Han Kang - The Vegetarian

“How is Yeong-hye? If you go now…”

In-hye takes hold of the other woman’s hand. “I’ve been really grateful.” In-hye finds herself surprised by the impulse to reach out and put her arms around the broad shoulders of this crying woman. But she doesn’t act on it; instead, she turns and looks over at the patients who are peering anxiously out of the window. They may be nervous but they’re also earnest, captivated, as if longing to walk through the glass and find themselves outside. They’re trapped here, In-hye thinks. Just like this woman, Hee-joo. Just like Yeong-hye. Her inability to embrace Hee-joo is bound up with the guilt she feels over having had Yeong-hye incarcerated here.

Rapid footsteps can be heard, coming from the eastern corridor. A moment later two carers appear, taking short, quick steps; they are carrying Yeong-hye on a stretcher. Now cleaned of blood and with her eyes closed, Yeong-hye’s face is like that of a baby napping after a bath. Hee-joo reaches out to take Yeong-hye’s wasted hand in her own rough palm, and In-hye turns her head so that she won’t have to watch.

—

The summer woods are dense and luxuriant beyond the windshield of the ambulance. In the waning afternoon light, the rain on the leaves glitters intensely, kindling a green fire.

In-hye brushes Yeong-hye’s hair, still slightly damp from when the nurse’s aide had washed the blood off, back behind her ears. She remembers rubbing soap over her sister’s individually protruding vertebrae, all those times when they had bathed together as children, those evenings when she had washed her back and hair for her.

It occurs to her that Yeong-hye’s hair now reminds her of Ji-woo’s when he was still in swaddling clothes, she feels her son’s small fingers brush her eyebrows, and loneliness sweeps over her.

She gets her mobile out of the inner pocket of her bag. It’s been off all day; now she switches it on and dials the number of the woman who lives next door.

“Hi, it’s Ji-woo’s mum…I’ve had to stop by the hospital because of a relative…yes, something suddenly…no, the bus will be at the main gate at five-fifty, you see…yes, it’s almost always exactly on time…I won’t be very late. If I’m late I’ll have to take Ji-woo and then go back to the hospital. How can he sleep there?…Thank you so much…you have my number, right?…I’ll call again later.”

She flips the phone closed and realizes how long it’s been since she left Ji-woo in the care of someone else. After her husband left, she’d made it a general rule always to spend evenings and weekends with the child.

She frowns. Drowsiness presses in on her, and she leans against the window. She sits there with her eyes closed and thinks.

Ji-woo will be grown up soon. He’ll be able to read on his own, see other people on his own. Somehow or other, he will inevitably get to hear about all that happened, and how on earth will she explain it to him? He is a sensitive child, prone to minor illnesses, but he is also a happy child. How will she make sure he stays this way?

She recalls the sight of those two naked bodies, twined together like jungle creepers. Of course, it had shocked her at the time, and yet oddly enough, the more time went by the less she thought of it as something sexual. Covered with flowers and leaves and twisting green stems, those bodies were so altered it was as though they no longer belonged to human beings. The writhing movements of those bodies made it seem as though they were trying to shuck off the human. What was it that had made him want to film such a thing? Had he staked everything of himself on those strange, desolate images — staked everything, and lost everything?

—

“There was this photo of you, Mum, flying about in the wind. I was looking at the sky, okay, and there was a bird, and I heard it say, ‘I’m your mum.’ And these two hands came out of the bird’s body.”

This had been a long while back, when Ji-woo’s tongue still tripped over certain words. The strange vague sadness of a child near tears had surprised her, she remembers.

“What’s all this, hey? Are you saying it was a sad dream?” Still lying down, Ji-woo had rubbed at his eyes with his little fists. “What did the bird look like? What color was it?”

“White…yeah, it was pretty.” Sucking in a quavering breath, the boy had buried his head in his mother’s chest. His sobs desolated her, just like every time he went to great efforts to make her laugh. There was no demand he had that she might fulfill, nor was he trying to ask for help. He was crying simply because he felt sad.

“It must have meant it was a mummy bird,” she’d said, hoping to placate him. Ji-woo shook his head, still pressed up against her chest. She slipped a hand under his chin and tilted his head up. “Look, your mum’s right here. I haven’t changed into a white bird, you see?” His lips wavered into a faint, uncertain smile. His nose was as shiny as a puppy’s. “You see, it was just a dream.”

But was that really true? Right then, in the ambulance, she wasn’t sure. Had it really been just a dream, a mere coincidence? Because that had been the morning when she turned her back on the sun as it rose over the silent trees and retraced her steps back down the mountain, wearing her faded purple T-shirt.

—

It’s just a dream.

That’s what she tells herself, out loud and vehement, every time she recalls how Ji-woo looked at her that day. This time she’s startled by her own voice, opens her eyes wide and stares confusedly about her. The ambulance is still racing down the steep road. She smoothes her hair back, knows she should see to it, knows it must look a state. Her hand trembles visibly.

She can’t explain, not even to herself, how easy it had been to make the decision to abandon her child. It was a crime, cruel and irresponsible; she would never be able to convince herself otherwise, and so it was also something she would never be able to confess, never be forgiven for. The truth of the matter was something she simply felt, horribly clearly. If her husband and Yeong-hye hadn’t smashed through all the boundaries, if everything hadn’t splintered apart, then perhaps she was the one who would have broken down, and if she’d let that happen, if she’d let go of the thread, she might never have found it again. In that case, would the blood that Yeong-hye had vomited today have burst from her, In-hye’s, chest instead?

With a low moan, Yeong-hye struggles into consciousness. Afraid that she might be going to vomit blood again, In-hye casts around for a hand towel and holds it to her sister’s mouth.

“Uh…uhn…”

Yeong-hye doesn’t vomit; instead, she opens her eyes. Her black pupils fix on In-hye. What is stirring behind those eyes? What is she harboring inside her, beyond the reach of her sister’s imagination? What terror, what anger, what agony, what hell?

“Yeong-hye?” In-hye says. Her voice is drained of all emotion.

“Uh…uhn…” Yeong-hye averts her head as though wanting to evade her sister’s question, as though the last thing in the world she wants to do right now is to give her any kind of answer. In-hye reaches out a trembling hand, then almost immediately lets it drop.

In-hye presses her lips together. It’s come back to her, all of a sudden; the mountain path she walked down, early that morning. The dew that wet her sandals had chilled her otherwise bare feet. There had been no tears, nothing like that, because at the time she hadn’t understood. She hadn’t understood what that cold moisture had been trying to say, as it drenched her battered body and spread through her dried-up veins. It had simply leached through into her flesh, down to her very bones.

Then In-hye opens her mouth. “What I’m trying to say…,” she whispers to Yeong-hye. The ambulance chassis rattles over a hollow in the road. In-hye squeezes Yeong-hye’s shoulders. “Perhaps this is all a kind of dream.” She bows her head. But then, as though suddenly struck by something, she brings her mouth right up to Yeong-hye’s ear and carries on speaking, forming the words carefully, one by one. “I have dreams too, you know. Dreams…and I could let myself dissolve into them, let them take me over…but surely the dream isn’t all there is? We have to wake up at some point, don’t we? Because…because then…”