Yul-chun answered instantly. “It was a seal of red jade which was once her father’s, before he was killed.”
Sasha could not hide his astonishment. Speechless, he put his hand in the bosom of his tunic and brought out the jade seal.
Yul-chun gazed at it and nodded. “I saw it last in her hand,” he said slowly.
Suddenly he could not hold back his tears. He threw his arms about his son.
“Now we will go home,” he said. “At last — at last!”
… He was a silent young man, this son of his. He must be wooed and coaxed, it seemed, for he could let hours pass in silence. But Yul-chun’s heart melted into constant warm-flowing talk, so moved he was by having his son. For the first few days he held back nothing. He drew his son into his own life and into the life of the Kim family. When he found how ignorant Sasha was of his own people and his own country, he talked of the early history of the Korean people, and how they came to be living here on this long mountainous strip of land hanging from the Russian mainland like fruit upon a vine. He told of the struggles of their people to keep their independence and how they had been compelled through the centuries to play one nation against another, lean first toward this one, and then toward that.
“I tell you, Sasha,” he began earnestly one day as they walked side by side, and then paused as he spoke the name. “Sasha?” he repeated. “How can I take you to your grandfather with that name? I shall give you another. Yes, I have it — you shall be another Il-han. Your grandfather’s name will honor you, and may you honor him.”
His son did not say yes or no, but as the days passed, Yul-chun saw that he would not accept the new name. Unless he were called Sasha he did not answer. For a few days, as they traveled on, Yul-chun inquired of himself whether he should not argue the name, and then decided he should not. It was too soon. The bonds which should have been between father and son since birth must be knit now as carefully as though his son were newly born to him, as in a sense he was. He returned then to the Russian name, and still Sasha said nothing for or against. Studying that closed handsome face, the high forehead, the broad cheekbones, the small dark eyes under flying black brows, the full stubborn mouth, Yul-chun puzzled as to what sort of man his son was. Closed against the world, secretive, brooding, and yet sometimes suddenly impetuous, how could Sasha be revealed to him? He had told Sasha everything and Sasha told him nothing.
“Will you not speak to me of yourself and your mother?” he said at last one day.
They were well into Korea now, walking through high mountains, treading narrow footpaths that clung to the cliffs and wound in and out among the rocks.
“I have nothing to tell,” Sasha said. “Every day was a day of work on the land. At night we went to political meetings. There was nothing more.”
“But after Hanya — after your mother died, what did you do?”
“I was put into a Russian orphanage.”
“And then?”
“Nothing.”
“You were sent to school?”
“Of course. All children are sent to school.”
“Were they kind to you?”
“Kind? I had enough to eat and a place to sleep.”
“But someone was — someone took the place of your mother?”
“No — there was no need for that.”
“You missed your mother — being so young.”
“I do not remember.”
“Are you — have you ever been in love?”
“Love? No!”
“How is it you are a trader?”
Yul-chun put the question innocently, and he was surprised to see that Sasha turned suspicious eyes on him.
“Why do you ask that?”
“Why? Because you are my son.”
Sasha waited an instant, then answered. “I am restless. I like to wander. Since I am Korean I am not forced — that is, I am free. Also my mother told me to find you if I could, and especially to look for you in Antung. If you returned to Korea you would pass through Antung, she said.”
“Did she say I would return?”
“Yes.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“Surely there is more,” Yul-chun urged. “What are your dreams? Where are your hopes? Every young man has dreams and hopes.”
“Not me,” Sasha said stubbornly, his eyes on the path ahead.
“Have you known terrors that make you silent?” Yul-chun asked next.
“There are some things I will never tell you,” Sasha said.
Yul-chun felt a desperate reluctance to reach home with this son until somehow he had discovered how to open his heart. If Sasha could not love him, the father, how could he love his grandparents, or even his country? Moreover, there was no haste. The Japanese had strong hold everywhere, and the time for revolt was not yet. Why, then, Yul-chun inquired of himself, why should he not linger here in villages as he had in China and Manchuria and near Antung, and sow the seeds of the people’s schools? It would be difficult for Japanese police would be watchful, but he would be wily. He would teach the people Japanese words by day, but at night he would teach them Korean.
He told Sasha of his plan, and begged his help. Sasha listened, unmoved. “The government should do this,” he said.
“It is not our government,” Yul-chun replied.
Sasha shrugged and said no more. Thereafter he sat watching while his father labored earnestly with new and old scholars and then a young student teaching them the way to teach the unlettered landfolk.
“Son, will you not help me?” Yul-chun asked one day.
“I read only Russian,” Sasha replied carelessly.
Yul-chun’s jaw dropped. It had not occurred to him that though Sasha spoke he could not read or write Korean, his ancestral language.
“How is it you did not tell me?” he demanded.
Sasha shrugged again. “I am not one for books,” he said.
“Nevertheless I must teach you,” Yul-chun said firmly.
And he did so from that day on. Each night, wherever they slept, Yul-chun taught his son. Sometimes in the day, too, if they were in a lonely place, he stopped and gave Sasha a lesson.
As for Sasha, he learned well enough, neither willingly nor unwillingly, and unmoved as ever. No, not by touch or word was this son’s heart moved. Days passed and months, for Yul-chun continued his building of schools, as slowly they went southward, until almost two years had passed, and Yul-chun, at first wounded, had learned to accept Sasha as he was.
This was the son he had found, a slim, silent, grim young man, who hid himself even from his father. Urging and persuasion only made him draw the invisible cloak the more tightly about him. Somehow he must be won, but not by force. Thereafter Yul-chun used every device that love and pride could conceive. For already he loved this son. The human feelings he had so long repressed emerged powerfully now from his strong nature, and finding no other object they centered on Sasha. Often in the evening when they sat resting after the day’s travel on foot or in some passing vehicle a landman offered, he longed to put out his hand and touch the warm brown flesh of his handsome son. He did not yield to the longing after the first time. Sasha had endured the touch and then had moved away and Yul-chun let his hand drop. No, not by contact nor by word was this son’s heart to be moved, if indeed it could be moved. Yul-chun, wounded, could only sigh and try to remember himself when young. He, too, had not welcomed the touch of his father’s hand. Now that he had this son, he began to understand how often he must have grieved his own father, and from his present hidden pain he spoke one day, as he and Sasha came out of the mountains and into the foothills below.
“I hope that my old father still lives when we reach home. I have not seen him for many years, nor have I written a letter, fearing that such a letter from me might bring him into danger. But now, as we walk together, you and I, I think of my father, and I remember many times when my coldness and my abrupt speech must have cut his heart. He never told me so and I was too young to know.”