Flowers of Mold & Other Stories

by Ha Seong-nan

  When he had lit his fifth cigarette, Dice finally appeared. Her wispy bangs were wet as if she had just washed her face. She was now wearing a T-shirt and a pair of short shorts with flip-flops. She shuffled her feet as she walked and hissed under her breath, “Don’t talk to me and you’d better keep far back.”

  He followed her, maintaining a wide gap between them. Her calves were tanned and covered with scratches.

  Not once did she look back. She glanced at the best-seller list on the window of a book rental shop, and then she disappeared inside a supermarket for a long time. She eventually stopped at the steps of a worn-down building. A sign that read “Quiet Study Hall, Air-Conditioned” was stuck in the window of the second floor, and names of students who had been admitted to prestigious universities were listed on the grimy banner that hung across the top of the building. Dice skipped up the steps, dropped off her bag, and came back down.

  “I was born and raised here, so everyone knows me. On top of that, I’m a model student, so I’m pretty much the talk of the town. Next year, my name will be going up on that banner.” She ran ahead and hailed a taxi.

  The taxi driver glanced at her and then at him in the rearview mirror. “Sir, you’re a lucky man.”

  Every time the driver made a joke, Dice responded with a witty comment. She gave a small shout as they were passing a movie theater. An enormous Godzilla was pictured on the big poster, the product of a failed nuclear experiment. People formed a long queue in front of the box office. Dice craned her neck, watching until the theater grew small. She mumbled to the man, “Have you seen that movie?”

  The taxi driver chimed in. “You like movies? I like watching them on my days off. You know how many movies a person can watch in a day? I watched five once, but by the end the storylines got all mixed up.”

  She told the driver to stop in front of the brightly lit New York Bakery. As soon as they climbed out, Dice spat on the back of a token stand. “Pervert. He was ogling my legs in the rearview mirror the whole time.”

  In front of the bakery, he followed Dice into the underground passage that was connected to Bupyeong Station. He was anxious about losing her in the crowd that surged out of the exit. Dice stood before one of the blue storage lockers that covered an entire wall. She fished out an identification card from her pocket and shook it in his face. “My older sister’s. It comes in very handy sometimes. She thought she lost it and got herself a new one.”

  People continued to insert coins, open locker doors, store or remove objects, and then quickly disappear. What could be inside all those lockers? Dice turned her key in the lock, and the door swung open. As she was pulling out the shopping bag from the locker, it caught on the hinge and a corner ripped. It was the same shopping bag that each girl had been carrying on the train. Clothes showed through the tear.

  “Wait here.”

  She left the man standing outside the women’s bathroom and disappeared inside.

  She didn’t come out for a long time. Women glanced at him as they went in and out of the bathroom. The smell of urine drifted out. As he waited for her, he pictured the large dark mole on her inner thigh. His face grew hot. He kept his head lowered just in case other people would guess what he was thinking. Just then, a tall woman walked out of the bathroom and stepped on his foot. She had on light blue high heels that matched her light blue halter dress. The heels were pointy like ice picks. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said with a polite nod and walked quickly past him. Her hair came down to her waist. He glimpsed light blue eye shadow on her lids as well. The clacking of her heels on the tiled floor sounded cheerful. Even after the sound of her footsteps had faded away, he could still smell the tropical scent she’d left behind.

  The man waited in front of the bathroom for an hour. Now that the evening rush hour was over, there were fewer and fewer people using the bathroom on their way home. The janitor came out of the bathroom, dragging a wet mop behind her. When she crouched in the corridor to remove some gum from the tiles, he said to her, “Excuse me, but did you see a high-school student inside?”

  The janitor’s eyes drooped drowsily. She disappeared inside and then stuck out her head a moment later, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “There’s no one here. I checked the stalls too, but they’re all empty.”

  His big toe started to throb. It was then he recalled the woman who had quickly disappeared after stepping on his foot. He vaguely recalled seeing cuts and scrapes on her legs.

  Inside Dice’s shopping bag would have been clothes, makeup, and a wig. She would have changed in the bathroom and made herself up. He hadn’t been able to recognize her, even when she had walked right past him. This girl could be hiding anywhere right now, watching and laughing.

  He rushed up the steps into the station square. The neon signs of pizza parlors, along with cosmetics and clothing stores, lit up the streets like broad daylight. He ran after several tall girls, but they weren’t her. Women with similar clothes, similar hair styles, and similar perfumes strode endlessly down the streets.

  The man ran all the way to the movie theater they had passed earlier in the taxi. There was a long lineup in front of the ticket booth. He tried to buy a ticket, but the two remaining showtimes were both sold out. He hadn’t been able to recognize her when she’d been right in front of him. So how would he ever recognize her in the dark with her face made up, even if she was staring him in the face?

  The security guard had dozed off with the television on and his feet propped up on his desk. No one saw the man return. As soon as he stepped into the apartment complex, the stench assaulted him. The garbage bags seemed to have multiplied. As he walked under the security light, he saw someone out of the corner of his eye. But it was just his reflection in the full-length mirror. Someone had hurled a rock at it and cracks ran like a spider web from its center, causing his reflection to splinter into pieces like a mosaic. His curls, which had come alive from perspiration, were matted like a steel wool pad, and his shirt hung pitifully over his thighs. He looked as if he’d been struck by lightning. It was only then that he remembered the courier in the hospital, his own totaled car in the shop, and the barbecue restaurant with the caved-in stone wall. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day. The man took out his cell phone from his back pocket. As soon as he turned it on, a clamorous tune rang out. He had chosen a folk melody so that it would be easier to distinguish his own amid countless similar ringtones, but the digitalized song sounded only obnoxious. It was the woman. She said that in all of her twenty-nine years, she had never been so insulted. She told him never to call her again, and then after yelling at him non-stop, she hung up.

  He had to stop often as he walked, since garbage kept sticking to the bottom of his shoes. Across the way, on the roof of a darkened apartment building, there was a pointy object he hadn’t noticed until now. It was a lightning rod.

  Onion

  1

  The tow truck driver lowers the chain from the boom to the middle of the cornfield. A man standing among the stalks jumps up and grabs the hook dangling in the air. The windows of the flipped-over car are shattered. He passes the hook through the rear window and windshield, and loops it securely around the frame as if he’s wrapping a bundle. As the winch drum turns, the car slowly rises above the three-meter-high stalks. The hood is crumpled like an accordion and the seats, wrenched loose from the floor, jiggle each time the chain shakes, as if they will plummet to the ground any second.

  The two policemen watch, their foreheads wrinkled and Adam’s apples protruding from tilting their heads so far back. One officer is tall and skinny as a pole, and the other has thick folds hanging over his belt. The tall one looks at the cornfield and then toward the hill where the ambulance carrying the two victims had gone. Back at the station, the lunch they had just been about to eat is sitting on their desks untouched; the black bean noodles would be thick and rubbery by now.

  The tall one stamps out his cigarette beneath his heel, and the fat one stares at the road, h
is cigarette still clamped between his lips. If the driver had slammed on the brakes, there would be distinct skid marks on the road. He looks everywhere, but there’s not a single mark. The sweat from his face and neck falls onto the asphalt. He flicks away the cigarette, which he’d smoked to the filter. The truck drops the car onto the road with a clunk.

  The seats, visible through the hole the Jaws of Life had cut to remove the driver and passenger, are stained with blood. The tall officer spreads open a bundle of accident report forms and jots down the plate number and car model. On top of the rubber floor mat is a sandal, flipped upside down. It’s a plastic shower sandal, neon pink, with drainage holes and grips on the bottom. The fat officer finds a booklet in the gap beside the seat. The words on the cover are difficult to make out because of the blood. He rubs the booklet against the seat, and the words inside a red box show up. It’s a department store catalogue. Every blank space is covered with vehicle plate numbers. This game had probably started before coming here, while they were stopped at intersections, waiting for the green light. It was game where you would pick a car at random and add up all the numbers in the license plate, and whoever ended up with the highest final tally would win. They couldn’t have been playing the game on this winding road where there was barely any traffic. They would have needed binoculars to see the license plate of the car in front.

  The driver had been speeding along at over hundred kilometers an hour on this bend. But negligence didn’t seem to be the cause of the accident.

  “Hey, you know what centrifugal force is?” the tall officer says, as he’s lighting the fat one another cigarette.

  The fat one wipes his forehead and shakes his head. “I can’t even think in this heat.”

  The tall one crosses the lanes to the other side. Spread below the cliff are potato fields like the terraced fields in the Philippines. If the car had flown off the road at high speed, it would have landed not in the cornfield, but in the middle of the potato fields below the cliff.

  When the fat officer yanks off the loose glove-box door, the junk inside comes cascading out. An empty disposable lighter, two pairs of cotton gloves still in their packages, cheap facial tissue, a cassette tape of old pop music, its ribbon loose and tangled. He puts each item in a plastic bag. Something glints from deep under the seat. He sticks his hand under the seat, his face pressed against the rubber mat, and pulls out the object. It’s a sashimi knife about thirty centimeters long, wrapped in something like a long strip of cotton gauze.

  The tall officer holds up the knife to the sun. The tip shines. He brings his thumb to the edge of the blade, testing its sharpness. Blood springs instantly to the cut. “Jeez,” he mumbles, hastily sticking his thumb in his mouth.

  Dozens of stalks of corn have been uprooted in the spot where the car landed. Pulled by the tow truck, the car rattles slowly along the road, only its rear wheels touching the ground. The officers climb into their car.

  “What time is it?”

  “Two forty.”

  “There goes our lunch again.”

  “What do you want to eat?”

  “Nothing sticky or spicy. Damn, today’s a scorcher!”

  The tall one, who has gotten behind the wheel, hesitates for a second when he comes to a blank space in the accident report form. The other officer is examining the sashimi knife in the plastic bag. This was no accident. The driver was taking the woman to see the ocean one last time, but he’d had a change of heart and stepped on the gas, charging toward the cornfield. He scrawls hastily into the blank space: alleged double suicide.

  He steps on the accelerator. They pass a gigantic billboard. It’s a new sign, the paint still drying. In the center of the billboard is a road that’s been rendered with accurate perspective. One World. One Path. It’s an advertisement for a mobile network called 020 One Communications. In no time, the police car speeds down the hill past the tow truck.

  2

  He stops putting the chairs on the tables and pats the front pocket of his shirt for his cigarettes. The paper pack looks full, but there’s nothing inside. He tears off the top and checks again. Empty. He can’t even gauge cigarette packs anymore. There are times he crumples up a pack, only to find a cigarette, now broken, inside. He crushes the empty pack, tosses it into the dustpan, and goes back to putting the chairs on the tables. For the past week, he hasn’t picked up his knife once. Not since the news reported three cases of Vibrio infections in Ganghwa Island. He puts the last chair on the table and turns around, his back pressed against the glass tank. There are five flatfish, three rockfish, and some sea eels, which, together, would make about one and a half kilograms of food. The flatfish cover every inch of the tank floor, and the rockfish swim leisurely above them. Everything appears larger under the water. The tank is set up against the restaurant window, so that those passing on the street can see. Sometimes when he’s having a cigarette in the kitchen, he sees their broad, distorted faces between the swimming fish. Mothers often drag away their children, who refuse to leave the tank.

  He opens the back door and heads to the bathroom. Midori, the restaurant where he works, is situated between a restaurant that specializes in a popular sausage stew and one that specializes in hot stone bibimbap. These shops are arranged in a square, facing out, and in the center courtyard is a shared bathroom. If he stands at the back of the restaurant, he can see into all the other businesses through their back doors. The raucous voices of drunk customers ring out. He hears the strains of a pop song sung off beat from the stew restaurant. He fills a rubber bucket with water and rinses the mop. Each time the mop moves up and down, dirty water splatters onto his feet. The man is wearing neon pink shower sandals. When he’s in the kitchen all day, his feet swell, just like a bar of soap that becomes bloated from sitting in water. But shower sandals are the most comfortable; they don’t slip on the tile floor and water drains through the holes. Plus he doesn’t have to distinguish the right side from the left, and can put them on any which way he pleases.

  He starts mopping from the back of the restaurant, finishing at the entrance. Sensing a presence, he turns around to find a face close to the glass of the tank, peering into the restaurant. Since only one rockfish is swimming, he can easily see out. The person stays pressed up against the tank, blinking two eyes that bulge like those of a rockfish, but instead of watching the fish like the other passersby, the eyes peer into the restaurant. Every time he stops mopping and looks back, he cannot help meeting those eyes.

  The bathroom entrance is splattered with vomit. He even spots bloated strands of udon noodles in the orange-colored slurry. It is definitely the work of a customer from the stew restaurant. There’s nothing more telling than vomit. Through the open door of the stall, he sees a middle-aged man on his knees, his hands gripping the toilet and his pants wrinkled and stained. He puts the bucket and mop back in their proper place. As he steps back into Midori, he stops in his tracks. There is a woman sitting at the bar.

  “Sorry, we’re closed.”

  Instead of getting up, she buries her head in her arms and slumps over the bar.

  The man starts to take the chairs off the tables. She doesn’t budge, even when he places the last chair back onto the floor. Her legs, which dangle halfway down the bar stool, are marked by varicose veins, and her calves bulge out like a blowfish. She sits atop the stool like a twenty-kilogram sack of rice. The man is used to customers like these. Customers who would come in drunk and order more drinks, only to fall asleep. Several times he has even hailed a taxi for them and sent them home. But when he goes to shake her awake, he smells wet newspaper instead of liquor. He ducks under the counter and stands before her. He sees the neat part in her tangled, frizzy hair. She raises her face and moves her lips, but no sound comes out. She licks her lips and tries again.

  “Give me anything … Too late, isn’t it … Sorry …” she mutters, trailing off at the end of her sentence.

  He stirs the bottom of the tank with the net to scoop up
the smallest flatfish. Because he has to reach all the way down to bring it up, he has to dunk his whole arm into the briny water, even up to his armpit. The water in the tank is from the East Sea; he’d gotten it with the live squid. He has never been to the East Sea, but if he puts his hand in the tank and closes his eyes, the sea spreads before him. Inside the net, the flatfish arches its body like a bow and flaps around. He presses down on its head and picks up his sashimi knife to cut around the gills. The way to fillet a flatfish is logged into his mind like a flowchart, and so he can fillet even while watching the television screen that hangs on the opposite wall. He quickly scrapes off the scales and glances at the woman. A scale flicks off and sticks to his glasses. He cuts close to the backbone, leaving the tail and back fin, and slices the fish into triangles. He sweeps the air bladders and other organs off the cutting board. On the floor to his right is an empty lard can that holds everything he discards, but the entrails fall on his shower sandal instead and get trapped between his toes. He realizes he forgot to put the can back in its place after he had finished mopping the floor. From this point everything starts to go wrong. The knife keeps slipping, so the fillet pieces turn out uneven. He even drops the knife, and so has to pick it up again. In his fluster, he ends up knocking over the can a few times.

  The cutting board is a little higher than the counter, so that the customers sitting at the bar are able to watch him fillet fish. Though she’s slumped over, the woman, too, is watching his hands out of the corner of her eye. On the julienned radish he places the fish bones, still attached to the head, spine, tail, and fins, and on top of these he arranges the fillet pieces. He pushes the plate toward her. As the final flourish, in order to prove the freshness of the fish, he pokes the head with the tip of his knife, making its mouth open slowly to show its sharp teeth. It is usually at this point that the customers clap. But right then, the fish’s limp tongue pops out like a piece of gum, and the woman jumps to her feet. Her heel catches on the stool footrest, and as her body pitches forward onto the cutting board, her hand comes down on the handle of the sashimi knife resting on the board, sending it flying in the air. It glances off his cheek and impales his shower sandal, penetrating his foot. The knife vibrates, making a strange noise. It’s similar to a musical saw performance he once saw on television. The woman shrieks, covering her face, and collapses back on to her stool. He grips the handle with two hands and pulls out the knife. With each pulse, blood beads from his cheek.