Se-yeon, did you know that a female sturgeon with eggs is as valuable as gold? When you harvest eggs from a sturgeon you hit the softest part of its head to stun it. And then quickly with a flat sharp knife you pull out the egg sac from the body. Then an expert wearing a white coat and white gloves receives the large egg sac covered in membrane as if it’s a baby. Because it’s so expensive. The stunned sturgeon dies without knowing any better and the eggs are harvested in a perfect state. If the sturgeon is injured or scared or stressed the caviar doesn’t taste good. Adrenalin pumps through so the eggs die or smell bad. So the perfect caviar has to be taken from a happy living sturgeon. This here is the most expensive caviar, which was harvested correctly. What do you think now? You’re hungry, right? You want to eat it, right? I’m cutting this bread into thin slices like this and I’m going to toast it lightly with butter. And then I’m going to top it with a teaspoon of caviar and eat it. Se-yeon, you know you have to eat caviar by putting it in your mouth and popping it lightly with your tongue?
Water? Do you want more? Oh, you must be so thirsty. I’ll give you warm water this time. Cold water is so fleeting. You know what’ll happen if you yell, right? I always keep a promise. You keep the promise you made with me, okay? What is it? Is the water too hot? Don’t worry. Once it goes past the tongue there won’t be any damage to your throat or stomach. The tongue is the most heat-sensitive place on the body. So just drink it. If you shake your head like that the water keeps spilling. Just drink it all up. Instead of bothering me again for more water. Let me see, open your mouth. I guess it really was hot, your tongue is all red. But it’s still healthy pink like a flamingo’s tongue, and your taste buds are standing at attention too. Everything about you is so pretty! You must be so happy that you’re beautiful and can get whatever you want. But looking at you drooling like that is kind of disgusting and sad. I hope he’s never seen you make that expression. Do you know why Hemingway ate oysters at every meal? It’s because he was feeling so empty. So empty, so he would slurp down oysters. That never happens to you, right?
You have something I want. I want you to give it to me. It doesn’t matter now, but you’ve taken things from me.
Why are your legs trembling like that? Your legs are so long and gorgeous, like a flamingo’s. Are you nervous? Don’t be, you’re getting sweaty and damp. You forgot what I told you about how to harvest the perfect caviar? What’s that expression on your face? Is it shame? Or fear? You can’t show that kind of emotion on your face. I want you to be more comfortable. I wonder what it felt like when those legs were wrapped around him in my kitchen.
Tongue is the tastiest part of the whale and apparently it’s the same for a flamingo. I haven’t tried one yet. It’s so delicious that a Roman wrote about a flamingo, something like, My pink feathers gave me my name but gastronomes gave my tongue a reputation. There’s something very strange about the tongue. It seems perfect but superficial. But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, right? So if you promise something, you have to keep it. That’s what I want from you. The thing in your cavernous mouth, that.
CHAPTER 32
ON FRIDAYS, patients participating in family therapy sessions write a short autobiographical piece and read it aloud. Usually it revolves around their childhoods or family history or the reasons they started to rely on alcohol—revealing intimate details of the patient. Uncle participated in other activities but never went to these meetings until today. I study Uncle’s face as he stands in front of strangers and reads his autobiography, condensed into two pieces of paper. I see fear, hesitation, sadness, and joy flitting across his face. What’s changed with Uncle? If Uncle was starting to rehabilitate in June, in July he’s reached the level of social adaptation. The third and last step. Some changes happen from the outside but some apparently occur from the inside. I wonder if the question he asked himself when he had the urge to drink was the catalyst for the change. Because asking yourself a question, a fundamental, unanswerable question, requires strong will and courage.
After the therapy session, we sit on a bench in the garden as always. Uncle has his hands linked behind his head, looking somewhere far away. Today may have been the first time he spoke about his wife in front of others.
“This flower, it looks like a cosmos,” I remark, pointing at a golden-yellow daisy in the flowerbed, a strong saturated sprinkling of saffron.
“I never knew yellow was that beautiful,” Uncle says in an embarrassed tone, frowning.
“Have you decided to forget her?” Is it because of the flower? The question I didn’t want to ask pops out.
“Do you think that’s what it is?”
“I don’t know, I couldn’t tell.”
“How could I forget that person?”
That person. I try it after him, slowly.
“I’m just keeping her buried,” he continues. “That’s the only way I can move on. Because I don’t think she would want me to live like this.”
“Do you think love is like basil, Uncle?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I heard of a woman who couldn’t let go of her dead lover’s body. So she cut off his head and buried it in a plot under basil. She watered it with her tears but she died, unable to mend her broken heart. And from there bigger and fresher and more fragrant basil grew and people came from far away to look at it. So a woman loves a man, the man dies, the woman goes crazy, tears fall, plants grow—do you think it all boils down to that?”
“Not all love turns into that.”
“I don’t know what’s love and what’s true.”
“What I’m saying is, not all true love makes you lose your calm like that. It’s lunacy.”
“Lunacy means there’s an intense power, though.”
Uncle is silent.
“Love is intense, Uncle.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Basil makes the heart dizzy, too. So you can’t eat too much at once.”
Uncle glances at me and smiles bitterly. “I don’t know what went wrong.”
I hang my head. “Why did we end up like this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Uncle, I don’t understand it. We grew up peacefully eating apples and pears, raised by Grandmother, the best person in the world. But why did we both fail like this?”
“What do you think you’ve failed at? Love?”
I don’t speak.
“You haven’t failed at everything. It could be a small mistake, not a complete failure.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“Remember when we put a watermelon in the freezer to chill and forgot about it until the next day? We broke into it to throw it away because it was frozen solid, and remember how the ice crystals glistened, enough to make it starry in front of our eyes? It was amazing. If it wasn’t through a mistake we would never have seen such a thing.”
I remember. The sparkling, starlike ice crystals that made us cry out in amazement.
“And you haven’t failed. You’re always comforted by cooking.”
I’m quiet.
“Not everyone can be like that.”
“When did you become so sweet? It’s weird, Uncle.”