He takes up the fork and knife obediently. Slices of tongue fan out in perfect symmetry on the sauce of garlic, peppercorn, truffle oil, lemon, and watercress. He pierces the middle piece, the biggest, the one with the clearest shape. Immobile, I watch him put it into his mouth and close his lips and move his chin slowly, chewing. A smile spreads across his face.
“How is it?”
“There’s something really tough about it, but it has a really good texture. It even feels crisp under my teeth, like very hard vegetables. Is this really beef?”
“Of course, of course,” I nod vigorously.
He puts another bite in his mouth and chews. “How can it taste like this? It’s so good.”
“There’s something special in my recipe, you know.”
“I feel a power in my mouth like two strongmen are competing against each other. Not just a fight that splatters blood but something that creates harmony, like a fight of taste.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. The taste is so alive—it’s leaping around on my tongue.”
You can’t fool taste. His pupils are starting to dilate. He chews carefully and swallows, one morsel after another. As if he’s enveloped in a holy light, his face becomes flushed and sweat dots his forehead. He’s sinking into my new dish. I hear from far away the patter of cats walking across the yard and raindrops falling into the drain. The feast has to be the last thing of the day. In quiet and intimacy like this. Like travelers who want to get to the same destination together. I feel the ground swaying peacefully. I’m standing on water. Dizziness sweeps across me. I pause from stirring the watermelon sherbet that’s for dessert and whisper in his ear, “Should we kiss just one time? Just once?” This is the end.
His eyes betray wariness. I grab his right wrist, the one holding the fork.
“Okay, because you’re truly a great cook. But this really is it.”
We approach each other slowly and our lips touch, fluttering, a resting of my face on a frost-covered winter window. Not too hot or close or passionate. Like a shy first kiss, tentative and soft.
I open my eyes and look into his. One man and one woman. Like every love story, there are happy times if you look back. And the first moment of seduction that drew us in. But now it’s time to go back to our places. To feel more and to remember more. We have returned to our first shared moment. But maybe we are now different trees. Trees that can only drink in different musical notes. Everything starts to die as soon as it’s born. Some things thrive and others decline while some are reborn and others float away. The thing that lives, gradually changes. It’s not important to go somewhere but it’s crucial that we’re moving. In the dark I quickly wipe away a tear with the back of my hand and with his fork I spear a piece of tongue and gently push it between his red lips.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Kyung Ran Jo was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1969. She earned a degree in creative writing from Seoul Institute of the Arts and has participated in the University of Iowa’s renowned International Writing Program. Since her fiction debut at age twenty-eight, she has earned numerous literary awards including the Today’s Young Artist Prize from the South Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Dong-in Literary Award for her newest short-story collection, I Bought Balloons. Tongue, an immediate bestseller in South Korea, is her first novel to be translated into English.
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by Kyung Ran Jo
English translation copyright © 2009 by Chi-Young Kim
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Jo, Kyung Ran.
[Hyeo. English]
Tongue : a novel / Kyung Ran Jo; translated by Chi-Young Kim.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59691-651-7 (pbk.)
1. Women cooks—Fiction. 2. Self-realization in women—Fiction. 3. Cookery—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Kim, Chi-Young. II. Title.
PL994.35.K98H94 2009
895.7’35—dc22
2008055743
First published in South Korea as Hyeo by Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. in 2007
First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2009
This e-book edition published in 2011
E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-781-1