I Am the Clay (12 page)

As they approached the foothills, the walls of the valley grew taller and steeper, the valley narrower. Firs and pines, branches bowed with snow and ice, covered the juncture of the valley and its hills, and at
one point a narrow line of larch advanced determinedly up the slope of a low mountain and yielded only to the granite face and thinning air. Along some of the foothills the trees seemed to be climbing perpendicular walls, and the ridges and towers leaned inward over the valley like, like what? like, the old man suddenly remembered, like, yes, the barbed-wire top of the fence near the airfield outside Seoul where while we were gathering brushwood—when? how long ago?—while we were gathering brushwood they fired their weapons at us and a man standing not twenty feet from me was struck in the chest and spun quickly around and tumbled face forward into the brush and those of us near him scrambled to gather up the wood he had loaded on his back and run and they fired at us again but no one was hit; the peaks leaned inward over the valley until they formed a nearly enclosed bower; and to the woman, pushing the cart from behind and wondering how long its wheels would last, to the woman the distant sliver of sky, pale blue and too soon emptied of the sun, mirrored the narrowing of the valley floor and cart path into a pebble-strewn fissure: a ravine at the very root of the world.

Blue-gray shadows entered the valley. Walking alongside the boy, the old man thought: Where is this place? What is it called? In the North I hunted one winter in a valley like this with my uncle and two cousins. A deep narrow river running through it and the trees down to the banks. How old was I? Fourteen? Fifteen? Long before the war between the Americans and the Japanese. Uncle shot six pheasants. And two huge boars. We came upon them burrowing for acorns in the snow. Coal black, big as
bears, large tusks. One of them, wounded, charged to within nine feet of me and Uncle. Smelled him and saw his yellow eyes. Uncle gave me a piece of his liver in the hut later. Raw and warm and dripping. Cousins took a long time to stalk and shoot a goral. Uncle said I should become a hunter, not a farmer. Stay with me, I’ll teach you to hunt. You take the rich Japanese and Russians out hunting. From far off we saw leopards and even a tiger. But Uncle would never kill a tiger. A sacred animal, the tiger. Uncle said tigers protected the wild and miraculous ginseng roots. A single drink prepared from the ginseng root and a person will never shiver in the cold or suffer in the heat, Uncle said. You grow strong and immune to all illness. You live until you are eighty or ninety. But it must be the wild red ginseng root, Uncle said, not the cultivated one. What is this valley? Where are we? Have I fallen into a dream of my childhood? Thoughts caused by not enough meat? Wise to have held the raw liver of the dog until this time. Keeps fresh in the cold. Warm it just a little near the fire. Eat it tonight warm and raw. One piece for the boy. What shall I do with this boy? Is he good magic? Let him return with us to our village? But he is not of our blood.

The old man sensed a change in the direction of the wind and felt the floor of the valley begin to climb. A faint keening accompanied the wind here, like the sound on the street in the city where he had slain the little dog. He trudged on, his shoulder muscles sore and quivering. Legs treading cautiously the icy pebbled path. Sweaty with exertion beneath the heavy cap and wadded clothes. Five days ago nearly dead, and
now, see, still alive. Where will we sleep tonight? Maybe a cave somewhere. They took away the pieces of the shack, those soldiers. Our soldiers. A knife to them!

Entering the foothills, he saw propped up against a low boulder the badly decomposed body of a woman. Stringy black hair; empty eye sockets. She had been left in her clothes but her shoes were gone and the soles of her feet were torn to black-and-red strips from the pebbles and the ridged razorlike ice and her legs had turned black. Black too her sticklike arms and hollow face and the stubbly remnant of her nose.

The woman saw the body and looked away. She murmured words taught her by her mother and quickly made horizontal and vertical motions with her right arm. It might be me in that cave if not for the healing spirits. Animals have been at her. No peace for her spirit. All the thousands and thousands of spirits of those slain in this war. No rest. No one to bring them offerings. Terribly lonely. As my spirit would have been had the boy and the man died. But better unburied than to lie in a wrong grave.

The boy stared a long moment at the dead woman and turned away. Mother with her eyes wide open and frozen. Nose firm and straight and blackened with dirt. Earth in her gaping mouth. Maybe the fire did not destroy everything and I ran away too soon. Maybe I’ll stay with them in the refugee camp and return with them to their village and then go back to my village to see if anything remains. Maybe someone is alive and and Badooki returned and is waiting for me and and I should go back and and and …

The woman left her place at the rear of the cart and went to the front and took the place of the old man, who then slipped the A-frame over his shoulders and walked off toward the trees to gather pine brushwood.

From somewhere came the sudden chop of a helicopter echoing through the hills and advancing toward the valley. Snow fell from trees and small stones cascaded down a steep gully. But the sounds and echoes faded and the whispers of the wind returned and now there were stars in the twilight sky.

The woman and the boy walked on, pulling at the shafts of the cart, and the old man, working among the trees, loaded brushwood onto his A-frame and never let the cart slip for too long out of his line of vision.

Before dark they halted at a ledge carved out of the base of the mountain wall and the woman built a fire. An overhang extended nearly the length of the ledge. The old man, helped by the boy, turned the cart on its side and angled it against the mountain. The cart and the mountain gave them two walls, with the fire as the third. On a flat rock next to the cart the old man placed tenderly the small box that contained the spirit of his father.

The woman filled a pot with snow and boiled it and put into it the small black mountain snake the man had found curled in sleep beneath a rock during the day. She offered the food to the spirits of the mountains, thinking, Are the spirits of these mountains like the healing spirits of the cave, and they had the soup and then ate the raw liver.

All that day since leaving the cave in the valley the
old man and the woman and the boy had not exchanged a word.

“I have not thanked you,” the old man said now to the boy when the soup and the meat were gone. “I want to thank you.”

The boy bowed his head. The woman smiled joyously to herself.

“You are a clever boy. Who taught you to fish?”

“Grandfather.”

“The scholar?”

“No. The father of my mother. He had long poles and high boots and fished in great rivers.”

“What did he do, this grandfather?”

“He owned many farms.”

“A farmer?”

“No. He owned the land.”

“Ah.”

“He was also a great hunter.”

“Ah, yes?”

“But I never went hunting with him.”

“Ah.”

“Have you ever gone hunting?”

“When I was a boy. But my memory of it is dim.”

“My mother’s father said I should go hunting and not read all the time, but my father and his father would not permit it.”

The woman listened and remained silent.

“When we come to the camp,” the boy said, “will you send me away?”

The man shook his head and scratched the mole on his cheek. “If the authorities ask, I will say you are not my son. But I won’t send you away.”

“Will they take me away if I am not your son?”

“I don’t know that.”

“What must I do not to be taken away?”

“I don’t know the law.”

“There was nothing left when I ran from the village. It was on fire and everyone was dead. Otherwise I would not have run away.”

The woman turned to look at the boy.

“I ran up and down and through the village to find someone. I did not run away because of cowardice.”

“I never said that.”

“I was very frightened, but I am not a coward. I even tried to put out the fires. The air was on fire.”

“I have never even thought it,” the old man said. “But you are not of our blood.”

“And you will not send me away?”

“I won’t send you away until we know it will be good for you.”

“Can I return with you to your village?”

The old man shook his head. “It is not your village and I am not your father and this woman is not your mother. Now we must go to sleep or fatigue will make us sick again.”

Quickly the woman unfolded the mats and quilts and sleeping bag and shook them out. She spread them upon the ledge, directly below the overhang. The wind as it moved through the ravine brought to them the cries and hooting sounds of night animals. Curls of smoke and heat from the fire blew across the ledge.

The boy had gone off to the side beyond the ledge to tend to his needs.

“Listen,” the woman said quietly to the old man, “you would let this boy go?”

“What are you asking?”

“This is a boy with strange power.” She knew how he thought.

“What do you mean, woman?” He trembled.

“The pond. The fish. The dog.”

“Yes?”

“There is magic in this boy.”

“Magic?”

“He may be helpful to us.”

“Let him take his magic and go home,” the old man said.

“I saw how the dog came to him. How it cured him.”

“We are too old for a young boy. He brings with him memories.”

“What memories?”

“The life I might have had. All the children and grandchildren stolen from me.”

“And from me,” the woman said after a moment.

“In the camp we will find a place for him. Let him take his magic. I have no need for magic.”

“Speak softly,” she cautioned. “There are spirits everywhere.”

He cringed and looked fearfully around.

The boy returned and knew from their sidelong glances that they had been talking about him.

“We will die in this cold if we do not keep up the fire,” the old man said. “The woman and I will take turns.”

“I will take a turn,” the boy said.

“You’re a child,” said the woman.

“I’m a boy. And the wound is healed.”

“It is too cold for you to be awake now.”

“I will take my turn,” the boy insisted.

“Speak to him,” the woman said to the old man.

“If he wants a turn he should have a turn,” the old man said, thinking of the additional sleep and the fewer hours of numbing torpor by the fire.

“But he is a child,” the woman said.

“He is more than a child,” the old man said. “By your own words.”

The woman began to respond but thought better of it and was quiet.

“Make sure you don’t fall asleep by the fire,” the old man warned the boy. “Or it will be the last sleep for us all.”

“When shall I wake you?”

“Let the fire burn down to this height”—the old man stooped and marked the air with his hands—“and then add wood to it to this height. After you have put wood on it a fifth time, wake me. Good night, Kim Sin Gyu.”

“I do not know how you are called,” the boy said.

“Call him Father,” the old woman heard herself answer to her own astonishment.

“Woman!” said the old man in anger.

“How may I call him Father?” asked the boy, his voice suddenly rising. “How?” He was crying. “How how how?” He wiped at the tears and looked fiercely at the old man. “I will call you Uncle.”

The two old people were quiet.

“Good night, Uncle,” the boy said. And to the woman he said softly, “Good night.”

He turned his back to them and put a quilt around his shoulders and squatted by the fire.

After a moment the woman slipped into the quilts on the floor of the ledge. She thought: This boy will
live all his life with those memories. He is too much inside his village.

The old man slid in quickly beside her and she felt the tautness in his bony frame. He scratched himself furiously and shivered and ground his teeth. Slowly he settled into sleep.

The boy squatted on the ledge, tending the fire.

He sat cocooned inside the quilt with only his eyes showing. The fire offered a dancing nimbus of light and caressing fingers of smoke and heat as it played across the ledge and over the two figures sleeping beneath the quilts. Minutes passed and from the mountains came the piercing noises of a night creature: three long shrill cries ringing through the darkness. He shuddered as the sounds penetrated him and brought a tingling to the back of his neck and the tips of his fingers and toes. What had made those fearful noises? A bird caught in its nest by an owl? A rabbit foraging outside its den and suddenly snapped up by a leopard? Are there leopards here? Flames dancing in the wind with a whoof and a puff and streams of sparks whirling off into the terrible darkness. Mother told me once a story when I was a child a fish a rabbit a turtle. Warm voice of Mother with cold earth in it now. A rabbit a turtle a fish. The queen of fishes. How she snapped at a worm one day and caught a hook through her mouth. Pain! With a burst of energy she broke the line and escaped with the hook still in her mouth. She became very ill from the evil hook. Pain and fever. All the scholars of her kingdom were
summoned to her palace. Grandfather listening to the story smoking his long-stemmed pipe and smiling behind the smoke. Father studying a book of Chinese characters but listening too behind his studying. The turtle, fat and scheming, announced that only a medicine made from the liver of a rabbit would heal the queen. I am acquainted with a rabbit, I see him walking now and then along the beach, I will bring him to the palace of Your Majesty. In fact the turtle did not know the rabbit very well but hoped that his cunning would help him make a great reputation for himself with the queen … Has the fire burned so low already? Did I fall asleep? We will all die of the cold if I fall asleep. More wood. Build it to here, the old man said. This mountain wind like a wall of ice. Remember how I put my hand in snow once to show off to my friends how long I could keep it there and when I took it out I could not feel the fingers, they were of a strange color, and the village doctor clicked his tongue and said two more minutes and I would have lost some of the fingers and Father was dark with anger. This is a foolish boy, he said. I have under my roof a foolish boy … Well, what did the fat and cunning turtle do? It dragged itself up to the beach and luckily there was the rabbit, who looked surprised and asked the turtle why he was out of the water. For the view, said the turtle. We have better views than this, said the rabbit. Ah, you should see the view in the water, said the turtle. Mountains, forests, valleys, caves, and great open plains. And most especially the palace of the queen … More wood again? How quickly it burns down. Quietly, so as not to wake them. Animals in the darkness, I hear them.
Hungry dogs? A leopard? Or are there leopards only in the North?… I would like to see the palace of the queen, said the rabbit. Hop on my back, then, urged the turtle. And the rabbit hopped onto the back of the turtle and down they went into the water and the rabbit was delighted by the view of the undersea mountains and valleys and caves and plains. And the royal palace was splendid and the rabbit was brought to the chambers of the queen, where he met the scholars and the doctors and was offered warm rice wine and a delicious omelet with soybeans, millet, maize, and rice with vegetable leaves. As the rabbit sat eating he overheard two servants talking about the need to obtain his liver to save the life of their queen. This frightened the rabbit but he kept his wits and when summoned before the queen again the fire is down so quickly is this the third or fourth time the third time it must be I see shadows moving beyond the flames night animals put on more wood but remember only as high as the old man said the rabbit put on a calm face and said he would be delighted to give his liver to save the queen but the liver could be put in and taken out it is worn like spectacles and he had left it on the beach so as not to get it wet and he would be happy to bring it to Her Majesty. Do go and fetch it, said the doctors and the scholars. And the rabbit climbed onto the back of the turtle who returned him to the beach where the rabbit informed the turtle that he had only one liver and he intended to keep it and off he went leaving the fat scheming turtle to answer to the queen for his foolishness. And Grandfather chuckled with the pipe in his mouth and and Father smiled with his eyes on the Chinese book and Mother
murmured good night and Badooki barked somewhere outside and and and the fire is down again and this quilt is not warm enough against the cold and if it were not for this fire we would all be frozen and dead by now like that woman and Mother with earth in her mouth. Foolish turtle and wise rabbit. Be wise like that rabbit, Grandfather said to me the next day. And Father said, He does foolish things, he daydreams all day by the pond, and Mother said, But he is only a boy. Now all with their hands tied and their heads in queer positions and earth on their faces and in their mouths. He dozed briefly and woke in terror and did not know for a moment where he was and then he saw the fire was too low and the wind dead and the air searing with arctic stillness and he put more brushwood on the fire, its prickles stabbing his hands, and he dragged himself over to the quilts to wake the old man.