Diary of a Murderer

by Young-Ha Kim

  I called the detective and told him to stop digging in the yard and start instead in the bamboo forest. The detective went outside, looking tense. From that point, the bamboo forest appeared on TV. My bamboo forest, whose brilliant leaves always sang melodies to me.

  As waterproof bags filled with skeletons descended the mountain one by one, one of the locals reported, “What it is, is a—a cemetery, a cemetery.”

  ·

  Incomprehensible things continue without end. Similar events in similar situations continue to repeat themselves, and I’m completely lost. I can’t remember anything anymore. Here I don’t have a pen or recorder. I think they took them away. I just manage to get a piece of chalk and record each day on the wall. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Everything is so mixed up.

  ·

  I was dragged to an inspection of the crime scene, but I didn’t do anything. Meaning, I couldn’t do anything. How can I reenact a scene I can’t remember? One of the locals threw a bottle at me, saying I was no better than an animal. The bottle hit me in the forehead. It hurt.

  ·

  Pak came for me. I’m so confused every time I see him. He said it was true that he had tailed me for some time. He said he’d suspected that I might be connected to the multiple murders in the district. As soon as he sat down, a psychologist followed and sat beside him. He resembled the man on TV who talked about the psychology of a serial killer, but maybe not.

  Pak asked, “Do you remember my visit with the students from the Police Academy?”

  “That was Detective Ahn.”

  “There is no Detective Ahn. I was the one who brought the students.”

  I strongly denied this. Pak looked at the psychologist. I didn’t miss them exchanging smiles.

  “That’s not true,” I said. “You came with Eunhui. You said you were going to marry her.”

  “I did meet Kim Eunhui. Since she was at your house regularly, I also had a few questions for her.”

  “But didn’t I hit your car? Your jeep. How can you explain that?”

  “That couldn’t have happened. I drive a Hyundai.”

  “You’re saying you don’t hunt, either?”

  “No.”

  The more we talked, the more confused I got. Last, I asked, “Did the killings stop?”

  “It’s too early to tell. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  The psychologist and Pak exchanged meaningful smiles, then exited the room, leaving me alone.

  ·

  Some days I’m alert, and others, I feel dazed.

  ·

  The detective asks me, “Do you feel wronged?”

  I shake my head.

  “Do you believe you’ve been falsely accused?”

  That made me laugh. The detective is underestimating me. That offends me the most. If they’d caught me in time, the sentence would have been much worse. If it was during Park Chung-hee’s regime, they would have immediately hanged me or sent me to the electric chair.

  I killed Eunhui’s mother. After first killing Eunhui’s father at their house, I kidnapped her mother while she was leaving work and killed her. Eunhui was at daycare, so she escaped. I still remember each of those scenes vividly. But I don’t remember anything about Eunhui’s own death, though the police seem to have found the tools that I used to kill and bury her. I must have left some things out in the back. My fingerprints were apparently found all over the tools. When the cops decide to get you, there’s nothing they won’t do.

  I once heard about an artist who had made so many paintings that he couldn’t tell if one of them was forged or not. While claiming it was a fake, he said, “It looks like one of my paintings, but I don’t remember painting it.”

  The painter finally lost the suit. I knew exactly how he felt.

  I said to the detective, “It seems like something I’d do, but I’ve no memory of it.”

  He urged me to remember, adding, “How can you kill someone and not remember?”

  I grabbed his hand. He didn’t push me away. I looked into his eyes and said, “You don’t understand. I want to remember what happened more than anyone. Mister, I do want to remember, because it’s so precious to me.”

  ·

  People say my memories of Eunhui are false. No one’s on my side. I even heard a person say on TV, “After retiring as a veterinarian, he had little contact with his neighbors and lived the secluded life of a loner. I never once saw family visit him.”

  One day I asked the detective, “Then did I have a dog? The yellow mutt?”

  “The dog? Oh, that dog. Yes, there was a dog. The one that dug up your lawn.”

  I felt a little reassured knowing that the yellow mutt did exist.

  “What happened to the dog? After what happened to his owners . . .”

  “What do you mean, ‘his owners’? There’s only you.” He called out, “Hey, what happened to the dog? The mutt?”

  The young detective, carrying some papers for him, said, “The locals wanted to eat it, since it’s got no owner. But the village head said, ‘What would they become if they ate a dog that had devoured human flesh?’ So they let it go. Since he’s got no one caring for him, I guess he’ll end up a stray.”

  ·

  I heard something about Eunhui on TV: “Colleagues are devastated by the death of Kim Eunhui, a woman who selflessly devoted herself to helping those with dementia.”

  What about all my conversations with her? Had I made them all up? That’s impossible. How could the imagination be more real than what I’m experiencing right now?

  ·

  I asked, “Did you find a lot of skeletons?”

  The detective nodded.

  I said, “Let me ask you one thing. Way back, I killed a woman who worked at the downtown community center and her husband. Could you find out if they had a child?”

  He said he would. The cops aren’t hostile to me anymore. Sometimes they seem to have respect for me. They even seem to consider me some sort of courageous whistle-blower.

  A few days later, the detective returned and said, “They had a three-year-old baby, but she was killed along with her father. With a blunt weapon.”

  The cop went through his documents and grinned. “Funny coincidence. The dead kid’s name was Eunhui, too.”

  ·

  I suddenly realize I’ve lost. I don’t know at what. I just feel as if I’ve lost.

  ·

  Time passes. The trial begins. People swarm in. I’m moved from here to there. People rush in again. I’m moved here and there. They crowd in again. People begin asking me about my past. I’m able to respond relatively well to these questions. I talk about the acts I committed in the past without stopping, and people write it all down. I tell them everything except about killing my father. They ask me, “How can you remember things so clearly from long ago but can’t remember crimes you’d recently committed? That makes no sense.” And wasn’t I being open about the past because the statute of limitations had passed, but not confessing to recent crimes because I was afraid of being sentenced?

  People don’t understand that I’m being punished this very minute. God has already decided how to punish me. I am stepping into forgetting.

  ·

  Will I become a zombie when I die? Or was I already one?

  ·

  A man who said he was a journalist visited me. He said he wanted to understand evil.

  What he said was so clichéd, it amused me.

  I said, “Why are you trying to understand evil?”

  “I’d have to understand it in order to avoid it.”

  I said, “If you can understand it, then it isn’t evil. Just stick to praying, so you can stay out of evil’s way.”

  His disappointment was obvious.

  I added, “Evil isn’t what’s terrifying. It’s time. No one can defeat time.”

  ·

  I’m somewhere that could be a jail or a hospital. I can’t distinguish between the two anymore. Maybe I’m drifting bet
ween the two. It feels like a day or two has passed, or an eternity. It’s impossible to tell. I can’t tell if it’s morning or afternoon. Or if it’s this life or that life. Strangers visit and keep asking me about different people. None of those names stir up any images in me anymore. Whatever links the names of objects, people, and feelings has been destroyed. I am isolated on a tiny spot in the vast universe, and I’ll never escape it.

  ·

  Over the past few days, a poem has been circling in my head like a swarm of mayflies by a riverbank. It was written by a Japanese death row inmate.

  The rest of

  the song

  I shall hear in the afterlife,

  over here.

  A complete stranger sits in front of me and begins talking. He looks tough and scares me a little.

  He questions me closely, saying, “Are you just pretending to have dementia? To avoid being sentenced?”

  I say, “I don’t have dementia. I’m just forgetful, that’s all.”

  “Didn’t you first claim you had dementia?”

  “Me? I don’t remember saying that. I don’t have dementia. I’m just a little tired. No, not a little—I’m exhausted.”

  While he shakes his head from side to side, he jots something down on paper. He asks, “Why did you kill Kim Eunhui? What was your motive?”

  “Me? When? Who?”

  He keeps talking about things I can’t understand, and I become unbearably tired. I hang my head and begin begging. I say, “If I’ve done something wrong, please forgive me.”

  ·

  It’s hard to wake up. I have no idea what time it is, or whether it’s morning or night.

  ·

  I can barely understand what people are saying.

  ·

  Only now do I truly understand a passage from the Heart Sutra that I must have memorized. I sit on the bed and repeatedly chant it to myself:

  So, in the emptiness, no form,

  No feeling, thought, or choice,

  Nor is there consciousness.

  No eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind.

  No color, sound, smell, taste, touch,

  Or what the mind takes hold of,

  Nor even act of sensing.

  No ignorance or end of it,

  Nor all that comes of ignorance.

  No withering, no death,

  No end of them.

  Nor is there pain, or cause of pain,

  Or cease in pain, or noble path

  To lead from pain.

  Not even wisdom to attain!

  Attainment, too, is emptiness.

  ·

  I’m floating in lukewarm water. It’s peaceful, tranquil. Who am I? And where is this place? A gentle breeze blows into the emptiness. I continue swimming, but no matter how much I paddle my arms, I can’t escape. This silent, still world becomes smaller and smaller. It becomes infinitely small until it becomes a single dot. It becomes a speck of dust in the cosmos. No, even that disappears.

  The Origin of Life

  Each time Seojin encountered difficulty in his life, he longed to return to his origins. Back to the place he’d left, what people usually called “the hometown.” Back to where everyone knew who he was. But no matter how much he thought about it, he wasn’t sure where that was. He had lived a drifter’s life. When he was young he had moved repeatedly across the country with his parents, and when he was older he hadn’t managed to stay in one place. It was the same with people; he had no relationships that had deepened with time. Long ago, he’d watched a film in which the main character shouted, “I want to go back!” But Seojin had felt jealous of him, not sympathetic. To have somewhere to return to resembled a valuable achievement that would never be his. Such achievements came easily to some. That someone like him could never possess it, no matter how hard they tried, felt truly unfair.

  “We should never have met,” said Ina. Ina had the ability to talk about happiness as if she was speaking about regret. She looked as if she couldn’t believe in such undeserved happiness, which perplexed Seojin. She would gaze out at magnificent scenery and say, “We shouldn’t have come here.” And when he asked why, she was the type who would respond, “Because it makes the past feel that much more terrible.” For someone as severely anxious about human bonds as Seojin, the discord between her regretful tone and her happy expression was much sweeter. Sometimes just to savor that sweetness, he would ask her, “Do you regret meeting me?” even as he anticipated her response.

  Ina traced the rim of her beer glass with her index finger and said, “I do. If I hadn’t met you, I wouldn’t have realized how beautiful life was, and I would have thought that living like everyone else is the only way to live. I would’ve endured, and after enduring, I would have simply died. Then I would’ve had little to regret.”

  Seojin took Ina’s hand. “I don’t regret it,” he said. “Everything that happened before I met you reminds me of a recent dream. You know how no matter what you dream about, in the morning you always wake up in the same place you were the night before.”

  “I wish I could see it the way you do.”

  “You’re where I begin.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “It’s not important. But it’s what I’ve always looked for.”

  They had been classmates in the fifth grade. They both transferred to the same school on the same day. They had gotten on the school bus for military kids, and greeted each other in typical military family fashion.

  “My dad’s deputy chief of staff for logistics.”

  “My dad’s deputy chief of staff for operations.”

  Their fathers also had similar ranks, both lieutenant colonels.

  The bus passed rice paddies and farmland, then let the kids off at the military’s family housing. When Ina casually said “See you tomorrow” before she headed into her house, Seojin felt his heart flutter for the first time. It felt as if a whisk was stirring up his heart.

  At school they said little to each other, since the girls stuck with the girls and the boys stuck with the boys. But once they returned to the family housing, they had a lot of free time. There were no after-school cram schools around, and the television reception was poor, so in that remote area near the North-South border they often met and talked about the few books they’d read. They both owned a complete set of biographies of famous people, put out by the same publisher, and since in their small world the few grown-ups they encountered were their parents and teachers, they naturally began to adopt primarily Western characters into their games of make-believe. Unlike Seojin, who was attracted to playing the part of conquest-driven, rural-born characters such as Napoleon, Ina preferred playing characters renowned in science and medicine, such as Marie Curie and Florence Nightingale.

  Ina said, “Napoleon killed too many people.”

  Seojin didn’t give in to Ina’s tactics, and said, “If Curie hadn’t been born, the atomic bomb wouldn’t exist.”

  “If a man kills a lot of people, I guess he’s revered as a great person.”

  “I like Mozart, too. He was a genius.”

  “I think Beethoven’s more amazing. I mean, he lost his hearing but overcame it.”

  It was a childish conversation, but Seojin enjoyed every minute of it. He imagined the distant future in which he became famous, and reveled in the thought that if that happened, Ina would be proud of him. But Seojin kept all this to himself. Spring quickly turned into summer, and summer into fall. In the fall, rumors began to float within the housing compound about promotions and transfers. Out of all the deputy chiefs of staff for operations, Ina’s father was first to be promoted to colonel and was simultaneously appointed to the army’s headquarters. Seojin’s father was passed over for promotion and was transferred to the border. The day Ina’s family moved, Seojin presented her with a farewell gift, a model Spanish galleon that had taken him over a month to build. It had been challenging to glue together each single pin set of the countless pieces of the A
ge of Exploration–style galleon. On closer look, there were adorable oars and cannons, even a model sailor atop the mainmast, gazing through a spyglass.

  * * *

  “Remember that boat you gave me?” said Ina. “I still have it.”

  Twenty years later, they had unexpectedly run into each other by a lake near a new town’s apartment complex.

  Seojin had gone for a run, and Ina had been sitting on a bench reading a magazine. Ina, pleased to see him, brought up the Spanish galleon. She said, “My husband once asked me about the boat.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “I said I got it as a present when I was young, but that was all I remembered.”

  “Your parents are doing well?”

  “My father retired as lieutenant general, but he passed away suddenly in his sleep. Officially it was a heart attack, but it was actually suicide. It must’ve been a huge shock to my mother—she died not many years after.”

  Seojin owned a small medical devices supplier, and as for Ina, she had stopped working as a contract English teacher in a middle school. Her husband was in finance, and they had decided not to have children. In broad daylight, while at a motel, Seojin discovered bruises across Ina’s body. Her husband. She had stopped teaching because as the number of beatings increased, so had her absences from school. The bruises seemed to be talking directly to Seojin: You may think this woman is yours, but the real owner is elsewhere. I can beat her, take her job away from her, even destroy her if I want, because it’s me who’s her legally wedded husband.

  Every time Seojin saw evidence of new beatings, he became furious at Ina’s husband and said things like, “The crazy son of a bitch, I’m going to kill him.” And each time, Ina said, “I knew we shouldn’t have ever met. Then things would’ve stayed the same . . .”