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.
MARCH
I am offering you the things which you eat, now you must do whatever I demand.
CHAPTER 10
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.