Bluebeard's First Wife

by Seong-nan Ha

  I wandered around the house, killing time. I waited for more than an hour, but Park’s mother didn’t come. Under the narrow porch I saw a pair of rubber boots I assumed had belonged to Park. The black boots were caked with mud up to the ankles. I hadn’t seen a single spot on my way over here where you would get that much mud on your shoes. Judging by the boot size, he seemed to have been rather small.

  Last month around mid-October, Park Gicheol was discovered by a villager who had gone into the woods to pick pine mushrooms. He’d already stopped breathing by that point. His body was covered in dew, and his pants were soaked with blood from a wound in his right thigh. Flies, their wings still wet with dew, swarmed over his body. The cause of death had been ruled as blood loss due to a hunting accident. Since the accident had occurred before the start of the hunting season, it meant the bullet that had killed Park had been fired from an unregistered firearm. It was, no doubt, the work of a poacher.

  Poachers had been causing a lot of trouble. Usually in groups of three, they prowled the deserted trails in jeeps. While the driver circled the base of the mountain, the second person shone a powerful searchlight into the woods, and if an animal was spotted, the third person fired.

  Those overhunted creatures were then sold off to specialty restaurants. Perhaps Park Gicheol, bounding through the woods in the dark, had looked like a deer. Hunting accidents like this happened sometimes. Though he had been shot in his right leg, he should have been able to make it home on his one good leg. So why, then, had he been discovered at the edge of the hunting grounds, in the opposite direction of his house? Park, who knew the entire area like the back of his hand, would never get lost, even in the dark. Then was it a suicide disguised as an accident? Park had left his mother, his only beneficiary, with a tidy sum when he died.

  I didn’t head down to the village. Instead, I walked through the woods. The deer farm where Park had worked wasn’t very far from his house. Two months before his death, the farm had burned to the ground when an electrical short circuit sparked a flame in the middle of the night. Park saw the fire and rushed to the farm, but all the deer pens were already engulfed in flames. The previous detective seemed to have believed that there was a connection between Park’s death and the fire. The detective had met Ahn Seongman, the owner of the deer farm, numerous times. Ahn lived in town. He may have been the owner, but all he’d done was drop by the farm occasionally. It was Park who’d managed everything.

  The yard was scorched in places. When Park had opened the gate, flaming deer had dashed around the yard, spreading the fire. Now, the charred wreckage of the pens were all that remained of the farm.

  After waiting nearly an hour for a car to drive by on its way into town, I was finally able to hitch a ride with a truck. Unlike the previous night, I saw many jeeps entering the village from all parts of town, headed for the hunting grounds. The truck driver was another Kim, and owned a corner store back in the village. He sometimes took supplies into town. He didn’t open his mouth unless he was asked a question. We ran across many jeeps heading in the opposite direction on the narrow road. Each time, the truck driver backed up and moved out of the way. Besides the fact that both men were quiet and reserved, Mr. Kim, the head of the Kim clan, and Kim, the truck driver, had something else in common. Even the young truck driver who’d first driven me to the village had been the same. They all had an unhurried way about them, with sharp jawlines and large, serene mouths, big eyes that drooped at the corners. How could I put it? They resembled gentle herbivores, animals that would chew cud, moving their jaws slowly.

  Unlike the village, the town was bustling. Elementary school students were heading home after school, illegally parked jeeps were everywhere, their drivers honking their horns, and the pressure cookers set out in front of specialty restaurants hissed their sticky steam. Music blasted from every store. In the city it would have sounded like white noise, but here, the commotion added to the gaiety. I didn’t need to search the whole town to find Ahn Seongman. According to the detective’s notes, Ahn would be at Mother Earth Tearoom at this hour.

  Ahn had smooth skin for someone his age. In fact, he’d make the perfect Santa Claus, if he’d had a white beard and a red costume. But unlike Santa, his eyes were bloodshot and veiled. Though he had lost all his deer, the girls at the tearoom still referred to him as the owner of the farm. He glanced up at my face and spoke informally right away, saying I was young enough to be his son. Even so, he was far from grandfatherly to the girls at the tearoom, who were young enough to be his grandchildren. A girl who’d been bantering with him moved to another table to give us some privacy. Though she was wearing false lashes and heavy makeup, she looked barely twenty. Ahn smacked his lips.

  “How many times do I have to say the same thing? If I’d had all that time, I would have found the perpetrator by now.”

  “This is all so that we can find the shooter. Help us out just one more time, won’t you, boss?”

  People are the same. If you humble yourself, they relent. The thing is, we couldn’t care less who the perpetrator was. That was another department’s responsibility. All I had to do was determine the manner of death, if it was a suicide, homicide, or accident.

  “What does a fire on a deer farm have to do with a shooting accident?” Ahn said, picking up his cup and sipping his now-cold tea.

  Though I could read greed in his eyes, he was still choosing to adopt the role of Santa Claus. He had picked up the teacup to avoid my eyes. At times like this, I just had to be straightforward.

  “I believe you were raising deer not for their antlers, but for a different reason.”

  Ahn called over a girl and ordered another cup of tea. He thrust his flushed face up to mine. I caught a whiff of stale breath and medicinal herbs. He admonished me, as he would a son.

  “Look here, poachers have killed off nearly all the wild boars and rabbits out there. Have you even gone into the woods? You got to be careful because of all the illegal traps they’ve set up. You know Mr. Kim, don’t you? He stepped on one, too. And those poachers don’t even collect the animals they’ve trapped. The woods are full of carcasses. Game reserves raise animals like pheasants and release them during hunting season. Even here, they just released two thousand pheasants. So what’s the big deal? I’m releasing deer already paid for so that people can hunt them. I’m not breaking any laws. Plus, this offsets overhunting by half.”

  Ahn let slip more information than he realized. He rinsed his mouth with the tea the girl brought and smacked his lips again. I’d seen the wound on Kim’s leg. Though it had since healed, the scar was distinct enough to count the spikes from the trap. Ahn had revealed Park Gicheol hadn’t only been in charge of looking after the deer. During hunting season, he would have accompanied the hunters. After all, no one knew the area better than him. Plus, Park was nimble. Someone like Mr. Kim with his limp wouldn’t have been able to do what Park had. The hunters may have been the ones to give Park his nickname, not the villagers.

  “By the way, do you happen to know a Kim Jinseong?” I blurted.

  I’d only remembered the name as I was walking out. It had been included in the information the detective had transferred over to me, and for some reason, it occurred to me just then that Ahn might know who he was. Though he was sitting with his back to the entrance, I saw his shoulders go stiff.

  “Hmm, doesn’t ring a bell,” he said.

  The girl, who had been sitting next to Ahn with her legs crossed, cut in. “Boss, maybe he means Mr. Kim from Seoul?”

  “W-w-well, maybe,” Ahn stammered. “How can anyone keep track of so many Kims?”

  The name Kim Jinseong had been written at the very end of the detective’s report. But unlike the other names, there was no other information about him. And then just as he was starting to investigate Kim Jinseong, he’d resigned from the case.

  Since I was in town, I went into a store and bought a padded parka. I even bought a pair of hiking boots. At the stationery sto
re, I picked up some instant heat packs and a flashlight. If I wanted to move ahead with the investigation, I had to go in the woods in the middle of the night, just as Park had. What exactly happened there at night?

  It was easy to find my way back into the village. I just hitched a ride with one of the jeeps heading into the hunting grounds. My companions were two middle-aged men and a third man probably twenty years younger.

  “So how’s it looking out there?” asked the young man, who was driving. He seemed to have mistaken me for a local. “Lots of game around? It’s our first time here.”

  “They just released two thousand pheasants into the woods.” I simply repeated what I’d gotten from Ahn Seongman.

  “Since they have wings, you can’t guarantee they’ll all stay in the woods,” said one of the middle-aged men in the back, who’d been stroking the stock of his double shotgun. “I much prefer land animals. Like deer and wild boar.”

  The other middle-aged man snorted. “Hey, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Double shotguns are the best for hunting pheasants. Don’t take a bad shot at the wrong animal and make it suffer for nothing. Forget everything and just set your sights on a pheasant.”

  The two men snickered like boys and jostled each other. Park Gicheol had roamed the woods all night, a gunshot wound to the thigh. It seemed Ahn had made quite a profit off his farm until now, since his seemed to be the only one near the hunting grounds. Park had accompanied the hunters. If a deer got shot and disappeared into the woods, he would have tracked its prints to find it. Or if a hound found it instead, maybe Park would have slung the deer over his shoulders and taken it back to the hunters. He may have even skinned the deer himself, and connected the hunters to the restaurants in town that would cook the venison. But two months before Park’s death, the deer farm had gone up in flames. The hunters coming to hunt this season would have to be satisfied with pheasants and ducks, and possibly wild boar, if they’re lucky.

  Back at Park’s house, his elderly mother barely managed to sit up and drink the water by her bed.

  “Since he died, I’ve been going into the woods every day. I think it’s going to rain. My whole body’s sore … The gods must be crazy. They leave the person who’s supposed to go and take the one who’s supposed to stay.”

  It was difficult to understand her. Her words tumbled past her few remaining teeth. It seemed she’d run out of tears to shed. Time had sucked all the moisture from her body and left her with wrinkles.

  “I’ve combed through every corner of the woods, but I can’t find it. There’s a pine mushroom patch only he knew about. When the mushrooms were in season, he’d take me there and we’d bring them back by the bagful. I keep thinking about that spot. Just one more time, I want to see it before I die. I know these woods pretty well myself, but I can’t find it … Now he’s gone, and somewhere out there, there’s a place filled with pine mushrooms.”

  Her cloudy eyes skimmed the yard, as if she were seeing the mushrooms. The fireplace was damp, as though it hadn’t been lit for a long time. As I started up the fire, smoke filled the kitchen. I slipped my hand under the mat where she lay and felt the floor starting to grow warm.

  “Do you know a Kim Jinseong by any chance? Have you heard of him?” Weakly, she shook her small head. “… I didn’t think he would die. I should have put a stop to it when he started bounding through the woods like a deer. Now he’s died like one, too.”

  I was left with no choice now but to start where the other detective had left off. Who was this Kim Jinseong?

  I arrived at Mr. Kim’s house to find the yard filled with people. They were from various parts of the village, all members of the Kim clan. In other words, they were also related to Park. They asked how big of a settlement Park’s mother was going to receive. They also wanted to know who would be next in line if, for some reason, she was unable to receive it. The other detective had mentioned experiencing something similar, and that it had made him think again about human nature. Maybe it was a good thing he had quit the investigation. On the other hand, there’s a category of people who remain unfazed by these types of situations, not because they’ve grown numb, but because they tend to be more objective. And those kinds of people respond this way: “Please wait until the investigation is complete.”

  The real ugliness will begin after Park’s elderly mother gets the insurance money. I pushed my way through the crowd and climbed onto the stoop. It wasn’t easy to remove my boots. While in the middle of untying my laces, I happened to look down and see the faces in the yard. With a start, I realized they resembled a herd of deer. As soon as I saw their fearful gazes, full of suspicion, I swallowed the question I’d been about to ask. Just as Ahn Seongman hadn’t, I knew they wouldn’t tell me about Kim Jinseong. Though I didn’t know who Kim Jinseong was, I could tell they were all afraid of him.

  •

  I sat on the bench in front of the pharmacy, waiting for the girl from Mother Earth Tearoom to come back from her delivery. Buses constantly pulled into the terminal and left. Even more jeeps had taken over the sides of the road than when I had come to town several days earlier. I called to the girl as she pulled up on her scooter. She was wearing long boots over a short skirt.

  “What brings you back here?” she asked, recognizing me right away.

  Though she wasn’t even chewing gum, it sounded as if she was.

  “You know Kim Jinseong well, don’t you?”

  “You expect me to share that kind of information for free?”

  Each time she blinked, her false lashes folded and opened like a fan.

  “You know what? I like you, so I’ll tell you, but I don’t actually know him that well. All I know is that he lives in Seoul and owns a small business. He’s got all kinds of connections, though. Who cares if none of that’s true? The important thing is, he’s generous to everyone here.”

  Opening day of the season was November 1. The hunting areas rotated every year, but according to the girl, Kim Jinseong came to this place even when the grounds weren’t open. Why would he come here in the off-season, when hunting was illegal? The girl grinned. Each time she grinned, a dimple formed in her left cheek.

  “Are you asking because you really don’t know, or because you’re naïve? They came here last year around this time. Closed season? Who actually follows those rules? You think I actually have a motorcycle license to drive this scooter? Every time they come here, they drop a lot of dough, so people just keep their mouths shut and pretend not to notice anything.”

  Young or old, it didn’t matter—everyone was always trying to teach me something. Her cell phone rang, and she answered it.

  “I gotta go. I’m behind on my deliveries. They’re all Seoul customers. Can you believe all the motels and hotels around here are full? Stop by the tearoom later. Don’t just order a coffee and take off, okay?”

  Her scooter puttered across the road. A jeep trailed her from behind and honked its horn, pulling up next to her. She leaned in close to the open window on the passenger side and exchanged a few words with the driver. Shortly after, the jeep pulled into the left-turn lane to wait for the signal. The girl looked back at me and pointed toward the jeep. It wasn’t hard to read what she mouthed: Kim Jinseong.

  Kim Jinseong’s party, which consisted of three jeeps, went in and out of the woods ceaselessly. He looked different from the other hunters. Though in his late-forties, he was fit and lean. He’d registered at the local police station as soon as he arrived, and was also using registered firearms. His was a pump shotgun. The other members in his group used double-barreled shotguns, either the side-by-side or the over-under. Even with a more classic gun, where he had to pump the gun to reload after each shot, he easily caught five pheasants, which was the daily catch limit. As per the law, he stopped hunting at sunset, and stored his guns at the police station. He abided by every law. He seemed to be doing nothing wrong.

  I put on a sweater underneath my parka and slipped out of my room for
a quick stroll. I had intended to head back before the night grew deeper, but I changed my mind midway. After all, I had my flashlight. A large disk of light lit the darkness ahead. It was slow-going, since I could only see what was directly ahead of me. I passed the totem poles and walked up the mountain path that led to Park’s house. Though I had traveled this path many times now, the trees looked bizarre and even grotesque in the dark. I walked quickly. I started to sweat.

  It seemed Park’s mother was still awake. Light spilled from her window. She’ll receive the insurance money soon, and she will see a fortune she has never known. Her peaceful life will come to an end. The fog surged in from the edge of the hunting grounds, across the river and past the field of reeds.

  When I was between Park’s house and the deer farm, it started to rain. I needed to get back to Mr. Kim’s house before the rain got worse. The wet leaves became as slippery as ice. After I slipped and fell twice, I took my hand out of my pocket. In the beam of my flashlight, the rain pierced the forest like silver arrows. The woods started to grow pungent.

  It was when I’d finally reached the road leading to the hunting grounds: the headlights of a jeep flashed through the trees. Gravel popped out under its tires. Its headlights swept across the woods, exposing more than what daylight revealed. The rain was coming down hard. Gun shots rang out.

  On this night, another kind of hunt was underway. Even from where I stood, I could see the jeep lights. I turned off my flashlight, ducked, and made for the lights. The rain streamed into my eyes, blurring my vision. I moved quietly under tall trees. Another shot rang out. This time, it came from a different direction. The rain covered the echo of the shots, but I could tell they weren’t using pump or double-barreled shotguns. It occurred to me that if I went down to the road, I could very well get shot. I had no choice but to walk through the woods toward Mr. Kim’s house. I just wanted to get back to my warm room.