Han Kang - The Vegetarian

There was a wrapped lunch box next to her elbow, and her limp fingers clutched her mobile. The camcorder was upside down underneath the table, its deck open. She must have heard him as he moved toward her, but she didn’t stir.

“D…darling,” he said. His head was swimming; he couldn’t believe this was happening. Only then did she lift her head from the table and stand up, but he quickly realized that she wasn’t planning to come anywhere near him. Instead, she seemed to want to keep the table between them, to stop him from getting too close.

“I hadn’t heard anything from Yeong-hye, so…so I thought I’d stop by on my way to the shop. I just happened to have made some seasoned vegetables, you see.” Her voice was incredibly tense. She was struggling to maintain her composure, as though she were the one trying to justify herself. He knew that tone. It was the slow, low, faintly tremulous tone that meant she was fighting to conceal extreme emotion.

“The door was open, so I came in. Then I saw that Yeong-hye was all covered in paint, and I thought, that’s strange…I didn’t recognize you at first, because your face was turned to the wall and your body was covered by the quilt.” Still clutching her mobile, she brushed her hair back from her face. Both her hands were shaking visibly. “I guessed Yeong-hye had found a man, or maybe that she’d gone crazy for the second time, what with that stuff on her body…I knew I ought to just get out of there, but…that man could have been anyone, and what if Yeong-hye needed my protection…then I spotted the camcorder by the door, and I picked it up and rewound the tape, just like you taught me, ages ago…” She was having to exercise extreme self-control, squeezing out every ounce of her courage so that she could go on. “And I saw you on the tape.”

In her eyes there was a mixture of shock, fear and despair that couldn’t be expressed in words, whereas her facial expression looked almost callous. Only then did he realize that his naked body seemed to be actively disgusting her, and he hurriedly looked about for his shirt.

He found it by the bathroom, tossed in a crumpled heap, and put it on. “Darling. I can explain. It won’t be easy for you to understand, but…”

She cut him off abruptly, raising her voice. “I’ve called the emergency services.”

“ What? ” He took a step toward her, incomprehension furrowing his brow.

She backed away. “You and Yeong-hye are both clearly in need of medical treatment.”

Several seconds passed before he grasped that she was in earnest. “What are you saying? That you’re committing me to a mental hospital?”

Just then a rustling sound came from over by the mattress. Both he and his wife held their breath. Yeong-hye pushed the sheet aside and stood up, stark naked. He saw that tears were streaming from his wife’s eyes.

“Bastard,” she muttered, swallowing her sobs. “Just look at her…she clearly isn’t well. In her mind. How could you?”

Up until then, Yeong-hye had seemed oblivious to her sister’s presence in the apartment; only now did she look over at the two of them, her face a perfect blank. Her gaze was utterly devoid of any form of expression.

She slowly turned her back on them and walked out onto the veranda. The chill air rushed into the apartment when she opened the sliding door. He fixed his eyes on the pale blue of her Mongolian mark, seeing the traces of his saliva and semen that had dried there like sap. Suddenly it felt to him that he had grown old, had experienced everything there was to experience, and that not even death held any fear for him anymore.

She thrust her glittering golden breasts over the veranda railing. Her legs were covered with scattered orange petals, and she spread them wide as though she wanted to make love to the sunlight, to the wind. He heard the sounds of the approaching ambulance siren, of screams, sighs, the yells of children, all the commotion of the alleyway down below. The sound of feet hurrying up the stairs, coming closer.

He had to rush out onto the veranda, now, and throw himself over the railing against which she was leaning. He would fall down three floors and smash his head to pieces. It was the only way. The only way to make a clean end of all this. And yet he kept on standing there as if rooted to the spot, as if this were the final moment of his life, staring fixedly at the blazing flower that was her body, that body which now glittered with images so much more intense than those he had filmed during the night.

She stands and looks out at the rain-swept road. She is at the bus stop across from Maseok terminal. Huge goods vans thunder past, speeding along in the fast lane. The raindrops drum against her umbrella, so forcefully it seems they might rip through the material.

She isn’t really young anymore, and it would be difficult to call her a beauty, exactly. The curve of her neck is quite attractive and the look in her eyes is open and friendly. She wears light, natural-looking makeup, and her white blouse is neat, uncreased. Thanks to that smart impression, which one might reasonably expect to attract curiosity, attention is deflected away from the faint shadows clouding her face.

Her eyes glimmer briefly; the bus she has been waiting for has appeared in the distance. She steps down into the road. She watches as the bus, which had been tearing along at a great pace, slows down.

“You’re going to Ch’ukseong Psychiatric Hospital, right?”

The bus driver, in late middle age, nods to her and motions her up. She pays the fare, and as she scans the bus for somewhere to sit her eyes pass over the faces of the other passengers. They are all watching her closely. Is she a patient, or is she a nurse? There doesn’t seem to be anything odd about her. Well used to this, she keeps her eyes averted from those probing gazes, that mix of suspicion, caution, repugnance and curiosity.

She shakes the water off her folded umbrella. The floor of the bus is already wet, black and glistening. It wasn’t the kind of rain for which an umbrella could provide sufficient shelter, and so her blouse and trousers are half soaked. The bus picks up speed, racing along the wet road. She struggles to keep her balance as she walks down the aisle. Finding a double seat where both spaces are unoccupied, she takes the one next to the window. The windows have steamed up, so she gets a tissue out of her bag and wipes a patch clear. She watches the streaks of rain lashing the window, with the untouched steadiness unique to those accustomed to solitude. As they reach Maseok, the late-June woods begin to unfurl on either side of the road. There is something battened down about the woods in this torrential rain, like a huge animal suppressing a roar. As it turns up the road to Ch’ukseong mountain, the road gradually narrows and becomes winding, bringing the wet body of the woods undulating nearer. The base of that mountain over there — might those be the woods where, three months ago, her sister, Yeong-hye, had been found? One by one, the black spaces between the trees, concealed by the shaking canopy of rain-lashed leaves, pass in front of her eyes. She turns away from the window.

The hospital staff told her that Yeong-hye had gone missing sometime during the hour that was set aside for the patients to take brief, unaccompanied walks — between two and three in the afternoon. This happened only on fixed days, only for non-serious patients, and only when the rain swelling the black clouds overhead seemed likely to stay there. Apparently, when the nurses had checked on the patients at three, they’d been able to confirm that Yeong-hye hadn’t come back. It was only then, they said, that the rain had finally begun to spit, just one or two drops at a time. The entire hospital staff were put on emergency. The management and staff hurriedly set up a roadblock on the corner where the buses and taxis went past. When a patient went missing, one possibility was that they had gone down from the mountains and already got as far as Maseok; or the opposite possibility, that they had in fact gone deeper into the mountains.