Writings

Christmas Carol

by Kim Young Ha, translated by C. La Shure

The detective hung up the phone and pulled his notebook computer closer. “You didn’t kill her?” he asked Jeong-sik.

“Why would I kill her?”

“Then why did you say you had to kill her?” The detective chewed on a matchstick.

“That was a joke.”

“Do you often make those kinds of jokes?” The matchstick broke.

Jeong-sik waved his hand in denial with a servile expression on his face.

“You left the inn room with Mr. Park for another drink, right? And that’s when you said that?”

“Yes.”

“And then Mr. Park said that his life had turned out this way because of that damn girl, and how he had actually gone to kill her. He said something like that, no?”

“Yes, I think.”

“Why would Mr. Park think that his life was wrecked because of the victim?”

“The thing about Jung-gweon, well, he had a problem. You see, he actually—this is pretty funny, but, he seemed to really like Jin-suk. The reason that the three of us stopped speaking to each other ten years ago was Jung-gweon. After we graduated, Yeong-su passed the CPA exam and went to work for an accounting firm, and I found a job as well, and we were all busy with our own lives. After a while we decided to get together to celebrate us all finding jobs.

“Well, that night, Jung-gweon, he wasn’t even all that drunk, but suddenly out of nowhere he grabs a knife and goes into a rage, and I thought I was going to die. He said he was going to kill us all. That he wouldn’t let us touch Jin-suk one more time. Huh, why would we want to touch her? We only slept with her because she never said she didn’t want to. Wouldn’t you have done the same?

“He had acted just as we had, and now he says that he was in love and we were just having fun. Have you ever seen such obstinacy? Actually, I kind of feel sorry for Jung-gweon, too. The only girl he had ever slept with up until graduation was Jin-suk. But still, to come at his friends with a knife and say he was going to kill us. Jung-gweon, he had a bit of a drastic side. I’m not saying that he killed Jin-suk, of course. He must have been a bit gloomy, seeing that his business went under and he got a divorce and all.”

“He’s separated, not divorced,” the detective corrected.

“You know everything, don’t you.” Jeong-sik swallowed hard.

‘Why am I swallowing,’ he thought. He worried that the detective might have heard him swallow. Then he began to worry because he was worrying about pointless little things like that. But just then the detective gave him the good news.

“OK, you’re free to go. Don’t go far for the time being. You’re still not completely cleared of suspicion.”

Jeong-sik hesitated as if to say something, but then changed his mind and got up. He had wanted to mention his upcoming business trip, but his first priority was to escape from the police station without any further trouble.

Actually, half of what he had said about the international furniture exhibition was just boasting. He was always exaggerating his abilities and hinting that everything would be lost without him. Surely the international furniture exhibition wouldn’t fold just because he wasn’t there.

This is what Yeong-su had been thinking while listening to Jeong-sik speak. He sat in the cafe, slowly drinking the coffee that the staff kept full, long after Jeong-sik left to retrieve the Christmas card from his mailbox. For some reason he didn’t want to go home. He feared that detectives would be staked out around his house, watching his every movement. And his wife would interrogate him just as mercilessly as the detectives about his relationship with Jin-suk. When they were at school together, Suk-gyeong was clearly displeased every time Jin-suk was mentioned.

“I know you’re comparing me with her every time we sleep together,” she had said in bed one day. “You’re not by any chance thinking that there’s no difference between her and me?”

At times like that Yeong-su took great pains to appease her. But it was that much harder to explain himself when he was thinking, ‘Well, there really isn’t any difference, is there? If there is a difference, it’s that you, unlike Jin-suk, only sleep with me.’

“There’s nothing going on with Jin-suk. Why do you keep doing this?”

“If nothing is going on, then why do you break into a sweat every time I mention her?”

Suk-gyeong was a vicious sparring partner. Of course, even while he was fooling around with Suk-gyeong he was sleeping with Jin-suk. And there were times when he wondered how Jin-suk could have chosen that sort of life for herself.

“Well, I’ll tell you.” Jin-suk, who had returned from Germany, answered his question. “Back then, I didn’t think anything of myself. I thought I was a bug, and there’s nothing you can’t do if you think you’re a bug. And once I became that bug, as long as you guys didn’t rape me—that is, as long as you were at least civil—there was no problem. Only one person ever told me I shouldn’t live like that, and that person is now my husband.”

“That German guy?”

“Yes, the German guy. He told me that I wasn’t a bug. That I was precious. Oh, my God, that was the first time I had ever heard that—that I wasn’t a bug, and that I was precious. You know that my husband is president of the Dusseldorf chapter of the Green Party, right? Of course, I’m a member of the Green Party too. When I came back to Korea, some magazine said that I was an environmental activist, but, uh, that’s not true. I’m just a member of the Green Party; in the strict sense of the word I’m not an environmental activist.

“I’ve changed? Well, I’ve always been impatient. When I was in Germany, I often heard about how quickly Korea was changing. First the Soviet Union collapsed, then the bubble economy grew, and then the economic crisis hit. I was worried about how much you guys and Korean society had changed, and whether or not I would be able to adjust. But now that I’m here I see that I have changed the most. You guys, you’re the same as ever. You’re not upset, are you?”

As she calmly recounted the last ten years of her life, the only thing Yeong-su could think was, ‘Well, so much for sleeping with her.’ That thought turned itself into the words he said next.

“You’ve become quite smart.”

Jin-suk shook her head. “You guys think I was an idiot, don’t you. Yeah, I was an idiot. But I felt a little sorry for you guys. You guys, in your early 20s—don’t take this the wrong way, it’s all in the past anyway—you were, um, you were like little dogs who had to take a crap. You guys couldn’t even feel sorry for me. Consumed by your lust and disgusted with yourselves, you guys didn’t even have the strength left to feel anything like compassion for anyone else. You would stride into my room pretending to be so gallant, shoot your loads within ten minutes, then slip out again like thieves; you guys must have thought you were some sort of guerillas.”

“OK, that’s enough,” Yeong-su interrupted. “We were wrong.”

Jin-suk was calm. “I’m not asking for an apology. What do you guys have to apologize for? In reality, the biggest problem was that I thought of myself as a bug. If a girl thinks of herself as a bug it’s only natural that other bugs should swarm to her. It’s just that you guys seemed to think I was an idiot, and I always wanted to correct at least that. Of course, I only began to think this way after I went to Germany.”

It was at that moment that Yeong-su undeniably began to harbor thoughts of murder. Yes, it was true. That girl was a walking videotape, and in that tape were recorded without fail all the sins of his repulsive past. All she had to do was push the play button and the audio and video would begin, no power or batteries required.

While she was going on, the murderous impulse violently took root in Yeong-su’s mind. In his imagination he rearranged her insides with a knife, pressed a pillow down over her face and suffocated her, and took her up to the roof and pushed her off. He was particularly fascinated by the thought of stabbing her in the chest with a long, sharp knife while she was sleeping. The blood gushed out like a fountain, and when the whole room reeked of blood he changed into the clean clothes he had brought along and quietly slipped out of the room. Glug, glug... each time her heart pumped out another spurt of blood, Jin-suk would gag and spit it up.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do this. You shouldn’t have come back like that. The three of us were quite happy with our lives. We had children, we bought houses, and we even go shopping on the weekends. We’ve all forgotten the past when we shared one girl. So you’re just going to have to disappear for us.’