I Am the Clay by Chaim Potok

Author:Chaim Potok [Potok, Chaim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780307575531
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2014-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

Why am I so cold with the heat of the fire on my face? So close to the flames and yet still shivering. The air so still, black and silent air, cold and smelling of raw earth. As on the night of the campfire in the forest when I dared the boys of my chronological group to cover me with earth to see how long I could stay under the ground and the earth was cold and dank on my nose and eyes and face, smelling of moist roots and wet stones, and I lay there so long Badooki began to whine and scrape at the ground and they rushed to uncover me and I climbed out laughing and brushed the earth from my clothes. Breathing through a reed they couldn’t see in the dark. And after supper Father called me to him and said, giving me a hopeless look, This is a foolish boy, how is it I have in my house under my roof such a foolish boy? And Grandfather said, The boy likes to explore, there is a curiosity in him, one must know the difference between a boy who explores for understanding and one who explores for excitement only. The second is foolish and dangerous. Which are you? Grandfather asked me, and my father replied, I say this is a foolish boy and one day his foolishness will cause him harm, may the spirits protect and guard him, what will you do next to shame me in the village, foolish boy? And he turned away from me very angry. But Grandfather kept smiling around the long stem of his pipe. Who told Father? No doubt fat and greasy and loose-tongued Choo Kun. Dead all of my chronological group. Ashes all their homes.

There is something strange about this place. Fires burning everywhere except on those two patches of darkness and where we are now. Big black circles and all around them fires, and fires all around the Americans, are they warm the Americans, I was warm in my village with the smoke from the kitchen fire running under the floor and our sleeping pads on the floor, the heat baking us no matter how cold outside. The old man and the woman, they must be very cold if I am cold so close to the fire. The old man doesn’t like me, I don’t know why, no matter what I do he doesn’t like me, I’ll go back with them to their village if the Americans drive out the Chinese and the soldiers of the North, and then I’ll go to my village, someone must still be alive, they couldn’t all have been killed, I’ll live with an uncle, a cousin, how could they all have died?

Is it already time to wake up the woman? I’ll stay a little longer. Six times with the fire tonight instead of five, were we really in the mountains last night? let her sleep, some fires have gone out, will there

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