Authors: Kyung-Ran Jo
Tongue (6 page)
Now it’s just Paulie and me, left behind. I didn’t believe we would have any problems, though I didn’t have all the time in
the world to think about this. It would be hard for Paulie to understand that, at times, I don’t remember to eat, or that I want to be holed up at home. Just as I forgot that Paulie needs his daily walk and that his teeth-baring bark isn’t a threat but a sign of submission. I didn’t remember that Paulie couldn’t be left at home all day, all alone, since he’s such a loyal animal, one who has a hard time whiling away the hours without his owner.
In mid-February, when I start coming home late every night, the house is a complete wreck, Paulie having messed up the books, cushions, clothing. And no matter how close you’ve grown emotionally, scent is the one thing that humans and dogs disagree about. Paulie and I like entirely opposite scents. Paulie hates the perfume I spritz on, while I can’t stand the smell of the urine and feces Paulie deposits on the cushions and carpet. Paulie had been well trained since birth, but after his cherished owner left, he has started going to the bathroom in the house, wherever he wants to. I understand this, of course, since Paulie seems to understand why I sleep so much or why I accidentally pour orange juice instead of water into his bowl. It isn’t easy to come home late and clean a house purposely ripped apart by the dog, but it’s the smell that’s intolerable, the smell of his urine and feces that wafts insistently like rotting eggs from this or that corner. Nothing works. Paulie keeps doing it.
Even if they’re of the same breed, dogs are all individuals, like people, and certain dogs have peculiar characteristics. On my way home, I think that I should hurry back so I can take Paulie for a walk, but once I arrive I head toward the bathroom to wash my hair, saturated down to my scalp with the smells of the kitchen, and after the shower all I want to do is fall dead asleep. No matter how much I eat, my body is forever tired. I think spring is coming, I whisper, lying on the sofa and carelessly brushing Paulie’s neck with my hand. Paulie shudders suddenly and raises his head, and I smell something. I sniff,
flaring my nostrils. What did you do, Paulie? Paulie shakes his head, all the hair on his body fanning out. I remove the hand tangled deep in Paulie’s fur and sniff it. It’s a smell I know well. That smell is slowly diffusing in the air. I push my hand back into Paulie’s coat and Paulie crouches back down again, acquiescing.
The stench of greenish mold blooming on the surface of blue cheese, the whiff from the hunk of aging lamb hanging from the ceiling, the old, stuffy, sour smell wafting from the underarms of a sweat-soaked shirt—amid all these scents, a refreshingly oceanlike scent, as fresh as a winter herring. A lively, visceral scent. The scent of a man—his scent.
Dogs remember us by the footprints we leave on the ground, from the smell of the hand that strokes their backs. This … this is the scent we both like.
Paulie shakes his head. I close my eyes. His smell may still be lingering somewhere on this sofa, too. A tiny number of minute particles. Now this scent is evaporating slowly from the house and from Paulie’s fur. But it’s not just his scent I’m remembering right now. Right, Paulie?
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the days I had classes at my cooking school, I would go shopping for ingredients at Gyeongdong Market or big warehouses like Costco. We often went together, but if his schedule conflicted I would take the car and go by myself. That day, after I lugged six large plastic bags stuffed with groceries to the door and was changing into indoor slippers, Paulie, who was lying in front of the opaque pocket door dividing the foyer and the living room, got up, padded over, and pushed his snout against my knee, hard. Unlike other times, the push was forceful, almost unpleasantly so, making me take a few steps back.
What’s wrong, Paulie?
When a dog acts in an unexpected way, you have to move the way he wants you to move. When I take Paulie for a walk, I
can’t just tug on the leash if I want to go a particular direction. Instead I have to follow the dog for a moment and gently turn the way I want to go. If I tug on the leash, the dog will obstinately want to continue going the wrong way. I had already learned a lot about dogs from him. Walking backward, I blocked Paulie, who was anxious to go outside, with a gentle and quiet authority. I thought I heard something from behind the pocket door. And it was unusual that Paulie was crouched outside the door like that, when his owner was inside.
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.
I am offering you the things which you eat, now you must do whatever I demand
.
—Tibetan Buddhist Sherpa saying
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 your 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.
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.