Flowers of Mold & Other Stories Read online

  She tugged at each button of her pajama top. The buttons had flown off when the man had yanked her shirt open. While she slept, her mother would have sewn them back on. She tugged at the second button sewn firmly in place. This one, however, had always been loose. But of course her mother wouldn’t have known. The girl’s room was no longer a safe place. Sunlight wasn’t the only thing that came in through the window.

  It rained. More blossoms fell. The weather report had predicted a clear day. Looking out at the downpour, the foreman said, “What did I say? You still trust weather news? After all this rain, only the toughest blossoms will be left. You can bet those will be the ones to produce big juicy pears.”

  Her father and the foreman played baduk all morning. Carrying an umbrella, she walked past the barrack. The rain had turned the cement building a dark gray. The door was ajar. She had always avoided this area when leaving the orchard. There was an outdoor pump beside the barrack, and the men sometimes stripped down and washed themselves, even when the days were cool. The men were lounging on the floor with their hands behind their heads, or watching an American broadcast, with their backs against the wall. The sportscaster gave the play-by-play in an animated voice. Big men were wrestling each other in a ring. Most of the workers had put their money on the wrestler wearing the black mask. But regardless of who won the bet, all would be going into town that evening.

  The young man lay on his stomach on the damp floor, flipping lazily through a magazine. He looked up at the screen whenever the men shouted, but his gaze soon returned to the glossy pages.

  One of the workers, his attention on the screen, jabbed his foot into the young man’s ribs. On his arm was a faded tattoo of several Chinese characters that gang members tended to get. He was graying at the temples.

  “Hey, College Boy, what the hell are they yakking about?”

  When the young man simply laughed, the man with the tattoo smacked him in the head. “Damn it, you did college, but you don’t even know?”

  “College, my ass!” said another worker, nibbling on a squid tentacle. “If he’s a college student, then call me professor!”

  The young man glanced outside while rubbing his head, and saw the girl watching. His dark, bushy eyebrows flinched like caterpillars. The Band-Aid on his chin was gone, revealing a gash. She hurried past the barrack. She decided to wait until he was alone.

  •

  She looked out at the rain, her chair facing the window of her piano institute. The droplets rolling down the glass made the bus terminal appear further away. People holding colorful umbrellas hurried past. Occasionally she saw those without umbrellas, completely soaked. Already wet, they didn’t run. Her young student, legs dangling from the bench, struck the piano with her fists. The windowpanes trembled.

  “Teacher,” the child said, coming to stand next to her. “Tell me if you know the answer, okay? When it’s raining a lot, do you think someone who’s walking will get more wet, or someone who’s running?”

  “Hmm, someone who’s walking probably?”

  The little girl giggled. “Wrong! The one who’s running! Because when you run, the rain hits you from the top and the front!”

  A blue truck stopped in front of the institute. The words NEW SPROUTS ORCHARD were written across the side. Those in the back hopped off. The man in the driver’s seat rolled down his window and gazed at the institute. It was College Boy. He saw her and smiled. After parking the truck in the lot beside the terminal, he slowly tagged along after the rest of the men to Mokpo Tavern. The beaded curtains continued to sway even after he had stepped inside.

  “Teacher, did you hear what I said?”

  The child poked her side with a pencil and stared up at her.

  “Oh, that’s why,” she said belatedly. “That’s why people with no umbrellas don’t run.”

  Shouts and music drifted out from inside the brightly lit bars. The smell of hot grease wafted out. Two women were fighting in the middle of the street, cursing and pulling each other’s hair. They tumbled on the ground in a heap. Though they wore heavy makeup, they looked nineteen or twenty at most.

  “So you think you can snatch my customer from right under my nose?” spat the girl sitting on top.

  “Your customer?” the one underneath cried, clutching the other’s hair. “Did you write your name on his forehead?”

  People gathered. No one tried to break up the fight. From time to time, men stumbled out of the bars with their arms around bar girls, and then disappeared into dark alleys.

  •

  A ladder was propped against every tree. The workers were hand-pollinating the trees by transferring pollen from the stamen to the pistil. All she could see were their legs and dirty shoes.

  “What a beautiful day! Even this flower gets to hook up with another flower, but how about me? Doomed to be single, that’s me.”

  Curses spewed from the next tree. “Griping about that same shit again? Just shut up and work!”

  The foreman made his rounds, barking orders. “If you’ve got enough energy to yap away, you’ve got enough energy to work! At this pace, you’ll never get through half the blossoms before they drop off. You can forget about today’s wages then! You won’t even get a meal!”

  “Aye-aye, sir!” a voice answered breezily.

  With all the workers up in the trees, it wasn’t easy to find the young man. Those who noticed her whistled. She ambled home. She had a view of the entire six-acre farm from the front yard. Sometimes she saw a man climb down from one tree, move the ladder to another tree, and then climb up again. The heat shimmered. She felt dizzy.

  “You looking for me?” he said, as if they were on a first-name basis.

  She knew who it was even before she turned around. He stood a few steps away, his gaze flicking over her body. He had just come from the kitchen and was carrying a pail of rice wine the men liked to have with their lunch. Venus, one of the shepherd dogs, stood next to him, licking his shoes.

  “I know you’ve been watching me,” he smirked.

  “We need to talk.”

  She led the way. She heard the wine slosh in the pail behind her. Venus followed at his heels. Apollo was licking his empty bowl. She kicked at the ground, but Venus backed away and then drew near once more. She threw a rock in the dog’s direction and stepped into the shed beside the barrack. It was the only place that would give them some privacy at this hour. On one side were yellow plastic crates stacked high to the ceiling. Pesticide containers labeled DERRIS and HEXACONAZOLE sat on top of a shelf, and plastic buckets in the corner were filled with gardening tools, like rusted shears, hoes, and pickaxes. He put down his pail and lit a cigarette.

  “So what’d you need to talk about? Can’t you see I’m busy?” He gestured at the pail. “Those guys can’t work if they don’t have any booze in their system.”

  “That cut on your chin, how’d you get it?” she snapped.

  Instead of answering, he sucked hard on his cigarette and drew his lips together as he blew out. Smoke rings rose from his mouth.

  “Should I jog your memory? It was you, wasn’t it? The rat that snuck into my room!”

  He let out a long whistle. “You don’t look like the type, but I guess I was wrong. You’re saying someone came into your room? And that someone was me?” He ground out the half-smoked cigarette under his shoe and laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself. There’s more than enough girls in town.”

  “Where did you get that scar then? It’s from the alarm clock I threw at you. That’s the evidence,” she mumbled quickly.

  “Oh, this? I cut myself shaving. It’s something men do. I’m sure you’ve noticed this place is crawling with men.”

  He drew closer and gripped her shoulders. He dug his fingers into her flesh, pressing hard, as if he were playing the piano. “It was all a dream. Virgins have dreams like that, don’t they? I guess you could call it a kind of test run.”

  He went to the corner and rummaged through the buckets, finally
holding up a pair of shears. He opened her hand and placed them in her palm.

  “Next time, just stab him in the face. If it’s not a dream, as you say, you’ll leave him with a huge scar.”

  He picked up the pail. Just as he was about to step outside, he looked back. “I won’t tell anyone about your dream, but here’s some advice. Don’t hang around the barrack anymore. They’re simple men. They’ll think you have a thing for them. You know how easy it is to climb to the second floor? Next time, it won’t be a dream. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  As soon as he went outside, Venus began to bark. She heard him kick the dog. She looked down at her hand. In it were pruning shears with long, sharp tips. She hid them inside the folds of her clothes.

  •

  The pear blossoms faded and the men left. From the window of the piano institute, she watched the buses pull out of the terminal. Some bar owners waited at the terminal to collect all outstanding tabs. The town became deserted, like an abandoned amusement park. Bar girls perched on wooden platforms out on the street and played flower cards together. “Let’s see, bird, rain, and cherry blossoms. Why don’t we take a stroll with lover-boy here on this moonlit night?”

  These girls who had been squabbling over customers only the day before now sat huddled together, giggling like children. Despite their young faces, they had the raspy voices of old women. They squatted on the street, smoking. Even the drink stalls in the vacant lots cleared out, and a few days later, the girls left, one by one. The town turned quiet once more.

  As always, the alarm clock woke her every day at six, and she pulled weeds all morning, wearing a visor and towel on her head. The weeds grew thick in no time, their roots tough from sucking up the nutrients meant for the pear trees. She headed to town in the afternoon and opened the doors to her piano institute, giving lessons to fifteen children until 5 P.M. She hated the piano, which sounded like noise to her.

  The barrack floor was littered with the things the men had left behind. Because her father had scrimped on labor costs and applied the cement himself, the floor sloped unevenly. She found two empty soju bottles that had rolled down to the right wall, and a curled-up magazine, which the young man had been reading. It was a porn magazine featuring foreign girls, with obscene comments scrawled on every page. She sat cross-legged without removing her shoes. Her body tilted to the right. She felt dizzy. Next to the pile of grimy blankets and pillows was a pack of flower cards. She brought one knee up as she’d seen the bar girls do and spread the cards before her. She picked up a few, but didn’t know how to play. She muttered, imitating what she’d heard them say, “Let’s see, bird, rain, and cherry blossoms. Why don’t we take a stroll with lover-boy here on this moonlit night?”

  On the weekends, she took her father’s car and went to Seoul. There, no one paid her any attention. She sat by the window of a café, smoking cigarettes and boldly making eye contact with those who walked by on the street. She wore crimson lipstick, and went with her friends across the Han River to the latest nightclubs. She drank and danced with the men who spoke to her. They all smelled of the wind. She spent the night in the car and returned home once she had sobered. Her alarm clock stopping ringing at six in the morning, but she didn’t replace the battery. She didn’t open the piano institute doors until after 2 P.M. Children grew tired of waiting by the locked doors and headed home. The monsoon rain started. Many days, she forgot to take an umbrella. She walked to the bus stop in the rain. Her hair and underclothes got soaked. People ran by, covering their heads with books or their hands. It was a small town. Rumors spread about the daughter of New Sprouts Farm, who roamed in the rain like a madwoman. There were fewer and fewer students. She went to the empty institute and gazed out at the street all day.

  At the terminal new faces climbed off the bus. They went into a nearby store and asked about any farm work while buying cigarettes. Her father heated up the empty barrack. The wallpaper and linoleum floor had mildewed during the monsoon. He brought the power out to the orchard and strung light bulbs between the pear trees so that the men could work at night.

  The men returned. It was a bumper year for pears. She heard her father say to the foreman that the price of pears was going to drop. The foreman acted as if he knew it all, saying it worked out to be the same, selling fewer pears at a high price or selling more pears at a low price. Cardboard cases with the words PREMIUM SINGO PEARS filled the house. On the days she didn’t have to go to the institute, she folded cases. Workers filled the barrack once more. The drink stalls returned to the vacant lots, and girls with young faces stepped off the buses. They went back and forth between the bars and the public bath with plastic basins at their sides, and at four in the afternoon, dolled themselves up with the bar doors wide open. Her mother brought out the industrial-size rice cooker, and the smell of boiling rice filled the house once more. Dirty running shoes and military boots crowded the entrance. She glanced at the men eating breakfast and found College Boy sitting at the table.

  He had grown leaner. His cheekbones protruded, and his hair now came down to his shoulders. He had taken the last bus into town. There were no cars heading to the orchard at that hour, so he’d walked.

  The workers were up in the trees again. They climbed the ladders, picked the fruit, and put it in baskets. Sweet, juicy pears dangled from over a thousand trees. Branches sometimes snapped, unable to withstand the weight of the fruit. Because the pears were so big, each basket couldn’t hold more than ten. When the baskets filled up, the workers climbed down to dump the fruit into plastic crates that were scattered on the ground. The foreman pushed his way through the trees, yelling at the men.

  “Gentle! You’ve got to handle them gently! If I find any bruises or scratches, you can forget about getting paid!”

  The workers snickered and wisecracked from the trees.

  “I said, gentle! Like you’re touching a virgin’s ass!”

  Though they were careful, the pears still suffered bruises, scratches, and cuts, for they injured one another with their only weapon—the stem. The treetops were full of rotting pears, because the magpies had already scooped out the flesh, and insects went for the sweetest fruit. The townspeople came to buy the damaged pears. They would sit in front of the bus terminal or in the corner of the market and sell them at giveaway prices. The ones no one wanted smelled terrible as they rotted. Soon they teemed with maggots.

  On the way home, she could see the light bulbs even from far away, bobbing like fish-luring lights. The workers whistled at her whenever she walked by. The whistles no longer bothered her. She didn’t run or hurry anymore. At the break of dawn, trucks loaded with cartons of pears left for Seoul, and late at night, trucks carrying workers returned to the orchard. Even after the shadows had staggered into the barrack, she could hear swearing and strains of pop songs until early morning.

  It was past 2 A.M. when he slipped into her room on the second floor. He landed soundlessly on her balcony like a cat and tried her window. It was unlocked. He crept toward the girl where she lay in bed. Her eyes snapped open. When he raised the towel, she shook her head at him. He wavered, taking a step backward. She said softly, “When you’ve been rained on already, there’s no need to run.”

  A weight equal to five 15-kilo cartons climbed on top of her. He smelled of liquor and the wind. He pressed his lips against hers. Her hand crawled up his back and suddenly traced an arc in the dark. He toppled to the floor. Then she smashed his head with a shovel she had hidden under her bed. He was motionless. Out in the orchard far away, a pear thudded to the ground. Plunged into the man’s back were the shears he had given her, the handles protruding like the key of a wind-up toy. It seemed he would start lurching about like a robot if the key were turned. She dragged him by his feet toward the stairs. His head knocked against each step, all the way to the bottom. She was sweating. Her thighs chafed each time they rubbed against her damp pajamas. The house was silent.

  She brought the wheelbarrow from th
e yard. Venus and Apollo were eating scraps of ham. They grew tense at her shadow, but went back to devouring their food as soon as they realized it was her. Now she knew why Venus had followed the man around. He moaned as she loaded him into the wheelbarrow. She hit him again with the shovel. The moaning stopped. She tossed it in the wheelbarrow as well. She pushed him through the orchard, keeping away from the barrack. His head and legs stuck out of the wheelbarrow, jerking every time the wheel hit a rock. If she happened to hear a noise, she stopped and stared into the darkness. But it was just the wind knocking fruit down from the trees. Rotten pears burst under her feet. She had forgotten to put on shoes. The wheelbarrow was difficult to push. Each time it lurched in a different direction, she swore like the workers. It was dark, but she knew the orchard like the back of her hand. The pear trees ended and she came to the hillside. The trees in this area had already been picked. Nobody would be wandering about here.

  Digging a hole was difficult work. All she managed to do was scatter the soil a bit. She pushed the wheelbarrow up to the hole and tipped it over. His body tumbled inside. The hole was too small and shallow. She could barely cover his legs with the dirt. She used the leaves to hide the rest of his body.

  “Father, you said it was just a nightmare, but it wasn’t. Look how dirty my hands are. I only did what he told me to do. If it was a nightmare like you say, the shears would be sticking out of my chest.”

  The parents saw their daughter’s eyes glittering wildly. Her fingers were blistered, and blood oozed from her broken toenails. They followed her outside. In the yard was the wheelbarrow, and inside were a shovel and a pair of shears. The tips of the shears were stained red. It seemed they hadn’t gone in deep, judging from the amount of blood. The father flung the shears into the empty doghouse, and clasped the shovel to his chest, the blade pointing up. He knew the orchard so well he didn’t need a flashlight. Neither did he want to risk waking the workers. The girl darted through the pear trees, swinging her arms in the dark. She talked feverishly.