He liked that.
Later she said, “You know that this is… not done?”
He held her hands, resting them on her belly.
“If you were my woman, then it would be all right.”
“No, that can never… be.”
“Why?”
She took up his withered hand. She turned to face him. Her dark eyes caught the firelight.
“I… can know… can tell. I can tell… you are brave. To me you are very… pretty… no… handsome. You are… clean. ‘Whole’ is the word? To me. But our leaders will not let those who live inside the gate… I do not like this word… it’s… is their… but they say ‘sully’… you know… to be unclean? With the barbarians.”
She sighed deeply, her eyes searching the darkened rafters for the right words. For the story. For the explanation.
“Even before we came… to here. To this place, America. We were separate and apart from others. Mandarin and Cantonese. Government and peasant. Not the same, do you understand? But after the war… even more so, there were many… defects. Many of the survivors from other places… Americans… were like you.”
He understood. She was perfectly formed. Perfectly beautiful, and he was not. It would be wrong of him to make her his woman. It would be wrong in this place.
“Even our people… were affected by the radiation from… bombs. But those children… how do you say…” She searched the room, her eyes casting about and finding nothing. “Never existed?”
The Boy nodded, understanding.
“They made them disappear. They made… rules, laws, I mean. No intermarrying with those who are sick… unclean. Now, they cannot even stand… to have them inside… the gate.”
She watched his eyes, searching to find the wound her words, the truth, had caused him.
But he remained steady, his gaze never wavering from her deep brown eyes.
“To me you… it does not matter, you are whole, to me,” she said again.
The Boy looked at her for a long time.
In his eyes she saw the question.
“Is that why I had to wear the suit beyond the gate?”
“Yes… they fear you will contaminate… them. They understand little and are afraid… much.” Then, “It is not wise of them. They do not have… wisdom.”
“Wisdom changes things. I knew a man who was very wise. But he is gone now… I need wisdom.”
“We… all… do,” she whispered.
An hour before dawn he led her to the dock. A slender boat, tied to the wooden planks, bobbed atop choppy wavelets.
As he helped her down into the tiny boat, he felt a sudden moment of terror, as if he were casting something valuable, something precious—his tomahawk, his best blanket, food even—down into a pit. Or an ocean. Or an abyss.
And I am hoping it will come back to me.
And.
She is more valuable than my tomahawk or a blanket or even food.
Why?
“Will you be safe?” he asked her.
Why was she valuable?
“Yes. I’ll use the boat to… go around… the point and then come close to the wall. I know my way over… and our home is just… just on the other side.”
He leaned down to untie the boat.
“When you stood…” she began, “in front of our leaders… in your mask… and at the wall… you were not afraid to tell them… the truth. They are… always… have been… afraid of truth.” She looked at him. She shook her head slightly. “You are not afraid… of anything… even of the truth.”
And.
“I also… am not afraid,” she said finally and turned the boat toward open water.
She looked small and helpless in the boat and he watched as she paddled out and away from him, rounding the point and finally disappearing. He watched the water for a long time, until he almost felt frozen inside. Within the shack he lay down on the bearskin in front of the fire.
Why?
Because she saw me when she looked at me.
Without horror.
Without fear.
Without pity.
And because she did not look away when she let me see that she was beautiful.
Thinking he was still awake, he slept. When he awoke with a start, wondering what was real and what was not, he smelled jasmine.
Chapter 42
The Chinese were preparing for war.
Soldiers drilled with their long breech-loading rifles. Large cannon were dragged forward by teams of laborers to an outer wall that was being hastily thrown up to surround the shantytown and the inner city. Every day riders left, thundering off toward the east at all times.
When the Boy returned to the shack by the water after another day of drawing for the general, he saw a strange man waiting under a roof down the lane, staying out of the spring drizzle. He was Chinese. He was thin. He appeared to watch something far away, but the Boy could feel him watching the shack. Watching him. For the rest of that wet and rainy afternoon, when the Boy looked out the door of the shack, he could see the man waiting in the darkening light, “not watching.”
Jin came to him again after midnight. She was soaked by the drizzle that slapped at the water of the bay.
“We must… exercise much caution,” she said.
The Boy considered checking the street.
She held on to him tightly.
“I would give… myself to you,” she whispered.
Blood thundered in his ears, beating hard in the silences between the soft rain on the roof and the hard slaps out on the water beyond the thin walls of the shack.
“But… it… cannot… be.”
They sat by the fire, listening to it pop and crackle.
The Boy thought of the bear’s cave where he and Horse had lived for the winter.
“Why?” he murmured.
Looking into his face, she reached forward and brushed away the dark hair that hung there.
“When my people came here… there was a great war. Our home, China, was destroyed. I am told that the first years were very, very difficult. Hard winter. Constant warfare. Famine. The children who were born… after these times… were not… good.”
Jin lay her head on his chest.
“It does not matter to me.” Then, “But if I am ‘sullied’… then it will be… very bad… for me.”
The rain had stopped outside. Dripping water could be heard, everywhere and at once, almost a pattern.
Almost music.
Almost as if one could count when the next drop would fall.
“Here,” he said staring into the fire.
