Diary of a Murderer Read online

  “That man has a sixth sense for making money. You heard he left home penniless and came back with three billion won. Just trust him and give him your manuscript. You never know, it may do well.”

  “You think I should?”

  “Please let me off here,” I heard her say to a cab driver. She added, “I’ve got to go now. Let’s talk again tomorrow.”

  I left Samcheong imagining my ex-wife and her boss in various sex positions.

  5

  A few days later, I met my philosophy friend for a beer. After hearing what Suji and I had talked about, he asked, “So, will you go to New York?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “But you said you were going.”

  “Only to get Suji off my back. You know how stubborn she can be.”

  “Girls who know what they want are always stubborn.”

  “That so?”

  “So why won’t you go to New York?”

  “Listen. Here’s my dilemma. Let’s say I go to New York and write a hell of a novel.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “I’m just hypothesizing. Aren’t you a philosopher? You don’t know what a hypothesis is? An if, an if.”

  “Okay, okay. So?”

  “Thanks to the novel I’d torture myself to write, Suji will be regarded as a fantastic editor at work, and the man she’s sleeping with will make a lot of money, right?”

  “Wait! What if Suji and her boss don’t have that kind of relationship?”

  “They do. I’m sure of it,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “I’ve got a sixth sense for these things.”

  “Why would a guy who’s made a fortune on Wall Street want to date a divorced mom in her forties?”

  I said, “Why would someone like you have sex with your friend’s wife, out of all the women in the world?”

  “That asshole isn’t my friend. And we’re not having sex. I told you, we’re disposing of the concept of sex together.”

  My friend, this is why no one cares about philosophy.

  “Anyway, if the novel I bust my ass writing sells well, it’d only fatten my ex-wife and her lover’s coffers.”

  “Probably true.”

  “But if it doesn’t sell, they’ll probably talk crap about me over drinks. They’ll say things like, ‘His writing career is over. I was right to divorce him. He calls that a novel? How will he survive the twenty-first century writing such old-fashioned books?’ Et cetera.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up.”

  “Beat myself up? I told you, all of this is hypothetical! If, if, if !”

  “It is a real dilemma. You write a good book, it’s a predicament. You write a bad book, an absolute embarrassment.”

  “That’s why not writing it is the best solution.”

  “But now you have to write it. Won’t that Goldman Sachs tightwad sue you?”

  “He’ll probably sue me for the advance. A real Shylock!”

  “He could also get you for fraud.”

  “Fraud? What kind of fraud did I commit?”

  “He can claim it’s fraud because you had no intention to write the book yet you accepted a large advance. If it’s fraud, it becomes a criminal case. So he’ll first claim fraud, then simultaneously proceed with a civil suit.”

  “Then the publishing industry will bury the bastard alive. Who’s going to sign with a publishing company that sues one of its own writers for fraud?”

  “I still think he’ll at least proceed with a civil suit.”

  “That asshole is clearly jealous of my talent. In order to win over Suji, he has to expose me as incompetent. That’s why he deliberately sent Suji to me. He set a trap. What a coward. Does he think I’m going to just sit there and take it?”

  He asked, “Is Suji really that amazing a woman?”

  I said, “Well, he’s probably blinded by love.”

  “Any brilliant ideas?”

  “I’m thinking of meeting him again and coming to an agreement.”

  “Will he agree to it?”

  “He will.”

  “But wait. Isn’t writing a book ultimately good for the writer? Whatever happens behind the scenes, it’s your book once it’s out in the world.”

  “This is why you’re a capitalist tool.”

  “I teach at a public university—it’s the nation that’s supporting me. And I self-publish my poetry books.”

  “Aren’t you lucky.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Anyway, what’re you going to say after meeting the publisher? Tell him you can’t do it?”

  “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

  “So now you’re the Godfather?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the offer he can’t refuse?”

  “I’ll tell him that I’ll turn a blind eye on his affair with Suji. That I’ll steer clear of Suji and be eternally absent from family events, even from Jjong’s wedding. I’ll do all this so long as he calls off the book contract. I’ll say I truly don’t have a whisker of interest in publishing a book with his firm—and if I had to, I’d sooner give up the pen forever.”

  “Isn’t disappearing from Suji and Jjong’s life what you want anyway? You hate Suji, and you’re not so happy with Jjong, either. You think the man won’t know this? It’s a deal far too easy for him to refuse.”

  “Would he really know that?”

  “Why wouldn’t he? He’d know if he’s close to Suji, and if there’s really nothing going on between them, you’d be way off. I mean, you have no evidence that he likes Suji.”

  “True.”

  “Then how about this instead?”

  “What?”

  “Write an unintelligible, chaotic book that’s unpublishable. Write something like James Joyce’s Ulysses. A difficult book, one around a thousand pages long, without a clear plot line or a recognizable subject.”

  “Ulysses has a plot and a concrete subject.”

  “To be honest, I haven’t read it. What’s it about?”

  “It’s about a petty middle-aged guy and his messy sexual fantasies.”

  “Sounds similar to Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.”

  “You’re right. That’s the whole story right there. The American prosecutor who claimed that Ulysses was obscene knew what he was doing. Sometimes people who have nothing to do with literature see right into a writer’s inner self.”

  “Which is why I’m saying write something like Ulysses. If it’s lewd, even better. If all goes well, he might land in jail for publishing it.”

  “Ulysses isn’t the kind of novel all that easy to write.”

  “So you have to write it badly. It’s easy to write badly, isn’t it?”

  “Even that’s not easy—at least for a writer like me, whose skills have reached a certain level.”

  He ignored my protests and said, “You’ll be reversing the situation and creating a major dilemma for the man. It’ll be an underdog victory. And as long as you submit the manuscript, you’ll be fulfilling your contract.”

  “Um, right, since it’ll be a near-thousand-page, chaotic, lewd, experimental mess.”

  “That’s it! He’ll probably never be able to publish it. If he does, he’ll be in trouble. I hear the price of paper’s gone up a lot lately.”

  Philosophy was so excited by the idea, he started clapping. We made a toast. He emphasized again that writing an abstruse, fragmented, filthy novel that put the publisher in a difficult position was a great idea.

  He added, “What’s more, you won’t need to go to New York.”

  As I watched him obsess over New York, I suddenly decided that I had to go. Why not just go and write it there?

  6

  The publisher’s apartment wasn’t quite as he had promised, “a stately, traditional brownstone.” The interior was worn and gloomy, and it hadn’t been maintained. Instead of a lovely garden and bright sunlight pouring into the apartment’s only two windows, the view was of an
enormous ventilator. When I opened a window, a cacophony like General Rommel’s army and summer heat invaded the room.

  And the neighborhood. The publisher’s neighborhood “near the financial district” was actually Chinatown. A cluster of fishmongers stood a mere block away, and next to them several stores sold cheap Chinese counterfeit goods. The streets brimmed with sludge from the food waste set out by local restaurants; the stench worsened in the hot, humid weather. A homeless shelter sat adjacent to the apartment. Someone told me that the city government had purchased the shelter that an individual once ran as a charity.

  Now that I was here, I decided to enjoy myself, and kept a frantic pace for no reason, visiting museums and bookstores, but that didn’t last long. At night the whirring ventilation system gave me nightmares. In one of them, I rode a whirring, violently pitching ferry to a distant land I’d never visited, only to discover that I didn’t have my passport. It became impossible to write in the apartment so I went to some cafés nearby, but there were few places in Manhattan where you could write in peace.

  My vow to cause the publisher trouble by writing a thousand-page, incomprehensible novel seemed an increasingly meaningless, reckless idea. My days of drinking wine by the bottle and battling the ventilation system’s extreme noise hit a nadir when two plump rats emerged late at night. I was dreaming about fighting a bear that had suddenly appeared on the pitching ferry’s deck when I woke up to a rat on my chest, gazing at me. The rat rambled toward my feet. Immediately, another one followed the same path. I flew upright, turned on the standing lamp, and watched the rats disappear into the closet. Maybe it was just my hangover—my head was thundering. The clock showed a little after three a.m.

  I rummaged around the apartment for painkillers and ended up opening the bedside drawer. Inside was a box of condoms, an eye mask, and a loaded gun. When you hold a loaded gun, you can feel its weight. It’s the same feeling as entering an old European cathedral. A feeling deep in your bones, as if you’re going from one world to another, crossing the border between life and death, sex and interiority. The grip was engraved with the logo GLOCK GmbH. I recalled that a Glock was one of the guns used in the Virginia Tech shooting, as well as the shooting of US Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson. It’s said that Saddam Hussein was also carrying a Glock on the day he was captured. I put the gun back. It was time to reconsider what I knew about the publisher. I added another hashtag to my mental file on him: #publisher #Wall Street #raccoon #loadedpistol. He was no longer merely a weak raccoon who’d had some luck on Wall Street.

  Was there any chance that the publisher intended to encourage my suicide? Had he locked me up in a stuffy studio, where sleep was impossible without the help of alcohol, to pressure me with the aid of a contract, a lawyer, and my ex-wife? “Writer Bak Mansu, Gunshot Suicide in Manhattan Apartment.” “Writing Slump Led to Signs of Depression.” The greatest beneficiary? The publisher. The bookstores would set up a special display to commemorate me, and for a while my book sales would skyrocket. Jjong would inherit the rights to my books. My shrewd daughter would use that money toward tuition. I vowed never to do something that would solely benefit others. But minutes later, I realized I was thinking about shooting myself again.

  I told myself: Let’s pack and return to Seoul. Even if I have to beg other publishers, let’s pay back Suji’s publisher. First, I must live. If I stay here, I won’t reach the end of my last days. I was mulling these things over breakfast when the front door flew open and a woman in her mid-thirties dragged in a large suitcase. She was so good-looking that any ordinary guy would instantly feel shy.

  I asked, “Who are you?”

  She looked even more alarmed than I did. Her bag seemed to faint as it collapsed diagonally with a thud.

  She asked, “And who are you?”

  I said, “Who gave you the keys?”

  “Who gave me the keys? They’re mine.”

  “I’m the fiction writer Bak Mansu.”

  Maybe she wasn’t interested in literature, as she had no idea who I was.

  I added, “From what I know, my publisher owns the apartment.”

  As if she only now understood the situation, she set the bag upright.

  “Don’t just stand there,” she said. “Please help me with my bag.”

  I did as she asked, took the bag and dragged it in.

  The woman mentioned the publisher by name, then said, “Why would that man loan you someone else’s apartment?”

  She told me she was the publisher’s wife, now separated from him. I added another tag to my mental file on him: #publisher #Wall Street #raccoon #loadedpistol #beautifulwoman.

  I said, “Actually, I was just about to finish up and leave.”

  “Oh, is that right?” She crossed her arms and stared at me as if expecting me to pack up and go.

  I said, “Ah, I didn’t mean I was leaving immediately. I meant I was thinking of leaving for Seoul in the next few days.”

  “Then what should we do? There’s only one bed, and no real sofa.”

  “That’s true.”

  “You can’t just say ‘That’s true.’ This is my house, after all.”

  She frowned, then pulled out her cell phone. Her profile was even more stunning. Her beauty was far from ordinary; I wondered if she was a former model. Why on earth would the publisher leave his wife and date a hick like Suji?

  The woman went on to have a heated discussion on the phone with the publisher. Their first round, over who owned the apartment, ended; then, over the next half hour, they attacked one another’s personality and general conduct. I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but I ended up overhearing everything, since there was nowhere to escape. I learned that the publisher had sometimes hit her, that he was stingy, that the mistrust and hatred between them went deep. But all this precious intel was buried in her last shocking declaration. This lovely creature, burning with fury from head to toe at the disregard of her lawful ownership, informed him that in that case, she had no choice but to share the bed with me. The rest was none of his business.

  I’ve always been superstitious, that if I became close to a stunning beauty, I would meet with disaster. I was also prudent about involvement in any awkward situations worthy of a screwball comedy. But here I was, embroiled in such a comedy involving such a woman. After hanging up, she looked a lot calmer.

  She said, “I can’t sleep because I’m jet-lagged, and I’m a little hungry, too. Do you have anything like ramen around?”

  If I hadn’t anticipated anything like, “I’m so furious I can’t stand it—go shower quickly and come to bed,” I also hadn’t expected her to merely ask for ramen. After freshening her makeup in the bathroom, she ate the ramen I made. After I set the empty bowl in the sink, I opened a bottle of wine. The wine meant to lift my spirits and keep my hands busy ended up taking us late into the night. Our conversation reached as far as the deepest buried secrets of married couples. I’m hopeless when it comes to seducing women, but I’ve always excelled at conversation.

  The woman and I shared the same last name, Bak, and her first name was Yeong-seon. Our common enemy was the publisher. We drank enough to lose count of the empty bottles, and—who knew who made the first move?—we ended up collapsing into bed together. It was noon when I woke up. So she was a woman who unconditionally stuck to her word. She was lying next to me, her naked figure so stunning that to view it as a mere human body was an insult. After I briefly gave thanks to the Almighty Creator’s omnipotence and eternal love, I put my underwear back on and lit a cigarette in the bathroom. I couldn’t remember what had happened, but I was certain we had done something irreversible. When I returned, God’s gift was still draped across the bed.

  An irresistible force pulled me toward the desk. There, I opened up a new Word document on my laptop for the novel that didn’t exist yet. I placed my fingers on the keyboard. That was as far as I’d gotten, but this time my fingers took on a life of their own. It was as if tiny brains were a
ttached to my fingertips. Phrases like “I wrote furiously” are reserved for these kinds of moments. Sentences came to me like falling rain. It was as if I were playing one of those games that teaches you how to type. “Earth-Defending Typing Champion Bak Mansu Intercepts the Many Sentences Attacking the Globe!” What was so important about plot or characters in a manuscript that I wouldn’t submit anyway?

  The scene I wrote for my erotic, abstract, avant-garde novel was about a protagonist embarking on bizarre sexual adventures while staying in New York’s Chinatown. I wrote furiously until I had a short story of over a hundred manuscript pages, but only two hours had passed when I checked the clock. I hadn’t experienced such heights of productivity since my debut. I was bewildered. I wondered, How is this possible—is it okay to actually write this?

  The censor in me had stopped functioning, so the narrative continued like a car with worn-out brakes. While imagining the publisher’s bewilderment as I handed him the manuscript, I glanced at his drowsing wife from the corner of my eye. My fingers flew over the keyboard.

  Late that afternoon, the publisher’s wife woke up from jet-lagged sleep and asked, “What are you working so hard at?”

  Had we become close enough for her to speak so casually to me?

  I said, “My novel.”

  “That’s right. You said you’re a novelist.”

  “I used to be pretty famous. Have you heard of The Toenail of Death ? That was my debut novel.”

  It was also the book I was most known for.

  “Die, Toenail ? Never heard of it.”

  She wrapped the bedsheet around her the way famous American actresses did and came over to me.

  She said, “Honey, you’re a fast typer.”

  As she spoke, my fingers continued setting down words.

  She asked, “You’re not really writing what you’re imagining right now, are you? You’re not just typing out the national anthem or something like that?”

  I didn’t respond. Instead, I wrote down a few more sentences. Yeong-seon then gave me a peck on the top of my head.

  “Amazing. You’re brilliant. You look like you’ve mastered it. The keyboard’s about to crack under your fingers.”