Free Snow Hunters: A Novel by Paul Yoon Page B

remembered the sound of that weeping soldier meeting the sound of the guard’s laughter and a doctor shouted, —Shut up, until the guard did not find it funny anymore and grew silent. Then there was just the convalescent, rocking his body and clutching his hands, his face like a ruined painting.
    Yohan continued to study the photo. He scanned the faces. He paused at the man toward the end. He was thin and had strong cheekbones and thick eyebrows. His hair was short.
    —Yes, Peixe said. Our tailor.
    —He was in the Second World War, he continued. But you know this, yes? He was a physician. An army medic in Russia. The Far East. For Japan. I was young when he came. Defectors, the town called them. I saw the high fences being built. The soldiers. The families that were brought here by ship or by trucks. There were so many of them.
    —My mother and I used to visit them. I would follow her along the coastal road and wait by the gatesas the men checked her bag. Then we were inside and soon people appeared from the shanties and the cabins. You see, she was a schoolteacher. She taught them the language, read to them, brought food. Kiyoshi was very young then. I remember his patience and his gentleness. The way he brought his ear toward me and adjusted his glasses when I wanted to speak. The way he clasped his hands together and circled his thumbs as he listened.
    —There was a table there out in the field. On clear days the sun would hit the top and I could see dark stains, from blood, and I grew afraid and would not enter the camp. I thought the soldiers cut the men. And the women and the children. It was Kiyoshi who pointed at the fish they caught, bringing them to the table and even cooking one for me. He was patient. He never hurried. As though he had been to as many places as he ever needed to and that there were no more surprises.
    Yohan looked away, his gaze moving across the garden until it focused on the vines on the church wall, crossing over one another and rising toward the eaves.
    He asked if there had been a family. Peixe shook his head. He did not know. If there was, the tailor never spoke of them.
    —He used to juggle for us. It’s true. He would tell meto choose a stone and my mother would choose another one and so on and we watched as the objects moved in a circle just above Kiyoshi’s head, then they went higher, and higher, the circle thinning, and his back bending backward in that long field beside the water. You’re still in the air, he always said, and it made me laugh.
    —I think he wanted to convince my mother and me that he was happy there. That all of them were. All these men and women who had come here to start new lives. It would not happen for years.
    —These days I think that Kiyoshi was a little in love with my mother. And that she was a little in love with him. I don’t know if this is true. I will never know. And I cannot explain why but it makes me happy imagining this.
    He waited for Peixe to go on but he didn’t. From the street came the sound of a passing cart.
    —Yes, well, Peixe said, and took out his wallet.
    When Yohan refused, he sighed.
    —Do you think I’m charity? he said, and, —Why?
    Peixe did not wait for a response. Instead he slipped the money into Yohan’s shirt pocket, thanked him, and waved his hand across the small plot of land.
    —One day, he said, you will come help me with this.
    —Yes, Yohan said, and the groundskeeper left, leaning against his cane, the paper package still under his arm.
    The wind pushed the cottage door back and forth. In the garden, Peixe began to pick weeds, reaching down, and the glasses in his shirt pocket almost fell, catching the low sun in the trees.

10
    T hey 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