Han Kang - The Vegetarian

“Where did she go?” I asked, wiping away the traces of drool from around my mouth.

“She was already gone when we woke up.”

“What? In that case, you should have woken me, you know.”

“Even if I’d tried to, you sleep like a log…of course, I would have woken you if it had seemed like something had happened.” Her face reddened, either from anger or simple confusion.

I adjusted my clothes and rushed out, looking around impatiently as I passed down the corridor and came to the lift, but my wife was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t have time for this. I’d told them at the office that I’d be two hours later than usual getting in; right now my wife should already have been being discharged. I decided that when I took her home I would tell her, and indeed myself, that we should just think of the whole thing as a bad dream.

I took the lift down to the ground floor. She wasn’t in the lobby, so I hurried out into the hospital garden, out of breath but making sure to scan the area thoroughly. The only people in the garden were those patients who had already finished their breakfast. The early-morning chill, which would pass off soon enough, was fairly mild even now. You could tell who was a long-term patient based on how they looked — whether fatigued and gloomy, or peaceful. As I drew near the fountain, which was dry, I noticed that there was some kind of commotion; the people gathered there were all looking at something. I pushed my way through them until I had a clear view.

My wife was sitting on a bench by the fountain. She had removed her hospital gown and placed it on her knees, leaving her gaunt collarbones, emaciated breasts and brown nipples completely exposed. The bandage had been unwound from her left wrist, and the blood that was leaking out seemed to be slowly licking at the sutured area. Sunbeams bathed her face and naked body.

“How long has she been sitting there like that?”

“Good grief…she looks like she’s come from the psychiatric ward, this young woman.”

“What’s that she’s holding?”

“It looks like she’s gripping something.”

“Ah, look over there. They’re coming now.”

When I turned to look over my shoulder, a male nurse and a middle-aged guard could be seen hurrying over, their faces grave. I looked at my wife’s exhausted face, her lips stained with blood like clumsily applied lipstick. Her eyes, which had been staring fixedly at the gathered audience, met mine. They glittered, as though filled with water.

I thought to myself: I do not know that woman. And it was true. It was not a lie. Nevertheless, and compelled by responsibilities that refused to be shirked, my legs carried me toward her, a movement that I could not for the life of me control.

“Darling, what are you doing?” I murmured in a low voice, picking up the hospital gown and using it to cover her bare chest.

“It’s hot, so…” She smiled faintly — her familiar smile, a smile that could not have been more ordinary, and which I had believed I knew so well. “It’s hot, so I just got undressed.” She raised her left hand to shield her forehead from the streaming sunlight, revealing the cuts on her wrist.

“Have I done something wrong?”

I prized open her clenched right hand. A bird, which had been crushed in her grip, tumbled to the bench. It was a small white-eye bird, with feathers missing here and there. Below tooth marks that looked to have been caused by a predator’s bite, vivid red bloodstains were spreading.

The deep oxblood curtain fell over the stage. The dancers waved their hands so vigorously the whole row became a blur of movement, with individual figures impossible to make out. Though the applause was loud, with even the odd shout of “bravo” thrown in here and there, there was no curtain call. The ovation abruptly subsided and the audience began to gather up their bags and jackets and make their way to the aisles. He uncrossed his legs and stood up. He’d kept his arms folded during the five or so minutes of applause, silently gazing up at the dancers’ eager faces as they greedily drank it in. Their efforts had inspired in him both compassion and respect, but the choreographer, he felt, hadn’t deserved his applause.

He exited the auditorium and crossed the foyer, studying the now-obsolete performance posters. He’d been in a bookshop in the city center when he’d happened upon one of the posters, the sight of which had sent a shiver through his body. Worried that he might have missed the last performance, he’d hurriedly phoned the theater and made a reservation. On the poster, men and women sat displaying their naked backs, which were covered from the napes of their necks right down to their bottoms with flowers, coiling stems and thickly overlapping petals, painted on in red and blue. Looking at them he felt afraid, excited, and somehow oppressed. He couldn’t believe that the image that had obsessed him for almost a year now had also been dreamed up by someone else — the choreographer — someone, moreover, whom he’d never even heard of. Was that image really about to unfold in front of him, just as he’d dreamed it? Sitting in his seat waiting for the lights to go down and the performance to start, he’d been so nervous he couldn’t even take a sip of water.

But he hadn’t found what he’d been looking for. Threading his way through the crowds of theatergoers who had thronged into the foyer, and who all looked so dazzling and extroverted, he headed for the exit nearest to the underground station. There had been nothing for him in the booming electronic music, the gaudy costumes, the showy nudity, or the overtly sexual gestures. The thing he’d been searching for was something quieter, deeper, more private.

He had to wait a while for a train, it being a Sunday afternoon, and when he got on he stood near the carriage door, holding a program with the photograph from the posters printed on its cover. His wife and five-year-old son were waiting at home. His wife, he knew, would have liked for them to spend weekends together as a family, but all the same he’d set aside a half day to see the performance. Would he get anything out of it? He’d known that, more than likely, he would only end up disillusioned yet again — that in the end, it was the only possible outcome. And now that was exactly what had happened. How on earth could a complete stranger be expected to tease out the inner logic of something he himself had dreamed up, to find a way to make it come alive? The bitterness that suddenly welled up inside him was exactly the same as the feeling he’d experienced a long time ago, on watching a video work by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. The work had been filled with scenes of promiscuous sexual practices, featuring around ten men and women, each of them daubed all over with colored paint, their greed for each other’s bodies playing out against a background of psychedelic music. They never stopped moving the whole time, flailing and floundering like fish out of water. Not that his own thirst was any less strong, of course — only he didn’t want to express it like that. Anything but that.

After a while, the train went past the apartment complex where he lived. He’d never had any intention of getting off there. He stuffed the program into his backpack, rammed both fists into the pockets of his sweater, and studied the interior of the carriage as it was reflected in the window. He had to force himself to accept that the middle-aged man, who had a baseball cap concealing his receding hairline and a baggy sweater at least attempting to do the same for his paunch, was himself.

—

As luck would have it, the door to the studio was locked, which meant he had the place to himself. Sunday afternoons were practically the only times when he could use the space undisturbed. It was a small studio on the second floor below ground level of K group’s headquarters, provided as part of their corporate sponsorship drive; the four video artists who shared the space had to take it in turns to use the single computer. He was grateful to be able to use the overhead equipment free of charge, but his sensitivity to the presence of others, which meant that he could only become properly absorbed in his work when he was alone, was a major stumbling block.