The Vegetarian

by Han Kang

  “Why is it you don’t eat meat? I’ve always wondered, but somehow I couldn’t ask.” She lowered her chopsticks and looked across at him. “You don’t have to tell me if it’s difficult for you,” he said, fighting all the time to suppress the sexual images that were running through his head.

  “No,” she said calmly. “It isn’t difficult. It’s just that I don’t think you’d understand.” She raised her chopsticks again and slowly chewed some seasoned bean sprouts. “It’s because of a dream I had.”

  “A dream?” he repeated.

  “I had a dream…and that’s why I don’t eat meat.”

  “Well…what kind of dream?”

  “I dreamed of a face.”

  “A face?”

  Seeing how utterly baffled he was, she laughed quietly. A melancholic laugh. “Didn’t I say you wouldn’t understand?”

  He couldn’t ask: in that case, why did you use to bare your breasts to the sunlight, like some kind of mutant animal that had evolved to be able to photosynthesize? Was that because of a dream too?

  —

  He parked the car in front of her building, and they both got out.

  “Thank you so much for today.”

  She smiled in response. Her smile was quiet and thoughtful, not dissimilar to that of his wife. For all the world as though she were a perfectly ordinary woman. It’s true, he thought, she really is ordinary. It’s me who’s the crazy one.

  She went in through the main door to the building, vanishing without bowing good-bye. He stood there and waited for the lights to come on in her room, then, when her window still hadn’t lit up, got back in the car and started the engine. In his mind he sketched her darkened room, and her sliding her naked body, still covered with the brilliant flowers, between the mattress and the quilt. That body which he had spent so many hours close beside, yet which he had touched only with the tip of his brush.

  He ached.

  —

  When he pressed the buzzer for 709 it was exactly twenty minutes past nine. The woman who opened the door and came out said in a hushed voice, “Ji-woo’s been asking for his mother; he’s just fallen asleep a few minutes ago.” A little girl—judging by her braids, she was in the second or third year of primary school—held out Ji-woo’s plastic forklift truck for him to take. He thanked them and put the truck in his backpack. He left the door to his apartment, 710, open, and carried the sleeping child through carefully. The walk down the corridor to the child’s bedroom felt unusually long. Ji-woo couldn’t have been sleeping very deeply, because as soon as he laid him down in the bed he could hear the wet sound of the boy sucking his thumb, a lonely sound in the darkened room.

  He went into the living room and turned on the light, locked the front door and sat down on the sofa. He remained lost in thought for a while, then stood up, went back over to the door, opened it and went out. After taking the lift down to the ground floor, he went and sat in the driver’s seat of the parked car. While he was busy rummaging around in the bag that held the two 6mm tapes and the sketchbook, his phone rang.

  “Ji-woo?” His wife’s voice sounded subdued.

  “He’s asleep.”

  “Did he have dinner?”

  “He must have done. He was already asleep when I got there.”

  “Okay. I’ll be back around eleven.”

  “He’s sleeping so deeply I…well.”

  “What?”

  “I’m just going to pop to the studio. There’s something I haven’t quite finished yet.” His wife didn’t answer. “I’m sure Ji-woo won’t wake up. He’s really sound asleep. You know he sleeps through till morning these days.” Nothing.

  “Are you listening?” Still nothing.

  “Darling.”

  To his surprise, it sounded as though she were crying. Was there no one else in the shop? It would be highly unusual for her to let herself cry in front of others, she who was always so acutely aware of prying eyes.

  After a while she appeared to have calmed herself down, and spoke in a voice he’d never heard from her before, such was the complex mix of emotions it seemed to express: “If you want to go, then go. I’m going to close up the shop and head home now.”

  She hung up. Ordinarily, she was the kind of person who could never bring herself to hang up first, no matter how busy she was. Thrown into confusion, he felt an unexpected pang of guilt and sat there for a while undecided, still clutching the phone in his hand. He hesitated over whether to go back inside and wait for his wife to get in, but soon made up his mind and started the engine. The roads were fairly empty at this hour; it would only take her twenty minutes or so to get home. In all likelihood, the child would stay sound asleep and nothing at all would happen. But in any case, he simply couldn’t face the thought of sitting there in that brightly lit apartment, waiting for his wife to come home, only to be confronted with the darkness in her face.

  When he arrived at the studio there was only J there.

  “You’re here late! I was just about to leave.”

  He hoped that J wouldn’t hang around on his account. Given that the space was shared by four people, and all of them night owls, the opportunity for a whole night’s uninterrupted work was rare.

  He turned on the computer while J was getting his things together and putting on his trench coat. J seemed surprised to see the two tapes he was holding.

  “You’ve made something.”

  “That’s right.”

  J smiled at his lack of elaboration. “I’d love to take a look at it when you’re done.”

  “Of course.”

  J sketched a playful bow, opened the door and swung his arms vigorously as he marched out, impersonating someone who felt the need to make himself scarce. He laughed. Once the laughter had subsided, it struck him what a long time it had been since he’d laughed like that.

  —

  The sun was well up the next day when he took out the master tape and turned off the computer.

  The tapes had turned out better than he’d expected. The lighting, her movements, the atmosphere these evoked—all were breathtakingly compelling. He toyed briefly with the idea of adding some background music, before deciding to keep it silent, to make it seem as though everything on-screen were occurring in a kind of vacuum. Her gentle tossing, her naked body littered with gorgeous blooms, the Mongolian mark—against a background of silence, a soundless harmony recalling something primeval, something eternal.

  He struggled through the tedious process of rendering for what felt like an age, smoking his way through an entire pack of cigarettes, sticking at it until it was done. The running time of the finished piece was four minutes fifty-five seconds. It began with a shot of his hand as he painted her prone body, faded out on the Mongolian mark, and then, after a shot capturing the desert of her face, her features so shadowed she was almost unrecognizable, faded out again.

  It was a long time since he’d known the exhaustion that comes from staying up all night. He felt as if grains of sand were embedded here and there in his skin, a sense of everything having taken on some alien form. He wrote on the label of the master tape with a black pen: “Mongolian Mark 1—Flowers of Night and Flowers of Day.”

  As soon as he was finished he put his hands over his eyes, consumed by the thought of that image that he knew he should never attempt to capture, but to which, were such a thing possible, he would affix the title “Mongolian Mark 2.”

  The image of a man and woman, their bodies made brilliant with painted flowers, having sex against a background of unutterable silence. Their shifting limbs matter-of-fact in that vacuum. A progression of scenes lurching from violence to tenderness, with no extreme left unexplored. One stripped-down, drawn-out moment of quiet purification, extremity sublimated into some kind of peace.

  He clutched the master tape, running his fingers over it while the thoughts ran through his head. If he was to choose a man to be filmed having sex with his sister-in-law, whoever it was it couldn’t be him. He was a
ll too aware of his wrinkled stomach, his love handles, his sagging buttocks and thighs.

  He started the car, but instead of driving home he headed to a nearby sauna. He changed into the white T-shirt and shorts they gave him at the desk, and gazed, disillusioned, at his reflection in the mirror. There was no doubt about it: it couldn’t be him. But then who? Whom could he find to have sex with her? He wasn’t making a porn movie, nor was it enough for them to just feign the motions. He needed authenticity, and that meant actual penetration. But then who? Who would agree to such a thing? And how would his sister-in-law react?

  He knew he had reached a point of no return. But he couldn’t stop now. No, he didn’t want to stop.

  He tried to fall asleep in the sauna, his dangling limbs caressed by the warm steam. The place felt like being inside a summer night, time doubling back on itself. Enveloped by the warm radiance of that image, the only image that was forbidden him, all the energy drained from his exhausted body.

  —

  The first thing he saw when he woke from his brief sleep was her.

  Her skin was a pale green. Her body lay prone in front of him, like a leaf that had just fallen from the branch, only barely begun to wither. The Mongolian mark was gone; instead, her whole body was covered evenly with that pale wash of green.

  He turned her over onto her back. A dazzling light came from her naked body, making him squint, and he couldn’t see the area above her breasts—as though the source of the light was somewhere around her face. He spread her legs; her thighs parted with an ease that could only mean she was awake. A green sap, like that which oozes from bruised leaves, began to flow out from her vagina when he entered her. The acrid sweetness of the grass was so pungent he found it difficult to breathe. When he pulled out, on the point of climax, he saw that the whole of his penis was stained green. A blackish paste was smeared over his skin from his lower stomach to his thighs, a fresh sap which could have come from either her or him.

  —

  Once again he was on the phone to her, confronting silence on the other end of the line.

  “Sister-in-law…”

  “Yes.” Luckily, this time she answered without too long a pause. Did she sound like she was glad to hear from him? He wasn’t sure.

  “Did you get a good rest yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Have you washed the flowers off?”

  “No.”

  He exhaled in a long sigh. “In that case, can you keep it on for now? Just until tomorrow. It won’t have faded by then. I, uh, I have to film you one more time.”

  Was she laughing? He wished he could see her expression. Was she smiling?

  “I didn’t want it to come off,” she said calmly, “so I haven’t washed my body. It’s stopping the dreams from coming. If it comes off later I hope you’ll paint it on again for me.”

  He couldn’t understand exactly what she was saying, but he gripped the receiver tightly, and muttered, good. Perhaps she would agree after all. Perhaps she would agree to what he had in mind.

  “If you have time, could you come around again tomorrow? To the studio at Sonbawi.”

  “Okay.”

  “And there’ll be someone else coming too. A man.” She was silent. “I’m going to have him take his clothes off and paint flowers on him too. That’s okay, right?” He waited. Her long silences no longer made him uneasy; he thought he’d figured out by now that they generally signified consent.

  “Okay.”

  He put the phone down and paced around and around the living room, wringing his hands.

  He called his wife. It would be unpleasant, but it had to be done.

  “Where are you?” she asked, her tone more ambivalent than cold.

  “At home.”

  “How did your work go?”

  “It’s still going. It looks like I’ll be busy until tomorrow night.”

  “I see. Well…don’t work too hard.”

  He hung up. He would have preferred it if she’d screamed and raged like other wives, nagged and heaped abuse on him. She became resigned so easily, and her habit of gloomily suppressing the dregs of this resignation suffocated him. He didn’t know if her desperate efforts to be understanding and considerate were a good or a bad thing. Perhaps it was all down to him being self-centered and irresponsible. But right now he found his wife’s patience and desire to do the right thing stifling, which made him still more inclined to see it as a flaw in her character.

  Once the vague mix of guilt, regret and uncertainty had passed, he continued with the next stage of his plan and dialed J’s number.

  “J? Will you be coming by this evening?”

  “No, I was there all last night. I’m going to take a break today.”

  “Ah, really? I have to ask you a small favor.”

  “What sort of favor?”

  “Are you free tomorrow? I’m going to be doing some filming tomorrow evening.” He told J the location of M’s studio. He was about to add that it was fine if J was only free in the afternoon, that it wouldn’t take long, but then he changed his mind. “You said you wanted to see the work I made yesterday, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I’m heading over to the studio now.” He hung up.

  —

  J was early. Though he was usually so laid-back, today, for the first time, he seemed impatient.

  “I’m shaking.”

  He made J a cup of coffee and mentally stripped him. Good: the two of them would suit each other.

  The previous afternoon, when he’d shown J the tape, the younger man had been incredibly excited.

  “I can’t believe it…it’s magical! I mean, how did this sort of idea come to you in the first place? You know, for a while I actually thought you were a pretty average guy…ah, I’m sorry…” J’s voice, the look in his eyes, were filled with an almost suspiciously excessive enthusiasm. Was he being sincere? “This is so different from anything you’ve made before. This is…it’s like something’s lifted you right up to a completely different level! These colors!”

  Though he balked at J’s hyperbole—typical of young people—overall he had to say he agreed. It wasn’t as though he’d previously been blind to the beauty of color, but still. It felt as though his body were brimming with their intense hues, all this latent energy inside him—it was almost unbearable. He was living with a new intensity.

  “I used to be dark”: There were times when he wanted to express it this way. I used to be dark. I was in a dark place. The monochrome world, entirely devoid of the colors he was now experiencing, had had a calmness that was beautiful in its way, but it wasn’t somewhere he could go back to. It seemed the happiness that had enabled him to feel that quiet peace was now lost to him forever. And yet he found himself unable to think of this as a loss. All of his energy was taken up in trying to cope with the excitement, the heightened awareness of living in the present moment.

  Encouraged by J’s praise, though he couldn’t prevent his face from flushing, he eventually managed to get out the words he’d planned. But when he showed him his sketchbook and the dance performance program and asked him if he would do him the favor of modeling for him, J became flustered.

  “Why on earth are you asking me? There are plenty of professional models out there; you could hire a theater actor, or…”

  “You’ve got the right kind of body. Anything too gym honed would be all wrong. You’re just the thing.”

  “No, I’m not the one for this job—to pose like that with this woman. I can’t.”

  “No one will know. I won’t show your face. And this woman, don’t you want to meet her? Wouldn’t you like to be part of the inspiration for such a piece?”

  After being given just the one night to think it over, J had called the next morning and agreed to be the model. Of course, there was no way the younger man could guess what he really wanted:
to film the two of them, J and his sister-in-law, actually having sex.

  “She’s a bit late, isn’t she?” J asked, peering nervously out of the window. He’d already been growing impatient himself. She’d assured him that she’d be able to find the place on her own, so he’d decided to wait for her at the studio rather than meeting at the underground station.

  “Well, perhaps I’ll go down to the station.” He picked up his sweater and stood up, but just then they heard someone knocking on the translucent glass door. “Ah, here she is!”

  J put down his cup of coffee.

  This time she was wearing a chunky black sweater, with the same jeans as before. Her loose hair, naturally very black, was still wet; she must have washed it just before she came out. She looked first at him, then at J, then gave a quick laugh.

  “I was very careful,” she said, touching her hair. “I didn’t get any water on the flowers.”

  J smiled, looking relieved. He probably hadn’t expected her to seem so ordinary.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  “Me?” J’s eyes opened wide.

  “She’s already been painted, so now I just have to do you.” Stifling a nervous giggle, J turned his back on them and got undressed. “You’ll have to take your pants off, too.” J hesitated, then did as he was asked. J’s body was slight, more so than he’d expected. Aside from the thick hair that ran down in a line from his belly button and spread to the tops of his thighs, his flesh was enviably white and smooth.

  Just as he’d done with his sister-in-law, he had J lie prone and began to paint him with flowers, starting from the nape of his neck. Working as quickly as possible, he used a big brush to paint light purple hydrangeas, which seemed to tumble down over J’s back as though caught in a strong wind.

  “Turn over.”

  Using J’s penis as the center, he painted a single huge flower, the crimson of blood, so that it looked as though J’s black pubic hair was the sepals, and his penis the pistil. She sat quietly on the sofa all the while, sipping a cup of tea and carefully watching him work. When he was done, he noticed that J’s penis had stiffened slightly.