The clothes started to turn in the machine, heavy with water. A dull thud. Rising and falling. Heavy. Rising and falling again. Spinning, tumbling faster and faster. Swirling to form a whirlpool, a vortex smashing up against the glass door. The sound of the machine faded to silence. Not for long. A few seconds at the most. And then the sound picked up again.
‘I’d like you to taste my cooking,’ I said.
I looked down. Kerrand was staring at the washing machine. He was already in another place. As if he’d stopped struggling and given in, too tired to go on. He stood up and murmured:
‘Your cooking. Yes, of course.’
Then he left, closing the door behind him.
AFTER DINNER, my mother and I went to watch television in bed. She positioned herself behind me, her legs around my hips.
‘This is the first time you’ve come to see me on a Saturday,’ she said as she massaged my neck.
‘Park’s going to Seoul tomorrow, I’ll have to stay at the guest house.’
The presenter was demonstrating how to create a spray-on moustache by firing a gun that sprayed the model’s faces with a mixture of hair and glue. My mother was staring intently at the screen, maybe Jun-oh would be one of the models soon, it would be hard to tell, they all looked the same on screen. Either way, she was happy, he’d be famous one day. I thought about how I’d eventually have to tell her we’d broken up. She started to rub my shoulders, lingering on my collarbones, they were too prominent, she said. The pressure of her fingers made me double over towards her feet. The skin on them was so hard, they looked like rocks.
‘You should rub some cream into them.’
‘You’re probably right.’
During the break she went into the kitchen and came back with a tube of persimmon jelly. A well-known brand. A gift from my aunt. She pierced the top, her eyes shining, she’d been saving it for me. I reminded her that I didn’t like the texture of jelly. My mother looked at the label, crushed. It wouldn’t keep. She settled back against the headboard to taste it. On the screen, they were talking about a miracle cream for open pores. I took the jelly from her hands and began to suck. It slithered limply down my throat. My mother gave a sigh of pleasure and the television screen went back to spraying its little clones into the room.
AT DAWN, before my mother awoke, I walked to the fish market, through the unloading area. The beam from my torch lit up the octopus squirming in their tanks. Containers filled with orange washing-up liquid. Acidic smell. My footsteps on the concrete, water lapping. Amplified. Distorted like sounds under water.
My mother’s blowfish floated open-mouthed, as if surprised. She’d pulled out their teeth to stop them harming each other. They were fat-lipped. I chose the one I thought was the most stupid, my conscience clear. Out of the water, it started beating itself violently with its fins. I panicked and hit it too hard, smashing its head with my fingers. I wrapped it in a bag to stop the head leaking out on the way to the guest house.
The sky was tinged with pink. I put the fish in the fridge, took a long shower, slipped on my tunic dress and tried putting my lenses in again. This time I managed to attach them to my eyes. I drew a line along my upper lids with a black pencil. My mascara had dried out, I had to soak it in warm water before I could use it. I tied my hair up in a loose bun and stepped back to examine myself in the mirror.
My features looked tired. My tunic was bunching up around the waist. I thought about changing but I’d been wearing my sweater dress all the time recently. I kept the tunic on.
In the kitchen, I realised the glass doors in reception needed cleaning, I’d have to do it before Park came back. I turned on the radio. The Japanese prime minister giving a speech about a trade deal with China. I put the fugu down on the counter, visualised my mother preparing it. I would have to do it perfectly.
THIS FISH WAS the kind with no scales or spines, but the skin felt gritty. I wiped it down, cut off the fins with scissors, picked up a knife and lopped off the head. The cartilage was thicker than I’d expected. I tried again, using a heavier knife. A sharp crack. I made an incision in the skin, pulled it back in a single movement along the curve of the abdomen, plunged the blade into the flesh and exposed the viscera. Like cutting into a ripe persimmon. No ovaries, a male fish. I scraped away the blood with a teaspoon, and using my fingers to avoid piercing the organs, pulled out the intestines, heart and stomach. They slid out, lubricated by mucus. Delicately, I freed the liver and severed the link attaching it to the gall bladder. It was small. Pink custard. I jiggled it in the palm of my hand. Then I wrapped it in a sealed bag and threw it in the trash.
The fish looked like a deflated balloon. I washed my hands, rinsed the fish, cut it into sections. Fillets, white and fragile as vapour. I dabbed them with a clean napkin to make sure there were no traces of blood and began to slice them up. I used the finest blade I had. The tip vibrated slightly.
An hour later, I was done.
I grated some radish, prepared the dressing of rice vinegar and soy sauce, and selected a large ceramic platter. Mother-of-pearl inlay, cranes flying. I arranged the pieces of fugu on it. So delicate and feathery, they seemed scarcely more substantial than air. You could see the mother-of-pearl inlay through them. I’d have liked to show it to my mother.
IN MOTHER KIM’S alleyway a kitten ran towards me. Holding the platter in one hand, I leaned down to stroke the top of its head. It was purring hard, pointing its nose towards my fish. Eyes glazed over. The creature followed me for a few metres, mewling.
THE COURTYARD DOOR was open. I stopped. Two fine lines in the snow ran across the courtyard. Footprints leading from Kerrand’s room, past the fountain, the chestnut tree, as far as the courtyard door then disappearing into the distance.
Two lines. His footprints in the snow.
I stared at them.
Then I walked along the covered walkway to his room.
THE CURTAINS were drawn. The quilt carefully folded on the bed. The smell of his breath still permeated the room. Incense. In the mirror, a beam of light, particles of dust floating down from the ceiling in slow motion and settling on the desk.
His frayed canvas sketchbook on the desk.
I put the platter down on the ground, walked over to the window.
How strange. I’d never noticed there was so much dust on the windowsill. I sat down on the bed. Carefully. Trying not to wrinkle the sheets. I listened. Buzzing in my ears. Softer and softer. The light was dimming too, blurring the contours of the room. I looked at the fish. The ink stain at the foot of the bed. In time that too would fade.
Then I picked up the sketchbook, opened it.
HIS HERO and a bird. A heron. Standing on the shore together, gazing at the sea, in winter. Behind them the mountain, beneath its carapace of snow. Keeping watch. The frames were huge, blown up. No words. The bird seemed old, one-legged, silver feathered, a thing of beauty. Water spurted from its beak, a river, the river feeding into the ocean.
I turned the pages.
People walking, ageless and faceless, leaving traces of colour behind them, faint imprints in the wet sand. Shades of yellow and blue haphazardly blended, as if by a hand discovering its power. One after another in the wind, they trod slowly out of the frames, the sea spreading beyond the beach, spilling over into the sky, an image with no lines, only the edges of the page to frame it. A place, but not a place. A place taking shape in the moment of conception and then dissolving. A threshold, a passage, where the falling snow joins the spray, where snowflakes divide to evaporate or meet the sea.
I turned more pages.
The story was fading. Fading, slipping through my fingers, adrift beneath my gaze. The bird’s eyes were closed. Only blue now on the paper. Pages of azure ink. And the man on the waves, feeling his way through the winter, slipping passively beneath the waves, an afterimage in his wake, a woman’s shoulder, belly, breast, the small of her back, the lines tapering to become a mere stroke of the pen, a thread of ink on the thi
gh, and on the thigh a long, fine
scar
carved with a brush
on the scales of a fish.
Winter in Sokcho
Elisa Shua Dusapin
Translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins
The Dominant Animal
Kathryn Scanlan
Indelicacy
Amina Cain
Real Life
Brandon Taylor
Empty Houses
Brenda Navarro
Translated by Sophie Hughes
About the Author
Elisa Shua Dusapin was born in France in 1992 and raised in Paris, Seoul and Switzerland. Winter in Sokcho is her first novel. Published in 2016 to wide acclaim, it was awarded the Prix Robert Walser and the Prix Régine Desforges and has been translated into six languages.
Aneesa Abbas Higgins translates from French. Her translations include What Became of the White Savage by François Garde and A Girl Called Eel by Ali Zamir, both of which received PEN Translates awards, and Seven Stones by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Scott Moncrieff Prize.
Also by Elisa Shua Dusapin
Les Billes du Pachinko
Copyright
This electronic edition first published in Great Britain in 2020 by
Daunt Books
83 Marylebone High Street
London W1U 4QW
© Editions Zoé, 2016
Published by arrangement with Agence litteraire Astier-Pécher
All rights reserved
Originally published in French as Hiver à Saokcho English translation copyright © 2020 Aneesa Abbas Higgins With the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
The right of Elisa Shua Dusapin to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The right of Aneesa Abbas Higgins to be indentified as translator of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from Daunt Books, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN 978–1–911547–55–6
www.dauntbookspublishing.co.uk
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