That still left one burning question mark hanging over us-why the Swiss visitor had become a nonsubject. Pak seemed to think that the subject was something being discussed somewhere else and that it would eventually crash down on our heads again. This wasn't like Pak, to be so jumpy and off-key. Pak was the polestar, the fixed point. If he started to wobble, there was no telling what would happen to the rest of us. I didn't blame him. The situation was bad. Pyongyang was awash in rumors, most of them true, about how conditions in the countryside had fallen apart. We were ripe for something, I just didn't know what.
Chapter Three
"Life, existence, whatever you want to call it these days-it's all made up of layers, am I right? People speak in generalities. They constantly sum up existence, apply a necessary shorthand. They say 'one' but they actually mean 'many.' If you say 'morning,' Inspector, what do you mean?"
I was standing in Pak's office, wondering what had brought this on. "I mean morning, like now. This is morning, which is when I generally come in to report what happened the day before. So here I am. I came in to give you a report on the meeting I had yesterday with the student. Yesterday afternoon. This"-I pointed out the window at the darkness-"is morning."
Pak waved away the idea of the report. "No, you don't mean morning. Morning is shorthand. What you really mean is that the sun is at a certain spot at or below the horizon, the sky a certain shade, the early breeze bringing the smell of earth, someone groaning after not enough sleep. It's the same with happiness, or sorrow, or boredom, isn't it? All layers, everything layers. Layers and intersections."
I could never fathom what set Pak off like this, climbing to these philosophical heights. Whenever it happened, the only thing to do was to follow along and try not to fall too far behind. "Intersections," I said and nodded, but he wasn't waiting for my reaction. He was already on the ledge above me.
"If you start to strip things down too much, get at their 'essence,' what do you suppose happens?"
This time I didn't bother to nod. It wasn't a real question. Pak pointed a finger at me. "I'll tell you what happens. If we aren't careful, things that matter disappear because we reduce them to bits and pieces, smaller and smaller, to the point where they become nothingness. Abstractions take over. Pretty soon, we start thinking that the only difference between day and night is the amount of light. 'Essence is everything,' people start thinking. So they keep searching for essence, some sort of first principle, but essence isn't anything. Sometimes, it's nothing."
This was fast getting to be unprecedented. A change, not yet defined, was coming over Pak. First he had been unusually confrontational with the special section, and now he was soaring into philosophy, far beyond the boundaries where he usually stopped. In another minute, we might need oxygen bottles, we'd be so high in existential clouds.
If Pak was suffering from the altitude, he didn't show it. "We can say exactly the same about sight," he said, and he smiled expansively. I looked around the office. Was there nothing I could use to slow his ascent? Some sort of cord to keep him from drifting completely beyond the boundaries of space?
"You think you see something, O. No, what you really perceive is movement and change; what you perceive is the changing light, light off one object in relation to something else. If there's no change, if things are totally static, there's nothing to see. That is a fact. Provable fact." That must have been the apogee, because he stopped and leaned back in his chair.
I took a breath. "Then I'm surprised anyone can see around here. Nothing ever changes."
Pak pretended he hadn't heard. He stared out the window into the darkness and the empty courtyard. "It's exactly the same with sound, you know. Constant complaining-almost impossible to hear after a certain point." He swiveled back to his desk and took a piece of paper out of a folder. He studied it a moment. "A woman was murdered last month. We're supposed to find out why." He glanced up to see my reaction. I started to speak, but he cut me off. Pak rarely cuts anyone off; he always defers to another speaker, even when someone interrupts him. "Not 'why,' actually. Not 'why' in the traditional sense. We're just supposed to gather information about her, background, family, friends, political reliability, education. Gather them up, all the things that might have a bearing on the 'why.'"
"Sex life?" Right away I was on guard. Cutting me off was another example of aberrant behavior. He was worried about something. If he wasn't going to share with me what it was, then I'd better worry, too.
Pak observed me with a kind of smoke in his eyes, a hazy, far-off look meant to avoid giving anything away. "If it's relevant, yes."
"You don't think it's relevant?" I never liked it when he gave me that hazy look.
"It might be. But there is a complication."
"A complication. Let me guess. She had odd appetites."
"No, she was murdered overseas."
I gave it some thought. "That's a few hundred kilometers out of my district, isn't it?"
"We have less than a week. They want a nice thick dossier prepared. We hand it over, then it's not our business anymore. It goes to the Ministry, but I have a feeling"-he paused for the downbeat-"I have a feeling it doesn't stop there. You'd better get moving."
"How do we know she was really murdered?" Getting moving, as Pak put it, was not high on my list until he let me know a little more about what I was supposed to do. A person could fall into a deep hole unless he asked a question or two before he got moving. "Maybe she just died. People do that."
"We don't know anything other than what it says on this." Pak held up the piece of paper. "I'll assume it's right, and so will you. It doesn't matter anyway. The facts will be the same on this end, no matter what happened to her or if she liked…" Pak paused. "It doesn't matter what she liked. All we need is a collection of the facts on this end. That's it. Nothing fancy, no hypothesizing, no grand framework. No essence. Just facts. Fact one, fact two, fact thirty-four. Sweep them up with a broom. Just think of yourself as a broom, Inspector. Now, go sweep. Most of it should be in files somewhere, so you can sit and keep your shoes dry." It was raining again, needle drops with icy tips that clattered against the window. "Don't bet some of the files haven't already been fiddled with, though. And where there are gaps, you'll have to go out and fill them."
"Isn't this a little odd? I can't remember being put on something like this before, worrying with events so far outside our jurisdiction."
"An unquestioning broom, a dumb, unthinking, uncomprehending broom. Shut up and sweep, can't you?"
"You don't think this smells right, I can tell. What do you know that you're not sharing?"
Pak got up and closed the door. When he sat down again, he crossed his arms. It made him look weighty-weighty and obdurate. He wasted another minute or so, hoping I would turn into a broom. I didn't, and finally he shrugged. When I first started to work in Pak's section, I thought that shrug was dismissive, a gesture meant to show that he was top dog and I wasn't. If I wanted to shrug, I thought, I'd have to find someone lower down the chain. Over time, though, I realized it wasn't deliberate and it wasn't aimed at me. It was part of a conversation Pak carried on within himself, an internal argument he had before deciding he didn't want to debate a point anymore. Some people grimace after they've made a decision they don't like. Pak shrugged. "The word is, this isn't just a simple murder. There are overtones. Or undertones. The sort of thing I don't like, and I tried to make the same argument you're making-that it's outside our jurisdiction. No luck."
"Not simple." I moved over to the window. "Murder may be a lot of things, but it's never simple." The icy rain had changed to snow, and would soon be piling up against the three ginkgo trees that stood in the courtyard. Pine trees took winter with a touch of grace. Not the gink-goes. They endured in a stolid, flinty sort of way, pursed lips, rigid and annoyed. One of the three was sick. It probably wouldn't last much past spring. It would never be replaced. We'd be down to two, and that would change the entire tone of the courtyard, change the light coming into the office, change everything. "You can't nurse a tree," my grandfather would say. "All you can do is say good-bye."