The Vegetarian

  Hee-joo is working herself up, so In-hye releases her hand and slowly approaches the bed. If only one’s eyes weren’t visible to others, she thinks. If only one could hide one’s eyes from the world.

  Yeong-hye is lying very straight on the bed. At first she looks as though she is gazing out of the window, but on closer inspection she actually isn’t looking at anything at all. Barely any flesh remains on her face, neck, shoulders and limbs. In-hye notices the hair growing on her sister’s cheeks and forearms, fine but unusually long, like the faint down that babies often have. The doctor had explained that this was due to Yeong-hye’s hormonal balance being disturbed, something that happens after a long period of starvation.

  Is Yeong-hye trying to turn herself back into a preadolescent? She hasn’t had her period for a long time now, and now that her weight has dropped below thirty kilos, of course there’s nothing left of her breasts. She lies there looking like a freakish overgrown child, devoid of any secondary sexual characteristics.

  In-hye lifts up the white bedsheet. She turns the completely unresisting Yeong-hye over and checks that no bedsores have appeared on her coccyx or back. The area that had been inflamed last time still hasn’t got any better. In-hye allows her gaze to rest on the clear, pale blue Mongolian mark imprinted in the middle of her buttocks, which are now wasted away to the bone. The image of those flowers, which had spread out from that mark like bleeding ink, covering Yeong-hye’s whole body, flickers briefly, dizzyingly, in front of In-hye’s eyes.

  “Thank you for everything, Hee-joo.”

  “Every day I wash her with a wet towel, and powder her skin too; it’s this damp weather that won’t let it heal.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “I used to need one of the nurses to help me give her a bath; now she’s so light I can lift her easily on my own. It really is like caring for a baby. Anyway, I was hoping to give her a bath today as well; I heard you’re moving her to a different hospital, so this would be the last time…” Hee-joo’s big eyes turn red again.

  “All right, let’s give her a bath together in a little while.”

  “Yes, the hot water comes on at four…” Hee-joo wipes her bloodshot eyes, one after the other.

  “All right, then I’ll see you in a bit.”

  In-hye nods to Hee-joo as the latter leaves, then covers Yeong-hye back up with the sheet, adjusting it to make sure that her sister’s feet aren’t sticking out. In-hye checks for burst veins and finds them everywhere; on both hands, the soles of both feet, even her elbows. The only means of providing Yeong-hye with proteins and glucose is the IV, but now there are no undamaged veins left where a needle could be put in. The only other way would be to link the IV to one of the arteries that run over Yeong-hye’s shoulders. Yesterday, the doctor phoned In-hye to explain that, as this requires a dangerous surgical operation, Yeong-hye would have to be transferred to the general hospital. They’d tried on numerous occasions to get some gruel into Yeong-hye by inserting a long tube into her nose, but this had always ended in failure as Yeong-hye had simply closed up her gullet. They would try this method one last time, today, but if this too failed then Yeong-hye would no longer be able to remain in their care.

  Three months ago, just after Yeong-hye had been found in the forest, when In-hye had arrived at reception on the scheduled visiting day, she’d been told that Yeong-hye’s doctor wanted to meet with her. This made her anxious, as she hadn’t spoken with him since Yeong-hye had first been admitted.

  “We know that it disturbs her psychologically if she sees a side dish containing meat, so we’ve been taking extra care to make sure this doesn’t happen. But now she won’t even come down to the lobby at mealtimes, and even if we bring a meal tray up to the ward, she won’t eat. It’s already been four days. She’s started to become dehydrated. And, since she becomes violent every time we try to put in a drip…well, I’m not sure we can even give her the medicine properly anymore.”

  In fact, the doctor doubted whether Yeong-hye had been taking her medication at all. He even blamed himself for not being as vigilant as he should have been, after things had initially seemed to be going well. Just that morning, the nurse had been asked to check that Yeong-hye took her medicine, but apparently Yeong-hye hadn’t listened when she’d been told to stick out her tongue. When the nurse then forced her tongue up and used a flashlight to look inside, the tablets were still there.

  That day back then, as Yeong-hye lay there in the ward with the drip needle inserted into the back of her hand, In-hye asked her, “Why did you do it? What were you doing in those dark woods? Wasn’t it cold? What would you have done if you’d caught something, something serious?” Yeong-hye’s face was terribly haggard, and her uncombed hair was matted like seaweed. “You have to eat. I understand you not eating meat if you don’t like it, but why won’t you eat other things now either?”

  Yeong-hye’s lips twitched almost imperceptibly. “I’m thirsty,” she whispered. “Give me some water.” In-hye went and fetched some from the lobby. After she’d had a drink, Yeong-hye let out a shallow sigh and asked, “Did you talk to the doctor, sister?”

  “Yes, I did. Why—”

  Yeong-hye cut her off. “They say my insides have all atrophied, you know.” In-hye was lost for words. Yeong-hye moved her emaciated face closer to her sister. “I’m not an animal anymore, sister,” she said, first scanning the empty ward as if about to disclose a momentous secret. “I don’t need to eat, not now. I can live without it. All I need is sunlight.”

  “What are you talking about? Do you really think you’ve turned into a tree? How could a plant talk? How can you think these things?”

  Yeong-hye’s eyes shone. A mysterious smile played on her face.

  “You’re right. Soon now, words and thoughts will all disappear. Soon.” Yeong-hye burst into laughter, then sighed. “Very soon. Just a bit longer to wait, sister.”

  —

  Time passes.

  Outside the window, the rain looks to be coming down less heavily than before. The raindrops on the mosquito netting appear undisturbed, so perhaps the rain actually stopped a little while ago.

  In-hye sits down in a chair by Yeong-hye’s bedside, opens her bag and gets out various containers of different sizes, all tightly sealed. She opens the lid of the smallest container first. A sweet fragrance spreads through the humid air of the ward.

  “It’s a peach, Yeong-hye. A tinned Hwangdo peach. You like them, remember? You used to insist on buying them even when fresh peaches were in season, just like a child.” She carves off a piece of the ripe, yielding fruit with a fork and brings it up to Yeong-hye’s nose. “Smell that…don’t you want to try a bit?” The next container is filled with watermelon, cut up into conveniently sized cubes. “Don’t you remember, when you were young, every time I cut a watermelon in half you would come and smell it? With some of them, when we cut them up they gave off this wonderful sweet smell that spread through the whole house.”

  Yeong-hye remains entirely motionless.

  In-hye gently rubs a piece of melon against her sister’s lips. She tries to use two of her fingers to part Yeong-hye’s lips, but her mouth is shut tight.

  “Yeong-hye,” In-hye says. Her voice is low. “Answer me, Yeong-hye.” She shakes her sister by her stiff shoulders, and resists the temptation to force her mouth open. She wants to yell right into her sister’s ear: What are you doing? Are you listening to me? Do you want to die? Do you really want to die? Dazed, she examines the hot anger that is boiling up inside her like spume.

  —

  Time passes.

  In-hye turns her head and looks out of the window. The rain seems finally to have stopped, but the sky is still overcast, the wet trees still silent. The densely wooded slopes of Mount Ch’ukseong stretch far into the distance. The huge forest blanketing those slopes is as silent as everything else.

  She gets a thermos flask out of her bag and pours Chinese quince tea into the stainless steel cup.
br />   “Try some, Yeong-hye. It’s infused really well.”

  She brings it to her own lips first and takes a sip. The taste that lingers on the tip of her tongue is sweet and fragrant. After pouring some of the tea onto a hand towel, she uses it to moisten Yeong-hye’s lips. There is no response. “Are you trying to die?” she asks. “You’re not, are you? If all you want to do is become a tree, you still have to eat. You have to live.” She stops speaking. Her breath catches in her throat. A suspicion that she hasn’t wanted to acknowledge has finally raised its head. Might she have been mistaken? Might it be precisely that, death, which Yeong-hye is after, which she has been after from the first?

  No, she repeats silently. You’re not trying to die.

  Before Yeong-hye stopped speaking for good, around a month ago, she had said, “Sister, please let me out of here.”

  She would often break off mid-sentence, perhaps because she found it difficult to keep talking for a long time, and her speech was mingled with the rasping sound of her breathing.

  “People are always telling me to eat…I don’t like eating; they force me. Last time I threw it up…yesterday as soon as I’d eaten they gave me an injection to put me to sleep. Sister, I don’t like injections, I really don’t like them…please let me out. I don’t like being here.”

  In-hye had held Yeong-hye’s wasted hand and said, “But you can’t even walk properly anymore. It’s only now that you’ve got this IV that you’re managing to keep going…If you come home, will you eat? If you promise to eat I’ll get you discharged.” She couldn’t fail to notice how the light went out of Yeong-hye’s eyes then. “Yeong-hye. Answer me. All you need to do is promise.”

  Yeong-hye twisted away from her sister. “You’re just the same,” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

  “What are you talking about? I…”

  “No one can understand me…the doctors, the nurses, they’re all the same…they don’t even try to understand…they just force me to take medication, and stab me with needles.”

  Yeong-hye’s voice was slow and quiet, but firm.

  In-hye couldn’t hold herself back any longer. “You!” she yelled. “I’m acting like this because I’m afraid you’re going to die!”

  Yeong-hye turned her head and stared blankly at In-hye, as though the latter were not her sister but a complete stranger. After a while, the question came.

  “Why, is it such a bad thing to die?”

  —

  Why, is it such a bad thing to die?

  A long time ago, she and Yeong-hye had got lost on a mountain. Yeong-hye, who had been nine at the time, said, “Let’s just not go back.”

  At the time, In-hye hadn’t understood what she meant. “What are you talking about? It’ll get dark any minute now. We have to hurry up and find the path.”

  Only after all this time was she able to understand why Yeong-hye had said what she did. Yeong-hye had been the only victim of their father’s beatings. Such violence wouldn’t have bothered their brother Yeong-ho so much, a boy who went around doling out his own rough justice to the village children. As the eldest daughter, In-hye had been the one who took over from their exhausted mother and made a broth for her father to wash the liquor down, and so he’d always taken a certain care in his dealings with her. Only Yeong-hye, docile and naive, had been unable to deflect their father’s temper or put up any form of resistance. Instead, she had merely absorbed all her suffering inside her, deep into the marrow of her bones. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, In-hye could see that the role that she had adopted back then of the hard-working, self-sacrificing eldest daughter had been a sign not of maturity but of cowardice. It had been a survival tactic.

  Could I have prevented it? Could I have prevented those unimaginable things from sinking so deep inside of Yeong-hye and holding her in their grip? She saw her sister again, as a child, her back and shoulders and the back of her head as she stood alone in front of the main gate at sunset. The two of them had eventually made it down off the mountain, but on the opposite side from where they’d started. They’d hitched a ride on a power tiller back to their small town, hurrying along the unfamiliar road as darkness fell. In-hye had been relieved, but not her sister. Yeong-hye had said nothing, only stood and watched the flaming poplars kindled by the evening light.

  —

  Had they run away from home that evening, as Yeong-hye had suggested, would it all have been different?

  At the family gathering that day, if she’d been more forceful when she grabbed their father’s arm, before he struck Yeong-hye in the face, would it all have been different then?

  And what about when she first took Yeong-hye to be introduced to her future husband, Mr. Cheong? He’d come across as somewhat cold; she hadn’t taken to him at all. What would have happened if she’d acted on instinct and refused to let the marriage go forward?

  There’d been a time when she could spend hours like this, weighing up all the variables that might have contributed to determining Yeong-hye’s fate. Of course it was entirely in vain, this act of mentally picking up and counting the paduk stones that had been laid out on the board of her sister’s life. More than that, it wasn’t even possible. But she couldn’t stop her thoughts from running on to her ex-husband.

  If only she hadn’t married him.

  He called her, just once. It was around nine months ago, and close on midnight. Perhaps he’d been calling from somewhere far away, because there was a brief lag after the sound of the coin tumbling.

  “I want to see Ji-woo.” His oh-so-familiar voice, low and tense—she could tell he was struggling to sound composed—was like a blunt knife stabbing her in the chest. “Couldn’t you let me see him, just one time?”

  So that was what he’d called to say. Not to say he was sorry. Not to beg for her forgiveness. Only to talk about the child. He didn’t even ask whether Yeong-hye was all right.

  She’d always known how sensitive he was. A man whose self-esteem was so easily wounded, who quickly became frustrated if the situation didn’t go his way. She knew that if she refused him this one more time, it would probably be a very long time before he contacted her again.

  Even though she was aware of this, no, because she was aware of it, she hung up without answering.

  A public telephone booth in the middle of the night. Worn-out sneakers, shabby clothes. A despairing face, no longer young. She shook her head, trying to erase those images from her mind. Whenever she thought of him now, those thoughts were quietly overlaid with the way he’d looked when he tried to throw himself over the railing of Yeong-hye’s veranda, trying to fly like a bird. All those scenes of flight he’d included in his videos; and yet, when he needed it most, such flight had proved beyond him.

  “I don’t know you,” she muttered, tightening her grip on the receiver, which she’d hung back in the cradle but was still clutching. “So there’s no need for us to forgive each other. Because I don’t know you.”

  When the phone rang again she pulled out the cord. The next morning she connected it up again but, as she’d predicted, he didn’t call again.

  —

  Time passes.

  Now Yeong-hye’s eyes are closed. Is she sleeping? Can she smell the fruit her sister put to her lips just now?

  In-hye looks at Yeong-hye’s prominent cheekbones, her hollow eyes, her sunken cheeks. She feels her sister’s ragged breath. She gets up and walks over to the window, where the dark gray of the sky is gradually lightening, the landscape growing brighter at the edges. The light touches upon Mount Ch’ukseong’s forest, rekindling its summer colors. The place where Yeong-hye was discovered that night must be somewhere over on that slope.

  “I heard something,” Yeong-hye had said, lying hooked up to the drip. “I went there because I heard something calling me…I don’t hear it anymore now…I was just standing there waiting.”

  When In-hye asked, “What were you waiting for?,” a fever came into Yeong-hye’s eyes. Her right hand was
the one with the needle in it; she reached out with her left and grabbed In-hye’s hand. In-hye was shocked by how strong her grip was.

  “It melted in the rain…it all melted…I’d been just about to go down into the earth. There was nothing else for it if I wanted to turn myself upside down again, you see.”

  Hee-joo’s excited tone jolts In-hye out of these memories.

  “What can we do about Yeong-hye? They’re saying she might die.”

  To In-hye, Hee-joo’s words sounded like the deafening roar of a plane taking off.

  —

  There is one memory that In-hye has never been able to tell anyone else about, and probably never will.

  April two years ago. The spring of the year when her husband made that video of Yeong-hye. In-hye had bled from her vagina for close on a month, on and off. She’d never been able to understand why, but for some reason every time she washed her blood-soaked pants she would recall the way in which the blood from Yeong-hye’s wrist had spurted out into the air. Every day she decided she would go for a medical examination the next day, then when the next day came she would postpone it again. She was afraid of going to the hospital. If it was a serious disease, how much time might she have left? A year. Six months. Or three months. For the first time, she became vividly aware of how much of her life she had spent with her husband. It had been a period of time utterly devoid of happiness and spontaneity. A time that she’d so far managed to get through only by using up every last reserve of perseverance and consideration. All of it self-inflicted.

  On the morning when she’d finally mustered the courage to go to the obstetrics and gynecology department, the one where Ji-woo had been born, she’d stood on the open-air platform at Wangsimni Station and waited for the train, which was taking an unusually long time to arrive. Opposite the platform was a row of temporary buildings, their steel structures now decaying, and wild grasses straggling up between the sleepers on the edges over which no trains passed. The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her success had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn’t understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived.