Shin kyung-sook
TRANS. BY bruce & ju-chan fulton
House on the prairie
It sits ivy-covered in the middle of a prairie.
People passing by regard it with curiosity, unable to fathom the reason for its existence. Wouldn’t you wonder what a vacant house is doing on a lonely prairie bounded only by paddy after dry field after paddy? For a long time it’s given no indication of a human presence, and no one seems to live there now. It presents a dreary scene except for the homey white-lace curtain, whose intricate weave gives the impression that you can feel the movement of the weaver’s hands. Considering the house is vacant, you might think someone would make off with the curtain, but it’s still there. The house seems never to have had a gate, and the steps leading straight up to the front entry look steep. One, two, three, four . . . nine steps in all. Empty though the house is, the seasons haven’t forsaken it. By summer the structure is newly wrapped in ivy. No one appears to be tending the house, and yet the oh-so-green ivy embraces it as if partaking of an emerald feast, luring people to the entry, but then they sense the eeriness lurking in that green color and they turn back without entering. When the winds sweep across the prairie, the gleaming leaves shooting out from the tenacious vines resemble turquoise tongues. Those vines seem ready to coil themselves around the neck of anyone who dares enter. The steps alone, extending up to the entry, are fortunate to have escaped the clutches of the vines and their gleaming leaves. Today, too, the steep, seemingly long-untrodden steps are a bleached-out path into the eerie, turquoise-colored ivy.
Who would believe this empty house was once filled with happiness and song? And with joy the likes of which you might encounter only in legend? The winds on the prairie. They know that this house on the prairie used to be filled with joy. To this day, when they have nothing else to do, they talk among themselves about the man and the woman. About their wretched appearance when they first arrived at the prairie, and about their love.
One day a man and a woman came upon the prairie. Lacking a house of their own, they could not become husband and wife. In the city they were too poor to be able to love each other. They walked and they walked, step after sorrowful step, fetching up in front of the house on the prairie. The empty house drew their heartstrings. They cracked open the door and went into the living room and then ventured into the other rooms. No one stopped them. They spent the night there. Nothing happened. They brought in the bare necessities and lived there. All seemed well. The woman wiped the living room floor and changed the rusty faucet in the bathroom. The man climbed onto the roof and sealed the leaks, then had himself a look around. He saw only dry field after paddy after dry field, and far in the distance a ridgeline. The scenery seemed to look back at him calmly as if understanding that he and the woman wanted to live there in the house. The man and the woman cried, believing their love had finally found a nest. Over and over they felt each other’s faces: how in creation had such luck come to them? The man worked at a construction site some distance away. The woman delivered his lunch, wrapped in a cloth. They had wanted to be together, and now that they lived in the empty house on the prairie, they wished for nothing more. In the afternoon she prepared dinner and sang as she awaited his return. The man would arrive home happy from listening to her songs resonating across the prairie. This was their life. From time to time she would hold his hands and tremble in fear that something would come between them and the next moment carry their trouble-free days off on the wind. The man would bring his wrinkled face to hers and whisper that they had nothing more to lose, that if this prairie was dream-like, then all they had to do was dream on. “Please don’t worry,” he told her.
And she no longer worried.
For a baby girl was born to them. The girl became five years of age, and during those five years the three of them were left alone in the house on the prairie. The man worked hard, the woman mothered the girl, and the once desolate house now wore a radiant gleam. There was a vase with flowers, and the woman wove a white-lace curtain and draped it over the window. The man was now a foreman and no longer had to lug rocks or sand on his back to earn his pay. And their girl was healthy, her red cheeks cute and fleshy and her bottom nice and plump. The girl took every opportunity to ask, “Mommy, am I pretty? Daddy, am I pretty?” Responding to her coquetry was one of the joys of their life. They were grateful for the happiness bestowed on them by the empty house on the prairie. But it seemed that the house wanted to bestow on them only that much happiness and no more.
One day the woman took the girl into the city. She bought all the items on her shopping list and returned to the house. The wind blew more than you would expect for early summer. Each of the woman’s hands held a heavy load, and the girl toddled along ahead of her. They arrived at the steep steps leading to the entry, and that’s when it happened. The girl climbed the first step and turned back toward the woman. Her cheeks were pale, as if the outing had tired her. But still she asked playfully, “Mommy, am I pretty?”
“Yes you are,” the woman answered.
The girl climbed another step and asked, “Mommy, am I pretty?”
“You sure are,” said the woman.
From the third step the girl asked again, “Mommy, am I pretty?”
Feeling weighed down by what she carried but fearful of disappointing the girl, the woman managed a cheery reply: “I’ve never seen a girl as pretty as you!”
The girl jumped up and down in delight whenever the woman answered. At the fourth step, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth—with each steep step she climbed she never failed to turn her pale face toward the woman and ask, “Mommy, am I pretty?”
And the woman never failed to answer, “You’re the prettiest girl in the whole wide world,” feeling all the while that what she carried was about to pull her arms loose from her shoulders. Silently she pleaded, Oh I wish the girl would stop asking that question and just open the door.
But when the girl had climbed the ninth and last step she turned back to the woman and asked, “Mommy, am I pretty?”
The items carried by the woman plopped onto the ground. Woo went the ivy leaves in the wind. “Yes, I said you’re pretty!” the woman shouted. The next instant something felt wrong: she sensed an uncontrollable force penetrating her. She never meant to push the girl, simply reached out to give her a slap on the bottom, but the moment her hand made contact, the girl, as if sucked into a whirling funnel, went tumbling down the steps she had climbed so laboriously.
“Oh no!” The woman ran down the steps, but the house on the prairie would bestow no more happiness. No drop of blood could be seen, but the girl lay pale and dying. With her last breath she asked, “Mommy, am I pretty?”
Time passed quietly.
The man and the woman were immersed in sorrow; it was a desolate time. The man tried to console the woman but she had lost her smile. He tried to love her more but she was forever gazing off into the distance. She kept mulling over the uncontrollable force she had felt that day. What was it, that unstoppable force that had penetrated her like a tongue—what? The woman aged. Each day made her look a year older, her face more haggard and weathered and her cheekbones more prominent. She could have been his mother or his older sister. But then another opportunity for happiness arrived. In the desolation of their lives another baby was born to them. With the new baby their love began to recover, if only barely. The woman put flowers in the vase for the first time in a long while. The newborn was another girl. The man consoled the woman, saying the baby looked just like the older girl—she must have been reborn! Only then did the woman smile; no longer did she gaze off into the distance. She gradually recovered her youth and again looked like the woman the man had always known. She loved the baby. Perhaps more than the man did. The man worried now and then that her love for the baby was obsessive, but his worries were outweighed by his relief that she had returned to her old self. The baby grew strong and healthy and turned five years old. The woman and the man wondered if they should return to the city for the girl’s sake. They couldn’t decide: their situation was slightly better, but still they were needy. The man suggested staying a little longer, saying the day would come for them to live with the girl in the city. The woman believed him and his “day that would come.” That day gave them hope. Perhaps the empty house on the prairie was jealous of their hope.
At first the woman was unaware. She simply held the girl’s hand and boarded the bus to the city to buy household items just like before. It was a monthly shopping trip and she always had too much to carry. The wind blew more than you would expect for early summer. The woman still had no clue: she had forgotten that today was the day on which her firstborn had died. The realization that that day five years ago was recurring came at the bottom of the steps to the house on the prairie. The girl, who had been following the woman until then, suddenly toddled in front of her, arrived at the first step, climbed it, and asked, “Mommy, am I pretty?”
The woman wanted to drop what she was holding and embrace the girl, saying, Baby, stop that. The girl had never asked such a question. The girl recoiled from the woman, her manner frosty, then asked again, “Mommy, am I pretty?”
The woman couldn’t help answering, “Mmm, yes, you’re pretty.” She broke out in a cold sweat. What is happening?
From the second step the girl asked again, “Mommy, am I pretty?”
The woman felt her knees buckle. The nightmare of five years ago had returned. Desperately she answered, “You sure are.”
From the third step the girl asked again, “Mommy, am I pretty?”
With all her strength the woman pressed down with the soles of her feet. “Yes you are.”
Help me, honey! the woman silently pleaded to the man. And now they were at the ninth step. She tried to focus: I absolutely mustn’t make the same mistake. The girl climbed the ninth and last step, as on that day five years ago, and turned her pale face toward the woman. “Mommy, am I pretty?”
As much as she tried to steel herself, the woman was practically shaking like a violet. “Yes you are,” she answered, “the prettiest girl in the whole wide world.” The girl stared at the trembling woman with a dubious expression and said, “Then why did you push me, Mommy?”
When the man returned from work, the house on the prairie was empty. There was no sign of the woman and the girl, only the shopping items scattered about the steep steps. The man waited for them for the longest time. He stopped eating, he didn’t go to work, and he waited, more for the woman than for the girl. But the woman didn’t come. Every night the ivy coiled itself about him and then released him. He wasted away more with the passing of each night. And then one gusty night he heard the ivy leaves calling out and he squatted to listen: Mommy, am I pretty? He shut his ears but still heard the woman’s feeble voice: Yes you are. At daybreak, his face devoid of color, he slipped out of the house on the prairie and left, never to return.
The empty house is still there on the prairie. Oddly enough, the turquoise hue of the ivy leaves gleams more with each passing day. Even if you’re a poor wayfarer who happens upon the house as you pass by the prairie, you mustn’t stop. Once upon a time happiness and song lived in that house. But even if the homey, white-lace curtain woven by the woman entices you to enter and settle in, you must back off. Unless you wish every night to hear the woo of the gleaming, turquoise-colored ivy leaves and the nine steep steps whispering on the wind: Then why did you push me, Mommy?
Shin Kyung-sook is the prize-winning author of numerous volumes of fiction. She was born in 1963 in Chŏngŭp, North Chŏlla Province, and studied creative writing at Seoul Arts University. She debuted with the story “Kyŏul uhwa” (Winter Fable) in 1985. English translations of her short fiction have appeared in Kyoto Journal, Harvard Review, and Acta Koreana. Several of her novels have appeared in English translation, starting with Please Look After Mom, translated by Chi-Young Kim and published by Knopf.
Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton are the translators of numerous volumes of modern Korean fiction, most recently Mina by Kim Sagwa (Two Lines Press, 2018), The Catcher in the Loft by Ch’ŏn Un-yŏng (Codhill Press, 2019), and One Left by Kim Soom (University of Washington Press, 2020). Their translations of short fiction appear in journals such as Granta, Asymptote, and the Massachusetts Review. Among their awards and fellowships are two US National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships (including the first ever awarded for a Korean project), and the first residency at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre awarded to translators from any Asian language. Bruce Fulton is the inaugural holder of the Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia.