Of course there weren’t any actual dogs there.
Old Raccoon was hardly the type to raise dogs in a library. He’d named his library ‘The Doghouse’ to make fun of people who made a big show of frequenting libraries but never opened any actual books, or possibly to make fun of himself for having spent a good sixty years of his life looking after a library that sat empty of people most of the time. He’d even hung a large signboard engraved with the name ‘The Doghouse’ right above the entrance. People visiting the place for the first time usually stared up at it dumbfounded, their heads tilted at a quizzical angle, or laughed. Then, after a second, their faces would turn sour.
‘Wait, is he calling us dogs? What the fuck?’
What was he thinking when he hung that sign right above the entrance to his library? Reseng attributed it to the cynicism typical of traditional, uptight intellectuals who spent their lives confined to private rooms, the walls padded with books. Unless it was Old Raccoon’s way of thumbing his nose at the world that had taken a young librarian leading a simple, happy life with his books, albeit saddled with a limp from a childhood bout with polio, and made him work for years and years as a middleman for plotters and assassins. Whatever the reason, the sign brought him no end of amusement.
Reseng thought it was childish. If this were his library, there was no way he would have hung that sign. But life never goes the way we want it to, and so, if he had found himself forced to hang that sign, through some odd combination of complicated and underhanded stipulations and well-timed blackmail (as if anyone would blackmail someone into doing something so random!), then at least he would, of course, have brought in a few actual dogs. Along with books from all over the world about dogs.
He pictured a young scholar raising his eyebrows at him and asking, ‘But Mr Reseng, what kind of name is that for a library? “The Doghouse”? Are you trying to insult humanity’s noble world of the mind?’
Reseng would give the young scholar a polite, dignified smile and say, ‘Why, of course not, young man. I haven’t the slightest intention of flipping the bird at humanity’s noble world of the mind. What on earth makes you think that? Perhaps we need to start with your prejudiced notion that books and dogs don’t belong together.’
He would point to the dogs strolling casually among the crowded shelves.
‘Look at these dogs. Aren’t they magnificent? And right over here, from D-11 to D-43, are all sorts of books on the subject of dogs. This library has the world’s largest collection of books on dogs. We’ve got books on chihuahuas, collies, shepherds, greyhounds, St Bernard’s, retrievers. We have books on every single breed of dog in the world. And not only that, this library also has books on dog food, dog breeding, dog lineage, canine interspecies conflict and a lot more. You might even say this library is the spiritual heart of dog-kind—the canine Vatican, if you will.’
At last, the young scholar would nod.
‘Ah, yes, I understand now! Your work is quite impressive!’
‘It is a sacred task.’
The canine Vatican. Wouldn’t that be something? The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like both the dogs and the books would appreciate it and feel elevated by it. But Old Raccoon had not intended any such elegant metaphor. Instead, his choice of the word doghouse hinted at the fact that the library (established in the 1920s, right when Imperial Japan was renaming its colonising strategy from Military Rule to so-called Cultural Rule) had survived for decades in the shadow of authoritarianism, that it had a shameful and obscene history of its own as the headquarters of every major assassination in South Korea’s modern history, and that he was disgusted with himself for being a part of that shameful history.
But Old Raccoon chose that life. Why pick on poor, innocent dogs for the choices he’d made? Seriously, what did dogs ever do wrong?
X
Ten a.m. Reseng entered the Doghouse Library.
It was empty as usual. The sole employee, a cross-eyed librarian, greeted Reseng, her gaze pointing at some spot he could only guess at.
‘Good morning!’
Her cheery voice echoed like a lark’s cry from the domed ceiling. That high-pitched voice vexed him every time. It sounded far too bright for a place built during the colonial era by a Japanese master craftsman and left to rot over the next century. He gave the librarian a curt nod and headed straight for Old Raccoon’s study.
‘He has a visitor,’ she said, rising from her seat.
Reseng paused. Who would come to the library this early with a job for them?
‘A visitor?’ Reseng asked. ‘Who is it?’
‘That tall, smart-looking gentleman. The really polite one.’
Tall, smart and polite? Someone with those qualities would have no reason to be skulking around here. Reseng tipped his head in confusion.
Her voice turning impatient, the librarian added, ‘You know, the guy who wears nice suits and sounds really cool and dignified all the time.’
Reseng snorted. She meant Hanja. The cross-eyed librarian thought Hanja was polite and smart and cool and dignified. And all the time, apparently! What on earth had given her that idea? On the other hand, maybe Reseng was the one who had the wrong idea. After all, Hanja was rich, had a fancy degree from Stanford and was constantly acting the part of a gentleman. Though Reseng could not get on board with the idea that the guy was handsome, he couldn’t argue with the fact that Hanja was tall. Reseng nodded and headed again for Old Raccoon’s study, but the librarian rushed over and pulled at his arm.
‘He told me not to let anyone else in. Not today.’
She stressed the words not today, as if this day were some once-in-a-lifetime event. She had a tight grip on his arm. He looked pointedly at her hand and then slowly up at her face. She let go.
‘Which one of them told you not to let anyone in? Old Raccoon or Hanja?’
She hesitated.
‘Hanja. But Mr Raccoon was standing right next to him when he said it.’
Reseng looked at the closed door. Given how early Hanja had rushed over, he must have been pretty angry about the changes Reseng had made to the plotter’s instructions. Reseng put the maple box containing the ashes of the old man and the dog on the round table in front of the librarian’s desk. He sat down and took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. The second he lit up, the librarian frowned at him.
She sat down at her desk and began to knit; he assumed this meant she’d already completed her tasks for the day. The wool was red. She hadn’t got far enough with it yet for him to tell what she was knitting. Reseng had never once seen her read a book. She never even read newspapers or magazines. She just sat by herself at her desk in that deserted library where no books were ever read or checked out and, naturally, were never returned, and passed the time knitting or cross-stitching, or painting her nails every color of the rainbow.
‘What is that?’ asked the librarian, pausing abruptly in the middle of a row. ‘Japanese sweets?’
She was looking at the box he’d placed on the table. The maple box was wrapped in a white cloth and looked unmistakably like a wooden urn. Reseng had no idea what made her think it was sweets.
‘Yeah, they’re Japanese sweets. But they’re not for you, so keep your paws off ’em.’
She stuck her lower lip out at him. It was covered in a thick coat of bright red lipstick. Right above her mouth was a beauty spot that seemed disappointed not to have been born on Marilyn Monroe’s face. She’d applied dark red shadow all around her eyes, and her eyebrows were shaved and replaced by two crescent tattoos. The overall effect made her look odd and simple-minded. That said, other than being cross-eyed, she wasn’t bad-looking.
She resumed knitting and seemed to forget all about Reseng sitting in front of her. Her knitting was faster now, but there was still something sloppy and uncertain about her work. She probably had trouble focusing on the stitches.
‘You should get surgery,’ Reseng said.
She looked up at him in confusion.
‘I said, you should get surgery.’
‘What surgery?’
‘For your eyes. To uncross them. They say it’s a simple procedure nowadays. Doesn’t even cost that much.’
She looked taken aback. Her expression seemed to say, Don’t you have enough problems, you idiot? Stay out of my business. Or possibly it was saying, I don’t care if my eyes are flipping inside out—why should I care what a loser like you thinks?
‘It’s no one’s business what I’m looking at,’ she said curtly.
She gave him a long, lingering glare. This time, her expression clearly said, Be warned: your insolence will not be tolerated; you’ve made me very angry. But with one eye pointing at the ceiling and the other eye pointing at the stacks to the left, that warning came off as more comical than stern. Not that Reseng didn’t take her seriously. It’s just that it’s next to impossible to make a serious threat when you’re staring simultaneously at the floor and at the ceiling.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean it the way it sounds.’
She didn’t respond. Instead she muttered something indecipherable and kept on knitting, her irritation spelled out all over her face. He assumed she’d told him to fuck off under her breath.
Old Raccoon had gone through a lot of librarians. Most of his reasons for firing them were pretty frivolous. He had fired librarians because a book was misshelved, because a two decades-old book had a tiny tear on the cover and had been left unrepaired for over a month, and because there was too much dust on one of the over nine hundred shelves. He’d even fired one librarian for setting a coffee cup on top of a book. Of course, there were plenty who’d left of their own accord. One left because she said there wasn’t enough work to do; another said the place was so dreary that she felt like she was suffocating; another said being alone in the constantly empty library made her feel like a character in a horror movie. And one librarian’s mysterious reason for leaving was that ever since setting foot in the place, she hadn’t been able to read so much as a single sentence.
Reseng had got along well with most of the librarians regardless of how long they lasted. He considered them friends—his only friends, in fact, with whom he could talk about books. With them, he was able to share the thoughts and emotions the books had aroused in him. Which may have been why talking to librarians always left him feeling a certain sense of kinship and peace of mind.
It usually didn’t take long for the librarians to wonder about the peculiarities of the library. They would steal a moment when Old Raccoon wasn’t around to cautiously ask Reseng what the purpose of the library was and what institution it belonged to. Anyone who found themselves working in that odd place with its crabby owner for longer than a month would naturally start to wonder. Each time he was asked, Reseng explained that it was a members-only library for high-ranking government officials.
They would tilt their heads and say, ‘But I’ve never once seen a government official come in to read or check out a book.’
And Reseng would say, ‘That’s why our country is so messed up,’ and laugh.
But the cross-eyed librarian had never, not even once, asked any questions about the place. When she first started the job, she didn’t ask where her desk was or what her tasks were. Worse still (or according to the same logic), she didn’t ask where the bathroom was or where the broom was stored. It was like she had no curiosity, interest or complaints about anything outside cross-stitching, nail art and knitting. When Old Raccoon gave her instructions, she listened with those unsettling eyes of hers aimed any which way and silently got to work.
So far, she’d lasted a good five years at the Doghouse Library without asking a single question. She had probably been there the longest of all the librarians who’d worked for grumpy, fickle Old Raccoon. She paid no mind whatsoever to what sort of place this library was that stayed empty all year round, or who these people were who came in from time to time with mean, secretive looks on their faces. She just reported for work in the morning, and wiped dust off the books. The rest of the time, she feverishly knitted or cross-stitched. But most surprising of all was her unfailing ability to shelve the books so accurately that not even Old Raccoon, who was more exacting than anyone, could find fault with her. Reseng was forever surprised and dubious at how perfectly a librarian who never read could keep books so well organised.
She was, by far, the strangest librarian he’d ever met. Now and then Reseng would mention a book he was reading, and she would instantly reply in a monotone, chin resting on her hand, ‘C-54 has other books like that. Go and have a look.’ What else could he do, of course, but head straight for C-54, feeling vaguely disconcerted and let down.
Until recently, the library’s collection had held steady at two hundred thousand books. Old Raccoon used to order new books regularly, but would throw out the same number just as regularly. He claimed he did that because there was no room, but they could have easily stored hundreds of thousands more. The real reason he threw them out was that more books would have meant adding more shelves, and Old Raccoon was loath to move the existing shelves that he had long ago arranged just so. As far as Reseng could remember, the shelf layout in the Doghouse Library had never once changed. Neither had Old Raccoon’s method for sorting the books. Nor did he make room for new categories of books that appeared with the changing times. As a result, books that could not be sorted into one of Old Raccoon’s existing categories went straight into the discard pile, even if they were brand-new.
When their time came, Old Raccoon placed a black strip around the discards. It was his own special form of sentencing, a funeral procedure for books that had reached the end of their life. The same way ageing assassins were added to a list and eliminated by cleaners when their time came. Of course, a book’s life span was determined by Old Raccoon alone, and neither Reseng nor the librarians could understand why certain books had to be tossed.
The books with black bands were gathered by the librarian and stacked in the courtyard to be burned on Sunday afternoons, the librarian’s day off. Old Raccoon could have sold them to a secondhand bookshop or even to a recycler, but he insisted on burning them.
Reseng was fond of Old Raccoon’s abandoned books. Though he couldn’t quite explain why, he felt they deserved his love. And they were the only books he was allowed to take home from The Doghouse. On Sunday mornings, before the books were burned, Reseng would peruse the pile next to the petrol can and pick out those he liked. After he had finished, the remaining books were left scattered around in the yard, unwanted by either Old Raccoon or Reseng; they looked as pathetic and hopeless as prisoners of war standing before a firing squad.
‘You don’t have to burn them,’ Reseng would say. ‘You could sell them to a second-hand bookshop instead.’
Each time, Old Raccoon responded in the same way: ‘Every book must follow its own destiny.’
In other words, the particular destiny of the books that had belonged to this ridiculous, godforsaken place where no one came to read (not even the librarian!) was to be as bored and miserable as court ladies, their untouched virgin bodies wasting away as they pined in sorrow, never once to be loved by the king, until they eventually grew too old and were cast out of the palace.
Reseng was confident in his knowledge that the library would be around for at least as long as people were. He had faith, not in the books themselves, but in the shelves and in the edifice itself that held them. What had sustained The Doghouse all this time were its large, wooden bookshelves, carved from the same priceless Chunyang pines used to build palaces during the Joseon Dynasty. Books came and went, but those heavy shelves, lovingly crafted by a famous furniture-maker during the colonial era and still pristine and unwarped ninety years later, never so much as budged.
The cross-eyed librarian had been knitting for thirty minutes straight. Each time Reseng lit another cigarette, she raised her head and fixed him with a frown. But he kept right on smoking, unfazed. He had no hope of getting anywhere with her anyway. In her mind, Hanja was distinguished and cool and Reseng was a dud.
‘What time did Hanja get here?’ he asked.
Without looking up, she said, ‘Nine-thirty.’
‘When did you get here?’
‘Eight.’
That was early. The library didn’t open until nine, so why had she come an hour early? There was nothing for her to do except clean. He really couldn’t understand her. Reseng looked at the door to Old Raccoon’s study again. It was still shut. If Hanja had come at nine-thirty, that meant he and Old Raccoon had been talking for over an hour. What on earth about?
Whenever Hanja met with high-ranking government officials or other powers behind the throne, he told them Old Raccoon was like a father to him. Sometimes he dropped the word like and actually called him his father. The Doghouse Library’s gruesome ninety-year history lent Hanja, who was a relative newbie to the assassination business, an air of tradition and authority. Prone to paranoia and easily spooked, the geezers who pulled the strings still trusted Old Raccoon’s neat and tidy approach to getting the job done. Now and then, while hearing yet another story about Hanja’s name-dropping and riding on Old Raccoon’s coattails, Reseng thought maybe he really was his son. After all, a monster like Hanja could only have been sired by another monster.
Reseng was lighting yet another cigarette when he heard shouts coming from Old Raccoon’s study. He and the librarian looked up at the same time. More shouts. Old Raccoon’s voice. The librarian looked at Reseng in bewilderment. Just then, Hanja came storming out. His face was flushed. He hadn’t shaved; even his hair looked uncombed. It was clear he’d rushed directly to the library the second he heard the plot to kill the old man had been changed. It was the first time Reseng had seen Hanja lose his composure. In fact, it was also the first time he’d heard Old Raccoon yell like a drunken sailor. Old Raccoon’s special skill was sarcasm, not volume. As Hanja stomped past, he spotted Reseng and stopped short. His eyes shot back and forth in shock from Reseng’s face to the wooden urn wrapped in the white cloth.
‘What is that?’ Hanja asked angrily.
‘Japanese sweets.’
Hanja glared at Reseng, biting down hard on his lip as if he wanted to punch him. But he regained his cool and sneered instead. He started to say something but turned to the cross-eyed librarian.
‘I’m sorry, miss, but would you mind excusing us? I need to have a word with this gentleman.’
She looked up at him blankly. He tipped his head ever so slightly to one side. All at once, she leaped up and switched back to the high-pitched, birdlike voice she used whenever she was being polite: ‘Why, yes, of course, not a problem!’ She dropped her knitting needles on the desk. But now that she was out of her chair, she got flustered, obviously unsure about where she was supposed to go, and turned to Hanja again with an awkward smile before rushing outside. After they heard the door click shut behind her, Hanja pulled out a chair and sat across from Reseng.
‘Mind giving me one of those?’ He gestured to the pack of cigarettes on the table.
‘I thought you hated things that stink.’
Hanja frowned. He was clearly in no mood for messing around and looked haggard, like he hadn’t slept at all. Reseng pushed the cigarette pack and lighter towards him. Hanja tapped one out, lit it and took a deep drag before exhaling a long plume of smoke into the air.
‘It’s been so long, it’s making me dizzy.’
He rubbed his eyes like he really was dizzy, or else the smoke was irritating them. They looked bloodshot. Hanja started to take another drag, but he changed his mind and stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. He stared for a long time at the wooden urn.
‘I specifically asked for the general’s body and you bring me a box of ashes. I can’t use ashes.’ Hanja spoke in a near whisper.
Reseng didn’t respond.
‘How did you mess up such a simple task?’
Hanja’s voice was soft, placating. Reseng guessed he was sounding him out in order to understand why he and Old Raccoon had gone against the plotter’s orders.
‘Look,’ Reseng said. He wanted to show him there was no point in prodding him on this, that nothing would come of it. ‘I’m just a hitman who works for a daily wage. Minions like me follow the orders we’re given, so obviously I have no idea what’s going on.’
‘No idea…’ Hanja tapped his fingers lightly on the table.
Reseng reached over to retrieve his lighter and cigarettes and lit another.
‘How many do you smoke a day?’ Hanja asked.
‘Two packs.’
‘Do you not watch the news? Lung cancer is the most lethal form of cancer, and if you smoke, you’re fifteen times more likely to get it. For a heavy smoker like you, lung cancer is a given.’
‘I doubt I’ll survive in this business long enough to get lung cancer.’
Hanja snorted.
‘You’re a funny guy. I’ve always thought that about you,’ Hanja said. ‘You’re tough to read, but you amuse me. I guess that’s why I like you.’
Reseng crushed his unfinished cigarette out in the ashtray and lit up another. As Hanja kept on jabbering—‘Yeah, a real peach, you are’—Reseng fought the overwhelming urge to punch him right in the mouth.
‘That job was worth billions. That plot was going to be huge, the likes of which a mere day labourer like you could never imagine. But then Old Raccoon blew it before it even began.’
‘Gee, what a shame. All that money, gone. My heart bleeds for you.’
‘I’m sure I can salvage it. That is my specialty, after all. But who’s going to compensate me for the blow this has struck to my honour and credibility? That nasty Old Raccoon? Or some lowly goon like you?’
Reseng felt disgusted to hear the words honour and credibility coming out of Hanja’s mouth.
‘Since when is your stupid honour more important than the general’s?’
‘What does a corpse need honour for? Leave him be and he’ll rot in the ground like he’s supposed to.’
‘I’ll be sure to ask your corpse the same question the day Bear cremates you. I’ll ask right before you’re shoved into the oven.’
‘See to it that you do. I can assure you that my corpse will give you the same answer I’m giving you now. We’re businessmen. Who would do something this stupid when there are billions of won at stake? If you’d just turned over the body like you were told, I could have packaged it into something worth selling by now. The politicians and the press can do whatever they want with it after that. I don’t care.’
‘You’re supposed to be Old Raccoon’s friend!’ Reseng shouted. ‘I don’t know why he puts up with a prick like you when everyone else refuses to.’
Hanja let out an arrogant laugh. He seemed to relish the fact that Reseng had slipped and revealed his true feelings, as if that had been Hanja’s intention all along and now he’d got what he wanted from him.
‘See, I told you you’re a funny guy,’ Hanja said.
Hanja had been planning to get the story out on the nine o’clock news. He wanted the assassination to be front-page, above the crease, in every single newspaper around the country. The death of a former North Korean general and key figure back in the days of the Korean CIA! And embedded in his corpse, an unfamiliar 7.62-mm slug that could only have come from a Russian-made AK-47. A suspicious assassination by firearm, positively reeking of foul play.
The day after the body was discovered, yellow police tape would have gone up all around the old man’s house, and the normally deserted forest would have been suddenly buzzing with journalists and TV reporters blowing every little thing out of proportion, and bumbling cops who had no idea what they were supposed to be doing. The TV news would have demonstrated how thoroughly scientific the search for clues was by filming the forensics team walking abreast as they noisily sifted through the forest at onecentimetre intervals, starting at the point of impact. The screen would have filled with the giant face of a balding expert, looking extremely serious as he prepared to give an interview. While pointing out exhibits 1, 2, 3 and 4—a shell casing, a chewing-gum wrapper, an empty biscuit packet, human faeces—found by the forensics team, the giant-faced expert would have spouted endless nonsense about the changing state of international affairs and the movements of the North Korean military. The next day, and the next after that as well, the news would have been full of commentary on the chewing-gum wrapper, the empty biscuit packet, the human faeces.
What was it they were hoping to start? In this day and age, when you can book a seat on a small space shuttle, rocket up out of the atmosphere and stare slack-jawed down at the earth for five long, space-tourist minutes before descending, were they seriously thinking of trying to turn this into another worn-out spy-ring cliché? Not that anyone could have said where the plot originated or what its ultimate goal was. No one ever knew the full truth. In the plotters’ world, everyone avoided having any more information than absolutely necessary. The more information you had, the easier it was to become a target. Ignorance was survival. You couldn’t just pretend, you had to genuinely not know. Why would anyone bother asking how much you knew when they could simply kill you? That’s why everyone stayed inside their own small fence and didn’t stick so much as a single toe out of it. Put enough of those small fences together and you got a plot, woven together from ridiculously large and intricate connections and countless stakeholders. Perhaps they’d been planning to blow up a dam, and for budget reasons had forced a turnabout by assassinating a washed-up former general instead.
At any rate, the plot had gone awry: the corpse they were planning to use had been reduced to ash. Just as Hanja had suggested, you can’t squeeze a media circus out of a pile of dust.
Hanja checked his watch and stood up. He’d said all he had to say.
‘Time to go. Everything’s fucked because of you, and I’m the one stuck sorting it out.’
‘Because of me?’ Reseng asked wide-eyed.
‘You should have told me the plot had changed.’ Hanja’s voice dripped with pity. ‘I don’t know why you had to overstep your bounds and take the fall for him.’
Hanja was much calmer and more relaxed now than when he’d burst out of Old Raccoon’s study. A consummate realist, he knew how to brush off mistakes. He might even have already thought of his next big stunt.
‘I think you have the wrong idea about yourself,’ Hanja added. ‘Let me give you some advice: don’t overestimate yourself. You’re nothing. That spot you’re standing on is all you’ve got. The second you step outside this library, you’re just another washed-up assassin from the meat market, just another disposable needle, used once and thrown away. So watch yourself. And go easy on the cigarettes. If you keep ruining your lungs with those two packs a day of yours, how are you going to be able to run for your life when the time comes?’
Hanja gave him another of his arrogant, hateful smiles. He straightened his jacket as he prepared to leave.
‘Oh! Have I given you my card?’ he asked, his gestures exaggerated, as if he’d overlooked some critical detail.
Reseng stared at him and did not answer.
Hanja took a card from his gold-plated case and set it in front of Reseng.
‘You’ll need this. The library won’t be open much longer. And you should start thinking about your future, maybe learn to speak more politely. Talking down to your elders doesn’t look good. I’m telling you this for your sake,’ he said with a wink.
‘I talk down to anyone and everyone. And you are just anyone to me.’
Reseng stuck Hanja’s business card in the ashtray and stubbed his cigarette out on it. Hanja watched him for a moment and shook his head, then took out another card and this time shoved it into Reseng’s jacket pocket. He patted Reseng on the cheek.
‘Grow up. How much longer do you think you’ll get away with acting cute?’
Hanja strode out of the library, whistling as he went. As the door swung shut, Reseng heard Hanja cheerfully say to the librarian, ‘Wow, pretty chilly out here! So sorry to make you wait. The conversation just dragged on and on.’ He heard her response: ‘Oh, no, it’s not that cold!’ She sounded giddy.
Reseng took out another cigarette. But he stared at it without lighting up. Hanja was right about one thing. Reseng should never have been hired to take out the general. Plotters didn’t use highly skilled assassins like him when the goal was only to stir up the news. That type of job belonged to washed-up hitmen whom no one ever hired anymore, or disposables fresh out of army training, still wet behind the ears and with no clue about how things worked.
Whenever an assassination came to light, the first person the police looked for was the shooter. In the end, all they wanted to know was: ‘Who pulled the trigger?’ When they did find whoever pulled the trigger, they fooled themselves into thinking everything had been solved. But, when you think about it, the question of who pulled the trigger doesn’t matter at all. In fact, it might even be the least important question in an assassination case. What matters is never the shooter but the person behind the shooter. And yet, in the long history of assassinations, not once has that shadow person been clearly revealed.
People believe Oswald killed Kennedy. But how could a bumbling idiot like Oswald have pulled it off? While the press and the police were busy fingering Oswald, the plotters of assassinations and the pullers of strings who’d orchestrated Kennedy’s death slowly and leisurely scattered in different directions and headed back to their nice, safe homes. There, they leaned back in their easy chairs, sipped their champagne and watched the news. A few days later, when Oswald the clown was eliminated on schedule by another third-rate assassin, the police closed the case, the looks on their faces saying, ‘Well, what can we do now that the key culprit is dead?’ Life is one big comedy. All the police have to do is find the shooter, and all the plotters have to do is eliminate him.
The police track down a shooter, interrogate him, torture him. This simpleton who pulled a trigger without thinking becomes the media’s next hot topic faster than his bullet found its target. Everyone who knows him expresses surprise and alarm to learn he was capable of something so awful. The media digs up everything they can about him, tracks down anyone and everyone who might be even remotely related to him (though, in truth, they are completely unconnected), pixelates their faces for privacy and turns the simpleton into a legend. The funniest part is that the idiot who actually pulled the trigger knows next to nothing about what happened. He himself has no idea what he has done. Why on earth would the plotters give such important information to a has-been or a disposable? The plotters’ instructions to the assassin are always the same, regardless of country or era: ‘Who told you to think? Just shut up and pull the trigger.’
Reseng lit the cigarette. It occurred to him that if he hadn’t cremated the old man, he might be a corpse as well right about now. What would Bear’s face look like while feeding Reseng’s body into the flames? Would that big teddy bear of a man weep hysterically, only to chuckle and bow over and over when Hanja handed him his cash, his tears having mysteriously vanished as he counted the bills twice? Reseng was on his second inhale when the cross-eyed librarian came back in, shivering from the cold. She wrapped the cardigan that she’d left on her chair around her shoulders and crouched under her desk, rubbing her hands over the space heater she kept there. She was down there for a long time before she finally came back up and sat in her chair.
‘For fuck’s sake, knock it off with the damn smoking already!’ she exclaimed, her face livid with contempt.
Reseng stubbed out his cigarette. He looked over at Old Raccoon’s study. The door was still closed. Should he go in now? Or should he wait until Old Raccoon had calmed down? He couldn’t decide.
‘What are you going to do if this place closes?’ he asked the librarian.
‘The library is closing?’ She looked shocked.
‘No, I said what if it closes.’
She hesitated and said, ‘I’ll find a nice guy and get married.’
‘A nice guy, huh…’ Reseng chewed over her words and asked, ‘How about me?’
She looked at him like he was crazy.
‘What’s wrong with you? Someone shoot you in the head while I was gone?’
Her voice was so loud that it echoed off the domed ceiling. Reseng laughed. He picked up the urn and walked over to Old Raccoon’s study.
When he opened the door, Old Raccoon was reading an encyclopedia out loud as always; he’d finished the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie and was rereading the Encylopædia Britannica. To Reseng’s surprise, he looked completely unruffled. He was sitting in the same chair he always sat in, with the same book, reading out loud in the same voice. What was the purpose of reading the same two books over and over? His reading habits made no sense to Reseng. Old Raccoon kept reading until Reseng had shut the study door and set the urn on the coffee table. Though he didn’t do it on purpose, the urn clacked loudly against the glass top. At last Old Raccoon looked up from his book and stared at the urn.
‘Why were you gone an extra day?’
He didn’t sound angry or accusatory. Merely curious.
‘The general invited me to stay for dinner.’
He thought that would invite follow-up questions, but Old Raccoon nodded. He set his reading glasses on the desk, got up and came over to the table, then unwrapped the white cloth from the urn and examined the box, briefly caressing the wood with his palm before opening the lid. The old man’s and Santa’s ashes were neatly wrapped in white paper. Old Raccoon unfolded the paper and felt the ashes.
‘Bear ground them really fine.’ He sounded pleased. He folded the paper back and closed the lid, then retied the white cloth. He put the urn on his desk.
‘Lie low for a few days,’ he said. ‘Don’t do anything.’ That meant Reseng was excused.
‘Hanja looked pretty angry.’
Old Raccoon let out a short laugh. ‘What’s he got to be angry about? He got what he wanted.’
Reseng tilted his head quizzically. ‘But he was carrying on about us blowing a plot worth billions of won…’
‘You really think he’d trust us with something that big? He’s thrilled because now he has a reason to run around telling those old government geezers The Doghouse messed up. Ha! I swear, he’s too clever.’
Old Raccoon seemed amused. But what on earth was there to laugh about?
‘Is the library closing?’ Reseng asked.
Old Raccoon looked confused.
‘Hanja tried to scare me by saying the library is closing.’
Old Raccoon thought about it for a moment. A strange smile came over his face.
‘If it closes, it closes,’ he said flatly. ‘What’s there to be afraid of? Not like there was ever any glory in this library anyway.’
But how could that be? How could he close the library that he’d personally overseen for the last sixty years? Old Raccoon’s voice was calm and blunt, as if he’d been readying himself for this moment for a long, long time. Perhaps that was why he sounded so determined as well.
Everyone said that Old Raccoon was born in the library and had lived there his whole life. It wasn’t a metaphor. He actually was born in it. He was the son of the handyman who’d lived in a cottage attached to the library and had kept the roof, electricity and plumbing in working order. After the bout of polio that left him with a permanent limp, Old Raccoon went to work keeping the library clean when he was only six years old. At the age of fifteen, he became a librarian, and at the tender age of twenty-one he became head librarian. It wasn’t clear how Old Raccoon, who was not only disabled but hadn’t even finished elementary school, was able to beat out the colonial officials who’d graduated from Keijo Imperial University in Seoul or studied abroad in Japan, to become first head librarian and then later director of the library. Perhaps the library was far too quiet and boring a place for smart people to devote their whole lives to. Or perhaps it was just too dangerous.
Old Raccoon was studying the urn closely. After a moment, he seemed to realise Reseng was looking at him and turned his gaze back to the encyclopedia, but it was obvious he wasn’t actually reading. He’d forgotten to put his reading glasses back on. As Old Raccoon stared blindly at the page, he suddenly looked much older.
‘I’ll get going,’ Reseng said.
Old Raccoon glanced up and nodded.
When Reseng came out of the study, the cross-eyed librarian was gone. He assumed she’d left to eat lunch. He sat down in her chair. To one side of the desk were her knitting needles and a skein of red wool. A partition concealed a collection of ten or so bottles of nail polish organised by colour, a dainty mini-vanity and a make-up bag that looked like the sort of thing professional make-up artists would take with them to a movie set. Next to it was a set of plastic drawers containing office supplies; each drawer had a nametag stuck to it: Paper Clips, Stapler, X-acto Knife, Scissors, Ruler. Reseng opened the drawer labelled Paper Clips and, sure enough, it contained paper clips. Perched all around the woman’s desk were soft toys: Mickey Mouse, Winnie-the-Pooh, a panda, a maneki-neko and a whole lot more. They looked like they’d always been there and were exactly where they were supposed to be. Reseng poked Winnie-the-Pooh, who was wearing a red T-shirt and no underwear, his belly sticking out, and grinning like an idiot.
The library no longer took in new books. Two years earlier, around the time Bear cremated Chu, Old Raccoon had stopped buying any and had even cancelled his regular orders. Strictly speaking, the library no longer needed a librarian. All it needed was a secretary, or a caretaker. Someone to answer the phone, take out the garbage and occasionally wipe away the dust.
Reseng stood and walked slowly down the rows under the watchful eyes of the old books that hadn’t been opened in decades and were so dry that a single match could have set them off like gunpowder. He trailed his fingers along their spines, feeling like he’d returned to a laneway he had skipped down as a child.
He stopped and pulled out a book. The Origin of Everything. He examined the front and back covers and flipped through the pages. He wasn’t actually trying to read it, though he would have back in the old days; he had no interest in the book, nor was there anything in it he hoped to find. He simply flipped through it out of habit. The first line read: ‘The first vegetable ever eaten by human beings was the onion.’ It wasn’t deep, and it wasn’t didactic. It simply meant what it said. Listed in the book were other sentences: ‘The inventor of the reclining chair was Benjamin Franklin.’ And: ‘The first tool ever used was a hammer.’ Reseng chuckled. Old Raccoon would love this book.
Reseng reshelved the book and looked around at the library. The old wooden shelves glowed in the sunlight filtering down through the slatted windows on the second floor. A library in decline. Its good old days long behind it. Maybe, just as Hanja had said, it was time to close. Everything in it was far too old to handle the changes that had come to the assassination market. The days of youthful recklessness were over. The days of taking on difficult, dangerous assignments without a word of complaint and carrying them off flawlessly. The days when contractors had come from all over in search of Old Raccoon, when the high-paying gigs never stopped coming, when their pockets overflowed with cash. The days when even government officials had to watch themselves around Old Raccoon, and the entire meat market had moved like clockwork at a single word from him. Those days were well and truly over. Just as it got no new books, the big jobs no longer fell to the library.
From the start, Old Raccoon should have been preparing for the day he’d end up an over-the-hill has-been. He should have partnered with a powerful company, or, if that wasn’t to his liking, he should have struck a deal with Hanja and handed over his client list. Unless his retirement plan was to get knifed by a bunch of scumbags while limping down a dark lane one night and meet his tragic end as a corpse fished out of the sewer, he should have at least put some money away. Or given some thought to preparing a safe house like others did in some place like Switzerland or Alaska. But instead Old Raccoon sat in his crumbling library reading encyclopedias. All he had left were those old books, so old that even a garbage collector would have turned up his nose at them.
Now Old Raccoon’s life hung in the balance of Hanja’s arithmetic. The only reason he’d survived that long was because Hanja thought there was still some blood to be squeezed out of him. The instant Old Raccoon came up zero in Hanja’s calculations, he was dead. Reseng pushed in a book that was sticking out and wondered how he fared in Hanja’s equations.
‘When the library closes, will my life close too?’ He laughed and raised an eyebrow.
He went up to the second floor and checked the corner near the western wall. The tiny desk and chair where he’d read as a child were still there. Since he hadn’t gone to school, The Doghouse had been his only education, and, in the absence of any friends, it had been his only playground as well. He’d spent most of his childhood playing among the shelves or sitting at that tiny desk reading books.
Looking back on it now, Reseng’s childhood had been nothing but tedium and apathy. He never received so much as a crumb of the adult kindness that was showered on most kids. The bulk of his childhood memories were of the maze of old shelves, the books, the dust, and of Old Raccoon reading day in and day out, his face blank. The librarians he worked so hard to befriend soon left for other places, and the only other people who dropped by—assassins, trackers hunting down targets, and crafty information traders—all looked gruff and never spoke to him. Of those people, some were still alive, some were long dead, and some were so taciturn and expressionless that he couldn’t tell from looking at them whether they were alive or dead.
Old Raccoon had not said another word about Reseng’s reading habit after slapping him on his ninth birthday. He did not tell him what to read, nor did he tell him what not to read. He was as uninterested in Reseng as he was in his own life. The library remained empty. And somewhere in that empty library was Reseng’s childhood, which had been of no interest to anyone, right along with the books that were no different from a cactus on a shelf or an ornamental stone.
Reseng read purely out of boredom. He didn’t read because he liked books; he read because he had to, because otherwise he would get too bored, or too lonely. After figuring out the alphabet on his own at the age of nine, he had stayed in the library until he was seventeen. Growing up in a library meant having no choice but to read. At seventeen, he made his first kill and used the money he earned to move into a small place of his own. His wages for killing a man went towards an electric rice cooker, rice bowls, a table and silverware. He cooked his own rice for the first time in his new cooker.
Reseng looked down from underneath the second-floor window, where the noon sunshine was spilling in. The librarian had still not returned from lunch, and Old Raccoon’s door was still shut. Reseng looked at the bookshelves to the east, the north, the south and the west in turn. The banks of sleeping books were as still and silent as a fog-covered sea at night. All at once he found it hard to believe that this quiet place had headquartered a den of assassins for the last ninety years. He marvelled at the thought that all those deaths, all those assassinations and unexplained disappearances and faked accidents and imprisonments and kidnappings, had been decided and plotted right here in this building. Who’d chosen this place from which to orchestrate such abominable acts? It was madness. It would have made more sense to set up camp in the office of the National Dry Cleaners Union, or the office of the Organising Committee to Revitalise Poultry Farming. Why pick a library? Libraries were quiet, book-filled places. What had they ever done to hurt anyone?