I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like (35 page)

He turned the dream over in his mind. In the pale light rising behind the buildings, the color of the flowers stood out in his memory. It was, he knew, the same color as the flowers of a hanged man, the purple-black blossoms of his swollen tongue and penis. He’d seen them before, in books and photographs. There was nothing mysterious about that.

But as soon as he dismissed the dream, another thought rose in his mind.

If a man was to be hanged, well and good. But what would blossom from the body of a woman? That would be a different kind of flower, a rose of extremities, brief and unsurpassable. A rose with a broken stem.

Walking back to the station by himself, he imagined them spreading through the whitening sky and the signs’ bleached neon — the hidden colors of the rose, its slickened petals opening in darkness.

•

Towards the end of April he started to see Shiho walking with a boyfriend — not anyone from their class, he realized; probably a student from Keio or Nekketsu or one of the other schools. They met each other outside the main entrance every day and he watched them walk past the gate, towards the station. The boyfriend was tall with close-cut hair, his face calm and passive. When he walked his stride was long and unhurried; when he met Shiho he smiled only briefly. When she took his arm she held her shoulders high and square, her boots clacking against the sidewalk. Though she held him tightly he let his wrist fall slack, his other arm dangling useless as a cripple’s. He seemed an extension of her, this boyfriend, a kind of secretion, her rigid shoulders displaying the tremendous effort needed to keep him in existence. Only her left wrist hung limp, supporting the weight of her handbag. Against her jutting forearm her hand seemed hopelessly light, as if it had fainted.

He thought of the boyfriend ejaculating in her eyes, imagining the strands of semen caught between her lashes and the play of gravity as it pulled them past her lids, a single pale rill running down her cheek. All trace of him exhausted in the desert of her flesh, the shelf of her back so seamless that even if he were to slash his throat before bending to kiss it, the flow of blood would leave as little trace as the lacquered finish on polished bronze... she shifted her legs and two brief ribbons of pink lace appeared at the end of her black silk socks, barely visible beneath her boots.

If a high-caliber bullet were to shatter the back of her skull, the immediate disorder would coexist with the residual delicacy of her fingernails, so that he could hold her hand and feel its warmth just as the skull-shard flower bloomed over her chest, the tops of her golden breasts dappled in grey... if the two of them were hanged from the same branch of the same tree, their spasming corpses would brush against each other like two hands reaching across a chasm... if they were left to rot in the wilderness, the foxes and crows would gnaw away their faces, remnants of mind and self scattered to the sands, a perfect compassion descending through beak and claw, in the beetles crawling from her rotting cunt... daydreams like these were the only way to endure the boredom of daily life. But outwardly, his composure never cracked. He wasn’t surprised to learn that he’d moved to the front rank of the class.

In the face of this boredom he went on with his old routines, finishing his assignments and meeting Mutsumi on the weekends. At work, on the train, he kept on reading the Bible, even as its passages palled. His only interest now was to imagine the faces of the Twelve Disciples. They would all be ugly, he decided: a pack of peasants with doglike eyes, scrounging outside their master’s tomb.

On television he saw a program about the
sokushinbutsu
or self-mummifying monks, Shugendô Buddhists who starved themselves to reach a point of purity. For years they ate only nuts, seeds, and bark, subsisting in isolation. After their rigorous physical training reached its end, they would lock themselves in their own tombs and drink poison, vomiting the last drops of water left in their bodies. Most of them failed: despite the measures, the years of training, the bacteria survived and the flies found them. But when the tombs were opened on the few who succeeded, there was no trace of rot. The corpses sat perfectly preserved in postures of meditation, their calcified organs intact. Each was immediately made a Buddha. Park imagined a group of awed novices opening the doors to find their master transformed, someone they had known in life now become a god. Images of the opened tombs filled his mind, and he passed a class dreaming of the petrified faces of fleshless saints, mummified monks like human diamonds.

On Saturday Junko called him and mentioned that Tomo’s sister had just come over from Kyoto. They were all looking forward to seeing what dish he would bring, and did he want to be picked up at the station or come directly to the house? Having forgotten about the dinner, Park stumbled over his responses, barely paying attention. Then, hanging up the phone, he turned and saw Sujung standing in the doorway.

—
Was that Tomoki’s mother? she said. I’ve already started cooking. You don’t think they’ll be bored with kimchi rice, do you?

—
I forgot it was today, Park said.

Sujung looked at him and not-really-smiled.

—
That’s what I thought. I don’t know where you get that from. Your father had an excellent memory.

—
I’ve been busy recently, Park said.

—
Come down and help me.

He followed her downstairs. The kimchi rice was almost finished, so he took a pan and started frying eggs. By the time he was done, Sujung had already taken two large plastic containers from the shelf and spooned in the rice.

—
Do you want a ride to the station?

—
It’s all right, I can walk.

Park put the eggs in the containers and pressed on the lids. He had another two hours before the dinner started, but wanted to get out of the house. After saying goodbye to Sujung, he caught the train to the station nearest Tomo’s house. While waiting for the bus, he stared at the intersection across from him. The trip out had only taken him forty minutes, which meant he had another hour or so to spare. But instead of looking at the shops, he stayed on the bench, watching the commuters. Eventually he felt himself drifting into a kind of trance. By the time he got up the air had cooled and the sun was setting.

He caught the bus and got off a block from Tomo’s. When he entered the house, everyone was already seated at the table, the plates set out in front of them. Junko looked pleased; Tomo’s sister had recently announced her engagement, and the two of them sat side by side, discussing plans for the wedding.

—
I know it’s so soon after Yuka, he heard Tomo’s sister say. When she saw Park come in she greeted him. He’d met her before, but had barely spoken with her at the time. To his disappointment, she looked nothing like the younger Junko he’d seen in the photograph.

—
Happy birthday, Park said, nodding at Tomo. Seeing the plastic containers, Junko got up and took them from him.

—
This looks wonderful, she said, as she went to heat up the rice. She seemed genuinely happy.

—
I heard you’re getting married, Park said, taking a seat. Congratulations.

Tomo’s sister smiled.

—
We’re planning it for spring next year. I’ve already told Tomo you’re invited.

Park looked at Tomo, who was sitting at the end of the table with a blank expression on his face.

—
Well, I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it out to Kyoto...

—
Oh, I’m sure it’ll be during your holidays.

Junko returned with the rice and, after wishing Tomo happy birthday again, they started to eat. Junko had prepared chicken, roast beef and a salad. Tomo’s sister had made omurice, a thin swirl of ketchup atop the rounded yellow egg topping. As they ate, the two women continued their conversation about the wedding. Then, noticing Tomo’s silence, his sister said:

—
You’ll have to show Seok-Hwan some of your paintings.

Tomo looked at her but didn’t answer.

After they finished dinner, Junko went to the kitchen, turned off the lights, and returned with a cake. They sang to Tomo and gave him his presents — first he opened a package from his sister containing a new watch, then moved onto the supplies Park and Junko had bought together. When he unwrapped the paints and pencils, he looked up and thanked Park.

—
Go on, show him something, Junko said. Show him your paintings.

Tomo nodded, but looked somehow anxious. He glanced at Park, seemed to consider something, then got to his feet and headed for the hall.

—
Come on, I’ll show you.

When they entered the room Tomo picked some of his clothes off the bed so Park could sit, then went to the desk and turned down the screen of his laptop.

—
Did my mother buy those paints?

—
I bought them with her, Park said.

—
So it was her idea?

Park thought about it.

—
No, not really.

Tomo walked away from the desk, towards the corner of the room. A group of three easels stood near the window, their canvases covered with plastic shrouds. After opening the window, Tomo removed the plastic and propped the canvases forward.

—
Anyway, this is what I’ve been working on.

Park looked at the paintings. The first was a self-portrait done in oil, Tomo’s profile silhouetted against the bureau shelf in the living room. His posture was straight as he stared to the side. The second canvas depicted Park’s face. He recognized the source — it was taken from a photograph of him from last year, on a school trip. Wearing his old uniform, he was looking up somewhat blankly, as if he had just noticed the picture was being taken. But there was something wrong — Tomo had changed the angle, so that the left side of his face stood out. He could see the side of his nose and the edges of his eyes just turning into view. It was not an angle he was used to seeing himself from.

The third canvas was still just a sketch, but it appeared to be another rendition of Park. The features were wrong, though — the eyes were too narrow, too close-set. And the structure of the bones was different. Looking at it he felt a strange sensation, as if Tomo were trying to caricature him somehow.

—
So what do you think of them?

—
Yeah, they’re good, Park said.

—
That’s all? They’re good?

—
Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you.

Tomo sat in a chair by the desk. He looked at Park, then shifted his gaze to the paintings.

—
So how does it feel to be sixteen, Park said.

Tomo walked to the edge of the room and put the plastic covers back on the canvases.

—
I don’t want to get any older.

—
Everyone’s getting older.

Tomo turned around.

—
I feel like I’m never getting anything done. Even if I sit in a room alone all the time I never get anything done, I just end up repeating myself. I keep drawing the same things over and over or else I get sick of what I’ve done and throw it away.

—
That’s just what you’ve been selected to do.

—
You make it sound like I don’t have any choice.

Park leaned against the wall.

—
Human lives are like little wind-up toys. When one runs down another one replaces it.

—
So what’s better than that? Art?

—
I knew you’d say that.

—
What’s wrong with it? Tomo asked.

—
Artists are also wind-up toys that have been set in motion. If they weren’t artists, they’d be politicians or comedians or something else. The shape of the mind determines the role. Everyone is given a role at birth and that role is their mind.

—
But you can change your mind.

—
You can change your opinions or beliefs but not your mind. When you pull off the body of a tick, its head is still under the skin. It’s the same with the mind. You can’t make your mind exactly the same as mine or move it around in time, so how can you do anything about it? But if we’re unborn, or dead, our minds are nowhere and so they’re not separate.

—
But then they don’t exist.

—
Non-existence is a hoax, Park said. The whole point of the hoax is that, in time, something can not exist, exist, and then not exist again. For example a person being born, living, and dying. I don’t believe that at all.

—
You just contradicted yourself.

—
I wouldn’t worry about that, Park said. Contradictions are also a hoax. The same people who believe that non-existence is separate from existence usually believe that it’s possible to contradict yourself. Let me give you another example: Christ is both God and man at the same time.

—
Like a snail.

—
What?

Tomo went to close the window.

—
The snail and the shell can’t exist without each other, so the snail is both snail and shell at the same time.

—
No, it’s different. The snail and the shell exist together, but the existence of the individual components is not a contradiction. But being God implies not being man, and being man implies not being God. The existence of Christ implies the non-contradiction of opposites.

—
So what? What if he was just a man pretending to be God?