Returning

Returning

 Ahjin Shim

The man's mother poured out the pack of apples, without appearing any exasperation on her face. Contrast to that kind of moderate gesture, the shinning red apples are falling down with a mournful noise. The easily bruised and deeply broken sound echoes in the street. The woman watches the apples tumbling down the slope helplessly. Even though he wanted to buy only ten apples, she insisted on buying twenty……. The woman had a greed saying that his mother would like the apples as she would. The reason why his mother doesn't take the apples is just there are too many apples. The woman hopes to believe that.

The apples happen to scatter busily toward their own way without any considerance of the regretful gaze of the woman.

"Mother……."

The man who has expected his mother to give hospitality to the woman like him, looks at his mother in a flurry. His pupils with no focus under the short eyelashes reveal the incompetence from what someone who has misunderstood for a long time happens to understand for the first time. He is sincere and futile like a man who is eager to remember the phone number which he can never remember. The man's mother recites the common words which are not matched for her serious voice.

"It is possible over my dead body."

The woman runs after the traces of the apples which are tumbled down. Some go to the first alley and others go to the second alley so all of them have gone out of sight. As the road is curved, no more apples can be seen. The man's house is located on the area where is indifferently high and inclined too much. Out of the twenty apples, there is nothing remained at the woman's feet. The apples which the man's mother would liked disappeared in front of the woman whom the mother doesn't like. The woman realizes that she can never get married to him.

Three years have passed.

The man marries another woman whom his mother likes.

Nobody knows whether it is because that the man loves his mother more whom he has lived together for thirty years, or he laughs at his incapacity by himself, or he feels that love is worthless in his life. Anyway the man has left the woman. The woman doesn't blame him. She gets a little rough and just a bit stronger. The man gets his house far away from the mother's house.

Another three years have passed. The woman who's married to other man doesn't eat any apple. Because she doesn't eat apples, her family doesn't eat apples either. The woman can only see apples in her dream. The haughty apple which has hidden the brown bruise swallows the time of the woman who has awaken from her dream. Sometimes the woman carves the bruise in her chest that the apples had. And sometimes she drools over the crunchy texture that the apple might give. The woman who doesn't eat apples feels odd that the same general life like other person's is held on for herself.

One day after another ten years have passed, the man holds his mother's funeral in a hall affiliated with a university. The man who thinks of the woman in front of the portrait of his deceased mother doesn't regards himself as an immoral person. Suddenly the man wonders the chases of apples which were scattered over at the meeting day of his lover and his mother. Where have the apples, having flown like water down to the sloping road, gone? The man regrets that he hasn't started to find the apples more earlier. He feels pain under his ribs which might be split. Carved pain long time ago. The scent of chrysanthemum opens the retreat path of memory which has been ambiguous till so far. The man is encroached by his old memory nakedly. Even though he wears a hemp hat for mourning on his hair getting gray, but he is not good at hiding his feelings as before.

The man visits his mother's village which he ceased to visit for a while, to find the place which he bought apples sixteen years ago. But there is not the old fruit-store any more where used to have a lot of fruits. Instead, there are a green grocery where young bachelors sell vegetables, an organic product shop, and a small super market. The man drops into here and there to buy apples. He buys about twenty apples.

His mother's house which was seen in the distance is not dignified like it used to be. It looks discouraged, as if it has already known to be sold with an unreasonable price sooner or later. However, the road is still very steep and arrogant. The man looks around very carefully, expecting to find the apples that had disappeared sixteen years ago. One of the apples might knock the sleek windows of his house. One of the apples might hide in the bookstand of his office where he obtained an especially quick promotion. And one might roll over, pretending to see nothing, by the man who had sexed or eaten dinner with the woman he married. An apple might have stopped its exhausted step at the shoes of him who'd found a profound and secluded star in the sky. Apples, inevitably, might hang around the man with repetition of appearance and disappearance. The man goes uphill and flashes upon the apples which would get lost between pale streets.

The man drops an apple from where his mother and the woman have been together. The fat and bouncy fruits are scratched in an instant following the road. For a little the apples seem to go to only one way, but immediately they scatter into a thousand ways. They are all urgent as running away from a contemptible life. There are apples, flurry, timid, running down the road. There are apples that vanish through small alleys. The alleys are too many to be bored, and the paths are curved profoundly. The man's goodness and ponderosity, meticulosity and lightness are shown on the road straightly. The man becomes angry for a moment. But he cannot resent the apples that aren't left around him for long. The man calls out the woman's name in a low, gloomy tone.

The woman is watching an unpopular movie by herself. She drinks her coffee, which is limited to only one cup a day because of the inflammation of her stomach. After all her family is sleeping, the woman listens to the story of the leaves that are wavering outside the porch window. She sees a dock-tailed cat on the flower bed, while she runs out in a hurry. She sorrowfully cries on a day when she has trimmed her nails and put on a beautiful makeup. Every day like this, she thinks about the apples that disappeared following the road. She imagines about the speed of the rolling apples, remembers the unknown road's vagueness, and is pestered by the coldness of the dead end. The woman tries not to forget where the apples are scattered upon in her whole life. That is why the woman does not eat apples.

The woman's friends looks at her funny because she wouldn't eat any apples. The woman's children were ashamed of her. Her husband often lost his temper with her because of eating no apples. The woman just eluded all these things easily. Because there's nothing more heavier than her regret in this world. Being perverse, hiding behind rationalization, or being unable to eat food out of despair, apples were what she could never forget.

Ten years have passed from the day that the man scattered the apples again to collect them. The woman didn't know, but it was enough time for the man. But the assumption that the woman doesn't know is only available if one does not consider the thing over her unconsciousness. The woman might have known where all the scattered apples meet together again finally.

Now the man and the woman are aged enough not to regard the routine surrounded with which shouldn't be in such way.

The woman decides to go to the house where the man and his mother had lived in. Since the nearly buildings have grown taller, the man's house which was seen then down the street doesn't appear yet. The woman determines to go through a small alley towards the man's house, instead of the main road. There is two neighboring stores selling fruits with apples. She passes a dressmaker's where a mannequin is standing with clothes and a hat as red as apples. When the woman turns the corner and sees the main road, she goes into another small alley across. She passes a few houses with the crabapple tree pots on their fence. The small hard particles are shining in right scale. When she reaches the skirt of the alley connected to the main road, she can see a playground which has a theme of apples. The road where the woman is walking is filled with strong apple's scent. The woman's heart is beating more than when she walked this road 26 years ago, as a 26 year old lady. Although she has passed only two small alleys now she can anticipate what's on the path that she will walk on. Even if you don't complain, cry, or exclaim in sorrow, there is a thing you can know. There is an age when you can do that. The woman can know that in this path all the apples that scattered into a thousand ways have met again. The woman laughs like the white apple flower.

Where the man, woman, and the man's mother have been standing is now occupied by a graceful apple tree. Red apples that have hidden their bluish color look at the woman boldly. The woman dyes her old and harsh skin reddish, because of these unshy eyes. Even though they took detour round back the road for a long time, the man and the woman would nod their heads because it wouldn't be too late. The woman bites on a small apple. The apple that finally returns to the woman through eternal recurrence, tastes like nostalgia.