by Young-Ha Kim
I said, “Maybe the local precinct still has those records.”
From the back, Detective Ahn cut in. “They don’t.”
“They don’t?” a slender-faced girl said with reproach. These confident young Police Academy students, these kids who had watched TV shows like CSI and dreamed of joining the force, would dismiss a provincial homicide detective in a second—but if you had all been there, if you’d been the cops in my district, would you have caught me? The records were probably a pitiful mess. A careless prelim investigation. Little mutual cooperation. The few suspects they managed to round up released with verdicts of not guilty. I’d read that a couple of them sued the government, claiming they were tortured during interrogation, and they eventually won reparations once Korea became a democracy.
Detective Ahn said, “Do you know what the eighties were like? Even police in the Gangwon-do countryside wore helmets, and cops were attacked with Molotov cocktails in front of universities in Seoul. You think anyone cared that some people died out in the country?”
Detective Ahn went out for a smoke. The students followed him. While the rest of them were putting on their shoes, one male student whispered to me, “Detective Ahn was in charge of a few of those cases. He’s been known to work weekends to catch the murderer, even now, though the statute of limitations has passed. There must be a reason he can’t let it go.”
A girl standing in the yard added, “You’ve got to be careful with country people. They’re more stubborn than they look.”
The kids don’t know what they’re talking about. That’s why I like them.
Detective Ahn stopped smoking and, as if he’d suddenly had an idea, came back to the veranda.
“Do you have any family?” he asked.
“I’ve got a daughter.”
“I see . . .”
A man who’d lived alone for a long time. He’s probably looking for a lone wolf. The students began scouring the neighborhood, but Ahn didn’t follow them. Instead, he perched on the edge of the veranda.
He said, “I shouldn’t be saying this in front of you, but now that I’m getting older, I’m breaking down everywhere.” He tapped his knees.
If someone saw us, he would think that Detective Ahn and I were old friends from the village.
“Are you ill?” I asked.
“Diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure. There isn’t anything I don’t have. It’s all because of these stakeouts for the same guy. I’m sick of it.”
“Why don’t you retire somewhere peaceful?”
“I’ll get my rest eventually, when I’m in the grave.”
“Naturally. The grave’s most comfortable.”
We were quiet for a moment.
The detective said, “Doesn’t everyone have that one thing? The thing they have to see to completion before they die?”
“Of course they do,” I agreed. “I’ve got one, too.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing much to share. One of the students mentioned how you’re still trying to catch the criminal. What will you get out of it even if you catch him? You can’t put him behind bars anymore.”
“I don’t know why I keep returning to those cases. I’m getting worse about it these days. At the least, I need to let the killer know that someone hasn’t forgotten and is still after him. That way he can’t sleep easy.”
So, Detective Ahn, you know what murder is. What a crime scene soaked in blood is like. Murder and its irreversible power. There’s something in it that captivates us and pulls us in. But Detective Ahn, I always sleep well.
I said, “Anyway, you should really watch your health. These days I keep forgetting everything.”
“But you look fit for your age.”
“You know how old I am?”
I sensed him flinch. I pretended not to notice and changed the subject.
“The doctor says my brain’s withering. Later, it’ll be just like a dried-up walnut.”
Ahn stayed quiet.
I added, “By tomorrow, I might forget you paid me a visit.”
·
The students leave, but I stay pumped up. I wanted to sit them down and tell all. Walk them through from the first murder to the last, every single one of them still vivid to me. They’d be rapt listeners. Kids, there’s no main subject in the documents you’re looking at, only lines of objects and predicates. If you replace the name “John Doe” on the line, I’d be that very name, that subject. I was dying to reveal myself to them, but managed to hold back. I still had one thing left to do.
·
I had to make a trip downtown. When I got back, I could tell that someone had entered the house while I was gone. The person had been careful, but someone had definitely gone through the house. There were some things missing, no matter how much I hunted for them. They’d been taken, for sure. Was it a burglar? I’d never been robbed before.
When Eunhui returned from work, I told her that we’d had a burglar. She looked at me with pity and said no such thing had happened. She asked me what had gone missing, but I couldn’t remember. Still, something was definitely missing. I sensed it. But I couldn’t form the words for it.
“People say all dementia patients are like that,” she said. “They think their daughter-in-law or nurse is a thief.”
They call it “theft delusion.” I know that much. But this isn’t delusion. Things have definitely disappeared. I always keep my journal and my voice recorder on me, so they were spared, but something else was missing.
“I know,” I said. “The dog has disappeared. The dog’s disappeared.”
“Dad, when did we ever have a dog?”
Strange. I was sure we had a dog.
·
The cherry blossoms along the main road into my hometown were lovely. In the spring, people strolled in long lines through the tunnel of cherry blossom trees, first planted under Japanese rule. When the flowers were in full bloom, I’d take a detour around that road on purpose. It scared me to stare too long at them. You can chase away a fierce dog with a stick, but you can’t do that with flowers. Flowers are fierce. That street of cherry blossoms—I keep thinking about it. What had scared me so much? They were just flowers.
·
I’ve never once been arrested or detained, but prison was always in my thoughts. In my confused dreams, I’m always walking down a jail corridor that I’ve actually never once entered. I search for my assigned cell and am bewildered when I can’t find it. Or sometimes I’m assigned a cell already crammed full of people, and when I enter, all the people I’ve killed smile brightly at me, waiting.
I always recall the prisons I’ve seen on TV or read about in novels as worlds of iron. The iron cell doors clanging open. Barbed wire decorating the towering walls like vines. Handcuffs and iron shackles tight around the wrists. The clinking of the prisoners’ plates and trays. Even their gray uniforms remind me of iron.
Each person has a different image of salvation. It might look like an English garden with sunlight beaming down on the lawn, or a traditional Swiss cottage, its sills lined with flowers. For me, I’ve always imagined it as a prison. I see rough men reeking of sweat from their armpits, groins, their entire bodies. Only inside that prison, I’d be tamed within the strict hierarchy of convicts and utterly forget who I am. It’ll feel like I’m finally able to put my restless self to sleep.
I also fantasize about solitary confinement. I repeatedly imagine being trapped in a coffin-sized room, my hands bound behind me as I lick my plate with my tongue. I’m miserably trampled and drained, suffering from an intense longing for the earth beneath my feet, the world that I’ve left behind. Imagining this gives me intense pleasure. I’m probably exhausted from making every single decision and executing them by myself for too long. A world that shrinks the autonomy of my demonic self to zero; for me, that place is prison and solitary confinement. A place where I can’t just kill anyone and bury him, a place where I wouldn’t dare to think those thoughts, a place where m
y body and mind would be completely destroyed. A place where I would lose myself forever.
·
The public stadium. I remember the crowds swarming in. At the rally, they said that the North had sent down guerrilla units, captured American warships, shot the first lady. Public speakers roared: Let’s rip up the Red pig Kim Il-sung and slaughter him. Let’s beat up the Communists. Kids sat in the front and gazed up reverently at the platform. We knew what was about to happen. We were anticipating the government-sponsored spectacle of erupting blood, the severing of body parts.
“It’s him!” A friend pointed at a young man sitting behind the platform. “Today it’s that man. I’m sure of it.”
“How can you tell?”
“’Cause he’s a gangster!”
He did immediately stand out. Aside from him, the rest were community leaders: the mayor, the chief of police, the general running the military district, the superintendent of education, and the school principals. Only the young man radiated tension—tension typical of a life dependent on brute strength. He was so broad-chested that his suit jacket wouldn’t button up all the way.
Moments later, he got up on the platform to great applause. The rally was reaching its climax. Some overexcited women cried and fainted. As soon as the man appeared, two women in cotton dresses walked in front of him with a scroll of paper. He screamed, “Those fucking Commies, those fuckers, let’s wipe them off the planet!” Then he pulled out a knife. The women screamed and covered their eyes. He immediately swung the knife downward and sliced off his pinkie.
“ERADICATE THE COMMUNISTS!”
The two women took that pledge of his, written in blood, and held it up from either side, high in the air. Immediately the stadium echoed with the military band’s performance of “The Torch of the Red Hunt”: We who protect these beautiful rivers and mountains, we live with the spirit of men. We risk fields of fiery mortar to protect our families back home. Fellow soldiers, I’ll protect my country. Under the torch of the Red Hunt, I’ll risk my life.
Medical aides rush out of the ambulance parked beside the stadium. The man shouts, “I don’t need it. I don’t need anything!” The young gangster is agitated at the sight of his own blood. Like a cornered animal, he whirls around, gasping for air. Only when the chief of police comes and whispers in his ear does he finally shrink back. The medics help him down and begin to stanch the bleeding.
Gangsters got up on the platform at every rally and cut their finger off as they screamed, “Crush the Communists!” The rally truly ended only when blood splattered on the platform. Rumor had it that the police force requested gang cooperation each time, for dramatic effect. Their boss would single out his underlings for the task. I wondered, Did our country have enough gang members to handle the many public rallies? But one day these rallies suddenly disappeared, after our president was shot and killed by the secretary of state.
While everyone was trying to catch the phantom that was communism, I was doing my own hunting. An official announcement about a man I killed in 1976 declared that an armed spy had murdered the man: “We believe that the criminal brutally slaughtered his victim, then fled back to the North. Based on the savage nature of the crime, it is clear that the puppet regime of the North was responsible.”
Since the murder was apparently committed by a nonexistent ghost, there was no need to catch the criminal.
·
Returning home from downtown, I ran into a stranger at the edge of the village. The young man stared directly into my eyes, his arms crossed. Who was he? Why was he being so openly hostile to me? I was terrified. Out of habit, I first assumed he was a police detective. But I went home, searched my notes, and realized who he was. It was that bastard Pak Jutae.
Why was his face still not imprinted in my memory? I was frustrated. Anyway, I write it down before I forget. About how he showed up again.
·
Eunhui brought up the nursing home again. She said, Let’s at least have a look. I had become curious about how old people with dementia live, so I decided to go. But Eunhui only ended up getting angry. I asked her why she was angry, and she claimed that I’d said, “When did I say I’d go?” and started resisting.
“I did? I don’t remember . . .”
Eunhui entreated me again, so I immediately followed her. Later, when I reviewed what I’d recorded, I heard myself in the car repeatedly asking her, “Where are we going?”
Each time she answered patiently, “Dad, you said you wanted to go see the nursing home, so that’s what we’re doing right now. We’re just going to look.”
Eunhui took pictures of the home, saying it would help me remember it later. I used my recorder and took notes.
The elderly residents looked at peace. I sat for a bit with a group of old folks playing board games. They welcomed me. A game of building blocks wasn’t going smoothly. The pieces kept tumbling, but they were enjoying themselves.
Eunhui said, “Look at them. Everyone’s having a good time.”
She doesn’t know that there’s no room for others in the happiness I’d pursued. I don’t remember ever feeling happy while doing something with others. I had always turned deep inside myself, and in there I discovered a lasting pleasure. Like a pet snake that requires hamsters, the monster in me required constant feeding. Only at those times did others have any meaning.
I felt disgusted as soon as the old people began wildly clapping and laughing. Laughter equals weakness. It means offering yourself unarmed to others. It’s a sign that you’re willing to turn yourself into bait. These people had no power—they were coarse and childish.
We also stopped by a lounge full of chatting residents. Their conversations were disjointed fragments. One with severe dementia kept talking nonsense to himself, and those listening to him blabbered back. Nothing they said was very funny, but they kept exploding with laughter.
Eunhui said to the social welfare officer taking us around, “How do they understand each other and keep up conversations like that?”
As if it wasn’t the first time the woman had heard this question, she said, “Drunk people still enjoy each other’s company, for example. Full mental faculties aren’t necessarily essential to enjoy talking to one another.”
·
My notepad has the random phrase “future memories” jotted on it. What had I seen when I wrote this down? It is definitely my handwriting, but no matter how much I study it, it means nothing to me. Isn’t the word called “memory” because it happened in the past? But the phrase “future memories” . . . Frustrated, I looked it up on the internet and found that “future memories” means remembering what you have to do in the future. These were the memories that dementia patients were said to lose first. “Take pills thirty minutes after eating” is an example of a future memory. If you lose your past memories, you forget who you are, and if you lose your future memories, you end up living eternally in the present. But without a past and a future, does the present have any meaning? Still, what can you do? If the rails are broken, the train has to stop.
Anyway, I’m worried about the important work ahead.
·
I like a quiet world. I can’t live in a city because too many noises rush in at me. Too many signs, billboards, and people and their facial expressions. I can’t interpret all of that. It scares me.
·
I went to a writers’ reunion for the first time in ages. The area’s literary folk have aged a lot. One person who’d passionately written novels is now studying genealogy. It means his heart is starting to move toward the dead. Some who’d written poetry are now obsessed with calligraphy, also an art that belongs to the dead.
One old man says, “Now that I’m older, I enjoy reading other people’s writing.”
Another old man agrees, adding, “One of the original principles of Asian art is imitation.”
Now old, they return to the East. There’s a retired vocational school principal whom everyone still calls Principal
Park. He asks me if I’ve continued to write poetry.
I say, “Sure.”
He asks me to show him some.
“They’re not worth showing anyone.”
“Still, I’m impressed. Writing poems after all this time.”
“Meaning, I’m trying to write poems, but it’s not going well. Maybe it’s age.”
“What are they about?” Principal Park asks.
“What I always wrote about, really.”
“Still the same old subjects—blood, corpses? You should mellow with age, old man.”
“I have mellowed out. Anyway, I’d really like to write at least one good poem before I go.”
“If there’s something you want to do, don’t put it off. Just do it. Who knows if you’ll be around tomorrow?”
“Exactly.”
We drank our coffee. I say, “I’m rereading the classics these days. Greek classics.”
“Which ones?”
“Tragedies, epics, the like. I read Oedipus Rex and the Odyssey.”
“Those kinds of books interest you?” Principal Park asks as he fiddles with his reading glasses.
“I’ve found there are things you only see when you’re old.”
I went to the bathroom and checked my recorder. Everything had recorded well.
·
I found a good poem on my bookshelf. I was excited and read and reread the poem, trying to memorize it. Then I realized that I’d written the poem.
·
My journal shocked me once again. The Police Academy students’ visit had been cleanly erased from my brain. I now experience this often, but never get used to it. It’s different from forgetting, since it feels as if it had never happened in the first place. It’s more like reading a page from an Antarctic explorer’s log or a crime novel. But the handwriting is definitely mine. I have absolutely no memory of it, but I write it down once again: Yesterday, five Police Academy cadets and someone named Detective Ahn paid me a visit.
·
These days, I only remember things vividly from the distant past.