Kyung-ran Jo - Tongue

Chef was to join me at the wine workshop conducted by the wine expert Michel Rolland in the Conrad Hotel garden, but I don’t see him. Kim and Choi would be on the sought-after gourmet safari, which takes you to three restaurants along the river. Rolland talks about Château Lebon Pasteur, which has notes of overripe plum and dried fig; it’s made in Pomerol, his hometown. This wine might be ordinary for others but is special to him. According to Rolland, you eat from the lightest to the most intensely flavored dishes, but for wine you should drink from the heaviest to the lightest, the most flavorful to the most subtle. But that’s not always true. Individual likes and dislikes are important in choosing wine, and the same is true for food. Rolland pours about half an inch of wine into glasses lined in a row on the table. Now it’s time to taste. He raises his glass and says, This is the purest liquid in the world!

Ruby-red liquid dances in the glass, the color of condensed sunlight and wind, sophisticated and transparent. A question pops into my head. Pure water doesn’t contain any molecules that draw out taste. So you can’t taste something that is completely pure unless another element is added, whether it’s a grain of salt or a few droplets of vinegar. Is the wine in my hand pure liquid or not?

On our last night in Singapore, our group decides to have dinner together at Seafood Center on the eastern shore. I stay back at the hotel alone. Just as a meal ends with coffee or ice cream, trips to Singapore always finish with seafood. This time I didn’t feel like it, partly because of the wine I’d been drinking since the afternoon and the humidity sticking to my body like a wet cloth. My head hurts. It’s not even eight o’clock when I return to my room after having a bowl of wonton soup at the third-floor Chinese restaurant. I sit in the tub with the water running, then emerge and lie down in the middle of the floor, water dripping off my body. Whatever energy I have drains out, as if someone were sprinkling kosher salt over my naked body. Three days is too long. To think of only one person, or to try as hard as I could not to think of him. If you’re sad just let yourself be sad . I can’t tell whether it’s sadness or wistfulness or resignation pressing down on me. I want to sleep now. I want to enter into a deep and lengthy sleep, one I wouldn’t wake from in the morning. Choi will be back soon. I don’t have the energy to get in bed. I’m wilted, like hand-torn spinach. I manage to stretch my arm out and pull down the camel-colored blanket from my bed to cover myself. I feel warmth from my armpits, from the insides of my elbows, between my knees. Did I overindulge in eating and drinking? Seok-ju, I’m freezing all of a sudden .

I rub my eyes. A huge white horse stands in the middle of the room. I close my eyes, open them. A man wearing a white bathrobe stares down at me… Who is it? Like I’m looking through heavy fog dispersing slowly, I realize it’s Chef. I’m about to raise myself up, but remember that I’m not wearing anything and that I’m not in a kitchen but a hotel room. I tug the blanket up to my chin. What time is it? Are they back from the seafood restaurant? Where’s Choi and why is Chef here? Even though I’m lying down and Chef is just standing there, it’s not awkward—it’s as if we’ve done this before. All we’ve done was stand next to each other in a narrow kitchen, bumping into each other. I raise my neck with effort, to get up.

“Just stay there.” His voice booms in the dark.

I’m surprised.

“Just five minutes.”

I don’t know what to say.

“I’ll stay just five minutes and leave.”

All of my vitality drains out. I hear cloth brushing against cloth. Chef is undoing his belt and taking off his bathrobe. Should I close my eyes? Even if I do it’s not completely dark. I don’t want to be nervous right now, like a fool. It’ll be okay as long as I don’t waver. Chef lies on top of me. He grips my hands holding the blanket and pulls them up toward my ears. I can feel his weight, his warmth, his breath on the other side of the thin blanket. Only our elbows to our fingers are actually touching, and his left cheek rests on mine. But it still feels like our entire bodies are touching. Nervous relief and sighs fill my chest. If I can’t turn the clock back by five minutes, there’s only one thing I can do. Lie quietly and wait for time to pass.

“Breathe.” His voice sounds so loud.

“…Okay.”

“I’m not going to do anything.”

I know .

“So please just stay still.”

Yes, that’s what I’m doing .

“I’m going to go soon.”

I don’t want to ruin our friendship of thirteen years, formed one drop at a time . “You’re too heavy.”

He moves a leg off me. It’s easier to breathe. Chef is the kind of person who would forgo pleasure that might later bring guilt. We have to be able to eat toast comfortably at the hotel café tomorrow morning, as if nothing happened. We have to be able to complain that the coffee is too weak or that it’s flavorless. We lie there, looking at each other, not saying a thing, listening to faraway sounds. The night around me is dreamy and dizzy and too hot, like when you eat too much fermented mango.

“Every time I look at you I’m reminded of her.”

I stay silent.

“I used to be alive because of her.”

Is he talking about his ex-wife or his dead daughter? I’ve known him for a long time but I know next to nothing about his private life. But I wish he wouldn’t say that I remind him of either of them.

“I didn’t have the chance to love her fully. I didn’t have enough time.”

He’s talking about his daughter. “You can say anything you want.”

He’s surprised.

“Because we’re leaving tomorrow. We’re going home. Don’t do it there. Don’t be this close to me there.”

“…Okay.”

I want to nod but I can’t move. His face is pressing down and his shoulder is flattening and his leg is pushing down, his entire body smashed on mine.

“I wanted to remember her growing up. When I gave her baths I used to put her heel into my mouth. Babies don’t have much of a heel before they walk. It’s just a soft and squishy foot. It would move around in my mouth. A shock would go through my entire body—she was alive, and so was I. When it felt heavier in my mouth I knew—Oh, she’s grown this much. After she turned one, I couldn’t even put it in my mouth. She was too big. Then she started walking. I felt a loss but I liked to see her walking and jumping and running with her heels that were starting to harden. I was happy that I was alive.”

I’m quiet. Four days after the five-year-old was kidnapped, she was found in a manhole near their house. “What did it taste like?”

Chef doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“Her heel.”

“…Sweet. Really sweet and tender.”

“Like a green grape?”

“No, it was purer and cleaner.”

We’re quiet for a moment.

“I’ve been to Dohoku,” I say.

“Right.”

“It’s famous for its horse meat. It’s amazing, the marbling of the bloodred and white, showing through the paper-thin slices of meat. I put it in my mouth and the juices of the meat welled between the crevices of my teeth. Like a horse was slowly walking into my mouth. It filled me up. Was it like that?”

“Yeah, that’s what it was like.”

“Right.”

“…No matter where you go, you can’t find that taste.”

“You probably can’t.”

“Yeah, it’s the taste of something that doesn’t exist in this world.”

“A special taste.”

“I wanted to re-create that taste.”

We’re silent for a moment.