by Kyung-Ran Jo
Is someone here, Paulie?
As if in slow motion, Paulie slowly pressed his front feet down on mine and lay down. Meaning we should stay out here together.
Do you know who it is, Paulie?
Paulie snuffled and emitted a low moan, almost like a sigh. I had realized when I was trying to teach Paulie words that dogs could express themselves only in a limited way. But the substance of their communication never contained lies.
Move, Paulie, I ordered in a low and firm voice. Paulie’s snout stiffened almost noticeably. Paulie was nervous. He kept poking my calf with his nose.
It’s okay, Paulie. Move back, Paulie. Do it!
Paulie reluctantly moved behind me, unable to disobey. I approached the pocket door. I placed my palm on the door, and when I put pressure on it the door slid open.
I stood on the other side of the door with Paulie only for a moment, but I must have been imagining all the possibilities of what was there. There’s nothing strange in seeing a naked man and woman. It’s as natural as having two different tastes mingling in one dish. She was wearing the peach-colored chiffon dress she had worn under a trench coat in the beginning of fall, which made the other students and me exclaim that it was so pretty on her, gathering around her as we touched the fabric. From the other side of the doorjamb, I thought the chiffon dress was still very beautiful, but that it was too cold to be wearing it in November. Her hands rumpling the hem of the dress raised to her waist, revealing everything, her lips sucked in his scrotum, wrinkly like dried plums, as he perched on the island. His hands were buried in her hair falling over her face as he gently and repeatedly pulled her head toward him and pushed it away.
When I was a girl, Grandmother told me a story. Once upon a time, a man slept for a long time in a tree. It was before there were many people in the world, at a time when dinosaurs flew around. One day the man woke up. Little tufts of clouds floated gently in the sky, and the wind smelled like grass. He realized that it wasn’t grass he was smelling, but a fragrant flower. The flower was blooming right under his tree. He shimmied down the tree with his thick, strong legs. A round well of water was pooling in the middle of the wide, big leaf, shaped like a dish. The man stood there, staring down at the water, then bent down and slowly and reverently started drinking it in.
Looking at him, I knew that was what the man in the story must have looked like when he was drinking in the water. He sat her down on the sofa—she was now completely naked—and kneeled and stared at her down there, which must have opened up like a ripe fig, just as if he had woken from a lengthy slumber and was gazing at rainwater collected in a leaf for the first time in his life. His back was to me, but I knew what his eyes looked like. I’d thought those eyes were meant only for me.
He started carefully and rhythmically rubbing her with his finger, massaging her. She spread her legs wider to allow his finger to come in deeper and looked down at his face with an expression like, Look, look at how perfect mine is, then moaned and closed her eyes. Nobody was rushing, nobody was nervous. Meaning that it wasn’t the first time they’d had sex. Like people foraging for mushrooms, the two concentrated secretively and carefully in the tense, impatient quiet, pulling and pushing and tensing and tugging at each other like giant, pink, wet, shiny tongues entwined as one. They were completely immersed in eating, as if they were attending a feast not of different kinds of food but of different methods of eating—chewing, sucking, licking. He pulled her bottom, round and blushing like peaches marinated in red wine, onto his lap. Then he pushed against her from behind, gripping her waist with both hands, and I heard him yelling out her name, loudly. As if my eyes were erogenous zones, I shivered too. I wanted to run in and ask, How did it taste?
When you eat peaches marinated in red wine, you have to take an extremely sharp fork and stab it—that’s the only way to enjoy it.
MARCH
I am offering you the things which you eat, now you must do whatever I demand.
—Tibetan Buddhist Sherpa saying
CHAPTER 10
WINTER CAME AND WENT like a fish that lost its way. At the same time it was a long, cold, never-ending winter. I’m so glad I was able to survive, I say to myself, quickly feeling better about the world whenever I catch a glimpse of a yellow daffodil pushing through the frozen earth. Spring is a great season for cooks. You can hear things bursting up through the ground, in the mountains and the sea and the fields; it’s like opening a can of herring and catching a whiff of the fresh marine smell and the bubbles of salt water that—pssht!—shoot up powerfully like an explosion. The best of these sounds is the squirming of squid rising from the depths of the ocean. The captured squid, surprised, twist around and spout dark ink, as if vomiting the wounds they’d been keeping to themselves all winter. They’re pleasingly chewy, fresh, and filled with eggs, March and April being peak season, guaranteeing optimal taste and nutrition. March also happens to be the month Nove serves its seasonal squid pasta. After finishing prep, I rest a little, waiting for customers to arrive for lunch, and dip five or six little squid in boiling salt water, fish a piece out, and, instead of pairing it with the traditional Korean condiment of vinegar-spiked red-pepper paste, I dip it in pesto and put it into my mouth. It feels squishy but chewy at the same time, the smell of the sea spreading in my mouth along with the effervescent, fresh taste of basil. It’s truly the taste of spring.
Right now I’m making tiramisu. The most representative dessert of Italian cuisine, tiramisu is good at any time of the year, but I happen to think that spring is the best season for it. It’s hard to prepare and difficult to keep compared to other cakes, so I don’t make it often, but in the spring I send it out to the regulars, on the house. Tiramisu, beloved by eighteenth-century Venetians, means “pull me up” in Italian, as in uplift your mood. Because of the espresso stirred into it, you actually do feel peppier after a bite. In the winter, if you accompany it with a cup of hot coffee garnished with a drop of cognac, the calming effect of the tiramisu is even greater. I make the espresso, and while it cools I put some sugar in a pot and boil it; at the same time I beat eggs, add water, scrape in the seeds of a vanilla bean, and give the whole thing a whirl. It’s the first dessert I made with the students at Won’s Kitchen, six weeks into the program. I spread cream and mascarpone, drizzle it with espresso, top it with a dusting of cocoa powder, and stick it in the fridge. I’m thinking of taking it out for the afternoon snack after it chills. It’s the first snack I’ve made since coming back to Nove. If a dish is too salty, you fix it with honey, and if it’s too sweet, you add some salt. I hope the other cooks will spoon into it gently from the outside corners, slide it into their mouths, and agree: I think K has finally found her rhythm.
The youngest prep cook, Choi, forgot to order salumi and mozzarella, creating problems for dinner service. It’s not the end of the world if we don’t have salumi, but if we don’t have mozzarella, we can’t make caprese salads, the most popular appetizer on our menu. Mozzarella demands freshness, so we don’t order huge batches of it. To make it worse, today is the day that Mr. Choe—the leader of the most influential group of gourmet eaters, Mido—is scheduled to come for dinner. Manager Park said it would be best not to tell Chef and I’m chosen to go to the closest market this afternoon. I feel a little uncomfortable that the market closest to Nove is actually the Costco in Yangjaedong, the one I used to frequent with him, but I’ve already stepped outside into the windy street.
When there is a huge crack in your relationship with someone, you wonder what others do in similar situations. I realize I’m trying as hard as I can to present myself as the most un-threatening being in the world, like a small animal. I hunch into myself, avoiding going back to the same places I frequented with him. Obviously I don’t eat the kind of food we ate or made together. But I don’t think I’m going to move to a new house, because I have the kitchen and the large fridge that I’d wanted for so long. People say you can’t possibly like your lover every single second of y
our life. But that’s not true. I liked and looked to my lover every single second we were together. And I still can’t admit that he’s gone. True sorrow is when one person desires but the other doesn’t. I don’t know any better words to describe it, and I can’t yet express this feeling through any kind of food. The one thing we know about sorrow is that it’s a very personal, individual feeling.
CHAPTER 11
WHAT DOES A WOMAN DO as she waits for her man? She may wash her hair, put on makeup, choose the kind of outfit any woman would be eager to try on, spray on perfume, and look at herself one last time in the mirror. If she does these things, it’s when she and the man she’s waiting for are in love. It’s different when a woman waits for a man she still loves but who has broken up with her, because the pure joy of it is missing. Loving someone is like carving words into the back of your hand. Even if the others can’t see the words, they, like glowing letters, stand out in the eyes of the person who’s left you. Right now, that’s enough for me.
I wonder whether I should clean up a little or give Paulie a bath but instead just end up lying on the sofa. I try to think of something we did together when he loved me, something that has to do with me, not with washing Paulie or cleaning up, but I can’t think of anything. Even though I’d once wanted to share so many things with him, so many things that would make us happy or excited. I rustle around. By the time he gets here at two P.M. as promised, I’m deep in slumber. I had been lying in the street just like this when we first met, and when I opened my eyes I saw him looking down at me, his nose almost touching mine. Paulie alerts me to his presence by tugging on the slipper dangling from my foot. I open my eyes. I see him standing just inside the pocket door, looking uncomfortable. Come here, like before. Come close. But he doesn’t budge. I sit up and smooth my hair.
“How’ve you been?” His greeting isn’t really addressed to me, but not really to Paulie either. He unslings the bag from his shoulders and puts it down on the floor near the pocket door like he’s going to leave very soon. Paulie approaches him slowly and licks his outstretched palm. With his other hand, he strokes Paulie’s neck. Paulie’s neck is going to smell like you for a while.
I rise from the sofa. I hadn’t wanted him to see me asleep. “Would you like to eat something?”
“No, I already ate.”
We’d usually get ready for lunch around two, leisurely, after our midmorning brunch.
“Already?”
“I’ll go take a walk with Paulie and be back.”
You haven’t been here for more than two minutes! “Okay, then.” I walk toward the kitchen. Paulie glances at me but pads out the door when he hears his whistle. The sound of him whistling. It’s been a long time since I heard it. No matter how hard I practice, I can’t make the sound. I hear the door closing. What’s the best thing to eat at two in the afternoon? I pucker and try to whistle as I open the fridge door. I have potatoes in the fridge, along with zucchini and flour and pasta and an assortment of sauces and frozen fish—flounder, turbot, mackerel—and fresh anchovies and caviar that would be great in a salad. With these I can put together a decent—though not sumptuous—meal. I used to feel I was being given a special privilege every time I opened the fridge.
In the novel The Edible Woman, Marian bakes a cake in the shape of a woman for the man who’d tried to make her change but nearly destroyed her. “You look delicious. Very appetizing. And that’s what will happen to you; that’s what you get for being food,” she says. She calls him to her place and displays the cake. When he panics and leaves, she takes a fork and digs in, starting with the feet. It could be that she was only looking to share something with him and feel satisfied. The novel ends with Marian announcing that it’s only a cake, as she spears her fork into her cake body, neatly slicing off the head.
Roman women would bake a vulvalike pastry and put it on the table when they were upset with their husbands. A fresco depicting a cake baked in the form of breasts—made from sweet, thick, yellow custard and finished with red cherries perched on top as nipples—adorns a small church in Sicily. When women cook, they’re not just doing it for sustenance. An expression of rage and unhappiness and desire and sadness and pleading and pain may lurk in their dishes. Of course, the best kind is food filled with love.
Just as it’s important to be happy when you’re in a kitchen, the most crucial thing to keep in mind when you cook is the people who are going to eat your food—their tastes, their desires, their likes and dislikes, what will satisfy them, what will move them, what will make them want it again. A cook should understand the people’s eating habits, too. People can’t change their eating habits easily. They take their habits with them even when they leave home for somewhere far away. When I first started cooking, Chef would often tell us to cook the way our mothers did when we were young. Having had no mother, I changed that word to Grandmother. When I was working at that restaurant in Napoli, the head chef told me that proper Italian cooking had to give customers the feeling that their grandmother was in the kitchen, and I found myself smiling despite myself. It’s not so when I cook for customers or the students I teach, but when I cook for him, I want to make the kind of food that would pique his hunger for me.
Taking lettuce from the fridge, I pause to look out the window, lit brightly by the spring afternoon sun. I look around at everything I have here—a kitchen spacious enough to conduct a cooking class for ten people, an interior and a yard roomy enough for an English setter, and a thirty-one-year-old man, as tall as a palm tree, walking across the yard. They’re not things that would come easily to me at this age. I have it all. Even if things have been bad between us, these I can’t easily give up. The problem now isn’t whether we love each other, but whether we can return to what we used to be. I need to say to him, subtly, suggestively: Even if we can’t return to what we used to be, it can’t be completely futile. We can learn something truly valuable as we pick up the broken pieces and float up to the surface. Let’s wait until then. Being inside the house in the spring, with him there, makes me a more positive person, more outgoing and cheerful.
I think I’ll make a meatless sandwich of herbs, vegetables, and eggs. There’s nothing more fitting for a meal at two P.M. on a Sunday. If it’s true that he already had lunch, the filling should be light. I put the cold chicken and the can of smoked salmon back in the fridge. Then I spread a thin layer of butter on the baguette and drizzle it thoroughly with olive oil infused with chopped garlic and thyme. Without the garlic and thyme enlivening the olive oil, the sandwich is boring. I usually add a bit of mayonnaise, but this time I don’t, since he’s not a fan. Now all I need to do is stack the ingredients. I spread lettuce, spun dry, slices of boiled egg, tomato, cucumber, onion. Usually one baguette is more than enough for the two of us. I cut it into thirds with the bread knife, on a slant, and nestle them in a gauze-covered basket. Even if it’s a simple sandwich, you have to choose quality bread, the ingredients have to sing together, and, whether it’s thyme or basil, there must be some kind of herb—this is my philosophy for sandwich making.
“Go ahead, try one.” I wait for him to take a bite of the sandwich. The person you can eat with is also the person you can have sex with, and the person you can have sex with is the person you can eat with. That’s why dates always start with a meal. You get to experience the impulsive expectation and curiosity toward the other person this way first, not in bed. There are many instances when the opposite is true, too. When you eat together, your relationship deepens or takes a step back—it’s either one or the other. Eating together, having sex—he and I are used to both, and we also know how to bring it up to the next level.
I eat by myself. I gulp down two pieces of the sandwich. I’m full. I’m satisfied, but not completely. Sharing something and feeling satisfaction from it—now I can’t seem to recall how much joy that used to give me.
“Why don’t you just take a bite?” Is the sandwich too boring to stimulate his appetite? He doesn’t even look
at it.
“I told you I don’t want to. Why do you keep doing this?”
“Why do you think I keep doing this?”
“It’s over, okay, so please stop.”
“Over? What’s over? You’re not being rational right now. Any day now you’re going to come back and beg, saying you were wrong.”
“That’s just not going to happen. And I wish you’d stop going around talking about Se-yeon.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about.
“I mean, you two liked each other back then. Why would you do something like that?”
“I’ve never said anything about her to anyone.”
“Okay. I guess it’s Mun-ju, then?”
“Stop it. All you do is worry about Se-yeon, right? Have you bothered to ask me how I’ve been doing since you got here?”
“If you keep doing that, you really make me out to be the bad guy.”
I can’t speak.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, but I can’t do anything, okay?”
“You can come back. I told you I understand.”
“It’s not you I want to live with anymore, it’s Se-yeon. How many times do I have to keep telling you this?”
“You told me you loved me with that mouth of yours. Don’t you remember? Did you forget all of that?”
“Yeah, I did back then. It’s all in the past, though.”
“Come back to me.”
He doesn’t say anything.
I lay a hand gently on his arm, near his left elbow. No matter how much you kick off the covers in bed you always have a corner of it covering your stomach—just like that, we’d always been linked together, by one leg, one arm, one hand. “I’ll wait.”