“Where has Mother gone?” I asked her with a straight face, wondering where she had emerged from.
My third sister jumped up with a scream in the middle of the room: “Stop your dirty tricks! You’re an odd one to put on the face of savior. It’s disgusting! You’re the one who’s sick! And you mistake me as the one! Who’s not clear about such things? In this corridor of ours, this disastrous passage, such soul-stirring changes are taking place, don’t you feel it? We’d be overjoyed if you left us! Yet you never leave; you’re stuck here…”
It was obvious that Mother had disappeared. Why should they remain so straight-faced and deny it? A living being should be seen and touched, yet mother could be neither of these. But whenever I raised the issue, they blew up. Their temper was definitely getting worse.
When I stepped into the kitchen, a large black figure emerged from the cistern. The soaking creature howled at me, “Look out!” It turned out to be the fiancé. How could he hide in the cistern? And what a coincidence that he rose up to threaten me just at the moment when I entered the kitchen. There must have been some ulterior motive there. “I’m a doctor.” Dripping wet, he stood erect and continued. At the same time, he kept poking my cheeks with his wet finger: “Your whole family has that complicated syndrome. Without my care, God knows what misery you would be living in. People in dire straits all want to save face, and they pretend that nothing has happened. When I was living above you, I could hear your third sister hit her head against the bed frame in pain. The reason I stamped on the floor so hard was to reduce her pain, in fear that she might run upstairs and have a fit. You’re the sickest of all your family. I’ve been watching your behavior all the time. I had been hidden in the water for more than two hours when you entered the kitchen. I’m shivering with cold.” His eyes grew dim, and he started sneezing, one after another, until my third sister rushed in and carried him off like a gust of wind blowing away a fallen leaf.
Father had been spreading the rumor that he left home because of unbearable oppression. He also said he had been living on fish and shrimp, but it wasn’t true, because he sneaked back home to steal food. It wasn’t even discreet stealing but brazen robbery. Though at every theft, they all pretended not to notice. They played their roles so well that I was tempted to think they had trouble with their eyesight. Maybe they were able not to see something — for instance, father pilfering food — if they didn’t want to see it. On the other hand, they could always see something, for instance, our disappeared mother, if they wanted to see it. Therefore, they discriminated against people with eyes like mine. Sunglasses once commented about me, “It’s horrifying for a person to develop such an unfortunate temperament as his.”
For several days, I’d felt terribly dizzy. I dared not look at people, or even look out the window. Wrapping my head in a cotton-padded quilt, I had lain in bed for three days and three nights. The fourth day, I supported myself by leaning against the wall and moved to the door muddleheadedly. I stood there clutching the doorframe. In the wind, everything was tilted and had several silhouettes. It was impossible to see anything clearly. Under that dead tree sat my mother. She had her nylons peeled down and was scratching her swollen feet. Because of the wind, her white hair stood toward the sky. She looked like a primitive figure. “Mo-ma!” I called out in a funny way. She turned her head toward me. I saw an unfamiliar, vague face. This was a young woman. “Your illness is serious. You’ve had that disease for a long time. It started from inside, and the hope for recovery is slim. You should keep this fact covered up.” She made a resolute gesture with a sneer.
My mouth felt very heavy, and the wind was so noisy I couldn’t hear my own voice. So I shouted, “I can’t see anything clearly! My head has a bellowing inside! You are young, so why is your hair all white?”
“That’s the problem with your eyes,” she sneered viciously. “From now on, just don’t use your eyes anymore. It’s much better that way. Your dizziness is caused solely by the eyes. I have a relative who is suffering from the same disease. He used his eyes so much that eventually his eyeballs fell out. Since you can’t see things anymore, you have to admit it as a defect. Ambition will lead to no good ending.”
I remembered that red snake berries once grew along the wall. Bending low and closing my eyes, I could feel them with my trembling fingers.
The sky was dim; everything underneath it looked like some kind of fluid. Three white geese flew through the mist like swimmers, then in one white flash they all disappeared. My finger touched a snail. My heart quivered, and my body was covered with goose bumps. Forcing my eyes open, I saw the woman fall back, farther and farther away. My eyeballs expanded so fast that I felt they might drop out of their sockets.
“I’ve also been sick,” she waved her hand at last. “You’ve seen that my feet are swollen like carrots. I feel terrible every time I touch them … I’ve been taking extra precautions to hide it.”
“You, go lie down.” My third sister jabbed my back and said with boredom, “Your spine is like a snake in puberty.”
Half conscious, I felt my way back to bed and covered myself with the quilt. Even inside the quilt, I could still hear the noise of my sister rummaging through chests and cupboards and also the howling and crying of her fiancé being chased and beaten. My third sister was getting more and more unbridled daily. She let down her hair and wore shorts and T-shirts. She beat my quilt with a broom. I had never thought she possessed such strength. In fact, her asthma was only one of her little dramas made up out of nowhere. She always succeeded at whatever she involved herself in. I curled up inside the quilt, soaking with sweat, waiting for the fit to die down.
It was getting dark, and I still couldn’t get up. I dug out a broken mirror and looked into it. I saw a vague lump of a face, with two reddened balls rolling around in it. They must have been my eyeballs. I tossed the mirror aside. It crashed on the concrete floor with an irritating sound.
In the dim red light the fiancé’s round face appeared. It had a gray lining. His tongue flickered in and out, as if playing a new trick. I listened carefully and heard his voice.
“Why are you lying down? The situation in the family is very complicated. You must beware of pine moths. I’m surprised that when I was living in the temple with your father, I felt much more relaxed. Now I’m shaking with fright, in fear of stepping on a pine moth. They are crawling everywhere. Often when you’re about to fall asleep, you’ll find one hidden in your quilt. When the old fellow brought back that pine branch, I anticipated such an unsolvable problem today. It’s been one week that your third sister has been eliminating those poisonous insects. Our quilt has been ruined completely by the beatings. She is never merciful, and she has a stony heart…” As he spoke, he lost his concentration.
“Do you think I have glaucoma?” Breathing with difficulty, I saw him melt into a shadow.
“Ahmm, in the temple, one heard the seeds of the Chinese parasol tree drop to the ground every night. Your father will never come back. He’s got what he wanted, and now he’s boasting about himself to the proprietress.”
The very night when the fiancé warned me about the pine moths, I was attacked by them. They crawled into my quilt and nestled close to my legs, waist, arms — like a carpet full of needles. Turning on the light, I peeled them away and threw them out the window. Yet hardly had I lain down than they were with me again. They rustled; they pricked. I felt dizzy with pain. So I turned the light on again, and peeled them off, and threw them out, again and again. I was exhausted, but still couldn’t sleep. In the morning, I found no pine moths but only skin made raw from scratching.