Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee

Author:Chang-Rae Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

The Korean restaurant had two floors. The main floor was for casual diners, lone businessmen and couples and families. The upstairs was reserved for quieter meals and private parties. The tables were all large enough for a small metal hollow to be fitted in their centers. When you order kalbi or bulgogi, a man brings a tin of red-hot coals to set inside the pit of the table. He then places over it a cast-iron grill. The waitress brings a platter of the marinated meat and starts cooking it. She leaves and then comes back with a huge tray of side plates, prepared vegetables and shellfish and seaweed and four or five kinds of kimchee. A basket of fresh lettuce, hot bean paste. Covered metal bowls of rice. She brings Korean beer. A bubbling stone crock of fish stew. She brings more plates, none larger than a hand, and soon the table is completely covered. There must be almost twenty plates. The Korean table is a lesson in plates. You finish the grilling yourself, the way you like it, and then wrap the sweetened meat with rice and paste in leaf lettuce, and eat quickly with your hands.

The hostess appeared from the coatroom and greeted us with bows. She took our coats. John Kwang walked a few steps with her and said something I couldn’t hear, but she nodded and then led us to an upstairs room.

She was very lovely. Beautifully colored, if this can be said, the blackness of her hair, the faint blush of her cheek, her lips. And there was a serenity to her expression which I could not decide on, whether it was the face of someone simply a little tired or quelling a sadness. It must be the obvious keeping of secrets that I find so attractive. I watched her as she ascended. Her hair was pulled back and held in a tight bun. She wore a traditional Korean costume, the shortened brocade vest and billowing long skirt in bright yellow and red silk and rainbow bands around the oversized sleeves. It wasn’t an outfit for working, by any means, though the woman moved easily in it.

The hostess pushed open a wood-and-paper sliding screen to the private room, and inside there was a low Korean-style table and sitting mats and a central ceiling vent for the grill smoke. She bowed again and took away our shoes. I realized she had not spoken a word to us.

Soon afterward a man wearing a suit came in, speaking effusively in Korean. He carried a tray of porcelain shot glasses and a small bottle of soju, clear liquor made from potatoes. The man, who I realized was the manager and owner, was saying how honored he was for Master Kwang to have come in to his fledgling establishment. He wanted the Master and his protégé to be special guests of his tonight, and hoped the house cuisine would be to our taste.

Kwang tried to protest but the manager insisted by pouring out two glasses of soju for us.

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