Free I Am the Clay by Chaim Potok Page A

listening to the hot crackling of the flames. The same noises: the flame-sounds of wooden walls and grass roofs burning. The very air on fire. Mother, he thought he heard himself cry out, there was earth in your mouth. And Father looked strange with his head bent back that way. Grandfather, if the old man dies the woman will not send me away. But can we survive without the old man? Will I die in this cave with these strangers? And what of your wish that I become a scholar and a poet? The fire crackled loudly as the woman placed more brushwood on the flames. Burning wood and straw and the ox bellowing in the shed and the pigs squealing and the frenzied dogs running back and forth and Badooki vanishing into the forest and the air swollen with reddish smoke.
    The woman rose from her place by the fire and slipped beneath the quilts beside the boy. He smelled on her the smoke and heat of the flames, and cringed. The wound in his chest had begun to throb again.
    Outside the cave the moon was long gone and the fire began to die. Creatures edged toward the cave but did not enter. The wind blew through the starlit darkness and before dawn brought with it a fall of thick dry snow that quickly covered the valley.
    In the early morning the snow ended and the wind died away. A platoon of South Korean infantry entered the valley from the south. The soldiers approached the cave in which lay the old man and the woman and the boy but did not stop to look inside. They passed on through the valley toward the destroyedcity on the sea, leaving behind their tracks in the snow.

    The woman thought: How silent the boy is. A sealed room. Mouth always tight, eyes always averted. Slender hands. Like the hands of one of my sisters bought by the fat arranger of marriages. Soft delicate movements of his shoulders and neck. A dancer. Is there a girl inside this boy? His penis and testicles are well formed, no question there. He will not speak unless spoken to first. Often when he is alone he inclines his head as if listening for something. He is a carrier of too much memory. His eyes are like the big mirrors in the marketplace: I see in them his burning village. What is happening to me in this madness of war? Can a stranger’s child be so quickly loved by an old woman? Are the spirits playing with me? Have they nothing better to do than torture again an old woman already scarred by their previous attentions? Turn away from me, spirits. Leave me in peace. How many more years have I? Will each year be a time for your sporting? Is my life a playing field for your games and laughter? Why have you sent me this boy? He said to me earlier in answer to my question, I am eleven years old, and I said, I am told your father and grandfather were scholars, and he said with pride coloring his face, Great scholars and famous poets to ten generations, famous in the North and in the lands of the Chinese and known to emperors and kings, writers of poetry and lovers of Chinese characters and teachers to the sons of ambassadors and landowners,and Grandfather and Great-Grandfather once in the service of the government in Seoul. I said, Tell me if you wish what happened to your mother, and he said, tears in his eyes, My mother has earth in her mouth and sings when she sews or prepares the most delicate of foods, my mother tells tales of tigers and birds and swinging contests, my mother lies in the burning village in a grave so shallow it was not even to her ears but earth was in her mouth, I saw it after they left and all around the air was on fire and and there was a rain of burning ash and I ran into the forest but could not find Badooki Three Four and I ran through the forest and into the valley and and and.… Calm yourself, calm yourself, I said to the boy. The old man tells me you are called Kim Sin Gyu. We were many generations in our village, the boy said with great agitation. Why did they burn it? We were like the rocks of the earth, the hills of the valley,