“Well, well,” Il-han said, “at least he was here. Let us agree on that. And he has been here ever since, our hope and our comfort, for we feared you dead, too, my son!”
“As good as dead,” Yul-chun agreed. “I dared not write letters to you. A price has been on my head, as you know, since the day I escaped from prison, after the Mansei—”
Sunia broke in. “And was it true that a bamboo shoot sprang up between the stones of the cell after you escaped?”
Yul-chun smiled. “Is there such a legend?”
“No legend,” his father retorted. “There were many who saw it, and the police, discovering the reason why they came to the jail as though on a pilgrimage, dug the bamboo up by the roots.”
“Did they do so?” Yul-chun said and fell into musing. “So the green bamboo was gone, root and all!”
“But,” Il-han went on in triumph, “they could never get all the root. Up the green shoot came in some other corner! And at last to stop the people’s joy when they saw it, the police poured cement over the floor.”
“There is bamboo everywhere,” Sunia said.
Yul-chun turned to her. “True, my mother, and so let us talk of Liang.”
Il-han leaned against the back rest of his floor cushion and prepared to enjoy himself again.
“This grandson of mine, before he was three he knew his letters. At five he could write very well. At seven he was beyond my teaching him anything except the old classics, and I sent him to an American school, although privately I taught him, too. He speaks English well and reads English books. He speaks French and German and he studied Latin for his medicine.”
“Medicine?”
“He is learning to be a physician in both foreign and Korean medicine. He is also a surgeon, for he says no one can be only one in such times as we suffer.”
“But why a physician?” Yul-chun inquired.
“He says that he can at least heal the people’s bodies,” Il-han replied. “It comforts him, he says.”
“Is he Christian?” Yul-chun asked.
“No, and yet yes,” Il-han said.
“How no and yes?” Sunia demanded. “No, he is not Christian.” She had left her corner and now sat with them, her eyes still lively in her withered face.
Il-han yielded. “He is not Christian, true, yet he behaves as though he were. He is not Buddhist, but he is like a Buddhist. As for Confucius, Liang reads the classics and he observes correctness.”
“You have taught him well,” Yul-chun told his father.
“I have taught him nothing,” Il-han insisted. “He learns without being taught.”
“I wonder,” Yul-chun said, reflecting. “I wonder how he will like Sasha.”
“Sasha — Sasha — what name is this?” Sunia demanded.
“His mother gave it to him,” Yul-chun said shortly. He saw weariness on his father’s face and he rose. “Rest now, Father. I have tired you.”
“You have only blessed me,” Il-han replied, and his eyes followed Yul-chun out of the room.
“It is better than Moscow,” Sasha said. He stood on a low hill above the city and gazed down upon the palaces and parks, the wide streets, the massive buildings of universities and new department stores. Liang had brought him to show him the city before they entered it.
“You have been in Moscow?” Liang asked.
“Once,” Sasha replied. “Our school sent us there at our graduation. Moscow is also very fine, but—” He swept his right hand over the vista. “Still I do not know whether I go or stay.”
“Stay,” Liang said. “At least stay until you know us well.”
A western wind had cleared the sky in the night and his face, open and benign in the clear sunlight, expressed an inner radiance. Sasha felt an unwilling admiration.
“You are very busy with your work.”
“Yes, I am busy,” Liang said. “I finish my internship at the American hospital next summer. But I have time when I am off duty.”
“Is it a Christian hospital?”
“Yes — a missionary hospital.”
“‘Are you Christian?” Sasha’s question was curt.
“No,” Liang’s voice was amiable, “I am not Christian.”
“All religion is bad,” Sasha declared. “It is an opiate for the people.”
“I believe in God,” Liang said quietly. “Where there is law as there is in the natural world, there must be a law-giver. Yet I do not believe, as Christians do, that we can be saved by a passive acceptance of God. We must save ourselves by doing what is godlike and we will become godlike.”
Sasha protested. “I see no sense in what you say. How do you know what is good? How do you know there is a god? I say there is none.”
Liang did not reply at once. When he did it was with a firm gentle authority.
“In the beginning, Sasha, our people were sun-worshipers. History tells us so, and it is reasonable, for our ancestors came from the cold and windy lands of Central Asia. The winters were long, and in the deep valleys between high mountains the sun shone for only a few hours a day. It is natural that our ancestors loved the sun and went eastward to find the sun. This is how they arrived at our country. But their longing for warmth and brightness, their heavenward yearning, persisted. They dreamed of a kind and powerful friend, a father-being, who lived far beyond their reach and because they could not reach him, they dreamed that he reached them, and he sent his son to become a man. Everywhere in the whole world there is such a dream. The Christians thought they brought it here — but we had it already. True, the manner of his birth varies. The Christians say he was born miraculously of a virgin. We have a legend that he was born of a union between bear and tiger—”
“Bear and tiger?” Sasha had sat down on a rock, brushing away the light snow, but now he suddenly stood up.
“Yes,” Liang said, “and so we Koreans have kept the mountain tiger as our national symbol.”
“Bear is the symbol of Russia,” Sasha exclaimed.
Liang laughed. “Let us not stretch symbols too far! Some of our patients say the tiger has nothing to do with gods, that it is our national animal because the map of our country looks like a sitting tiger. Some say it is because we tell the other peoples to leave us in our lair and we will not disturb them, even as the mountain tiger will not attack unless he is attacked.”
Sasha did not answer. He lay back on the cold rock, hands clasped behind his head, and gazed into the purple sky. Too much was happening, and too fast. He was Korean, and among the Russians he had felt alien. Now that he was here, he felt more alien than ever. Yet this was his family, his cousin, his father, his grandparents — those grandparents, like two ancient dolls in their old-fashioned garments! And this cousin, so handsome that it made a man jealous to look at him, and yet this air of being saint, poet, scholar, all that was remote and impractical except that he was a doctor, a surgeon, and wanted to practice among the poor!
“I wish I could remember my mother better,” he said suddenly.
“Tell me about her,” Liang said.
Sasha stared into the sky. “I should remember her better,” he said, “but she worked day and night for our food, and she never talked much. And I was too young to ask the questions that I wish now I had asked. She came of landfolk. I think she did, for she read no books. But how came she to have a jade seal? Yet here in this scholar’s family, I feel out of place.”
Liang rose as he spoke. “Rather, you have been out of place until now. Come — we must buy those clothes. And I have taken half a day’s absence, but I must be back at the hospital and you may come with me — after you are dressed in your own clothes!”
And suddenly he went running down the mountainside like a boy, Sasha following.