Han Kang - The Vegetarian

She looked on in silence as spring passed and summer arrived. The outfits sported by her female customers grew progressively shorter, and more colorful. As always, she smiled at the customers, never failed to recommend additional products or give discounts where appropriate, and made sure to pack up a complimentary sample with every purchase. She put up posters advertising new products in carefully chosen locations around the shop, where they would catch the customers’ eyes, and handled with ease those occasions when skin-care consultants hadn’t got good feedback and therefore had to be replaced. But in the evenings, when she left her employees and walked through the sweltering night streets, brimming with music and crowded with couples on dates, she could feel that gaping black wound still sucking at her, pulling her in. She dragged her sweat-soaked body through the street and away from the crowds.

—

It had happened around the time when those sweltering summer days had started to cool down a little, at least in the mornings and evenings. When he arrived back at the house early one morning, sneaking in like a thief after several days away, got into bed and tried to put his arms around her, she pushed him away.

“I’m tired…I said I’m really tired.”

“Just put up with it for a minute,” he said.

She remembered how it had been. Those words had run through her semi-conscious mind again and again. Still half asleep, she’d managed to get through it by thinking to herself that it was all right, it would just be this one time, it would be over soon, she could put up with it. The pain and shame had been washed away by the deep, exhausted sleep she slipped into immediately afterward. And yet later, at the breakfast table, she would all of a sudden find herself wanting to stab herself in the eyes with her chopsticks, or pour the boiling water from the kettle over her head.

Once her husband had fallen asleep, the bedroom was still and silent again. She picked up Ji-woo, who had been sleeping on his side, and put him back down so that he was lying on his back, seeing as she did so how pitiful they must appear, mother and child faintly outlined in the darkness.

There was nothing the matter. It was a fact. Everything would be fine as long as she just kept going, just carried on with her life as she always had done. In any case, there was no other way.

She left the bedroom and looked out of the dark blue veranda window. The toys that Ji-woo had been playing with last night, the sofa and the television, the black door flaps underneath the sink and the splotches of grease on the gas range; it was as though she were seeing these things for the first time, walking around the house as though she’d never been there before. A strange pain gripped her chest. It was an oppressive, constricting feeling, as if the walls of the house were slowly closing in.

She opened the wardrobe door and took out the purple cotton T-shirt. Its color had faded, because Ji-woo had liked it when he was nursing and so she’d worn it often in the house. It was the kind of thing she liked to wear when she was ill or just not feeling her best; even though she’d washed it countless times, that milk-and-newborn-baby smell still gave her a sense of security. But this time it didn’t work. The pain in her chest got worse. Her breathing grew shallow, and she had to make an effort to try to breathe more deeply.

She sat down on the sofa. Her eyes followed the second hand on the clock as it ticked around, and she made another effort to regulate her breathing. To her surprise, there was still no improvement. A feeling of déjà vu crept up on her then, a feeling of having already experienced this same moment countless times. The proof of her internal pain had been set in front of her as though this were something she’d spent a long time preparing for, as though she’d been waiting for just this moment.

All of this is meaningless.

I can’t take it anymore.

I can’t go on any longer.

I don’t want to.

She took one more look around at the various objects inside the house. They did not belong to her. Just like her life had never belonged to her.

Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance, no more real than a television drama. Death, who now stood by her side, was as familiar to her as a family member, missing for a long time but now returned.

She got up, shivering, and went over to the room where the toys had been left scattered. Every evening for the past week, she would take down the mobile which Ji-woo had helped her to decorate, and begin to untie the thick cord. It was wound so tightly that it hurt the tips of her fingers, but she continued patiently until the final knot was untied. She rolled up the colored paper and cellophane, which had been decorated with stars, and tidied it away in a basket, then rolled up the cord and put it in her trouser pocket.

She slipped on a pair of sandals, pushed open the heavy front door and went out. She walked down the five flights of stairs. It was still dark outside. The huge apartment building was illuminated only by the light she herself had left on. She carried on walking, through the gate at the rear of the apartment complex and up the dark, narrow path to the mountain.

The folds of the mountain looked deeper than usual in the blue-black darkness. It was so early that even the old-timers who diligently went out to collect mineral water at dawn were still asleep in their beds. She walked on, head bowed. There was something on her face, sweat or tears, she wasn’t sure, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. The pain feels like a hole swallowing her up, a source of intense fear and yet, at the same time, a strange, quiet peace.

—

Time passes.

In-hye sits back down. She opens the lid of the last container. She takes hold of Yeong-hye’s stiff hand and pulls it toward the plums, running her sister’s fingers over their smooth skin. She curls those gaunt fingers around one of the plums, makes her hold it.

Plums are one of the fruits that Yeong-hye used to like. In-hye remembered that, as a child, Yeong-hye would sometimes roll one around inside her mouth for a while without biting into it, saying that she liked the way it felt. But now her sister’s hand is limp and unresponsive. Her fingernails have become as thin as paper.

“Yeong-hye.” Her voice sounds dry and rasping in the silence of the ward. No answer; she brings her face up close to Yeong-hye’s. Just then, though it seems unbelievable, Yeong-hye’s eyelids flutter open. “Yeong-hye!” She peers into her sister’s empty black pupils, but all that she sees reflected there is her own face. The strength of her own disappointment takes her by surprise, plunging her into despair. “You’re actually insane.” It’s a thought she hasn’t been able to countenance these past few days, but now, for the first time, she asks Yeong-hye the question. “Have you really lost your mind?”

An inscrutable fear makes her draw back from her sister, but she remains seated. The stillness of the ward, without even the sound of breathing to break the silence, is like waterlogged cotton wool stopping up her ears.

“Perhaps…,” she mutters to herself. “Perhaps it’s simpler than I thought.” She hesitates, falling silent for a while. “You’re crazy, and so…” Instead of completing the thought, she reaches out and touches her index finger to her sister’s philtrum. A faint breath tickles her finger, warm and regular. Yeong-hye’s lips twitch minutely.

This pain and insomnia that, unbeknownst to others, now has In-hye in its grip — might Yeong-hye have passed through this same phase herself, a long time ago and more quickly than most people? Might Yeong-hye’s current condition be the natural progression from what her sister has recently been experiencing? Perhaps, at some point, Yeong-hye had simply let fall the slender thread that had kept her connected with everyday life. During the past insomniac months, In-hye had sometimes felt as though she were living in a state of total chaos. If it hadn’t been for Ji-woo — if it hadn’t been for the sense of responsibility she felt toward him — perhaps she too might have relinquished her grip on that thread.