I Have the Right to Destroy Myself

by Young-Ha Kim

  "That was a game," Judith says, breaking the silence. The windshield is again covered in thick snowdrifts, and the inside of the car returned to its pitch-black state. "When I slept with you for the first time, I mean. Remember I was eating a lollipop? I knew you were looking at me. So I decided to play a game and see whether I would win you over while I was eating candy, or afterward. I decided that if you came over to me while I was eating it, I would live with you, and if you came to me after I was done, I would live with K. Fun, huh?"

  She rolls down the window. A cold gust and snow rush in. She reaches up to the top of the car, grabs a fistful of snow, and rolls up the window. She turns on the light.

  "I just thought of something fun to do," she says, packing the snow into a small ball, the size of a golf ball. She parts her legs, giggling. The snowball slides up inside of her. She still has a lollipop in her mouth. She shivers. Her brow is furrowed for a long time, as if she can still feel the snow on her skin.

  ***

  That day, when C saw Judith's left hand undoing the button of her shorts and sliding inside, he stood up. She didn't stop, her right hand curled around the lollipop stick, her left touching herself. C didn't know where to go. He stood there for a while, watching her movements become faster and her expression change. It seemed that a very long time had passed. She opened her eyes. Their eyes met. She called him over. He went to her, and she pointed to her back. He held her from behind. Even then, she was writhing violently. He worried that she might be going insane. After a while, she relaxed in his arms. He laid her on the sofa and inserted his dick inside of her. She sucked her lollipop, bored, even as he thrusted. He came before she finished her candy. He immediately stood up and went to take a shower. He faintly remembers hearing her laughter behind him and, for some reason, wanting to listen to Mozart.

  The fuel gauge shows that there's only a quarter of a tank left. They will freeze to death when the gas runs out. C turns down the heat. The snow isn't stopping. It's coming down heavily, like the fake snow used in movies. Judith is touching up her makeup, using the mirror on the sunshade.

  "Why do you bother fixing your makeup?" C asks.

  "I have nothing else to do."

  "We're running out of gas."

  "Are we going to die here?" she asks, penciling in her eyebrows. She looks serious, probably unsatisfied with the eyebrows she's drawing.

  "It's possible."

  "Cool. We'll be smothered to death by snow."

  "Maybe we should walk and try to find a village. There must be something if we walk along the road."

  "I don't want to." Done with her eyebrows, she's touching up her lips.

  "Why not?"

  "It's cold out."

  "When we run out of gas it's going to be cold in here, too. And aren't you hungry?"

  "A little, but I can wait. Turn on the radio."

  Finished with her makeup, she smells like an apple. After his mother's body was embalmed it also smelled of apple. Apples emit an intense scent as they rot. On the radio, a dance music group is laughing with a female DJ. She's talking about the weather. "I hear that a snowstorm has hit Yeongdong and Yeongseo. Are you going to go skiing?"

  "It's hard to find time because we're so busy. We all really like to ski but we haven't been in a while."

  "Oh, that's too bad!" The DJ sounds hyper. "Okay, let's hear a song, then we'll continue our conversation." A song by the group that had just been joking around comes out of the radio. Compared to the upbeat rhythm, the lyrics are dull, going on about first love.

  "Do you remember your first guy?" C leans his face on the steering wheel.

  "No. It was one guy out of two, but I don't exactly remember which one it was. I was sixteen and the three of us lived together for about a month. I ended up sleeping with both but I can't really remember who was first. I'm always like that. I never remember anything once it's over. I mix up movie plotlines, and a lot of times I watch a video I've seen before because I don't remember the title. I guess there hasn't been anything worth remembering. But sometimes weird things stay in my memory for a long time. TV shows like Heo Yeong-ho's North Pole Expedition or Animal Kingdom. I don't like dramas or novels. The only thing I watch religiously is Animal Kingdom. Did you know the lioness is in charge of hunting, but the male lion always eats first? After the males are full, the females and the cubs eat. My mom was the breadwinner in my family, too. Maybe because of that my dad always crept around like a loser. Once he was caught sleeping with a bar girl and my mom clobbered his face with an ashtray. But now I can't really remember either of their faces."

  "Why did you leave home?"

  "At school my teacher asked me why I didn't have my book with me. I told him my dad ripped it up, and he asked me why. So I said he rips up books whenever he drinks, and he told me I was lying. I yelled that I wasn't, and he hit me, saying that I was being rude. I didn't go back to school after that. The teacher called when I missed classes several days in a row, and then my mom beat the hell out of me. So I ran away. It was great. Nobody bothered me and I could drink and buy clothes and sleep with boys."

  "Don't you miss your mom?"

  "You're just like everyone else, asking that kind of question. You don't understand. Don't ask things like that. I hate people who ask questions. Guys who ask questions have a lot to hide. Instead of saying something about themselves, they always want someone else to talk, to reveal something about themselves."

  The radio weather forecast says that over thirty centimeters of snow are predicted to fall before it stops.

  The snowfall has become heavy by the time he gets to Sadang Station. K parks and ducks into a makeshift bar, set up on the side of the street. "One bottle of soju and some boiled squid, please," K orders.

  The squid is lying quietly on the plate. It's tame, its body cut in horizontal strips. K remembers the time he went to Jumunjin with Se-yeon. Before sunrise the squid boats came into the brightly lit docks. The squid, thrown in heaps on the docks, moved about, tangled together. A few squirted black ink. He and Se-yeon drank soju, eating raw strips of squid. She seemed to be at home at the harbor. He asked her if she was from Jumunjin, but she didn't answer. She smelled like C's lotion. He asked her if she'd slept with his brother. She nodded. The scent of C's lotion cut through the fishy smell of the ocean, and K started to feel sick to his stomach.

  There aren't any customers in the bar. Perhaps it's because of the snow. K throws back two shots, then eats some of the squid. The bar where he first met Se-yeon is somewhere around here. He and the other drivers had gone there for karaoke. The five men entered a room and ordered beer, and Se-yeon came in to peel fruit for them. She peeled apples awkwardly. She looked young, despite her dark purple eye shadow. She didn't laugh once. The drivers got pissed and cursed at her, a woman selling a good time who didn't laugh. The owner of the karaoke bar came in and cursed at her, too. He dragged her outside, and they could hear him slapping her. A bit later, when she came back in, she laughed endlessly. She laughed at a lame joke, when someone groused about the taxi dispatcher, and when someone said that the Korean soccer team was likely to get to the World Cup. The drivers got pissed again. Someone called her a crazy bitch. She laughed at that, too, and was dragged out again.

  After all the drivers went home, K went back to that place, paid, and took her out. It's my birthday today, Se-yeon said. So they drank some more and slept together in a motel near Sadang Station.

  "Why didn't you laugh at first?" K wondered.

  "Because nothing was funny."

  "Then why did you laugh afterward?"

  "Because it was all funny then."

  She said it was her birthday whenever he went to see her, so each time they drank and slept together.

  That very morning, she'd said it was her birthday again. So K had sex with her before going to work. He gets aroused when she says it's her birthday.

  "I don't have any more Chupa Chups. This is the last one," she said during sex.

 
"I'll get you some when I get off work," K told her.

  In the bar, K fumbles with the bag of Chupa Chups next to him. He takes one out, peels off the wrapper, and puts it in his mouth.

  But where is she now? Is she with C? C always takes everything. K is used to this. Some people take things as if that's the most natural act in the world. When he thinks about his older brother, all of his memories are about having things stolen from him. When he was very young, before he started going to school, they had a puppy. The puppy was cute, with fluffy brown fur. It was always in C's arms. K tried hard to win its affections, but the puppy would always run back to his brother. Even to this day, K doesn't know why; he doesn't want to know.

  That puppy disappeared one summer day. After the rainy season it was found in the mouth of the drainpipe coming down from the mountain. The adults said that it must have crawled into the narrow sewer and was unable to come back out again. Fluffy had rotted, his guts burst, in the corner of a drain for an entire summer. Nobody removed his body. K couldn't understand C, who was able to finish his bowl of rice the night they found Fluffy. K couldn't eat for two days.

  Their father was in the military, so they always lived in the military compound. Whether he hated or loved him, C was K's only friend. But he had to pay a price to play with C. C would always want to bet when they played Chinese chess or children's Go. C always won. Even if K really won, somehow C ended up winning anyway. Those who always come out ahead in the end are a different breed. The foreign stamps that a cousin gave K soon became C's. K remembers the German stamps with cars on them. He wants to see them again. And butterflies. C's butterflies, pinned and rendered into ash.

  Once, hearing these stories, Se-yeon remarked, "You guys must have fought a lot."

  "No, by the time I entered middle school I never fought with C."

  "Why not?"

  "When our father beat me for my bad grades, smoking, or because I ran away, C always stopped him. He would calm our father down and come to talk to me gently. Each time C convinced me to shape up. I always thought he was the only one who understood me, and when I left home I missed C the most. Still, when I think about him I get the feeling there's something a little off. You have to be careful with him..."

  Se-yeon giggled. "Stupid, those guys are the scariest. They're the most frightening customers I have at the bar. These assholes look after me when I'm in trouble. They hold me when I'm tired and wipe my tears when I cry. But they're the ones who get mad when I eat a lollipop during sex. They try to get away with not paying for motels, and in the morning they tell me they don't have cab fare. Most often, the guys who bought me a meal when I was really broke were the violent ones, dragging me by the hair and all that."

  But it's true that K missed his brother when he left home five years ago. Around the time he stopped missing C, he started fixing cars. He lived in a room in the corner of a garage, a huge poster of a Lamborghini hanging from his wall. During the day his entire body was coated in grease as he changed the oil in people's cars, but he spent his evenings dreaming. He read and reread the automotive magazines distributed free at garages. He memorized the specs of the Mercedes 500. He was contemptuous of the cars he fixed for customers. He found his customers laughable for bringing in cars that could only hit 180 kilometers per hour and fussing about small problems.

  Once he saw a Porsche. The man who got out of the car sauntered into the shop, bought antifreeze, and left. He was in his early thirties. How could he drive a Porsche and have such a nonchalant expression on his face? K couldn't understand it. When the man turned on the engine after putting the antifreeze in the trunk, that powerful purr was different from any other engine he'd heard. He realized that he wanted to kill someone for the first time in his life. He was so shocked by this impulse that he tore up his poster of the Lamborghini into bits that night, sobbing.

  K is drinking his second bottle of soju. The squid is still mostly untouched. There are only two older men drinking in the bar. They are talking about Dok Islet. The balding man is saying that Japan should be bombed. The other man agrees, and adds that Korea should hurry up and develop nuclear weapons. The snow starts falling harder. K takes another Chupa Chups and puts it in his mouth. He sees double—two owners of the bar. Either his right or left eye has shifted to the outer corner of its socket. He momentarily sees the world askew.

  "Isn't it uncomfortable to see double?" Se-yeon asked curiously one time, studying his wayward eye.

  "When I'm comfortable, the muscle in my eye relaxes and one eye rolls to the side. It's been like this since I was a kid. When I concentrate on it, it comes back to normal. Or else everything looks overlapped. But it doesn't bother me. I just choose one of the images and go with that."

  Se-yeon shook her head as if she couldn't believe it.

  "Nobody knows, other than my family. When I'm with other people I make sure to tense my eyes," K explained.

  "Doesn't it make you tired?"

  "Life is tiring. I'm used to it, anyway."

  "If you don't show it to anyone, why do you show it to me?"

  "Because of your Chupa Chups."

  K closes his eyes and downs the rest of the soju. He pays and goes into a phone booth. He dials slowly. Nobody answers. Not Se-yeon, not C—nobody answers his calls. The world doubles again. K yanks the Chupa Chups from his mouth and flings it outside the phone booth. He weaves over to his car and sits in the driver's seat. Snow is gathering on his windshield. He turns on the engine and the radio. The weather reporter is saying that mountain villages are stranded because of the snowstorm in Yeongdong and Yeongseo, and the Taebaek and Jungang Railway Lines are out of service. They read names of people missing in a landslide. Some places don't have electricity or telephone service; schools are being closed. K shifts into first gear and steps on the gas. He hears the whirring noise of the wheels turning in vain, then the Stella TX starts to move.

  "We're almost out of gas," C says.

  "I want to go to the North Pole. They say there's only snow and ice—all white. And polar bears wander around and strong winds blow up to thirty meters per second. In the summer, it's always bright out and the North Pole itself is always floating around on the ocean. Isn't that cool? And sometimes the ice cracks and sinks."

  "I'm not kidding. We're stranded," C insists. "It's going to keep snowing and the roads are blocked. We have to go now if we want to live."

  "I think all guys are just nervous when they have to stay in one place. I mean, even when they drink they like to go from bar to bar. Why bother leaving? I like it here. It's cozy, like a grave. Have you ever been inside a coffin? When I was in middle school we went on a church field trip and we were all supposed to take turns lying in a coffin. And then we had to talk about what that was like. I think they wanted us to experience death early to make us believe in Jesus more. What do you think I said afterward? I said it was so comfortable. And it really was so cozy that I didn't want to leave. I think a nun asked me if I was scared that I would go to hell. I don't think there is such a thing. But I do want to go to the Arctic. I would like to be bored for eternity. And the North Pole, it doesn't even move."

  "There is no North Pole. Didn't you say that the whole thing is a block of ice that floats around on the ocean? If nobody else can find it, you won't get there, either."

  The engine shuts off. The lights blink, then fade away. The white LCD of the radio disappears. Only the red anti-theft light blinks periodically. Everything turns pitch-black, like in a blackout drill. It becomes completely quiet. Neither C nor Judith says a word. The cold starts to crawl toward them, like an army of white ants.

  "Let's go," C suggests.

  "Not yet."

  "When?"

  "I want to stay a little longer. Hey, do you want to have sex?"

  He hears her skirt go down, rustling. Judith pulls his shoulders toward her. He climbs over the emergency brake, squeezing next to her. He settles into the passenger seat and she straddles him, facing out. Holding her fro
m behind, he starts having slow, tedious sex with her. Sometimes her head bumps the ceiling and snow falls off the windshield, but they still can't see anything. A quiz show plays on the radio, which is still working even though the car is turned off. The first caller says the answer is Antonio Banderas. The DJ perkily says it's the wrong answer. He tells the caller that he'll still give him a bookstore gift certificate, and the guy is thrilled. The second caller guesses Leonardo Di-Caprio. The DJ screams that it's the correct answer, clapping. The prize is a CD player. The winner says she'll give it to her sister as a wedding present.

  "Why aren't you coming?" Judith asks, at the end of a long, dull thrust. C remembers he's having sex with her.

  "I'm not turned on."

  "Then try choking me. That'll turn you on."

  C starts to pump away again, choking her. He hears her strain for breath a few times, and he becomes nervous, worrying that she might die. He comes quickly. She coughs a few times, then climbs into the backseat.

  "You'll never be able to kill anyone," she announces. "There are two kinds of people. Those who can kill and those who can't. The second kind is worse. K's the same way. You guys seem different, but deep down, you're identical. And people who can't kill can't ever truly love."

  C falls asleep mulling over her words. He's tired and spent.

  He dreams one dream after another, only remembering the last one. On a white snowy field, a neon sign blinks: "North Pole." The sign brightens one second, dims the next, announcing the North Pole like it's Las Vegas. As he walks toward the sign, he sees Judith and a polar bear having sex. C shoots the polar bear. With a bang, the bear falls over and Judith glares at him resentfully. When he goes to flip the bear over, it has changed into K. K is bloody, his eyes wide open and glaring. Naked, Judith stabs C's eyes with a long knife. He sees her knife coming out of the back of his head, all the way through his skull. How can he see the tip of the knife coming out of the back of his head, when his eyes are in front? Even in his dream he tries to figure this out.