I Am the Clay (8 page)

Authors: Chaim Potok

The old man found himself thinking that perhaps this time the boy would really die.

He wondered then why he wanted the boy to die. The woman would not abandon the boy. And the boy, because he was hurt and alone, would not leave on his own. But he would certainly leave later to return to his village. What if his village no longer existed? Then he would return to his family and clan. But what
if all were destroyed, as had happened to so many? Then they would give him over to the government or to an orphanage. But what if the woman refused and the boy chose not to leave? Still, why should he want the boy to die? A helpless child.

The old man then found himself gazing at something within him that he had never before seen. All knew of the unseen world beyond the everyday realm of appearances; but he had never thought there might be such a world inside himself: unexplored and cavernous. And because he could neither understand nor name it, he could not see which spirit or demon lurked within it, and that was for him the greatest fear and bewilderment of all.

Still, he was certain he wanted the boy to die.

They slept on the ground near a stand of shattered trees. Dead branches littered the shell-pocked earth but soldiers had come earlier among the refugees and warned against making fires. The woman could not sleep for the cold. All around were footsteps and moans and the sibilant whispers of the spirits of the trees. She lay beneath the quilts and sleeping bag alongside the boy and heard clearly the talking of the trees: the anger of spirits not properly fed, the vengeance they planned—this one’s child would drown in a pond; another would burn of fever; a third would topple headlong from her swing … Up and down on the swing, the warm spring wind on her face; higher and higher, until her bare feet sent the peach blossoms raining down upon her, and higher still, to
the very heaven above. White anemones glistened on the slopes of the hills and frogs had begun to bring their music to the nearby streams. Up and down and higher still, embraced by the kind spirit of the tree. The boy lay beside her, very still … Mother came running that day with news of my marriage: our names and birth days were in accord; men would soon arrive from the bridegroom with gifts of cotton and silk and fine shoes. The boy lay rigid and strangely still. Perhaps he will die after all. What do the spirits care about how many children they take from one mother? Did they not take three from the wife of the old carpenter? Up and down and higher and higher a terror this creature beside me and where will I run they are all dead their hands tied behind them in their shallow grave and why is she singing, this old woman. She felt the boy suddenly stirring, was stabbed by his moan. Raising her stiff arms, she felt upon her face the dry coarse flesh and broken nails of her hands, then drew across the underside of the quilt the vertical and horizontal signs taught her by her mother and murmured soothing words to the boy. The old man slept on, breathing deeply. Stiffening, the boy cried out. Hands tied behind their backs and earth on their faces. Grandfather and Mother and Father and and and earth in their open mouths and eyes and their heads in odd positions as if without bones and and and running. Who are these two old people and demons of fire on my eyes and what is this old woman doing now singing. Mother would sing with earth in her mouth and there are fiends in these broken trees I hear them and they will kill the boy this night. But she swung on the swing higher and higher and when
she could go no farther, at the very height of the arc, at that instant of hesitation between up and down, she leaped from the swing toward the trunk of the nearest shattered tree, arms and legs swimming through the air, and entered deep into the core of the tree, and in the depths of the tree she encountered the clammy foul-smelling spirit, clung to it, sank her fingers into its hooded eyes, heard its piercing scream, felt its tail lash her legs and grasp her thighs. A stone-shaped cry stuck in her throat.
The pain!
She clutched the scaly throat, pressing upon it all her weight, and the creature, writhing, released its grip and slithered from her with tiny moans of defeat and vanished into the heart and root of the tree; and the old woman lay very still, a heavy throbbing in her chest and thigh. She mounted the swing and flew up and higher and took with her the pain of the boy to the blossoms on the boughs and to the heaven beyond. She slept then in a delirium of hunger and dread and through the occasional bursts of automatic-weapon fire that stitched the distant fringes of the refugee camp.

The old man heard movement, a moan of pain. A burst of light, iridescent sparks rising. The lights were inside his eyes. He thought he must be dying. Death welcome. But to be buried in this desolation. Or not to be buried at all.

That last thought brought him sharply awake. His lids scraped across swollen eyes.

He saw the woman with her head over the boy’s
exposed chest. She had brought her mouth down upon the boy and was gnawing on one of the black stitches.

The boy gave out a little scream and pushed with his sticklike arms against the woman’s head. She moved her head slightly away and with her fingers tugged at the stitch, which she then pulled through the puckered skin of the healed wound.

The boy watched in horror.

The scar, about two inches in length and parallel to the right collarbone, was red and ugly. Again and again she put her mouth to the wound and each time chewed at length, making dry grinding noises with her teeth. The boy felt her wet lips and tongue upon his chest, smelled her breath. She drew the stitches through and held them dangling in her fingers, black writhing strings, and threw them clear of the quilts.

She was done. Her mouth ached. She tasted the blood from the broken gums around her teeth. Covering the boy’s chest, she murmured to him soothingly; and the boy lay still.

The old man looked at them in the dawn light that filtered through the partially open top of the sleeping bag and knew the boy would not die of the wound though they would probably all die of the hunger that would soon finally and firmly settle upon their lives.

Many already lay dead on the beach. They lay where they had died in their sleep and no one moved them after the removal of their shoes and clothes. The woman, trembling with weakness, shook the vermin from the quilts and sleeping bag. The bugs scattered on the sand; the lice she would attack again later.

Carrying the quilts to the cart, she suddenly grunted and bent over, and stumbled off behind some trees.

The boy stood a moment, glancing around, shivering.

The old man felt the boy’s eyes upon him. He helped the boy into the cart and wrapped him in quilts.

Knowing now the boy would not die of the wound, the old man thought to study him closely and saw, in the folds of the quilts, a frightened trembling creature with dark hair, a furrowed brow, dark soft eyes arched with fear, a slender nose, the center of the mouth bow-shaped and then dropping to thin pale lips, a soft rounded chin, high-boned cheeks, and a long thin neck. His lips were parched and cracked. There were reddish sores on his face.

The old man looked away from the boy, shivering with uncomprehending anger at the spirits that had sent him to them. Why did they return his life to him? Is he strong with magic?

“Are you able to speak?”

Hesitantly the boy nodded. He means to hurt me.

“What is your name?”

“Kim Sin Gyu.”

“Where are you from?”

The boy named a place north of the old man’s village, a slight breathlessness in his high thin voice.

“What is your father?”

“My father?” A lengthy pause as the boy looked away and then looked back. “A scholar. A poet.”

“Where are your people?”

This time the boy did not respond.

“What happened to your people?”

Still the boy said nothing.

“You have no one?”

“I had a dog.”

The old man looked startled.

“A dog with three colors. Badooki was his name, because of his spots. Three Four I called him sometimes, a bad name, to tease him. Three colors, four legs.” The boy paused a moment, his eyes swollen with memory. “Badooki ran away when the noise began and and I was afraid to run after him because I thought they would see me and he ran across the pond into the forest and and and …”

The boy stopped. His breath came tremulously from the exertion of speaking.

There was a pause.

The old man looked intently at the boy. “Tell me again your name.”

“Kim Sin Gyu.”

“How old are you?”

“I am eleven years old.”

“What do you want us to do with you?”

The boy was quiet. He saw clearly the malice in the old man’s dark eyes and was frightened and bewildered.

“You do not belong to us,” the old man said.

The boy began to cry.

The old man looked away.

From the direction of the hills in the east came a flurry of rifle fire. The old man saw the woman hurrying toward them. Her face greenish, drained of life. Others had begun scurrying from the beach. The old man and woman took up the shafts of the cart.

The sea, driven by winds, foamed upon the shore. The old man and woman, together with others,
walked with their backs to the sea toward a region of ice-covered mountains.

In the early afternoon they reached a small valley. The noise of the war came only faintly there.

With what remained of his waning strength the old man gathered wood and lit a fire. The woman prepared a soup of melted snow and winter grass and the remains of a frozen jackdaw she had found earlier on the beach. Wild dogs circled in the darkness just beyond the light of the fire. The boy sat up and ate, holding the bowl tightly in his shaking hands. His eyes kept darting about and he would not look directly at the old man. The woman watched him eating and spoke silently to the tree of her childhood and to the spirits of her father and grandfather.

The next morning they continued south along cart paths, away from the fading sounds of the war.

During the early hours of the day they came to a narrow valley and the boy was able to walk awhile, leaning on the side of the cart. The woman, overjoyed, refrained from speaking lest she cause him undue fatigue. The old man was glad they did not have to drag the cart with the boy in it along the stony floor of the valley. Tall steep walls of boulder-strewn granite rose on both sides of the valley, darkening it with spectral shadows. The wind blew a wall of stiff cold air through the valley and soon the boy could no longer walk and the woman helped him into the cart and covered him with the quilts and sleeping bag.

“Hungry,” he pleaded.

“Soon.”

“Hungry,” he said again.

She turned away and took up the second shaft and walked alongside the old man.

“How far?” she asked.

“We will stay with the others.”

“There are some who are not continuing.”

“They will not live long.”

“The boy needs to eat.”

“The boy. The boy.”

“I cannot go on.”

“When we stop I will make a fire, catch a rabbit.”