Snow Hunters: A Novel (6 page)

He heard his name. A short man with a graying beard waved and approached him. They stood facing each other and the man laughed, admiring Yohan’s sweater.

—Wanting to go back out onto the water? the sailor said.

They embraced. A year had passed since they had last seen each other. He was startled by how much the man had aged: the wrinkles around his eyes, his thinning hair, the slight stoop as he walked.

—It’s just me now, the sailor said, pointing at the
crew who was beginning to unload the vessel’s cargo, all of whom Yohan had never seen before.

They spoke Korean. He had not heard or spoken it in a year. It took him a moment to find certain words.

One of the men had died, a crane accident. The rest had changed jobs and crews, moving to other routes and crossing the Pacific toward the western United States.

He patted Yohan on the shoulder.

—But you, he said. You will stay.

And he laughed again and looked back toward the ship where a man was sliding crates down a plank.

—Ah, he said. Yours.

They moved down the pier where there were two shipments of textiles from Tokyo and Osaka. He did not leave right away. He sat on one of the crates, facing the sea, and the sailor sat on the other. The water was blue and gray and broke as the birds dove.

The sailor had been living on the southern coast of Japan all these years, joining a cousin, a migrant worker who had gone there before the war. The sailor had two sons and a daughter. His wife, a Japanese woman, worked at a hotel now, washing linen.

—It’s new, he said. The hotel. It’s ruined her hands.

He raised his palms in the air.

He did not see her often. They exchanged letters when they could, the wife writing to his next destination. Sometimes, when she knew he would be stopping in Brazil, she sent a letter to Yohan’s shop because he had offered.

He would carry it to the docks and the sailor would read the letter aloud to Yohan, who imagined the small house in the coastal village: how each day the sailor’s wife followed the road down to the beach where the hotel stood. She carried a lunch box and a parasol for shade. The children went to school and then returned home to his wife’s mother. Some days the hotel was empty but still she cleaned the rooms and made the beds. Lifting sheets the color of ivory and that color everywhere. A thousand empty tents.

But a letter had not come to the shop this time. He did not have to tell the sailor, who knew already because Yohan had not given him anything.

—I will see them soon, he said, and watched a small boat leave the harbor.

When he did not go on, Yohan looked at him, searching the man’s eyes, and waited.

The sailor said, —Nothing. I have not heard news of your town.

He did not say anything more. Yohan knew what he meant. He stayed a while longer but they did not speak much, as though they had both said what they needed to say. The sailor mentioned Korea, about the southeastern port that he docked at, the one from which Yohan had embarked, but that was all.

He wondered how different that port looked now, whether there were new buildings and new ships, whether it was busier, but he did not ask. He shivered; he wrapped his arms around his stomach. He had once stood in the cold among ships that were like towers. Then the Americans escorting him pointed to a distant vessel where silhouettes moved across the high deck under a sky of long clouds.

How long ago that was now. How long ago was his own exhaustion and the exhaustion of the men escorting him, their bloodshot eyes and their helmets and the reek of iodine and gunpowder that they all carried and seemed to take years to erase. There were days even now when he could still smell it, and that evening on the coast did not seem so far away then.

For a moment, he was still that man, a boy, in that country, in that harbor, with his back to the years that had happened and unsure of whether those years would
follow him into the sea. He remembered the uncontrollable shaking of his body. The pause on the gangplank and himself above the water as though suspended between the coast and the ship.

He remembered the sailor standing beside him as they entered the harbor here that early morning. He had lit a cigarette and the two of them watched as the other ships unloaded their cargo and the peddlers walked back and forth along the docks, carrying boxes strapped over their necks, selling stationery and pornography.

—Yohan, the sailor had said. Stay here. Stay for a long time.

The day dimmed and the dock lights flared. In the distance, beyond the piers, he recognized Kiyoshi’s bicycle and then Bia riding it. She circled the market square, bumping over the cobblestone, and then pedaled past the crates and the men. A scarf covered her hair. Santi was seated on the bicycle, holding her waist.

The bike tottered and for a moment it seemed as though Bia was on the verge of losing her balance. Yohan found himself standing. But she regained control and continued on, laughing. Dockworkers shook their heads and then returned to their work.

Whether they saw him he could not tell.

—They’ve grown, the sailor said.

Santi leaned back, his legs in the air as she pedaled past the men and headed toward the boardwalk. When they lost her in a far crowd, Yohan offered the sailor a room to spend the night, as he always did, but the sailor refused, as he always did.

—Next time, the sailor said, and they parted ways, Yohan pushing the crates up the hill on a dolly, and the sailor returning to the ship, to his cabin, where there was a narrow bed, photographs, his wife’s letters, a ceramic dolphin his children had given him, two coins a shipmate once placed on his pillow, years ago.

F
rom his window that evening he saw the shape of someone riding a bicycle through the town. There was a flashlight on the handlebars and he followed the errant star as it swayed down the slope and faded along the coast.

He left the shop. He passed the church and entered the meadow. He continued to walk away from the town, moving under the open sky, until the land narrowed and formed a promontory high above the sea. He took the path beside it, descending the cliff.

The brightness of the low moon was everywhere. For a moment he was disoriented. He squinted, shielding his
eyes with a hand. He was on a beach north of the harbor, the sand gleaming and unbroken. The shadow of an animal, a dog perhaps, retreated into a thicket. A piece of torn paper twirled past him.

In the distance, farther up the beach, a fire was burning. He could distinguish the silhouettes of people in the darkness: some were sitting with blankets over their shoulders; others were standing. A girl lifted her arms and stretched, her body a blade against the light of the fire, a leaping fish.

He felt the softness of the sand, its give. The water blinked from the nearby lighthouse as he moved along the shoreline. He heard conversations. The calm of the night hours.

He kept walking. He found the old plantation house on the coast. It stood in a long field, beyond a stone wall. In the evening light it looked as if it had just been built. But as he approached he noticed its dilapidated architecture, the wood-covered windows, the sinking porch, a portion of its rooftop gone.

Nearby, shanties stood in rows. They were short and squat with steel roofs that reflected the evening light. Some of them were without windows. Others had the
space for a door but there was none, the entrances covered in heavy blankets.

A path had been made among them and in the moonlight he watched a man on a mule pace through the settlement. Two women carried baskets into a shanty. At one entrance a pair of gray dogs lay side by side with their heads on their paws. A group of old men, with their hats hooked over their knees, smoked cigarettes.

There was also a large tree in the field. Clothes of various colors hung on its branches, left to dry. Bia was standing under it. She was wearing a hat pulled low over her eyes. She unfurled a shirt and threw it over a branch.

He climbed over the stone wall. Water hit the hulls of the small boats lined up along the shore. He could hear himself breathing, hear the beats of his heart starting to speed and then slow as he moved away from the beach and entered the settlement. It was as though someone, somewhere, were dreaming this and he had crossed into it without permission. Everything both familiar and foreign.

A man on crutches walked past, nodding. A basket of dried fish was tied to his waist. Across the field, closer
to the plantation house, he saw the figure of a juggler, his chin pointing at the sky. A group of children, sitting around him, were following his motions.

Bia did not seem surprised to see him. He looked up at the clothes hanging above them in the tree, these shapes in the air like windows afloat. A house of fabric. Drops of water hit his wrist.

Without speaking she led him away toward the plantation house. The man on the mule greeted her and as they passed she patted the animal on the neck. She spoke briefly with a girl, leaving her a folded shirt.

Santi was sitting on a large blanket, watching them. Around him lay the bracelets, necklaces, and the long coiled rope they had woven. In the morning they would bring them to the market. They would sit all day, selling what they could.

Not far from them the children had gathered in a circle. They were leaning back and clutching the grass. Some wore sweaters and others wore wool caps. Many of them were barefoot.

The juggler stood at the center, throwing the children’s shoes into the air. He had a faded red scarf wrapped around his eyes. His shoulders were narrow and he wore a loose shirt that revealed his collarbones. His arms
moved like wheels, without pause. The ends of his scarf swayed. His blinded face tilted toward the night clouds.

Santi made room for them. In the moonlight a bruise revealed itself on his cheek. Yohan pretended not to notice. Instead he unwrapped a chocolate bar and shared it with them.

He could feel the wet grass against his palms. The cool of the blanket on his ankles. He looked back toward the settlement. On the rooftop of a shanty stood a cluster of potted plants. From the ground a cat jumped the height and began to claw at the leaves. Someone was playing a French song on a gramophone.

He did not know what time it was. It could have been midnight or even later. The night was clear and fell on the land. On occasion a car could be heard; but from here the town was invisible, blocked by headlands and cliffs.

Yohan had tasted chocolate for the first time at the camp. It had been sent from America. A nurse rested the bar on the damp operating table, then cut it with a surgeon’s knife.

She shared it with those in the field tent. Pieces the size of fingernails. He stood in the corner and placed a piece on his tongue and kept his lips pressed together, unused to the flavor, the sweetness. Watching the men on
the cots and the other nurses do the same. All of them silent as though they each held a secret.

The nurse had also given some to a boy who lived beyond the camp. In the days that followed Yohan would see him through the fences, standing in the fields, looking down at his shirt where there was a chocolate stain, which he licked. When the taste vanished he continued to lift the spot on his shirt and sniff. He did so long after the scent faded. Each time he grinned. Then he moved on to wherever he was going, heading into the woods with a kite strapped to his back.

In the field, shoes rose high and descended. Up and down they went. There was applause and laughter. He heard the coast. Then a ship’s horn blew. The lights of a long vessel appeared at sea. It moved so slowly that he was not sure it was moving at all.

Santi reached for another piece of chocolate and then he was gone, running across the settlement toward the beach. In the dark his body was barely visible. He found a high rock and from there he lifted his hands to form an imaginary spyglass, which he swiveled out toward the blinking lights of the vessel.

—They work on the farms and in the mines, Bia said,
looking out at the settlement and the beach fire. There are also fishermen and factory workers.

Then she took his hand and smoothed his palm. She placed his hand on her lap, looked down, studied it. He saw a clarity in her eyes. With her index finger she traced the line that curved around the base of his thumb. The warmth of her skin surprised him.

—You are going to live for a very long time, she said. There’s a split, however. You will come upon a great obstacle. You will go around it, see, where it forks near your wrist. It is your character. To go around. For a moment, here—she tapped his skin—you will live a different life.

She spoke slowly so that he would understand. It was the first time she had spoken more than a few words to him. It seemed that she had described both a life sometime in the future and one he had already lived.

He wanted her to go on, wanted her to continue speaking, to be surrounded by her voice, but she raised her eyes and he looked up to see the juggler leaning over them with a curious expression.

Then the juggler frowned and tightened his mouth, brought a finger to his lips, and snatched Bia’s hat. All
this while still blindfolded and without dropping a single thing.

Bia, blushing, dropped Yohan’s hand. They both returned to watching the blindfolded juggler, who was now walking in circles with the shoes and the hat aloft, sometimes running and bending his body.

The children cheered. An airplane appeared behind the mountain range. Clothes were collected from the tree and some more were placed there. Smoke from the fire rose above the field.

The night grew colder. He watched the girl’s hat rise and fall, its brim spinning in the air.

Santi was still standing on the high rock. Yohan followed the boy’s gaze out toward the blinking water. He waited, though what he was waiting for he was no longer sure of. His legs grew heavy, he felt his palms settle into the grass, and he imagined himself sinking, his body falling into the earth until the sea claimed him and there was nothing left, no evidence of him.

He wondered who would notice his vanishing, who would miss him then.