Gwangju, Jungangno-Street
Scene 3
What Maille could see more than anything else on his arrival in Gwangju was fish. Although the town lay some 60 km away from the coast, it had hardly any grocery shops that did not have yellow fish hanging out to dry. Tied into bundles with glowing golden ribbons and hung up in tidy rows, they looked like weird shoals hovering in the air – as beautiful as dead.
«Cabbage», Marie had said, revealing clearly how little the palate interested her. In Korea, especially in the Gwangju region where Tatjana’s tiger had his factory, this can only mean one thing: Kimchi, the national vegetable – the cabbage that is fermented for, depending on the recipe, hours, days, months or years. Maille had tried to make kimchi himself in a large clay dish. The kimchi pot had emitted strong gases - so much so that a friend of his cook had taken a pot-shot at it with a gun one dark evening. The man had taken it for a stinking wild animal, apparently after having tasted Odette’s cool coconut cocktail. Maille did not want to taste the pot-shot kimchi; he was, admittedly, a bit conservative.