INTERVIEW

• Please, Pyun Hye Young, Don’t Stop Walking Vol. 29 Autumn 2015

    For a long time, Pyun Hye Young worked in an office in the city. Nowadays she works at a university teaching creative writing, but she must still be spending a lot of time in an office. I imagine that her documents and scraps of paper, dappled with her fingerprints, are piled up in a basement storeroom in a secret building, and there a shadow, having lost its body, is reading out the sentences written on the old, soggy paper. The voice of the shadow echoes along an iron staircase which runs up to the office.      Pyun Hye Young likes paper and writing implements, and often her gaze is concentrated on things like teacups, plates, and empty containers. All of those things will be made up of perfect rectangles, triangles, and circles. Like an office worker, Pyun Hye Young knows how to conceal her intentions and how to be considerate of others. She speaks her words clearly as though typing them out. She resolutely erases the language of pain and despair, dealing only with the matter at hand, and at times alters the atmosphere with a dry joke. Her hands, as they lower the blinds, will exude just the right mixture of coolness and warmth.      There is no particular subject matter or type of character that Pyun Hye Young favors. She lives a life without anything you might call a hobby. Once, when asked whether she liked animals she responded, “I’m not able to like an animal that’s covered in fur.” Not able to like. I want to draw emphasis to those words. Born in the Year of the Rat, she hates rats, but she does like their habits. She said that she finds the way that they follow the same fixed path every day interesting. People who follow the same fixed path every day. The characters in her novels come to mind. They are people who walk keeping a fixed gait, but limp when no one is looking. It seems just as if you were to say, “Oh my, you’re limping!” the response would be, “Really? I don’t think so,” accompanied a moment later by an awkward smile.      People who live their everyday lives with their desires regimented and repeated. Moments of ruin and misfortune that spring out of the blue. Faces that are so pale they are placed on the photocopier, seen from behind some crumpled human forms, trembling like paper. Her novels are dominated by an unspeakable horror, anxiety, and coercion. If a writer is someone who, from a certain point, begins playing out their experiences in language, what is it that Pyun Hye Young has perceived? Why does it not stop? She said that when she becomes fixated on a single problem, although there is no way of knowing what it is, she cannot help but keep writing, even if it is a story that repeats itself. She cannot help but keep writing. Again, I want to draw an emphasis to those words. It’s impossible to know what it is exactly, but I believe that the countless urban spaces, the countess city scenes that she has walked through, pull her writing ever onward.      Pyun Hye Young was born on the outskirts of Seoul, went to school there, got a job in the city, got married, and is still writing novels in the same surroundings. She grew up in a place where farmland and ruin and new buildings coexisted. For her, the most familiar scenery is that of the building sites of an expanding city. Her development was goaded by dust and noise and the coarse talk of construction workers, and the image of demolition and construction has made up her emotional map.      The city continues to change its guises rapidly. There is no spare moment for studying ethics. The darkness of the city. The speed, the sounds of the city. While despising such things, she also loves them. The characters in her novels are either in the city, striving to leave it, or heading towards it. In the end, they all turn in a similar orbit around the city. Just like her characters, Pyun Hye Young will not be able to escape the city. Don’t leave. Don’t stay either. Keep walking your fixed path, so that when we lose our way in your novels and begin to wander, you can ensure that we find a different path, following a faint shaft of light.      by Kim Taeyong Novelist

• I Went My Way, with Someone Beside Me Vol.27 Spring 2015

      Sometimes I get the feeling that Ae-ran thinks with her eyes. Big, dark eyes turned mischievously on the world, taking a good, long, deep, lingering look, before turning inwards to herself. Storing up what they had just seen, no doubt. Only then does she put words to the objects of that good, long, deep, lingering gaze, taking her own sweet time producing each sentence.      Sometimes it feels like that when she’s talking, too. If you ever catch Ae-ran suddenly falling silent in mid-sentence, blinking slowly and seemingly staring off into space, rest assured that what you are witnessing is nothing more than a mental warm-up of sorts. Flexing the muscles of her thoughts, Ae-ran leaps up and usually lands on a joke. We’ll burst out laughing or nod understandingly before more jokes and more laughs follow, or sometimes tease her a bit before joining in the laughter.      Ae-ran’s jokes are often ways of brushing off trivial but bothersome worries, unpredictable coincidences, and unspecified stretches of time, but what she is actually thinking is beyond the realm of jokes, the invisible gap between jokes, their pale and fragile texture. And while she does not try to erase the stain of things that happen to her, she thinks about them for a long time, watches them, and embraces them. She does not plough over what is difficult to say or explain, or try to turn it into a joke, or tie a neat narrative bow around it—that she leaves up to those deep, dark eyes that gaze upon the world and herself at the same time.      She doesn’t jump to conclusions about people or things, preferring to guess and surmise with an “I suppose so.” She thinks the good thing about writing is “those instants when I get to feel awed by the world and its people, without having any religion,” and that writing fiction comes down to a kind of attitude, of facing the world and treating people the best way she can. She knows that if you give one hand to joy, you always take sadness in the other.      by Pyun Hye-young Novelist    *This is an excerpt from “I Went My Way, with Someone Beside Me,” Yi Sang Literary Award Anthology (Seoul: Munhaksasang, 2013).

• Witness to Solitude: Novelist Pyun Hye-Young Vol.12 Summer 2011

  We were set to meet near the river. A thick fog was slowly turning the sky an ash grey. It reminded me of a scene from her novel. I pictured the main character, who finds himself all alone in the world. Just then, Pyun Hye-Young walked into the cafe, her face a bright red. Pyun has been one of the most prolific writers in Korea in the last decade. I was thrilled to meet her. As I listened to the sound of her voice and watched the changing expressions on the face of this calm and careful storyteller, I found myself feeling somehow comforted. Perhaps even the lonely man in her book sensed her warmth from afar.   Yang: You just published your third short story collection right on the tail of your first novel. Was it hard to part ways with your characters? Pyun: Well, in the case of Ashes and Red, I’ve spent so much time talking about it in various publications that, in the process, I felt like I was slowly saying goodbye to that world. Also, the short stories were already written, and I had time to say my goodbyes while the collection was being put together. So the postpartum pain wasn’t too bad. (laughs) Yang: Most Korean writers add an author’s note at the end of their books. But you chose not to add one to Ashes and Red, even though it was your first novel. If you were to add one now, what would you want to say? Pyun: I did not add an author’s note when the book was published because, as a writer, I was concerned about elaborating too much on the content of the novel and over-explaining the character. I still feel that way, but I suppose I would like to thank those who have read the book, those who are reading it now, and those who will read it in the future. Critic Yang Yun-eui and novelist Pyun Hye-Young   Yang: Recently, you have been serializing your second novel online. Is there a big difference for you in terms of writing a short story versus writing a novel? Pyun: If writing a short story feels like running a hundred-meter sprint, then writing a novel is like running a marathon. You take deeper breaths and can’t stop for rest. I guess I must be out of shape, because I felt a little out of breath. Yang: In the last decade, your writing has carved out a new field in Korean fiction, and your first two short story collections clearly showed where you stand. With Ashes and Red, the motifs that appeared in your short stories seem to be more integrated and expanded. Was there a particular inspiration behind the novel? Pyun: This is a delicate subject considering the unfortunate disaster that has taken place in Japan, but Ashes and Red was inspired by earthquakes. Depending on how you look at it, an earthquake is like “bad luck.” They both strike without warning and can cause even a life that appears strong and stable to collapse in an instant. I read an article on earthquakes in a science magazine. It said that in countries where large earthquakes are predicted to happen, even the slightest tremor can cause fatalities. Not because of the earthquake itself, but because people can mistake a tremor for the “big one” and panic. They might rush out of a building only to accidentally fall to their deaths. Ironically, the desire to live can lead to your death. I felt that this said something about what it means to be human, so I based my novel on it. Yang: Now that you’ve said that, it seems like you must’ve felt the same stress and anxiety as the character in your novel. Was it difficult to write? Pyun: The whole time I was writing, I had to steadily maintain my focus, so that part was difficult. But when I write, I try to keep the furthest distance possible from what is happening to the characters. If I had completely closed the distance between the narrator and the main character, then I would have absorbed the main character’s pain and suffered. But in this book, I maintained a sense of distance from the characters and tried to write in the voice of a distant observer, so I did not internalize their pain. Yang: That sense of distance also seems to enhance the character’s duality. In the novel, the character goes abroad for a job transfer and finds himself lost and confused. Up until the halfway point, it seems clear that he’s a victim. But when he becomes implicated in his ex-wife’s death, he starts to look more like a victimizer who lashes out violently at others. So I guess you could say the character is two-faced? Would you say that this two-sidedness is inherent to human desire itself? Pyun: In my opinion, the main character in Ashes and Red is both a victim and a victimizer. He is a victim in the sense that he is thrown into this diseased city, this world of violence, without regard for his own will. But since he plays a role in that violence, he is also a perpetrator. It does not matter whether he killed his wife or not. The man is pushed around by this violent world, but he comforts and consoles himself with the thought that he’s a victim while easily turning into a perpetrator at a moment’s notice. He seems pitiful because his existence is consumed by this world, but at the same time, he’s not worthy of endless pity because he is also responsible for his situation. Yang: So I guess, to borrow a line from your novel, you could say he “catches women during the day and rats at night.” Women, or perhaps wives, play an important part in this man’s story. Of your short stories, “Evening Courtship” struck me as a poetic love story. This isn’t directly connected to your work, but could we turn the topic of conversation to romance? Pyun: That’s not something I have much experience with, unfortunately. (laughs) I’m more the type to tell my younger friends that they should date more. Nothing brings people together quite like love or romance, and one of the things we learn from such relationships ultimately is the question, “What kind of person am I?” It is both the only way for one individual to try to understand another individual, and conversely the process through which we realize how little we actually know about each other. I find love, as a way for a person to find out who they are, to be highly recommended. (laughs) You said that “Evening Courtship” is a love story, and I do think it expresses one type of love. To me, the most beautiful moment in love is when you’re itching with the desire to know the other person, to confess your love, and to hear them confess their love, but you have no assurance of what they feel for you. In other words, I’m referring to that feeling of itching with a desire that cannot be put into words, and holding back and hesitating with each other, even while gladly summoning the courage to try. “Evening Courtship” is about sharing your true feelings with another person despite yourself. In that respect, I agree that it is a type of love story. Yang: So I wasn’t that far off the mark. I can’t wait to read a full-fledged love story written by you someday. (laughs) You mentioned the idea of hesitations that cannot be expressed in words. I can’t help but think that this mentality is similar to the hesitation and indecision experienced by the main character in Ashes and Red. After the main character becomes homeless, things still could have ended in a hopeful way if he had confirmed the existence of “Mol.” But when you look at it from another angle, it is also the process through which his life falls apart. In that sense, can you talk about the meaning behind the title, Ashes and Red? Pyun: I got the idea for the title from the scene where the main character sees the flames of the incineration plant and thinks they are beautiful. You could also say that the key colors of the entire book are ash grey and crimson red. If I had changed the word order around to “Red and Ashes,” then it would have put more emphasis on “grey.” So I put “red” last in order to highlight the red that is left behind in a grey, ruined world. Blood-red signifies death, but it also signifies vitality. So I hope that is how the title will be interpreted. Yang: So that dual meaning applies to both the theme of the novel and the personality of the main character. Pyun: Yes, it does. I like to write about things like irony and the duality of human nature. 1. Evening Courtship Pyun Hye-Young, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 257p, ISBN 9788932021850   2. AOI Garden Pyun Hye-Young, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2005, 266p, ISBN 9788932016207   3. Ashes and Red Pyun Hye-Young, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2010, 260p, ISBN 9788936433734     Yang: I heard that an excerpt of your novel will be translated and included with this interview. Is there a particular reason you chose this excerpt? (pages 95-98 of the Korean edition) Pyun: In that excerpt, the main character experiences loneliness the news, he can’t believe it. But he relives an unhappy memory from his past that reminds him of his wife. I think of this scene as the first moment where the character begins to realize how alone he is. It also foreshadows the fact that he will have to get by and survive on his own without anyone to talk to about his fear and loneliness. Yang: I thought the most dramatic depiction of the main character’s loneliness was in the final scene of the book—where his only means of communication with the outside world is a public telephone. He’s hit rock bottom, and he’s clinging desperately to the telephone line like a man hanging from a cliff. In fact, the word for “public telephone”—gongjung—is a homonym that can also be read as “midair.” When I think of that scene, with the image of the man talking to the empty air, the excerpt you chose seems all the more meaningful. Pyun: My first version of the ending had the character gazing at a ruined world in which he has to survive on his own. But if I did that, the reader would be left with only the image of an irrational, oppressive world. It felt like all the blame was placed on the irrationality of systems or the world. So I changed it to a depiction of the main character’s daily life. And I depicted this life as one in which he has lost his own name and adopted the name Mol instead, after the name of the person he searched for but was unable to find. So though he has survived, he’ll never be happy. It may be that he will always be alone in the world. Yang: Now that you say that, the name Mol seems like a compressed version of his entire life. In your stories, most of your characters are either nameless or only have a last name. Is there a particular reason for this? Pyun: I chose the name Mol because it doesn’t signify any particular ethnicity or nationality. The Chinese character for mol means “to disappear.” In the end, the main character has vanished from reality. Also, I thought the word sounded like the English word, “mall.” The word “mall” makes me picture a child lost within an enormous maze-like structure or an artificial world. I also often use the name Yujin, the main character’s friend, because it is not limited by gender or nationality. I like names that don’t contain any preconceptions about race, nationality, or gender. Though, of course, it’s not easy to find names like that. Yang: That’s true about the characters names, but it’s also true about the setting of the story. In your book, no specific nationalities or place names are mentioned. There is not even much indication of when the story takes place. In that regard, infectious disease or earthquakes seem to play a big role in creating worlds, beyond nationality and time period. I guess you could say it is proof that the whole world faces the same difficulties. Pyun: My short story “AOI Garden” was set in an apartment building in Hong Kong during the SARS epidemic. And, as I said, the starting point of Ashes and Red was a major earthquake. Just as earthquakes give shape to the fear of disaster striking anywhere at any time, disease and epidemics have a similar context. We only experience epidemics through warnings; they don’t exist to us outside of that. Recently, the world was hit hard by the H1N1 virus. I am no expert, so I thought it was nothing more than a type of cold. But socially, there were endless warnings about the dangers of a new virus. An epidemic is where the symptoms are unknown but fear builds with each warning and new set of information. Also, in the case of earthquakes and epidemics, there are always victims, but the rest of the world quickly recovers its vitality. That, too, is part of the nature of everyday life. No matter what horrors we experience, daily life always makes a quick recovery. Yang: Considering the recent earthquake in Japan and the explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant, your novel seems quite timely. Nuclear power stops at national borders, but radioactivity has no nationality. You just completed your second novel, which was published online in serial form. How is it different from your first novel? Pyun: With Ashes and Red, I felt like I was tightening my shoelaces at the starting line, waiting for the gun to go off. But when I wrote my second novel, I had time to check my laces, do a little warm-up, and wave to my friends who had come out to support me. I guess you could say I enjoyed being able to take my time and take deeper breaths while working on something longer. Yang: I look forward to reading the author’s note in your second novel very soon. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.

FICTION

• Aoi Garden Vol.51 Spring 2021

  She was surprisingly adept at slicing open the stomach of the unconscious cat. Its organs were still throbbing warmly in a pool of blood. Cats have long been accused, not for nothing, of being carriers of disease. When the plague first struck Aoi Garden, the authorities couldn’t pinpoint the source of the outbreak. Only after confirmed cases began appearing in other apartments was the pathogen finally identified, with the findings reported in an international medical conference. Data was presented that traced the transmission route leading from the first host microorganisms all the way to human patients. Cats were somewhere on that route. When it came to preventions and possible treatments, there was nothing but hearsay. It was impossible to even think of developing a vaccine or any therapeutics. Doctors hesitated to come into contact with patients, as some physicians on duty had reportedly come down with the infection. People started double masking. They wore disposable gloves or surgical latex gloves to protect their hands. Still, the best course of action was to not get infected. It would take years, or even hundreds of years, for a vaccine or viable treatment to be developed. The authorities announced that the mortality rate was not that high. But because the rate of infection was so high and there were no available treatments, the fears did not quickly subside. When a person became infected, there was nothing he could do but wait for impending death or transmit the disease to someone else. Being infection-free was no better, either. In fact, people who were uninfected lived as if they were already dead, under the all-consuming fear that one day they might succumb to the sickness that hung in the air. My sister often talked about what lay outdoors. Diseased, dying people could sometimes be seen roaming the otherwise empty streets. “Was it the plague that killed all those people?” I asked. “I can’t say. Some people froze to death or were stabbed by muggers. Some of them died without anyone knowing the reason why. But the thinking was that if you’re out there, you must be diseased or crazy.” She didn’t explain why she herself had been out there. But I believe she was planning to move to a different city. The way she put it to me was that, when she realized she couldn’t leave, she decided she might as well die. Everyone in the city probably felt the same way. There was no way Aoi Garden was safe. This building had the city’s first confirmed case. But this was the only place we could be. As long as we made sure not to touch anyone’s hands, or take off our masks and start talking, or share the same cup of water, or use the same pillow, or have the briefest of conversations even in our sleep, Aoi Garden could be relatively safe. At first, it was somewhat inconvenient to wear face masks at home. Soon, however, I became so used to the masks that I could eat my meals while still wearing one. The trick was to lift a corner of the mask, quickly shove a spoonful of food into my mouth, then snap the mask back into place while I chewed. If this got annoying, I could choose to eat less. Every time I had to drink water, the mask ended up slightly wet. When it did, it gave off a foul smell—a mix of my own breath, sweat, and the food I’d just eaten. It wasn’t always terrible living in Aoi Garden. As someone who was born and bred in Aoi Garden, it was much more challenging to venture outside the building. The same was true of Mother. She was growing old, clinging to the walls of the apartment like the mold that grew there. The only “going out” we did was to open the front door and sit by it sometimes, looking out at the hallway. The hallway was completely empty and dark and as ominously narrow as a passageway to hell. These “outings” were always kept short. The nausea-inducing smells that infiltrated our place through the open door made it unbearable to stay out there too long. There were all sorts of confusing rumors. One of them involved a young girl who was said to have gone around spreading the infection. According to some, the girl wore a red scarf around her neck. Nobody knew who she was. It was unclear who it was who first saw her. Everyone seemed to know what she looked like, but no one had seen her in real life. They said the girl could be seen walking along the mud walls that crisscrossed the town and past the black curtains that billowed at the windows, stopping to wave her red scarf on the way. Rumor had it that whenever she did that, the people who lived behind those windows would invariably get sick. Her style of dress became popular among the younger students. All the girls started wearing red scarves around their necks. They dressed in white to make the red color pop. My sister began dressing in the same manner. The red scarf looked as natural on her as the creases on her neck. In the first days of the outbreak, people gathered at churches and temples. People came who weren’t infected, who knew they were infected, and who didn’t know they were infected. Some of the pastors in these churches became afraid of getting sick and refused to show up, so the faithful had no choice but to leave, their souls unappeased. Later, the places of worship banned all public gatherings. Doctors, too, were feeling helpless. They resorted to bloodletting to cure their patients. This method had not been used before the outbreak. By letting their blood flow, patients believed they would be rid of all the bad things in their bodies as well. Soon, doctors became convinced this was true. Later, when it became clear that none of the existing medicines were working, physicians began secretly prescribing drugs laced with mercury. Word spread that some people were cured after taking these pills. The prices were jacked up. This led to more crime, committed by people desperate to get their hands on the drugs. Experts pleaded with the public to stop, as these drugs were useless against the disease, but no one listened. People still paid a hefty sum to get the drugs anyway. Time passed but the disease didn’t go away. Some people’s faces turned black from the amount of mercury in their systems. This only gave more weight to the belief that there was no cure against the plague. Finally, Mother managed to reach the cat’s abdomen. She told my sister to make the incision, to which she complained, “Shit, that means I’ll get blood all over my clothes.” I watched quietly, a bit of cat fur sitting on my head. Grudgingly, my sister reached into the abdomen and felt around among the gallbladder, stomach, and kidneys. I eyed her blood-soaked gloves with undisguised envy. If I had reached into the animal’s abdomen myself and seen its intestines surrounded by warm, pulsing blood vessels, I would have had the urge to feel and grab them. Mother yelled at her to hold the clamp steady. As my sister raised her arm to lift the clamp, a drop of blood fell from her glove and coursed down the length of her arm and into her armpit. The blood was an almost blindingly bright red color. The operation came to an end by closing up the cat’s abdomen. Its uterus, now removed, gave off a foul stench. On the surface, it was hard to tell whether the indistinguishable lump was the cat’s uterus, its heart, a lung, or the duodenum. It was merely a bloody mess, similar to every other organ. After a pot of boiling water had cooled, Mother used the water to wash the site of the suture. Over time, the cat’s remaining organs would rearrange themselves to fill the empty space where its uterus had been. My sister glanced at the cat as it lay stretched out on the floor, then took off her bloodied gloves. I reached for them but she tossed them outside on the balcony. She wet a piece of gauze with antiseptic and slowly wiped her hands with it. Mother was especially skilled at sutures. That was a relief. If the cat hadn’t been sutured properly, its bloody intestines would have spilled out of the seams as we lifted it up. If nothing else, the operation was successful in terms of opening and stitching up the cat. When it was all over, Mother headed into her room, which was as dark and narrow as a crypt. It had poor air circulation, and the smell of rotting meat hung in the air. Ever since her menstrual cycle came back, she seemed to have lost more of her energy; any spare time she could find, she’d lay her blackened body to rest. My sister, also spent, lay down on the floor. The cat, which had lost so much blood that it seemed as if it had lost all its organs, also looked exhausted. I stroked its stomach where the stitches were. Each time I did, the cat purred, its body gently stirring. A while later, Mother emerged from her room and tossed a balled-up bunch of garbage towards the balcony. Some of the flying pieces peeled off the ball and landed on the living room floor. They looked to be dirty towels, damp and smelly, that were mostly black or the color of blood. Mother had already retired to her room by the time I crawled to where they lay. The color reminded me of the cat’s dark red blood. The blood had been a bright yet deep, dark red, dazzling to behold yet filthy. I picked up the towels from the floor and held them to my nose. Instantly I knew what they were. They were cloth towels Mother had kept tucked under her dead, black crotch. The stench from them was enough to blur the surface of mirrors, dull the edges of knives, crack plates, gather the worms from the mud, and send the rats in the attic into a frenzy. I thought again how strange it was that she was bleeding in that area when she was supposed to be in menopause. I woke my sister from her sleep and showed her what I’d picked up from the floor. She told me that some women started menstruating again before they became old and died. “Before they became old and died?” I repeated. I had no idea how old Mother was. How old do you have to be to be old and dying? Was there such a thing as a “dying” age? It wasn’t just Mother’s age. I had no idea how old my sister was, or even how old I was. Sometimes I felt like a boy of seventeen, sometimes a young man of twenty-three, and sometimes a child of twelve. How old I was depended on Mother’s feelings at the time. Some days, she claimed it had been over twenty years since she’d given birth to me; other days, she screamed and accused me of being an insolent twelve-year-old kid who hit his mother. I myself had no memory of the year I was born. Once, I asked Mother if what had happened to my legs was a result of the epidemic. She said I was born sometime before the outbreak. I couldn’t remember a time before the plague. I don’t know when it first began. As far back as I could remember, the epidemic was always there; the only difference was that it was quieter on some days, while unleashing hell during others. Somewhere along the way, I was born to this woman, who was already living in Aoi Garden by that time. And it was after the epidemic first struck that my wet dreams began. I know, because I remember being convinced that I’d been infected with the plague when I saw what looked like pus dribbling out of my penis instead of urine. It must have been several years since my first wet dream, although it could just as likely have been a few months. From the wet dreams, I gathered that I was past my puberty years, but my underdeveloped legs told me I could just as likely be twelve years old. I wasn’t sure whether Mother knew how old she was, much less how old I or my sister were. “Yeah, before they die. They all start bleeding before they die. Maybe the uterus becomes diseased or something. When that happens, they start bleeding at random times before they die,” my sister said, as she rolled over on her side. “How old is she to be dying already?” “You think death knows age?” She spat, before growing quiet again. I knew that this subject lay outside her area of expertise. She once claimed I was thirty-seven years old. And that she had been born maybe three or four months earlier. Yet, her face belonged to a girl who couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. There was no way to tell which one of us was older. We spoke casually to one another, and Mother never scolded us for doing so. The smell of Mother’s blood mixed with her urine and vaginal discharge stained my fingers. I could smell it on my sister. The smell was worse than the stench from the abandoned streets. I imagined the smell forcing us to vomit nonstop until we become emaciated and our skin turn black, eventually rotting away our insides. I started a fire and held the bloodied towels up to the flames. This still did not get rid of the smell. My sister snatched the towels from me. She began rubbing them hard against her own crotch within its mess of thick, black hair. She said she had no choice because her crotch was burning as if it were being ripped apart. Her vagina had indeed split open, revealing the raw, red flesh inside. “Don’t do that. If that blood gets on you, you’ll start shivering and your eyeballs will pop out of their sockets. Your organs will explode and you could die!” I begged her to stop. I grabbed the towels from her and set fire to them. Afraid she might grab them from me if I let go, I held on to them until they turned to ash. Some of the sparks jumped and burned my hands. Two of my fingers melted down and clung to one another. But the smell that had seeped into my fingers still didn’t go away. At the smell of burning flesh, the cat drew near. I stroked its head, then its chest, stomach, and tail. Feeling a rush of pity at the sight of the stitches sticking out of its fur, I drew the cat close and hugged it tight. I must have hugged it too tight though, as the cat ended up crawling into my stomach. I dry heaved as hard as I could to vomit out the cat. Some of its fur fell out of my mouth, heavy with saliva. I coughed up one of its eyeballs that had been stuck in my throat. My sister frowned, as if her stomach was upsetting her. Gently, she stroked her round belly. Fighting back the nausea that arose from the cat, I asked her whose child it was that was in her womb. She said she didn’t know. She had been wearing a shirt buttoned up to her neck, hadn’t regularly changed out of her thick underwear, and had stayed low on the ground among the grass while keeping her legs firmly together, but still she somehow managed to get pregnant. With my smelly fingers, I stroked her protruding stomach. Suddenly, she screamed. Somewhere in her screams, I thought I could hear a cat’s faint purring, or possibly the croaking of a toad. Mother remained in her room. “What did you do with the dead cat? Where’s the cat?” My sister asked, breathing heavily. Had she smelled the cat on my breath? It didn’t matter. The cat was inside my stomach, panting softly. It wasn’t dead or gone. “It’s not dead. Don’t worry. I’m holding it close.”

• Ashes and Red Vol.33 Autumn 2016

    “May I take these?” the man asked. He had no idea what he was going to do with bug spray and rat poison. The rat poison might have been useful for analyzing existing products on the market when he started working at the head office, but surely someone there had already done that. As for bug spray, there was always a use for that. His apartment was probably crawling with insects from all the uncollected trash piled up outside. The pharmacist eyed him suspiciously and said, “That stuff won’t help your cold. You know that, right? As long as you know that, you can have it.” She placed the bug spray and rat poison in a black plastic bag. “Well,” she added. “You said you’re not a thief. Does that mean you’re going to pay me?” Flustered, he fumbled in his pockets for cash but came up empty-handed. “See, now you are a thief!” she said teasingly. The man laughed and drew his bruised hand across his throat like a knife. As he left the pharmacy with the bag of poison, he figured that most of the stores were closed because the owners were worried that what had happened to the pharmacy would happen to them. He had unwittingly found himself in a place where you could not get medicine without resorting to robbery, and where—for all he knew—circumstances were such that not only medication but everything else as well would have to be obtained the same way. He wanted to rush back to his apartment, but he couldn’t. The spray from the constantly circling trucks obscured the buildings and shops and kept the ground coated in a layer of powdery chemicals, making everything look alike. Even the piles of black garbage bags and homeless men picking through them looked identical. The more he wandered, the more the air filled with vapor, and the taller the piles of trash seemed to grow. When he had exhausted himself with trying to find his way back, he flopped down onto one of the garbage bags. He knew it was trash, but it was the only thing there for him to rest against. As he breathed evenly, trying to adjust to the stench, he glimpsed a pair of legs coming towards him through a cloud of disinfectant left by a retreating truck. The legs drew closer. He stood up. He brushed the dirt off the back of his pants, but there was nothing he could do about the smell. The legs belonged to a tall, thin man. His shirt and pants were neat and unwrinkled, as if they’d been recently laundered and ironed. He stopped the tall stranger and asked for help finding his address, but he could barely make out what the other man was mumbling from behind the dust mask he wore. He managed to catch a few directional words, like left, right, and across. He turned his back on the stranger, staring worriedly down the street he was being told to take, the street that was indistinguishable from all the other streets behind their veil of litter and disinfectant, when something hit him over the head. It wasn’t enough to knock him out, but it was enough to knock him over and into the garbage. His head felt like it was on fire. He gingerly touched the back of his skull: the flesh there felt swollen and strange from the impact, like a helmet had been slipped over him. His fingers were sticky, he had no idea if it was from blood or from something seeping out of the trash. Lying in the pile of garbage, he watched as the stranger who had struck him tore open the black plastic shopping bag that had fallen on the ground. The items in the bag couldn’t possibly be of any use to the stranger. Had it been food or much-needed medicine, he would have fought back, bleeding head or not. The stranger examined the bug spray and rat poison then tossed them away. As he hurriedly retreated, the stranger glanced back once at the man. There was no trace of guilt in his eyes, only worry that the man might regain his strength, right himself, and come after him. The man lay still among the garbage bags until the stranger’s long, thin legs had vanished back into the chemical fog. If he could have stood up, he would have hit the stranger on the back of the head just to get even, but pain kept him from rising. After a while, he checked again to see if the bleeding had stopped, then he picked himself up. Pain flared up his spine and his body ached like an old woman’s. A heady mix of rotting garbage and acrid disinfectant filled his nose; he couldn’t tell if it was coming from him or from the street. The smell was worse than before. It was coming from him. The smell had started wafting off of his bruised and battered body as he lay in the pile of garbage. While lying there, enduring the pain, he had become part of that smell. It was no longer a fetid world but a world in which everything turned fetid. He swallowed his nausea, as if to side with this part of him that had assimilated so quickly into the smell, and slowly walked away. There was no need to rush, he had nothing more to lose. The blow to the back of the head had told him clearly: in this world, problems were solved differently than where he came from. This was not a world of morals, order, education, and kindness; it was a world of plunder, pillage, violence, and garbage. To survive here, he would have to be like that tall stranger. And if plundering and pillaging were a means of livelihood, then the only true asset was to own nothing.    pp. 52-55Translated by Sora Kim-RussellPrinted with permission from Skyhorse Publishing, New York, US.

• Ashes and Red by Pyun Hye Young Vol. 29 Autumn 2015

  They had just stepped into the shadow of the trees when the guide, who had told them he would wait for them in the van, called them back.      “It’s scary in there. Tons of monkeys. You understand?”      “I can’t do this,” his wife said. “Let’s just go.”      His wife gave him a look that said she meant it. But he avoided her eyes and said, “You don’t really think you’re going to be killed by a monkey, do you?”      He walked back into the forest. Whether resigned or simply too angry to argue with him, his wife followed right behind.      They had not gone far when he realized that this dense, dark forest filled with towering trees that blocked out the sky should have been called a jungle. The trees were as tightly packed as the air itself, and outnumbering the trees were the monkeys idling about from branch to branch and harassing who or whatever wandered in. There wasn’t a single other soul in sight. The guide had followed his request exactly and brought them to a quiet, secluded spot. Later, after they’d made it out of the temple, he would realize that the monkeys were the same species as those he had seen in zoos back home, but in the moment he could not properly make out the shapes of the countless bodies that confronted them as they made their way through.      The temple sat at the center of the forest, which was shaped like a deep U; there was no way through without passing the temple. Other than the path (a mere line of trampled grass), everything else was covered in tall trees and dense undergrowth. The heavy shade of the tangled trees, the calling of unseen birds that filled the air, the queer screeching of monkeys that immediately followed as if in response to the birdcall, the creepy sound of wind rattling the leaves, and the cold, damp air wafting up from the ground made their teeth chatter.      “Well, I guess we know their god is male. Why else would they build a temple somewhere this dark and wet? Am I right?” He made the joke as an excuse to get them talking, but his wife walked on ahead and didn’t respond. Normally she scoffed at his failed jokes. In the silence that followed, he sensed that, since entering this dark forest that could care less about them, he and his wife had been slowly leaving the world in which their lives had overlapped. The feeling made him want to pull his wife, who was now striding several paces ahead of him, back by his side and keep her there, but he never got the chance. His wife screamed. A black something or other had wrapped itself around her face. He ran to her, but the black object suddenly vanished, as if nothing more than a shadow. His wife’s sunglasses had vanished with it. It was a monkey. Terrified, his wife clung to his side. She clutched his forearm, but he could tell it held no more meaning than an elderly person leaning on a cane. Nevertheless, he knew he would not soon forget the heat flowing from his wife’s hand to his arm.      That was the beginning. Their path to the temple was a progression of lost items. The next monkey snatched his wife’s hat. That too happened in the blink of an eye. He chased after the monkey to try to retrieve the hat. He spotted one or two other people in the distance, but they were locals, and it wasn’t clear whether they were also just visiting or whether they lived in the forest. They watched as he chased after the monkey, their faces suggesting that this was something they saw all the time and yet was still as entertaining as ever. And they looked serene, as if they had nothing the monkeys could take from them, or perhaps nothing left to be taken. He gave up on chasing down the monkey. It had scrambled up a tall tree and disappeared into the forest. He could have followed it into the trees, but he would have only stumbled across an entire troop or gotten lost in the dense, shady woods.      As he was walking back to his wife, panting and trying to catch his breath, two monkeys jumped him at the same time. He threw his arms out to the sides, breathing in the foul smell, the stink of urine, and something else that reminded him of wet grass coming off of the monkey wrapped around his face. He managed to pull them off of him, but his hat and sunglasses were now gone, and he had several scratches, both deep and shallow.      He immediately regretted the decision to come there and tried to turn around. But the way back was so dark and thick with trees that they could not locate the entrance. They had no choice but to keep going until they reached the temple. They walked and walked, but there were only more trees and no temple in sight. The path seemed to lead only to deeper jungle. The further they went, the more monkeys they encountered, and each time, they lost another of their belongings. Sometimes the monkeys appeared only to tease and anger them: one would abruptly drop from a branch right in front of them to scare them, or burst out of the forest and grab his wife’s ankle to make her fall, or smack the back of his head with its tail and then run off again into the trees, too fast to be caught.      Just as the round roof of the temple had come faintly into view among the treetops and they were breathing a sigh of relief, two more monkeys attacked him. They bit his arms, clawed at his eyes and let out a blood-curdling shriek as they took the black bag he had been clutching to his chest as if it were his heart itself. The bag contained his passport and wallet. He had pretended not to hear his wife when she had urged him to leave them in the hotel safe. Lately, the more right she was, the less he listened. Despite his frantic efforts, the two monkeys would not get off of him. His bag was quickly stolen. He ran after the monkey with his bag around its neck and grabbed its long tail as it was about to leap into a tree. He pulled hard and sank his teeth into the wiry fur. It felt like large insects squirming inside his mouth. He clenched his jaw as hard as he could, his eyes shut tight, teeth bearing down through the tough, filthy-smelling skin and the tender bones. A crunching sound pealed inside his head. He thought he would never forget that sound for as long as he lived. The feel of those wiry hairs, the crumbling of bone, the sticky saliva trailing from his open mouth. He would not forget these things.      The monkey’s hair stood on end and it let out a piercing scream. He held it down with one arm and fumbled with the other until his hand fell on a long, heavy, fallen branch. He jabbed the tip of the branch at the monkey’s back, but it glanced off. Nothing was ever easy. Taking a firmer grip on the tail, he stabbed the monkey over and over with the branch as it screamed and struggled to free itself. Some of the blows landed on the monkey while others struck his own forearm that held the monkey in place, and some of the blows hit nothing at all. When the stick missed the monkey and pierced his thigh instead, he thought he might drop dead from the pain, but he didn’t care. He would kill himself if that was what it took to kill the monkey. Screams—were they his wife’s screams as she finally caught up to him? The monkey’s screams? Maybe his own?—slipped under and over the dark tangle of branches overhead and echoed deep into the forest.      He did not let go until the monkey lay slumped and weakened. But the moment he released his grip, the monkey that had seemed as good as dead suddenly sprang up and leapt into the trees without a look back. He watched as its red bottom disappeared among the branches. His body ached. His forearm and thigh were throbbing. He wasn’t sure, but he might have even broken a bone. A thorn on the branch must have opened a vein, because the wound in his thigh bled profusely and soaked his pant leg. Fat drops of rain began to splatter down from the dark sky, as if to scold him.      His bag was gone, snatched up by the other monkey while he was busy fighting. Only after he had lost everything did he realize that what he had fought so desperately to save amounted to nothing. Other than his wife, there was nothing he wanted to save so badly as to merit biting a monkey’s tail and stabbing himself in the arm and thigh.      He got angry at her because of that. He got angry because, here he was, all covered in blood, and still he knew he could not keep her. Just as he had failed to keep his passport and wallet, he was incapable of keeping her no matter how great the wounds he suffered. And not only that, all of this had been his choice alone. What if his wife were the one who had insisted they go to the temple? What if she had told him to chase down a thieving monkey to get her money and passport back? And what if she had persuaded him to stab the monkey over and over? Then he would not have had to take up that branch and attack the monkey until he was covered in his own blood with no idea whatsoever of what it was he was trying to hold on to.      On their way out of the forest, the monkeys left them alone since they had nothing left to take, so he unleashed his fury on his wife instead. His wife took his baseless accusations in silence, as if he were talking about someone else, and her silence made him even angrier. He had to clamp down hard on the urge to beat her. If he hadn’t injured his arm, if he could have lifted his arm or flexed the muscle at will, he might not have been able to hold back.      Later, when he recalled the events at the temple, he felt shocked at his own unfamiliar self. Picking up a tree branch, which he had never before regarded as a weapon, to stab a monkey to death; gladly enduring his own injuries in the process; confessing his suspicions as a way of swallowing his anger; abruptly accusing his wife of being a two-timing whore, and unleashing all of the bad words he hadn’t used since he was a teenager in order to sexually disparage her; knowing he would have hit her if he’d had any energy left—all of this kept him feeling ashamed of himself for a long time after.      When they returned from the temple, his wife bought bandages and medicine and helped patch him up, but the next morning she took her passport from the hotel safe and left for home. Their itinerary ended, the guide left as well to lead another group of tourists. He had to go the hospital on his own without knowing a single word of the language, get his passport reissued from the embassy, and wait for his wife to wire him money for the rest of his travel expenses, hating himself all the while.      After that trip, every time anger rose up in him, he pictured spidery limbs wrapped around his face, monkeys hanging nonchalantly from his body and blacking out his vision, giving off their odorous funk. Whenever he pictured it, his heart shivered like it was shrinking inside his chest and his head when his back was to the wall.  ached from the effort to bear the tremors, but what frightened him was not those horrible, marauding monkeys but rather the choices he had made    Translated by Sora Kim-Russell

• Evening Proposal Vol.26 Winter 2014

  Kim’s friend ordered the funeral wreath. It had been more than ten years since Kim had seen this friend, who now recognized his voice on the phone. Perhaps he was an inconsiderate person, or merely acting like one, as he completely neglected the formality of greeting Kim or inquiring about his well-being. Without introduction, he simply described the condition of an ill, bedridden man. Only after listening for a few moments did Kim realize that the person on the phone was a friend from long ago and that the ill, bedridden person was an elderly man whom Kim had often visited during the period when he used to correspond with this friend. Kim paid little attention to the friend’s incessant chattering on the phone. Instead, he wondered how the man had obtained his new phone number, since Kim had taken over the florist shop only quite recently. He was also struggling to determine just how old the elderly dying man would be now. He would have been surprised to hear that he had already died, but hearing that he was still alive was also quite surprising. He did not mention this to his friend, not wishing to seem unsympathetic especially at this moment when they were talking to each other again after such a long time. Kim could not remember exactly, but he felt the elderly man must have reached an age at which no one would be surprised at his passing. “He’s unconscious, breathing with the aid of a respirator as unconscious people do, and exhaling slowly,” the friend reported. “Every time he exhales, I nod my head cheering him on, but then I look at the clock.” Kim was unable to tell whether his friend’s voice was expressing grief or disappointment. “The doctor said it was unlikely that he would still be alive this afternoon.” The friend paused for a moment. It seemed as though he was waiting for Kim to say something, possibly to ask the location of the hospital so he could visit, to express sympathy, or perhaps to provide some words of comfort. But Kim said nothing. The friend sighed. “Please do me a favor with the wreath,” he said. Kim agreed somewhat reluctantly, as though he had no choice. He was thinking that doing this friend a favor quite likely meant he would receive no payment, and it was not as if they were really friends. Their relationship was so tenuous that they could easily be considered to be strangers. However, it seemed mercenary to be dickering about money when the elderly man was dying. Without mentioning anything about payment, the friend then asked for Kim’s mobile number and gave him the name of the funeral home, which was located in a town Kim was not familiar with. Merely to continue the conversation, Kim was about to ask why the mortuary was located in that town, but he changed his mind. In a telephone conversation such as this, suddenly taking place after more than ten years, there was really only one thing Kim wanted to know: How had this person obtained his phone number? Their only connection was that they had worked for the same company for a short time. It would even be difficult for them to recognize each other in a photo that had been taken at a company event. In any such photo, they would have been standing quite far apart, and their relationship had definitely not changed over these past ten years. “You are coming to the funeral, aren’t you?” the friend asked. Kim hesitated and before he could answer, the friend added, “Of course, you are. In any event, who else should we contact?” His tone of voice indicated that the matter was not open for discussion, nor was he talking to himself. Kim was about to explain that he was out of touch with all of their acquaintances from ten years ago, when this friend, not waiting for a response, and as though he was thoroughly displeased with Kim’s reluctance, suddenly raised his voice. “Never mind, I’ll do it!” he said. He then gave Kim the name of the organization that was sending the wreath. It was an organization Kim had never heard of. Feeling that it would be rude not to inquire, Kim forced himself to ask what this organization did. But the friend abruptly hung up on him, saying that he had to return to the hospital. There were no goodbyes just as there had been no greetings at the beginning of their conversation. Kim wondered if he was somehow responsible for this friend’s cold and rude behavior or if it was merely his personality. He reflected on long past events until he was eventually reminded of some letters his friend had written. It was during the period when Kim decided to resign from their company, which was under legal management as a result of severe financial pressure caused by the company’s inadequate expansion. The employees had voluntarily accepted a wage reduction in order to stabilize the company’s situation, when Kim was recommended for a position in another company in another city. The person who recommended him was the same elderly man who was now dying, and this friend had criticized him for taking the new position. He claimed that Kim had no sense of comradery and accused him of being selfish and calculating. Kim was told about this criticism by another person with whom he’d now had no contact for a long time. Criticizing a person for being selfish makes no sense, Kim thought. Everyone is selfish. If his friend had been recommended for the position, he wouldn’t have hesitated to take it. But his friend was hurt by what he felt was Kim’s uncaring attitude. He sent letters to Kim’s new company citing several mistakes Kim had made. The result was that Kim was talked about behind his back for a time, until the whole matter gradually blew over. As a result of this experience, Kim concluded that friendship had nothing to do with a degree of affection, but was a feeling that was valid only when it was dedicated to, and reaped benefits for, one of the persons involved. He calmly recalled the event and the scars it had inflicted, but the process of remembering did leave him sad and resentful about his long forgotten past. He wrote the name of the funeral home on the upper part of a memo where orders for items and their places of delivery were haphazardly scribbled. He would have remembered these without looking at them, but seeing them now reminded him that he also had other orders to attend to. Not that they had to be attended to before doing anything else, but certainly they did have to be taken care of. Also other urgent events might arise at any time if not today, then tomorrow, or even in the next five minutes. It was impossible to predict. That is what self-employment is like. He tried to find someone who could deliver the wreath and the condolence money that he would donate for the funeral expense. Considering the elderly man’s age, even though Kim didn’t know exactly what it was, his funeral could take place at any moment. So it was appropriate to be prepared for mourning. According to the friend, the elderly man had been unconscious and not recognizing anyone for a long while. Even if Kim hurried to get to the hospital, he might not be able to arrive before the man died. Realizing this filled him with compassion for dying humanity in general, but his feelings were not at all personal. After transferring to the other company, Kim had felt an obligation to the elderly man and expressed his gratitude with greetings and gifts. One year, it was a box of apples for the Harvest Moon holiday, and for the Lunar New Year holiday, a basket of dry shiitake mushrooms. Another year, he gave a box of pears of superior quality for Lunar New Year’s and a box of Hallabong oranges for Harvest Moon. And now, now there would be the wreath for which he would surely not collect any remuneration. His gratitude had been great, but not great enough to remember after all this time. The funeral home was located in a town three hundred and eighty kilometers to the south. Kim was annoyed. “The news of someone’s death should not be sent out to those who have been out of touch for over ten years,” he proclaimed frowning. He tried hard to think of someone to call, but everyone he phoned was occupied with other matters. They had important appointments or responsibilities that couldn’t be postponed. “No, the news of a person’s death should be sent out far and wide to everyone,” said the man who ran the florist shop next door to Kim’s, “because it too often happens that someone who has not heard of a friend’s death will come up to you and ask about him as though he is still alive. This happens you know. I lost my high school buddy of thirty years. He was physically the strongest among us. Some friends still don’t know he’s gone, and they ask after him. When I tell them he is dead, I realize all over again that he’s gone.” He swallowed his words as he remembered his dead friend. “I wore this to his funeral,” he added sorrowfully as he handed the black jacket to Kim. Kim nodded. He did not really understand the man’s sorrow, but after hearing this story about his having had this buddy for thirty years, he was able to fairly precisely guess the florist’s age. Previously he had thought of him as being much older than he actually was because of his graying hair. “But this jacket is too big for you and too old,” the man said to Kim. “It’s okay. It really doesn’t matter with this kind of jacket,” Kim replied despite the fact that the long sleeves completely covered the back of his hands. “You’re right. It’s not as if you are going for an interview,” the man said, nodding his head, but he advised Kim to fold the sleeves back twice. Kim was about fifteen centimeters shorter than the average man. He recalled that he had stopped growing when he turned fourteen. His father had passed away then, and for some time, Kim believed that he stopped growing because of the emotional shock of his father’s death. It wasn’t until years later that he realized he was wrong. One day as a grown man, he went to see a traditional doctor about unbearable pain he had in his shoulder. In the doctor’s office, he happened to see a poster on the wall that read: “How to Estimate the Maximum Possible Height of One’s Growth.” The method involved using the heights of both parents and going through several steps of simple calculations. He used his father’s height based on his mother’s dim memory of his being one hand-span taller than she was. Although it wasn’t supposed to be exact, the result of his calculation showed Kim’s maximum possible height as only four centimeters taller than his present height. Kim smiled sadly remembering this. He recalled his childhood when his father’s sudden death forced his mother to work three shifts at a nearby factory leaving him home alone. His friends teased him about being short, and he often got into trouble because he had too much time to kill. He also blamed his father’s death for the disorderly path his life had taken and mercilessly accused his father of abandoning his family and leaving him with nothing but this meager height. He realized now how wrong he was about all of this. As he started his car and was about to leave, Kim remembered his dinner date with the woman. He could postpone the date for one or two hours, but even then he still wouldn’t be likely to get back on time. He had already broken this date with her twice. He apologized to her for his carelessness, and she, as usual, said she understood his situation. Kim sensed that she was concealing her disappointment behind her carefully articulated response, and this displeased him. Instead of being angry she expressed curiosity about what he had for lunch and how he had spent his weekend. She often wanted to talk about incidents in her daily life and to discuss matters that required choices. Each time she attempted such conversations however, Kim suddenly had a customer to take care of and would have to immediately hang up. A few days later when she called again, it seemed as though she had hesitated before picking up the phone to ask how he was. Then she became embarrassed at Kim’s unfriendly response. At a loss, she began to spew out words that were far from courteous. When he had a customer and needed to hang up, she hurriedly bid him goodbye in an ambiguous tone of voice that expressed both relief and sorrow for his having to hang up and her not having time to make amends for what she had said. Later when he was busy or even in his free time after hanging up like that, he would be reminded of her face. It was expressionless, her mouth remaining closed as she sat among a group of people on social occasions. She was a quiet woman who would now and then suddenly make some inane comment which elicited ridicule. She would inappropriately tell jokes relating to topics that people had already stopped discussing, jokes which confused everyone and at which no one laughed. Then she would put on a serious face, as though she had never meant them as jokes at all. Observing all this, Kim would be initially nervous. Then gradually he became displeased, but he felt totally helpless. This was the behavior he often manifested when he felt embarrassed, when he lacked confidence because of being conscious of his short stature. She also frequently gave him gifts. It was obvious that she had spent considerable time carefully selecting each of those ordinary, inexpensive items, so they would not feel burdensome to him. There were books he had mentioned in passing that he wanted to read, a handy suitable wallet or some useful item for his florist shop. She carefully wrapped each of these gifts for him. But this attention that she paid to his needs was lost on Kim who consistently unwrapped and received her gifts with utter indifference. He even gradually grew to dislike her smell. It likely came from her perfume, or shampoo or possibly the conditioner that she used. Whatever it was, it spread like the odor of mixed flowers. The fragrance that Kim did like could hardly be called a fragrance at all. It was a complete lack of smell. It wasn’t until after he took over the florist shop that he realized that even the best fragrance could easily become an unpleasant odor when flowers mingled their fragrances. * He had an easy drive traveling south for about a hundred and twenty kilometers when he suddenly approached a congested area where he was forced to stop. Unlike most drivers, Kim seldom listened to traffic reports on the radio and often found himself in situations like this. He had not heard the news flash, but when the person ahead of him stepped out of his car to smoke a cigarette, he informed him that the road was blocked off for several hours because of a marathon. Absolutely nothing was moving in the closed off area. There were no runners in sight. It appeared that they had either already passed the area or dropped far behind. Kim stared blankly at the road. He remembered a sports announcer whom he’d listened to during one of these marathons. The announcer explained that marathoners usually breathe in twice when inhaling and breathe out twice when exhaling. Kim consciously tried to breathe in and out this way. The air coursed through his body and returned to the atmosphere. He had never before taken notice of this delicate and ordinary phenomenon that regularly took place in his body, as though it was irrelevant. When the road reopened, he continued driving south. After some time, the cell phone in his pocket rang. It was an unfamiliar number. He suspected it was the friend, who had ordered the wreath he was delivering, and that being anxious, he was calling to urge him to hurry. Perhaps the elderly man had just died and the mortuary looked empty without the wreath that had not yet arrived. Kim did not bother to answer the phone. Customers were forever calling to complain about deliveries being late and insisting that their orders be delivered more quickly. So when a customer demanded to know when his order would arrive, Kim would respond, “It will certainly be there in about 10 minutes.” He assumed that the customer would understand that traffic and road conditions could change within that time period. If the customer called again, Kim would say he was in the vicinity and pretend he had a wrong address. The customer would then hurriedly give him the correct one. Providing a wrong address for an invoice was actually a mistake that occasionally did occur. Fortunately, however, there were also times when a delayed delivery did not matter. Those were times when unexpected events occurred for either the customer or the recipient of the flowers. It might happen, for example, that a person would receive a message from a departing lover while waiting for the arrival of a bouquet that was meant to accompany a marriage proposal. The opening ceremony of a new business might suddenly be disrupted by criminals appearing on the scene. A mother might faint after delivering a stillborn baby. These were the fortunate occasions when it was of no consequence if flowers arrived late. Driving past a tollgate as he was exiting the highway, Kim was abruptly confronted by the huge signboard of the funeral home. Below the signboard, tossing and turning in the wind, was a banner announcing its opening. The stark, square building stood in the middle of a farming area. The harvest season was over. The fields lay fallow. Kim was late, but considering the distance he’d had to travel from another city, he considered his arrival time quite acceptable. The mourners would not come in flocks until late evening. As for the wreath, it was not the time of its arrival that was important. It was the sender’s name. Just as Kim was about to enter the funeral home’s curved driveway, his phone rang again. Without slowing down, he reached for it and almost hit the guardrail. His tires squealed as he barely managed to pull onto the shoulder. His heart pounded, and the phone continued ringing as though it were cheering for him. It was the friend who had ordered the wreath. “Where are you?” “Almost there.” “At the funeral home, you mean? Come to the hospital first.” “Why?” “He’s not dead yet.” “. . . . . .?” “He’s still alive.” “What do you mean he’s still alive?” he asked then immediately realized this was an improper response. He should have responded as if it was fortunate that the man was still alive. However, that response would have been just as inappropriate as the other. When confronted with death, the wisest thing is to avoid lighthearted language and say nothing. “I’ve asked you, you mean he’s still alive?” It sounded as though the friend was sighing or searching for words with which to reply. Perhaps he was restraining himself from saying anything, because telling the truth would make him appear to be unsympathetic. Then to Kim’s bewilderment, his friend continued to speak as though he was answering his own question even though it was the same question Kim had asked. “He is not going to last long. Let’s go to the hospital and watch his passing together.” But instead of going to the hospital, Kim headed downtown. He was not hungry, but he felt the need to kill time so he entered the first noodle shop he saw. He was determined not to go to the hospital. He had no desire to observe the man’s death. Similarly he had never wanted to watch the moment of a bloody birth. As far as he was concerned, birth was an event in his past, and death existed only in his distant future. He wanted nothing to do with either of them at this point in his life. When the funeral started, he would deliver the wreath as any delivery person would be expected to do and return to his own city. On returning he would have to save face by compensating for lost hours and failing to fulfill his other obligations. The atmosphere in the restaurant was leisurely since it was not a regular mealtime. Nevertheless, they were extremely slow coming to take his order, bringing water, and preparing and serving his food. He didn’t try to hurry the owner, though. It was only forty minutes ago that he had received the call from his friend. Time was moving so slowly. Perhaps it was also moving slowly for the elderly patient as he awaited his death. Kim considered those forty minutes. He had never before waited forty minutes for someone to die. He wondered what it meant to have one’s life prolonged by forty minutes. As the death watch continued, his feeling of sadness lessened. He spent most of the time blankly staring out the window. If he had had several other deliveries to make in this general area, as he usually did in most places, he could have gone on to deliver those flowers and spent his time more efficiently while waiting for the funeral to start. He might have attended an opening ceremony of a new business delivering a standing wreath of orchid blossoms and even been given some of their red bean rice cake. He could have gone to a maternity ward to deliver a basket of flowers sent by her husband’s coworkers to a mother holding her newborn whose eyes were not yet opened. He could have delivered a boxed bouquet of red roses to a man who was about to propose marriage. He could have delivered a wreath to the mortuary for someone who had died earlier. But there was nothing else for him to do in this town except to keep this deathwatch. He went outside after having slowly eaten his noodles. Fifty eight minutes had passed since receiving the call from his friend. He had still more time on his hands as he waited for the man’s death. He drove along through the small downtown and stopped in front of a grocery store that reminded him of the canned fish cakes someone had brought him from this town some time ago. Canned noodles and canned fish cakes were the specialties of this town. The person who had given them to Kim thought of them as humorous gifts, and had not known that they were in fact emergency provisions to be used in case of a disaster. According to old records, the town was located in the vicinity of two geological faults, and some long time ago it had experienced a notable earthquake. This happened shortly after Kim was born, and the residents were reminded of it every time there was a need to warn them of any kind of danger. Unreinforced electric lines, water pipes and gas lines had been destroyed. There were sporadic fires. Old wooden houses were badly shaken before completely collapsing. When the earth trembled, buildings with more solid walls quickly collapsed. Cars and people were crushed among piles of debris. Roads and bridges were damaged. Following the earthquake, strict construction regulations were enforced. All kinds of buildings were constructed to endure a certain level of earthquake. A quake-proof tunnel was built to protect all the pipes that went through the town so that delivery of electricity and water could be quickly resumed after a possible future quake. Evacuation drills were conducted for students, and to this very day, maps designating safe routes out of town still sold like hot cakes. A pessimistic scientist appeared on television. “Although we have suffered great losses, this earthquake cannot be compared to the one yet to come. The real fear indeed is that we cannot predict when or where the next one will occur,” he stated. His opinion differed from that of most scientists who believed that earthquakes could be predicted by measuring certain features of the earth’s movement. But this bearer of ill tidings stared directly out from the television screen and warned, “At this very moment the earth on which you are standing could split wide open.” Despite this specialist’s warnings, Kim was not afraid. For him, the possibility of an earthquake was the same as stories of wars ceaselessly occurring in faraway places. It was like a tsunami story that brought disaster to some other country or the story of global warming that melted some glacier. No, for him, the real disasters, disasters far worse than earthquakes or tsunamis, were the occasions when the flowers in his shop faded before he could sell them or when some miscreant threw a stone and ran away after smashing his florist shop window. He felt no fear of an earthquake or a tsunami that might at any moment devastate thousands. The misfortune he feared was the misfortune which affected only him while the rest of the world was safe and well. The cans of fish cake that Kim had received had eight years to go until their expiration date. Out of curiosity he had tasted one of them and discovered the liquid was salty and the fish cake was swollen to the shape of a tennis ball. It tasted so awful that one would never be tempted to eat it except in an emergency. These days it was said that after an emergency, food could be supplied to isolated areas within two days. So this leather-like fish cake was what people would have to survive on for two days. Kim asked the owner of this grocery store for canned fish cakes or canned noodles. The owner, whose eyes were focused on a television program, responded briefly that he didn’t have any such a thing in the store. Kim explained that somebody brought him a gift of them from this town. The owner firmly replied that he had never seen such canned goods in his sixteen years of business. But seeing that Kim was unconvinced, the owner told him to look through the stock in the back of the store where several types of canned foods were kept. Kim wanted to see what sort of canned food was sold there. He went back to look. Passing by several shelves he came to the stock of cans, a variety from different regions. There were cans of whelk, tuna, jack mackerel, mackerel, chrysalis and some fruit, cans that were commonly seen everywhere. The owner came and stood beside him and told him that they didn’t have fish cake or noodles in cans, but they did have a variety of fast food packages that he could purchase. Kim did not respond. He returned to his car. On the way to the funeral home, he stopped at a few more stores, but no one sold the cans of emergency provisions he sought. * He entered the dark underground parking lot of the funeral home and carefully parked his truck, precisely parallel to the line drawn on the ground, exactly the way a casket would be placed. He decided to take a nap in the driver’s seat, but then remembered that the cargo bed was almost empty. Only the wreath was back there now, shimmering in the dark like a daytime moon, exuding the faint scent of chrysanthemums. Kim climbed into the cargo bed and lay down next to the floral tributes. The cold quickly penetrated his body, and lying there in the dark he felt as though he was a corpse waiting to be shrouded. If the elderly patient’s life continued to drag on like this, Kim would not be able to keep his date with the woman tonight at all. The man’s death presented itself to Kim as a problem of stagnant and prolonged time that was far removed from a serious and sad world. He hesitated and then decided to call the woman. Without even asking him what had happened, she assured him that she understood. She seemed too disappointed to talk. Kim explained that he was about four hundred kilometers away and not yet done with his work. In a hesitant voice she asked when he would be done. “I wish I knew, but it is not for me to decide,” Kim replied. The woman said nothing. She was perhaps hurt by his curt reply, and Kim was annoyed that he always had to be so cautious about his responses to her trivial questions. Nevertheless, he repeated that his work was not yet finished, and he did not know when it would be. The woman began to talk about other matters as if she hadn’t been affected at all. As their conversation continued, Kim became anxious about possibly receiving a call from his friend announcing the elderly man’s death. “Are you listening?” the woman asked. “Yes, I am,” he halfheartedly answered. She continued to talk, and he started to listen. She was upset about the untidy attire of a customer who visited the Customer Relations Office. It seemed she had been telling this story all along. She complained with angry sighs that the customer had demanded a refund for underwear which had been worn several times. She sounded fatigued. Her sighs made Kim remember how she had helped him through difficult times, but for whatever reason he suddenly felt he could no longer endure this. Although he still received comfort and warmth from her, he was convinced these feelings would not last much longer, that they would quickly dissipate. He felt foolish for not having acted on the decision he had already made. For some time he had only been maintaining a distance, but now listening to her complaints he felt edgy and wanted to be even further removed from her. She stopped talking. Or perhaps she had been silent all this time while Kim’s thoughts had traveled elsewhere. “Did you hear me?” she asked again. This time Kim honestly answered no, he had not. She sighed again, another long sigh. Merely wanting to end the conversation, Kim promised that he would come to her home when he returned to the city. He made this promise only to comfort her because she had been left downcast on other such occasions. He knew if he hung up on her without this promise, she would be sad once more, hesitant and confused for some long time before phoning him again. Delighted with his response, she asked what time he would come. He responded that it would be about four hours after a certain person died. Then for the first time during their conversation she burst out laughing. Obviously she thought this was a joke.  After concluding their phone conversation, Kim made his way upstairs into the funeral home. There were thirteen parlors spread out on four floors. All but one of them was empty. In this first floor parlor the portrait of a deceased person had been placed on a marble altar. Without a chief mourner, guest mourners, fruits, flowers or incense, the lone portrait looked strangely out of place. It was as though an impetuous bereaved person had set the portrait there before the man had passed away. The man in the portrait had neatly combed gray hair, but even though a long time had passed, Kim could tell that this was not the elderly man with whom he had been acquainted. The man portrayed here had beaming, playful eyes and was smiling slightly as if he thought it mildly interesting to be early for his own funeral and waiting to greet the mourners even before he passed away. This lone person in the portrait, in this otherwise empty funeral parlor, reminded Kim of himself. Yet he was alive, and the person in the portrait was dead or about to die. Kim realized that he had never thought seriously about death. He was living. He did not want to think about death. Not yet. Not until the time came, far, far off in the future. Darkness was slowly descending. The elderly man’s life was slowly ebbing away. Kim stood in front of the funeral home looking at the desolate farm field as it gradually dissolved into the shadow of darkness. A man in a black suit approached him and asked for a light for his cigarette. Since the funeral home was empty, Kim guessed that this man was also dutifully waiting for someone’s death. He didn’t know that this man who was wearing a badly creased black suit, black tie and a shirt spotted with red food stains, had come to the same conclusion about him. “My uniform got stained again. I had to work today before coming here. They gave me spicy beef stew despite my strong objections. You know, I have been fed that stew day after day, over and over again,” he explained conscious of Kim’s staring at the stains on his shirt. A slight smile appeared on Kim’s face when he heard the word ‘uniform’ but it disappeared as he vaguely remembered seeing a car from the Mutual Aid Company in the parking lot. “Where are you from?” the man asked and Kim replied that he was from the florist. The man asked if the person was not dead yet. Bewildered, Kim nodded his head. The man in the black suit smiled. He understood Kim’s situation. “I am in the same predicament,” he said. “Could it be the same person we’re waiting for?” Wishing to avoid any further conversation with the man from the Mutual Aid Company, or, more to the point, wishing to avoid any further conversation about waiting for someone to die, Kim decided to take a walk. But he took a longer walk than he intended and had come all the way from the funeral home to the state highway. Still he had not received a call from his friend. Now standing by the state highway, he looked back toward the funeral home. Mindlessly staring at the huge, lit-up sign board, he heard himself murmur, “It seems he hasn’t died yet.” Surprised by his own unfeeling words, he fell silent. At that instant his phone rang. If it had been his friend calling just then, Kim would have felt responsible for causing the elderly man’s death. “You’re still not finished?” It was the woman’s voice. Kim felt both relieved and anxious. His anxiety made him once more realize how much distance there was between them. He knew that from now on there would be fewer conversations. Their times together, which were even now so infrequent, would become more and more boring. The tone of their voices would become less friendly, and they would find fewer and fewer things to laugh about. As all of this happened the woman would call more often trying to understand Kim’s negligence and indifference. There would come a time when she would explode with anger, and then be overwhelmed with regret and loneliness. Soon after that she would apologize for having been angry. After more time had passed, and she had repeated this scenario several times, she would start to regret not winning his heart in return. She would continue to waste her time wallowing in resentment and hatred. Finally, she would realize that she didn’t love Kim enough to continue any longer, or perhaps she would decide that she hadn’t really loved him to begin with. Then she would feel empty and relieved. Kim could think of nothing to do except to wait for that moment. Then at last, he might feel something like a deep affection for her. He lowered his voice and said, “If you push me, I will have to pray for the elderly man to die quickly.” She laughed, and that made Kim nervous again. He feared it would take too long for her to sense the truth in his heart. He blurted out the word, “Enough!,” interrupting her laughter. Not hearing this clearly, the woman asked, “What do you mean?” Kim’s first inclination was to say, “That’s enough joking.” But it didn’t feel right to him to say goodbye in that dark field where the only light was coming from the sign board of a funeral home. Besides, although he had been thinking of it for some time, he still wasn’t sure if he was now being impulsive and superficial. He feared he might be in his current state of mind because he was exhausted from his long, four hundred kilometer drive to the south and this interminable waiting. “What do you mean by enough?” the woman asked again. “Us. Us being together,” he replied to her persistent pressure. She paused for a moment. Then she said, “My team manager is looking for me, I must go. Please drive carefully on your way back. I will pray for the man to die quickly.” She hung up. His heart felt suddenly heavy and not at all liberated as he had thought it would. The end of the state highway disappeared into the darkness. Kim squatted there at the side of the road with a cigarette in his mouth. A large car passed by, shaking the surface of the earth, creating a gust of wind, and exuding black smoke. Then the road was calm again. Having chain-smoked three cigarettes, Kim was about to stand up, when he noticed something in the distance. A small white dot was approaching him and growing larger. As it drew closer it assumed the form of white sportswear. It was a marathon runner with numbers on his shirt. As he passed by, Kim clearly heard the sound of his breathing. It was a ‘hu hu ha ha,’ inhaling and exhaling in even intervals through his mouth and nose. Kim watched as he gradually entered the hidden highway of darkness. The shifting white dot grew smaller and smaller until it completely vanished from sight. Ironically, its extinction brought about an awakening in Kim’s mind. It occurred to him that the road continued beyond the dark place where it became invisible. As though in a trance, he moved toward the darkness that had so completely enveloped the white dot. Walking on a short way, he heard the low sound of a whistle behind him. He stopped. A truck appeared out of the darkness, the same type of truck as his own. Strangely there was no sound of wind or wheels, no rattling of anything in the cargo bed. He thought he might have somehow missed hearing these sounds, but then once more he heard the passing truck give off the clear whistle. It seemed that the driver, hidden in the darkness, was whistling. Kim stared vacantly at the truck. Then as though it was startled by Kim’s gaze, the truck accelerated, turned into a curve in the road and slid along the surface. In the next instant, it hit the guardrail and overturned. Before he had time to react or express his shock, the truck burst into flames that instantly enshrouded it. The driver was nowhere to be seen. It was impossible to tell whether he had been fortunate enough to escape or if the flames had already devoured him. The flames engulfed the truck. They lit up the state highway. Kim stood there transfixed. Then he reached for his mobile phone. But instead of calling the police, the emergency rescue team or the emergency center of a hospital, he called the woman. She didn’t answer. She might have been busy listening to a customer’s complaints or perhaps she was angry. Kim stared at the flames. He let the phone continue ringing. After some time, the woman picked up the phone but remained silent. The sound of her shallow breathing reached his ears. It was a calm, rhythmic sound that calmed him. He imitated it, inhaling and exhaling, and breathing faster than usual to keep up with her. Then after several attempts and still finding it difficult, he abruptly confessed his love for her. The woman remained silent. He feared this silence of hers, but he also feared what she might say if she spoke. He continued talking, frantically thinking of things to say so as not to give her a chance to respond. He spoke of the joy he experienced when looking at her for a long while, the strange, unreal feeling he had when he held her hand for the first time, her soft breathing that was so calming for him. He spoke of his fear of not winning her love and the thrilling moment he experienced when he realized she loved him. He was saying things to her that he had never thought about before. He was hearing his own words, but he felt as though they were words he had heard someone else speak or words that he had read somewhere. They were too conventional, too banal for him to believe they were true, but then again that was exactly why they did sound true. He didn’t understand why he was talking this way. Perhaps it was because he was standing there alone on the state highway with only the funeral home signboard and the flames illuminating the area around him. The signboard was so brightly lit up it was visible from a long distance, as though it was a sign shining in the dark for the whole town to see. It might be because it was located in this town where the students had regular drills in preparation for an earthquake, and the residents kept maps like amulets which would help them return safely to their homes after an earthquake. It might be because it was a town where canned noodles and fish cakes were sold at stores unbeknownst even to store keepers who had been running their businesses there for so long. Or it might be because of some elderly man on the verge of death who was not dying. If Kim had been in his home city, with no such problems or fears, he would have continued to treat this woman in an unfriendly manner. If he had occasionally been warm to her, he would have panicked in fear of her misunderstanding him. Now the woman spoke. She asked him what had happened. It was such an ordinary question that Kim had no idea if his confession of love had made her happy, excited, displeased or angry. Kim was like a stranger to himself while speaking these words to her. Yet, because he had these feelings, he thought his confession might have some truth in it. Regardless of the truth, regardless of her feelings, Kim obviously knew that he was soon going to be ashamed of the confession that heaven-sent fear had forced him to make. He would be angry because nothing he had said could now be taken back. He could not change the situation or the feelings his confession had caused. Nor could he fathom what was at the core of the emotions that arose inside of him. He became lost in the midst of these thoughts and simply hung up the phone. He thought she might call back. If she did, he wondered if he should answer. She did not call. The truck continued to burn fiercely, and Kim stood motionless, silently watching the brilliant conflagration burn like a bright lantern light for the funeral parlor. 

• "Bodies" Vol.20 Summer 2013

  * A short story from AOI Garden, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd., 2005.   The phone call came about a month after his wife had gone missing. A body part appearing to belong to a woman had been discovered in a ravine. It was the same ravine where his wife was presumed to have drowned. He told the officer he would leave first thing in the morning and hung up. It was a five-hour drive to U City, not counting the time it would take to stop at a rest area for a bowl of udon noodles. Even if he left right away, he would not reach the police station that was handling the case until after two in the morning. A right leg had been found. He would have to confirm his wife’s death from nothing more than a right leg. The length of the average adult leg is about half the total height of the body. His wife was 160 centimeters tall. So her leg, he mumbled while spreading his arms eighty centimeters apart, is about like that. He pictured her body in four pieces, as if sketching it, from the bottom of her feet to her kneecaps, from her kneecaps to her genitals, from her genitals to her nipples, and from her nipples to her head. The rough outline of a female body took shape in his mind. He couldn’t tell whether it was his wife’s body or the body of some prostitute that he had slept with. He strained to remember what his wife’s right leg looked like. He recalled that she used to complain all the time that her legs were fat. But were they really that fat, and if so, how fat were they? Were they only fat in comparison to her unusually long and slender arms, or fat compared to other women her age? He couldn’t even remember whether she shaved her legs or not. He began to question whether he had ever in his life touched his wife’s right leg. He ran his hand over the air as if stroking the contours of her leg. He could not for the life of him recall whether she had thick calves or whether they were sleek and smooth, and whether the ankles hidden inside her long skirt were slim enough for him to wrap his hand around or so thick that they merged right into the calves. He lay down and tried to erase the imaginary woman But instead of disappearing, the woman raised her right leg and rested it on top of his head. As the leg bore into his brain, he finally remembered something about his wife’s leg. She had a small skin tag on her leg. That would tell him whether the unidentified leg was his wife’s or not. It was no bigger than a grain of rice. But to his wife, it was a lump the size of a fist. She had said that she sometimes felt like her body was nothing but leg, and it was all because of that skin tag. Someone had told her that if she wrapped a strand of hair around it, it would fall off on its own. Since her own hair was too short, she had used a thin strand of black thread instead. The thread cut off the blood supply and, after a while, the tag dried up and turned black. But it did not fall off. That blackened and withered fibroma dangling from her leg would be the clue that determined what had happened to his wife. She had gone missing and was presumed to have drowned to death. Someone had witnessed her f loundering and screaming for help in the watery ravine where she had fallen. To be precise, the witness did not see his wife but rather a woman. The witness could not recall his wife’s clothing or the length of her hair or any distinguishing facial features. He merely said that he saw a woman floundering in the ravine. The detective in charge of the case had concluded that it was most likely his wife but they could not be certain. He pictured the imaginary leg again in order to add the skin tag to it. But then it hit him that he did not know which leg the tag was on. If he did not know that, then he could not very well tell the detective there was small, black fibroma clinging to his wife’s right leg. His uncertain speculation might leave his still-living wife for dead. Or his long-dead wife could go missing forever. The leg fell on his head with a loud thump. He felt like a detective who had let a criminal slip away right before his eyes. He felt baffled, too. He realized that what bothered him the most was the uncertainty: the police were sure she had drowned and yet, because there was no body, they were handling it as a missing persons case. She was neither alive nor dead, and that bothered him. It bothered him because her state was not so different from his own. He, too, was not so much living as dying. He was so pathetic. How could he not remember anything about his wife’s body after living together for more than a decade? He stomped out  of the house and left immediately. He would see for himself the right leg that had been fished out of the ravine. Then maybe he would know whether it was his wife’s or not. * On the way to U City, rain, which had not been forecast, began to fall. He hurried to turn on the wipers. They sluggishly began to move, but the left side stopped before sweeping any of the rain away. Raindrops slid down the left wiper, while the right side thumped away slowly. He almost let go of the steering wheel in shock. Laboring along on its own, the wiper looked like a woman’s right leg. He wanted to turn them off, but the rain was coming down too hard. His wife’s right leg, which he was incapable of identifying, wiped the rain from the windshield for him. * The detective was not at his desk. The man sat on one of the chairs in the waiting room. He thought he would just take a quick nap. At at the sound of someone coming down the hallway, his eyes snapped open. A black shadow was tramping towards him, dragging heavy rain-soaked shoes. As the shadow drew closer, a raw smell filled the air. It was the same smell that came off of his wife, who had handled fish for a living. He kept his eye on the black shadow. It was his wife. She was struggling to walk towards him on one waterlogged leg. Her right leg looked like a thick wooden stump. Startled, he tried to get up, but she swung the stump at him like a club. He cowered to avoid the blow and suddenly awoke. The detective was shaking him by the shoulder. The detective did not ask why the man had come down to the station after saying he would come the next day. If he had, the man might have panicked and blurted out the story about his wife’s skin tag, even though he wasn’t sure of it yet. He might have even blurted out something about his dream, in which his onelegged wife kicked him with her stump. The right leg was lying with the other unidentified bodies in the morgue. The detective pulled open a metal drawer. Resting in the middle of the long iron tray was the stiffened leg. It gave off a smell of formalin, solvent, and antiseptic. Even the drawer smelled metallic. The man could not hold back his nausea. But it was not the smells that made him gag. The leg was so rotten, the flesh black and blue, that he could not believe it belonged to a person. Tattered muscle tissue hung like loose threads around the exposed femur. The bone looked solid in contrast, as if it were part of an anatomical model. It glowed fluorescent within the black, rotting flesh. The kneecap that protected the knee joint looked as strong as ever, and the tibia glimmered whitely where it connected to the femur. The skin and flesh were clearly that of a rotting corpse, but the bones belonged to someone living. The toes were crushed beyond recognition, and he even thought maybe there were no toes there to begin with. Who did this leg belong to? He tried to picture the unidentified woman from whom this leg, now dead and black as charcoal, had hung. The woman probably never imagined she would end her life in the deep waters of a ravine. Before it became rotten and disfigured, the leg might have belonged to a busy college girl who rushed from place to place on foot. It might have belonged to a saleswoman in a department store who massaged her tight calf muscles, stiff from being on her feet all day helping customers. Or it could have belonged to a track and field athlete who tensed her muscles with every jump, trying to leap higher. The leg might have been used to tread a dance floor over and over, dancing itself to exhaustion, or to bend beneath a wedding dress, bowing in deference to a new bride’s in-laws. The leg could belong to every woman, but it would never be his wife’s leg. He stared dumbly at this thing that was nothing more than part of a dead body. The leg proved its own death by ruthlessly continuing to decay. Leeched of organic matter— moisture, protein, nucleic acid—it was but a lifeless object, a long way from anything like life or the world of the living. It gave him no consolation that he was alive. Instead, it impressed upon him the fact that the human body was just a lump of protein, easily putrefied. The urge to search his body, to examine every part of it to make sure nothing was rotting, came over him. Given the choice, he would swallow a fistful of preservatives before dying. He trailed his eyes over the decaying flesh in search of the skin tag. The mottling was especially bad around the knee. He couldn’t tell whether he was looking at a skin tag or just torn skin. He shook his head at the detective. This is not my wife, he stammered. She has all of her toes. The detective shrugged and said, So does this leg. The detective pointed at the mangled tip of the foot. Snow-white bones rose like milk teeth from between the torn lumps of flesh. The detective explained that the toes had been eaten by fish. The man countered that his wife’s legs were not that fat. The detective said the leg was not fat, just swollen with water. At that, the man vomited. The udon noodles he had eaten on the way poured out of him. The vomit was congealed and blackened from the roasted seaweed garnish. It looked like part of the rotted flesh resting on the metal pan. His stomach lurched again, as if he had eaten his wife’s toes himself. The detective silently closed the metal drawer. The right leg had been found at the lower end of the ravine. A fisherman had reeled in a shredded leg. There was no clothing or other body parts. The detective asked the man if his wife had ever had surgery on her leg. No, never. Only after answering did he realize that he had no idea whether she’d had surgery as a child or before they started dating. He corrected himself and said he did not know. The detective told him that suspicious marks were found on the bones, the kind that were not likely to have been caused by breaking against rocks or being bitten by fish. He said it looked like the leg had been severed. When he looked puzzled, the detective added that it could also be scars from routine surgery or a dislocation. Bodies raise all kinds of questions, the detective said. He nodded slowly. His wife had gone missing during their first fishing trip.  She stood on a mossy boulder. He kept telling her to stand somewhere safe, but she had refused, saying that the water where she was standing was shallow and still. She did not know the water was deeper than it looked, due to heavy rain some days before. He, too, had no idea how deep the ravine was and how fast the water was moving. When his wife fell in, the water carried her off in an instant. The witness who said he saw a woman drowning was fishing downstream, but he did not jump into the rain-swollen gorge. The man was not confident he would have jumped in either if he had been the one to see his wife drowning. The water looked as sharp as blades, like it would pierce him through to the heart at the slightest touch. The police had interrogated him about his wife’s disappearance. He repeated over and over that he did not shove his wife into the gorge. Nobody believed him. There was no one who could testify that he left his wife alone by the water while he wandered upstream. But no evidence was found that he pushed her either. Though she was presumed to have drowned, without a body to confirm it, the detective had to treat it as a missing persons case. She might have disappeared into the water, or in some deep ravine, or been swept away to a distant city that he would never find. Only the gorge with its razor-sharp water knew his wife’s whereabouts. Actually, they were in no position to be out fishing and enjoying themselves. It was a bad time to take a vacation. The considerable deposit they had put down to buy a new storefront had vanished into thin air. Dozens of other victims had formed a committee to try to get their money back, but he had dismissed it as a lost cause. It would have been better  or him to stay and try to retrieve their lost deposit with his wife. If he had, she might still be alive. His wife was the one who suggested U City. It was a long way from where they lived. For a couple now bankrupt, it was much too far for a weekend trip to blow off steam. It was  five-hour drive just to reach the tollgate. Then they would have to drive further, along a winding cliff, to reach the ravine. But his wife said it had to be that ravine. She told him the water was deepest in U City, that waters more secretive than the ravine itself ran cold and sharp as knives through that deep gorge, and that the water was so clear you could see all the way to the bottom. The clearer the water, the deeper it might be, so deep as to be unfathomable. They reached the ravine and drove upstream a long ways, far past where the paved road ended. Along the way, they saw parked cars and figured others were out fishing. The ravine wound on and on. It seemed they could have driven until sunset without reaching the end of it. They picked a relatively isolated spot. Though it was their first time fishing, his wife had no problem with the maggots they used for bait. She handled raw fish for a living, so there was no reason for her to shrink away from maggots. She stirred the squirming maggots around and chose an especially fat one. Suddenly he felt angry. He thought maybe it was his wife’s fault they were penniless, because, to her, nothing was too disgusting or dirty. For all he knew, she might have served their customers rotten fish, too reluctant to toss it out, or fed them fish eyes. He set down his pole and watched his wife out of the corner of his eye. She was threading a plump maggot onto a floater. It was not her fault they had to close the restaurant. He was the one who lost their deposit. But the desire to beat her with the fishing pole was overwhelming. He imagined shoving her into the deep ravine below. He clenched his fists to quell the urge. He left his wife where she was hooking the maggot and returned to the car. When he looked back, his wife was casting the floater into the water. He decided to take a drive to calm his anger and find out where the ravine ended. But the road kept going. He went around one curve only to find another, as if he were driving in circles around the same spot. Exhausted, he turned the car around to return to his wife. But it was no easier finding his way back. He drove in circles for hours and returned to find the maggots had escaped from their canister and were crawling everywhere. His wife was gone. On the way back from the police station, it rained again. He turned on the windshield wipers, which were still broken, and pictured the decaying right leg he saw at the station. Thinking about it now, the leg was thin and bony. His wife had sagging breasts and a thick waist. The leg was far too thin to be his wife’s. He muttered just as he had to the detective that it could not possibly be his wife’s leg. Somewhere in the raging waters of the ravine, his wife’s right leg was slowly decaying and turning to silt. It would feed the fish and later whet the appetites of the fishermen. The remaining left leg, torso, arms, and head would meet the same fate. His mouth watered. He opened the window and spit into the rain. The falling drops were as thick as the maggots they had used for bait. * The building was a dump. It looked like it had been hit with the wrecking ball, though demolition had not yet begun, despite the fact that the shops had long gone out of business. When it was first built, they said the building was so well constructed that people in the neighborhood came just to take a look. It was the only building in the area with an elevator. Children would try to play inside of it, forcing the doorman to keep a closer eye on the elevator than the entrance. That was forty years ago. During that time, the building had grown weak and begun to fall apart. But the falling apart did not take place gradually over the course of four decades. It happened suddenly. Like water rising in a ravine during an unforeseen downpour, like being sucked down into the depths and swept away by a raging current, like water rushing into your windpipe the moment you go under, it happened in an instant. The first symptoms were spotted right after it was announced that two different companies had bought the empty lots on either side of the building and were planning to build high-rise residential-commercial complexes. The vacant lots filled with people. High metal fencing was erected to the left and right of the building by the big construction companies. The fencing had a picture of a forest on it. The picture was elaborate and detailed. It was easy to imagine birds flying into the fence by mistake. Next to the fake forest, the building with its heavy concrete walls looked like a giant garbage can. The fence blocked the entrance of the building from view, so even the few customers who were left stopped coming. The building began leaking tenants. The owner had no choice but to go to both of the construction companies to try to sell the building. If he’d sold it earlier, he might have made some money. But because construction had already begun, he had no choice but to sell it below the market rate. Demolition was to begin in earnest the following week. Their restaurant would be reduced to piles of cement and shards of glass and steel, along with the rest of the building. He and his wife had owned a cheap fish restaurant on the ground f loor. For the last ten years, the restaurant was the only living thing they cared for. They had nursed the restaurant through the first years, but later the restaurant nursed them. It made them laugh, gave them a chair to sit on when their heads ached, and kept them from arguing with each other even when they were angry. He did not find out until later, but the store also kept his wife in fish eyes. His wife plucked the eyeballs out of the fish that she grilled and simmered for customers. It wasn’t difficult to do since nobody really cared whether the fish had their eyeballs or not. His wife’s favorite food was simmered fish eyes. It was her main source of protein, as she did not care for meat. He rolled up the metal security shutters and opened the door to the restaurant. The smell of rotting fish stung his nose. The smell had been seeping out even before he lifted the shutter. He had not been back since his wife had gone missing. All of the fish inside the restaurant was bought before they left for U City. He plugged his nose and opened the freezer door. Once the electricity stopped, everything inside had begun to stink and fester. The decomposing things all jumbled together were unidentifiable as flounder or sole or pike or mackerel. He put on a pair of rubber gloves and pulled everything from the freezer. A black liquid was leaking out of the spoiled bellies. As the rotten fish hit the floor, water spattered against his pants, leaving black stains that looked like mottled flesh. He found a plastic bag filled with fish eyes in the freezer. His wife had been saving them. A teary black discharge was seeping out of the eyes, which had been rotting along with the bodies. He turned on the tap. Nothing came out. The water had been cut off along with the electricity. He used some barley tea that was still in the refrigerator, and which was clearly spoiled, to wash the bagged eyes. Most of the eyes had already decomposed. He picked out one that was still mostly whole and put it in his mouth. The vile smell of fish and scent of rot spread through his mouth. Each time he took a breath, a fishy smell rose from deep inside him. He thought maybe it was the smell of his internal organs dying. He took his time, slowly sucking on each of the rotted eyes. Only then did the tears come. Suddenly he was certain his wife was dead. * A few days later, he got another phone call from the police station in U City. The detective spoke slowly, sounding embarrassed. I’m sorry but you’ll have to come back to the station. It’s nothing urgent. You can come by any time, but we think it would be better if you came sooner rather than later. He waited for the detective, who was beating around the bush more than usual, to finish and said he would leave right away. But just before he was about to hang up, something occurred to him. What did you find... this time? The detective was quiet for a moment. He regretted asking such a pointless question. I guess you’ll find out anyway when you get here. The detective told him what had been found. It’s the left arm and hand. We’re having trouble getting fingerprints off of it. After they hung up, he stared at his left hand. The hand was connected at the base to the strong, thick wrist via blood vessels, nerves, and muscles wrapped in fascia. At the other end stretched five fingers, each with their own bumpy knuckles. His fingers were short and stubby, but the skin was a healthy color because of the even supply of blood they received from the straight blood vessels. The veins bulged, as if to prove it was the hand of a living person. The hand and arm was definitely his. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what they looked like. He pictured his big, coarse- looking knuckles, then the wrist, too thick to wrap his hand around—but that was as far as he got. Had the detective ordered him to describe his own hand, he was not sure he could have done it. He could not even picture his wife’s face clearly. He could only see the sharp, cold line of her mouth. If he could not remember her face, then there was no way he would remember her left hand. He thought about the ring she always wore. They had bought it together several years after they got married. It was a plain, slender band with a tiny diamond, a common design that could be found anywhere. The tiny protruding diamond was covered in scratches visible even to the naked eye. The ring had gone into the water with his wife but fortunately not without leaving its impression behind on him. He could only hope that the hand still had its fingers, and that one of those fingers wore his wife’s ring. This time he did not stop to eat anything on the way. He did not want to look at a tattered hand and heave up black chunks of seaweed like last time. On the way to U City, he got a phone call from the landlord telling him that if he did not remove the tableware from the restaurant by the next day, it would all be demolished along with the building. He said he would separate out the things he would take from the things he would leave behind as soon as he got back. Not that there was anything to take. All of it could be thrown away. Still, he wanted to get his wife’s knife. She always used the same knife, whether she was slicing fish, chopping them up, gutting them, or scraping off the thin scales. It was a long, thin sashimi knife made from carbon steel. It wasn’t the right knife for grilled or simmered fish. She should have used a heavy cleaver like the kind used by chefs in other restaurants to chop and gut fish. His wife was good at scaling and deboning fish. But she sometimes cut her wrist. The blade of the knife was long and the tip sharp. The tip of the knife often grazed her wrist when she used it to gut fish. The cut was never fatal. She said it felt like being poked with the blunt end of a needle. But it bothered him because it looked like she was trying to sever an artery. If the left wrist had knife scars, it could be proof that it was his wife’s. The man felt thrilled to have finally found an identifying feature of her body. He decided that if his wife ever came back he would inspect her body thoroughly from top to bottom. He would learn everything: which of her molars had fillings and how many; the approximate length of her nose hair and whether they were thick or protruded from her nostrils; the shapes of her earlobes; the relative softness or hardness of the cartilage in her ears; which way her nose bent; whether her hair was stiff and rough or whether it was soft; and the location of every mole on her body. He swore he would remember the length of the hair that covered her private parts and whether it was darker than other women’s, as well as the shape of her labia. If he could, he would even memorize the size of her uterus inside the pelvic bones. He would know whether his wife’s uterus, which had never once carried a child, was really as small as a fist, and whether it really did curl in like the mouth of an old woman. That way, even if she were torn from limb to limb one day and he had to confirm her identity from a body part fished out of the water by chance, he would be able to tell the difference between what was his wife and what was not. * The detective apologized to him. He was sorry to put him through so much trouble again. The man did not respond. He swallowed his words before he could say he hoped the wrist that had been found this time was his wife’s. The wrist was swollen with water and blue with putrefaction, just like the right leg. The flesh, which was missing a chunk, looked like ragged strips of paper. The tips of the fingers were bitten off. The blood vessels were split into dozens of pieces like a snipped wire. It might have been his wife’s hand that had picked out the plumpest maggot to use for bait, the hand that scaled, gutted, sliced, salted, and roasted fish. It could also have been the hand of a typist who could type 600 characters a minute on a computer keyboard, or the hand of a musician who performed a concerto on the violin. He asked the detective if they had found a ring. There was no ring. The detective looked stumped. She might have been wearing a ring… If you look closely, the base of the finger does look paler there. But we can’t be sure whether that’s from a ring or from the water. This time, as well, the man said he did not know whether it was his wife or not. The detective nodded slowly, as if to say he suspected as much. It’s always hard to determine the identity before the head is found. Nose torn off, teeth cracked off at the roots, cheeks puckered with water and plucked out, eye sockets stuffed with waterweeds.... The man got goose bumps picturing his wife’s detached head. He pointlessly started to say, if only there had been a ring. The detective apologized again. That ravine gets a lot of drowning victims. People slip on the moss between the rocks and fall in, or go swimming and get caught in the rapids, or get swept away by the current while dipping their feet in the water. Sometimes, people go there for fun but wind up shoving a friend or family member into the water in a fit of anger. And there are a lot of suicides. If they don’t leave anything behind, they are listed as missing forever. The ravine is so long and deep that it makes searching for anyone impossible. The people of U City don’t go there unless it is to fish. It’s very well-known, and there is even a rumor that it’s haunted by a ghost who drags people down into the water. People tell stories about it, and it’s even been in the news a few times. Have you seen it? The man slowly shook his head. The detective pulled off his gloves. They say fishermen come from all over the country to fish there, deep into the mountains where the roads aren’t even paved. They say the fish that are caught there taste better. Because of all of the people who have drowned. The detective finished by asking the man why he and his wife had come all that way for a vacation. If they found the body, he would have to return again. Eventually he would be asked to identify a head or breasts or buttocks. The whole time the man was listening to the detective, he was thinking about his wife’s hand. The hand that had stroked his cheek, the hand that cooked for him, the hand that kneaded his penis, the hand that dug out fish eyes and pulled out crimson fish organs, the hand that sparkled in the light when it was covered in fish scales, the hand that smelled of hot spices, the hand that raised and lowered the security shutters thousands of times, the hand that wiped away tears after they closed the restaurant, the hand that punched him when he came home after losing their deposit, the hand that picked out a maggot, the hand that floundered in the waters of the gorge. Of all of those hands, not one was left. What he saw in the police station was just a piece of a limb that not even maggots would eat. Without electricity, the restaurant was dark. He took the bag of eyes from the fridge where he had left them last time. They had rotted more since then. He threw the rest out. The smell in the restaurant was so strong that he kept gagging while emptying the freezer and refrigerator. Each time he saw something rotten, he pictured his wife’s sunken body decomposing underneath the water. Her body would have been smashed, bones broken against the jagged rocks as she was swept down the deep gorge. Her shattered body would have been carried away by the strong undertow while bloodthirsty fish tore her flesh to pieces. They say hearing is the last of a person’s senses to die. As she was swept away, his wife would have heard her own screams mixed with the raging current and the flutter of sharp-toothed carnivorous fish approaching, her bones cracking each time she smashed against a rock, and gadflies’ wings fluttering as they sensed death and swarmed nearer. She would have heard countless fishing lines bobbing in the current and the laughter of fishermen reveling with no regard for her as she died. She might have wanted to reach her arm out and grab their lines. Just then he heard a sound coming from the kitchen. A black shadow wavered before his eyes. The shadow was slicing a rotten fish. Is that you, honey? He had not spoken in so long that his voice was hoarse. His wife sliced the fish with her left hand, which was blackened and shredded from being nibbled at by fish. Her body leaned a little to one side, as if standing on one leg; she was using the decaying right leg that he had seen in the police station in U City as a crutch. She did not turn around. She was absorbed in the task of holding the fish down with her left hand and scooping out its eyes with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. A long blood vessel dangled from the eyeball. The tips of her fingers were dark with blood. He watched helplessly as his wife gulped down the eyes of an uncooked fish that might have been swimming with parasitic larvae or Vibrio bacteria. With the eye still in her mouth, his wife glanced back at him then disappeared from view. As soon as the black shadow vanished, the restaurant grew a little darker. He took his wife’s knife from where it glimmered keenly between rusted metal bowls. The handle was warm, as if someone had just set it down. He picked up a rotten fish eye from the cutting board and put it in his mouth. The sour smell of fish spread deep inside him. He wiped the dark blood off on his clothes. He would take the knife home. All the rest could be thrown away. * In mere moments, the building would be demolished without a trace. The man felt like his bones were cracking each time the metal ball that swung from the crane struck the walls. The shop that he and his wife struggled to raise and that had been like a child to them, the shop that gave them food to eat and chairs to sit on and money and eyes, was turning into scrap. He buried his wife and their shop beneath the debris. He thought of something he saw on TV once, a funeral for some tribe in southern Africa. They said that when someone died, they would pull the roof down on top of the body and then leave the place without any special ceremony. His wife and their shop lay beneath the earth with a cement heap for a grave mound. The long sign for their restaurant fell. The glass door shattered into tiny pieces without a sound. Just then, the phone rang. It was the detective again. It had been less than ten days since the last phone call. I’m sorry to bother you, but you’ll have to come back. The detective sounded calm. The man did not want to try to identify another body part. They might all be parts of his wife, but since she was already gone, they were just inanimate objects that had nothing to do with her. He said that unless they found the head this time, he did not want to go. For all he knew, it would be the right arm, and then the left leg, the limbless torso, then the right leg. The fishermen could bring up as many body parts from the deep, secretive water as they wanted. He did not want to go back and forth identifying all those parts. That’s why I called. We found a head this time, and we believe it is your wife’s. We checked it against the facial features of our recent missing persons, and it bears the closest match to hers. His heart thumped wildly. At last they had found her head. It was the decisive clue that would change her status from missing to deceased. He would not have to identify any more body parts. He thought it over for a moment and then asked how his wife’s face looked. The detective hesitated before responding. Drowned bodies are rarely found intact. Most are found floating face down with the head and limbs submerged. As a result, the blood settles into the head, face, and throat, which speeds up decomposition. The face swells so much that the features can be hard to recognize. Of course, it’s not often that we find only the head. The detective was beating around the bush, telling him that his wife’s head was spoiled beyond recognition. The man said he would leave right away and hung up. When the man first heard that a witness saw a woman drowning in the gorge, he had stared at his hands for a long time. Hands that were made up of fourteen bones in the fingers, five bones in the palm, and eight bones in the wrist, all more fragile than any other body part. Hands that flinched, reacting immediately whenever the thousands of nerves registered pain such as hot, cold, or stinging sensations. Hands that might have pushed his wife into the gorge. Hands that might have sensed the agony that flared up inside him when he saw the maggot wiggling in his wife’s hand and unconsciously shoved her. The man’s hands hung limp as he returned home to pack his wife’s knife. He had to hold a funeral with only his wife’s head. Her eyes might be wide open and glaring. The waterweeds plugging her eye sockets would make it look like she wept black tears, and the maggots writhing inside her blackened lips would maker her look as if she frothed at the mouth. She might be too swollen from the water to fit inside a coffin. All of her parts, except her head, would be stuffed with cotton and dressed for burial. He planned to set the knife on his wife’s chest. The sharpened knife would never rot and would serve as his dead wife’s spine, as her femur, as the soles of her feet. The knife was the only thing she would take with her. * On his way back to the police station, the man took a detour to the ravine where his wife had fallen to her death. The sun was on the horizon. Each time he thought the road would end, another curve appeared. The further upstream he drove, the fewer fishermen he saw. Where was the spot he had gone to with his wife? He only recalled the endless drive and could not remember exactly where they stopped. He went around another curve and was heading further up when he saw a group of fishermen standing close to the gorge. The men all looked alike and were crowded together in one spot, casting their floaters and pulling in their catch. They were excited about something. The fish seemed to be biting more there. He parked the car and walked over, as if drawn to the spot. Though it felt like he’d been driving along that winding road for over two hours, the road continued on as if the end would never come into sight. He had no idea how much further he had to go to reach the end, or how much farther was the spot where his wife had disappeared. The water was translucent and lapped gently; it looked ankle-deep. But he remembered that his wife had said the clearer the water, the deeper it was. Was this where she fell in and was swept downstream while her head was torn off, legs ripped apart, and wrists severed? The icy water swirling in the shadow of the trees must have been extremely cold. If the water were warmer, she might have survived a little longer. Even so, she would not have lasted more than half an hour before dying. The man moved a little closer to the fishermen. They fished together in silence. No one was bragging about landing a big one or grumbling that it was barely a minnow. They looked like they were toying with the lines, bobbing them up and down. They looked skilled. They kept reeling things in. The man went closer to take a look and let out a shriek. One of the men was pulling up an arm dripping with black blood. The man next to him reeled in a pair of buttocks, the white of the bones exposed. Blood trickled from where chunks of flesh had been torn out. Another man rejoiced as he raised an eyeball the size of a ping pong ball with a clotted capillary stuck to it. A head with the tongue lolling out of it. Blackened toes. Hair clumped together like waterweeds. Glossy blue intestines jiggled from a hook. One man brought up a winged torso. The body had blue markings, and the face had a red and white beak. Several of the anglers worked together to haul in something heavy. With great difficulty, they pulled a grotesquely swollen torso out of the water. Covered in fish scales, the torso sparkled and shone. The body parts took the bait that the fisherman cast. They were using maggots, plump and large as worms. One man, too busy to attach fresh bait to his line, pulled a handful of squirming maggots from his pocket and tossed them into the ravine. When they landed in the water, the maggots did not spread out but clumped together. The water stood still and did not move. Torn limbs and body parts swarmed around the maggots. Shocked, the man took a step backwards and lost his footing. He grabbed for the exposed root of a dead tree to keep himself from falling into the water. A slimy mass landed on his head with a thump. The moment it touched his head, the mass broke into pieces and spread all over his body. He let go of the root to try to brush the things off of him, and fell into the ravine. The sun had set, and the water was so cold it seemed his organs would freeze instantly. The current did not move but tightened around him. He grabbed at the fishing lines in the water, struggling not to be swept away. His legs were spread out in the water, making him look like a black waterweed with its roots swaying around. He could not make out the shapes of the fishermen in the dark. He shouted for them to pull on their lines. The fish were coming towards him. They were already nipping at his toes. Someone cast his hook towards him, and it snagged the top of his head. The floater rose, slowly peeling back his scalp. The maggots in the water burrowed into the openings in his flesh. He was slowly pulled up on the fishing line. After they reeled him in, the fishermen tossed him into a large net along with the other bodies they’d fished out. His skin chafed against the ground and peeled away. His body was torn and bitten all over. The ground was damp with dew and gave off a soft smell. He lay with his battered body against the earth and listened to the sounds of the ravine at night. He heard dry leaves rustle in the wind and fall softly onto the fishing net. He heard the glistening white maggots contract and expand their bodies as they crawled towards him. Each time the fishermen cast their lines, the water splashed sharply as if struck with a whip. The stagnant water droned and eddied. It sounded like his wife sobbing. The maggots swarmed the fishnet, crawling over his body, and began marching up the trunk of the dead tree. They climbed in single file, like a white line being carved into the bark. They reached the top and flung their bodies lightly into the air. Maggots poured down on him like rain. He was buried in the pitch-dark night of the ravine.    * Translated by Sora Kim-Russell. AUTHOR'S PROFILE Pyun Hye-Young completed her BA in creative writing and MA in Korean literature from Hanyang University. Her novel The Hole was the winner of the 2017 Shirley Jackson Award, and City of Ash and Red was an NPR Great Read. Her works in English include Evening Proposal (Dalkey Archive, 2016), The Hole (Arcade Publishing, 2017), City of Ash and Red (Arcade Publishing, 2018), and The Law of Lines (Arcade Publishing, 2020). Her short stories have been published in the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and Words Without Borders. She currently teaches creative writing at Myongji University.   

• Ashes and Red Vol.12 Summer 2011

  My ex-wife is dead. My ex-wife is dead. My ex-wife is dead. My ex-wife is dead. My ex-wife is dead. My ex-wife is dead. My ex-wife is dead. He kept muttering the words to himself, but no matter how many times he repeated them, the truth would not sink in. Yujin was just playing a mean joke on him. Yujin knew that he had slept with his ex-wife after she divorced him and married Yujin, and now he had obviously spent the last few days coming up with ways to hurt him. He slid open the door to the balcony. The smell of trash and disinfectant seeped into the room ; at the same time, a stunned sorrow spread out from the center of his body. It was not the sorrow of realizing his ex-wife was dead. The emotion he felt was similar to what he had experienced as a child, when he stood before the dark funeral portrait of his deceased mother. They had not let him see his mother’s body. No one in his family wanted him, just a boy at the time, to see what she looked like when she died, her body mangled from the traffic accident. Though he was just a boy, he knew what death was, but he did not yet understand what it meant that his “mother” had died. The reason he had felt sad was his father. His father, dressed in a black suit cut from fabric too heavy for the season, dripped with sweat in the funeral home. He kept glancing at his father in that suit. The suit had been purchased for their wedding, nine years ago. A furniture wholesaler, his father wore jeans and a windbreaker to work everyday. Other than when he attended other people’s weddings, he almost never had reason to wear a suit. The jacket sleeves were too tight on his father, who had grown portly after marriage. The black fabric was wrinkled from bowing to the floor each time another mourner stepped up to the funeral portrait, then from sitting like a stone with his back slumped. The sleeves, which tightened like sausages each time he leaned forward to bow to someone who had come to pay their condolences, looked like they were going to burst. By the afternoon of the second day, the seam in the armpit finally gave way and the white shirt popped out. It looked like a white tongue. Everyone was too sad to care or to laugh. The sorrow of mourning enabled them to overlook the ridiculous. He kept glancing at the white fabric. It looked like his mother was sticking her tongue out at him to keep him from crying. Later that night, after he had fallen asleep in the reception hall where several guests were still quietly tilting back glasses of alcohol, he was awakened by the sound of stifled sobs. His father was alone, crying, in front of the funeral portrait. He burst into tears. He cried because of the quiet funeral hall, the smell of spicy brisket soup that had thickened and condensed from boiling too long, the dark faces of the tired people, and the sight of his father bawling his eyes out. He cried from the sorrow of a son looking at his humble father dressed in a torn suit, teary face contorted and clownish, bald head beaded with sweat, and not out of mourning for a deceased mother. The funeral ended, and a month passed. His father called a cleaning lady to help straighten up their neglected house. When she opened the refrigerator, she made a face, took out the containers of side dishes one by one, and set them on the table. They were the last dishes his mother had made. They were moldy and sour with rot. He had been hiding in his room, peeking through the door as she cleaned, but when he saw this, he jumped out and grabbed one of the containers before she could pour it down the sink. It was stir-fried dried shrimp. He hated dried shrimp. Each time he ate it, the shells stuck in his teeth. He stood there, glowering at the hateful cleaning lady, and stuffed his mouth full of moldy shrimp. His stomach ached for days. With no one to take care of him, he had to suffer through it alone, the diarrhea wearing away at his bottom. At last, he understood that his mother was gone. Pain spread through his body and his heart, rising up and down his esophagus with each nauseating whiff of the moldy, mushy shrimp. He had lain awake in bed, late into the night, sick and alone, coming to terms with the fact that he would have to nurse himself back from sickness without his mother. The death of his ex-wife would sink in the same way. Only after his entire body ached because of her, only after all of the words he wanted to say and needed to say had backed up inside of him and overturned his stomach, only after his tongue stiffened with the pain of being unable to speak even a single word since she was not there to hear it would her death finally become real. He was not sad because she was dead. What he felt was just the bewilderment of finding out while in a foreign country, by someone who was little more than a stranger to him and who had informed him unilaterally and in a voice dripping with suspicion, that the person he had felt closest to in this world was gone. Now more than ever he longed to talk to her. He kept repeating the words she's dead to himself to try to shake off that desire. Even if he could not make himself believe it, she was obviously not there in the apartment with him. So he could not talk to her anyway. Back before their divorce, he had strayed once. The girl was friendly and laughed easily, and she liked him. For a while, he was secretly tormented, wondering whether he really loved the girl and trying to figure out whether she loved him. He would think he was madly in love one day, but the very next day he would think to himself that if this flimsy thing he felt was called love, then he may as well say he loved a dog in the street. While hovering in indecision, he slept with the girl several times. What had bothered him then was not the sense of moral failing or guilt he felt about sleeping with someone else while legally married. It also wasn’t because he felt bad towards his wife. Nor was it because he felt bad towards the girl he had slept with despite not knowing for sure whether he loved her or not. It was the loneliness he felt from being unable to discuss the problem openly with his wife. It was the loneliness of one who harbors a secret he would prefer not to carry. When it came to the waves of feeling that washed over him, the thrill he felt each time he saw the girl, the insecurity of not knowing if she was going to leave him, the anxiety of wanting to be loved by her, the loneliness of having to guess what she was feeling through a single trivial word as she did not let him in completely, and the fact that he wanted to get away from her despite all of that, the only person he wanted to confide in was his wife. His wife was the only person who could have listened to the whole story and told him whether or not the girl really loved him, whether or not he really loved the girl, and just how hard that love would make things for him in the end. But he had known it was precisely for that reason that, of all people, he could never say a word about it to his wife. He was as lonely now as he was back then. He longed to talk to someone about his ex-wife's death and about the disappointment he felt because she had fled to a world that he was not a part of. But the person he wanted to talk to about her death was, more than anyone else, was his ex-wife herself. She would have wanted to tell him how afraid she was the moment she realized she was about to die, how much it hurt when the knife blade—as he pictured it, he started to cry for the first time—slashed into her flesh, how agonizing it was to realize she was still alive after repeated stabbings, and how frightening it was to expel her final breath as she used the last of her strength to open her eyes and look upon her killer. As lonely as it made him to not be able to tell her about his loneliness, it must have made her just as lonely to not be able to tell anyone about her own death. His tears fell, yet her death still did not feel real. Even if her body were there now, right before his eyes, he would feel the same. But since he was no longer a child, he had to accept her death, whether or not it had sunk in yet, and it pained him to imagine her in pain. He would never see her again, would never share a conversation with her again. The opportunity to talk about the loneliness of keeping secrets they could not share with each other, about the profound loneliness that arose from bearing only the things they were expected to know, was gone forever.    * Translated by Sora Kim-Russell. AUTHOR'S PROFILE Pyun Hye-Young completed her BA in creative writing and MA in Korean literature from Hanyang University. Her novel The Hole was the winner of the 2017 Shirley Jackson Award, and City of Ash and Red was an NPR Great Read. Her works in English include Evening Proposal (Dalkey Archive, 2016), The Hole (Arcade Publishing, 2017), City of Ash and Red (Arcade Publishing, 2018), and The Law of Lines (Arcade Publishing, 2020). Her short stories have been published in the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and Words Without Borders. She currently teaches creative writing at Myongji University.   

REVIEWS

• [FRENCH] Man is an Owl to Man Vol. 64 Summer 2024

• Psychic Wounds and the Body’s Rebellion: The Hole by Pyun Hye Young Vol.37 Autumn 2017

• Into the Minds of Men: Evening Proposal by Pyun Hye Young Vol.34 Winter 2016

• On Night and Waiting: Night Passes by Pyun Hye-Young Vol.22 Winter 2013

• Secrets the Woods Tell: They Went to the Forest in the West by Pyun Hye-Young Vol.18 Winter 2012

• Standing on the Precipice of Hell: Evening Courtship by Pyun Hye-Young Vol.12 Summer 2011

• Who Murdered My Wife?: Ashes and Red by Pyun Hye-Young Vol.8 Summer 2010

BOOKS