East Goes West

by Younghill Kang

  Later, Kim and I sat on the writing balcony waiting for Helen to come from her stateroom and go in to dinner. We watched a play going on. A woman sat at a desk. She wore the kind of velvet hat that is mysterious and obscure, so that you could not see the face very well. A man sat on the other side of her desk, writing, though there were empty desks, too, all around. He was not writing very arduously. Mostly he was making self-introductory remarks, it seemed. He was expensively dressed and had a big mouth and glasses. He was smoking a big fat cigar. Now he had to look around for the cuspidor in which to throw his ashes. He flecked his ashes, but he missed.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon!”

  “It’s not my carpet,” the lady looked up smiling.

  “Well, some people call that the cleanest kind of dirt,” he said, flourishing his cigar, with rosy cone, “but I hardly think so.”

  The lady shrugged. “Not clean? Well—why not? I like the smell of good cigars.”

  “Chemically speaking, there is an alkaline in ashes damaging to fabrics,” he explained. (Obviously, create your own topic and conclude with your own expert knowledge, that was his kind. Perhaps he belonged to some commercial chemical company, I thought. Probably a travelling salesman.) Now he was talking of Baltimore, about the dinners that were so darn cheap there. Only $1.50, with all sorts of fresh sea foods. Where else could you get such a bargain? “I always plunk down five or six bucks for anything decent at the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York.” From the prices of food in New York, he went on to talk about the prices of entertainment, giving proof by figures that he was no piker. She seemed to be well up on musical shows, too, and he said they ought to take in one together some time. This made progress, and by the time Helen joined us, they were very chummy and went into the dining room as man and wife to sit down not far from our table. Helen and Kim were much disgusted by them, especially when the man took out his wallet at the end of the meal, and flourishing a roll of bills about, handed the waiter in payment a $50 note, to show he had nothing smaller.

  After dinner we went out on deck again. Helen and Kim seemed content to walk up and down and watch the water together. They had forgotten long ago the couple who had played the pick-up game. Even I scarcely existed for them in their absorption. And my friends’ faces became lost in darkness. Only their figures stood or walked apart; figures they were to me only, allegorical figures, lovers sailing on a grave and uncertain errand over the sea, while the space became all space, the time all time. I looked toward them tenderly, and inwardly I cried: “O Helen and Kim, you may love all you want, there is plenty of time!” (As if I might soothe their imminent fear of tomorrow, their gravity on a sea so calm and dark that none could see in that mirror victory and triumph, as none could prophesy certainly storms and defeat.) Time for victory as time for failure. So much time no man can use it all. But his sighs tire him, his pain eats him, his sorrows bury him, before he sees space exhausted or time finished. Sail on and on, Helen and Kim. Where? Why to the uttermost horizon, to the farthest rim, on—on—on. Yes, forever there space extends, forever time holds all, and the bird of life is flying, invisible ghost in an invisible immortality. I looked into the sky . . . unbroken continuity stretching forever, embracing the stars and the sun and the sun’s sun in its bosom, around in a ring to the smallest atom again. I looked into the sea . . . imperishable beauty, indestructible energy. As the serenity, as the freedom of the sea and sky tonight, so was time, its yesterdays, its tomorrows all there just the same as its todays.

  Confucius by the Shantung, Sophocles by the Ægean, Jesus by the sea of Galilee . . . and that Fall River line as beautiful to me as the ship of the Achæans that journeyed over the mighty globe—shaken in search of a former Helen ages ago. O time! Your magic hues have dyed the Arabs’ seven seas . . . the green of the Indian Ocean, the violet of the Mediterranean, the black of the Euxine, the blue of the Persian, the yellow of the Yellow Ocean . . . and the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, the Caspian rocking the cradle of Islam. On your bosom, O time, dreamers must dream, thinkers must think, the lonely isles must be explored and charted, and lovers there are waiting to be loved.

  6

  Kim and I were up early before Helen appeared from her stateroom. We waited for Boston to come into view. It was a morning of cool blue mist, full of a sceptical and mournful Autumn. My exalted mood during mystical night was all gone. Like Kim, I regarded the future dubiously.

  “I am hating to get back to Boston from New York,” I put our mutual disquiet into words. And because I could not bear his impassivity, as of a man already condemned awaiting execution, I went on in practical words. “I may have another month at the doctors’, but after that I don’t know where anything is coming from.”

  “You will get along somehow,” said Kim, as if glad to attack with me some simpler difficulty than his own. “Boston has treated you well on the whole. You must not expect a full theological scholarship, for you are not a theologue. But professors in Boston have great sympathy for any adopted Oriental child. As long as you are willing to be docile and obedient.”

  “That’s just it!” I agreed indignantly, and Kim smiled. “I hate being nicey-nice.”

  “Well, I’m afraid we cannot do much against Boston,” said Kim. “Morals and manners are greater strongholds than fortifications. They are more unyielding. That is the Oriental conviction. But all insularity defeats itself in the end, if that’s a comfort.”

  Then Kim looked me over, and he said to me some things I long remembered, for they were my own conclusions, too. “And after college,” Kim began, “what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I want to see all America. Not just the intellectual centers. But if I remain in America, I must come back to them, I suppose.”

  “There is a great future for Oriental scholarship in the West. Have you ever thought of that? Nowadays in the West we see a definite trend. People begin to be interested in the Orient scientifically and esthetically. Before they thought in terms of Christianity and Western institutions. They are going deeper now, and this interest will increase year by year. I have come at a very unfortunate time. There has been little room for an Oriental intellectual in the West. But you have all your life before you and for you clouds may gradually clear and an easier spiritual climate come for you. Let me give you advice. You will be thrown of course into uneven competition. Generations of a different mental training you have to span in one. But remember. African cats and Asian rats have managed to survive in Europe, and from Europe to emigrate to America. Cats you know got in at the beginning of the Christian Era from Egypt. How they have thrived during all these years in Rome, though in Rome you would think life for them would be hard. I understand that the rats arrived with the Huns from Asia. Nothing has been able to kill them, not even the pied piper of science. They survive to this day in New York’s tenements. Now you are better off than cats and rats. You are not so objectionable and you have much to contribute. But your problem is the same. You have to eat. And to eat, you must enter into the economic life of Americans. Listen then. First you should get a good Western foundation in education. But—and here is your difference from the majority of students who come to the West from the Orient—don’t lose touch with your own classical traditions. By chance you came here from an old-fashioned community. You arrived with an unusual training and inclination for the ancient classics. You complain that you find it hard to learn the American efficiency and to find in that a means of livelihood. Don’t set too much store on American efficiency. In making a living, Oriental scholarship may help you more than your American education, though this seems strange to contemplate now. But in such a field, you would have the advantage. There would be less competition. Read on the Orient, all that is written from the Eastern and the Western points of view. As you read, analyze. You must be now like a Western man approaching Asia. Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism have not been much analyzed scientifically. Oriental history,
above all, we know it has not been written with regard for the truth at times. I suppose, like myself, you can see without trying to do so the exaggerations and prejudices of the West. But by keeping a well-balanced mind, you will see, too, the exaggerations and prejudices of the Orient. The field I suggest is not small. It is mostly uncharted. But the more you study of the art, religion and literature of both hemispheres, the broader and more elastic as a living being you will become. As a transplanted scholar, this is the only road I could point to, for your happy surviving.”

  We were silent then for a time. And suddenly Kim asked me what I thought of Helen. He did it dispassionately like a detached mind from the clouds, looking down philosophically on his own emotions. And I tried to reply in kind.

  “I think she has a very beautiful spirit, inherited from an older generation,” I said. “Of course she has no fault to find with her own environment. Only her loneliness.”

  “You are thinking she would make a wonderful wife for a Boston professor?”

  “I think so. But I think you would be happy with her too.”

  “You are right,” Kim said. “I know she has lots of faults, but she is the only one I really care about. And there is no substitute. If there were any substitute, there would be no broken heart at this time.”

  Kim at least was expecting the trouble that was to come from Helen’s family. He said he would probably not have time to see me much in Boston this time. He was expecting some day soon to sail for Europe. But he would communicate with me again before that happened.

  BOOK NINE

  1

  NOT FAR FROM Doctor Dimassi’s, just by the Harvard Bridge, stood a handsome house of bright red brick trimmed with white stucco. I often sauntered by this house when I went for a walk. Sometimes I would see coming out of this house a large fine-looking gentleman with a healthy pink and white face, who carried a cane and led a fat little spaniel. The dog really made our acquaintance. It was a very friendly little dog with extremely short legs and long silky ears almost sweeping the ground. One day the dog stopped to smell me as I stood by Harvard Bridge. Since the dog was on a leash the master, too, was obliged to stop. The obvious thing was to say, “Good morning,” and I added, “This is a cute little dog.”

  “A very inquisitive one,” he responded.

  Then he asked me whether I came from China or from Japan. It took quite a time to explain all that, and we strolled along together. I told him I was a self-supporting student, and was looking for something to do. Particularly I needed some cheap heated room to study in.

  “You can’t do much and study,” he mused reflectively, which seemed an unusually sympathetic remark. He hesitated, then at the end of our walk, he said, “I believe I have something for you.” There was a little room on his top floor which was empty, and it had a good bed and plenty of heat. He had wanted his library indexed for a long time.

  This was good luck. Doctor Dimassi’s family were just about to return from Marblehead. When the time came, I moved my belongings just across the street, a little way up toward the Mount Vernon way. My new employer’s name was Mr. Schmitt. The red and white brick house was even bigger than Doctor Dimassi’s; I suppose it cost about the same amount, but the Schmitts had more taste for display. Everywhere varnished gleaming furniture, rosewood and silver, and everywhere draperies bending many times. The chairs were lustrous and so cushiony that you sank into them several feet. It was the kind of house with beautifully colored Persian rugs stretching down glassy halls, big front rooms, middle rooms, and back rooms, all with fireplaces and marble mantelpieces, and a winding staircase.

  Again my room looked over the Charles River from an exclusive section of Boston. The window sill was so wide that I could keep books and papers there and use it like a table. The room had a three-quarter size white iron bed, very comfortable, a chest for clothes and an elastic reading lamp. There was only one other room in the tower, a much larger one, and this was occupied by the Schmitts’ Negro cook. Laurenzo was his name, at least it was his first name and I never knew his other. In his rich negroid way, he was amazingly good-looking, very large and black with a magnificent physique, and hair not kinked but crinked, rather like a much rippled permanent wave. Laurenzo had soft regular features more broad and massive than a white man’s and unusually thin lips. He was always polite, too polite in fact. I was used to greater freedom and frankness with my housemates. The washstand with running water stood just outside my door. It was practically private to me, for I never saw Laurenzo using it either to wash or to shave. Once I asked him if he ever did these things. But he only smiled broadly and said with diffidence, as if he didn’t know how to take me, “Oh, ah keeps clean . . . hands always in the water.”

  Laurenzo was a remarkable cook. I know, because sometimes the Schmitts invited me to eat with them. And yet he cooked without meat. The Schmitts were vegetarians. They belonged to a religion which did not believe in eating meat of any kind. Mr. Schmitt maintained that meat was unhealthy. Every bite of meat eaten, he preached, robbed a man of part of his natural longevity. Thus if a man’s destiny was to live to eighty years, eating meat, he would automatically cut life down to seventy, and so on. “Alas! too many modern men have degenerated because they cannot live on vegetable food,” I quoted the Chinese poet-philosopher Chu Hsi, and Mr. Schmitt was much pleased. I think I would not mind a diet of vegetables if I could eat them always as Laurenzo cooked. Great soft sweet potatoes, the color of apricots and with a curl of smoke arising from the center; green vegetables like landscapes after a rain. Once or twice a week too they had chicken, which they argued somehow inconsistently belonged to the vegetable kingdom. At other times they had something on a meat platter—it cut like steak or roast—but was made entirely of nuts.

  The Schmitts belonged to an anti-vivisectionist society. Just the word vivisection made Mrs. Schmitt cry. She was much younger than Mr. Schmitt, very plump and affectionate, with a turned-up nose and blooming face. Every morning she would wait at the foot of the winding stairs for Mr. Schmitt to come down and when he did she gave him an affectionate bouncing kiss. Mrs. Schmitt was English-Canadian. Mr. Schmitt was of German parentage, but long transplanted to Boston, so that now he was practically Bostonian. They belonged to a school of New Thought called the House Omnipotent. This was no church really, as they did not believe in church, only in a spiritual force of the invisible powers and the brotherhood of man communicating simultaneously with all the world. Mr. Schmitt was rather a busy man. He was the editor of a New Thought paper using very mysterious sentences always hard for me to understand. So he worked hard on his small Corona typewriter, which usually accompanied him on his frequent railway journeys. He also gave several lectures every year on the cruelty of those who ate animals. Yet Mr. Schmitt was not a missionary. At least only for animals. He had no use for the other kind of missionaries. He said he hoped I had never been influenced by any missionaries, for they were full of dogma and contradiction. They contradicted the Bible, Mr. Schmitt said. And every time I saw him that winter, he preached to me against the devilishness of missionaries. When I still said I had some use for some missionaries, Mr. Schmitt kept on, trying to convert me not to have any use for any missionaries since none, he said, understood the brotherhood of Man and of God.

  Before Mr. Schmitt became an editor for that paper New Thought, he must have been in the postcard business, for in his library was a large cupboard with glass doors containing many different kinds of postcards—stacks and stacks—with quotations from Emerson, Ruskin, Browning, Tennyson—all the heroes of the nineteenth century. These, being very beautifully and expensively printed, were the kind one pays fifty cents for at Christmas time. Mr. Schmitt had a curious library. It was almost all religious, philosophical, mystical and theosophical. No science book was there, only Christian Science. He was very sympathetic toward Christian Science. And yet with the exception of the scientific fields, his library was rather broad. He had
Kant, Emerson, Carlyle, Poe, even Whitman and Melville, Goethe, Mullner, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Lessing, Klopstock, Schleiermacher. He read German as much as English, and several times offered to help me with my college German. Mr. Schmitt got me a card catalogue, and I set to work arranging his books. The Schmitts were rarely seen and I had the library all to myself to work and dream in.

  A period of unusual isolation for me—these two months before Christmas. In addition to my studies, I was occupied with indexing, and with the translations Kim had obtained for me to do. I discouraged visitors, for I knew the Schmitts were quiet people, and would not want college boys rushing in and rushing out, disturbing their musings on the House Omnipotent. I speculated some about Laurenzo. The first chance I had had to observe any one like him. All revelations about Laurenzo came at week-ends. Sunday was his day off. On Saturday he would work very hard, cooking a lot of things for Mrs. Schmitt to warm up over Sunday. But Saturday evening, as soon as he had finished up the dishes, he left the house, dressed up in his best clothes and shiniest tie. He carried then an enormous suitcase, as if he were leaving for some kind of trip. I said he must be strong to carry such a suitcase. He agreed. Yes, he was strong, he said. But when I picked up his suitcase, I found it wasn’t heavy after all. It felt like an empty suitcase.