“. . . and the twilight, yes, the twilight,” says my mother, closing her eyes for a moment. “The sun goes down quickly in the north, you know, especially in the winter.” She pauses, remembering the twilight and the sunset in a small border town by Tuman River that separates northern Korea, Manchuria, and Siberia. 1933—I must have been only a year old. “Oh, but that twilight was glorious, almost awesome,” says my mother. “It was windy that afternoon, and snow flurries were swirling and swishing around all over—over the shabby little town, the snow-covered railway station, the ice-capped mountains, the frozen river, the bridge, yes, the bridge which we had to cross but couldn’t. Of course, I didn’t see it all really until I was out of the train, until they took your father away from me, away from the train we were on.” She stops again, as if to blot out that part of her remembrance —the Japanese Thought Policeman and the Japanese Military Policeman snatching away my father’s papers and pushing him down the corridor and out of the train. She shakes her head slightly and smiles. “And it was so cold in the train. The steam heater wasn’t working, not in our compartment anyway, and I had only thin socks on.” Her thin cotton socks and her black patent leather shoes—and she is the only Korean woman in the compartment who wears Western-style clothes, has a baby, and has to watch, in tearful silence, her young husband being taken off the train by the Japanese.
And what was I doing? Asleep? Awake, wide awake—watching too. “And I almost wished you would start crying, and the Japanese would let your father alone so he could take care of me and you, but you didn’t.” She smiles. “We had been on the train almost all day, when it, at last, pulled into that railway station. The compartment was half-empty, cold, and there was a thick coat of ice on the windows, and you couldn’t see out.”
. . . the train gasps and puffs into the outer edge of the train yard, braking hard, slipping on the tracks. “Where are we?” my mother is asking, holding me up in her arms as the train jerks and lurches. “This is the last stop before the border,” my father is saying, “this is the last Korean town before we get to Manchuria.” Frozen windowpane crusted with sooty ice. My father scratching the pane with his thumbnail, thawing it with his breath, and clearing a round patch with his fingers, so my mother and I can look outside, so his young wife can look at the last town on the Korean side of the border, before they take leave of their homeland that is no longer their homeland. She watches the snow flurries whipping and gyrating madly outside, subsiding suddenly once in a while, and she can see nothing for a while, as the train crawls into the station. Then, the train is slinking in between other trains and flatcars, and she is staring at the big guns of the Japanese artillery and the tanks on the flatcars and, then, the horses of the Japanese cavalry peering out of their open stalls next to the flatcars, the horses’ white breath mixing with the steam from the train, and, then, the Japanese soldiers in their compartments, all looking out, some in their undershirts and some with their jackets open, eating and drinking. She turns to my father and says:
“Look.”
My father looks out, turns to her, and nods.
It is then that a Japanese Thought Police detective and a Japanese Military Policeman come into the compartment. The detective is a middle-aged Korean who works for the Japanese; he is big and tall and wears a brown, dog-fur coat and a gray felt hat. The Japanese Military Policeman is not wearing an overcoat; he has on a brown leather belt with a big brass buckle, a pistol in a black leather holster, and a long saber that his white-gloved left hand clutches; he is young and short, with a flushed, boyish face; he is a corporal. “There were only about a dozen people in our compartment,” says my mother, “and the detective took one look around and came straight to your father. He knew what he was up to. The Military Policeman followed right behind him, like a hunter following behind his hound, and all the Korean passengers were looking at us, all very quiet. When the detective came to our seat, he turned around to look at the other passengers, and they all snapped their heads away from us, and the detective nodded to the Japanese Military Policeman.” She stops. “As if to say to the corporal, ‘Well, we got him.’”
. . . and she is looking down at the snow-covered toes of the corporal’s long, brown boots and the shiny toes of the detective’s black shoes. The thin fingers of her young husband smoothing pieces of creased papers and holding them out, and the white-gloved hand of the corporal snatching them up. The papers crackle, and she thinks her husband’s hand is trembling, not because he is afraid but because he is in poor health and weak; after all, he had been jailed by the Japanese for years for his resistance-movement activities, before she married him. . . . The corporal gives the papers to the detective and steps aside. His boots creak, and, as if on cue, the Korean detective says to her husband—my father—“So, you don’t waste much time, do you? You could hardly wait to get out of the country.”
My father is silent.
“Your parole was over only a week ago, and here you are sneaking out of the country.”
“My papers are in order, as you can see,” says my father, “and you must have had words about me from the police in my town.”
“We know everything about you.”
“Then you know I have official permission to travel.”
“A piece of paper,” says the detective.
“It is signed by the chief of police in my town and also by the Japanese judge of our district.”
The detective folds the papers and stuffs them into his pocket. “What is the purpose of your travel?”
“It is stated in the papers.”
“I am asking you a question.”
“I have a job waiting for me.”
“You couldn’t get a job in the country?”
“I was a farmer,” says my father. “I worked in my father’s orchard.”
“So—this high school is run by foreign missionaries. Do you have to work for foreigners?”
My mother thinks my father should say, “Look, you, too, are working for foreigners, as their hound.” But my father says quietly, “It’s a job.”
“These missionaries—these foreign Christians—they feel sorry for you and give you a job and think they are protecting you from us?”
“It’s a job; besides, I am a Christian,” my father says and quickly glances at my mother. “And my wife is the daughter of a Christian minister, so it is natural that the foreign missionaries would want to hire me to teach.”
“What do they want you to teach?”
“I am going to be teaching biology and chemistry.”
The detective doesn’t reply to that and looks at my mother.
My father says, “She will be teaching music at the school’s kindergarten. It is all stated in the papers.”
The detective says to my mother, “Is that a boy or a girl?”
I am all bundled up and wrapped in the wool blanket my grandmother made.
“A boy,” says my mother. “He is only a year old.”
My father says, “May I have the papers back?”
The detective says, “Do you understand Japanese?”
My father nods. “I don’t speak it well.”
The detective whispers something to the Japanese corporal. He turns to my father. “You must come with us.”
“Why?”
“The Military Police want to ask you a few questions.”
“About what?”
“How would I know! I don’t work for the Military Police!”
“But I can’t leave the train. It will go out soon.”
“No, it won’t move for a while. The military trains will have to cross the bridge first, and that will take a while. Come!” He says to my mother, “You stay here. He will be back soon.”
She tries to stand up, gathering me up in her arms. My father tells her not to worry. “Stay here,” he says. Tears well up in her frightened eyes, and her husband shakes his head. She nods and sits down, clutching me close to her. He moves out of the seat, and she picks up his woolen gloves and hands them to him. Then, they are gone from the compartment. She presses her face to the window, trying to see if she can catch a glimpse of him, trying to find out where they are taking him. But all that she can see is the Japanese military train that is right alongside her train. The military train is now creaking out of the station and, through the frozen windowpane, she sees blurred images of the Japanese guns, tanks, soldiers, and the horses that are passing by. At last, she can see across the snow-covered tracks to the dingy station house, just as my father and his inquisitors disappear into it. Her breath is clouding the windowpane, and a thin coat of ice quickly blots out her view. Scratching at the windowpane, she is trying to be brave, but she is afraid for her young husband and for herself, alone with the baby; she weeps silently, all the time thinking that she must do something. It is quiet in the compartment; the other passengers try not to look at her. A little later, the conductor comes in and begins to collect the tickets. She doesn’t have her ticket; her husband has it. She looks up at the conductor, who is a Korean, and tries to explain but words do not come out. A young Korean boy, a high school boy, comes over and quickly explains the situation to the conductor, who nods in sympathy and tells her not to worry. The high school boy bows to her and shyly asks her the name of her husband. She tells him. The boy smiles triumphantly, knowingly.
“I heard his name mentioned by the detective, but I wanted to make sure,” he says, glancing at the conductor, who is standing by awkwardly. The boy says to her, “I go to the same high school he went to in Seoul. Everyone at the school knows his name and about his trial and going to prison and all.” He tells the conductor that my father is a patriot who, as a college student, organized a resistance movement against the Japanese and was arrested by the Japanese and spent years in prison. He tells the conductor the name of the trial case. The conductor says he has heard about it and turns to her. “He will be all right. Don’t worry too much. It probably is just a routine questioning. This is a border town, you know, and, what with the war and all the disturbances going on across the river—well, the Japanese have been pretty strict about security.”
The high school boy whispers, “Is it true that the Chinese and Korean troops across the river demolished a whole Japanese regiment a while ago?”
The conductor hushes the young boy but nods. “In June,” he says. “The regiment from Nanam.” He cuts the cold air with his gloved hand. “All of them.” He says to the boy, “I would be quiet about it, though, if I were you.”
“Yes, sir,” says the boy.
Suddenly, the train lurches forward and begins to move.
The conductor says, “What’s going on? We aren’t supposed to pull out for another hour!” He runs out of the compartment, saying, “I’ll find out and let you know.”
My mother, in panic, stands up, swaying. Quickly, she makes up her mind that she should get off the train. She gathers me up in her arms but doesn’t know what to do with the two suitcases. The train slows down and stops. The boy says, “You can’t get off the train! They wouldn’t let the train go out without him. Trains can’t go out without the Military Police’s permission, you know.”
But she is now determined. She should have followed her husband, she thinks, when they took him away. She is afraid, and she feels lost. She says to the boy, “I am going out.”
The boy says, “The train is stopped now. Why don’t you wait and see?”
The conductor runs into the compartment and shouts to everyone, “We’ll be moving out in a minute!” He comes to her. “What are you going to do?”
“She wants to get off the train,” says the boy.
“No, no! You mustn’t!” says the conductor. “Look! I can tell the station clerk about your husband and have him tell your husband that you will be waiting for him across the river. He can join you there. There’s another train coming in about two hours.”
“That’s a good idea,” says the boy. “You can come with me and my mother and stay with us. We live right across the river. We can leave our address with the station clerk.”
She doesn’t answer. She quickly wraps me up tightly and is out of her seat.
The conductor says, “If you insist, then I’ll take you to the station clerk who is a friend of mine. A Korean. It will be warm in his office, and you can wait there. Come.”
She says to the boy, “Would you do me a favor? Would you mind taking these suitcases with you and leaving them at the station across the river?”
The conductor says, “I’ll help him. We can leave them with the Chinese station master there.”
She thanks them all and starts down the corridor.
Someone says, “Take care of yourself.”
Outside, icy wind and snow flurries lash at her. Her shoes are quickly buried under the snow on the tracks. She covers my face with the blanket, trudging across the tracks toward the station house. The conductor is carrying a small bag for her. Before they clear the tracks and climb up an embankment, the train they just left clanks and begins to move. The conductor, helping her up the embankment, swears under his breath. “I can’t come with you. I must run back to the train. Be careful now and tell the station clerk I sent you. I may see you both on the other side of the river.” He leaps over the tracks and runs back to the moving train. Her words of thanks are lost in the wind. She is now standing on the platform, which is deserted, except for a Japanese Military Policeman who is flagging the train out. She looks at the train chugging out of the yard, and she can see the old conductor and the young boy standing on the step of the compartment she was in. They are waving to her. Tears run down her frozen cheeks, and she silently watches the train move across the bridge, across the river, toward Manchuria. She hugs me close and wipes away her cold tears, rubbing her face against the blanket that keeps me warm. She looks up, aware that the Japanese Military Policeman is watching her, and it is then that she, standing forlorn on the barren platform, sees that it is twilight.
The sun, big and red in spite of the snow flurries, is setting, plummeting down toward the frozen expanse of the northern Manchurian plains. “Twilight”—she thinks—“it is twilight,” and, somehow, she forgets everything for a moment, lost in the awesome sight of the giant, red sun, which, as though burning out, is swiftly sinking and being swallowed up by the darkening northern horizon. The silvery snow flurries are dancing in the air, whishing and roaring, as if cleansing the lingering rays of the bloody sun from the northern sky. . . . The air is cool and fresh, and she prays, “Lord, help me.”
The sun has disappeared. It is now dark. The wind has died down. My mother is still standing there alone on the platform. I am asleep in her arms. She is facing toward the bridge. She can’t see it clearly now. Only the red lights on both sides of its entrance and its dim silhouette against the starry northern sky are visible. Occasionally, she looks back at the main door of the station house. She can see a small room to the right of the station house; it is lighted inside by a green-shaded lamp that dangles from the ceiling. Someone inside the room, hunched over a little potbellied stove, gets up once in a while and looks out the window. My father is somewhere in town at the Japanese Military Police Detachment. “Too far to walk,” said a Korean man, a ticket clerk at the station. “Why don’t you and the baby come inside and keep warm?” My mother said no—she would wait for her husband outside; he might come any moment. She waits.
How long did she stand there alone waiting for my father? An hour? Two hours? She doesn’t know. She only knows that it is getting darker and darker and, now, she can’t see even the silhouette of the bridge. Her feet, protected only by the thin cotton socks, are numb, and, without realizing it, she is rocking back and forth. I am now awake and begin to whimper; I am thirsty and hungry. My mother begins to pace, rocking me; she is weeping quietly, swallowing a big lump of irrepressible terror. She says to herself she can’t cry, she mustn’t cry, and she must be brave. Her father has been in jail, too, on and off, many times because he would say in his sermons things that the Japanese Thought Police did not like; and, of course, her husband. . . .
All the men she knows—her father, husband, brothers-in-law, and many of her friends’ relatives—they have all been to jail at least once. It was bad last year, she thinks, especially in May. A lot of Korean men were arrested and interrogated, and many have not yet returned home; all this began right after what happened in Shanghai—a Korean patriot threw bombs and killed the Japanese general who commanded all the Japanese forces in China, along with several other Japanese officials; the general and the officials were at a park in Shanghai, celebrating the birthday of their Sun-God Emperor. She remembers a Japanese Thought Police inspector who came to her father after that incident; the inspector told him that it would be in the best interest of everyone in his parish if, in his Sunday sermon, he would condemn the violent acts committed by a fellow Korean, a terrorist. Her father would not cooperate, and, the next day, they came for him and took him away; they released him two days later, just before Sunday. Her father had been beaten by the Police; all that he said in his sermon on Sunday was that God said vengeance was His. The Japanese are stupid, she thinks; they think the parishioners would believe their minister if he said what the police forced him to say, as if people are so stupid and naïve, as if forcing a man to say what they want him to say would change his soul. . . .
The old ticket clerk opens the window and asks my mother to come into the room—the baby must be cold. She doesn’t listen to him. Remembering her father and thinking about him have made her brave and proud. I come from a family . . . and I am married to a man . . . She lifts her face and looks at the star-studded night sky, proud; if her father and her husband can endure the torture and humiliation inflicted by the Japanese, she and the baby will endure the cold wind and the darkness. She lowers her gaze toward the plains of Manchuria across the river.
Across the river—she thinks—across the river . . . She almost says to herself that life would be different across the river, that the family would be away from the Japanese, and that there would be quiet and peace. . . . Then, she remembers the Japanese guns, tanks, soldiers, horses. . . . The Japanese had conquered Manchuria and set up a puppet regime, just a year before, and they have already begun their invasion of the Chinese mainland itself. All those guns and tanks and soldiers, on their way to China. There are too many Japanese around; the Japanese are everywhere, toting guns and rattling sabers. Staring hard toward Manchuria, she feels neither despair nor sorrow but the outrage of a wounded soul. “Vengeance is Mine.” “Lord,” she prays, “free us from them and free us from this nightmare.” The wind is quiet now, and there is a strange warmth in the air. Her tears flow freely now, but she does not mind. There is only her Lord to see her tears—and now her young husband, who is coming toward her, crossing the yellow patch of light on the snow outside the room.
She stands still and realizes she is crying. She quickly buries her face in the woolen blanket that is keeping me warm, as if to see whether I am awake or asleep, and rubs her tears dry. She suddenly feels that her throat is parched and that she is a little dizzy. She is afraid she may start crying again. She sways and I squirm and whimper, and that steadies her. My father is by her side now, without a word. She thinks he is trembling. He looks at her quietly, and she can see tears in his eyes. She feels her eyes welling up with tears and quickly she hands me to him as if saying, “Here, he is safe.” My father takes me in his arms. My mother opens the blanket so that he can see my face. He touches her on the shoulder. She moves a little closer to him and sees that one of his nostrils is stuffed with tissue paper or cotton that is darkened. Then, she sees several welts on his left cheek. A sharp ache needles her heart. He raises one hand and brushes off snowflakes from her hair.
“We missed the train,” he says.
“Another train was supposed to come in but it hasn’t yet.”
“You must be hungry,” he says. “I have something for us to eat. Something for the baby, too.”
“I am not hungry.”
The ticket clerk opens the window and calls out to them. “Come inside! You’ll freeze to death. Come!”
My father says, “Let’s go inside. He is heating up some rice cakes I brought from the town. Come.”
She nods and picks up her small bag. Snowflakes slide off the bag. “The baby can have some powdered milk. Some biscuits.”
They walk into the station house. The ticket clerk opens the door to his room and beckons them in. The warm, steamy air makes her feel dizzy again.
“Come in, come in,” says the clerk. “Warm yourselves at the stove.”
My father says to my mother, “Better sit down away from the stove. It is not good to get too hot all of a sudden, especially when you have been outside so long.” He thanks the clerk for inviting them in.
“The least I can do for you young people,” says the clerk. “I’ll get you some tea. You must be starving. How is the baby doing?”
I am halfway out of the bundle of blankets, sitting up on my mother’s lap.
My mother just looks at me, saying nothing.
The clerk says to my father, “Your wife is a strong-willed woman. She just wouldn’t come in until you came back.” He is heating the rice cakes on a grill placed on the top of the stove.
My father pours tea from an iron kettle into a small china cup and hands it to my mother, who says he should drink it first. He takes a sip and gives the cup to her. He picks me up from my mother and, bending down, notices that her shoes and socks are wet. “Better take your shoes off and dry them,” he says.
The clerk, putting the cakes on a piece of cardboard, says, “Better dry your socks, too, and don’t mind me at all.”
She takes off her shoes and, turning away from the clerk, removes her wet socks. My father hands her his handkerchief so she can dry her feet. It is stained with blood. She looks up at him and sees the cotton in his nostril. She begins to sob.
“It is all right,” he says. “Dry your feet.”
The clerk puts a wooden chair between my parents’ chairs and puts the cakes down on it. He quietly goes out of the room.
When the clerk returns to the room, my father thanks him and says that they are ready to leave.
The clerk says, “There is another train sometime tonight. Why don’t you wait for it here?”
“It may not come,” says my father. “It is already several hours late.”
“If it doesn’t come in, you can stay in town and leave in the morning.”
“We’d better go now,” says my father. “We can’t stay in this town.”
“With the baby, on a night like this?”
“We’ll be all right.”
“I want to go across the river,” says my mother, wrapping me up with the blankets.
“We have someone waiting for us across the river,” says my father. “Thank you for everything.”
“I understand,” says the clerk. “Do you know the way?”
My father nods. “I asked some people in town.”
“You’ve got to go downstream a bit. There are always some people coming and going. You’ll see them.”
They are going to walk across the frozen river. People who can’t afford the train have made a footpath across the river.
“There’ll be a policeman out there, you know,” says the clerk.
“I have my papers,” says my father.
By now, my mother has put another pair of thin cotton socks on under the other pair. Her shoes are still damp. I am in my father’s arms. She picks up the small bag, ready to go.
The old man says, “Take care of yourself. Raise the baby well.” He wraps the leftover rice cakes in a piece of newspaper and puts them into my mother’s small bag. He comes over to my father and pats me on the head before my father covers me up with the blanket. My mother unfolds the edge of the blanket carefully so that I will have a small opening to breathe through.
The old man opens the door for them, and my mother bows to him and bids him farewell. My father bows, too. The old man taps him on the shoulder. “Take care of your family,” he says.
* * *
Half an hour later, they reach the bank of the river. There is a small hut, lighted inside. Smoke is curling up out of a stove pipe through the roof, and sparks fly off into the dark night air. A dozen people are lined up outside the hut to show their papers to a young Korean policeman. Another policeman is inside the hut. My father shows his papers. The policeman nods and waves my parents by. They are behind an elderly couple, and they follow the old people down the bank toward a path through the snow on the frozen river. They can see lights flickering at the other side of the river, on the Manchurian side. It doesn’t seem too far. The old man looks back and says to my mother, “The baby must be cold.”
She does not answer. I am warm and secure within the wool blankets. My father says to him, “Is the ice thick enough?”
“Nothing to worry about,” he says, helping the old woman down the bank. “We’ve done this many times. Our son lives across the river, you know. You just follow us.”
My father stretches out his hand, which my mother takes as she steps onto the ice. It is the first time they have touched hands since they left home, my grandparents’ house. “Do you feel all right?” asks my father. She nods.
She goes behind him. Many people are behind her. No one is talking much. The path has been made by lots of footsteps that packed the snow hard. It is jagged and slippery, and my mother’s leather shoes do not help her much. Other people are wearing straw shoes and heavy socks, thickly padded with cotton. “If I had a pair of socks like them,” she thinks, “I would take off my shoes and walk on in my socks.” Someone slips and falls down behind her. My mother stops.
My father stops, too, and asks her if she is all right. They both watch the people helping a young girl up. They look toward the south side of the river, the Korean side, but they can’t see anything. With all the snow under the starry sky, the air is stangely white. People move on like ghosts, silently, except for their feet crunching on the ice. “People without a country”—my mother thinks—“people ousted and uprooted from their homeland. Forced out of their land and their homes by the Japanese, who are buying up land cheaply by threat and coercion. Displaced peasants driven out of their ancestral land to find new roots in an alien land.” What fate is waiting for these people across the river? What destiny will unfold for her and her family across the river? She gazes at her husband’s back. She can’t see the baby. She slips on a large chunk of ice and almost falls. In that second, she lost sight of him and the baby and now she wants desperately to be at their side. She wants to touch him and the baby. She hurries over to them.
My father turns around. “Be careful,” he whispers. “Here. Hold onto my hand.” She is out of breath and clings to his outstretched hand. She opens the blanket a little to look at me. “He is all right. Asleep,” says my father. “Poor thing,” she says. “Come,” he says, “it won’t be long.” They are halfway across the river.
Later, the old man ahead of them turns around and says, “You have to be careful now. The ice gets thin around here, and there are holes here and there. Last time I came by, I saw some Chinese fishing through holes.” The old man squats down and unwraps a bundle he has been carrying on his back. He takes out a kerosene lantern and tries to light it. The wind blows out his match. The old woman tries to help him by crouching next to him and holding her skirt around the lantern, which the old man lights. “You people stay close behind us. Don’t worry.”
They can see lights and a few huts along the bank. My mother thinks they are now close to the bank, but there is still a long way to go. Then, she thinks of the holes and the thin ice. She clutches my father’s hand. The old man’s lantern bobs up and down, its yellowish light flickering. “There’s a big crack on the left. Be careful,” says the old man, holding the lantern high, waving it. Thin ice, holes, a big crack in the ice. She is afraid. “Be careful, dear,” she says to her husband.
“We are almost there,” he says. “Almost there now.”
Almost there. Across the river. She looks toward the bank. There are people standing on the bank. She can see them dimly against the light from the huts. Almost there. Then, it strikes her that there hasn’t been anyone going the other way across the river, toward the Korean side. She can hear voices coming from the bank. The sky is clear, and the stars in the northern plains seem larger and brighter than those in other directions. The snow all around her seems so white and almost shining. Her feet are cold and ache, but the crossing is almost over, and she is thinking only that, across the river, someone is waiting for them, someone from the missionary school. She hopes he has brought a buggy with two horses, which, she has heard, people ride in in Manchuria. “Taking a buggy ride in the snow would be nice,” she thinks, “just as they do in Russia,” or so she has read. Almost there. There will be quarters for them in the town where the school is. Two rooms and a kitchen. Her husband will be a teacher; students will visit them, and, of course, so will his fellow teachers and the missionary people. She, too, will be teaching, at the school’s kindergarten. Twenty-five children—so they have written her. Mostly Korean children, but some Chinese and American and Canadian children, too. Almost there, across the river. “Oh—the suitcases,” she thinks, “I hope the young boy and the train conductor made sure the suitcases were left with the Chinese station master. Some wool in one of the suitcases. I will knit a wool sweater for him so he can wear it under his coat when he goes to the school to teach, and the baby could use another wool jacket, and maybe another wool cap. Almost there now.” “Is the baby still sleeping?” she asks her husband. “Yes,” he says. “Just a little more and we’ll be there.”
The old man’s lantern, the lights along the bank like haloes, and the voices calling to them. Almost there now. Then, she is suddenly seized with a violent fear of that strange alien land waiting for her. All those Chinese people there. “The town is almost a Korean town, really,” her husband has said to her, “and the school, of course, is for Korean students. It really is like any other Korean town, except that there are lots of Chinese people around you.” “A Korean ghetto, that’s what it is,” she thinks. She has heard from her father that, in many places in Europe, the Jewish people lived together among foreigners who did not welcome them, and the places where they lived were called ghettos. “Like our parish,” he said; “We Christians in this country live close to each other around our churches, and that is not much different from the Jewish people living in their ghettos.” “Will those Chinese people be friendly?” she wants to ask her husband, but it is not the time to ask a question like that. Almost there. And, suddenly, she again thinks of holes and thin ice and big cracks in the ice. Thin ice, holes, cracks. . . . The bank looms ahead of them, and it is as if, with one big leap over the ice, they can get onto it. But, now that they are so close to the other side of the river, she feels as if she is losing all her will and strength. “We have made it across,” she says to herself. And again—holes, cracks, and thin ice frighten her. Thin ice especially. For one moment, she has a blinding vision of crashing through thin ice and being sucked into the cold water and pushed down under the ice . . . one of her hands is clinging to the edge of the ice, but her body is being pulled down and down . . . and the water freezes her instantly and she can’t even scream for help but, then, her husband pulls her up out of the water onto the ice and she gets up . . . and asks, “Is the baby still asleep?”
He says, “Yes.”
She says to him, squeezing his hand, “We’ve made it, haven’t we?”
“We’ve made it across,” he says, looking straight ahead.
“Good thing the baby slept through.”
He turns to her. “Actually, he’s been wide awake. All the way.”
She smiles. “What a good little boy he is,” she says. She is not thinking of thin ice, holes, and big cracks in the ice any longer. After this, she thinks, I can go with my family anywhere, anytime, to the end of the earth. . . .
* * *
And so, I, too, crossed that frozen river wide awake, and, years and years later, whenever I think of that crossing, I think of thin ice, holes and big cracks in the ice—especially the thin ice.
“But, I don’t think I can do anything like that again,” says my mother. “Not any more. I was young then. Lots of people never made it across that river, you know. Drowned or frozen to death when they were caught in a sudden snowstorm. No, I could not do anything like that again.”
“But you can and you will,” I say to her. “And you have, many times since, if not crossing a frozen river on foot.”
She thinks it over. “Well, so I have, haven’t I?” She thinks of the thirty some years since the night we crossed the frozen Tuman River. “And you have, too,” she says, “on your own, by yourself.”
“I have done it many times.”
“Well, you’ve made it across,” she says.
And I am still thinking of the thin ice of that frozen river in the north.