The last time I killed
someone was 25 years ago – or was it 26 – anyway, it was around then. The force
that drove me up until then was not the impulse that people would generally
think of, like a sexual perversion or something. It was regret. The hope that a
more perfect pleasure was possible. I repeated this to myself whenever I buried
a victim.
I’ll do better next
time.
I stopped killing
because that hope disappeared.
*
I kept a diary.
Level-headedness, I think I needed that. I thought that only if I recorded the
mistakes I made and how they made me feel would I avoid repeating the same
painful mistakes again. Examinees make note of their errors. I recorded in
minute detail every action and feeling related to my murders.
It was pointless.
It was too difficult to
make sentences. It wasn’t like I was writing a masterpiece, it was just a
diary, so why was it so hard? I couldn’t express the ecstasy and shame I felt.
It was a dirty feeling. Almost all the books I read I did so in Korean language
classes. They didn’t have the sentences I needed. So I started to write poetry.
It was a mistake.
The poetry teacher at
the culture centre was a male poet about my age. In our first lesson, he said
this with a solemn expression on his face and made me laugh.
“A poet’s is an
existence of catching words like a skilled killer and finally murdering them.”
By then, I’d already
gone hunting, “caught and killed” dozens of people and buried them in the
ground. But I didn’t think of what I had done as poetry. Murder is closer to
prose than poetry. Anyone could understand it if they tried. Murder is a more
troublesome and foul job than you would have expected.
Whatever the case, it’s
true that thanks to that teacher, I gained an interest in poetry. I developed
it so as not to feel sad, but I responded with humour.
*
I’m reading the Diamond
Sutra.
“Let your mind wander freely without abiding anywhere or in anything”
*
I went to poetry classes quite a long
time ago. I was going to kill him if the lecture was a disappointment, but fortunately
it was rather interesting. The teacher made me laugh several times and he even
praised my poems twice. So I let him live. He must have been living since then,
unaware that he was given those additional years. I read his latest anthology a
while ago and it was disappointing. Should I have just buried him then?
I wonder if there’s another genius
murderer like me, who has stopped killing, but still writes such accomplished
poetry. How audacious.
*
I’m falling over a lot these days. I
fall over riding my bike and I fall over stones on the road. I’ve forgotten a
lot. I put the kettle on about three times. Eunhui phoned to say she’d picked
up my prescription from the hospital. I got angry and yelled at her; Eunhui was
silent for a while, then she said,
“Something’s definitely wrong. It’s
obvious something’s happened to your head. It’s the first time I’ve heard you
angry, dad.”
Have I really never been angry before?
Eunhui hung up first while I stood there blankly. I grabbed the phone to
continue the unfinished conversation but I suddenly couldn’t recall how to
phone her. Do you press the call button first? Or do you press the numbers
first and then the call button? But what’s Eunhui’s number? No, I’m sure it was
something simpler than that.
It was frustrating. It was irritating.
I flung the phone across the room.
*
I didn’t know much about poetry so I just
wrote honestly about my murders. ‘Knife and bone’ – was that the title of my
first poem? The teacher said my poems were unique. He said the raw words and my
imaginings of death sharply portrayed the meaninglessness of life. He
repeatedly commented on my metaphors.
“What’s a ‘metaphor’?”
The teacher laughed – I didn’t like
that laugh – and explained what a ‘metaphor’ was. It’s what we call ‘biyu’ in
Korean.
Aha.
I’m sorry, but those weren’t
metaphors.
*
I’m holding the Diamond Sutra in my
hands. I’ve spread it open to read.
“Inside the air, there’s no substance,
no feeling, thought, will or consciousness, no eyes, ears, noses, tongues,
bodies or meaning, no shapes or sounds, smells, tastes, touch or awareness, no
limit to eyes, no limit to consciousness, no unknowns yet endless unknowns, no
old age and death yet endless old age and death, no pain, or causes for pain,
or loss of pain, or ways to get rid of pain, no wisdom, and no receipt.”
*
Have you really never learned poetry
before?” The teacher asked.
“Should I learn?” I asked back.
“No. If you learn wrong, you’ll end up
throwing away your style instead,” he replied. I said to him,
“Ah, I see. That’s lucky. There must
be lots of other things in life you can’t teach.”
*
I had an MRI. I lay down on an examination
table that looked like a white coffin. I went into the light. It was like a
kind of near death experience. I saw an illusion floating in the air, looking
down on me. Death is right beside me. I can tell. I’m going to die soon.
One week later, I did some kind of cognitive
test. The doctor asked and I answered. The questions were simple but the
answers were difficult. It felt like having to scoop out a fish from a water
tank and it suddenly disappearing the moment you grab it. Who is the president?
What year is it? Please say three of the words you just heard. What is 17 plus
5? I’m sure I know the answer. But it just doesn’t come to mind. I know but I
don’t? Does such a thing happen in the world?
I finished the test and met with the
doctor. His expression was hardly cheerful.
“It’s shrinking year by year.”
He pointed at the picture of my brain
taken by the MRI.
“It’s definitely Alzheimer’s. We’re
not yet certain what stage you’re at. It will take some time to find out.”
Eunhui sat next to me with her lips
pursed together, not uttering a word. The doctor said,
“Your memories will gradually
disappear. Your short-term and most recent memories will go. We can slow the
progress but we can’t stop it. Firstly, please make sure you take your
prescription as stated. Write things down and keep them on you. You might be
unable to find your own house later on.”
*
Essays of Montaigne. I’m re-reading
the yellowed paperback. I like this passage all over again, reading it now I’ve
aged.
“We’re ruining our lives with our fear
of death and we’re spoiling our deaths with our concerns about life.”
*
On our way back from the hospital, there
was an inspection. The policeman recognised us when he looked at our faces, so
he just let us go on. He was the youngest son of the union president.
“We’re doing an inspection because of
the murder. We’ve been doing it day and night for several days and it’s killing
me. Would a murderer really do as he pleases and go back in broad daylight?”
He said that in ours and the
neighbouring province, three women have died one after the other. The police
have concluded that it’s a serial killer. All three women were in their
twenties and on their way home. Their wrists and angles were bound. Since the
third victim appeared right after I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, it was only
natural that I questioned myself.
Was it me?
I looked at the calendar hanging on
the wall and picked out the assumed dates of the women’s kidnappings and murders.
I had an unquestionable alibi. It was a relief that it wasn’t me but it’s not
good that someone who randomly kidnaps and kills women has appeared in my area.
I reminded Eunhui about the murderer who could be loitering nearby. I told her
to take precautions. Never go out alone late at night. You’re finished the moment
you get into a man’s car. It’s dangerous to walk wearing earphones.
“Don’t worry so much.” As she went out
the door she added, “It’s only murder.”
*
These days, I’m writing down anything
I can. There have been times when I’ve come to my senses all confused in places
I don’t know and have only got home thanks to my name tag and address hanging
around my neck. Last week, some people took me to the police box. The policeman
greeted me with a smile.
“I see you’re back, sir.”
“You know me?”
“Of course. I know you well. I know
you better than you know yourself.”
Really?
“Your daughter will be here soon. We’ve
already phoned her.”
*
Eunhui graduated from the college of agriculture
and got a job in a nearby lab. She develops plant species there. She even
grafts two different types of plant together to make a new one. Wearing her
white lab coat, she practically spends the whole day at the lab; sometimes she
even works through the night. Plants have no concern over human commuting
hours. I think she sometimes has to fertilise them in the middle of the night.
They grow shamelessly, brazenly.
People think Eunhui’s my
granddaughter. They’re shocked when I say she’s my daughter. It’s because I
turned seventy this year, but Eunhui’s only twenty-eight. Of course, the person
most interested in this mystery was Eunhui. When she was sixteen, she was
learning about blood in school. I’m type AB but Eunhui’s type O. They’re blood
types that can’t appear between parent and child.
“How am I your daughter?”
Where possible, I do my best to speak
honestly.
“I adopted you.”
It must have been from then that
Eunhui grew further away from me. She seemed awkward, not knowing how to act
around me, and the gap between us widened. From that day onwards, the closeness
between Eunhui and I disappeared.
There’s something called Capgras Syndrome.
It’s an illness that develops when an abnormality occurs in the area of the
brain in charge of feeling intimacy. If you get this illness, you will
recognise those close to you, but you will no longer feel the intimacy. For
instance, a husband will suddenly suspect his wife. “You’ve got my wife’s face
and you act like her, but who the hell are you? Who told you to do this?” They
have the exact same face and they do the exact same things, but even so, they
feel like a stranger. They just seem unfamiliar. In the end, the patient has no
choice but to live on, feeling as though they’ve been exiled to an alien world.
They believe that those other people with the same faces are hiding their true
selves.
From that day onwards, Eunhui started
to treat this small world surrounding her, this family made up of just her and
me, with unfamiliarity. Even so, we lived together.
*
The bamboo grove out back rustles when
the wind blows. I start to feel dizzy accordingly. On days when the wind rages,
even the birds seem to keep quiet.
I bought up the woods with the bamboo
grove a while ago. I have no regrets about that purchase. I always wanted my
own forest. I go for walks there in the mornings. You can’t run in the bamboo
grove. You could die if you fall. The roots remain after you cut down the
bamboo and they’re extremely sharp and hard. So in the bamboo grove, you have
to walk looking down. As I listen to the sound of the leaves crunching beneath
my feet, I think about the bodies buried beneath. The corpses that shoot up
towards the sky as bamboo.
*
A young Eunhui asked.
“Then where are my real parents? Are
they alive?”
“They’re both dead. I got you from an
orphanage.”
Eunhui wouldn’t believe me. She searched
alone on the internet and even went to the council, but then locked herself in
her room for days. Then she accepted it.
“Did you know my real parents?”
“I met them but we weren’t that close.”
“What were they like? Were they good
people?”
“They were. They thought of you up
until their last moments.”
*
I’m frying tofu. I eat tofu for
breakfast, tofu for lunch, tofu for dinner. I pour oil in the pan and put in
the tofu. Once it’s cooked enough I turn it over. I eat it with kimchi. No
matter how severe my dementia gets, I’ll be able to make this on my own. My
tofu meal.
*
The minor collision was the start. It
was at a three-way intersection and the guy’s jeep was in front of me.
Recently, I’ve been losing my sight on a daily basis. It must be the Alzheimer’s.
For a moment, I couldn’t see the guy’s stationary car and I crashed into the
back of it. It was a jeep customised for hunting. The search lights on the roof
weren’t enough; there were three more footlights above the bumper. These cars
are customised so it’s possible to hose down the boot. There were two
batteries. In the hunting season, these guys always flock to the mountain
behind the town.
I got out of the car and approached
the jeep. He didn’t get out. Even the window was closed. I knocked on the
window.
“Hello, can you come out?”
He nodded and motioned me to just go.
It was strange. Shouldn’t he at least look at the rear bumper? I didn’t budge
and eventually he got out. He was in his early thirties and of a sturdy build;
he looked at the rear bumper absentmindedly and said it was fine. It wasn’t
fine. The bumper was caved in.
“Just go, mister. It’s always been
dented. It’s fine.”
“But just in case, we should exchange
contact details. You don’t want to regret it later.”
I handed over my contact details. He
wouldn’t take it.
“I don’t need it.” He spoke in an
emotionlessly cold tone.
“Do you live nearby?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he stared
straight into my eyes. They were like snake eyes. They were cold and cruel. I
was certain. We recognised each other then.
He wrote down his name and number on a
piece of notepaper. It was child-like writing. His name was Park Ju Tae. I
returned to the back of the jeep to double-check the damage. It was then that I
saw it. The drops of blood dripping out of the boot. And I felt it. His eyes on
me as I looked at the dripping blood.
If blood spills out of a hunting jeep,
people will assume there’s a dead deer or something inside. I started to
suspect that it was a human corpse. It was safer that way.
*
Who was it? A Spanish, no an
Argentinian writer. I can’t remember the author’s name now. Anyway, there was
this story in someone’s novel. An old writer met a young man while walking
along the riverside and they started talking on a bench. He realised later.
That young man he met at the riverside was himself. If I were to meet my
younger self like that, would I recognise him?
*
Eunhui’s mum was my final sacrifice.
On the way back after burying her in the ground, my car crashed into a tree and
overturned. The police said I was speeding and lost balance on the curve. I had
a second brain operation. At first I thought it was because of the medicine. I
was lying in the hospital room but my mind continued to feel peaceful and
strange. Before, I would feel unbearably irate whenever people made noise. The
sound of people ordering food, the sound of children laughing, the sound of
women chattering. I hated it all. But a peace suddenly came over me. I thought
it was normal to have an endlessly racing mind. It wasn’t. Like someone who had
suddenly gone deaf, I had to get used to this abrupt silence and serenity that
had come over me. Whether it was because of the shock from the accident, or the
doctor’s scalpel, something happened to my brain.
*
Words are gradually vanishing. My head’s
turning into a sea cucumber. It’s full of holes. It’s slippery. Everything’s
escaping. In the morning, I read the whole newspaper from start to finish. When
I’ve finished reading, it feels like I’ve forgotten more than I’ve read. I
read, even so. Whenever I read sentences, it feels like I’m being forced to
assemble a machine missing several essential parts.
*
I was after Eunhui’s mum for a long
time. She was working at the culture centre I used to visit. She had pretty
calves. Maybe it was because of all the poetry and sentences, but my heart went
weak. It was as though I was suppressing my urges of regret and rumination. I
didn’t want to be weak; I didn’t want to suppress the urges crawling inside me.
It felt like I was being pushed into a deep, dark cave. I started to want to
see if I was still the me I used to know. When I opened my eyes, Eunhui’s mum
was right in front of me – coincidence is often the start of misfortune.
So I killed her
But it was so difficult
It was disappointing
A murder with no pleasure at all.
Maybe something was already happening to me then. My second brain operation just
made me unable to change that.
*
In the morning, I saw an article in
the newspaper that said the community was in shock after another murder had
taken place. When was this murder? It seemed strange so I looked in my notes;
there was a record of the third murder, the one that had occurred before this.
Things are slipping my mind more and more these days. Things that I don’t write
down are like sand falling through my fingers. I noted down the report of the
fourth murder. A twenty-five year old student was discovered dead on a farm
road. Her arms and legs were tied and she wasn’t wearing any clothes. This time
too, the corpse was abandoned on the road after she had been kidnapped and
killed.
*
That guy Park Ju Tae didn’t contact
me. I caught sight of him several times, however. It was too frequent to be
coincidence. There must be other times when I’ve seen him not noticed him as
well. He stalks around my house like a wolf and watches my every move. Whenever
I approached to strike up a conversation, he would hide away before I could.
*
Maybe he’s after Eunhui.
*
I’ve restrained myself and let more
people live than I’ve killed. “No-one in the world does everything they want.”
My father always used to say this. I agree.
*
In the morning, I couldn’t recognise
Eunhui. I recognise her now. That’s lucky. The doctor said that Eunhui too
would soon vanish from my memory.
“Only my image will remain then.”
I can’t keep on an existence where I
know no-one. I’ve made a locket from a picture of Eunhui and I wear it round my
neck.
“Even so, it won’t be of any use. Your
short-term memories will go, you see,” the doctor said.
*
“Please just let my daughter live,”
Eunhui’s mum pleaded through her tears.
“I will. Don’t worry about that.”
I’ve kept my promise up to now. I always
hated people who made empty promises. So I did my best not to become such a
person. From now on though, it’s going to be a challenge. I’m writing this
again so I don’t forget it. I can’t let Eunhui die.
*
Back when I used to go to the culture
centre, the teacher did a class with one of Midang’s poems. It was a poem
called ‘wife’. On his wedding night, the husband went into the bathroom,
leaving his clothes hanging on the door handle, but he thought his wife was too
lustful so he ran away. Forty or fifty years later, he came back to that place
by chance and his wife was still sitting there, looking the same as on their
wedding night. He gave her a slight tap but she turned to ashes and crumbled.
The teacher and even the students made a fuss saying it was a really beautiful
poem.
I read it as a poem about a husband
who murdered his wife on their wedding night and escaped. A young man, a young
woman, and a corpse. How else could you read it?
*
My name is Kim Byong Su. I turned
seventy this year.
