The Vegetarian

by Han Kang

  She’d fought down her feeling of shame and managed to stop trembling before getting up onto the bed. The middle-aged male doctor then pushed a cold abdominal scope deep into her vagina and removed a tongue-like polyp that had been stuck to the vaginal wall. Her body flinched away from the sharp pain.

  “So this is why you’ve been bleeding. Well, it came away cleanly, so the bleeding should start to lessen in a few days, and then stop altogether. Your ovaries are completely fine, so there’s nothing for you to worry about there.”

  There wasn’t even a scrap of happiness that she could glean from this. Instead of a serious illness, a possibility that had caused her no end of worry over the past month, it had been nothing but a minor niggle. Back on the platform at Wangsimni, it wasn’t only the pain from the operation that caused her legs to tremble. When the train eventually roared into the platform, she staggered behind one of the metal chairs and hid herself, afraid that something inside her would make her throw herself in front of the solid mass of the train.

  How to explain the four months or so that followed on from that day? The bleeding continued for around another two weeks, then the cut healed and it stopped. But she felt as though there were still an open wound inside her body. Somehow, it seemed this wound had in fact grown bigger than her, that her whole body was being pulled into its pitch-black maw.

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

  —

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

  “I’m tired…I said I’m really tired.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  All of this is meaningless.

  I can’t take it anymore.

  I can’t go on any longer.

  I don’t want to.

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

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

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

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

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

  —

  Time passes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The only times when the pain simply, miraculously ceases, are those moments just after she laughs. Something Ji-woo says or does makes her laugh, and then immediately afterward she is left blank, empty even of pain. At such times, the sheer fact of her having laughed seems unbelievable, and makes her laugh again. Admittedly, this laughter always seems more manic than happy, but Ji-woo loves to see it all the same.

  “Was this it, Mum? Was this what made you laugh?”

  Then Ji-woo will repeat whatever it is he’d just been doing, such as pursing his lips and using his hands to mimic a horn growing out of his forehead, or else making a clattering sound, sticking his head between his legs and calling out “Mum, Mum!” in a silly voice. The more she laughs, the more he ups the ante with his clowning. By the time he finishes he will have run through all the secret mysteries of laughter that human beings have ever understood, mobilizing everything at his disposal. There is no way for him to know how guilty it makes his mother feel, seeing such a young child go to such lengths just to wring a bit of apparent happiness from her, or that her laughter will all eventually run out.

  Life is such a strange thing, she thinks, once she has stopped laughing. Even after certain things have happened to them, no matter how awful the experience, people still go on eating and drinking, going to the toilet and washing themselves—living, in other words. And sometimes they even laugh out loud. And they probably have these same thoughts, too, and when they do it must make them cheerlessly recall all the sadness they’d briefly managed to forget.

  But lying next to the small, tanned body of her son, after sleep draws itself down over his guiltless young face, the night begins again for her. A time when there is neither sight nor sound of any other living thing. As long as eternity, as bottomless as a swamp. If she curls up in the empty bathtub and closes her eyes, the dark woods close in around her. The dark lines of rain drill into Yeong-hye’s body like spears, her skinny bare feet are covered in mud. When In-hye shakes her head to dispel the image, summer trees in broad daylight flicker in front of her eyes like huge green fireworks. Is this because of the hallucination Yeong-hye told her about? The innumerable trees she’s seen over the course of all her life, the undulating forests that blanket the continents like a heartless sea, envelop her exhausted body and lift her up. Only fragments of cities, small towns and roads are visible, floating on the roof of the forest like islands or bridges, slowly being swept away somewhere, borne on those warm waves.

  There’s no way for In-hye to know what on earth those waves are saying. Or what those trees she’d seen at the end of the narrow mountain path, clustered together like green flames in the early-morning half-light, had been saying.

  Whatever it was, there had been no warmth in it. Whatever the words were, they hadn’t been words of comfort, words that would help her pick herself up. Instead, they were merciless, and the trees that had spoken them were a frighteningly chill form of life. Even when she turned about on the spot and searched in all directions, In-hye hadn’t been able to find a tree that would take her life from her. Some of the trees had refused to accept her. They’d just stood there, stubborn and solemn yet alive as animals, bearing up the weight of their own massive bodies.

  —

  Time passes.

  In-hye puts the lids back on all of the containers. She packs everything up into her bag, starting with the thermos. She zips the bag closed.

  What other dimension might Yeong-hye’s soul have passed into, having shrugged off flesh like a snake shedding its skin? In-hye recalled how Yeong-hye had looked when she’d been standing on her hands. Had Yeong-hye mistaken the hospital’s concrete floor for the soft earth of the woods? Had her body metamorphosed into a sturdy trunk, with white roots sprouting from her hands and clutching the black soil? Had her legs stretched high up into the air while her arms extended all the way down to the earth’s very core, her back stretched taut to support this two-pronged spurt of growth? As the sun’s rays soaked down through Yeong-hye’s body, had the water that was saturating the soil been drawn up through her cells, eventually to bloom from her crotch as flowers? When Yeong-hye had balanced upside down and stretched out every fiber in her body, had these things been awakened in her soul?

  “But seriously,” In-hye said out loud. “What the hell?”

  “You’re dying,” she said, louder this time. “You’re lying there in that bed, and dying. Nothing else.” She presses her lips tightly together, clenching her teeth so savagely the blood shows through, wrestling with the desire to get hold of Yeong-hye’s insensible face, to shake her wraithlike body hard and hurl her back down on the bed.

  —

  Now there’s no more time left.

  In-hye shoulders her bag and pushes back the chair. Walking with a stoop, she hurries out of the ward. When she turns her head, Yeong-hye’s body is still rigid and unmoving beneath the sheet. In-hye clenches her teeth even harder. She walks along to the lobby.

  —

  A nurse with bobbed hair walks up to the table in the lobby carrying a small white plastic basket, and sits down. In the basket are various nail clippers. The patients line up and each in turn is given a pair of clippers. Each selection takes a long time, as if the patients are trying to decide which pair will suit them best. On the other side of the lobby, a ponytailed nurse’s aide cuts the nails of the dementia sufferers.

  In-hye stands quietly and observes the scene. Anything sharp or narrow that could be used to pierce or cut, anything with a long cord that could be wrapped around a throat, is forbidden. Partly this is to prevent the patients from harming others, but the main concern is that they would want to harm themselves. In-hye scans their faces, each of them bent over their hands, absorbed in the task of getting their nails cut before their time with the clippers is up. The clock on the wall indicates five minutes past two.

  A doctor’s white coat flits by the glass door, and the entrance to the lobby opens. It is Yeong-hye’s doctor. He turns and locks the door behind him, his movements swift and practiced. No doubt the same could be said at any large hospital, but here, at a psychiatric hospital, the authority of the medical specialist seems even more pronounced. Perhaps it is because the patients here are not free to leave. They flock around the doctor as though they have just discovered their Messiah.

  “Just a minute, doctor. Did you call my wife? If you could just tell her that’s it okay for me to be discharged…here’s my wife’s number. If you’d just give her a call…”

  “Doctor, please change my medication. There’s this incessant…ringing sound in my ears.”

  “Doctor, won’t you speak to him? He’s always hitting me, I can’t cope anymore. What, now you’re at it too? Why are you kicking me? I’m telling you to talk to me.”

&
nbsp; The doctor gives the woman a relaxed, direct smile, clearly designed to appease.

  “When did I kick you? Now hang on, I need you all to talk to me one at a time. When did this ringing in the ears start?” The woman stamps her foot loudly, impatient at having to wait, the feelings contorting her face seeming more like misery and anxiety than violent inclinations.

  Just then the door to the lobby opens again and another doctor comes in, one that In-hye hasn’t seen before.

  “That’s the internist,” Hee-joo says. In-hye hadn’t noticed her arrive. Apparently each psychiatric institution has an internist permanently on hand. This man seems young, though perhaps he just has a young-looking face, and gives the impression of being intelligent but cold. Eventually, Yeong-hye’s doctor detaches himself from the gaggle of patients and strides over to In-hye. She takes a step back without realizing it.

  “Have you spoken to your sister?”

  “From what I could see, it didn’t look like she was conscious.”

  “It might seem that way on the surface, but every single one of her muscles is tensed. It isn’t that she’s not conscious, exactly—rather, it’s as if her conscious mind is so completely concentrated on something, or somewhere, that she isn’t aware of her immediate surroundings. When she’s in that state and we force her out of it, if you saw what happens then you’d know for sure that she’d been awake the whole time.” The doctor seems sincere, and a little tense. “It can be a difficult thing for a family member to witness. If we decide that your presence is complicating things, it’s best if you get out of the way quickly.”