With graduation looming, Dong-ju made three copies of a manuscript containing nineteen poems. He asked his friend Jeong Byeong-uk to safeguard one copy, kept one for himself and took the final copy to his professor Lee Yang-ha. He explained his desire to publish a couple of dozen copies and asked Professor Lee to write a foreword. His mentor shook his head; the book of poems would be considered seditious. The Special Higher Police detectives would bare their teeth if they saw poems like ‘Cross’, ‘Sad Tribe’ and ‘Another Home’. Professor Lee suggested that they wait for a better time.
‘When would that be?’ Dong-ju asked.
His mentor couldn’t give him an answer.
Dong-ju wondered if such a day would ever come, and whether his nineteen poems would survive until the day the world changed.
‘Are you saying that there are two more copies of the manuscript in Korea?’ Sugiyama demanded.
‘That was three years ago. Who’s to say that someone else could save the poems I myself couldn’t protect?’ Dong-ju was less concerned about his poems than for Byeong-uk, who’d been enlisted as a student-soldier. He also didn’t wish his professor to be put in danger for owning a seditious manuscript.
But Sugiyama wanted to believe that they had protected those poems from the gale.
Dong-ju changed the subject. ‘The stars will be in the sky tonight too, right?’ He sounded parched.
Sugiyama nodded. Every night, from the eastern sky, Venus rose without fail, and the Big Dipper circled the North Star like an enormous waterwheel in the sky. The Milky Way and the sharp twinkling stars giggled and whispered and fought like children. Stars didn’t appear in Dong-ju’s sky. Each night he lay in his cell and drew an imaginary constellation on the ceiling. Sugiyama couldn’t blame Dong-ju for wondering whether light had disappeared from the world and whether stars no longer twinkled in the sky.
That night at 10 p.m. Sugiyama stood in front of the cells. The steel doors opened with a screech. He walked down to Cell 28 at the end of the corridor on the right. ‘645! Interrogation! Regarding seditious writings.’
The prisoners turned around in their cots and hurried back into slumber. Men called out in the middle of the night rarely came back whole. The guard on duty unlatched the lock and opened the door, then tied Dong-ju’s arms together. Sugiyama signed off on the prisoner log and prodded 645 with his club. He could feel Dong-ju’s protruding ribs through the tip of his club. The long, winding corridor heading towards the interrogation room was dark. The two passed the interrogation room. The shackles clacked and shrieked. Dong-ju was afraid. Where was Sugiyama taking him?
They stood in the prison yard, spotted with white light as though salt had been scattered over it. They heard the watchtower machine gun readying. The cool searchlight stopped over them.
‘Sugiyama Dozan, Guard Department!’ Sugiyama shouted. ‘Interrogation of the scene with Prisoner 645.’
The guard above them checked his files; he found paperwork signed by Maeda that had been submitted earlier. The searchlight returned to its normal pattern, circling the premises. Sugiyama and Dong-ju could hear the wind against the branches of the poplar trees as they rose like soft, leavening bread. They sat against a tree, side-by-side. The wind blew cold air on Dong-ju’s pale cheeks and temples. He could hear his own heart beating. Sugiyama loosened Dong-ju’s ties and took off the handcuffs. The cold night air smelled sweet. Dong-ju inhaled deeply and murmured words Sugiyama couldn’t understand; he was reciting a poem in his mother tongue, the same language he shouted in as he played in the mountains and fields of his hometown. The language he’d had to repress now burst out through his lips.
A shooting star raced over their heads. Dong-ju had too many wishes to pick only one. Not Sugiyama; he asked that this poet pass safely through this cruel era. He gazed up at the stars as they traced concentric circles along the sky and wondered if they made a noise as they orbited, or whether they gave off a gentle rustle. He wanted to hear it. The wind blew; his cheek was wet and cold.
Back in the interrogation room, Sugiyama opened the report form. Dong-ju began to speak, translating ‘Night Counting Stars’ into Japanese. The poem emerged as fragile as candlelight in a gale. Sugiyama wondered: how could he not blame himself if he couldn’t usher these poems past the end of the war? He was the only person who could protect this young man’s legacy; there was no one else. Sugiyama dipped his pen in ink and began transcribing the words, which floated like stars on the dark paper:
NIGHT COUNTING STARS
The sky of passing seasons
Is filled with autumn.
Without a single worry
I think I can count all the autumn stars.
The reason I can’t count all the stars carved
one by one in my heart is
because morning is coming,
because night will fall again tomorrow,
because my youth is not yet gone.
For one star, memory;
For one star, love;
For one star, loneliness;
For one star, longing;
For one star, poetry;
For one star, mother, mother.
Mother, I call out one beautiful word for every star. The names of the children I shared a desk with in primary school, the foreign names of girls, Pei, Jing, Yu, other girls who have already become mothers, the names of impoverished neighbours, dove, puppy, rabbit, donkey, deer, the names of poets like Francis Jammes and Rainer Maria Rilke.
They are so far away.
Like stars in the beyond,
And you, Mother —
you are in Manchuria far away.
Longing for something,
On top of the hill under falling starlight
I etched my name,
And covered it with dirt.
The insect that cries all night
Does because of its sorrow about its shameful name.
But after winter passes and spring dawns on my star,
On the hill where my name is buried
Grass will stand thick and proud
Like green grass blooming on a grave.