THE
ROOSTER
AND
THE
CENTIPEDE
PAINTED in bright colors on a square tablet of wood, a fierce rooster hung on the edge of the veranda in the Inner Court.
"It drives the centipedes away," Halmoni often explained to the children. "But you must keep watch for them just the same," she always added.
Those long crawling creatures, with their many legs moving like the oars of a boat, were feared by everyone in the Inner Court. None in the Kim household would ever forget the time when Yong Tu picked one up in his hand, nor how nearly its poisonous bite came to sending him off to the Distant Shore.
"That centipede was twice as long as my hand," the boy told his friends. "My hand and my arm grew very fat. Only when the mudang made charms over me, did the pain go away."
Halmoni had watched the mudang's every move. The sorceress danced and screamed at the poison spirit that had entered the little boy's body. The Korean grandmother, however, thought the rag soaked in wine, which she herself put on the bite, had a good deal to do with the cure.
"Why does the centipede fear the rooster, Halmoni?" Ok Cha asked one afternoon.
"Because of the rooster's sharp beak, of course, child. Then, too, the rooster and the centipede have been enemies for ten thousand years. There are many tales about that."
"Could you remember one now?" the little girl asked eagerly.
"I can remember the one about the young man and the woman who once had been a centipede. That was a curious happening. It took place many hundreds of years ago, probably right here in our own city of Seoul.
"The man came of a family whose name was Chu. He was young and well-mannered, and he earned his rice by finding customers for an important silk merchant. So polite a manner had Chu that when he stood on the street and asked people to buy, many followed his beckoning into the silk shop.
"'Buy silk! Fine silk! No better silk in all the land!' Chu was crying this one day when the maidservant of a rich widow walked by. Under his persuasion she bought of the best the silk shop afforded, and she paid for her purchase with shining gold coins out of her embroidered belt pocket.
"Not many days later, the maidservant came to the Street of Silk Merchants again. Though young men from other silk shops begged her to enter, she waited for Chu. And again she bought much. A third time, and a fourth time, she came to the silk shop. The silk merchant was pleased, and it meant good earnings for Chu.
"One afternoon the widow's maidservant politely requested Chu to accompany her home. Her mistress wished to talk with him about some special silk she wished to buy for a screen. Now this lady was a widow, and Chu himself was a widower, his young wife having died when the Spirit of Smallpox entered his courts. Both were young. Both were handsome. It is not strange that before long the widow and Chu were married, and the young man went to live with her in her rich home.
"All went well. Chu was happy. Never had he known so kind and so pleasant a woman as his new wife. He had fine coats of silk, and each meal was as bountiful as an Ancestors' Feast.
"When he walked abroad, Chu usually crossed the 'Chicken Bridge' near his home. One evening as he stepped upon it, he heard a voice calling his name. 'Chu, Chu, my son!' the voice said. 'Your father speaks. Your father warns you of danger. That person in your house, that woman, brings you bad luck. You must put her to death. Crush her as you would a centipede that crawls near your foot.'
"'How should I kill my beautiful wife?' Chu replied to the voice that came from under the bridge. 'She is good. She is kind. She has brought me only good luck. I could never do her harm.' And he went on his way.
"The next time the young man crossed over the Chicken Bridge, the voice of his dead father came to him again. 'Kill that person in your house, my son. Your father's spirit commands you. She is a demon in woman's form. If she does not die before close of the fifteenth day, your own spirit will ride the winds to join me here on the Distant Shore.'
"Now the young man was troubled. The voice that gave him this dire command sounded just like that of his own father. He was a good son who always had obeyed the words of his parents. But when he thought of the comfort and kindness which he had got from his good wife, he knew he never would kill her.
"His heart was heavy. The fifteenth day dawned, and the hours passed one by one. At evening he went into the Inner Court. His wife did not move towards him as usual. She only sat on the soft white mat on the floor, as if lost in a dream.
"As Chu watched in silence, her face turned first to dead white, then to pale green. The woman began to groan and to shiver. The man was spellbound. He did not dare touch her or call out her name, for he could see she was bewitched. At last, however, the sickness passed away from his wife's face. Joy filled Chu's heart when her skin cleared. She opened her eyes, and she began to speak to him.
"'Why did you not kill me, as the voice under the bridge commanded you, Master of my House?'
"'What strange words do you speak? What is their meaning?' Chu replied to her. 'How did you know about the voice under the bridge?'
"I will tear the paper out of the windowpane of your understanding so that you may see clearly into the heart of that curious happening under the bridge,' Chu's wife said to him. it is a strange story, but it has a golden ending. By your kindness and your faithfulness you have released me from a terrible prison.
"'You must know that, in an earlier life, the Jade Emperor of Heaven decided to punish me for some misdoing. He changed me from a woman into a centipede, and he set a great rooster to torment me. Through one life after another, that rooster has pursued me. Only after a thousand years had gone by, was I permitted to take on my former shape and become a woman again. But still my enemy followed me.
"'Once I had become a woman, I was too large and too strong for the rooster to kill all by himself. His only hope was to persuade some man to perform the dreadful deed for him. It was the rooster's voice you heard, my husband, imitating your dead father. And it was your good heart that kept you from obeying that false command.
"'This day ends the time that was given the rooster to destroy me. My spirit was fighting with his spirit when you came into the Inner Court this afternoon. As you see, I won the battle. Now, forever, am I free of him. Always and always, now, I may remain a woman and your wife. Peace lies before us.'
"Next morning when Chu came to the Chicken Bridge, he climbed down to the spot whence the strange voice had come. There on the ground he found an enormous white rooster. Old, very old, it was. And as tall as Yong Tu. The rooster was dead, quite dead, my children. Never again did Chu's wife have to fear him. But to this day, a rooster will attack a centipede whenever the two meet."