by Hwang Sunwon
The next morning he was preparing to take the thermometer to his wife in the next room when he noticed the kitten sticking its head through a hole in the rice-paper panel at the bottom of the sliding door. He hadn’t realized the previous evening how absolutely filthy the kitten was. Its white fur was sprinkled with dark spots, and the white was so dirty it was almost as dark as the spots. He gave the kitten a fierce scowl but left it alone for the time being, head still poking through the hole in the door, and went into his wife’s sickroom.
He inserted the thermometer in his wife’s mouth and took her pulse. He had a bad feeling, and not for the first time. Her pulse felt faster than the previous day, but also weaker, and then his fingertips lost it altogether. He tried again, this time following the second hand on his wristwatch, but in doing so he lost count. The next time he finally succeeded; her pulse was over a hundred. Anxiously he removed the thermometer from her mouth. Ninety-six. He shook the thermometer. Then, on the chart he kept there, he jotted down her normal temperature as well as a pulse count quite a bit lower than what he had just measured.
Unknown to his wife, he kept a separate chart with accurate figures. Those figures suggested to him that it wouldn’t be long before she would need a second surgery. But there seemed no way she could tolerate another operation, and with this thought in mind he turned toward his room, only to discover the kitten licking the mouth of an overturned milk bottle with its slender red tongue. He kicked the kitten, not that hard but enough to send it bumping up against the wall, and when the creature produced a short, sharp yowl he could scarcely convince himself that it was not his wife who had made the sound. The maid happened by and he scolded her, saying that if she intended to keep the kitten the least she could do was keep it clean. The maid responded that she had already bathed the kitten twice, and that once spring arrived, it would naturally shed, and its new coat of fur would be lovely.
The sunlight streaming down outside resembled the lovely fur of a cat.
One evening he was about to close the door to the pigeon cage when he noticed that only the female was there, sitting on its eggs; the male was nowhere to be seen. Wondering why it hadn’t returned, he looked around outside but didn’t see it. The male liked to perch between the curved roof tiles of the house next door and take in the last rays of the setting sun, but there was no trace of sunlight there now. He decided to look for the pigeon at his in-laws’ home.
By the time he arrived there, the sun was down and it was difficult to tell one pigeon from another. His mother-in-law nevertheless peered into each of the cages, but it appeared that none of them contained his male. When she was finished she turned to him and asked about her daughter’s condition. She was about the same, he answered, whereupon his mother-in-law said that she had been meaning to pay a visit but just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Knowing that his wife’s brother had been leading a dissipated life of late, he allowed as how he didn’t think there was much she could do by visiting just then. Before leaving he inspected the pigeons asleep outside the cage, but his Motley Fool (the name for a black-and-white-speckled pigeon) was not to be seen.
Nor was the male pigeon back in its cage when he returned home. As he peered through the gloom at the female sitting on the eggs, it cooed briefly in his direction. Finally he closed the door to the cage. He hoped his wife wouldn’t learn of the male’s disappearance. Or that the male would return to them first.
One day he noticed indications of constipation in his wife’s stool and told himself the time had come for her next operation. Despite his uneasiness, he left to buy the beef liver she had said she wanted. When he returned, she was looking outside through the open curtains. Where had the male pigeon gone? Not wanting to agitate her, he replied nonchalantly that it was probably gathering food. She asked if the male had been there when he closed the door to the cage the previous evening; her face had an unaccustomed flush to it. He felt compelled to say yes. His wife said it was no good for the eggs if the male was gone; how could the female possibly do it all by herself? He shook his head vigorously in an attempt to allay her fears and replied that if it was the male that was by itself it would not sit on the eggs, but the female by itself would sit on the eggs until they hatched. Which was the best he could do to answer the question, since he didn’t know for sure. His wife heaved a sigh of apparent relief, then said that in any event the male might be at her family’s home, and she asked him to visit.
Off again he went to his in-laws’ house, thinking optimistically that on his previous visit their pigeon may actually have been there, indistinguishable in the darkness, or that if it had gone elsewhere it might then have returned to his in-laws’, preferring its previous home to their own.
But when he arrived he was surprised to see not a bird in sight on the roof, where normally pairs of pigeons would have been gathered. Had they all left to find food? But then his mother-in-law appeared, her face haggard, to say that her son was so dissolute these days he was eating a couple of pairs of pigeons a day as a drinking snack. So much for finding their pigeon, he told himself as he went to inspect a cage from which he could hear cooing. His mother-in-law explained that only one pair of pigeons remained, and she had prevailed with her son to spare them because they had just produced a young one, but for all she knew, he would end up taking them as well. A door slid open and the son’s wife emerged from inside. When a child tried to follow, she pushed it back inside in annoyance and roughly slid the door shut. No doubt their pigeon had fallen into the hands of his brother-in-law, he thought as he left to the squalling of the child.
His wife was still waiting at the opened curtains when he returned. Uneasily she read his expression. He couldn’t help silently shaking his head. His wife closed her tear-filled eyes. He was just about to return to his room, thankful that his wife hadn’t inquired about her family, when she asked how her mother was; her eyes remained closed. She was in good health, he replied, and would shortly be paying them a visit. Perhaps her elder brother was vexing their mother less these days, she murmured. He called to mind the squalling of the child and the presence of the baby pigeon, and felt a chill along his spine. Yes, that appeared to be the case, he mumbled as if he were talking to himself.
From the next room he heard the maid enter his wife’s sickroom. From the way she was calling the kitten, it sounded as if she intended to feed it the liver he had bought that day.
That evening he heard the maid enter his wife’s sickroom, turn the light on, and say that the damned kitten had gone off somewhere. Where could it be? his wife asked; she had seen it only a little while ago licking the milk bottle. From his room he told them the kitten wasn’t there either. To which his wife responded in a tone of concern that she was afraid it would starve if it went wandering, because it was still a kitten. The maid shot back that this kitten never missed an opportunity to feed itself, and there was no doubt in her mind that it would always be a stray. Then she lowered her voice and said that as long as the cat was gone she might as well say that in fact it was not a good thing for a cat to move into a house, so she had fed it the worst-smelling food she could to make it leave, and then it would have to fend for itself. His wife then asked, almost as an afterthought, if in that case the pigeon’s leaving was a good thing or a bad thing. The maid replied in a louder than necessary voice that she didn’t know, and then she laughed. His wife asked if the kitten had eaten the pigeon. Maybe so, said the maid, but even if it hadn’t, it was a blessing that the kitten had left when there was still one pigeon remaining.
The thought of his brother-in-law capturing their pigeon, and the image of the lone pair of pigeons and their hatchling, rose in his mind, and in an effort to dismiss them he turned over onto his side. He hoped now that his brother-in-law hadn’t taken the pigeon, and that instead the kitten had eaten it.
More frequently now, his wife opened the curtains during the day. She fell into the habit of gazing at length into the cage once occupied by the male pigeon. Her sunken ch
eeks and despairing eyes were paler now than when she had kept the curtains drawn, and if laundry happened to rustle in the breeze, she would startle and ask if the male pigeon had returned.
If his wife but heard the sound of a dish breaking in the kitchen, she would summon the maid in a voice loud enough to make him wonder where she mustered the strength, and have her fetch the broken pieces so she could try to put them back together. The maid would reply that the dish already had a crack in it when she had started to work there, and even gentle contact with the dishwashing basin was enough to break it. His wife would continue to fit the pieces back together and pass her hand over the design, saying there was no other dish quite like it in its flawlessness and its lovely pattern, and from the time the two of them had set up housekeeping at the foot of the mountain it had been a dish that was dear to her frugal heart, and that that period when they had first lived together, footloose in the hills, had been the happiest of her life, and her eyes would fill with tears, as if the future were as dark and gloomy as the reality of the broken dish that she would not allow to leave her hand.
He was tempted to scold the maid but realized that to do so would only chafe his wife’s nerves all the more. Instead he suggested that once she was a little better they could go to the mountain to look at the flowers. But he sensed that this prospect no longer appealed to her. Picking up the vase at the head of her bedding as if to smell the flowers, she abruptly told the maid, who was standing off to the side, to move the vase farther away. It appeared his wife had declined to the extent that she could not even enjoy the scent of the tulips. But then she asked the maid to put some aspirin in the vase. The maid did so and then, as if she had forgotten about the dish she had just broken, she muttered that aspirin was for colds and maybe the flowers were withering because they too had caught a cold. With a smile that seemed more drawn than the desiccated petals of the tulips, his wife brought her weepy gaze to rest on the maid’s broad back. This pained him, and he was preparing to go out when his wife reminded him of the seed they had gotten from last year’s flowers and asked him to plant it on time this year, as he had the previous year.
In fact the season for flower seeding had arrived before he was aware of it.
Later that day, he went out to buy the chicken liver that his wife had said she wanted. Just outside the short, narrow alley to their home he caught sight of a boy who, upon seeing him, immediately hid his hands behind his back. Seeing that it was a pigeon the boy was attempting to conceal, he quickly approached. The boy retreated several steps and released the pigeon into the air.
A presentiment came over him, and he demanded that the boy produce their pigeon. The boy backed off another step, saying he didn’t know anything. All he wanted to know was where their pigeon was, he told the boy. His large eyes blinking, the boy said he knew the family that had captured their pigeon. He himself had no doubt that the boy had taken it, just as he had taken this pigeon now, and he watched as the bird made a gradual ascending circle and headed south before descending and finally going out of sight among the roofs. He followed the boy toward the neighborhood to the south where the pigeon had disappeared.
They arrived at a house on whose thatched roof a pigeon perched, perhaps the one released by the boy, a dirty Typesetter (a white pigeon with dark spots on its head). Circling and cooing next to it was a dirty Blood Clot (a pigeon the color of red beans). Arrayed along a low wall in the yard were cages of pigeons. From among the cages emerged a huge man who looked down silently at the boy. The boy said, “Motley Fool,” and indicated him. The man went to a cage, opened it, put in a hand, and drew out a pigeon by the head. Its feathers were dirty but it was clearly their male. The man demanded one wŏn for having fed the pigeon during this time. Taken aback, he nevertheless paid, thinking as he did so that each of the cages contained pigeons who had suffered the same fate as their male, which made the huge man before him appear all the more repellent. On his way home, this sentiment was transferred to the pigeon. Over and over his grip would tighten until the bird opened its beak.
Back at home his wife received the pigeon with an expression both happy and tearful. But when she attempted to bring it close to her cheek, the bird squirmed away. Relieving her of the pigeon, he brought it against her cheek. She remarked at how dirty its feathers were, then said to the pigeon that she was glad to see it safely returned and that it mustn’t go off again.
He handed the pigeon to the maid beside him and began removing its wing feathers. Each plucked feather brought a look of surprise from his wife. Leaving half the feathers of its other wing intact, he released the pigeon outside. Tilting to the side whose wing had lost more feathers, it flew at an angle and barely made it inside the cage, where it commenced cooing. Suddenly the reality of what he had just done hit him, and when the maid declared that the pigeon wouldn’t be flying off anywhere now, he shouted at her to dispose of the feathers. And when the maid had gathered the scattered feathers, he told her not to put them in the firebox but to get rid of them.
For a time his wife looked out at the pigeon cage, from which cooing could still be heard, before remarking that the male, left by itself while the female sat on the eggs, must have followed another pigeon off somewhere. And then she said to him that he was looking worn out from staying by the side of his sick wife, and urged him to go visit one of his favorite teahouses. And then she murmured, seemingly to herself, that she wouldn’t feel bored or frightened if she were by herself.
For the first time in a long while he was at a teahouse, listening to a record and relaxing. His eyes came to rest on the package of chicken livers he had bought. The sight of the bloody paper wrapper gave him the incongruous thought that something had gone wrong with his wife’s body, and hurriedly he left.
He realized that his wife’s mention of not being bored or frightened if she were by herself indicated a presentiment of her own death. He grew dizzy at this thought. If the end came to his wife, then the moment would soon come when he would forget her, even if just for an instant. His legs trembled.
On the day they decided that a day or two later his wife would have another operation, he was turning over the earth in their flower garden. As he removed pebbles from the soil and broke up clods of dirt, the odor of earth moistened by winter snow and spring rain made his head swim. He squatted in a ball and without realizing it kept crushing the soil between his fingers, even though he had already broken up all the clods.
Only when the maid emerged with the bedpan from his wife’s room did he straighten up. His wife had been given an enema, and as he inspected the stool with a branch from the previous autumn’s chrysanthemums he made up his mind that she had to have the surgery the following day. He entered his wife’s room hoping that this operation would proceed without complications.
To his surprise, his wife was sitting up and applying makeup. And she was wearing the pink traditional jacket she had worn back when they had lived such a healthy life at the foot of the mountain. She was too weak to hold the hand mirror up, so she rested it on her knee. She brought her face close and applied powder around her eyes, but the dark rings just wouldn’t go away.
He observed his wife’s meticulously combed but lusterless hair—the maid had no doubt done the combing. But why hadn’t that infernal maid told him that his wife was sitting up? In spite of his anger, he merely asked his wife where she had put the seed from the previous year’s flowers. A twinkle appeared in her despairing eyes as she remarked that she should be the one to plant the seed this year, but he should get seed from this year’s flowers before the hard frosts of autumn and remember to plant it next year around the same time as now. Suddenly he had a bad feeling about the following day’s operation. Too dizzy to stand there any longer, he disappeared outside.
The small flower bed with the turned-up dark red earth received a fair amount of sunlight, producing heat shimmers that made him even dizzier.
But he had to help bring his wife outside, and back indoors he went.
AUTUMN WITH PIANO
A man is kneeling on a packed trunk, trying to close it. The door opens and there stands a woman.
The man looks up.
—What’s going on?
—Scared you, didn’t I?
—Your color’s not good.
The woman sits down at the piano.
—Did something happen? I thought we decided to meet at the station.
—Don’t tell me you just finished packing. I was ready a long time ago.
—The train leaves at ten forty-four, so we’ve still got an hour or so.
—True, but we’ll need twenty minutes to get to the station if we don’t want to hurry.
—Why is your face so pale?
—Maybe because I was walking into the wind.
—Or because something’s wrong with you.
—Kuhyŏn!
—Yes?
—Play the “Funeral March Sonata” for me.
—The “Funeral March Sonata”?
—Yes. Chopin.
—Why now?
—Because we’re going away and I won’t be able to hear you play it anymore. You know, the first time I heard you, that was the piece you played. And now that we’re leaving for a new life I want to hear it again. It’s still fresh in my mind, that spring evening when the skies had cleared after several days of carefree rain. My husband was all wrapped up in his law exams. I made him some coffee but he didn’t pay any attention when I served it—just stuck his tired face up over the book he was leafing through. I added some sugar cubes, stirred, and set the coffee within close reach. He finally took a sip, but then his eyes went straight back to his book. He’s never once said that it’s too strong, too weak, or just right. And it makes no difference if I add cream—he doesn’t say anything. And that’s exactly what our marriage is like. We’re not affectionate toward each other and we’re not hateful toward each other. My husband never interferes in what I do. And he’s not concerned about things like the color of my clothes. You might think that’s a comfortable way to live, but I so wanted some excitement, even if it meant being hateful toward each other when we actually felt that way. And that day, I thought of pestering him to go to the pines out back or down to the river—it would have been relaxing for him—but I gave up. I’m sure he wouldn’t have refused if I’d suggested it, but I don’t think he’d have taken any pleasure from it. So I took the empty coffee cup, and then who should show up but Nan? She said, let’s go to a concert. I didn’t hesitate for a second. I was feeling down in the dumps, and at the prospect of being with cheerful Nan, well, I just followed her out, I didn’t care if it was to a concert or what. On the way she told me it was a piano recital by her boyfriend. Your recital, Kuhyon. By the time we arrived, you were already playing. The “Funeral March Sonata.” The place was full but we somehow managed to find seats, and from that point on I just listened to the piano. I couldn’t have told you how well or how poorly you played—all I remembered was the rapture of the sound and my heart pounding as it hadn’t pounded in ages. The soprano who came out later in the program had a plaintive presence, but I found her voice too cold and sharp. Nan was terribly sorry she couldn’t sing that night—she had a cold, remember? That’s Nan for you—I swear, she was born with charm. On our way home, she kept promising she’d get you to treat us on account of your successful performance. Every time she said this I thought, well, the next time I go to Nan’s I’ll probably see him there. Kind of a shocking thought, actually.