Short Stories
vol.8The Chili Pepper Sisters（2/5）
The other day, Little Sister had spent hours mumbling about the differences between waegyoja and kochu. Elder Sister didn’t put much faith in any of what she said. There were lots of peppers hanging in the shade of leaves with nothing to do but pass on legends of uncertain origin. Elder Sister believed knowledge was of little or no use to any of them. Her younger sister was still naive in so many ways. Elder Sister knew that eventually she would have to teach her “don’t learn, don’t think, just accept your natural feelings”?words of wisdom in the world of chili peppers.“Elder Sister?” “Hmmn?” “That house over there with the red hollyhocks; isn’t that where our owner lives?”
When the wind lifted the leaf drooping over her, Elder Sister could see the house. It was surrounded by a whitewashed earthen wall, and had a roof missing a few tiles.The curve of the roof seemed almost too graceful for a farmhouse. She knew the saying went that the roof curved upwards at the edges so that anyone who slipped from the tip would be flung out into the sky.
Then she remembered back when she and her sister had just begun to grow out of their flowers.Someone had jumped from that roof to their death. It was just a few days before the hollyhocks began to bloom. The young wife of the farmer was pregnant with the child of another man. She had jumped stomach-first onto the rows of bottles lined up in the yard,
hit her head and died.
When the still-green younger sister had heard about this, she had shown almost no emotion.So she jumped? was all she had to say. She was more interested in the jumping than the falling part.
It’s so sad, Elder Sister had mumbled, but her sister just leaned into the breeze and ignored her.
“Yes, indeed,” Elder Sister responded, returning to the original question.The 45-year-old man who lives there is our owner. He comes around occasionally, nibbles on one of us and then spits it out.” “Do you think he’s rich?” “Not a clue. All I can say is he has lots of bottles. He does a lot of bottling; mainly kimchee. Sometimes ginseng, dates, chestnuts, or garlic. I hear he stuffs spring chickens with it all, and then packs them in miso. Mainly in the winter. “Does he stuff the chickens with us, too?” “Goes without saying, Little Sister. He grinds fresh chili peppers into powder, spends a whole night stirring it into a paste, and then crams the stomachs full of it.” “Then what happens?” “I’m glad you asked that question. The pepper starts in the stomach and then seeps through the meat until it all has a savory flavor.” Elder Sister imagined the stomach of the young woman who jumped off the roof.
She wondered if her stomach had split open and sprayed out to fill dozens of bottles. But the woman had fallen inside the white wall, and Elder Sister couldn’t see inside to get a look at the bottles, no matter how hard she tried. Little Sister, my green little sister, as soon as you ripen and turn red, that man will come to harvest us. Until then, let’s just take it easy and enjoy hanging from the tree like this. Don’t dream about flying through the sky. Forget about Hideyoshi Toyotomi. Thinking’s not bad, but thinking too hard will bring out the han in you. And that will make you sad, she thought.