He inclined his head. “How can I thank you?”
He said no more but went to the room where he had slept as a child, and she took the mattresses from the wall closet and laid them on the floor and spread the coverlets. Then she went away and he undressed and prepared for rest. Yet weary as he was, he paused to look from the window into the main room of the house. There he saw the two young men sitting on opposite sides of the table, the candle flickering between them. They were talking, talking, and they had forgotten the hour. He gave a great sigh as though a burden fell from his shoulders, and then he laid himself down to sleep.
… He was wakened in the morning by Ippun coming in with a basin of water for washing and fresh garments.
“Our old master sends these for you. He asks you not to make haste after your long journey. He has waited a long time, he says, and it is nothing to wait until you have washed and eaten.” She bowed and went out.
He lay for a moment, collecting himself out of deep sleep, realizing that he was in his old room. Nothing had changed. Only he! He rose at last and washed and put on the fresh garments. Ippun returned with a tray of tea and small sweet cakes. She set them on the low table.
“Eat a little, drink a swallow or two,” she coaxed.
While he ate and drank she put away the mattresses and the silken quilts into the wall cupboards, and when he was finished she handed him a cloth wrung out of hot water to wipe his hands, bowed and took the tray away.
He stood a moment, preparing his spirit, then went into the main room. His old parents were standing side by side waiting for him, and behind them stood Liang and Sasha. His parents stretched out their arms to him as he entered and he fell to his knees as their son. They lifted him up then, tears on their cheeks, and he felt their arms around him, he put his arms around them, first his father and then his mother. How thin and small their bodies were, how piteously shrunken to the very bones!
“Have you not had enough to eat?” he kept saying. “No, you have not had enough to eat! While I have been wandering you have grown so thin — I shall never leave you again!”
They tried to laugh, his mother sobbed and his father held his hand. “We are only old,” Il-han said, “we are very old, and it is time for us to die, but we had to live until you came home again.”
“And you bring us this fine grandson,” Sunia sobbed, pointing to where Sasha stood at one side. “Thanks be to all the gods — and we must all have something to celebrate — I made some special — where is Ippun? I told Ippun—”
She hurried away, tottering slightly as she walked, but the two young men pressed forward.
“Grandfather,” Liang said. “Sasha and I, we must go to the city immediately. There may be more news.”
Il-han stretched his head. “Must you go? The police will be savage today, puffed up with pride for what was done yesterday. When they find that your uncle is here — do you think the Living Reed can be hidden?”
Sunia heard and came running back as fast as her old feet could carry her. “Not both of you,” she wailed. “One of you must stay, lest an evil come about and — if we lose one—”
Il-han made apology for her to Yul-chun. “So used has this poor soul become to the loss of one or another of our family and clan—”
The two young men spoke together.
“I will not stay—”
“Nor I—”
“Safer for two—”
“Go,” Yul-chun said. “I will stay. And do not think of me. Whatever your duty is, do it.”
As he spoke he noticed that Sasha no longer wore his old garments. Instead he wore Korean robes that Liang, doubtless, had lent him. Strangely they did not suit him. His dark face and black eyes and hair, his bold profile and arrogant bearing, made him look foreign in the long white robes, somewhat too large for him at that, for Liang was the taller.
“Go,” he said again, “and if there is time, buy yourself some clothes. You cannot always wear those. Here is enough money.”
The two young men went away then and while they were gone, Yul-chun stayed with his parents and he told them of all that had befallen him, even of Hanya and of how Sasha was born, and he heard the long story of their lives here in the grass roof house. They ate of the dishes that Ippun brought in on trays and set before them, but Sunia did not eat with the men. She had never eaten with menfolk and she did not now, whatever young women did. She bade Ippun set her tray to one side so that the two men could talk. She listened, nevertheless, and she put in her part from time to time, and while they waited for the return of the young men, Yul-chun, from one parent and the other, was able to discover much that he had not known before of all that had happened and was happening in the lives of their people.
“And now,” Il-han said at last, “we can only wait until the Americans win this war. Then we will ride in on the wave of victory.”
“Father,” Yul-chun exclaimed. “I hope you do not mean what you say. There will be no easy riding on any wave. We must be ready with the machinery to take over the government and administer it in modern and efficient ways. Without delay we must study Western government and choose from each those elements which best suit our people. The President must choose the cabinet, the whole structure to offset the Communist structure—”
He saw that his father was listening without comprehending, his eyes fixed on Yul-chun’s face, as he leaned forward to hear.
“Why do I trouble you with such matters, my father?” he said in love and pity. “You have done your share. Tell me about Liang.”
Here was a subject upon which his parents could not say enough, his father carrying the tale and his mother putting in such bits as his father forgot.
“After the fire died down from the burning of that church,” Il-han said, “all who had lost relatives went to find relics and bones for burial. Of Induk and the little girl we could find nothing, for who could sort out such bones as were mingled with the hot ashes?”
Sunia broke in. “I always did say that scrap of blue cloth was a bit of Induk’s skirt. Ippun said she wore a blue skirt that day—”
Il-han continued without pause. “Your brother’s body was not burned — not altogether. I was able to—”
Here Il-han’s chin trembled under his thin white beard, but he put up his hand when Yul-chun tried to urge him not to say more.
“No, no — I must tell you. It is your right to know. The police stood by while we searched, and they allowed me to — to — see — we had taken a — a coffin with us, the servant and I, and we were able to — we gathered the parts — a beam had fallen across his back, but the face — it was he, I–I couldn’t mistake him. Yes, it was he — and we — we had — a funeral—”
Sunia was sobbing softly. “We buried him beside his grandfather. Such a rainy day — the rain falling like waterspouts, though the fortuneteller said it was a lucky day — and a yellow frog hopped out of the grave and I thought of your old tutor and the story of Golden Frog, do you remember, my son?”
“I remember,” Yul-chun said.
“And whatever became of that tutor’s wife?” Sunia mused in the easy diversion of the old. “Not his wife altogether she was, for he went away somewhere before the wedding day and never came back, and they sent his distant cousin here to ask where he was, but how could we know? He had left us, too, and the poor young woman went into a nunnery since she had no husband and was too virtuous to marry another.”
Il-han waited with some impatience while she talked on and now he could wait no longer. “It was of Liang that we were speaking, I believe! A god watched over him that day the church was set on fire by the police. He—”
“No god but his mother,” Sunia put in. “She knew the child loved you, his grandfather, and she sent him to us.”