Han Kang - The Vegetarian

—

Once again he was on the phone to her, confronting silence on the other end of the line.

“Sister-in-law…”

“Yes.” Luckily, this time she answered without too long a pause. Did she sound like she was glad to hear from him? He wasn’t sure.

“Did you get a good rest yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“So, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Have you washed the flowers off?”

“No.”

He exhaled in a long sigh. “In that case, can you keep it on for now? Just until tomorrow. It won’t have faded by then. I, uh, I have to film you one more time.”

Was she laughing? He wished he could see her expression. Was she smiling?

“I didn’t want it to come off,” she said calmly, “so I haven’t washed my body. It’s stopping the dreams from coming. If it comes off later I hope you’ll paint it on again for me.”

He couldn’t understand exactly what she was saying, but he gripped the receiver tightly, and muttered, good. Perhaps she would agree after all. Perhaps she would agree to what he had in mind.

“If you have time, could you come around again tomorrow? To the studio at Sonbawi.”

“Okay.”

“And there’ll be someone else coming too. A man.” She was silent. “I’m going to have him take his clothes off and paint flowers on him too. That’s okay, right?” He waited. Her long silences no longer made him uneasy; he thought he’d figured out by now that they generally signified consent.

“Okay.”

He put the phone down and paced around and around the living room, wringing his hands.

He called his wife. It would be unpleasant, but it had to be done.

“Where are you?” she asked, her tone more ambivalent than cold.

“At home.”

“How did your work go?”

“It’s still going. It looks like I’ll be busy until tomorrow night.”

“I see. Well…don’t work too hard.”

He hung up. He would have preferred it if she’d screamed and raged like other wives, nagged and heaped abuse on him. She became resigned so easily, and her habit of gloomily suppressing the dregs of this resignation suffocated him. He didn’t know if her desperate efforts to be understanding and considerate were a good or a bad thing. Perhaps it was all down to him being self-centered and irresponsible. But right now he found his wife’s patience and desire to do the right thing stifling, which made him still more inclined to see it as a flaw in her character.

Once the vague mix of guilt, regret and uncertainty had passed, he continued with the next stage of his plan and dialed J’s number.

“J? Will you be coming by this evening?”

“No, I was there all last night. I’m going to take a break today.”

“Ah, really? I have to ask you a small favor.”

“What sort of favor?”

“Are you free tomorrow? I’m going to be doing some filming tomorrow evening.” He told J the location of M’s studio. He was about to add that it was fine if J was only free in the afternoon, that it wouldn’t take long, but then he changed his mind. “You said you wanted to see the work I made yesterday, right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’m heading over to the studio now.” He hung up.

—

J was early. Though he was usually so laid-back, today, for the first time, he seemed impatient.

“I’m shaking.”

He made J a cup of coffee and mentally stripped him. Good: the two of them would suit each other.

The previous afternoon, when he’d shown J the tape, the younger man had been incredibly excited.

“I can’t believe it…it’s magical! I mean, how did this sort of idea come to you in the first place? You know, for a while I actually thought you were a pretty average guy…ah, I’m sorry…” J’s voice, the look in his eyes, were filled with an almost suspiciously excessive enthusiasm. Was he being sincere? “This is so different from anything you’ve made before. This is…it’s like something’s lifted you right up to a completely different level! These colors!”

Though he balked at J’s hyperbole — typical of young people — overall he had to say he agreed. It wasn’t as though he’d previously been blind to the beauty of color, but still. It felt as though his body were brimming with their intense hues, all this latent energy inside him — it was almost unbearable. He was living with a new intensity.

“I used to be dark”: There were times when he wanted to express it this way. I used to be dark. I was in a dark place. The monochrome world, entirely devoid of the colors he was now experiencing, had had a calmness that was beautiful in its way, but it wasn’t somewhere he could go back to. It seemed the happiness that had enabled him to feel that quiet peace was now lost to him forever. And yet he found himself unable to think of this as a loss. All of his energy was taken up in trying to cope with the excitement, the heightened awareness of living in the present moment.

Encouraged by J’s praise, though he couldn’t prevent his face from flushing, he eventually managed to get out the words he’d planned. But when he showed him his sketchbook and the dance performance program and asked him if he would do him the favor of modeling for him, J became flustered.

“Why on earth are you asking me? There are plenty of professional models out there; you could hire a theater actor, or…”

“You’ve got the right kind of body. Anything too gym honed would be all wrong. You’re just the thing.”

“No, I’m not the one for this job — to pose like that with this woman. I can’t.”

“No one will know. I won’t show your face. And this woman, don’t you want to meet her? Wouldn’t you like to be part of the inspiration for such a piece?”

After being given just the one night to think it over, J had called the next morning and agreed to be the model. Of course, there was no way the younger man could guess what he really wanted: to film the two of them, J and his sister-in-law, actually having sex.

“She’s a bit late, isn’t she?” J asked, peering nervously out of the window. He’d already been growing impatient himself. She’d assured him that she’d be able to find the place on her own, so he’d decided to wait for her at the studio rather than meeting at the underground station.

“Well, perhaps I’ll go down to the station.” He picked up his sweater and stood up, but just then they heard someone knocking on the translucent glass door. “Ah, here she is!”

J put down his cup of coffee.

This time she was wearing a chunky black sweater, with the same jeans as before. Her loose hair, naturally very black, was still wet; she must have washed it just before she came out. She looked first at him, then at J, then gave a quick laugh.

“I was very careful,” she said, touching her hair. “I didn’t get any water on the flowers.”

J smiled, looking relieved. He probably hadn’t expected her to seem so ordinary.

“Take off your clothes.”

“Me?” J’s eyes opened wide.

“She’s already been painted, so now I just have to do you.” Stifling a nervous giggle, J turned his back on them and got undressed. “You’ll have to take your pants off, too.” J hesitated, then did as he was asked. J’s body was slight, more so than he’d expected. Aside from the thick hair that ran down in a line from his belly button and spread to the tops of his thighs, his flesh was enviably white and smooth.

Just as he’d done with his sister-in-law, he had J lie prone and began to paint him with flowers, starting from the nape of his neck. Working as quickly as possible, he used a big brush to paint light purple hydrangeas, which seemed to tumble down over J’s back as though caught in a strong wind.