The Last Lover

4. KIM’S PASTURE

The scale of the Rose Clothing Company’s business grew larger and larger. Joe’s customers were increasing, and these were all large-scale transactions. This left almost no time now for reading, and his business trips grew more frequent.

Once he went to a large pastureland in the north, where the owner’s house sat halfway up a mountain. Although it was the height of summer, when night came to the mountain it turned cold. Even wrapped up inside the thick pajamas his host had given him, Joe still felt a little cold. The owner, Mr. Kim, was a Korean. In his youth he had emigrated with his parents.

“I own ten thousand sheep, and cows and deer, too,” Kim said. “I don’t bother about the business side of the farm. I live like a retired king on this mountain. When I heard you were coming, I knew my opportunity had come. Now, let’s empty our cups together. This is good liquor, and tonight it might make you realize your desires.”

Outside the sky was already dark. Joe saw that within the room there were many big, human shadows walking back and forth, yet Kim didn’t seem to see them. Joe was afraid, but he still had to feign composure. Kim told him how several years ago his wife and son had both died of pneumonia, one after the other. They couldn’t endure the severe climate of this place. But he was himself loath to depart. It was as if a demon possessed him: the place was too beautiful. If it were morning, he would climb with Joe to the mountain’s frozen peak to see the scenery.

“Do other people live in this building?” Joe couldn’t help asking. He thought of the horror novel he’d brought along.

“Ah, yes. I have two guests. Many years ago they came to my house for a visit, then they went missing. I sense that they are inside the house. I’ve gotten used to it.”

Joe discovered that when he said these words Kim’s face had a cruel expression. A head of black hair shone under the lamplight, making Joe think of a black wolf. Fearful, Joe didn’t pursue his questioning. He saw a dark, unmoving shadow behind Kim’s back, and the lenses of Kim’s glasses sent out an insidious reflected light. Joe said he had drunk too much and should go to bed.

Joe went to the guest room, bringing the alcohol fumes with him. Half awake, half asleep, he realized that it was a luxurious bedroom. But why were there so many black cats on the bed? Altogether there were five of them, all lying stretched out on the silk-and-satin quilt spread over the bed. Small green lamps were lit in the bedroom. It seemed much colder than the living room had been. Joe felt a shiver run through him. He swiftly dug into the quilts, and the cats seized their chance to squeeze in, too, furry but in fact comfortable. Lying down, Joe sobered up. Someone was knocking lightly at the door, but he didn’t have the courage to answer. He decided to keep the lights shining continuously. Just now, in the living room, Kim had spoken of Joe’s company. He said that the Rose Clothing Company was a monster, but if Joe could only escape to an Eastern country he’d be able to struggle out of the beast’s claws. Kim from start to finish of his speech had watched Joe coldly from behind his lenses, watching until Joe recoiled. Deep in his heart, Joe didn’t care about what Kim was saying. Although he seldom had time at present to read books, this didn’t hamper his construction of his world of stories. On the road he’d already channeled this journey into the web of his story. And so, despite the terror in his heart, he was excited.

This enormous pastureland, named Dangulan or Red Old Blue, was so beautiful. Joe, getting out of the taxi, had stood there stupefied. It was a beauty that would keep others at a thousand kilometers’ distance, a stern beauty. That silent and unbroken grassland; that arrogant, ice-capped mountain without signs of habitation; also that house built halfway up the mountain, only the one and no second house — all these without speech closely pressed Joe’s spirit. Joe couldn’t help cowering, but there’d been no trace of the taxi for some time. Kim, wearing pajamas and holding a pipe in his mouth, came down the steps of the large building and casually shook hands. Joe noticed that his hands were extremely strong. They even had a sort of magnetism, as if hinting to Joe, telling him that he’d already entered Kim’s realm.

Kim’s household included only a female cook past her prime. There were no servants — or perhaps none of the servants appeared on the scene. At meals the cook sat off to one side, but from first to last she didn’t speak a single word. Judging from her countenance, with its severely shut mouth, she apparently looked down on Joe. Joe was disheartened, and wanted to go to the guest room early, then shut the door and read that horror novel he’d brought along. But Kim suddenly started talking to him of his homeland, Korea, with his voice both sharp and urgent, as if he would open wide his inmost heart to his guest on their first meeting. In Joe’s impression, Kim’s homeland seemed to be floating, a dancing single-story building in midair. In this building the men and women had stopped cultivating crops or buying and selling. Yet these people’s hearts held surprising lusts. They were capable of long periods of sex in dreams, not waking from lethargic sleep. . “Yellow roses are in full bloom at the foot of the iceberg.” When Kim spoke this ambiguous sentence, Joe saw that he had bleeding red gums and his whole face looked a bit like a tiger. But Kim suddenly stopped in the center of the room, his voice again an ear-piercing scream: “So many years have passed. Does the sun still hang in the East?”

Listening and listening, Joe entered into Kim’s story. Even afterward, Joe couldn’t really distinguish between the boundaries of Kim’s story and his own. Kim’s matchbox-like single-story houses always exploded open all at once, and from inside all sorts of ghosts flew out. The ghosts scattered in midair and disappeared into the human world, endangering people’s lives. “Korea is a balloon in a boundless ocean,” he told Joe in affirmative tones. Joe lowered his head to see his own sleeping robe embroidered with many foxes, but only felt desire leaping up between his legs. The more he listened, the more interesting he found Kim to be. In his heart he called this short man “a hawk”; he did not know why he named him this.

Outside it grew windy, with howling gusts, and the building started rocking as if the wind would smash the whole thing. Joe was scared, and he curled up in a ball, prepared to get under the table. Kim stood solidly on the floor. Perhaps he took this building to be a large ship on a billowing sea. He leaned close to Joe’s ear, telling him a secret: “My house was built with no foundation. This building is in the style of my homeland.” After a while the building became steady, yet the storm winds gusted even more violently, and it sounded as though hailstones were striking the tin sheet roof. Kim reached out an arm and hung it over Joe’s shoulder. Joe once again exclaimed at the magnetism in his body. “Who would come here? Other than you,” Kim said.

The stormy wind and the icy hail outside the room only intensified the seething desire in Joe’s body. Amid the groaning sounds of the black cats copulating, Joe thought of a sexual partner who wasn’t Maria and also wasn’t the Kim in this house. It was apparently a person of indeterminate gender, covered in long black hair from head to foot. Joe felt dread at this unfamiliar and intense desire. He thought that perhaps the black cats were inducing these latent sexual fantasies. Midway, he climbed out from underneath the quilt and stood in the center of the room. The black cats followed him down onto the floor. One of them bit his calf, and when this fresh sense of pain again provoked his desire, Joe felt he would soon go mad. Concentrated hailstones struck the tin roof deafeningly loud, and the building looked ready to collapse. A knocking on the door sounded again and again in the pauses between the hailstones. He saw the peacock-embroidered quilt he’d slept in bulging up high. Was it possible there was still a cat inside, and that the cat had rapidly grown this large? He walked over and pulled off the quilt; inside was nothing. Joe lay down again. The black cats hid in the corners of the room and even more lascivious groans sprang up from their direction. Kim shouted from outside the door:

“Open the door! It’s Kim. Years ago, I was in your hometown. Did you forget all about it?”

He yelled again and again until Joe finally lost patience, got up, and opened the door. However, it was the fat cook standing outside. The cook’s garlic-bud eyes weren’t focused on Joe. She was looking amiably at a small mouse at her bosom. The white mouse was one breath away from death. Joe didn’t know whether she understood his words, so he used hand signs to gesture, saying to her:

“Kim. . Kim, Kim!”

The woman immediately looked apprehensive. She tossed the mouse down on the floor, and left.

Kim finally appeared in the morning when the sun shone brightly. Joe saw that his face was a waxy yellow, and every movement of his hands and feet was unsure. He had changed into yet another embroidered sleeping robe, one printed with gold ingots. This get-up made him look unctuous.

“Did you realize your desires during the night?” He stroked his extremely glossy black hair.

Joe thought back to his high-surging passion throughout the odd night, and didn’t know how to answer.

“The contract is already signed, but you still haven’t made up your mind!” Kim said.

He called his wolfhound in from outside, and lightly stroked the dog, which was about as tall as himself. He told Joe that the dog’s mother had died the year before last, died on the mountaintop. “I sealed her up inside an ice cave. When I turned to look out into the distance, do you know what I saw?”

“What?”

“The East! I saw it clearly, that place where the sun rises. Everything is there!”

“But a man like me cannot see that far,” Joe said in disappointment.

“Ah, no! You’re completely wrong. Yesterday for example, you went there, you were like an emperor. .”

“I never went to the place you’re talking about. I was inside the building the whole time, suffering from the attacks of those black cats.”

“You’re not pleased with the cats?”

When Kim spoke he again displayed his bloody gums, very displeasing to Joe. He felt that the man’s body had the characteristics of a predator, one that seemed like it could break loose at any moment. Kim leisurely lit his pipe. After he’d smoked a few puffs, a thin flush spread over his face, and his black eyes shifted like a thief’s behind his lenses. Joe drummed up his courage and asked whether Kim would be able to take him to the summit for a look around.

“I can’t,” Kim said outright. “All the roads are impassable. Japanese people came to this mountain before. The women changed into kimonos and geta sandals, then they disappeared into the snow-fields.”

Joe drank coffee, thinking to himself how lonesome Kim’s life must be. Aside from that hometown floating among the clouds, his life was spent nearly cut off from the world. Kim read Joe’s thoughts and responded, saying, no, he wasn’t a bit lonesome, because everyone in the whole world could potentially pass through his residence. His house was like an entrance for getting into heaven. Joe, for example, whom he hadn’t met before. Hadn’t he hurried from so far away to be his guest? Although he hadn’t known Joe before this, there was, in fact, a common communication of information between them.

“I don’t at all. .” Joe wanted to defend himself.

“Oh, no, no, no!” Kim waved his hands. “It’s your doing. You send out messages, but you don’t know it. Instead, I know you. Right when you set off I heard the sound of your footsteps.”

Kim made Joe feel awkward, so he could only be silent. He saw a basket hanging down from the living-room ceiling. The hanging basket was piled up with wasps, and wasps were overflowing its edges. A few had dropped to the floor. Joe once again felt the house’s perilous situation. In comparison to these wasps, which were as large as jujubes, last night’s black cats really didn’t count for anything. Kim’s addictions were horrifying, but why on reaching here were his own desires so tempestuous? There had been one stretch of time when Joe had believed he was almost a hopeless case. Fortunately, afterward, reading had enchanted him. It was those fabricated stories that had saved him, that had brought changes to the look of his life. But stories were only a part of Joe’s life, the sole part possessing meaning. Joe had not thought that in the world there could be a man like Kim, who lived altogether inside of fabrication. Clasping Kim’s hand Joe realized his surpassing vigor. A wasp crawled onto the side of Joe’s foot, so he hastily switched his seat. He saw a thread of mocking light at the edges of Kim’s glasses.

“Your cook speaks very little.”

“She is able to speak, she just doesn’t want to is all. When she was young, her family turned her out for speaking out of turn. A few years ago she settled down at my place here.”

Kim invited Joe to the greenhouse behind the building to see the “rare flowers” he cultivated.

“It is worth your making mental preparation. You need to have confidence,” he said.

The so-called greenhouse was a large empty room. The room’s windows were small, so that the rays of light inside were dim. After Joe stood for a while in the center of the room, he could make out the earthen bowls arrayed on the ground. There were no flowers, but rather a single type of coarse sand in the bowls. Kim squatted down and dug up a brown seed the size of an almond from a sand bowl. He placed it in the light to inspect it.

“Look, it’s already burst open, but the shoots inside can’t get out. All the seeds here are in the same condition. The flowers open inside of dreams. Surely you understand what I’m talking about? It’s been more than ten years, and the seeds still keep this shape, neither sprouting nor decaying. Think about how surprising that is.”

Kim continuously dug up all kinds of seeds for Joe to inspect. His voice sent out echoes into the empty room. Joe had the feeling of entering an enormous open grave; it was both curious and unfamiliar. A question repeatedly occurred to him: Were there any passages here leading to the mountaintop? The shadow of a person swayed in front of the windowpane. It was the cook, who was observing their movements from outside. It appeared that she was keeping watch over Joe at every moment, but why? Joe knit his eyebrows. Kim watched from the corners of his eyes.

“These flowers don’t like the light. They are from my homeland. The buildings of our homeland have no windows, but every family still grows these kinds of flowers. Flowers raised in dark places have a slightly evil odor. Does your family grow flowers?”

“We grow roses.” Joe thought of Maria’s bewitched flowers, and abruptly grew sentimental.

“Roses, good, roses are flowers tended by people who regard themselves highly. A man who came here told me that his roses went crazy. They did not stop blooming, and so in all four seasons of the year his whole courtyard was bright red.”

“You aren’t speaking of me?”

“I don’t know. Whether that person was you, you will be able to tell tonight. The fragrance of certain flowers can asphyxiate people. But they yearn for that wonderful moment.”

Kim clapped the sand clean from his hands. In the obscure light his face looked like a rock, and his body also grew rigid. He did not move.

“Whenever you grasp hold of some object, other objects all change into unreal things,” Joe said.

But Kim showed no reaction to his words, as though he really had changed into a stone. The nightclothes with gold ingots he wore fluctuated with an immeasurable light.

The door creaked with a zhi ya sound as the cook entered. She grasped Joe’s arm, bringing him out of the room. She still didn’t speak, but her movements were extremely confident. Joe indistinctly understood: she wanted Kim to stay inside alone. He remembered what Kim had said regarding confidence and comprehended it in his heart.

He walked into the living room and saw that the wasps had all fallen to the ground. They crawled on the floor in a large black mass, provoking disgust. Joe turned around and walked into the kitchen, but the cook flared up angrily and shooed him out, her face red all over. As she drove him out her mouth let out a sound like a wolf’s howl.

Joe dodged into the bedroom where he’d slept during the night. He entered through the door and saw the cats occupying the large bed, sleeping peaceably on it. Joe quietly retreated from the room and slid out of the building.

At the far end of the grassland, the same as underneath a green sea, a human shadow wearing deep red clothing was heading straight toward him. The man was alternately hidden and visible, and so perhaps riding on the back of a horse. As he came closer and closer, Joe discovered with shock that the man was actually riding a leopard. When the leopard rose into the sky, the man’s long hair flew up into the air. Joe watched until his eyes went blank. He nervously waited for the red-clad rider to climb the mountain. But when he was about to reach the mountain, Joe heard the deafening sound of a gun. The rider rolled down into the thick grass, and the leopard was nowhere to be seen. The scene from a moment ago was dissolving like a hallucination. Joe determined that the bullet was shot from near where he stood. Could it have been Kim? He turned around to look. The cook was just walking through the door, her ferocious eyes watching him.

Joe circled around to the “greenhouse” behind the building, but he saw no one there. He sat outside the building on a stone bench. A longing for his family gushed up in his heart. What was Maria doing at home? He thought Maria should come to this place. She and Kim were alike in many ways. There was someone following the stone steps up the mountain. It looked like the red-clad rider. Joe grew agitated. “Hey! Hello!” he shouted, not understanding why he shouted.

But the man wearing red was Kim. Kim’s hair was a mess, his glasses were broken, and his left leg had been injured.

He walked limping into the building, refusing Joe’s supporting hand. No one had helped him care for the wound. Blood already soaked a large patch of black onto the red trousers. Kim’s blood looked like black blood.

“Who fired the gun?”

“Who fired the gun?” Kim repeated Joe’s words. “It was me. I had the cook fire the gun.”

Kim smiled coldly, grinding his teeth and showing his blood-red gums. That stoked Joe’s horror again.

Kim sat in a reclining chair and closed his eyes to sleep, with his fists clenched tightly. Joe thought it looked like he was shivering.

“Your pastures are truly beautiful. I’d like to see your sheep.”

“Other than me, who would come live in a fearful place like this? You speak of my sheep, but they’re just a front. To make the people who listen to me misunderstand.”

“Maybe your wound should be bandaged or have medicine put on it.”

“No need. My body already has seven bullets in it. This sort of thing doesn’t count for anything. The Japanese women wearing geta sandals were frozen in the ice caves. No one will be able to see those peerless, beautiful women again.”

Now, especially, Joe wanted to start reading the horror novel he’d brought along. He abandoned Kim and went to the bedroom, pulled out his book from inside the leather briefcase hung on the clothes rack, then drew back the curtains, sat on the sofa, and began to read.

On the book’s red cover was written: This is a horror novel. But at the precise center of the cover was a picture of a young girl. She was sitting embroidering in a tranquil boudoir. In the distance beyond her window were blue skies and white clouds. The beginning of the book introduced the childhood life of this young girl named Hailin. It seems she grew up in a lonely environment. Although she had parents, they abandoned her to do business in a far-off land. It was said that they’d gone to the East. Fortunately, the girl had a peaceful, even slightly indifferent, temperament, and so she didn’t miss her parents much. She lived alone in an old house and took care of herself. After reading a few paragraphs, Joe grew interested in the book because behind its vapid writing he could again indistinctly see his familiar backdrop. He thought Hailin’s household must have layered walls, and inside the layered walls would be underground tunnels. This girl must have a secret life. Continuing on, the depiction was an account of everyday life flowing like water. Her neighbors were a few names not to be remembered, and, later on, even the name Hailin became vaguely intermingled with them, and the descriptions changed to cloudy water. Also, he didn’t know what were the intentions of the book’s author, who suddenly dropped into a vulgar tone to start praising freedom. There appeared six or seven identical sentences in succession:

“Ah! The hovering of freedom! An unreachable height!”

“Ah! The hovering of freedom! An unreachable height!”

“. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ”

Reading this part of the book, Joe couldn’t refrain from laughing. His laugh woke the cats, and they began their unbridled copulating. Strange calls came from the bed, a continuous disruption, and Joe feared they would bite him, so he went to sit at the window. On the roomy windowsill, he continued reading. In the second chapter the young girl, Hailin, suddenly disappeared, in what direction it wasn’t known. The empty boudoir grew lively. Because she hadn’t locked the door, all sorts of people entered: to gossip, to do a little business; umbrella fixers; farm-bird raisers; and so on. They carried a profusion of odors with them, and the boudoir’s former ambience disappeared. But one day the young woman returned home. She had lost her right leg, and her appearance had grown unbearably coarse. There was a cruel, ruthless expression on her face. She drove away her neighbors, shut the main door of the old building, and began a life of deep meditation. At this point there appeared several vulgar and repeated sentences:

“What happened in the distant past? We will never know!”

“What happened in the distant past? We will never know!”

“. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ”

Joe could not smile now. A kind of yearning, similar to sexual desire, started to rise again inside his body. He leapt across obstacles and reached the kingdom of his stories. In its square, under the clinging roots of a banyan tree, he saw a multicolored kimono fluttering with the wind. “Hailin! Hailin!” he cried a few times in succession. He heard the book in his hand dropping to the floor with a thwack, pa.

When Kim picked up the book, Joe saw him snicker, his long hair shaking. He’d changed into a sleeping gown printed with a strange pattern. As he straightened up from the waist, Joe saw a black cat stretch out from inside his pajamas.

“Only this cat understands my state of mind,” Kim said. “I’ve met the protagonist of your book before.”

“Is there really such a person?”

“It’s because what is written is the author’s own life. She rested in my house for a night, then on the second day she went to the summit. That was where she lost her leg. Her appearance when she dragged her injured leg, howling, down the mountain I still see before my eyes today. You won’t dare finish reading a book like this. If you read to the end, you’ll be dragged in and never come back out. That is a true ice cave, much deeper than on the mountaintop.”

The kimono disappeared before Joe’s eyes, changing into a patch of vast whiteness. He thought of discussing the novel with Kim, but he felt he had nothing to say: the book had nearly no plot, and no imagery. Even so Kim bore out that Hailin was a real person in the world. “How was her leg cut off?” Joe sank back into a reverie without borders. He heard Kim’s voice as if it were coming from inside the walls. The voice was ambiguous, and Joe didn’t know what it was saying.

The room quickly grew dark. The cats were nowhere to be seen, and Kim also wasn’t to be seen. The curtains shut of their own accord. Beyond the window a woman was crying. Joe groped his way to the bed, and in the dimness he quickly climbed the palace stairs and entered an uncultivated garden. On reaching it he realized that the garden wasn’t in fact uncultivated. Many different kinds of animals made a racket inside, and the people were not few either. They all stood silently underneath a large tree. Their expressions were difficult to fathom, as if they were not of this world. Joe thought that perhaps they were ancients who’d lived several centuries ago. There was one youth standing under a cedar tree who appeared extremely troubled. Joe asked him where he was from. He said he’d come from home. His accent was strange, he was a foreigner. Joe asked him again where his home was, and he said the East.

“But this place isn’t the East?” Joe assessed the mud-red palace walls and spoke in a loud voice.

The young man turned an expressionless face toward him and didn’t respond to his question. Then Joe finally noticed that the youth was wearing prison clothes and, surprisingly, had shackles on his feet. Looking next at a few of the others, he saw that they, too, appeared to be wearing prison clothes. Joe suddenly, without reason, felt incredibly ashamed. A squirrel scurried between his legs. The squirrel belonged in this garden. Joe didn’t belong here.

“My wife, Maria, planted many rosebushes at home,” Joe said, as though debating.

The young fellow’s face promptly showed a seemingly curious expression. But he still didn’t open his mouth, only making an occasional sound with his shackles and turning his ear toward where Joe was speaking. What was it he actually heard? Joe felt unsure on this point. Then there was a sound near Joe’s ear — it was the sound of Kim’s voice.

“The entire garden is inside my house. A book is buried under the palace wall on the western side.”

Joe deduced the location of the western side from the sun’s bearing. The western part of the palace wall was burning as if with fire. Joe watched until his eyes stung. He thought that since the garden was inside Kim’s building, there was no need to walk around futilely. He sat down on the grass. To his right under the cedar tree the young man held a book close to his chest. Joe thought the red cover looked familiar. He stood back up and walked over to him.

“This is your book. Inside is a cruel murder story, but I’ve already decided not to finish reading it. Who can finish a book like this?”

As he spoke he made a string of noises with his shackles.

“My book is about a young girl named Hailin. If I recall, she wasn’t ugly, her parents did business, were never at home. .” Joe said.

“Ah, you only read the beginning? That was a false semblance. The real story is afterward. This kind of story doesn’t have a protagonist. Take your book and leave.”

He handed the book over to Joe. Joe felt the book light and buoyant in his hand. Flipping it open he saw that it was, as a matter of fact, only an envelope. On the front cover the young girl Hailin had an unsightly open-mouthed smile.

Joe followed along the palace wall. In his ears Kim’s voice grew louder and clearer. This led him to realize that he was merely circling Kim’s building. Afterward, the voice grew quiet, and the wailing, desolate howls of the cats shook Joe’s head into a daze. “Maria, Maria, forgive me, forgive me, what have I come to?” Joe spoke to himself incoherently. The grass lawn and the cedars disappeared and the palace walls were intermittent in the duskiness. Even so, up ahead he saw from behind Japanese women wearing cumbersome kimonos. There appeared to be three of them.

“You’ve been turning about in this room for a whole day. You actually can walk and read a book at the same time. This is a masterful skill.”

When he spoke Kim’s face again displayed that cruel smile. Joe tried as best as he could not to look at his face.

“I always keep a respectful distance from horror novels,” Kim said.

Joe took the book in his hand and turned to the middle. Stepping in front of the window, he read a paragraph. It still told Hailin’s story. The middle-aged Hailin sat in her sewing room embroidering a red spider. Upstairs the fretful sound of her parents’ footsteps rang out. Her parents were now two old people who had lost their memories. On the third day after they returned from that distant place, Hailin with no irresoluteness at all had imprisoned them inside one of the building’s large rooms. “No irresoluteness at all,” these four words were underlined with a mark of emphasis. Joe read this sentence again and again, in order to comprehend its meaning from many angles.

“Joe, once you return home, will you or will you not commit yourself to growing roses?” Kim asked him.

As he drew nearer, Joe saw more clearly the design on his dark-colored pajamas. It was the savage faces of traditional theater masks, without any gleeful faces at all. Some of their mouths had long sharp teeth, with blood on them. Joe also heard the wail of an infant.

Because Joe didn’t answer, Kim again examined him closely:

“If you read them repeatedly, can you make the stories become reality?”

When Kim leaned in close, exposing strange, long teeth such as Joe had never seen before and stretching his right hand toward Joe’s face, Joe finally let out a shout. Then all went black before his eyes.

After a spell, Joe slowly recovered consciousness. He recalled that all along he’d been reading that horror novel, all along sitting at the windowsill. In the exact center of the house, Kim and the cook were in the middle of watching a seed inside a large flower bowl. A seed as large as a fava bean lay in the cook’s fat palm. It wasn’t clear what kind of flower it was. She raised her palm toward the light from the window. Joe saw clearly now that the plump brown seed had a termite-like insect popping its head out from inside. Kim laughed, hei hei, and showed Joe two other seeds he’d dug out from the flowerpot. Inside these were two similar insects.

“They are cultivated in our greenhouse. These small things don’t affect the blooming of the flowers, and who’s to say, the flowers may even benefit from them! Those roses at your house in reality open inside our dreams. You see them in full bloom, but that’s only a false semblance. It’s written clearly in the novel you’re reading.”

“I’m too timid,” Joe said. “I can only stand outside the palace walls, beneath the stairs.”

As they talked, the cook bent down to pick up the flower bowls and carried them away. Kim watched her obese receding back, nodding his head in commendation. He told Joe that last night a visitor had arrived. It was a woman. This guest wasn’t planning to go up the mountain, but had rather come only to see his grasslands. Hearing Kim describe his guest’s appearance, Joe thought that this arrival might be Maria. But Kim spoke a different name, and also said the woman had eccentricities, was an Eastern woman, and did not easily show her face to strangers.

“Ah, again it’s the East!” Joe sighed.

But Kim, staring at him, spoke one word at a time:

“Afraid she’s looking for you?”

“Impossible, impossible. I don’t know any Eastern women.” Joe forcefully shook his head.

“You have, however, been to her country.”

“That’s not possible.”

Joe lowered his head to mull this over. Was Kim pointing to his years of reading? If so, he certainly had been to Eastern countries. It could be said that he had a singular feeling for Eastern stories. When he took all the stories and combined them into a web, in the square at its center appeared a kimono and peonies. At that time, in the midst of his busy marketing work, he’d still been able to enter lightly into his own stories, seemingly in large part because of the kimonos and peonies. In everyday life, he had never known women from the East, and due to his conservative nature, he also never had vain sexual hopes about strange women. But once inside his stories it was a different matter. More than once he’d had intense feelings for young women and mature women wearing kimonos.

But how did Kim come to know this? Perhaps he really had met him before? Before this Joe did not expect that there would be anyone in his country who could have fabricated a story like his own. Based on his observations, Vincent and Reagan were aware of the dual nature of the world, but they seemed to have no way of fully entering into his story. They were in too much daily contact and unable to wholly open up their hearts. And aside from work friends, Joe didn’t have other types of friends. Joe thought again of Maria. For the past several years Maria had also fabricated her own world. Maria’s and Joe’s were parallel developments. But occasionally, Joe felt himself to be in her grasp, and in the blink of an eye this was enough to depress him. Kim, who was a longtime client of Joe’s, lived in a way that was difficult to interpret. He was unfettered, and for a long time he had constructed his own complex, interconnected world. By coming here Joe felt that he’d thrown himself into a trap. Even so, he was happy to sacrifice himself. This really was his own story. Could that be?

A whispered conversation was taking place in the kitchen. Kim said that the woman guest was talking to the cook. They’d already conversed for a long time: they shared an aspiration for exchange. So the cook was speaking? Joe asked. No, the cook didn’t speak. It was only the one woman speaking. She had the aspiration to speak, the cook had the aspiration to listen. As Kim spoke this sentence, the two of them walked into the dining room. While they ate, Kim told Joe, the women would eat in the kitchen. Joe thought this was a pity. He’d hoped the woman would reveal her face, and he would know whether she wore a kimono. And now he listened to Kim in discomfort.

“During the hailstorm, she was on the road. Her jeep broke down. Then she came up with a way to fix the vehicle herself. An estimable woman! Eastern women don’t give up if they don’t achieve their purpose.”

“What is her purpose?”

“To come see my grasslands. Possibly also to ride the leopard. I’ve never seen her, not even this time, because she is covered in black cloth. Had you expected that?”

Kim seemed unsettled as he spoke. His whole countenance grew stiff. At this moment there was a loud burst of noise from the kitchen. Kim jumped up in surprise, his face turning a deathly white.

The cook looked in, then entered. She’d come to tidy up the dishes. She walked falteringly. Joe thought, mistakenly, that she would gather the plates and bowls, but she stood unmoving next to the table, her eyes staring at nothing. After a moment, she slowly collapsed beside the table. Joe tried to prop her up, but Kim grabbed him, saying, “Don’t move her, her spirit has suffered an attack. Allow her to recover.

“In fact, she and I are from the same village. My village and hers were only separated by one kilometer. Every time there’s a windstorm, we are both distressed, but we’re the sort of people who make up our minds and never look back. She left her terminally ill father to escape to this country, and I, after accompanying my parents here, never thought afterward of going back. I’d rather climb to the mountain’s summit, stand in the ice and snow, and look out from a high place toward my homeland. The woman who arrived yesterday told the cook that she is her stepmother, and at her father’s dying wish she came looking for this pastureland. At first I thought that she was lying because the cook’s father must have died a long time ago. Even if he hadn’t contracted a fatal illness, he couldn’t have lived this long. And as for this woman wrapped in black cloth, judging from her exposed hands and feet she’s not that old. How could she be the stepmother? Then, a thing I never could have predicted happened. This woman stood there speaking to the cook, and she told the whole thing, all of the particulars, and the cook’s eyes filled with tears. . Ah, how can there be such extraordinary things on the earth? In short, between yesterday and today the two longtime residents of this house are learning from strange experiences. Because through this woman, we meet the history discarded behind us. This isn’t good.”

Kim’s face recovered its color and his hands stopped trembling. He seemed to have decided on a plan.

“So, what is she really here to do?” Joe asked.

“Her? She’s seeking repayment for a debt. She’s already gone. My house is therefore brought into darkness.”

When they left the dining room, the cook still lay on the floor. Kim said that the woman had carried away the cook’s soul. It was difficult to imagine how the cook’s prolonged days would be passed after this. However, it was no use to worry, because he had ordered many more flower seeds, and the present greenhouse would be enlarged. These flowers alone would be enough for her to work on, without too much time for recollecting things of the past. Further, the climate was already changing, as storms grew windier and more frequent. He said this, and those potted flower seeds containing insects appeared in Joe’s mind. He immediately felt an itch on his neck, and the skin all over his body felt uncomfortable.

Kim at long last led Joe to tour his pastures. As they lay on the grass, watching the hawks gliding in the air overhead, Kim again revealed his blood-red gums, with the expression of a predator.

“Where are those sheep of yours?”

“Oh!” He answered as if waking from a dream. “Don’t you understand yet? They are in my dreams.”

“So it’s like that.” Joe was a bit disappointed.

Afterward they drove in an old clunker, stopping and starting. The grasslands were certainly large enough, nearly without borders, and the plains were the same. Seen from a distance, the large mountain where Kim’s house sat appeared utterly monstrous, lonely as it broke up from the ground, in its surrounding pastureland. Joe looked back and forth, but from beginning to end discovered no waterways. Could the piled-up snow on the mountaintop have never melted? Looking at this cold, still, solitary mountain peak, Joe felt his eyesight growing blurred. Several decades ago, Kim’s whole family had immigrated to this country. What were the actual circumstances? Kim said he did not have sheep or cattle, nor did he have workers, so why did he order so much workers’ clothing? Perhaps Kim’s parents were wealthy, and he could arrange for a home in this strange place? In Kim’s words, living here was “not in order to break off from other people, but in order to merge into the midst of other people.” This sophistry in his way of speaking made Joe laugh.

“Your house is truly beautiful, built here, like a kind of magic.” Joe gasped in admiration.

“That isn’t my house. I am no more than a guest.” Kim wrinkled his eyebrows as if lost in thought. “I’ve already told you, the house has no foundation. That is to say, it isn’t built up — it was originally here. You, for example, if you are willing, can become a tenant, too.”

“But I have my own house. My wife is named Maria. My son is named Daniel. I have to go out and sell clothing every day. I have to make a living.” Joe felt falseness in his voice.

Kim glanced at him, saying, “That won’t hinder you. Don’t you already practice the skill of reading at work? I, too, had a job originally. I was a gardening specialist.”

Joe thought of those insects with a burst of disgust, and he couldn’t help inquiring about them.

“The flower seeds had worms inside them to start. I only use special methods to make them develop. I love working in the greenhouse. When I was a horticulturalist I did only surface handiwork, but now my work grows more and more interesting. Have you seen a wild hare before? It has a battle of intelligence with the hawks. I sought the home of the hawks. I have never found it. It isn’t on the cliffs overhanging this mountain. It’s in a place no one has thought of. For example, the East.”

“Where do you buy the flower seeds from?”

“I don’t know. I found the nursery in the local newspaper. But the address was fake. There’s no such place in existence. The strange thing is that I sent a letter there, and they shipped me all varieties of seeds. This has something to do with my homeland. That’s how I think of it.”

Another day had passed. This place had no dusk, and night fell suddenly. In an instant, Joe could see nothing. Kim pulled him into the car. The car lights cut into the black in all directions as they drove ahead, and shortly they reached the house.

Kim’s pace quickened as he entered the dining room. Joe went in with him. They saw the cook lying as before on the floor. Kim bent down to look at her, saying to Joe, “She’s suffered a serious blow.” Then he went to the liquor cabinet and brought out the liquor they’d drunk earlier. He gave Joe a large glass. Joe drank a few mouthfuls, and saw the dark shadows appearing in the room. These shadows were all excessively large men, and their heads butted the ceiling. One of them stretched out his hand and smashed a basket filled with wasps over his head. Immediately the room filled with crazily flying wasps. Joe shed his coat and used it to wrap his head tightly. He squatted, leaning on the wall. He heard the fellow next to him say:

“It’s so comfortable. Why are there people who refuse this happiness?”

Joe suspected that the bodies of the men in the room must be crawling with venomous wasps because they were groaning as if in pain. Someone was yelling “Mama, get up,” probably referring to the cook. It did mean her, and Joe heard her roar, like the howl of a beast he couldn’t name, both painful and longing. Joe was deeply affected. He picked up his jacket and rose to his feet. There was no one in the room, only the black mass of wasps madly flying. His face swelled up before long, and his head felt dizzy. A pair of hands dragged him into the dining room. His eyes swelled into a narrow slit, and through the slit he saw the disheveled hair of the cook.

He was led into the guestroom, where a fragrant lotion was spread on his face.

“People who come here are never afraid of the wasp attacks.”

The one speaking was in fact Kim. Strangely enough, though, it was the cook who’d led Joe into the room.

“Where is the cook?” he asked.

“She’s still sleeping on the floor of the dining room, accepting the consolation of the wasps.”

Joe stroked his face, which was swollen out of recognition. He heard a beastlike howl again. Moreover, the cry was not the same as before: it was like the sound a beast made when baited. Kim also listened closely. He said, “The cook is the kind of woman who’s able to give up her life. Her homeland left her with a nightmare, for decades she’s lived inside a nightmare, and she told me she never wanted to wake up.” He also said, “She isn’t unable to speak — she isn’t willing to speak. Is it possible that someone able to howl like this would still be willing to speak? So she became a tenant here.”

Kim made him lie down on the bed, but the bed was already occupied by those black cats. There were more than ten altogether, squatting on top of the quilt. “There is no picking and choosing in life,” Kim said, at the same time pushing him toward the bed. Once Joe fell down, the cats crowded around and licked his face where it had been stung. Their scorching, prickly tongues made him extremely nauseous. He wanted to howl, too, and he did howl, twice.

“That’s right,” said Kim from off to the side.

He heard Kim quietly leaving, shutting the door to the room. But he did not go. He spoke with someone at the door. Every time Kim’s voice rose a little, the cats crazily licked Joe’s face. Two of them even tried to bite his cheeks and wrists. So he dared to howl twice again. Joe had never liked to go too near cats, and when he was at home he felt that these somber animals hid an incalculable will. But now his whole body, from head to toe, lacked strength. He was oppressively tired and could only let them manipulate him. He did receive one benefit: the pain in the stung places lessened.

He couldn’t remember when he went to sleep. On entering a dream the feeling of nausea disappeared. There was someone beside him who urged him to go look at the snow lotuses and, without reflecting, he went with him. The two men climbed the mountain on a single road. The mountain was steep and slippery, requiring both hands and feet in many places. At his side Kim cautioned, “Meet a man and casually go along with him, and in the long run you will be the one who meets with disaster.” Joe disregarded the question of whether there would be a disaster, because once they reached the steep slope, if he drew back he would have fallen into a bottomless abyss. But he couldn’t go up either. There was some object tangled around his foot. The man turned his head to tell him two cats were tangling up his feet, and added that if he’d escaped those two cats when he was at home, with his wife, Maria, all would be well. Now it was too late. “That time when you ate turkey, why didn’t you think of what the cats wanted?” The fellow, with his head wrapped in a scarf and his face obscured, started to complain to Joe. Joe felt his feet slipping down. He couldn’t stop, he simply closed his eyes and didn’t mind anything. .

Joe sat in the back seat of a taxi. He lay down and pulled the horror novel out of his leather briefcase, turning to the first page. The novel’s conclusion suddenly appeared between the written lines. A white-haired Hailin sat in the kitchen peeling potatoes. A vampire spied on her from outside the window. Hailin raised her head, saw the vampire. Her eyeballs suddenly couldn’t move. Later she discovered that, aside from her eyeballs not moving, her body was unaffected. She had no discomfort. She still peeled the potatoes, took out the roasted fish and put it on the plate, and decorated it with cherries. Passing through the drawing room, she unintentionally looked at the mirror and discovered blood dripping from the corners of her mouth. Her neighbors opened the door and came in, letting out surprised cries and then hurriedly fleeing. Hailin thought she had probably changed into a vampire. With this thought, she had a feeling of freedom.

“Reading that kind of book on a journey is not a good idea.” The driver spoke without turning his head.

“Why do I feel like the car is going back and forth, and still hasn’t left the pastureland?” Joe asked.

“With a place like this, once you enter you can’t leave again. It isn’t a bad thing, either. Close your eyes, and you can always reach home. Didn’t you give me your address?”

“I gave it to you?”

“Yes. What you gave me was an incorrect address. There is no such place. Then your host gave me another address, written quite clearly. Your host is the kind of person who even plans out what to dream. For decades I’ve been making trips back and forth through this area, and I’ve figured out his disposition. Just think, why would someone want to live halfway up a mountain? That fat cook, I heard she murdered her own sick father and then fled here. Now she messes around with caterpillars all day to atone.”

Joe heard this chatter and found the man disagreeable. He picked up his book to read again. He couldn’t understand its contents, and even the characters’ names had changed. The plot seemed to speak of a serving cook avenging herself on her unfaithful lover. The cook’s name was also strange, Yi Zhi Mei (or Iljimae, “a plum branch”). The lover went to eat at a small restaurant. Yi Zhi Mei threw a bowl of boiling soup at him. The soup didn’t touch the man; all of it splashed onto her own body. Within a second, her skin and flesh fell to the floor and all that was left was a skeleton standing in the restaurant. The man stared fixedly at the bones in front of him. . Continuing, there was an explanation of the name Yi Zhi Mei. The book said that it was “Eastern.” The serving cook came from some island nation in the East, these things had happened in ancient times, the cook’s status was somewhere between a prostitute and a respectable woman, and the lover was in truth a patron of brothels. That lover, after seeing the cook’s accident, went completely insane. He brought the cook’s bones back home, made a glass cabinet, put them inside, and locked it from outside. From then on every time the lover fooled around with a woman, his eyes saw the objects inside of the glass cabinet. The glass cabinet was set next to the bed for a long period. Joe read this and started to smile. He felt that the novel was too hyperbolic. However, he still wanted to know the whereabouts of that glass case, and imagined the look of the skeleton wearing a light, graceful summer kimono.

The car went faster and faster. Joe couldn’t sit securely in the back seat. He realized that the driver was making maneuvers, and thought he must have some insidious motive. He feared something would happen. There was one moment when Joe saw him call out to a person through the car window. Joe hurriedly looked outside and saw to his surprise that it was Kim. Kim stood in grass as high as his waist, dressed up to look like a hunter, with peacock feathers stuck in his hat.

“You’ve left me no way to rest,” Joe complained.

He let down the velvet curtain over the car window, deciding that no matter what, he wouldn’t care or notice. He wouldn’t even care about his own life. He reflected that the driver had no reason to be after his life, altogether no reason. If he wanted to make a point, then he’d made it. Perhaps that person in the grass masquerading as a peacock was his audience. At this time, Joe’s longing for Maria was more intense than at any other. He recalled that night in her room with its small purple lamps shimmering like fireflies; even her slightly aging slackness filled his body with longing. The occasion had made him embarrassed. Strenuously, he would not think of that scene. Over the days, he’d nearly forgotten the events of that night. But now, Maria’s body overbore him. Her breasts with their erect nipples would block his nostrils, stifle him. Joe’s body quickly shriveled. He hid in the darkness of the back seat, and did not notice when the car reached a dangerous speed again. He heard the driver curse, then suddenly the car stopped.

“That day you weren’t at home, there was a hailstorm. The second day, in the morning, the roses opened even more exuberantly. Can you tell me what happened, Joe?”

“I can’t, my dear.”

Maria left the side of his bed and quietly went downstairs. Joe lifted his head from the pillow, looking at the wall in front of him. To his astonishment he discovered a new tapestry on the wall. It was a human skeleton wearing a kimono, and the flowers of springtime bloomed on the kimono. The tapestry was so large it covered almost half the wall. When had she started weaving it? Joe’s heart was full of gratitude, but the impulse for sex completely disappeared.