I Am the Clay

by Chaim Potok

  “What village, Uncle?”

  The old man, squinting into the light, gave the soldier the name of their village.

  “Near what town?”

  “Dongduchon.”

  There was a pause.

  The flashlight did a quick slide and landed on the face of the woman. She closed her eyes.

  “Who’s this, Uncle?”

  “She is my wife.”

  The flashlight lingered a moment on the woman and then moved to the boy.

  The boy stared directly into the light. Small. Very small.

  “Who’s this, Aunt, your grandson?”

  “Yes, grandson,” the woman answered quickly.

  “What happened to him?”

  “His parents dead. Village burned.”

  “What’s in the cart?”

  “This and that from our house,” the woman said.

  He ran the light across the cart, letting it linger over the splintered wheel and then brushing it across the quilts. He took his time poking the quilts with the flashlight. The light narrowing and burying itself briefly and reappearing. A diminishing and vanishing and returning of the world.

  The old man watched the soldier, and the woman leaned against the cart shivering and gazing at the fires on the plain, and the boy stood very still, feeling on his arm the small bony fingers of the woman.

  Behind them the line of refugees stood in silence, dimly visible in the cold starlit night. Vehicles kept on along the road, an endless procession, all going north.

  From somewhere in the darkness up ahead a voice called out in a strange language. The flashlight moved away from the cart and shone fully upon the face of the old man.

  “Uncle, have you relatives in the North?”

  Almost everyone had relatives in the North. But the North was the enemy.

  “Ah, yes. An uncle and cousins. Uncle long ago gone to his ancestors. Cousins I do not see since I was a boy.”

  “Aunt?”

  “No relatives in the North. All my relatives only in the South.”

  He shone the flashlight again upon the boy.

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  “Very bad wound,” the woman said.

  She opened the boy’s jacket and shirt. He gasped as the cold air bit his flesh.

  In the harsh beam of the flashlight the healed wound had the look of violated flesh.

  The soldier turned his face away and waved them on.

  The old man bent to pick up the shaft of the cart.

  “We have no food,” he heard the woman say.

  “Trucks come in the morning with food.”

  “We have no food for tonight,” the woman said.

  In the darkness up ahead the voice called out again in that strange language. The soldier replied and the voice answered.

  “Move,” the soldier said to the old man.

  “We will die without food,” the woman said.

  “Tell your woman to move, Uncle.”

  “Come,” the old man snapped.

  She picked up the shaft. The boy pushed from behind.

  As they passed through the line of burning oil drums a soldier stepped out of the shadows and held up in front of the woman a small paper packet of rice. Without a word he dropped it on the quilts in the cart and then vanished back into the shadows.

  They rolled the cart off the main road onto the narrow dirt path that ran through the plain. Its broken wheel now perilously tilting, the cart jounced and squeaked along the path and the boy tried to keep it raised so the wheel would not touch the ground. But after some while he thought his arms would come loose from his shoulders and he set the cart back on the wheel and pushed from behind. Then the old man came over to the wheel and lifted the cart and the boy took the other shaft and pulled together with the woman.

  On the plain was a vast shantytown. Firepits and oil drums and makeshift shacks on the frozen ground and shadowy figures squatting or moving slowly about. Dark arctic-cold moonless air with currents of smoke and heat from the fires. Patches of brushwood humped and dwarfish beneath capes of snow. An odd noise over the plain: a low sighing and moaning ascending toward the black sky and pierced now and again by sharp clanging sounds from the military compound.

  A patch of uninhabited darkness amid the surrounding fires: they left the path and settled the cart on it.

  All around them shanties and huddled figures.

  Quickly the old man shook snow from nearby brushwood and with the help of the boy loaded the A-frame while the woman with the last of her strength cleared snow from a section of ground near the cart and dug a shallow pit with the same stone tool the boy had used to make the hole in the pond near the cave. Digging, she wondered briefly why the ground was not frozen to stone. She put snow into a pot and when the old man and the boy returned built a fire and busied herself preparing the rice.

  She thought: Who was he, the silent soldier with the gift of rice? One of the pale-skinned ones with the upside-down eyes? Sometimes kind and sometimes cruel creatures. Mother told me this how when she was a servant once in the house of the provincial governor and saw with other servants through finger holes poked in the paper doors and screens the governor dining with a pale-skinned man. Odd how he removed his hat when he entered the house. Ill-mannered creature. Mother said she learned from her grandfather that different kinds of creatures eat different kinds of foods, some eat stones, some wood, some grass, some water, some air, and the highest creatures, humans, eat rice and pork and raw fish, and the pale-skinned creature ate rice and pork and was clearly human even though his eyes were upside down and he removed his hat upon entering the house when it is known to all that a hat is put on to show respect not taken off what good is a hat as a sign of respect when it is not on the head where it belongs. Mother said that perhaps everything is upside down where they live, because they live on the other side of the world. Ah, look at the boy, my heart aches for the boy, he is so tired, he sits leaning against the cart exhausted, patiently waiting for his rice. And my man with the pipe in his mouth, hungry for his food. How will we sleep tonight? It is less cold here than it was in the mountains but it is still cold enough to kill us.

  She offered the rice to the spirits of the plain and then served it and they crouched near the fire huddled in quilts, eating. Along the distant main road vehicles kept moving like squat yellow-eyed creatures, blacker than the darkness of the night, all heading north.

  When they had eaten, the woman put the snow-cleansed bowls and pot back in the cart and returned to the fire.

  “We will take turns again at the fire,” the old man said.

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

  “Are you too tired?” the woman asked the boy.

  “I will go first,” he said.

  “Then you will wake me,” the woman said.

  “As you wish,” said the old man.

  “And I will wake you.”

  “I hear what you are saying.”

  “How will we sleep?”

  “We should make walls of two of the quilts and sleep under the cart. And if we die, we die.”

  “We will not die,” the woman said. “That is not a way to talk.”

  “What the spirits decide to do, they do,” the old man said.

  The boy helped the old man spread the pads and quilts and unroll the sleeping bag on the ground between the wheels of the cart and then drape two of the quilts over the four sides of the cart.

  “You are sure you can take a turn?” the woman asked the boy. “Because if you are too tired you should not.”

  “I am not too tired.”

  “Remember to wake me.”

  The old man was putting more wood on the fire. Flames leaped in the windless air. He gazed out across the plain. Flat, treeless. Prickles of cold dread crawled along his back. Something here.

  The woman moved into the space beneath the cart and slid into the quilts. She lay back and felt a sudden rush of iciness pass through her. From what? A
creature of piercing cold residing in the ground? She shivered and began to rise but her fatigue held her like a stone weight and she was asleep before the old man slipped in beside her.

  He thought: This wall of quilts will not help us much against the cold. How bitter if death comes tonight after all we have been through.

  The boy sat by the fire inside a quilt wondering what the old man would have answered had the soldier asked him instead of the woman, Who’s this, Uncle, your grandson?

  Why am I so cold with the heat of the fire on my face? So close to the flames and yet still shivering. The air so still, black and silent air, cold and smelling of raw earth. As on the night of the campfire in the forest when I dared the boys of my chronological group to cover me with earth to see how long I could stay under the ground and the earth was cold and dank on my nose and eyes and face, smelling of moist roots and wet stones, and I lay there so long Badooki began to whine and scrape at the ground and they rushed to uncover me and I climbed out laughing and brushed the earth from my clothes. Breathing through a reed they couldn’t see in the dark. And after supper Father called me to him and said, giving me a hopeless look, This is a foolish boy, how is it I have in my house under my roof such a foolish boy? And Grandfather said, The boy likes to explore, there is a curiosity in him, one must know the difference between a boy who explores for understanding and one who explores for excitement only. The second is foolish and dangerous. Which are you? Grandfather asked me, and my father replied, I say this is a foolish boy and one day his foolishness will cause him harm, may the spirits protect and guard him, what will you do next to shame me in the village, foolish boy? And he turned away from me very angry. But Grandfather kept smiling around the long stem of his pipe. Who told Father? No doubt fat and greasy and loose-tongued Choo Kun. Dead all of my chronological group. Ashes all their homes.

  There is something strange about this place. Fires burning everywhere except on those two patches of darkness and where we are now. Big black circles and all around them fires, and fires all around the Americans, are they warm the Americans, I was warm in my village with the smoke from the kitchen fire running under the floor and our sleeping pads on the floor, the heat baking us no matter how cold outside. The old man and the woman, they must be very cold if I am cold so close to the fire. The old man doesn’t like me, I don’t know why, no matter what I do he doesn’t like me, I’ll go back with them to their village if the Americans drive out the Chinese and the soldiers of the North, and then I’ll go to my village, someone must still be alive, they couldn’t all have been killed, I’ll live with an uncle, a cousin, how could they all have died?

  Is it already time to wake up the woman? I’ll stay a little longer. Six times with the fire tonight instead of five, were we really in the mountains last night? let her sleep, some fires have gone out, will there be many dead of the cold here in the morning? Badooki once found a man dead in the forest near our village, a stranger dead in the snow, no relative of anyone in the village, and no one would touch him, no one would take the responsibility of the funeral, and finally someone called the police. Badooki barked and we all came running, all in my chronological group, we were playing in the forest, and the man lay very still, not still the way you are when you sleep, but the way a stone is still, or a sack of grain, dead stone still, and fat greasy Choo Kun stared at the body and turned green and went away to vomit. I told my sisters to have a look at the body and they screamed and put their hands over their mouths and ran frightened into the courtyard beside the garden. Ah, girls.

  How many times have I added wood to the fire? I can’t remember. Let her sleep.

  He sat shivering inside the quilt. I made a tent of quilts once in the forest with my two little brothers and we slept in it near the campfire, all dead my little brothers, hands bound and earth in their eyes, they kill children too, why do they kill children? what did children do to them? told them stories of ghosts that night, wandering ghosts, Badooki in the tent lying next to me warm, and stories about the two stars, the wandering cowboy and the weaving girl meeting only one day a year, on the seventh day of the seventh moon, because the cowboy had neglected his cows and the weaving girl her weaving, so they were punished and must forever live separated by the Milky Way, each person must tend to the duties in his proper sphere, a story Grandmother told me, I felt it a duty to teach my little brothers what was being taught me, but they only wanted to hear more stories of wandering ghosts, and there were mosquitoes and fireflies in the tent and the smell of the forest, and suddenly it began to rain, a waterfall of rain came through the trees, collapsing the tent and sending a river down on our heads, and Badooki ran around barking and we laughed and collected the wet quilts and ran and Badooki barked and followed us into the house and he was so wet, we all looked at him and laughed, and I called him Two Three, he was so small and wet, all his fur gone, and we slept on the floor in the house, my little brothers and Badooki and I, how long ago was that, how long, I can’t remember, how many times have I put wood on the fire, I can’t remember.

  He fell asleep and woke with a start and then dozed and woke again. Shivering, he heaped wood on the bed of glowing embers and watched it catch fire and burn high and saw the snow had melted near the firepit and the earth oozing tiny rivulets despite the dense curtain of glacial air that lay upon the plain. Time to wake him, he thought, dazed. It must be time by now. Is that light coming from the sky or from the American compound? How warm they must be. And the food they have. Wake the old man, wake him, it must be time.

  The old man moaned but woke without a word. Staggering slightly, he went to the fire, where he sat in his quilt staring into the flames, still inside his troubling dreams.

  The boy lay down beside the old woman and was instantly asleep.

  Gunfire from the American compound woke the old man from a half-sleep: three shots in swift succession. He experienced a confusion of frightful images: the Chinese, the soldiers from the North, the woman, the cart, run, run. Rising, he tripped over an edge of the quilt and nearly tumbled into the fire. He scrambled to his feet, his hands touching soft muddied earth, and stared wildly around at the fires and the darkness across the silent plain and the cloud of reddish light over the American compound and the line of military vehicles moving along the road. Trembling, he piled more brush on the fire and sat inside his quilt listening to the beating of his heart.

  In a haze of shivering bewilderment and fatigue, his head feeling oddly weightless and his eyes seeing the fire as flaring halos of yellow light spreading from the center of the flames, the old man thought he remembered the woman telling the boy to wake her but he could not be certain or perhaps the boy had tried to wake her and she would not rise or the boy had forgotten or the woman had not said that to the boy, she had said to wake the man and the man was to wake her, she would be angry again if he did not wake her, perhaps the boy had waked her and I dreamed the boy woke me when it was the woman who woke me, the dreams were strong tonight, dreams of planting the seedlings, with my feet in the hot brown waters of the paddies, the soil oozing out between my toes and the woman beside me or with the ox and the sun beating down upon my shoulders, and in the evening the rich smell of the fields and the cool breeze from the mountains and the moonlight on the wrinkled face of the river, strong dreams tonight, Uncle said a man before he dies dreams of the best moments of his life and carries those memories on his journey into the next world, he told me while we hunted pheasant in the mountains with a hawk, three-year-old female bird, beautiful plumage, Uncle trained her himself, she lived in a thatched-roof birdhouse in Uncle’s backyard, sat perched on a branch six feet above the ground staring out at the world, a leather thong looped around each of her legs, a cold cruel untamed look in her glittering eyes, on the hunt the hawk sat on the thick leather glove that protected Uncle’s muscular hand, we crossed a river and climbed a steep hillside and saw a farmer plowing a patch of cleared earth with an ox, and Uncle said to me, Is that what you want to do or is
this? and he raised the hawk high over his head and the hawk fluttered her wings and the bell on her back rang and later, as the hawk swept across the valley like a swift shadow in pursuit of a pheasant, Uncle said, pointing to it, That’s what I want to remember, that’s what I want as my last memory to take with me on the journey to the next world.

  The old man stirred and roused himself and heaped more wood on the dying fire. Light already in the sky? Figures beginning to move about. A child crying. The muted wail of a woman: someone dead of the cold? Gray curling mist, vague distant hills, pale blurred sky. Melted snow around the fire, the ground oozing water and mud. Raw brown seeping earth. Strange.

  He got to his feet, the quilt still around him, and took some steps away from the fire. In the faint light of the predawn sky he bent down and scraped snow from the ground and probed the land with his fingers. Miniature hills and vales. Rough earth, knobby, recently turned. He prodded the ground: not quite frozen, yielding. Scooping out a handful of earth, he put it to his nostrils, smelled it, let it sift down through his fingers, sensing its texture, watching it fall.

  He stood and looked around, then walked some yards to a low dead fire outside a nearby shack and bent and put his hand on the snow and scraped it away. Here the earth lay like solid rock beneath his fingers: hard-packed, unturned, frozen, winter earth, not the earth on which he and the woman and the boy slept, not that earth, a different earth.

  He rose slowly and returned to the cart, walking with care. Drawing the quilt about him, he squatted next to the cart on the side where the woman slept. He sat there staring across the plain, waiting for the sun to rise.

  The woman woke from a dream in which she had been tending the fire and a shower of sparks had ascended to the black sky and formed a constellation in the shape of the boy. She had been gazing up at it in wonder and love when next to her the boy stirred in his sleep and softly moaned, waking her.