by Seong-nan Ha
PRAISE FOR HA SEONG-NAN
“These mesmerizing stories of disconnection and detritus unfurl with the surreal illogic of dreams—it’s as impossible to resist their pull as it is to understand, in retrospect, how circumstance succeeded circumstance to finally deliver the reader into a moment as indelible as it is unexpected. Janet Hong’s translation glitters like a blade.”
—Susan Choi, author of Trust Exercise
“Flowers of Mold shows Ha Seong-nan to be a master of the strange story. Here, things almost happen, and the weight of their almost happening hangs over the narrative like a threat. Or they do happen, and then characters go on almost like they haven’t, much to the reader’s dismay. Or a story builds up and then, where most authors would pursue things to the last fraying thread of their narrative, Ha elegantly severs the rest of the story and delicately ties it off. And as you read more of these stories, they begin to chime within one another, creating a sense of deja-vu. In any case, one is left feeling unsettled, as if something is not right with the world—or, rather (and this latter option becomes increasingly convincing), as if something is not right with you.”
—Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World
“Brilliantly crafted with precision and compassion, Ha Seong-nan’s heartbreaking collection dives into the depths of human vulnerability, where hopes and dreams are created and lost, where ordinary life gains mythological status. A truly gifted writer.”
—Nazanine Hozar, author of Aria
“Ha Seong-nan’s stories are familiar, domestic, and utterly terrifying. Like the best of A. M. Homes, Samantha Schweblin, or Brian Evenson, her elegantly terse style lures you in and never fails to shock. She writes the kind of stories I admire most. Ones you carry around with you long after reading.”
—Brian Wood, author of Joytime Killbox
“Wrapped up in fantasy or dreams, these men, women, and children are often confused over what is and isn’t real, the reader seeing before they do how their anxious yearning will go unfulfilled.”
—Laura Adamczyk, The A.V. Club
“Be forewarned: it might make you reconsider your interest in your neighbors, because it could lead to obsession and madness—or something odder and less reassuring than a tidy end, of which there are few in this wonderfully unsettling book of 10 masterful short stories.”
—John Yau, Hyperallergic
“Joining a growing cohort of notable Korean imports, Ha’s dazzling, vaguely intertwined collection of 10 stories is poised for Western acclaim.”
—Booklist, starred review
“This impressive collection reveals Ha’s close attention to the eccentricities of life, and is sure to earn her a legion of new admirers.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“If you’re looking for a book that will make you gasp out loud, you’ve found it.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Ha’s ability to find startling traits in seemingly unremarkable characters makes each story a small treasure.”
—Cindy Pauldine, Shelf Awareness
“Her characters are trying their best to get by, and I found them deeply sympathetic, but they often face obstacles they just do not know how to confront. The stories are beautiful, inventive, gorgeously-written, and often heart-wrenching.”
—Rebecca Hussey, Book Riot
“Like The Vegetarian—another surreal and haunting text by a Korean woman—Flowers of Mold unsettles and unnerves, effortlessly….
Flowers of Mold offers readers an alternative perspective on city life, relationships, and ambition; and while it may be dark and unrelenting, it is also hauntingly lyrical.”
—Rachel Cordasco, World Literature Today
“As horror and art continue to steal and mix with each other, I’m sure we’ll find more—on both sides of the aisle—that continue to push the envelope. Flowers of Mold pushes that envelope with its impressive style and stifling isolation, creating something that’s as strange as it is incisive.”
—Carson Winter, Signal Horizon
“In these stories, readers will find tales of alienation and unruly behavior that will likely jar them as much as any narrative of sinister creatures and haunted spaces.”
—Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders
“These aren’t bedtime stories. Indeed, reading them before bed might not be a good idea at all.”
—Peter Gordon, Asian Review of Books
“Here is, undoubtedly, one of the best translated short story collections of 2019.”
—Will Harris, Books and Bao
“I’m raving about this book…. It is brilliant, modern, and surprising.”
—Charles Montgomery
“In Ha Seong-nan’s gripping and courageous Flowers of Mold, the author triple-underlines those distasteful aspects of our lives that we’d rather ignore: the putridity of leaky trash; the greasy, lingering smell of fried chicken; children’s crackers crushed underfoot; the solid clunk of an alarm clock to the jaw…. Ha is a master of the short story and hooks the reader without revealing or resolving too much too cleanly.”
—Samantha Kirby, Arkansas International
BLUEBEARD’S FIRST WIFE
HA SEONG-NAN
TRANSLATED FROM THE KOREAN BY JANET HONG
Copyright © 2002 Ha Seong-nan
Originally published in Korea by Changbi Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved
English translation copyright © 2020 by Janet Hong
English edition is published by arrangement with Changi Publishers, Inc.
First edition, 2020
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available.
ISBN-13: 978-1-948830-17-1 / ISBN-10: 1-948830-17-5
The translation was undertaken with the support of the Daesan Foundation.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Printed on acid-free paper in the United States of America.
Text set in Caslon, a family of serif typefaces based on the designs of William Caslon (1692–1766).
Design: Anthony Blake
Cover image: Anthony Totah © 123RF.com
Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press:
Dewey Hall 1-219, Box 278968, Rochester, NY 14627
www.openletterbooks.org
Contents
The Star-Shaped Stain
Bluebeard’s First Wife
Flies
Night Poaching
O Father
Joy to the World
The Dress Shirt
On that Green, Green Grass
A Quiet Night
Pinky Finger
Daisy Fleabane
BLUEBEARD’S FIRST WIFE
The Star-Shaped Stain
It must have been tough for the photographer to squeeze over sixty children into one picture. Not only that, but he’d also needed to include the sign above their heads that said Myeongjeong Hall. He managed to fit everyone in, but the children’s faces came out so small they were difficult to make out. The woman had trouble picking out her own child among the tiny faces. To make matters worse, they were dressed in the same yellow uniform, marked with the name of the kindergarten. She moved the tip of her finger over each face until she came to a girl standing at the end of the last row. Only her eyes and nose were showing, the bottom half of her face hidden by the children in front.
With photos spread out over the living room floor where she sat, the woman was in the middle of choosing the clearest o
ne of her daughter. They were all taken at the kindergarten and sent home for parents to buy. It took studying a few photos intently before she could spot her child at once. The girl was always off to the side with her face cut off, or in the last row, the top half of her face barely showing above the shoulders of the children in front, like a sun peeking over the horizon. In all of them, it seemed everyone had been gathered for a picture and the stragglers, their absence noted only then, had been dragged over and placed anywhere.
The woman had already examined dozens of photos, but there wasn’t a single one properly focused on her child. Even in the pictures where the children were eating lunch with their mouths full of kimbap, or proudly holding sweet potatoes and radishes they’d just pulled out from the red soil, her daughter was caught in mid-motion as she turned toward the camera, or her face wasn’t raised at all and her forehead and the part in her hair were the only things captured. Once her husband had complained, as he looked through the pictures their daughter had brought home.
Go and meet her teacher for once. Don’t act like there isn’t anything you can do.
She knew instantly what he meant. Do you even understand how things work these days? Teachers aren’t allowed to accept gifts, even soft drinks.
Her husband tossed the pictures on the floor near her feet. They scattered around her. It’s not me who doesn’t understand. It’s you.
If she had listened to him and met with the kindergarten teacher then, would they have gotten at least one good picture of their daughter?
Their daughter was much too ordinary. There wasn’t a single special thing about her looks, personality, or even her eating habits. If she had gone on to elementary school, that ordinariness could have worked to her advantage. After all, the woman had seen many cases where teachers singled out children with unique personalities; attention sometimes invited trouble.
There was a friend she’d been meeting for the past ten years. Once every two years, sometimes even twice a week, they would meet for lunch or dinner, ask after one another, and joke and laugh together. But once she said goodbye and returned home, she wouldn’t be able to visualize the friend’s face. It was the same with her daughter. Now a year later, it was difficult for her to recall the child’s face. Sure, she could pick her out among the many faces in group pictures, but the moment she shut the album, all that remained in her mind would be her daughter’s round face and the hazy outline of her features.
She looked all morning, but couldn’t find one decent picture. In the end, she pulled out the same photo she’d used the previous year. It was of her daughter in profile, cropped and blown up from a group photo, taken when the class had gone on a field trip to the historic Seodaemun Prison. Her daughter’s face—already hazy to begin with—became even fuzzier when enlarged to portrait size.
•
Three charter buses were parked in single file in front of the Deoksu Palace entrance. The narrow sidewalk swarmed with people heading to work or out of town on vacation. Those passing by accidentally kicked coolers, crates of beer bottles, and plastic bags filled with fruit and beverages.
A driver smoked out on the road, in front of an idling bus with a paper sign in the window that said Morning Star Kindergarten. He watched the electronic news board on top of a building across the boulevard. Headlines from the morning papers raced across the display in large letters. Hun’s mom who had notified her about the time and location hadn’t arrived yet. The woman placed her bag on the ground and leaned against the stone wall of the palace. On the subway, the corner of the frame that held her daughter’s picture had kept stabbing her in the thigh.
A large woman lurched up to the bus, checked the paper sign in the window, and wiped the sweat from her face. It was Hun’s mother. She’d put on even more weight in the two months, and age spots had settled on her right cheek, like grains of sand. Hun’s mother recognized her and clutched her hand. A sour tang escaped from the big plastic bag hanging on her shoulder. She laughed, blinking her thick eyelids.
“I couldn’t find a place that does sweet-and-sour fried chicken this early,” she said. “I had to go to ten different places. I finally found one where the owners live right next door, so I convinced her. I just had to get it. It was his favorite after all …”
Tears like discharge oozed along the corners of her eyes that were crusted with sleep.
One by one, familiar faces appeared. In the past year, they’d met many times in the parents’ committee meetings. They nodded to each other and some men shook hands. The driver opened the luggage compartment on the side of the bus, but closed it shortly after. All they had were purses and shoulder bags.
The bus reeked of gasoline. She plugged her nose. The blue vinyl seat covers made her dizzy. Since it was the middle of summer, it was probably the bus company’s peak season; there were still mop streaks on the floor, as if the bus had come straight after cleaning. The mesh pocket in front of her knees contained an empty beverage bottle that hadn’t been collected. Miseon’s father counted heads, moving from the back of the bus to the front, and stood next to the driver. As the chairman of the parents’ committee, he looked after everything from renting the bus to other trivial matters.
Her husband emerged from the subway exit. He strode faster upon seeing the bus, his suit jacket in one hand and a bouquet of white chrysanthemums in the other. He held the bouquet up in the air out of people’s way; the crowds seemed to be slowing him down.
Once, she’d walked past a flower shop with her daughter when the florist was standing outside, arranging the white chrysanthemums to be used for funerals. The florist discarded the leaves and stems, and poked the blossoms into a round floral foam. Petals and leaves drifted even to the middle of the road. Look Mommy, her daughter had said, pointing at the blossoms. They look like steamed buns. She could still hear the girl’s voice in her head, but her face was blurry, just like in the class picture taken in front of Myeongjeong Hall.
Her husband rushed onto the bus, nodding at those sitting in front, and sank into the seat next to her. Her body tilted over to his side. He breathed heavily for a long time, as if he’d hurried to make it on time. His shirt was wrinkled and the collar, grimy. The flowers reeked. He was late, because he’d stopped to buy the flowers.
After passing the Singal Interchange, the bus pulled into the bus lane and sped up. The other lanes were clogged with cars from all the people going away on vacation. Every time the bus braked, her stomach turned. The smell of the sweet-and-sour chicken wafting from the back made things worse. Goose bumps rose on her arms from the air conditioning, but the bus trapped the smells inside.
Installed beside the driver’s seat was a karaoke machine, along with a microphone. The driver, who’d probably been expecting a group of tourists, seemed to gauge the situation only after Miseon’s father told him the destination. He’d turned off the radio after and been chewing gum ever since. Once in a while, buses packed with vacationers passed by. People danced ridiculously in the narrow aisle, moving only their upper bodies.
Around noon, the bus pulled off the expressway. Scenes of tranquil farms passed outside the window. Women in visors with towels wrapped around their heads pulled weeds in the paddy fields, crouching, as if waiting in ambush. Under a bridge, children frolicked knee-deep in the stream.
Once the bus entered the first town, it was forced to slow down, because of the motorcycles and tractors that dashed out unexpectedly. The rice mill, post office, clothing store, and fire station lined the street. They passed an empty school playground equipped with wall bars, a jungle gym, seesaw, and swing set, and then passed more fields and rice paddies. In the distance, houses stood in clusters. When they had passed several more towns that looked the same, the road narrowed and the paved road came to an end. It was just gravel after that. The bus rattled along the gravel road, sending her bouncing on the seat.
Both sides of the road were thick with pine trees. The shade they cast made the road appear wet. After traveling
on the gravel for about twenty minutes, the view opened up and she could finally see the ocean. It was low tide; the water was out almost as far as the horizon.
It was past two o’clock in the afternoon when they finally arrived at their destination. They walked down the trail to the beach, since the bus couldn’t go any farther than the parking lot. There was hardly a trail left, for it was overgrown with weeds that came up to her knees. They scratched her legs as she pushed her way through.
The wreckage had long been cleared away, and where the building once stood was now thick with weeds. The swimming pool had never been filled up. A dead pigeon floated in the fetid rainwater that had collected at the deep end.
As the tide went out, it left behind a small boat stuck in the middle of the mud flat. The day before their daughter had left for summer camp, the woman had cut off the mouth of a plastic bottle and punched holes in its side, then threaded a cord through them and tied the ends together. If everything had gone according to plan, the children would have taken their plastic bottles and gone digging in the silt for clams and crabs. With the bottle hanging from her neck, her daughter had hopped up and down in excitement, saying she was going to fill it with crabs.
It was not easy to find where Room 204 of Building B had been. Several parents moved from spot to spot, guessing and arguing over the correct location. A mat was rolled out on the ground and a simple memorial table was set up. They lined up the frames in a row. Favorite toys like stuffed dolls and toy cars were placed before the children’s pictures.
Hun’s mother placed the sweet-and-sour chicken, now cold from the air-conditioned bus, in front of her son’s picture and sank to the ground. Before their daughter’s blurry photo, the woman’s husband placed a bouquet of white chrysanthemums—the ones that had reminded the girl of steamed buns—and glared up at the sun blazing above his head. The sky contained not even a speck of cloud. Tears left salt streaks on the woman’s cheeks. Her cracked lips stung from the salt.
