It is my first day at the new school. I am going to be in the second grade, although the principal, who is Japanese, at first insisted that I be put in the first grade, so that I could “start everything new and fresh,” meaning that whatever education I have had at the missionary-run school in the town in Manchuria ought to be discredited. We returned from Manchuria about a week before, because—as my mother told me when I was helping her pack our things—my father, as the eldest son of his family, ought to come “home” and help his father manage the household and take care of the family’s apple orchard and farming and so forth.
“I knew the Japanese would try to make your life difficult,” my grandfather says to my father at dinner, “but it pains me to realize they would be so malicious as to make the boy’s life miserable, too.”
“Fortunately, the assistant principal is an alumnus of my high school in Seoul,” my father says, “and he tried to be helpful and persuaded the principal to let the boy take a special examination to see if he can qualify for the second grade. The boy will pass the test.”
And, the next day, I pass the examination.
My grandfather is beaming that evening and allows me to have dinner at the same table with him and gives me five large coins wrapped in rice paper. “If you are at all like your father, you should have a good brain,” he says, downing rice wine from a small cup that my father fills for him. He passes the cup to my father and fills it for him. My father drinks the wine, holding the cup in both hands. It is unusual for a father to fill the cup he drinks from with wine for his son. My grandfather is expansive that evening. He drinks much wine. “Your father was first in his class in his grade school; third in his high school,” he says, turning to my father, “and he would have done well in college, too, except for the . . .” He takes a big swallow of the wine and says to my father, rather abruptly, “Well, does the boy know?”
“I haven’t told him.”
“Well, you should. A boy his age ought to know what his father is really like.”
“He is too young. Someday. Time will come.”
My grandfather shakes his head. His silvery white hair glistens in the light. “Yes, yes. Time will come.” With his large eyes, he looks fully at my face. “Just remember, your father is someone who has done things which you will be proud of someday.”
My father is quiet. He simply pats my head.
“And remember,” my grandfather says, “you must do well; you must do better than the Japanese at the school.”
“He will do all right,” says my father, putting his arm around my shoulders. “He will be all right.”
“The Japanese can insult you and humiliate you,” says my grandfather, “but they can’t take your brain away.”
I am speechless. I do not understand what they are saying. Besides, my grandfather’s voice is becoming louder and his face redder. “Eat, eat!” he says to me. “You must be strong and healthy to be a man and to be able to walk down the street with your head high. And don’t ever cry just because some Japanese are mean to you, hear!”
* * *
So this is my first day at the new school. My grandfather and my father have already finished their breakfast and are getting ready to go out to the apple orchard, which is about ten miles from the town. Early in the morning, my grandfather and my father have breakfast together; then, my grandfather rides out on an oxcart with one of our tenant farmers, who lives alone in small quarters apart from our house. My father will follow him a little later on his bicycle.
This morning, my father wants to see me off to school. He will not, however, come to the school with me. My mother is going to come all the way to the school. “Just this morning,” says my father. He is wearing a brown hunting cap and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His face is deeply tanned, and I see the muscles in his arms ripple as he pumps air into the bicycle tires. My mother leaves my sister, who is four years younger than I am, with a maid. The young maid says, “Have a good school day, Master.” I am not used to being called “Master”; in Manchuria, we never had a maid. My mother is wearing a pale blue dress with a long, billowing skirt and white rubber shoes. Her hair, combed neatly into a small bun in the back, is shiny black, and I smell the hair oil, which has the smell of almond. My father touches my sister on the cheek as she is carried by the maid. He sets out ahead of us. My mother and I follow him out of the east gate. I am wearing the school uniform—a black jacket with a stiff hooked collar and lots of shiny brass buttons down the front, a pair of white trousers, and a black cap with the school insignia, which is a design with cherry blossoms. I am carrying a small, brown book bag, brand new, a present from my two uncles who are away in Tokyo, going to college.
The three of us, my father pushing the bicycle, walk down a narrow dirt road. My shiny, new leather shoes get dirty in no time. It is early summer, hot and humid, with the sun already strong. The road is lined with poplars, and there are few houses, until, downhill, we come to a small square where there is a communal well. The well is covered with a large, pentagonal, wooden roof and has a cement base. Small children are out already, getting cool, splashing water at each other. Women are lined up with pails and buckets, and a few of them are doing their wash. When we walk by the well, the women turn to us and bow to my father. My father nods his head, greeting them, and my mother bows back to the women. An old woman wants to “take a good look” at me. She pats me on the head. “She is one of our neighbors,” says my father. She has known my father as a child. “Well, you study hard,” she says, bending down to bring her face level with mine. I see her small eyes and wrinkles and shriveled mouth. “You must try to be smarter than those Japanese boys.” She stretches up and says to my father, “If any of our boys can be smarter than the Japanese brats, it’s got to be your son.” “He will be all right,” he says. My mother says we should hurry. The children are openly staring at me—I am the new boy in the neighborhood.
We move on and we are at an intersection when my father says he must go now and catch up with my grandfather. I bow to him and wish him a good day. We stand there for a minute and watch him ride down the main road.
A boy who is bigger and looks older than I appears from a small house with a thatched roof. The house is shabby, and it has a small wooden door in the middle of a mud wall. The boy is wearing the school uniform, too. He is carrying an old, ragged bag. He stands outside the door and looks me up and down, putting his cap on. There is a large tree by the door, and a rope swing hangs down from a thick branch. He puts his bag down on the ground and sits on the swing, tying the laces on his dirty white sneakers. “You’d better run, or else you’re going to be late!” a woman’s voice shouts from within the house. The boy does not answer.
My mother walks on, and I say to her, “That boy is going to the same school.” She nods. The boy is following us. We walk down the road toward a large plaza, which is a market place on weekends. On the left of the dirt road, there are small shops—a candy store, a butcher shop, a tailor, a pharmacy, a Chinese restaurant, a Chinese laundry, a rice merchant’s store, and so forth. I look back and see that the boy is still following us. In front of the pharmacy, my mother is greeted by a middle-aged woman in a gray dress; they chat a while. I stand by idly, sneaking a glance toward the boy, who is now a few paces behind us, squatting down, again tying his shoe laces. He looks at me sideways and makes faces at me, sticking his tongue out. I try to ignore him, but, from the corner of my eye, I am watching him going off toward a hill. Beyond the hill is the school, and I can see hundreds of children streaming up the steep hill toward the main gate of the school. My mother introduces me to the woman. I bow to her without a word and get another pat on the head.
We move on. I am the only one with a parent. All the children are staring at me, whispering with each other. They all seem to know who I am. I hear a boy saying to his friends, five or six of them, that I am the new boy in town, the one who has come back from Manchuria. One of them says, “All dressed up—he must be new at the school.” The path up the hill is flanked by rows of acacias. The leaves are dusty and lifeless. The little huts and dingy houses on both sides of the path are dusty, too, and shabby. Thatched roofs of rotting straw, sooty paper windows, and mud walls—poor people live there. Well-to-do people have houses with tile roofs; our house has a tile roof. The children’s voices are loud and shrill. We are like an island, surrounded on all sides by the children. At the main gate, all of a sudden, the first boy I saw reappears out of nowhere and sticks his tongue out at me again. Other children who see it laugh, squealing and shouting. The boy runs off. Girls, in white and blue sailor shirts and white skirts, set apart from the boys, walk by us, staring at me, some giggling, covering their mouths with their hands. My mother, when we are by the main gate, says that I am now on my own and asks me if I think I can find my way back home after school. I nod quickly, anxious to be left alone, though I am a little afraid of so many children. The school in Manchuria was small and had only thirty or forty children. This school must have several hundred children. I say good-by to my mother, without looking up at her, and run away, swinging my bag, not really knowing which building I am supposed to head for. I look back and cannot see my mother. She has gone.
There is a large, circular flower bed, with a flag pole in the middle, in front of a big building. The flag—the Japanese flag—is white, with a big red circle in the middle. There is no breeze in the morning air under the cloudless, blue sky, and the large flag hangs limp. I stand by the flag pole, not knowing what to do. In front of me is a large field, which is now filling up with the children. They are all lining up in formation, class by class, I think; each group has someone in front who is barking out orders, calling out names. From another building, to the left, teachers are emerging. I see a small platform, and a teacher gets up there, and other teachers are spreading out in front of the children, who are all facing them. All the male teachers are wearing identical clothes—khaki jackets and trousers of the same design as the boys’ uniform, which is really identical, in its turn, to the Japanese military uniform.
The girls, on one side, and the boys, on the other, nearly fill the large field. All I can see are the boys’ black caps and black jackets and the girls’ white and blue sailor shirts and white skirts. I am still standing by the flag pole, clutching at my book bag, not knowing what to do with myself. All the children seem to form groups according to their classes, with the bigger children, boys and girls, standing in the center of the entire formation. I decide that the first-graders must be the ones standing at the edge of the formation, mainly because these are the littlest ones; so I make up my mind to go to what I think is the group of the second-graders, when a big boy comes over to me. He is wearing a white armband on his left sleeve and insignia on his collar that indicate he is a sixth-grader.
“Are you the new boy?” he says. “The assistant principal said I should look out for a new boy this morning.”
I nod silently. His uniform is neat and clean; his trousers are sharply pressed and he is wearing big leather boots with lots of eyelets for laces. His armband says that he is the Student of the Day.
“You are going to be in the second grade, right?”
“Yes, sir.” I was told to “sir” the senior students as well as, of course, the teachers.
“Come with me, then,” he says, nodding approvingly after looking me up and down. “You look fine. Come on. I’ll take you to your class.”
I follow him. When we reach the line of the teachers, he stops in front of a teacher and salutes him in a military manner. I see the teacher glance at me and nod. Everyone is looking at me—I think. The boy again salutes the teacher smartly and, holding me by my left arm, takes me around the entire formation, going behind it, and deposits me in the rear of a group of children who must be the second-graders. A small boy who wears a blue armband salutes the big boy with the white armband, and the big boy says to him, “Here. This is the new boy in your class. Look after him.”
“Yes, sir,” says the small boy. He says to me, after the big boy has gone, “Today, you can stand here in the back. We will figure out where you are going to stand from tomorrow on. I am the class leader.” He leaves me and marches back to where he was—in front of the group. I find myself standing next to a small boy, who doesn’t look at me at all. I steal a glance at him. He is rubbing his eyes as if he has just been awakened. His uniform is rather dirty, and he smells bad—sour and sweaty, as if he hasn’t bathed for days. Suddenly, I see the boy who followed me and my mother to the school. He is three rows ahead of me. He looks back at me and thumbs his nose, showing his gappy, stained teeth. He has two buck teeth. I look away, feeling a little annoyed and also surprised to learn that he is a second-grader, too, although he is bigger than any of the other children in the group. I don’t look at him, but I can hear him grunting like a pig and then oink-oinking. Some children giggle. The class leader trots back to where the big boy is and says sharply, “Shut up!” When the class leader resumes his position, the boy makes noises again, this time pretending he is a tiger—“Grrrrr!” More giggles, and a boy ahead of us says, “Hey, that’s enough! You want all of us to get in trouble!”
Someone is barking out some sort of command, and I crane my neck to see what it is all about. I see the big sixth-grader with the white armband, standing stiffly a few steps from the platform, facing the entire formation. Then, each class leader reports to the big boy that his class is all assembled and so on. The big boy turns around on his heels, salutes the teacher on the platform, and makes his report that the entire school is assembled and so forth. The teacher—the Teacher of the Day—returns the salute. The boy—the Student of the Day—pirouettes around, clicking the heels of his boots. Again facing the formation, he shouts, “At ease!”
It is all very much like a military formation, parade, and ceremony. The teacher on the platform is the battalion commander, the big boy is the battalion executive officer, the class leaders are the company commanders, and so on down the line. I am, then, a mere private or maybe a corporal. . . .
It strikes me then that I have not seen any Japanese children in the field. I discover later that they have their own morning assembly in another field in the back of the school. It is obvious that we do not mix in classes. They have their own classes and classrooms, and we have ours, although we are all in the same school. A few years later, they will build a new school somewhere outside the town, exclusively for themselves.
The teacher on the platform is Japanese, and he is addressing the assembly. I do not understand what he is saying, and I get the impression that the other second-graders and first-graders do not understand him either. Many of them are fidgeting, whispering to each other, and teasing one another. When the teacher has finished speaking, the Student of the Day shouts out a command, and the entire formation shuffles and rustles and faces what must be east, because we are now all facing toward where the sun rises. Another command and everyone is bowing deeply—everyone except me. The small boy next to me, bending from his waist, twists his face toward me and whispers, “Bow your head or else you are going to get a beating later on.” There is urgency in his hushed voice, and, after one quick look around me, I lower my head, still not knowing what is going on. It is the ritual of bowing toward where the Japanese Emperor is supposed to be in his Imperial Palace in Tokyo—I find out later. We are required to do this every morning. I tell my father about it that evening, and he doesn’t say a word, though my mother says not to think about it too much and just to do what other children do, because it would be a shame to get beaten for something as silly as not bowing one’s head—for nothing, in short. I think about it, however. Would the Japanese Emperor know that we children are bowing our heads to him? He may be asleep . . . he may be eating his breakfast . . . or he may be in the toilet, for all we know . . . and I can’t help giggling about the picture conjured up by the last image . . . the Emperor is in the toilet and someone knocks on the door and says, “Your Majesty, Your Majesty! The children, the children! They are bowing to Your Majesty!” . . . and the Emperor says, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I have my pants down!” Ha, ha, ha, I laugh; I want to tell my parents about it but it is not a very nice thing to say, so I decide to keep it to myself.
The morning assembly is over at last, and each class marches into its classroom. It turns out that each class—and there are two or three classes in each grade—has its own room and teacher for a whole year; other teachers come in to teach, depending on the subjects. Our classroom is a large room at the end of a wooden building that has a long, wooden corridor running the entire length of it. The room has a nice view; on the left, it looks out on a small pond with rocks and water lilies and another classroom building identical to our building; to the right, beyond the corridor, through the glass windows, we can see pine trees and, in between the branches, a little of the town below the hill. The class leader seats me in one of the front seats squarely in front of a small lectern on a platform. There is a large blackboard behind the lectern, and an enormous Japanese flag hangs on the wall above the blackboard, which is framed, on the right, by the school motto, in Chinese characters written in black ink with brush, and, on the left, by the national slogans, also in Chinese characters. Something about “Long Live the Emperor” and “Long Live the Invincible Imperial Forces,” and so on. As I sit looking at these slogans, the Invincible Imperial Forces are battering the Chinese, having conquered most of the heartland of China. In Italy, the Fascist Mussolini has been in power for years now, and, in Germany, Hitler and his Nazis are firmly in control. Three years ago, in 1935, Mussolini’s Fascist armies conquered Ethiopia, and, the next year, Ethiopia was “annexed” by Italy, just as my country was “annexed” by Japan, by force, in 1910. Japan’s Imperial Army gobbled up Manchuria in 1934 and invaded China proper in 1937. The same year, Japan, Germany, and Italy formed the so-called Axis powers—all set to carve up the world. In 1938, the year I am starting at the new school, Germany annexes Austria; and, in July of this same year, the Japanese troops and the Soviet troops are fighting along the Manchurian-Siberian border. In September, the Munich Pact is signed by England, France, Germany, and Italy, handing over Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Germany; everyone in non-Axis countries is saying, “Peace in Our Time,” echoing Neville Chamberlain, who, as England’s Prime Minister, negotiates the Munich Pact to appease Hitler. Peace in Our Time. . . . Only six months later, in 1939, Germany will swallow up Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Rumania; Italy will try to “annex” Albania. In April, Hitler’s Germany will sign a nonaggression treaty with Poland, and, in August, one with Soviet Russia—only to invade Poland in September to ignite the Second World War. Meanwhile, Peace in Our Time. . . .
And, meanwhile, here we are, the children of the second grade, standing up in our classroom, reciting the Japanese national slogans—Long Live the Sacred Emperor, Long Live the Invincible Imperial Forces, Long Live the Conquest of China by the Invincible Imperial Forces. . . . And there is a huge map of China on the wall in the back of the classroom, most of its heartland colored red and its cities pinned with a little Japanese flag of the rising sun. On the left of the back wall, there is another large map; this one is of Europe, with Nazi Germany and its expanding territories colored dark brown. Geography is changing, and we are hard put to keep up with the changing of colors of countries, as the armies of the Axis Powers, in the West and in the East, continue to advance. The maps in our classroom are covered with arrows, standing for these armies, that are thrusting out and curling around like gigantic tentacles. Peace in Our Time . . . and the children are singing martial songs of the “Invincible Imperial Forces,” songs celebrating the defeats and massacres of the enemy, and the brave deeds of the Imperial soldiers who bayoneted to death over 4,000 Chinese civilians in Nanking in December of 1937—the Rape of Nanking.
So, that morning, the first day at the new school, I am sitting silently in one of the front seats, uneasy, uncomfortable, lonesome, and longing for the familiar sights and familiar friends and familiar warmth of familiar grown-ups. The children are unruly and loud. Books and notebooks are flying about and so are caps and rubber balls and anything else that can be thrown. The room has a sweaty odor from so many bare feet; to keep the room clean, we remove our shoes before entering the classroom, the floor of which is waxed shiny and slippery, and we leave our shoes outside the door on wooden shelves. I am wearing socks, and I notice that only very few children are wearing them. Most are barefoot, and the smell of their sneakers and rubber shoes, mixed with their sour body odor, is nauseating. A book bag lands on my small wooden desk, and another one hits me in the back of the head. I stand up, turn around, and glare at the children—bigger ones—in the back rows. Everything is quiet for a second before that big boy, who sits in a corner seat in the last row, squeezes his runny nose with his fingers and oink-oinks. The room is plunged into the same pandemonium as before. I am looking down, gazing into the rough surface of the desk top, my fingers tracing all the knife carvings, scratches, and pencil marks. Suddenly, everything is hushed. I look up from the desk and see a tall young man standing at the open door surveying the room. He is our teacher, a Korean.
We are all sitting silent and demure when the young teacher closes the door behind him and takes his seat on the platform behind the lectern. He looks around the room, and his eyes spot me finally and he nods with a smile.
Unlike the Japanese teachers, he wears his hair long and parted in the middle. His eyebrows are thick and dark. His large eyes and his high cheekbones lend to his pale face an air of poor health. I remember my grandfather telling me to be strong and healthy so I could walk down the street with my head high. . . . The teacher clasps his hands together on the lectern, and his hands are bony and his fingers are knobby. He clasps and unclasps his hands a few times, looking about him. The children are quiet. The teacher gets up and strides down the platform to the windows that look out toward the pond. He opens two windows. I don’t feel any breeze coming in through the open windows—only the heavy, humid air. He returns to his seat, and begins to speak in a quiet, gentle voice that surprises me.
“As you all know,” he says, “we have a new boy in our class this morning. His family has just returned from Manchuria. Some of you may know his father’s name. Certainly, some of your parents would know who this boy’s father is. I am good friends with his uncles in Tokyo, where we go to the same college. So, our new friend is no stranger to our town and certainly not to you, and I hope you will all be good friends and help each other. You do realize what it would be like if you were suddenly plucked out of this classroom and this school and transferred to a different school in a different province or country. You can certainly imagine how confusing and frustrating it would be on your first day in a new school. So, our new friend here must be a little confused and bewildered. We certainly do have rules and regulations that he must find strange and in many ways peculiar, and we must admit that we do have many peculiar ways we are supposed to do certain things. This, then, is the time when you all should try to be most helpful to our new friend. So, let’s welcome our new friend to our class.” With that, the teacher stands up and claps his hands and the children, jumping up from their chairs, clap their hands, too. I remain in my seat, head bowed, embarrassed, and rather happy. In a moment, all sit down. “And now,” says the teacher, looking at me directly, “we, in this class, have a tradition, which is that a new student will sing a song for us as a way of concluding his introduction to the class. Would you, therefore, stand up, face the class, and sing us a song, your favorite song.”
I am at a loss. I have not been told by my parents about this “tradition,” and I am, therefore, not prepared for the ordeal. I stand and look up at the teacher, who says, “Turn around and look at your classmates now. Let’s hear your favorite song.”
I turn around. Faces and faces, all blurred to my eyes, waver and sway all around me. The big boy in the corner—he has his thumb and forefinger in front of his face, ready to squeeze his nose and say oink . . . I stare at the back wall and then the large map of Europe, and my gaze shifts to the brown, wooden ceiling and then back to the map, and I concentrate on the map as if I have been asked to recite the names of the many little countries in Europe, thinking I must sing, I must sing my favorite song . . . but I have so many favorite songs, and I think about all the songs I know and can sing and have sung . . . I have sung with my friends in Manchuria, my familiar friends in Manchuria, with whom, only a week before, I was playing and singing, all those friends I have left behind in Manchuria—Korean, Chinese, Canadian, American, English friends . . . and I remember all their faces and gestures and the songs we sang together. And, then, without realizing it, I am singing, first quietly, haltingly, then loudly, being carried away, by then knowing that I am singing, all the time thinking about my friends in Manchuria and looking at the map of Europe, finding England and Ireland there and thinking especially about that chestnut-haired boy—was he English or Irish? (I never knew the difference)—and I am singing, in English, “Danny Boy, Oh, Danny Boy . . .” I am halfway into the song and now, emboldened, I can look the children fully in their faces, one by one, and, to my horror, I see them covering their ears with their hands, staring up at the ceiling . . . and I quickly look toward the big boy in the corner, and I see him, quiet and unmoving, his face held in his hands, his elbows propped on the desk top, and he is listening to my singing, his attention rapt and unwavering. When I finish singing, the big boy claps his hands first, even before the teacher behind me does. The children clap their hands. I turn around and sit down and dare not look up at the teacher.
“That was very nice,” he says. “It certainly was unusual, and I am sure we all enjoyed the song, although most of us here do not understand English. Well, children, we will have to learn the song. I know the Korean words for it, and someday we may sing it together. Let me see if I can tell you a little bit about the song. . . .”
I am not listening to him. I am thinking of the farewell party at our school in Manchuria, with all the children and their parents.
The party is given by the children of the missionaries. I and my little sister are the guests of honor; the party is for us—the next day we will be leaving the town to go back to Korea. The grown-ups are having their own party in one corner of the school hall, but they join the children when the time comes for singing. Everyone sings. I sing “My Old Kentucky Home”—my mother taught it to me and rehearsed it with me the day before. A boy sings “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair,” and that English or Irish boy and his sister sing “Danny Boy,” and the song is for me. . . . There is a big cake with small candles burning and twinkling, and there is a large punch bowl filled with juice and slices of fruit floating in it. When the farewell party is over, we all hug each other, boys shaking hands and girls kissing each other on the cheek. The grown-ups are hugging, shaking hands, and kissing on the cheek, too. Many of them have tears in their eyes, and a few women are quietly sobbing. Although my family will be the first to leave the town, they all know that, soon, everyone will have to leave and say good-by. The missionary people have been harassed by the Japanese and their Manchurian puppets, and, with the Japanese invasion of the Chinese mainland in full operation, the extraterritorial privileges given foreign missionaries by the Chinese Government are no longer recognized, and foreign governments cannot protect their citizens in this part of the world. The situation in Europe is bad, and, although Japan is not yet at war with America and England, everyone knows that war will come sooner or later. The missionaries have received word from their home countries to prepare themselves for an eventual evacuation and, before they must leave for home, they want to make sure their Korean and Chinese friends will be looked after and spared from Japanese threats and harassment. The farewell party for my family is, then, a farewell party for all. “Oh, Danny Boy” . . . and “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair” . . .
And here I am, uprooted once again and transplanted into what was once ours but is no longer—an alien land that is not an alien land—finding myself cut off from my friends, forlorn, bewildered, and melancholy. And I know my eyes are filling with tears. I fight back the tears and swallow a big lump in my throat.
The teacher is saying, “. . . so we shall have no class today. You may go out to the field, and we shall assemble in twenty minutes. Did you all bring the money I mentioned yesterday?”
The children say in unison, “Yes, sir.”
He says to me, “Since you weren’t here yesterday, I will lend you the money, and you can bring it to me tomorrow.”
The class is dismissed.
He comes over to me, taking out some coins from a small, black leather wallet.
I tell him that I have some money with me but that I do not understand why I need it.
He explains to me that the entire school will go to the town theater to see a movie, actually an hour-long newsreel. The children have been told to bring money to pay for the admission. He looks around at the children who are quietly watching us and says that we will all get used to each other in no time, that he and one of my uncles went to the same high school and the same college in Tokyo, but he had to come home and teach for a while because his family needed him. “See you all out in the field,” he says to everyone around and walks out of the classroom.
The children are running out of the room, whooping it up. Some of them stop behind me—I am still sitting in my seat—and tiptoe by, imitating my singing of “Danny Boy,” twisting out some unintelligible words and wagging their tongues before dashing out of the room. A few others walk by me and quickly whisper “I liked your singing” or something to that effect. A boy—I can’t tell what he looks like because I am not looking up from my desk—saunters by me, in a sort of measured step, and says, as if to himself, “It is not smart to sing foreign songs. . . .”
By now, almost everyone is out of the room, and, yet, the big boy hasn’t gone out. I sit still, pretending I am rearranging the books, notebooks, and pencils in my book bag and making sure the buckles on the bag are secure. . . . The big boy is standing by my side. I glance at him and see that there is another boy behind him. The big boy says, “Are you going to the movie?”
I nod. “Are you?” The big boy sniffles a lot and, when he sniffles, his nose, which is rather pudgy, gets all wrinkly. He is stocky and has a big, chubby round face.
“Of course not. We’ve already seen it,” he says triumphantly, and looks back at his friend, who grins.
“You’ve already seen it? How?”
“His father works in the theater,” says the big boy, thumbing back at the other boy. “So he sneaked us in the day before. It’s all about the Japanese soldiers marching and fighting and something like that.”
“So, why waste money on a movie you’ve already seen?” says the other boy. “Do you want to see it?” He is short, and has a well-scrubbed baby face.
“I don’t know,” I say, standing up. “I guess I will have to go.”
“Yeah” says the big boy, “if you haven’t seen it, maybe you ought to see it.”
I nod. “You followed me and my mother this morning, didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t following you,” he says. “I was just coming to the school, and you were going the same way, that’s all.”
The other boy says, “We live a couple of houses from each other. You live in that big house up the hill, right?”
“Yes.”
The big boy says, “That sure is a big house. I bet you have lots of rooms.”
“Yes. If you come with me to the house someday, I will show you around.”
“What are you doing after the movie?” says the shorter boy.
“I don’t know. Going home, I guess.”
They exchange a glance, and the big boy says, “We are going to skip the movie and go to swim. Do you want to come along with us?”
“Where do you swim?”
“In the river. Where else?” says the other boy, as if in despair at my ignorance.
“Well, he’s a new boy in town. He doesn’t know,” says the big boy in my defense.
“Do you want to come?” says the other boy eagerly.
“I would like to. But I will have to tell my mother about it.”
“Oh, do you have to tell your mother everything!”
“Sure he does,” says the big boy. “Maybe his mother doesn’t know where the river is. Got to tell his mother. On the first day, anyway.”
“If my mother says all right,” I say, “I would like to go with you.”
“That’s settled, then,” says the big boy. “We will meet you later, outside the theater. All right? We will wait for you.”
I nod. “What about the lunch?”
“We’ve got our money for the movie,” says the big boy. “We can get some candies or something on the way to the river.”
“All right.”
“You’d better go out to the field and join the class,” says the big boy. “We will see you later.”
“All right.”
The big boy says, “That was a nice song.”
“I didn’t know a word of it,” says the other, “but it sure sounded nice.”
The big boy squeezes his nose with his fingers and lets out, “Oink-oink.” “Sounds much better than this!” He laughs.
“Come on, you pumpkin!” shouts the other boy, squealing.
“See you!” “Pumpkin” and the other boy run out of the room.
I am alone in the room, happy, glowing in the warm feeling of knowing that I now have two new friends and that we will be going for a swim in the river. I am not a good swimmer, but I know they are, because of the way they talked about it and because they are bigger than I am. I can get my feet wet anyway. It is hot and humid, and it will be nice to wade into the cool water up to my chest, at least, and maybe the boys will teach me how to swim. In Manchuria, the winter is long and bitter cold, and everyone skates, and I am a good skater. My father taught me how to skate, and I have skated ever since I can remember. I have a nice pair of skates, with real leather shoes and shiny, long steel blades—a birthday present from one of the missionary people. I think that if these boys, although they may be good swimmers, can’t skate, I can maybe teach them, come winter. . . .
I am gathering up my cap and the book bag when a big, tall man in a teacher’s uniform strides into the room, accompanied by two small boys. The teacher has short, cropped hair and a big mustache. I stand up. He comes right up to me and stands glowering at me, his legs apart, his hands on his hips. His small eyes peer into mine and, taking me by surprise, he grabs my shoulder and wheels me around. I am face to face with the two small boys. The teacher says something to the boys in Japanese. One of them points a finger at me. I recognize him as one of the classmates. I don’t know the other boy. The teacher shakes his head and shouts at me in Japanese, which I do not understand. I simply shake my head, meaning that I do not understand him, that I can’t understand Japanese.
He slaps me on the cheek, so hard that I stagger and crumple back into my seat.
He pounces at me, pulls me up by the back of my neck, and when I am on my feet again, he slaps me again on the other cheek.
I do not know what is happening—why the teacher, a Japanese, is so angry at me and why I have to be slapped twice in front of the other boys. Tears flood out of my eyes, though I am not crying. . . .
I dare to look up at the big teacher—at his flushed, distorted face—and I see his mouth sputtering out Japanese words, high-pitched and rapid, and his mustache is jerking up and down. Out of the corner of my eyes, I see a couple of children peering into the room through the windows, then running away down the corridor.
The man is still screaming at me.
Again, I shake my head, my tears running into my mouth.
He slaps my face again, barking out a word, and again and again.
In despair, I look at the other boys.
One of them says, to my surprise, in Korean, “You are lying!”
In Korean, I stammer out, “I am not lying,” though I do not know what I am saying or why I have to tell anyone that I am not lying.
The boy, the bigger of the two, says something in Japanese to the man, who, in turn, says something to the other boy, who I am by now sure is a Japanese boy. The Japanese boy runs out of the room.
I say again, in Korean, “I am not lying!”
The Korean boy says, “You are, too! I was in this room, and I heard you sing that foreign song in a foreign language!”
“What?”
The boy talks to the man, who sneers at me and says something in Japanese.
The boy snickers. “The teacher says your father is a criminal and that’s why you are behaving like a criminal, too. Telling a lie to a teacher, ha!”
With that, I spring to my feet and leap at the boy. I am fast. My face lowered, my head smashes into his face, and I punch him in the stomach—the best way to fight, according to one of my uncles who is an officer in the Manchurian Army. He taught me this tactic on the sly, making me promise not to tell my mother about it.
I am punched on the cheek and flung onto the edge of the platform, not by the boy but by the teacher. He picks me up with one hand by gripping the front of my jacket and, with the other hand, slaps me on both cheeks. Then, he lets me go, pushing me down, and goes over to the boy. Through my tears and dizzying anger, I can see the boy is bleeding from the nose and the lip. He crouches on the floor between the desks and chairs. My stomach punch—my one-two punch.
The teacher turns to me, pointing his finger at the boy crumpled on the floor, bleeding, as if to say, “Look what you’ve done to him!”
I wipe my tears off my face, feeling that both my cheeks are burning, and I am screaming and screaming, trying hard to say, “What have you done to me!”
It is then that my teacher runs into the room, comes straight to me and helps me to my feet looking into my face. Through the heavy mist of my tears which well up again on seeing him I can see that his eyes are angry and his high cheekbones are twitching. He swings around and shouts in Japanese at the Japanese teacher, who shouts back, waving his hand at the other boy, who is now up, not bothering to wipe the blood off himself. My teacher, in a fury, says something, his thumb jabbing at his own chest. He goes to the other boy and gives him his handkerchief and as he does so he bends down a little and, suddenly, the Japanese teacher kicks my teacher in the rear and my teacher bumps into the boy and then into chairs and desks and he lands flat on his face on the floor. The Japanese teacher turns around and starts for the door, when my teacher struggles up and says something to the Japanese. The Japanese wheels around a few steps away from the door, and the next thing I know my teacher is flying in the air, letting out an ear-splitting cry, his clenched fist outstretched, and he flings the Japanese against the wall by the door with a big thud; the Japanese staggers down to the floor but picks himself up quickly and charges against my teacher who, with a shrug of his shoulder, flings the Japanese up in the air and, at the same time, chops at his neck with his hand. The Japanese thumps down onto a desk with a beastly moan and rolls off the desk onto the floor; he does not move for a while; then his hands grope for support, and he pushes himself up. He turns around to look at us, muttering something incomprehensible, gasping for air. The boy is cowering in the corner next to the door and, as my teacher approaches him, he raises his arms, covering his face with his hands, saying, “Please don’t hit me! Please don’t hit me!” My teacher gazes at him for a moment. “In the old days, someone like you would have had his tongue cut out,” he says. “I am not going to punish you. As you grow up, you will have to live with your conscience.”
He turns to me. “Get your things. I will take you home.”
I pick up my bag and cap and follow him out of the room, leaving behind us the Japanese teacher and the Korean boy. I put my shoes on. The corridor is swarming with children, some from my class, and they all hush up as we walk down the corridor. They know what happened. We walk out of the building, into the steaming sunshine. My cheeks are aflame, and I can feel welts all over them, thick and long as earthworms. My lips are cut and bleeding, and I can’t move my jaw which, as if dislocated, is aching. The teacher dips his hands into the pond water and then puts his wet hands against my cheeks. I begin to cry. “There, there,” he says, as I struggle to choke off my crying and to calm my shoulders that are violently heaving. “Go on and cry,” he says. “It’s all right. Cry it out. There, there.”
We go out through the main gate of the school and silently walk down the hill. Once in a while, I look up at him. He is holding his head high, as though staring at the hazy blue sky. I keep pace with him by his side, and, suddenly realizing that I am going home and will see my mother, I reach out and hold his hand. He stops and looks down at me for a moment, and he squeezes my hand, tears shining in his eyes, though he is smiling.
“Come on,” he says. “I’ll give you a treat.”
I mumble something about the movie.
Without looking at me, he says sharply, “You are not missing anything. Besides, your father wouldn’t have approved of your seeing that movie, if he had a choice.”
I do not understand what he says, only that he respects my father. I am thinking more of my new friends, who will be waiting for me outside the theater to take me to the river for a swim. I think I won’t tell the teacher about them, because they were going to skip the movie; though, from what the teacher has just said, maybe the boys are doing the right thing. . . .
We are down the hill and at the edge of the plaza, and the teacher takes me into the Chinese restaurant. It is a small, rather dingy place, dark inside, with a dozen or so wooden tables and chairs. It smells good and familiar, like those restaurants in Manchuria, with the smell of soy sauce and steaming dough, of meat cooking and food frying. We sit at a table, facing each other “man to man.” An old Chinese with an apron around his waist comes to our table. The teacher orders in Chinese, and I know he asks for six steamed cakes with meat and vegetables inside. Though it is only mid-morning, I am hungry and I can taste the cakes already. He pours hot tea for me. The Chinese man brings the cakes and sauce to dip them in. He talks with my teacher, and I can understand a little: They are talking about me—something about my fight, about the Japanese teacher’s hitting me, and about my having lived in Manchuria. The Chinese man pats my head and says in Korean, “Your father—a good man. You—a good, strong boy.” He is beaming, urging me to eat.
When we are ready to go out of the restaurant, the old man wraps up four cakes in white paper and hands them to me. He is insistent, and I take the cakes; they feel warm and moist through the paper. I think of my new friends and decide that I will give them the cakes when I see them, though I am not sure I will see them during the day. I thank the old man, who says in Korean, “Come again. Any time.”
* * *
I am in bed. I have a splitting headache, and my face is swelling up. I also have, inside my mouth, a big cut that I did not notice before, and I keep tasting salty blood. My mother puts ointment on my face, not saying a word, and my grandmother makes me a glass of ice water with honey in it. My grandmother is a tiny woman, efficient, bustling, and always cooking something for the children. Her hair is as shiny and black as my mother’s, though her face and hands are wrinkled. She sits by my bed, watching me drink the ice water. She wants to make more of it for me. My sister is out with the maid. The teacher has gone; he will come back later to see how I am doing. Mother knows about everything. My grandmother is back in the kitchen, and I can hear her chipping ice. My mother goes out to the kitchen and comes back with ice chips wrapped in a towel and puts them on my forehead. Her eyes are red. “Try to sleep,” she says. I close my eyes. Suddenly, I feel limp and drowsy. I am home. . . . I am falling into sleep. My mother holds my hand in hers, and I can feel her long fingers tracing mine and hear her muffled sobs. With eyes closed, I say, “I am all right. I feel fine. It doesn’t really hurt.” She is quiet, and I am almost asleep when, with a sniffle, she abruptly leaves me and goes out of the room.
My mother is waking me up. I do not know how long I have slept. She is saying, “Your friends are here to see you.” I open my eyes. It is bright in the room, and I feel a little dizzy, staring at the white ceiling. My grandmother is beside me, holding a large fan. I touch my cheeks. “Don’t,” my mother says. The ointment is still there, and I feel my face all puffed up. She wipes my fingers with a towel. “Your friends came to see you. Do you want to see them?”
“I made two new friends at the school today.”
“There are four boys in the courtyard and about ten more outside the gate,” she says. “You made lots of friends today.”
“I don’t know that many boys.” I sit up. My back is in pain, as if it has been crushed with a rock.
“Do you think you can get up?” says my grandmother. “Is it all right for him to get up?” she asks my mother.
“I think he should see his friends,” says my mother.
I nod.
My grandmother says, “Nice of those boys to come to see you.” She gets up. “Why don’t you have them all come onto the porch,” she says to my mother, and then to me: “I’ll make them ice water with honey, too, and maybe a slice of watermelon.” She goes out to the kitchen.
Soon, fourteen boys from my class, led by the big boy, “Pumpkin,” are crowded into the porch. No one speaks. My grandmother comes in with a big pitcher of ice water with honey, and my mother carries in a tray of sliced watermelon—red ripe, with black seeds. The boys are all sitting on the wooden floor, cross-legged, looking awkward and shy. They are waiting for my grandmother and my mother to go away. My grandmother goes around, pouring more ice water for them, saying, “Drink it up, boys. I can make more. It’s such a hot day, and you must be dying of thirst. It really is very thoughtful of you all to come to see our boy.” She turns to my mother. “Isn’t it an extraordinary thing for these boys to come to see him?” “Yes, Mother,” says my mother, slicing another big watermelon. She says, “Well, we will leave you now, and thank you all for visiting us.”
At last we are alone. Everyone is quiet for a while, looking at me. We are sitting in a big circle, and the big boy is sitting next to me, on my right, and his friend with the baby face is on my left. We eat all the watermelon slices, busily picking out the black seeds, drink up all the ice water, and soon there is nothing left to eat or drink.
“Would you like more ice water?” I say. “And more watermelon?”
Everyone shakes his head. Silence.
Someone says finally, “Hey, Pumpkin, say something.”
Pumpkin says, “Well, the three of us”—thumbing at me and at his friend on my left—“were going to go to the river for a swim. He was going to meet us at the theater after the movie, so we went to the theater to wait for him while you were all watching the movie. We didn’t know he wasn’t there, and, then, you all come out of the theater, and he isn’t there. Then, someone told us he had a fight and got beaten up by a Japanese teacher, and everything. So, we went back to the school, but he wasn’t there either. Then, I saw our teacher in the marketplace, and he told me what happened. I mean, the teacher told us he was home and wouldn’t be able to go to the river. I told the teacher about the swim. Then—hey, how did we all get together anyway?”
Someone says, “Some of us heard about the fight when we came out of the movie and saw you two out there and saw you two going off. I guess we followed you. You know everything, Pumpkin. You find out everything in no time, so we followed you two.”
“I heard you punched that boy really good,” says a small boy in the corner. “I bet his father will beat him up for getting beaten up by you.”
Everyone laughs.
“What does his father do?” I ask.
“He is a teacher at our school, didn’t you know?”
“No.”
Pumpkin says, “Did you all hear that our teacher flipped that Japanese teacher with just one finger?” He snaps his fingers. “Just like that!”
“He wears a black belt, you know,” someone says. “I saw him practice Yoodo one day. Boy—was he great!”
Pumpkin says to me, “Where did you learn to box!”
I tell them about my uncle in the Manchurian Army. He will be home in a few days on leave; they can all come and meet him; maybe he will let them touch his saber and pistol.
“Wow!” says a boy. “Have you ever fired his pistol?”
“Sure.”
“You ought to be the class leader,” says Pumpkin, looking serious. “Our teacher told us you got the highest score on the transfer test, and you beat that boy up, too. Yeah, you ought to be the class leader.”
“I bet the Japanese teachers won’t make him the class leader, though.”
Pumpkin goes, “Oink-oink.”
Everyone is laughing and oink-oinking.
My mother comes in. “Well, what’s so funny?”
Everyone is looking demure and serious.
I tell her about the swim in the river.
Before she can say anything, everyone starts saying this and that about a swim in the river—that we will all go to the river together and that we will all be very, very careful.
“Well, that’s very nice,” she says, “but I think he should stay home today. The doctor is coming to take a look at him in a little while, and his face is still quite swollen. Another day, all right? But why don’t you go and have a swim? I am sure he wouldn’t mind if you all went without him today, so long as he knows he can go with you all another day. All right?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” several say in unison, getting up.
“Take care of yourself,” says Pumpkin, giving me a brotherly tap on the back. “Do you think you can come to school tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“Well, we will see you,” says my mother.
They all bow to her as they leave the porch, one by one. I remember the steamed Chinese cakes, but there are only four of them, and I don’t know what to do. Outside, in the courtyard, they wave and shout good-by. My grandmother comes out of the kitchen and says, “Come again, all of you.” They bow to her and troop out the gate.
I call out, “Hey—Pumpkin! Wait a second!”
He comes back into the courtyard, trailed by his friend.
I do not want the other boys to hear me, so I whisper to Pumpkin when he comes close to me. I tell him about the Chinese cakes.
My mother, overhearing our conversation, says, “Well, why don’t you ask him to come back later with his friend? I’ll have them warmed up.”
“All right, well come back after the swim in the river. See you later,” he says and runs out, racing with his friend.
“Now, you’d better get back into bed,” she says.
“I feel all right. It isn’t hurting now.”
“I know, I know,” she says, firmly taking hold of my arm. “Come on. Back to bed.”
I wake up again. It is dark. My father is beside my bed. I sit up.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
“I am all right, sir.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything. I know.”
“That boy called you a criminal. . . .”
“Do you think your father is a criminal?”
“Of course not, sir.”
“Well, that’s what matters. But the Japanese think I am,” he says, looking into my eyes. “I was in their prison when I was young. Before you came along. Before your mother and I were married.”
“Was that when you were in college, sir?”
He nods. “I was in prison many years.”
“Why, sir?”
“I can’t tell you about that now. It is not time yet for you to know everything and to understand it all. Time will come. Someday, I promise, I will tell you about it. Now, all you have to know at this time is that I have done nothing in my life that you should be ashamed of. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s all you need to know. Will you believe me? That, as my son, you have nothing to be ashamed of?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. Do you think you would like to have dinner?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Your grandfather would like to have dinner with you and me. He’s been waiting for you to wake up.”
I get up and follow him to my grandfather’s room.
I kneel down on the floor and bow to my grandfather.
He does not say anything.
My mother and the young maid bring in our dinner and set the table. It is unusual; my grandfather usually eats alone. The dinner is unusual, too; there is chicken—we have chicken only when we have guests or when it is someone’s birthday—and there is a big dish of fried meat dumplings, my grandmother’s specialty and my father’s favorite, as well as mine.
My grandfather looks grave, and he is staring at my swollen face. When the table has been set and my mother and the maid have gone out of the room, we sit at the round table. Just the men in the family. My grandfather calls out to the kitchen, “Where is the wine?”
My mother comes in with a bottle of warmed rice wine and two small cups. She sets them on the table by my father.
My grandfather waits till she is out of the room; then, he stands up, goes over to a cupboard built into the wall, and returns with another small cup, which he places on the table in front of me. “I know your mother won’t approve of this. . . .” He reaches for the wine bottle and pours the wine into the three cups on the table.
I glance at my father, who is silent and sitting still.
My grandfather raises his cup.
My father raises his cup, saying to me, “You, too.”
I raise my cup. The sweet and sour smell of the warm wine makes my nose tingle.
“Drink it up now,” says my grandfather.
We drink. I swallow it down with no difficulty, feeling warm in the throat and chest as the wine goes down, feeling big and strong, and feeling quite unabashedly happy.
My father looks at me for a moment and smiles.
“It tastes good,” I announce to both of them.
My father laughs and rumples my hair with his big hand. “Now, it is your turn to pour the wine for your grandfather,” he says.
My grandfather holds his cup in one hand, and I pour the wine into it, holding the bottle in both hands.
He drains his cup down, then picks up the bottle in one hand and fills my father’s cup, which he is holding in both hands. That is the way the grown-ups drink wine. My cup stands empty, and my father tells me to turn it upside down on the table—that means you have had enough.
“Eat, boy, eat!” says my grandfather. “You must be strong and healthy. It seems as though you’ve got something besides brains, and that’s good, too. Eat, boy, eat!”
The men of the family are having their dinner. . . .
In the middle of our dinner, we have a guest—my teacher. Though he insists that he will wait outside until we are finished with the dinner, my grandfather commands him to join us at the table. My father, who is out of the room with the teacher, brings him in.
I stand up and bow to him and, looking up, see that his face is as swollen as mine. One of his eyes is blue and purple and half-closed. His lips are cut and puffed up. He has a white bandage on his forehead.
He kneels down on the floor and bows deeply to my grandfather.
My father says, “He was taken to the police station this afternoon, and he just got released.”
My grandfather stands up, goes over to the cupboard, and brings another cup. Without a word, he fills the four cups on the table. “Come,” he says to the teacher, who joins us at the table.
We drink the wine in silence.
My grandfather gives his own cup to the teacher and fills it for him.
My teacher drinks it down, returns the cup to my grandfather, and fills it for him.
My father then gives his cup to the young teacher, who drinks the wine in it, returns it to my father, and fills it for him.
“Have some dinner,” says my grandfather, after a few rounds of wine.
“No, thank you, sir,” the young man says. “I am not hungry.”
“Have some,” says my father.
My mother comes in with a bowl of chicken soup with meat dumplings in it. She puts it down before the young man. Her eyes are wet, and she avoids looking at my teacher.
When she is out of the room, my father says, “I am sorry.”
My teacher bows to him.
“How is your mother these days?” asks my grandfather.
“She is improving. The doctor says she will be able to get up in a week or so.”
“That’s good,” says my grandfather. “Is there anything we can do?”
“No, thank you, sir. We are fine.”
Silence for a while. The chicken soup goes untouched.
My teacher says abruptly, “I came to say good-by, sir.”
Silence again.
My father says, “What is your plan?”
“That’s what I came to see you about, sir.”
“Anything I can do, just tell me.”
“I am thinking of going to Manchuria, sir, so I thought, perhaps, I could go to see your brother there. What do you advise me, sir?”
I understand he is speaking of my uncle in the Manchurian Army.
“What will you do then?” asks my grandfather.
“Well, sir . . .” My teacher looks at me quickly.
My father says, “As a matter of fact, the boy’s uncle will be home in a few days, on leave. He will stay here for a week or so before he goes to his new assignment, near the Mongolian border. Do you think you understand what I am talking about?”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
“What do you think of this?” says my father. “Can you wait a few more days, until the boy’s uncle gets here? I am thinking, perhaps you can go with him to Manchuria. His being an officer will be helpful, if you know what I mean.”
“I understand that, sir. I didn’t know he was coming home. Yes, sir. If you think he wouldn’t mind . . .”
“Of course, he wouldn’t mind,” says my grandfather.
“What about your mother?” asks my father. “Will your brother be able to look after her?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve already talked it over with him and with my mother, too.”
“You needn’t worry about your mother. She will be all right,” says my grandfather, nodding his head. “Eat your soup now, before it gets cold.”
“Thank you, sir.” He picks up a spoon.
My father looks at me and says gently but very firmly, “You may be excused now. I want you to go to bed early.”
I get up, bow to everyone, mumble my thanks and regrets to my teacher, and withdraw from the room.
“Please close the window on your way out,” says my father.
I do, and, somehow, I know that they are going to discuss something very important, something so important that only the grown-ups should hear and talk about it. I do not mind being excluded; after all, I have had a drink of wine with all of them in there—just the men.
I go to my mother in her room. My sister is sleeping in the corner bed. My mother sits by a lamp, reading a newspaper.
“How many cups did you have?” my mother asks, giving me a sidelong glance.
“Two.”
“Well!” she says, half-serious and half-mocking. “Wait till your other grandfather hears about that!”
“I feel fine.”
“I am sure you do. How’s your face? It is still swollen. Do you feel pain?”
“I am all right.”
“I am sorry about what happened to your teacher.”
“Will he be back at the school?”
“I imagine not. Not after everything that happened today.”
“They are talking about my uncle in Manchuria.”
“Yes, I know.”
“He is going to go to Manchuria with my uncle.”
“I know. Maybe you’d better not tell other people about it too much.”
“Why?”
“I wouldn’t be able to tell you why. Besides, you don’t have to know that. You’d better go to bed. School tomorrow, you know. You are going back to school, aren’t you?”
“Of course, I am.”
“The Japanese teachers may punish you and be mean to you.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am sure. I have nothing to be ashamed of. Besides, I have lots of new friends now.”
“You can go to a private school in Pyongyang if you like, you know. You can stay with your other grandparents and go to school there.”
“No. I will then have to be away from you and father and everyone.”
“We can come and see you often, and you can come home on weekends.”
“I don’t think so. I think I am going to like the school here. I want to be the class leader, too.”
“Of course, you do. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to another school, in Pyongyang? A private school? Without Japanese teachers?”
“I am sure.”
“All right. As long as you are sure.”
“Yes, Mother.” And I think of my friends. Everyone who came to see me in the afternoon and the swim and Pumpkin and, then, the steamed Chinese cakes with meat and vegetables inside them. . . . “I almost forgot, Mother. Have Pumpkin and the other boy been here? They said they would be back after the swim for the cakes. Remember?”
She does not answer.
“Do you still have the cakes?”
“No.”
“Then—did they come?”
“The other boy did,” she says, standing up. “I gave them to him.” She is going out of the room. “Come with me.”
I follow her out of the room to the veranda. In my grandfather’s room in the other wing of the L-shaped house, the windows are closed, but I can see the three of them still at the table talking. My mother stands in the shadow outside the room, by the window. “Come here,” she says.
I go up to her.
“Something happened to your friend.”
“You mean—Pumpkin?” It strikes me that I do not know his name.
She nods. “The other boy came here. He was crying. He told me that, when they got to the river—it was very hot. Remember? When they got to the river, your friend Pumpkin—well, he just ran ahead of everyone, put his bathing suit on, and dove into the water. From a rock. Just like that. And that’s the last they saw of him.”
“What happened?”
“He dove into the water from the rock. They saw him dive, but, when they got there, they couldn’t find him.”
“You mean—he was still in the water? Like swimming underwater?”
“No. He just never came out of the water. Not for a long time.”
“Where was he?”
“They looked for him there, but he couldn’t be found.”
“Was he drowned, then?”
“Yes. They found his body later, downstream.”
“He is dead, then.”
“Yes. I am sorry. It is a terrible thing.”
“He is dead, then.”
Without a word, she puts her arms around me.
I do not really understand my own words. I do know about drowning. . . . “He is not alive, then.”
“He is dead,” she says.
“Dead.”
* * *
. . . And my young teacher is dead, too. My uncle helps him to cross the Manchurian-Mongolian border. He makes his way inside Mongolia. He is captured by the Soviet troops. The Russians kill him. Before they shoot him, they tell him that he is a Japanese spy.