hats smaller and smaller, and lighter and lighter. And since men had by that time learned to live without fighting, the Emperor's pottery hat decree was withdrawn.

"But even today our men's hats are designed chiefly to protect and cover up their precious topknots. That is why they wear hats inside, as well as outside, their own houses. So's topknot-pulling with the dishonest peddler shows what happens to persons who go about without hats."

Yong Tu admired above everything the tall black hats made of fine horsehair gauze, which were worn by his father and his uncles. He liked to lift them, because he never could believe hats could be so light. "They're no heavier than feathers," he used to say to Ok Cha. Indeed their father's hat weighed only a little more than an ounce.

On cloudy days the boy was often sent to fetch the rain cover for his father's horsehair hat. The slightest dampness would melt the stiffening of its crown which stood up so proudly. An oiled-paper pleated covering, shaped like a tiny tent, was kept tucked inside Kim Hong Chip's sleeve, whence it could be quickly pulled out when the rain came.

Yong Tu admired also the neat gauze skullcap his father wore under the hat, with his fine upstanding topknot rising through the hole in its top. Like most yangbans, Kim Hong Chip sometimes put a small silver pin in his topknot. That was to drive away evil spirits which might wish to grab it. Other times he wore in it a button of jade, amber, or turquoise.

The amber beads on the chin strap that held his hat firmly upon his dignified head were a sign of this man's importance. More ordinary men had only a narrow black ribbon tied under their chins.

Yong Tu never thought it strange that a boy of ten years, like himself, should wear a long braid down his back, like a girl. It never occurred to him to wonder why his father and his uncles should bother with long hair, which had to be combed and oiled with such care.

This boy looked forward to the time when he, too, would be old enough to marry and put his hair up in the honorable topknot. That would be a great day, a lucky day chosen by the soothsayer. All the family would gather in the Hall of Ceremonies. Kim Hong Chip, as Master of the House, would unbraid his son's long hair. He would then comb it upward, giving it a firm twist and tying it tightly with string. The horsehair cap would be put on, and in his new long white coat, Yong Tu would bow before the tablets of the Ancestors. Then they, too, would know that he had become a man. There would be feasts for the Ancestors and for the family and friends who came to congratulate him.

If anyone had asked Yong Tu why a topknot was so important, he would have just looked surprised and would have answered, "It is the custom." That was reason enough in this land of Korea where people had followed the ways of their ancestors for more than four thousand years.