“Here he is,” she said, mumbling through her broken teeth. “He came through our village late this year, after I wasted many days watching for him — good days of work I have missed — and I told the guard at the village gate to wake me if a young man came by, and he must be paid, too, that guard!”
Yul-chun was lying on his bed when she came in, his hands folded under his head, reflecting and regretting, perhaps, the time he had spent here in waiting and watching, and wondering if he should have gone into Siberia to look for Hanya. Many times he had been about to go and had not gone, prevented by his fellow Koreans who said that since it was well known that he had refused to be a Communist, he would be killed if he went upon Russian soil.
“Dead, you will never find your woman,” they argued.
“You must think of your country first,” others argued.
And so he had not gone as he had thought he would when he left China, and now would never go. Yet while he had lingered here, he held together the exiles through the news sheets he printed wherever he went. Thus only he had told the others how the Japanese were victorious in China, and how a month ago in Canton seven thousand Korean conscripts had turned against their Japanese officers and killed them.
Now when he saw the old woman he rose from his bed and went toward the young man she led. He saw no likeness in that sullen face either to himself or to Hanya. Let him be prudent lest he commit himself to a stranger!
“Do you look for someone?” he asked.
“This old woman,” the young man answered, his voice lusty and strong, “this old woman has dragged me here, saying that you are my father, but I see no likeness to what my mother told me.”
They looked at each other with mutual distrust.
“Nor have I reason to think that you could be the son I have never seen,” Yul-chun rejoined.
The old woman set up a clamor. “Where is my money?” she screamed and she thrust her dirty palm up into Yul-chun’s face.
He was on the point of saying that he owed her nothing since this was not his son, then he remembered that his bargain had not included such certainty. He had said that she was to bring the young man to him wherever she found him, however long the search, and he had given up the search. Yet here the young man was! He could only reach into his pocket again and take out two coins and put them in her black-lined palm. She looked at the money coldly.
“Come,” she said, “for how many days I have not worked, spring and autumn, watching at the city gates for this fellow! And because this year he was late, I watched through summer, too!”
At this the young man took umbrage. “You!” he shouted. “You bring me here for nothing! I am set back in my journey. This is not my father. My father is a young man, taller than I am, very handsome — his skin white as milk, my mother said!”
So shouting, he took the old woman by the shoulders, spun her around twice and sent her flying from the door. Then he closed the door and barred it. “These land people,” he complained. “They are too greedy and altogether ignorant. They need a power above them to compel them.”
Yul-chun was not listening.
“Your mother said your father was young — and handsome — and his skin was white? How many years ago did she say that?”
“Many years,” the young man said. “She died,” he added. He gnawed at his lower lip and mumbled. “Died? She was killed.”
“Killed?” Yul-chun’s lips went dry. He sat down on the bed. “How was she killed?”
The young man sat down on the bed beside him. “We lived in a hut on a Russian peasant’s land. It was not his land, but we helped to till it. A nobleman owned the land. Long ago that was — long ago, and everything is changed now. But in those days the winters were endless and we were always hungry before spring came. We dried berries and roots and mushrooms but we always ate everything too soon. That is — I ate too much. I was young and I did not see that she gave everything to me. One day in the spring she stole into the forests of the nobleman to find some early mushrooms, or a few green weeds. She said she knew a hollow where the sun shone warm and where there was no wind. There she went and I followed. She told me to hide among the trees, and so I hid, but where I could see her. It was a quiet place, scarcely the birds were there. Suddenly I heard footsteps and a great crackling of broken branches on the ground. I saw a big man in good clothes, high leather boots and trousers of leather and a loose jacket belted in at the waist, a bearded man, with a whip in his hand. He shouted at my mother that she was a thief and she tried to run but he laid hold of her — and—”
The young man faltered and bit his lip and then went on.
“He beat her when he was finished with her and she did not get up again. She fell in a drift of late snow under a thick pine tree. She did not move when I called. She did not answer. Her eyes were open and staring at nothing. I was afraid and I ran away. I left her there and I never went back. Nor did I ever tell what had happened to her. And I do not know why I tell you now, for no one can do anything.”
“What was her name?” Yul-chun asked.
“I do not know,” the young man said. He frowned. “You will think I lie, but I only called her O-man-ee. And we knew no one except the Russian peasants. They called her Woman!”
It was on the edge of Yul-chun’s tongue to ask the next question. Did she not tell you your father’s name? But resolved against hope, he would not. At this moment the young man shook his hair back and it fell away from his ears. Yul-chun stared. The lobe of the left ear was not perfect. It was the same ear with which his brother Yul-han had been born!
“What is your name?” Yul-chun muttered. His voice would not come out of his throat and his heart beat hard enough to make him faint.
“Sasha,” the young man said.
“Sasha!” Yul-chun exclaimed. “But that is a Russian name.”
“I was born in Russia.”
Yul-chun looked at him with reluctant certainty. The young man got to his feet. “I must be on my way,” he said.
“What is your haste?” Yul-chun asked, to delay him.
“I am a trader,” Sasha said. “I bring furs and woolens here to Antung and I take back brass and silver goods and sometimes a rich man orders celadon dishes and lacquer chests from Korea.”
He was set on going, and Yul-chun could think of no other way to delay except by telling the truth.
“It may be that you — it may be — you are my son,” he stammered.
Sasha paused at the door.
“How do you know?” he demanded.
“You bear upon you a family mark,” Yul-chun replied. “My blood brother had that same ear you have. It cannot be accident that there should be two such ears.”
He came near to Sasha and lifted the lock of his hair and looked at the ear.
“It is the same,” he said.
But Sasha pulled away from him. “That cursed ear,” he muttered.
“Not cursed, but perhaps most fortunate,” Yul-chun retorted.
“Fortunate? Unfortunate,” Sasha exclaimed. “Too many men tease me for my ear. Did a Russian bear bite me — what woman loves you too well — such things, all stupid!”
Yul-chun, fearful and hopeful, tried to laugh but Sasha looked at him gravely. For an instant the two men exchanged a speculative gaze.
“Do we part?” Yul-chun inquired at last. When Sasha did not answer he stepped back. “It may be you are right. The lobe of an ear — it is no proof. Who knows how many people in the world have the same defect?”
Now it was Sasha who hesitated. Then he spoke. “My mother had something of jade which she valued above all else. Though we starved, she would not use it. What was it?”