by Un-su Kim
The clinic was small and very old. There was only one other patient, an elderly woman. The nurse seemed to have stepped away from the front desk. He peeked inside the half-opened door of the office to see an old man, around seventy, playing the card game Go-Stop online and cursing at the computer. ‘You idiot, why’d you take that card? Well, you ate shit, now you better shit it out.’ Reseng walked into the doctor’s office with his gun drawn.
‘I’ll leave once you stop the bleeding,’ Reseng said, making an effort to sound polite. ‘As long as you don’t call the police, no one will get hurt.’
The elderly doctor slid his reading glasses to the tip of his nose and looked Reseng up and down. Reseng pulled back one side of the coat to show him the knife. The doctor got up and walked over slowly. He eyed the coat for a moment, then pulled it back to study the wound.
‘Take off the coat and sit there.’
He gestured with his chin to an examination table at one end of the office. Reseng took off the Barber’s coat and hung it on the coat rack.
‘You’ll have to take that off too.’
The doctor was looking at the leather holster slung around Reseng’s shoulder. Reseng took off the holster and hung it next to the Barber’s coat. The doctor tossed a syringe, several bottles of medicine, a pair of scissors, antiseptic, gauze and bandages onto a tray and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. The equipment looked a little meagre for treating such a deep knife wound. But Reseng didn’t have much choice in the matter. He lay down on the table.
‘You going to point that gun at me the whole time?’ the doctor asked as he cut off Reseng’s shirt.
Reseng lowered the gun. The doctor soaked a piece of gauze in alcohol and disinfected the skin around the wound. Then he inserted the syringe into one of the medicine bottles.
‘I don’t need anaesthetic.’
‘It’s going to hurt.’
The doctor pressed the plunger to clear the syringe of air bubbles and tried to inject it next to the wound. Reseng raised his gun and aimed it at the doctor.
‘I said I don’t need anaesthetic. Or painkillers.’
The doctor stared at him.
‘This is an antibiotic.’
Reseng sheepishly lowered the gun. The doctor gave him the injection, then stared at Reseng for a couple of minutes without moving. Reseng gave him an incredulous look.
‘That wasn’t an antibiotic, was it?’
‘Hard to say. I might’ve mixed up the bottles.’
The doctor’s voice sounded surprisingly similar to Old Raccoon’s. Reseng let out a hollow laugh before he passed out.
The December sun beamed down into the hospital room. Reseng startled awake at the sunlight warming his face. An IV solution dripped slowly out of a bottle hanging above him. It took all of his strength to get out of bed. His shirt and pants were gone, and he was dressed in old-fashioned, blue-striped hospital pyjamas. Blood showed through the bandage around his stomach. Reseng pulled the IV needle out of his wrist and put on the Barber’s old coat hanging on the rack. When he came out into the hallway, he heard women’s laughter from another room. The doctor was still playing online Go-Stop in his office. Reseng went inside. The doctor looked up from the computer screen and stared at Reseng.
‘Woke up, huh?’ the doctor said.
Reseng bowed and asked, ‘Why didn’t you call the cops?’
‘What’s the point? They’d just be a headache, and I am too old for that kind of headache. You leaving now?’
Reseng nodded.
‘You know insurance won’t cover this.’
Reseng smiled. It was nice to meet someone with a sense of humour.
‘Thank you for your help. I’d like to say that I’ll repay your kindness next time, but to be honest, I don’t know if I’ll get that chance.’
The doctor took a shopping bag out from under his desk and handed it to Reseng. Inside were Reseng’s knife and gun, the leather holster and the Barber’s Mad Dog.
‘I know the owner of that coat. I was one of his regulars,’ the doctor said.
Reseng’s hand paused while taking hold of the shopping bag.
‘Was he a good friend of yours?’ he asked.
‘Not really. Sophisticated intellectuals like me don’t have much reason to rub shoulders with that world. I got a haircut from him now and then, and sometimes we played baduk. At any rate, judging by the shit knife he used, I’d say he wasn’t planning to kill you.’
Reseng stared at him, dumbfounded, and nodded slowly. The doctor turned his gaze back to the computer. Reseng said goodbye. At the front desk, the nurse was explaining something to the elderly woman. After the woman left, Reseng took out his wallet.
‘Checking out already?’ the nurse asked.
He nodded. The nurse tapped at the keyboard to calculate his bill. He took out ten hundred-thousand-won bank cheques and put them on the counter. The nurse stopped typing and stared at them.
‘This is for the hospital fee and these ugly pyjamas, and for forgetting you ever saw me. Will that cover it?’ he asked.
The nurse’s jaw was hanging open. Reseng took five more hundred-thousand-won cheques from his wallet and added them to the stack. Then he left the hospital.
It was night when he reached at Seoul Station. Reseng opened the coin locker and stared at the suitcase of money inside. If he took that money and left right now, would he make it? India, Brazil, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Venezuela, the Philippines, New Zealand, the Czech Republic…Names of countries he’d never been to scrolled through his mind. I hear there are a lot of beautiful women in Venezuela, he babbled nonsensically. This was his last chance to leave. In three more days, every assassin and tracker from the meat market would catch up with him.
A loud shout came from the corner of the underground passageway. Reseng turned to look. Two homeless men were shoving each other, arguing. Sitting next to them, guzzling alcohol just like last time, was Fuck-My-Life, who’d given Reseng a paper cup of soju. His only worldly possessions appeared to be his mismatched layers of dirty clothes, the pieces of cardboard on the ground to insulate him from the cold, and the bottle of soju. Was it a terrible life? Probably. And yet his face, with its look of complete and total resignation, struck Reseng as somehow serene.
Reseng opened the suitcase and transferred ten bundles of one million won each to a shopping bag. He zipped the suitcase shut and took it out, then switched it from the day locker to a long-term storage locker and closed the door. On his way out of the underground passageway, the locker key in his hand, he paused to look at Fuck-My-Life.
‘Can you spare a thousand won for ramen?’ the man asked bluntly.
Reseng looked him straight in the eye, but the man didn’t seem to remember him.
‘If you’re not giving me anything, then go. Don’t just stare at someone when he’s talking to you, goddammit. I’m not a bum.’
What a joker. Begging for money but swearing he wasn’t a bum. What did that mean? Probably nothing at all. It was just meaningless prattle, to match his meaningless life.
‘What? What?’ the homeless man yelled. ‘Godammit, what’s your problem? Why’re you being a dick? You mad? If you’re mad, hit me. Hit me!’
Reseng dropped his eyes from the man’s face and scraped his shoe against the ground to dislodge a piece of gum stuck to the sole. Fuck-My-Life babbled to himself about ‘fuckers looking down on him’ and took a swig of soju. Reseng took five bundles of cash out of the shopping bag and placed them in front of the man, who looked up at him in shock.
‘Use that to start over. Before you drink yourself stupid and freeze to death on the street.’
The man stared wide-eyed at the money but didn’t touch it, as if dubious it was really his. Would he be able to make a fresh start? Probably not. He’d live it up for a while without having to worry about how to afford his next drink. Eventually, the money would run out. He’d end up back here, get drunk and freeze to death. Right in the same cold, miserable, stinking,
familiar spot. Reseng walked away. From behind him, he heard the man saying, ‘Thank you, sir! Thank you! People like you are going straight to heaven, sir!’
Reseng went up to the Seoul Station plaza to have a cigarette. The smoke felt like shards of broken china going down his throat. The painkiller seemed to have worn off; the knife wound in his side was throbbing. The cold December air sharpened the pain. Clutching his side with his left hand, Reseng squatted in the corner of the plaza to catch his breath. People eyed him as they walked by. A Salvation Army volunteer was ringing a bell in the middle of the plaza. Reseng used his cigarette butt to trace the Chinese characters for his name in the dirt: 來生, ‘Next Life’. Then he wrote ‘Venezuela’. He wondered where Venezuela was. He spun a globe inside his head to try to find it and laughed out loud at himself. ‘Idiot,’ he muttered as he flicked the cigarette butt away. He got up, walked over to the taxi stand and got into a cab.
The library looked like a bomb had gone off inside: the floor was strewn with thousands of books, shelves had toppled over, the librarian’s desk was littered with boxes and drawers. Reseng headed for Old Raccoon’s study. The hidden door in the back that led down to the basement was wide open. Old Raccoon was picking up fallen encyclopedias and reshelving them.
‘Did Hanja do this?’ Reseng asked.
‘Who else? You think a pack of wild boars tore through here?’ Old Raccoon said, straining to feign humour.
Being attacked by boars would have been better. No one had ever done anything like this to the library. For ninety years it had been lady-in-waiting to the country’s highest powers, the truth behind every major assassination, and the inner sanctum for contract kill brokers, plotters and assassins. Hanja had panicked. Or maybe he’d finally got sick of showing his perfunctory respect for The Doghouse. ‘When did he come?’
‘Last night. You must’ve done something pretty spectacular. He was out of his damn mind. He threatened, then pleaded, then threatened again,’ Old Raccoon said with a chuckle.
Reseng picked up an encyclopedia from the floor.
‘What’re you doing here, anyway?’ Old Raccoon asked. ‘Hanja’s people will be out there hunting you down.’
Behind his cynical tone was a hint of anxiety.
‘I thought I should say goodbye before I go.’
‘Before you go? Don’t you mean before you die?’
Reseng didn’t answer. He put the encyclopedia back in its proper spot on the shelf. Old Raccoon sat on the couch and lit a cigarette. He gestured for Reseng to sit with him. Reseng took the chair opposite.
‘Is this because of that girl?’
‘Who said that? Did Hanja say that?’ Reseng asked angrily.
‘Jeongan told me a few days before he died. Said you were hung up on some amazing girl.’
‘No, I’m not,’ Reseng said, flustered. ‘Jeongan was full of shit and talked too damn much about things he didn’t understand.’
‘And yet I miss that mouth full of shit that talked too damn much. Without him, I have no idea what’s happening anymore.’
Old Raccoon smiled glumly as he took a long drag on the cigarette.
Over Old Raccoon’s shoulder, Reseng spotted an open gun case sitting on the desk. Inside was a .38 Smith & Wesson, practically an antique. When he was little, Reseng had got the scolding of his life from Old Raccoon for playing with the revolver. He hadn’t seen the case since. All at once, the events of the past few days, which had been hanging in his head like a thick fog, sharpened into focus. A cold, distressing sensation pierced Reseng right through the heart, as if he’d stepped on a tripwire and set off a booby trap. He felt like a fish with a torn fin that had drifted too far and could never return home. Old Raccoon read the look in Reseng’s eyes.
‘People think villains like me are going to hell,’ Old Raccoon said. ‘But that’s not true. Villians are already in hell. Living every moment in darkness without so much as a single ray of light in your heart, that’s hell. Shivering in terror, wondering when you’ll become a target, when the assassins will appear. True hell is living in a constant state of fear without even knowing that you’re in hell.’
Old Raccoon took another drag. Reseng dropped his head. They sat in silence for a moment. Old Raccoon finished his cigarette and lit another.
‘Aren’t you here for the book?’
‘No, I’m not,’ Reseng said firmly.
Old Raccoon nodded to show he didn’t care either way, and said, ‘Come with me.’
He stood and walked out of the study. Reseng jumped up and followed him. Old Raccoon stopped in the middle of the bookshelves near the western wall and pulled out a book. The shelf was the same as all the other shelves in The Doghouse, accessible to anyone, even a certain nine-year-old boy who could have reached out his hand and grabbed it at any time. Contrary to what Mito had said, there was no leather cover and it did not resemble a Bible. It was simply a book, hardly any different from the countless other books in the library. Old Raccoon looked around at the shelves, the book clutched in his hand.
‘Will this book make the world a happier place? Hard to say, but I doubt it. Nothing good ever came out of a book.’
Old Raccoon held the book out to Reseng, who stared back at him in confusion.
‘What do you want me to do with it?’
‘Do with it what you will. You can give it to the girl, burn it, sell it or fill the rest of the pages yourself. It’s just a book, after all.’
Old Raccoon’s hand shook. The book looked heavy. Reseng hesitated to take it from him.
‘There’s one thing I’ve always wondered,’ Reseng said. ‘The name you gave me. Does it mean that since this life is already messed up, I should try harder in my next one?’
Old Raccoon laughed.
‘I had no idea your name had such a brilliant meaning behind it.’ The laughter still showing in his face, Old Raccoon held the book under Reseng’s chin. Reseng accepted it with trembling hands.
‘Don’t come back. It takes tremendous courage to run away. I could never escape this hell. You know, coming here for the first time as a clueless young librarian was heaven for a cripple like me. But it never was for you.’
Old Raccoon hobbled away between the shelves and closed the study door behind him. Reseng stared at it for a long time. That door was always shut tight, but today it looked more solid, impenetrable. He headed for the exit, glancing back as he went. Bracing for the sound of a gunshot.
X
Snow fell as he made his way up through the forest, heavy flakes turning the narrow path into fairy floss. The wound in his side throbbed each time his foot slipped. Reseng checked his watch: 3 a.m. The dead of night. The snow-covered path was luminescent against the dark, and the shadows of trees cast across the snow looked like spilled blood.
When he reached the garden gate, Reseng stopped to smoke a cigarette. Mito’s attic window was the only one with a light on. It looked warm and inviting, like a lighthouse on a hometown coast. Though he hadn’t knocked, the door to the cabin swung open, as if it had been waiting just for him. Mito looked out at him, one hand on the doorknob. Reseng stubbed out his cigarette and went inside. Mito closed the door behind them without a word.
In the bed under the living room window—the bed in which Reseng had recuperated—Misa was asleep, the tattered Winnie-the-Pooh clutched in her arms. Her elephant-print pyjamas looked baggy—either they’d always been too big for her, or she kept getting smaller.
‘Was that Misa’s bed to begin with?’ he asked.
‘No, that’s the guest bed. But she’s been sleeping there ever since you left.’
Reseng looked down at Misa’s sleeping face. A few tiny capillaries were visible through her pale skin. Reseng placed his hand lightly on her forehead. At the touch of his cold hand, she tossed in her sleep.
‘Why are you touching my little sister?’ Mito whispered.
‘She’s so pretty.’
Mito smiled and nodded, as if that were obvious.
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‘I guess that means I’m pretty too. Since we’re from the same parents.’
Reseng stared at her in astonishment.
‘What, you don’t own a mirror?’ he said.
Mito grinned, then pointed towards the attic room.
‘Wait up there for me,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring us something to drink.’ Reseng tiptoed up the stairs. The table in the attic was piled high with documents. There were more boxes of documents under the table. Reseng was rifling through files when Mito returned with a pot of persimmon-leaf tea.
‘What is all this? Preparation for fighting Hanja?’
‘Hanja?’ Mito scoffed. ‘Hanja fights in the sandbox with the little kids like you. Mito is after much bigger adversaries.’
‘You’re not planning to kill Hanja?’
‘Not with a knife.’
‘Then?’
‘I’ll send him to prison.’
Reseng gave her a disappointed look.
‘How naïve of you. Do you seriously think the law will judge him?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘Then…?’
‘They’ll have to go through the motions at least. It’s election season. They won’t be able to just cover it up. There’s the money, and the ledgers, and too many watching eyes. Once the dam breaks, there’ll be no stopping it. I’ll keep backing them into a corner, little by little, and then right at the end, pow!’ Mito glanced over the pile of documents as she spoke.
‘How do you plan to have him arrested?’
‘As loudly as possible. In front of as many people as possible. Ideally with lots of cameras and all of it broadcast live,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Dream on. A fox like Hanja will never come out of his den.’