by Yoon, Paul
10
They were loaded onto the bed of a truck and taken into the surrounding forest. It was the only time he left the borders of the camp. All through the day he felled trees, the guards gathered on a high riverbank above them. They would use the wood to build additional shelters and for fire.
They were given time to rest and they went into the river. Some of them bathed while others sat in the cool water or washed their faces and their necks.
It was their second year at the camp. Yohan immersed himself, holding his breath, feeling the current pass over him. The life of it.
Peng lay beside him. His body submerged, the dirt on the bandages over his eyes began to loosen. They had been holding on to a boulder. Earlier, they had been speaking of the river in Yohan’s town, how in the warm seasons they had gone swimming there. All the children did, entire groups of them navigating the slow current and one another as though they were each a ship.
Yohan spoke of that one time a girl surfaced, unmoving, her back to the sky and the delayed confusion and then the shouting.
Peng asked whether Yohan had known who the girl was. Yohan could not remember.
—Was I there? Peng said.
In the water they faced each other for a moment, the two of them holding their breaths and the sun on them and their bodies afloat. Yohan smiled. Then he shut his eyes.
He would never know when Peng let go. Just that when Yohan looked again beside him he was no longer there.
It happened too quickly. On the banks a guard shouted but Peng remained motionless as he caught the current and floated away, moving faster now with the river.
Two guards started to run, following the banks. Peng grew smaller.
He would always wonder whether Peng heard the shouting. Perhaps he had been daydreaming. Perhaps he had fallen asleep. Perhaps he was aware of what was happening and no longer cared.
He was twenty-six years old. This young man whom he had first seen as a boy in front of an audience, on the shoulders of his father, leaping into the sky. Peng, who once sat on a tree stump in the woods, exhausted, his rifle between his legs, the crescent shape of an orange rind in his mouth and his face frozen in a smile.
On that first day at the camp, he had reached into the air and found Yohan’s wrist. He asked where they were, what was happening. They were suddenly surrounded by men and a foreign language. A helicopter deafened the morning. Yohan felt the bandaged face against his shoulder. He held Peng’s hand as he looked out at a field of barracks and cabins, an old mill and tents, a graveyard and a garden.
That afternoon in the forest there were four rifle shots and the sounds echoed across the river. In the distance, water sprayed into the air.
It was the last he saw of him. In the madness of those seconds, while everyone around him rushed to the high banks, he was unable to move, standing there, his body rooted in the moving water and all the noise like light against him.
He had done nothing. He had held his breath. He had clasped his hands as though in prayer and he had followed the paleness of his friend’s skin in the current.
A week after that, while washing a uniform, he tore it and, startled, he looked down at the wrecked fabric in his hands and wept.
• • •
He stayed at the camp for almost a year after the war ended. Most of the prisoners had gone. The field hospital remained active, the doctors and the nurses staying, tending to the remaining Americans and the surviving prisoners. By then they had grown accustomed to Yohan and he assisted them, carrying trays of washcloths and dressings, a bucket of water and a ladle.
The guards no longer watched him. He was free to walk the grounds whenever he wanted. He had the cabin to himself in the evenings. He was unused to the silence and the size. He slept where he always did, in the corner. He was given extra blankets if he needed them.
Some nights he stayed outside, watching the field and the distant farmhouse where a single light burned behind a window. Other nights he walked to the mill, played cards with the men.
One day, in a field tent, he brought out a sewing machine from under a table. He began to mend old and torn and discarded clothes. It was no longer necessary. It was something to do. He rubbed his nose, feeling its crookedness, the bump there. He concentrated on the movement of the work. It came naturally to him.
He worked all day, alone in that tent, finding whatever clothes he could. He washed them as well. Then those still stationed there began to approach him, giving him the shirts they wore.
The worst of the winter had passed. The land was gray.
On Yohan’s last day he walked to the edge of the camp. He slipped his fingers through the fence. He could hear a peddler’s bell somewhere in the mountains. He heard footsteps. He turned to see the medic, Lamont, approaching him.
—Snowman, the medic said, and stood there behind Yohan with curiosity.
There used to be a kite somewhere in the trees. That nameless boy who was given chocolate by a nurse would call to the prisoners, —Hey, mister! and then run the meadow. The ball of twine he held unraveled, the kite aloft over his shoulders.
Almost always the kite tangled itself at the edge of the woods. And the boy, with patience, would climb the tree and they would all watch, the guards, too, as he vanished into the high foliage.
In that moment it seemed that they all held their breaths, wondering where the boy had gone. But then a hand would appear between the leaves and the camp cheered.
He never knew where the boy lived. He stayed for one season, then traveled farther south, he supposed.
The boy was short. He had lost the use of one of his hands. It hung by his side, bent at the wrist, forever in a halfhearted fist. A mine perhaps. Still, he climbed trees with speed and dexterity, using his thighs and his good arm.
In the end the kite tore, suffering its last crash into the trees. The sound of the tear could be heard in the camp. Men paused in their work and turned. They laughed and hollered and clapped.
The boy approached the base of the tree. He placed a hand above his eyes and raised his head. The tip of a tree branch had pierced one of the wings.
Yohan, expecting the boy to climb the tree once more, waited. But he didn’t.
In the months that followed, the kite stayed in the tree. It stayed in the weeks of rain and it stayed as leaves began to fall. The paper darkened and changed form. And then the snow dusted it, brightening it once more, and in the nights it shone like a moon in the trees.
Yohan used to look out at it from time to time, like some coast he was waiting for. Then, as the winter deepened, he no longer did.
He searched for it now but couldn’t find it. It had been almost three years since he had woken to his wrists bound and his body shaking from the movements of a truck. This man Lamont who was from Virginia peering down at him, grinning and raising his thumbs.
They stood beside the fence. Lamont turned to him as though about to speak. Then, following Yohan’s eyes, he looked up.
11
Three months after Kiyoshi’s death, Yohan found the child’s coat the tailor had been working on. It had been placed in the chest in the corner of the old man’s room. It lay with many other clothes. They were clothes of all sizes and had never been worn.
He carried the coat to the shop and lifted it to the light. It was not yet finished. It was missing a lining and buttons and the cuffs needed to be hemmed but he admired the construction of it and its shape.
Whose it was he did not know. He draped it over the tailor’s dummy, where it remained visible through the window.
All that week he asked each customer who entered the shop. He asked the people to whom he delivered clothes. He asked them whether they could ask others.
—Are you missing clothes? he said.
They shook their heads. It seemed that it did not belong to anyone. Or at least anyone here in this town.
One afternoon he approached the windows. A group of children had gathered in front of the pastry sto
re. The church bell rang.
Two hours remained before the shop closed; but he turned over the sign on the door. He took the child’s coat and laid it over his worktable. He undid the knot of his tie and rolled up his shirt cuffs. He lifted the sewing machine aside.
He worked with patience. He had not worked without the machine in some time. It pleased him to return to it, the work, the movement of his fingers. He lost himself in it.
The day passed and moved into evening. On occasion a shadow appeared: a woman pressed her hand against the window; a man knocked and called to him. He ignored them, increasing the volume on the radio.
When he finished he hung the coat on a rack and sat looking at it. He saw the shape of the arms and the shoulders as if a child floated there.
He did not know what time it was. Outside, it was dark and the streets empty.
He stood and began to pace the shop. He was not tired. He made himself some tea. He organized the fabrics and rolled the measuring tapes. He climbed the stairs and headed to his room, thinking sleep would come to him if he lay down. Instead he stayed by the window in the dark, looking out at the hill town.
Soon, it began to rain. It fell across the streets and the harbor. He opened the window. The rain hit the tiles of the rooftops, erasing the town noises. He pushed his hand out into the air and felt the cold drops catch his skin.
He was suddenly aware that there was no one else in the house. That there would be no one downstairs when he woke.
He stayed beside the window in his room with its sloped ceiling. He did not sleep. A store sign flickered, throwing its light against the walls of the room. The night passed.
In that hour before dawn he returned downstairs to the shop. He took one of Kiyoshi’s leather bags and placed the child’s coat in it. He put on a raincoat. In the corner he found Kiyoshi’s bicycle. He unlocked the shop door and pushed the bicycle outside.
Though the rain had stopped, the air was now cool. He could smell the wet cobblestone and dirt. Streetlamps were still glowing.
He pushed the bicycle down the street for a while. He hesitated. There was no one. He swung his leg over the seat. He began to pedal slowly, circling the street, passing the tailor’s shop a few times. Then he began to pedal faster and when he reached the start of the street he turned.
He went down the slope of the hill, following the roads, going faster now past the shuttered stores and the cafés. He arrived at the port and turned again and when he reached the coastal road he sped.
A field of stars opened above him. The breath of sky. A path of lights on the ocean’s surface; and the hill town to his left, all its windows like a blurred image as though another ocean were there, another body of water, draped across the high slope.
The coastal road was empty and bright. He shut his eyes. He leaned back, straightened his legs, and listened to the bicycle wheels. When the bicycle slowed he bent forward and pedaled.
Back and forth he went like this. Toward the settlement, the flashing lighthouse and the northern cities, and then back toward the piers. His chin pointed up, his body stretched against the moonlight. He was smiling.
He could hear the waves pushing toward the coast and he did not want the sound to end. It seemed to him the night would go on, that it would always be dark, the town forever lit by the muted glow of electricity. That it would be a world of nights alone.
He felt a lightness in his chest and breathed the cool air; he could taste it almost, it tasted old and rich as though it had traveled a very long way to reach him, as though he could taste the years it contained. And he felt those years and the land that it had traveled across and the people it had passed; and he thought of how it entered him and how he held it now, within him.
He shut his eyes once more and he thought of others and of times before this one.
He slowed, approaching the settlement. Through the coastal trees he could make out the shanties in the field and the broken rooftop of the plantation house. There were rowboats and canoes in a small bay, bobbing as the water approached and receded. He caught movement in the trees, the thin smoke from a chimney. Fishermen began to appear from the shanties and factory workers headed toward the road.
He stayed a little longer and then he adjusted the bag over his shoulder and returned to the town.
It had become morning, the town the color of a fading fire. A fog was climbing the hill, following him. He was walking, pushing the bicycle up the streets that were still quiet. His breathing was calm as he passed the tailor’s shop and continued up the road.
At the church a light had been turned on, illuminating a stained-glass window. He entered the meadow, making his way toward the tree.
There, on that hill, he rested. People began appearing from windows, checking the weather. He could hear the carts heading toward the markets. Behind him, in the fields, mules and cattle were already grazing.
There was just one road that moved across the land, vanishing into the mountains. He had never been to those mountains or beyond them, did not know how far this road extended, whether it continued unbroken through the country.
On a far slope he noticed the shape of someone clothed in white and carrying a basket, picking mushrooms.
He still felt awake. He held his breath and then exhaled. In that moment it seemed as though there was nothing more to know.
When he turned to face the town he saw a figure walking the promontory. He stood under the tree and followed the person’s approach. Raindrops fell from the tree onto his raincoat and the mud around him. The fog was thick and the figure slipped in and out of it, heading toward him, growing clearer in the gray light.
It was Bia. She wore a long-brimmed hat and she was carrying a rucksack. She crossed the meadow and climbed the hill. Her boots were stained with mud and the hem of her trousers was wet.
He had not seen her for some time. She stood opposite him, the two of them under the tree. She had tucked her hair under her hat, revealing a pale line around her neck where a necklace had been.
He looked behind her to see if anyone else was coming. A large ship retreated from the harbor.
—He’s gone, Bia said. He left.
He asked to where. She shrugged. She didn’t know. She adjusted the straps of her rucksack and smiled.
—He’ll come back, she said.
He asked if she was leaving, too. Where she was going.
—North, she said.
She looked down at her boots and kicked each heel against the other, loosening the mud.
—A different kind of winter, she said.
He remained silent. He opened his bag. He took out the food he had brought with him, wrapped in newspapers, and handed it to her.
Then he lifted the child’s coat, unfolding it. He held it up for her to see and he took Bia’s arm and slipped it into the sleeve. Then the other.
When it was on her he smoothed the collar and checked the buttons. It fit her shoulders though it was a bit short for her; the hem fell above her waist and the cuffs revealed her wrists. Still, Yohan buttoned the coat and Bia blushed, avoiding his eyes.
He did not know what to say. She was examining the buttons on the coat and smiling. They had anchors on them.
—Will you be gone long? he said.
She did not respond. She approached the bicycle. She tilted it away from the tree, gripping its handlebars, waiting for his permission. He nodded.
—Yohan, she said. I’ll see you.
She turned and entered the fields that led to the mountains.
He remained under the tree. He watched as she made her way along the country road. A mule approached her and she paused, lifted her palm, and went on, pushing the bicycle and avoiding the puddles.
He thought of Santi in front of the tailor’s dummy with his fists raised. His face like a knot. His arms like spears. He thought of the parents the boy could not remember. The boy on the shore and the ships he followed. His quiet violence.
He imagined the tailor as a young
man and his journey here, crossing an ocean on a slow-moving ship as he himself did. He wondered whether Kiyoshi had been wearing a uniform. Whether there had been a family and where they were. What the man had fled from, if he had fled at all. What the man had let go of and whether it was possible to regain anything, to search and find it once more. Whether there was someone far from here who remembered him.
He thought of these years as another life within the one he had. As though it were a thing he was able to carry. A small box. A handkerchief. A stone. He did not understand how a life could vanish. How that was even possible. How it could close in an instant before you could reach inside one last time, touch someone’s hand one last time. How there would come a day when no one would wonder about the life he had before this one.
She was far away. He could see the shape of her shoulders as she approached the mountains. The child’s coat and the spokes of the wheels catching a corner of daylight.
He held his arms. Water continued to fall from the tree.
He was now alone. It had been almost four years since he had first seen her on the deck of a ship. The girl looking for a boat and the kindness of a sailor to show Santi the coast. The gift of an umbrella in the morning rain. The tail of a scarf high in the air, and the boy following as she began to run.
She grew fainter. She kept going.
12
He used to wake early, before the light of morning, and climb the hill beside his home. From there he could see a distant farmhouse with its half-built chimney. This unfinished structure of wood and stones. Six windows like pockets of water.
On some days, if he waited long enough, a candle flame appeared behind one of the windows. This was followed by the ringing of a bell.
Then the men and the women came out of the woods. They were young. There were children as well, some of them on their own and others on the shoulders or the backs of their fathers and their mothers.