Han Kang - The Vegetarian

The nurse unlocked the door to the six-person ward and led them in. Yeong-hye remained composed as her sister greeted each of the nurses in turn. Eventually, she set the hospital bag down and went over to the window, which had a heavy-looking set of bars running vertically across it. Just then, she was discomfited to find herself struck by a guilty conscience, which she’d so far managed to avoid. Suddenly it was there like a lump in her chest, weighing her down. Yeong-hye walked up soundlessly and stood beside her.

“Ah, you can see the trees from here too.”

You will not be weak, In-hye told herself, her lips pressed tightly together. At any rate, she is a burden you cannot bear. No one blames you. You’ve done well to make it this far.

She didn’t look at Yeong-hye as she stood beside her. Instead, she looked down at the bright early-winter sunlight as it splintered over the larches, which had not yet shed all their leaves.

“Sister,” Yeong-hye said, her voice low and calm as if intending to comfort her. Yeong-hye’s old black sweater gave off the faint scent of mothballs. When In-hye didn’t answer, Yeong-hye whispered one more time. “Sister…all the trees of the world are like brothers and sisters.”

—

She walks past the second annex and stops in front of the door to the first annex. She sees the patients pressing themselves against the glass door and peering outside. They’re probably feeling a bit claustrophobic, the rain having kept them cooped up inside for the past few days. When In-hye presses the bell, a nurse in his late thirties comes out from the nurses’ room by the ground-floor lobby, carrying a key.

The nurse closes the door quickly behind him, inserts the key and locks it. In-hye notices a young female patient staring out at her, her cheek pressed against the inside of the locked glass door. Her two empty eyes scrutinize In-hye as though trying to bore through her skin; there was no way she could look at a stranger like that if her mind were sound.

“How is my sister at the moment?” she asks as they climb the stairs to the third floor. The nurse looks back over his shoulder and shakes his head.

“She’s stopped talking. She’s also been trying to pull the IV needle out, so we had to get her into the secure room and give her a tranquilizer before we could put it back in. How she has the strength to shake us off…”

“So she’s in the secure room now?”

“No. She woke up a little while ago, so we moved her back to the ward. They told you they’re putting the nasal drip in at two, right?”

She follows the nurse into the third-floor lobby. On fine days there are elderly patients sitting on the long bench by the window and soaking up the sun, others engrossed in a game of table tennis, cheery music filtering in from the nurses’ room. But today all of that liveliness seems to have been smothered by the incessant rain. Perhaps because the majority of the patients are in their wards, there isn’t much going on in the lobby. The table tennis bats lie unused on the table.

She looks down along the ward’s western corridor, where, right at the end, the afternoon sunlight shines through the large window more brightly than in any other spot on sunny days. When In-hye came to see Yeong-hye last March, just a few days before the latter disappeared into the rainy woods, Yeong-hye refused to come to the visiting room. When In-hye contacted the head nurse from reception, the nurse said that, oddly enough, Yeong-hye hadn’t wanted to leave the ward for several days now. Even during the hour when an unaccompanied walk was permitted, a time that all the patients always looked forward to, she’d kept to the ward. When In-hye asked if she could just go and look at her sister’s face, given that she’d come all this way, the nurse came down to reception to accompany her.

When she came upon the unexpected sight of a female patient doing a handstand at the far end of the western corridor, it never even crossed her mind that it might be Yeong-hye. Only when the nurse, with whom she’d just spoken on the telephone, guided her in that direction had she been able to recognize Yeong-hye’s long, thick hair. Her sister was upside down and balancing on her hands, her face flushed almost puce.

“She’s been at it for thirty minutes already,” the nurse said, seeming impatient. “It started two days ago. It’s not that she isn’t aware of her surroundings, or that she doesn’t speak…she’s different from the other catatonic patients. Up until yesterday we’d been having to force her back into the ward; but no matter what we did she just started up with the handstands again as soon as she was in the ward, so…so we can’t even force her to stop.” Before he went back to the nurses’ room, the nurse said, “She’ll fall over if you give her a little nudge. Give it a try if you can’t get her to talk to you. We would have had to push her over to get her back in the ward, anyway.”

Left alone with Yeong-hye, In-hye squatted down and tried to look her sister in the eye. Anyone’s face will look different when they’re upside down. Yeong-hye’s face certainly looked odd, with what little flesh she had on her cheeks pushed down toward her eyes. Those eyes were glittering and sharp as Yeong-hye stared into space. She seemed unaware of her sister’s presence.

“Yeong-hye.” No reply. “Yeong-hye. What are you doing? Stand up.” She reached out a hand to Yeong-hye’s flushed cheek. “Stand up, Yeong-hye. Doesn’t your head hurt? For goodness’ sake, your face is bright red.” With nothing else for it, she gave her sister a gentle push. Just as the nurse had said, Yeong-hye immediately tumbled to the floor, and In-hye quickly lifted her head up, supporting her neck as you would with a baby.

“Sister.” Yeong-hye’s face was wreathed in smiles, her eyes shining as though she’d just woken up from a happy dream. “When did you get here?”

The nurse, who’d been watching the two of them, came up and led them to the meeting room that adjoined the lobby. This, she explained, was where family members could meet with the patients whose symptoms were so severe that it was difficult for them to go down to the visiting room in reception. In-hye guessed that it was also where consultations with the doctor took place.

When In-hye laid the food she’d brought out on the table, Yeong-hye said, “Sister. You don’t have to bring that stuff now.” She smiled. “I don’t need to eat anymore.”

“What are you talking about?” In-hye stared at her sister as though she were possessed. It was a long time since she’d seen Yeong-hye’s face shining like this; no, in fact, it was the first time. “What on earth were you doing just now?” she asked.

Yeong-hye met her question with another. “Sister, did you know?”

“Know what?”

“I didn’t, you see. I thought trees stood up straight…I only found out just now. They actually stand with both arms in the earth, all of them. Look, look over there, aren’t you surprised?” Yeong-hye sprang up and pointed to the window. “All of them, they’re all standing on their heads.” Yeong-hye laughed frantically. In-hye remembered moments from their childhood when Yeong-hye’s face had worn the same expression as it did now. Those moments when her sister’s single-lidded eyes would narrow and turn completely dark, when that innocent laughter would come rushing out of her mouth. “Do you know how I found out? Well, I was in a dream, and I was standing on my head…leaves were growing from my body, and roots were sprouting from my hands…so I dug down into the earth. On and on…I wanted flowers to bloom from my crotch, so I spread my legs; I spread them wide…”

Bewildered, In-hye looked across at Yeong-hye’s feverish eyes.