7
I left New York at the latest possible moment—Sunday afternoon. Hitchhiking alone, I was picked up by a young man in a new, sporty roadster. That is, he told me it was new, and he said, “Let’s see how fast we can go.” We saw several cops, but he boasted that he could outrun all cops. This seemed to be true. We saw a number of cops on motorcycles, but he went faster than any of them. He told me he intended to sleep in Boston that night, and he would need a good long rest, as he had been up late the night before. We passed Marlboro but we were still a good ways short of Framingham when a traffic officer dropped down the railroad gate in front of us. (He had received a telephone message from one of the disappointed cops far behind.) Now my driver got into trouble. For this gave them the break, and all the motorcycle cops we had outrun came up with us. My driver didn’t even have his license with him! He was informed that he would have to go to jail for the night. But he was in very good spirits and he said, pointing to me, “Let my buddy go. He has to get back in time for an early morning class and he’s only a hitchhiker.” So he was taken and I was left. It was too far to get to Framingham for the night, on foot, and too far back to walk to Marlboro. Since it was nearing eleven o’clock, I knew everybody on the road would be afraid to pick up hitchhikers, for fear they might be robbers or gangsters. I stood a long time at the crossing, talking to the cop who had dropped down the railroad gates. It was a busy section and continually he whirled his stick and blew his whistle. He was a big, good-natured Irishman, and I explained to him again about my class in Boston.
“You see, I have to get back. Or I’ll get on probation. And maybe flunk.”
“Well, son, I don’t see how I can help you.”
“Oh yes, you can, sir, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Then I begged him to lend me his cap and whistle. Just for a moment. The cop grinned. He saw my scheme. “Can’t do that exactly. But I will help you out.” He blew his whistle a mighty blast. He stepped out in front of the cars heading in the Boston direction and held up his hand. My! how all those cars grated and stopped. They thought they were being stopped to find some criminal, or else that they were going to be searched for bootleg whiskey.
“What car is going to Boston?”
“Here! Here! Here, Officer, I’m going there.”
Each thought he must carry in some important message and everybody was excited, just as when the chief of police rolls by with all his bells ringing.
“Take your choice!” the cop waved me toward the cars.
I picked out a very handsome one and finished my trip to Boston in a roomy limousine.
BOOK EIGHT
1
JUNE HAD ALMOST COME. Time to make plans for the summer. Boston already grew hot and stifling on some days. Before the college term was over, a prospect turned up that looked very advantageous for me. It came through Richard Chai, a Korean medical student interning in one of the Boston hospitals. My prospect was a position answering phone calls in a doctor’s house on Beacon Street while the family went to Marblehead from the middle of June until the 1st of October. Chai took me around to meet Doctor Dimassi in his office. I liked the doctor very much, and he was cordial to me. So my summer was settled. A great load off my mind. The work would not be arduous and I could get a lot of reading done.
Richard Chai had been kind to me all that winter. Poor in the beginning, like the rest of us, Chai had done very well in Boston. In his medical studies he was a cum laude. He was given a blood-chemistry course to teach in the medical school, and now he moved in a circle of influential American friends. He was ready to help out any Koreans who behaved themselves. Chai was really one generation removed from Korea; he was Hawaiian-bred—a slim, small, delicately built person with hair rather fine, brushed high from his forehead. He was always scrupulously neat, fastidious, soigné. A born society man, he yet had tact and well-meaning for everybody—an unusual combination obviously destined to success in a professional line. George Jum maintained that Chai tried too hard to be “white,” but then Jum was prejudiced against him, and he against Jum; they were too different. Besides, ever since coming to Boston, Chai had been in love with an American girl, Martha Wright, confidential secretary to Doctor Morrison. Chai was very circumspect in this and did not talk much until he saw how it was going to turn out. He courted Miss Wright first through his high grades and their meetings over scholarships. (She handled scholarships, just that kind Chai was always carrying away.) And grades would naturally mean a lot to her, for she was wearing a Phi Beta Kappa key. Miss Martha Wright was a handsome, imposing girl with golden hair always beautifully marcelled, and was very popular in the university circles where she moved; she was intelligent and efficient in everything, even in the good appearance where often Phi Beta Kappa keys do not help.
Chai bided his time, but was playing every love-card skillfully, avoiding both the crassness of George and the gloomy confusion of Kim. By this time he had Martha Wright and Doctor Morrison both singing his praises, one to the other. Chai was not much interested in my line—philosophy and literature—but in his own field he knew what he was doing.
No Korean anyhow was much interested in my line. Nobody except Kim and George. For instance, there was the Korean Eulchoon Chang. Chang was studying to be an engineer—and unlike Guru, the Hindu, he overcame all theosophical temptations—he stuck to engineering. Chang’s mind was clear and practical; in personality, he was amiable, alert, but quiet, tending strictly to his own business. All Koreans I have known had a good word for Chang and for his gentle shrewdness. Even George, who did not care much for the student type. George’s respect for him might be measured by the fact that he predicted to me: “Chang will some day be a millionaire because he knows the value of money.” To know the value of money was with George almost a mystical phrase. It did not signify either spending or hoarding—but it meant cleverness with a tool, a necessary tool which would fit you into the American environment. Chang had done many kinds of work at first. But now he had a very successful job, which began in Jordan Marsh’s where he sold Ma Jong sets. Chang knew how to play Ma Jong very well, for he had learned in China, where he lived for a time on his way to America. He quietly expanded his salesmanship job into that of teaching Ma Jong. His appointments came through the store. Ma Jong was at the height of its popularity. During the summer he sold Ma Jong sets, and during the winter he studied in college and gave Ma Jong lessons in his leisure hours. Ten and twenty dollars a night he would make for instructing a party, and as a teacher Chang was very popular. He had self-possession and tact and he got on beautifully with wealthy Americans.
Chang had known George for a long time, having also done some studying in New York. Each had a tolerance and respect for the other’s personality, though they were not exactly chums, being too different. Chang told me he had in mind to get George a good job in Boston through one of his wealthy patrons. I said, “Oh, George will never leave June.” Chang said, “Didn’t you know? They fight all the time.”
Chang had been in New York more recently than I. And Chang said she would send George wires to visit her in Philadelphia. When he got there, she received him in a sumptuous millionaire’s apartment. She had the same kind in several cities. It was strange. “There isn’t much money in dancing unless you are a Broadway star,” Chang said. Also she would sometimes break their date in the midst and send George away suddenly, if she received a telephone call.
“I believe she is June to George, but May to some one else,” Chang said. And he said thoughtfully, it would be a good thing to bring Jum to Boston. Anyhow he meant to offer him a good job, as soon as he could pick one out.
Chulmo Chu was also very anxious for George to come to Boston. Chu was not exactly a student, though originally he had come to Boston to study. He had already spent three years at a college in the South. He thought he was ready to be a senior in a college in Boston. But in Boston he was degraded to the rank of a freshman.
Then at the end of the first semester, he was made a special student because of his poor grades in English composition. This completely discouraged him in education. At the same time he had the offer of a very good butlering job with a wealthy real-estate man, Morris Reynolds. “Four years in college and nothing to show for it,” argued Chulmo Chu. “Why should I go on being a starving student when I can get a good job like this one?”
And nobody could deny that of its kind it was a very fine job. By the middle of May, the Reynolds family had all gone to Europe for the summer, and Chu was left in charge, with their great, luxurious house all to himself. He got his usual wages while they were gone, and he had the use of a Ford car as his own. When the car was turned over, his employer never suspected that Chu was anything but an accomplished driver, and as a matter of fact Chu had learned how to drive it in a few hours. In spite of inexperience he never had had an accident. And now he had been driving this car for several months. He was very clever always with his hands. He boasted that he could do things simultaneously, such as driving and taking pictures at the same time, a cigar in his mouth.
At last George came up to Boston. But it turned out, June came along, too. However, she was staying with friends and we did not see her much. George stayed with Chulmo Chu. Saturday, Chulmo wanted to take the car out, and I felt I should drive up to the Higginses and tell them I was not coming back that summer to work on the farm. We started out, Chai, Chu, George, Chang, and I. Then George insisted on stopping for June. We picked her up at a downtown drugstore. She and George seemed as thick as ever, though George did say rather sarcastically, “It’s good you did not make me wait this time” . . . and she, as sweet as anything, “No, darling.” I think she was fond of George and his lovemaking, but not quite fond enough to be sincere. I was a little uncomfortable as to how they would behave before the Higginses. June’s skirts, of course, were very short and her mouth very red. Otherwise she was all right, for she always dressed simply. Humble, kindly, sincere, the Higginses came out to meet my friends. George did most of the talking, while June did some of the interpreting. June was good at acting. She told Mrs. Higgins that she was half-Chinese, that she and George were engaged and were going to Hawaii to live. Mrs. Higgins put down any shortcomings that she saw in them to heathen ignorance. But she told me they would make a wonderful pair, and you could see her thinking that perhaps they might even do something for the church. Mrs. Higgins took June off with her and made her a gorgeous bouquet from flowers in the garden. June and George seemed in a very good humor with one another until they got back to Boston. Then June had another engagement.
George began running down Boston, after that. So it didn’t look as if we would get him there after all. “Oh, what a hell of a town! No good whisky, no good shows, women all homely, cold intelligentsia! Boston hasn’t even a decent magazine.”
“The Atlantic Monthly,” said Chai, sharply. (Always he was irritated by George.)
“That I can’t stand!”
“I read it regularly. And everything there is very well written . . .” Chai insisted coldly.
“Well done . . . I know . . . well done! You may like steak well done. I like mine rare. This is according to taste.” And George shut up sulkily. He wouldn’t argue any more on Boston.
But soon he and Chai plunged into argument again, this time on love. Chai was very reserved on love, but he had decided opinions. “Love is having a wife that is well chosen. All else is fool’s play. A wife can make or ruin a man. That is clear.”
George snorted at this. “Well, love, like poetry or like life, has a thousand definitions. Many are brilliant, suggestive, clever and enlightening. Love . . . I can’t tell what it is. But it is only real to those who have experienced it. It is as the breathing air that gives life to all living creatures; the bird that was put in a cage without ventilation died. (It is divorced from logic and has nothing to do with acquiring a respectable wife and four or five children.) But just as with life, nobody can define it except by living, so nobody can talk on love except by loving. And I have loved a thousand different ways, some ardently, others half-heartedly, and still again reluctantly, and now I have come to the conclusion, to love is loving and is nothing else.”
“Yes, the man who loves many wastes time and energy,” said Chai. “In the end he is left with nothing to show.” (“Like four years in college and not even the diploma in hand,” commented Chu with personal reminiscence.) “Never love wastefully. That is my advice to you.” (Chai meant to be very disapproving of any show-girl.)
“Hell, you are wrong!” cried George the romantic and the anti-Confucian. “Love has to be wasteful, or it is no more love. Yes, it is wasteful, but it is not losing anything. You, Chai, are not saving anything up . . . only to miss the radiance of the tender morning and the grandeur of the setting sun. Even when the love is gone—and in this life nothing is sure—the picture of the lost world, the memory of yesterday’s love, gives the strength for tomorrow.”
George went on talking about various aspects of love, and Chai equally contradicting. He said a kiss could not possibly last as long as George said. George said, “Well, I need every bit of the time allowed.” They made a bet. George said he would carry it out as soon as he could get June up to Chulmo’s. So she did come up, late one night. While Chu was making cooksoo in the kitchen, George said to Chai to get out his watch. June was sitting on the Morris Reynolds table smoking a cigarette lazily, and she agreed George ought not to lose his bet. George began just as the minute hand reached a certain point, and Chai said, “Go.” Chai stood right there looking at his watch as if he were watching an egg boiling in water. Chai lost his bet. George won. A kiss from George did take as long as George had said it would.
2
Even before George had left, Kim came to Boston on one of those obscure errands of his. I received a note asking me to meet him at the Boston Public Library. Arriving there, I found Kim in the lobby, seemingly engrossed in the works of Sargent. We went into the Bates Hall and to my surprise found Helen Hancock. She was in white sweater and skirt and without a hat. She rose at once, and we tiptoed out.
When we arrived on the street outside, she said with a bright smile, nodding at Kim, “We’re playing truant from New York.”
“Boston too, nicht?” said Kim.
Her car was waiting. She was a good driver. We drove to Riverside, and Kim rented a canoe. It was a beautiful day, a little bit warm but not too warm. Under the shade at Riverside, heat did not penetrate much. This place was new to me, but they both seemed to know it. Oh, it was wonderful to be in the country again, just at this time, when the college year was closing! We had left Boston behind, Boston where the accumulation of puritanic dirt made me uneasy. I would have liked to jump at once into the river, wash off all dirts and send them down to the sea, becoming a child again as I was in Korea. These were not actually the dirts that could be washed off in the bathtub at all. They are only the outside kind. But oh, to wash off the dirts from the inside, something of dullness and discouragement, disillusion and weary lethargy, those dirts of futility that the winter brought to the weary struggler in Boston! Ah yes, the sunshine was good, and not too warm! It was so good that you feared it might not last long. Far away the blue banked-up clouds showed a vapor of pearly whiteness. The pure, exhilarating New England wind blew my hair and touched my shirt sleeves vigorously, but sunshine was encircling all, and wherever the wind touched, the sunshine touched too, with a golden, gentle, all pervading pressure. The soil was green-clothed all over, trees luxuriously blooming, branches spreading out, leaves spotlessly clean and large, as if new overnight. All was green, not the green of one color but the green of many greens—of dark, bright, light, even whitish greens . . . indeed I noticed some of the leaves were tinted yellow, with tenderest russet, too. You felt that the whole year, all eternity, was here wrapped up in a package and waiting to be unfastened just for you. What tranquil relaxation, chee
rfulness, serenity was in that atmosphere! The sun slipped into the moistened earth with poignant odor. The distant hills sent up a mystic haze, and the winding, pleasant river ran zigzagging on its healthy errand to the sea. There were bees and many flimsy flies roaming over the blooms of the common shrubs. We heard a multitude of sounds, yet the landscape had one voice, softly singing.
The canoe glided down like a floating fish. Kim and I paddled at either end. Helen sat in the middle of the boat, stretching out slim silk-covered legs. I thought she looked rather like an escaped nun out of a convent. But Kim was a wild man of the desert coming to a blooming oasis out of the Sahara. On and on we glided, not working, always moving. Now we passed a deep crystal pool where the morning mists, it seemed, still gathered, yet clear, to the bottom, like a looking glass. Now we reached the changing, rippling currents, we went fast. How clean, clean the running sparkling water! How cold it felt to the hand! Like that wine described in an old poem I knew by heart, rich-bodied as with spring, yet chill as fall winds, warm sunshine and ice mingling in its breath. I thought of melting snowfields higher up, mountain torrents, faraway brooks and valley streams, all combined and verging toward the sea, bearing our boat onward . . . yes, everything moving, drifting seaward, but with a flowing motion, making no rushing sound.
What varied banks we passed, sprinkled with rushes, meadow-sweet and bluets. Now we glided around wooded islands in their young dress of rich, tender green. One island was so enchanting that we drew in to the shore. Jumping out, we tethered the canoe and sat in a pine grove, resting carelessly on the new grass and last year’s pine needles. We gazed up at the bright sky through the tender leaves and lacquered needles, and all the while there came the murmur of striped bees, and the chirruping of pastel-green insects.
Kim was lying comfortably at ease. His body merged into the earth like the curves in Oriental pictures, like a dog or a cat or a fox that nestles down; he had none of the gingery abruptness, the temporary unhingement of the Western figure flinging itself down on the lap of nature from the accustomed chair. Helen of course sat upright, her knees folded under her in a delicate angularity, her whole body poised in the Gothic brittle lines to be associated with New England. Kim was recalling a poem by Su Tung P’o.
East Goes West Page 29
