Beauty Looks Down on Me Read online

  B pointed at the chicken. “Want some? You said you can eat fatty food.”

  “Plain chicken is okay,” I said, “but that looks like it dove into the fryer wearing a cheap coat.”

  B raised one eyebrow and gave me a bitter look “This is a real struggle for you,” he said.

  “Yeah, I envy bears the most. They lose weight just by sleeping all winter.”

  “They lose weight in their sleep?” He laughed. “Never knew bears got liposuction.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “Nice to know they can afford it.”

  But B didn’t look like he was enjoying joking around as usual. I could hear the ice rattling as B absentmindedly shook his cup. I changed the topic.

  “Do you know why people overeat?” I asked, and launched into another lecture.

  Back in the Ice Age, our ancestors starved on a regular basis. Many died because they couldn’t make it through the lean times when there were no plants to gather or animals to hunt. Therefore, if they did find something to eat after all that waiting, they would throw a big feast and overeat. The purpose of the feast was to store fat, and the purpose of storing fat was to be able to survive the next cold spell, drought, or other lean season. If children don’t eat properly for even a week, their limbs stop growing. According to researchers who study the bones and teeth of prehistoric humans, there is a clear difference in density between the parts that stopped developing due to starvation and the parts that developed actively after a round of heavy eating. The ability to survive didn’t depend simply on eating but on overeating. Therefore, even fat people, whose bodies have more than enough fat stored for emergencies, still get hungry and crave the taste of food regularly. Overeating is a genetic flaw built into the human body.

  “In other words, all you have to do is blame everything on your ancestors,” B interrupted me.

  Strangely enough, the look on his face as he stared at me was identical to the look on the face of the kid sitting across the way. It was the first time B had ever looked at me like I was fat. His expression seemed to say that, while trying to fight my inner fat guy, I end up becoming the fat guy.

  “What you’re saying,” B added, his face still that of a stranger, “is that it’s not your fault because you were born this way. Am I right?”

  I put the empty cup and dirty napkins on the tray without a word. He went on.

  “You seem to really hate the guy you call ‘Primitive Man,’ but aren’t you the one crying out for fat? You think you’re a highly rational being in command of yourself while he’s a primitive barbarian living off of you like a parasite? Bullshit. He existed long before you got this shell you call your ‘body.’ He is you. Isn’t that right?”

  I picked up the tray and got up without responding. The innocent, well-adjusted kids never understand. They don’t get why the dumb, grouchy-looking fat kids don’t join them at recess but instead watch them from behind the classroom window, a candy bar clutched greedily in each hand, a ring of chocolate around their mouths, the sweetness, the animosity. Goddammit! Who cares whose genes are inside my body?

  At The Dinner Table

  THAT EVENING, I returned home and ate grilled pork belly with half a bottle of soju. I usually drank beer, but I took Dr. Atkin’s advice and chose soju instead. My mother drank the other half. The TV was on behind me. Her eyes were glued to Hyeon-jung and Hyeong-jun.

  “Tell me the truth,” she said. “Why are you suddenly so crazy about losing weight? What’s going on?”

  I looked down at the sliced pork belly cooking on the electric pan. She’d separated the fat from the lean, and a bit of leftover fat was sizzling especially loudly. Holding the last shot of soju, I glanced up out of habit at the wall behind her. There was nothing hanging on it.

  It had been two weeks since his operation, so I thought he’d be out of the hospital by then. But the patient was still in his hospital room, awaiting a second operation. I’d wanted to ask how he was but I hung up the phone instead. I didn’t want even the nurse to know that I was curious. I hid my desire to know whether the patient wanted to see me. I didn’t even ask if he was in pain. It’s not that I didn’t care, but the years had built up between us, like cholesterol thickening the blood, and I could not just feel bad for him.

  I opened my notebook and was checking the dates when my mother shrieked.

  “You’re not blocking the TV anymore! Hyeon-jung came on alone this time, right?”

  I moved aside so she could see the rest of the screen. She joked a lot when she got tipsy. On TV, handsome young men were grimacing and eating rice cakes stuffed with horseradish as a penalty for losing a game.

  “Good-looking people look good even when they’re eating.” She was talking to herself again. “They say when you get old, you look ugly when you eat. Who wants to look at something ugly? That’s when it’s time to take a person’s food away. Time for them to die. They say that’s what happens when you stop loving someone. When love cools, the thing you hate the most is watching them eat. Wanting to take someone’s food away . . . I guess that’s the same as wanting them to die, huh? There’s nothing more vulgar than eating. They say you first fall for someone while eating together, and that love grows at the table.”

  “If you look pretty when you eat, you’ll turn into a pig,” I remarked cynically.

  She stopped wiping the grease from the pan and heaved a deep sigh.

  “Why don’t you go buy another bottle of soju,” she said, throwing down the greasy paper towel. “You claim to be losing weight but you never exercise. And stop acting like rice is your mortal enemy.”

  The more she drank, the more her jokes turned into nagging, and then to sob stories about her sorry life.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” she said. “It wasn’t that long ago that there simply wasn’t enough to eat. Everyone went hungry in spring waiting for the barley to ripen. Back then, you did whatever you had to not to starve. Do you have any idea how many families in our neighborhood sent their daughters to work nights in seedy bars just so they could eat?”.

  “Times have changed,” I said, cutting her off. “No one starves to death nowadays, so you—”

  I gulped down what I wanted to say next because she was glaring at me. Even after I stopped talking, she kept staring hard at me. She looked both mystified and dubious.

  “What?” I asked bluntly, and she laughed and shook her head.

  “Nothing, you just reminded me of someone.”

  The Final Week

  MY BODY SEEMED to have completely shifted from synthesizing fat to burning fat. I got my rhythm back, and could tell from the astonished looks on everyone’s faces that the changes to my body had become noticeable. When a client I hadn’t seen in a while dropped by and said he almost didn’t recognize me, the new female employee chimed in and said, “Isn’t he incredible?” Then she turned to me and added, “I never noticed how big your eyes are.” With each step, I could tell that my butt had grown smaller. My footsteps felt much lighter, and the loss of my double chin made nodding effortless. “So, this is how you become a positive person,” I murmured in front of the mirror.

  My colleague congratulated me on my shrinking belly. He even asked me whether his potbelly had anything to do with the fact that each time he hiked, he grabbed wildly at trees and rocks rather than tightening his stomach muscles. I explained that since most fat is stored in the belly, the body defends it to the end, making belly fat the last to go. The new female employee asked me why sweet foods were fattening. I told her that the quickest source of energy is an injection of glucose. The next quickest is sweet foods. Since it only takes a single step to convert sugary foods into glucose, the body naturally hungers for sweets when it’s tired. Newborn babies are born already craving sweetness and will seek out their mother’s milk, which contains sugar, and thus survive. Likewise, children, who need a lot of calories to grow, can’t help liking sweets. The reason old people crave sweets is a little different. My mother, who could finish
off an entire bowl of sweet-and-sour pork by herself, used to rationalize her gluttony by saying, “You revert back to childhood as you grow old,” as if it were some tried and true proverb. But unlike children, old people don’t need that many calories. Instead, eating sweets is a way for the aged body, having grown weak and wily and disinclined to work too hard, to get energy quickly and easily.

  My physical changes weren’t the only thing. Fat people’s larger frames tend to make their feet look disproportionately small and sad, but now I felt like my silhouette had come alive. My suit jackets that used to strain against my arms and back to the point of tearing at the seams were now much looser. Fortunately, all the stores were holding sales just then. I bought two suits and a brightly colored spring shirt. I felt lighthearted, as if the world were opening up before me.

  I called the hospital for the third time, my fingers in a rush to dial, only to learn that the second operation hadn’t gone well. The nurse, speaking in the same kind tone, told me to contact the hospital’s funeral parlor. I dialed again, this time trembling. The funeral was the next day.

  I returned home and hung my new suits in the closet. They had an air of politeness and dignity, their shoulders bowed forward slightly like they were entering someone else’s house, so different from the tired clothes that had been there so long. Exuding luster and a sense of vigor, like junior staff with innovative plans, the suits dispelled the air of gloom that had settled in my long unchanging wardrobe. My gaze stopped at the sight of my old jacket hanging in the far corner. Unlike my perky new clothes, the arms sagged like a shed skin and the voluminous space between the back of the jacket and the front lapels looked sad and empty, as it nothing could ever fill it. I took the jacket out and slowly brushed it with a lint roller. It was the only black suit I owned. I could hear my mother talking to herself in the kitchen as she set the table for dinner. She was probably grumbling about the dishes I’d requested. As I listened, I felt a sorrow more excruciating than any I’d ever felt in my life.

  Children Born by Accident

  BACK WHEN WE were kids, B used to joke that he was born by accident.

  “I would never have been born if my dad either didn’t have five thousand won for a motel room or did have fifty thousand won for an abortion.”

  But B’s story changed each time he told it.

  “Actually, my dad did give my mom money for an abortion. But on the way to the clinic, she was passing in front of a store where a beaded purse in the window caught her eye. My mom blew all the money for the abortion on a purse. Her motto for everything is ‘I’ll deal with it later.’ That’s her style. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. Anyway, that’s what happened. I competed against a beaded purse and lost, and that’s how my life began.”

  Some days, B changed his story from the purse to a pleated skirt or a pearl ring. I envied the way he could joke about how he was born.

  We were nearly thirty when B told me what had really happened.

  “The truth is, I used to have an older sister.”

  B’s parents had one son and one daughter, so I already knew B had a big sister, three years older than him.

  “I’m not talking about her. I mean the one who was born the year before me. She’s still my sister, even if she did die four months after she was born.”

  B’s father was the only son born in his family for two generations; therefore, it was his duty to pass on the family name. From the day their first daughter was born, the family elders started pressuring B’s father to have a son. Two years later, when his wife became pregnant again, B’s grandfather didn’t even consider the other possibility and prepared five potential boys’ names based on their family tree. But, just like the last time, it was a girl. B’s father would come home from work every night to find his wife crying under the blankets, holding the newborn. One day, when the baby was three months old and B’s mother was feeling better, she put the baby down for a nap and took her older daughter with her next door to visit their neighbor. When she returned, the baby was dead, face down with her little nose and mouth buried in the blanket. B’s father despaired. Just the day before, he’d secretly had a vasectomy. He thought it was the best solution to his family’s irrational expectations, which even he thought were crazy. He didn’t want to impose those expectations on his wife after her second pregnancy had left her so depressed. But while he had accepted the idea of raising two daughters, he hadn’t planned on raising an only child. Back to the hospital he went. The doctor told him some sperm could still be alive inside his body, so they might still conceive, though the chances were low. Immediately after burying their second daughter, the couple jumped into bed. To their surprise, she got pregnant again and gave birth to a baby the following year. This time it was a boy.

  B said he’d never forget the shock of hearing his grandfather, who loved his grandson exclusively and believed that girls had no souls, describe it as the time the family narrowly escaped disaster. It wasn’t until much later that B became both repulsed and fascinated—by the remarkable determination of the sperm that bore his name and that stayed alive in his father’s scrotum for over three days before emerging into the world and succeeding at its task, by the way his newborn older sister had made the entire family happy by breathing her last feeble breath just a hundred days after her birth, by the selfish, merciless family instinct that, in the end, whether anyone had intended it or not, conspired to commit murder, and by the bargain, swiftly made, to exchange death for life. To him, his parents were no better than chimpanzees—the female lewdly shaking her red, swollen genitals, and the male running after her, grunting, nose aquiver. Had his mother really lingered so long at the neighbor’s with no ulterior motive? He had his doubts about all of it, but what troubled B the most in his adolescence was the sense of disillusionment he felt toward his father’s desires. How had his father been capable of shuddering in sexual pleasure on the very blanket where his newborn baby’s corpse had lay? The only way B could endure it was by cracking jokes about his own birth.

  B’s last words that day were still clear in my mind. “I think I’ve come to terms with it now. Life goes on, mean and dirty, and that’s how we learn about the world—through our fathers’ hypocrisy.”

  “Maybe,” I replied coolly. “But it’s different for you and me. Your dad went back to the doctor so he could have you. My father never wanted me at all.”

  Venus

  I DIDN’T HAVE the courage to go in and pay my respects before my father’s photo. I formally presented my condolence money at the entrance, took a step back behind the other funeral guests who were just then arriving, and retreated to the hallway. A young man dressed in black came up to me with a friendly look on his face. I reluctantly let him lead me into the crowded room where people were eating. No one took any notice of me. Of course, it wasn’t the sort of place where people show curiosity toward others, but then I realized that I was no longer so fat as to be conspicuous. I thought I’d just sit near the entrance briefly and leave right away, but the young man in charge of the funeral arrangements politely asked me to sit further inside. There was an empty seat in the far corner. I sat and stared blankly for a moment at the liquor bottles and food that were set out on the table.

  A middle-aged woman with a white pin in her hair came to me carrying a bowl of soup on a tray. She set the bowl in front of me and gave me a friendly look; the whites of her eyes were bloodshot. I assumed she was related to the deceased.

  “Have some soup and rice,” she said. “It’ll warm you up.”

  The spicy aroma pricked at my nose, while the white grains of rice floating in the oily red broth already had me excited. But instead of picking up a spoon, I quickly opened a soju bottle so that the grief-stricken woman with her kindly air wouldn’t feel embarrassed that I hadn’t touched the food. Other guests kept coming in, making it awkward to get up, so I just went on drinking soju. The soup cooled quickly.

  Almost all of the tables were filled except for mine and, as
luck would have it, it seemed to be reserved for relatives. All my life, I’d had almost no relationship with any extended family members. Ever since I was young, my mother didn’t like outings with her family, where they got together and attacked each other with unwanted advice. Here, my father’s relatives greeted each other warmly, remarking on how long it had been, and after briefly shedding tears, set about sharing food and drink while talking loudly about all kinds of things. I’d always imagined the people of my father’s world. All the adults would be dignified and warm-hearted, and the children would be innocent and bright. But these people who were gathered to mourn my father were just normal people, like everyone else I knew. The wrinkles on their faces evoked both joy and sorrow, and they had a weary look about them, like they led ordinary lives, finding comfort in the little things or putting on brave fronts, just like the rest of us. There were also quite a few fat people. Maybe that was why no one looked my way. It didn’t matter. They didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them.