Highway with Green Apples (Kindle Single) (A Short Story)

by Bae Suah

  There was a lot of time left over after I finished breakfast, but I left for the airport anyway. I think about how many hours I will have to wait and start to feel bored. Women dressed in shiny hanbok with flowers in their hair, carrying colorful bouquets and clinging to men’s arms, parade past me. A couple sits down across from me on a plastic bench instead of going to board a plane. The woman is wearing a purple dress that looks like it went out of style a long time ago and chocolate-colored shoes with low heels. The man is turned toward the stainless steel ashtray to tap out his cigarette. I am debating whether to go get another cup of coffee from the vending machine when I see the man’s profile. It’s the man I broke up with over the phone two years ago after talking to him about green apples for the last time. He doesn’t look a day older, and nothing else about him has changed. He doesn’t see me. The woman in the purple dress gets up and goes to the bathroom. They don’t look like they’re on their honeymoon, nor do they seem to be traveling far. He looks like he hasn’t shaved in a while, and his dress shirt is wrinkled, which makes him look tired and as if deep in thought about something. I feel relieved that he doesn’t recognize me, but also a little disappointed.

  I get up and go to the bathroom. A girl is standing right up against the mirror, combing her long hair with her fingers and staring into her own eyes. I grab a paper towel, wet it with lukewarm tap water, wipe off the eye shadow that now seems too heavy, and reapply a dark pink lipstick. I look at myself in the mirror and go back in time two years. I am leaning out the window of a car racing down a highway in late autumn in order to get a better look at the windy, deserted fields. While my heart pounds at the dry, expressionless eyes of the woman selling green apples on the side of the road, at the strangeness and desolation of that woman, I grab a green-colored pencil and start sketching those apples that we bought in their brown paper bag. That road with its green apples, as pale as the worn-out sunlight and as depressing as the piano music that played in the car. Wait. Was it piano music? Or was it just a pop song on the radio? Some singer whose voice sounded like Jeon In-kwon’s? A piano sonata that started off monotonous and boring but rose to a thundering climax. Hadn’t I heard that kind of piano music long before that? In some shadowy basement bar in midsummer? A woman in a blue dress was playing piano onstage. Outside, the sun had long set, but the weather was so hot and humid that it felt like the clouds would burst at any moment. But inside, a large portable air conditioner was running, and the girls were sipping sticky sweet vodka sunrises through straws. It was dark in the bar, and I couldn’t see anyone’s face through the cigarette smoke and the dry ice evaporating on the plate of pineapple on the table. The woman in the blue dress started singing. I didn’t recognize the song. The tone and rhythm reminded me of a French chanson. It was sometime in the summer, and the bar was the sort of place where girls would work part-time even before they were out of high school so they could make money to go to the beach. Or maybe I was remembering it all wrong. The bar with the piano might have happened long after that day I bought green apples on the west coast highway. The languid piano music made the stifling dark of the basement weigh even heavier, and the pianist in the blue dress was putting her hair up and fixing it in place with a pin. The girls might have been drinking Bloody Marys, not vodka sunrises, and there might have been popcorn crumbs scattered all over the tables and floor. I was one of those girls wearing a sleeveless white dress that left my shoulders bare. I was there to meet the designer, and the rest of my memories were a jumble. The one thing I did remember clearly was that piano playing over and over like a broken record. The same piano music I heard in the car on the highway in late autumn.

  I hear a toilet flush, and the woman in the purple dress comes out of the stall. She touches up her bangs in front of the mirror, takes out a light-colored lipstick from her bag, and applies it. Her outfit is conspicuously out of style, but up close, her face is surprisingly pretty. Her wide, beautiful eyes twinkle, and her cheeks look like peaches. She seems young. The girl who has been doing nothing but staring at herself in the mirror goes over to the window and lights a cigarette. The woman in the purple dress leaves. I hear the steady drip of water from a faucet that hasn’t been turned off all the way. An airport announcement states that the flight for Busan is departing soon. I want a cigarette. When I come out, he is alone. The woman in the purple dress is gone.

  “She’s not coming back,” he tells me. “She’s gone back home.”

  We sit across from each other at the airport grill and drink lemonade. Inside, the sweet scent of air freshener and the smell of hot coffee mixes with the scent of thick slices of lightly toasted bread. The restaurant is also filled with waves of newlyweds waiting for their planes.

  “I’m glad to see you’re doing well,” he says.

  A silver ashtray sits on top of the tablecloth, which has a faint coffee stain. He lights a cigarette.

  “Last week my washing machine broke, and before that, someone offered me a good price on a used Yamaha piano, but I had to let it go since my room is so small. I also had to call a repairman twice because of the heater. But aside from that, I’m doing well,” I say.

  “My job at the bank is one headache after another.” He frowns. “I used to drink every night before going to bed. I had this friend in high school—I think about him each time I drink. I haven’t seen him in ages. He moved to a fishing village on the south coast after college. Or was it the west coast? That’s right, I remember now. It was the west coast.”

  Though he looks tired and worn-down at twenty-seven, his profile is as handsome as ever, and he has the attractiveness of someone who’s just come in from playing tennis.

  “I’m waiting for someone,” I say, and check my watch. He will be here soon.

  “Who?”

  “A designer from the department store. He went on a business trip to one of the regional branches.”

  “Are you meeting him for work?”

  “No.”

  We sit together anyway for five more minutes as we drink the last of our lemonade, which is watered down from the melting ice, and smoke the cigarettes down to their filters. Finally, I ask him about the woman.

  “That woman in the purple dress was very pretty.”

  He smiles faintly.

  “So are you,” he says. “When I was with you, my friends at the bank were so jealous. She used to work as a teller at the same branch as me. She’s nice. Probably because she’s still such a country girl.”

  “I have to go now,” I say. I smooth the wrinkles out of my skirt as I stand up.

  As I’m walking away, I hear him ask, “Can I call you sometime at the department store?”

  His plane lands on time, and we have no problem catching a cab. The weather is very hot, but the sky is blue and the sunlight as sharp as glass. My rented room has a tiny balcony with a nice view. I had thought about lying out there on a towel in my bathing suit with my Walkman in my ears so I could get a tan. All I needed was a pair of sunglasses, oil, and an Agatha Christie novel. I had worked all summer long without going to the beach. I’d gotten tired of trying to get the other girls at work together for a trip to the beach, and I was too self-conscious to try to get the same vacation days as the designer. He had gone to Jeju Island with his friends and come back with an enormous pineapple.

  That night, the designer and I, along with several of his friends from work, go to a basement bar. I keep switching between vodka sunrises and straight whiskey. After a while, I get pretty drunk. On stage, a long-haired woman in a blue dress plays the piano. Large pieces of pineapple sit in a glass dish on the table. The men loosen their neckties, and the girls order large bowls of ice. I’m certain I’ve been in a basement bar on a summer night like this before. The thunderous piano music, the shadowy figures in the dark, the large portable air conditioner quietly humming. Everything is so familiar, but I cannot remember when I’ve seen it all before. The men are talking about work, and I am on my fifth glass of whiskey.


  As the night progresses, one of them suggests going up to the sky lounge on the top floor. “There’s an express elevator. The lounge looks out over the Han River.”

  Someone else says, “What’s so great about that? We see the river every day. I like the music here.”

  In the end, we all go up to the sky lounge and have martinis. The view of the Han River at night and the cars driving along the highway is beautiful.

  “I have a gift for you,” he tells me.

  An evening breeze comes in through the open balcony door. It carries the scent of the river. I am sitting on a round cushion, jiggling my leg, and smoking a cigarette. I’m a little queasy, but the cool breeze in the darkened hotel room makes me feel better. The designer takes out a box of Godiva chocolates and pink Chanel lipstick.

  “The salesgirl said it’s waterproof. And that it won’t smudge. I picked a color you wear a lot.”

  “Thank you.”

  I start to feel queasy again, so I go out onto the balcony. Far below, I can see the lights of the hotel parking lot.

  “You’re not going to throw up out there, are you?” he asks. “I think you had too much to drink.”

  “So what if I throw up? Anyway, I feel better now. I’ll just stay out here a little longer.”

  I feel like I’ve had one too many whiskeys. The side of my head is pounding.

  “They gave me something at the department store. A kitchen utensil set or something. You can have it.”

  He takes a box wrapped in shiny black paper out of his suitcase.

  “I live with my mom and don’t cook for myself, so I don’t know why they gave me this.”

  I look inside the box lying open on the table. He says proudly, “See, it’s the new German kitchen set.” A pair of shiny silver kitchen scissors made by Henckels rests on the table. There are other things, too, of course. Measuring spoons, a fruit knife, a trivet for hot pots, and a fancy kitchen scale. The scissors look sturdy and strong.

  “You don’t mind this, right?” he asks.

  We are in bed. The scissors are just sitting there on the table. I hear a crackling sound coming from the river. Someone must be setting off fireworks.

  “What do you mean by ‘this’?” I ask.

  “I mean going on dates and having sex and talking on the phone. Going out to the hotel lounge at the Sheraton Walker Hill now and then. I was worried you might get tired of it. I want to do what you want to do.” He plays with my hair and then falls asleep. The Godiva chocolates, each one individually wrapped in pretty silver paper, are scattered across the table and the carpeted floor. I unwrap one of the chocolates and pop it in my mouth. It tastes like a dried leaf or overcooked cabbage. I go out onto the balcony and lean over the railing. Dawn is coming. Some eager person somewhere must already be warming up for a jog.

  At the airport, I should have asked him about the highway with green apples. Then he would have searched his memory and said: To get there, you just have to take a train and then transfer to a bus. There’s a river and a lake nearby. Once you’re on the highway, go straight until you reach the ocean.

  The scissors continue to shine among the cans of coffee, chocolates, and various kitchen utensils sitting on top of the table. I have had too much whiskey. I light a cigarette and drink a half-full can of lukewarm coffee. To the final darkness of summer before the oncoming dawn, I whisper: “I don’t know anything.” I’m not thrilled by sex, and I’m not moved by love. I gaze down at the road stretching off into the distance and stand still in the bleak, dusty wind. I think I can smell the green of the river and the scent of old grass. “Is the ocean this way?” they pull over and ask. The wind ruffles my hair and flattens the tall, dry grass along the side of the road. Rachmaninov blares out the car windows, and they buy green apples.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Bae Suah was born in Seoul in 1965. After majoring in chemistry as an undergrad, she became a writer at the relatively late age of twenty-eight. Her first short story, which she wrote while learning how to type on a word processor, was published in a literary magazine. Prior to that, she had never taken any creative writing or literature classes. Highway with Green Apples, published in Korean in 1995 and making its English debut here, is one of her first works. She continued to publish over the years, and in 2001, she moved to Berlin, where she took a break from writing to learn German. In 2008, she began translating German literature into Korean, beginning with Martin Walser’s Angstblüte. She has also translated two works by W. G. Sebald, one of her favorite German writers (Nach der Natur and Schwindel. Gefuehle, both forthcoming). She is also a fan of the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa and is currently translating The Book of Disquiet.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Sora Kim-Russell is a literary translator based in Seoul. Her translations of Shin Kyung-sook’s I’ll Be Right There and Gong Ji-young’s Our Happy Time are forthcoming in 2014. She teaches at Ewha Womans University.