The last two chapters were about people reaching people. This one has something that is not a person in it.
The young woman he met going round the pagoda was a tiger, and the tiger asks him to kill her.
This is the chapter about the man who did as she asked. And about what he never spoke of afterwards.
The Night at the Pagoda
Silla had a custom of a spring gathering each second month. From the eighth day to the fifteenth the men and women of the capital went round the brick pagoda at Heungnyunsa. It was for asking blessing.
In King Wonseong’s reign there was a young man called Kim Hyeon.
He went round the pagoda alone until the night was late. A young woman came round behind him saying her prayers, and as they went their minds met.
That night the two were joined as husband and wife.
When she made to go home Kim Hyeon set out after her. She declined, and he went along all the same.
The House on the Mountainside
They came to a hut at the foot of the west mountain. An old woman came out and asked who it was she had brought. The young woman told her the truth.
The old woman’s answer is the first fork in this chapter.
It was a good thing, she said, and better not to have happened. But it was done and there was no scolding it. Then she said to hide him, for fear of what the brothers might do.
The young woman hid Kim Hyeon in a corner.
Shortly after, three tigers came growling in. The house smelled of a person, they said in human words, and that would do for a meal.
The old woman and the young woman scolded them off.
Then a voice came from the sky. You are too fond of taking the lives of others, it said, and one of you shall be killed to check that wickedness.
The three beasts heard it and fell into worry.
The young woman spoke. If her three brothers would go far off and mend themselves, she said, she would take the punishment in their place.
The three ran off gladly.
Five Goods in It
She came in and spoke to Kim Hyeon. At first she had declined to bring him home out of shame, she said, but now there was nothing left to hide.
What she said next was her plan.
Tomorrow she would go into the market and do great harm. Nobody in the country would be able to handle it, and the king would call for a man with high office as the prize. Then he was to follow her without fear into the wood north of the city, where she would be waiting.
Better his blade than a stranger’s, she said, and so pay back what he had given.
Kim Hyeon refused. It is no ordinary thing, he said first, for a person to keep company with another kind. But they had been happy already, he said, and that was a piece of luck from heaven.
How could he sell his wife’s death and hope for office by that chance.
She took the words up. Then she counted out five goods in the thing.
Her early death was heaven’s command, she said, and her own wish besides. It was his good fortune, her family’s blessing, and the joy of the whole country. One death and five things are had, she said, so how could she refuse.
She asked only that he build a temple for her and have the sutras read.
The two of them wept and parted.
In the Wood
The next day a fierce tiger came into the city. It hurt many people and nobody could handle it.
King Wonseong heard and gave the order. Whoever took the tiger would have office of the second grade.
Kim Hyeon went to the palace and said he could do it.
The king gave him the office first, to spur him on. The record sets that order down as it stands.
Kim Hyeon took his sword and went into the wood.
The tiger turned into the woman and met him smiling. Do not forget last night, she said. Those hurt by her claws today should have the paste from Heungnyunsa put on them, she said, and hearing that temple’s horn they would be well.
Then she drew the sword he wore and took her own life.
Kim Hyeon came out of the wood. He said only that the tiger had been easy to take, and hid the reason.
The hurt were treated in the way she had said and their wounds all healed. The method is still used, Iryeon notes.
Once in office Kim Hyeon founded a temple on the west river and called it Howonsa. He had the sutras read there always, to guide the tiger on and pay back what he owed.
He put the thing in writing only when he came to die.
The world learned of it then. The writing is called On the Tiger Wood.
Iryeon puts a Chinese story beside this entry. It is about a tiger who becomes a man’s wife and leaves. That tiger cannot bear people and goes back to the mountain leaving one poem behind.
Setting the two side by side, Iryeon thinks better of this one. She hurt people because she had no choice, but she left behind a way to save them.
The Four Lines Iryeon Added
Iryeon left four lines at the end of this entry. In our words:
The house in the hills could not bear the wickedness of three brothers and an orchid mouth spoke fair words, one promise given in earnest The debt was heavy on many counts, ten thousand deaths made light and she gave up her body under the trees, the falling blossom scattering
The four lines take only her side. Kim Hyeon is not in them.
Today, What He Never Said
The strangest place in this chapter is not where a tiger turns into a person.
It is between what Kim Hyeon said and what he did.
He said he could not sell his wife’s death and hope for office. The next day he went to the palace, and the king gave him the office first.
What he refused and what he took are the same thing.
The record does not rub the mismatch out. It leaves the order as it is and adds nothing.
A reader can take it two ways.
One is that he went along with what she wanted. It was she who counted out the five goods, and to block what someone has decided for themselves, in a way they do not want, is not respect.
Besides, without the office he had no standing to go into that wood.
The other is that his words and his act came apart. He came out of the wood saying only that it was easy, and hid the reason.
To hide a thing is to be caught on it somewhere.
And he never spoke of it. He founded a temple and had the sutras read, and did not put the thing into words.
Only at the end did he take up a brush.
Here one more question turns up. Who was that writing for.
If it was for the one who had gone, it was late. If it was for those still living, what was it he wanted them to know.
It may have been for himself.
We meet places where we refuse a thing and end up doing it. People usually go quiet then rather than explain.
Kim Hyeon was quiet all through his office and his temple building.
What this chapter leaves is not the tiger. It is that stretch of silence.