The Gun

I then had sex with the girl one more time. I got the impression that she wasn’t all that into it, but I was feeling good and was up for it. I think I might have really worn her out. After I came, I stroked her hair. I did that for a while, despite the fact that she was certainly not a beauty. Then I made a joke to get her to laugh, and added, “I’ll be back sometime.”

4

I went to the department store in my neighborhood, where I bought two white handkerchiefs. I finally had the chance to get something to lay under the gun inside the bag. The handkerchiefs were made of cupro fabric — smooth to the touch, like silk — exactly like what I had imagined. I thought the gun’s colors, the riveting silver-black as well as the vibrant brown, reminiscent of natural wood, would stand out beautifully atop this velvety white. I also bought another handkerchief made of the same fabric but in black. I thought I would use that one to polish the gun. My gun was so beautiful, I didn’t think it needed to be polished, but I liked the idea of polishing it and wanted to anyway. Through the act of polishing it, I thought I might be able to communicate more deeply with the gun.

I was eager to get back to my apartment, so I quickened my pace. No matter how much I walked, I didn’t feel tired. I went over the railway crossing and cut across a park, breaking into a run midway. My cell phone rang, and I was a little surprised by how loud it sounded. Reflexively, I answered; it was my mother calling. She asked me if anything new had happened. When I said, “Why do you ask?” she told me that she had had a dream about me.

“It’s just that, you know, seeing you in my dream all of a sudden, I was worried that something might have happened.”

“Come on, you freak me out with that kind of thing.”

“No, for some reason I was just worried — so you haven’t caught a cold? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Look, I’m kind of busy right now, sorry, I have to go,” I said and hung up, even though it seemed like my mother still had something else she wanted to say. She always called my apartment whenever she needed to speak to me. I wondered for a moment why she had decided to call my cell phone, but then my thoughts turned once again to the gun. There were two things for me to do today. I had just completed the first — buying the white cloths — and the second was to examine the bullets inside the gun. Whether bullets were loaded securely inside was, as far as I was concerned, a critical issue. So critical, in fact, that, terrified of confirming whether or not they were there, I had not dared investigate before today. This was a habit of mine, putting off matters of grave importance. It was less about not wanting to kill my joy; rather, I preferred to cling to grand illusions. However, I could not just avoid this forever. If there were no bullets inside, my gun would lose some of its significance. I mean, even if I never actually used the gun, it needed to have bullets in it. If it weren’t loaded, then one way or another I would need to get my hands on some bullets. And doing so would be fraught with considerable peril and challenges. It was a choice I hoped to avoid, if possible.

What concerned me was the high probability that the man lying there had in fact killed himself. How many bullets would he load in the gun he would use to commit suicide? He could have loaded a single bullet and then taken his own life. I guessed that would have been the usual way to do it. This was a nagging suspicion in my mind. When I became aware of this doubt I harbored, I grew anxious, sometimes to the point where I couldn’t stand it. I realized I could no longer put it off. I needed to know for certain what my situation was.

I returned to my apartment and opened the satchel. The gun was as breathtakingly beautiful as ever. The girl I had just slept with was no comparison for the gun. In this moment, the gun was everything to me, and would be everything to me from now on as well. As I pondered whether or not it was loaded, I gazed at its piercing metallic sheen.

I made up my mind that I would try to pull the cylindrical piece in the center out sideways. In my imagination, bullets could be loaded one by one, by moving this part out to either the left or right. Figuring that was a safe bet, I proceeded, careful not to touch the trigger or the hammer. My hands trembled slightly with nervousness, and I felt my body dampening with a cold sweat. As I pushed it with the ball of my thumb, the cylinder made a little clink and moved far out to the left, stopping at a point where I could see clearly inside. There were four golden bullets loaded in it. Each of the gold bullets was embedded in one of the six regularly spaced holes. For a moment, I gave myself over to a sense of bewildering joy that was mingled with excitement and relief. This was as it should be, I thought. The gun would never betray me, it would satisfy me in every way, I said to myself as I could feel a smile breaking out across my face. I stared at the bullets and imagined them being fired from the gun and how far they would travel. I couldn’t call to mind a more beautiful image, or something so fascinating. Then, without hesitation, I visualized myself using the gun. First I leveled the gun, and with my right thumb I lowered the hammer. Then I closed my left eye, focusing my right eye as I decided on an appropriate target. What should I shoot? I hadn’t thought about it. For instance, I wondered, a person? Anyone would do — some hopeless lowlife who deserved to be shot — that’s who I’d aim for. I imagined a woman. A man would also do, but the first thing that popped into my mind was an unknown woman, slender with long hair. Preparing for the impact, I braced my right wrist, grasping it with my left hand. I placed my right index finger on the trigger, and slowly pulled it toward me. The impact of the gunshot rippled through my entire body, a dense and fine vibration running along my wrist. Of course I couldn’t see the actual bullet fly out, but I thought I saw a spark of discharge and a plume of smoke that accompanied it. The bullet bore through the woman’s body, and as she fell blood spurted out. She might say something as she lay there. But that’s where I took leave of my fantasy. I had no penchant for so-called subversive impulses or brutality. For example, I was capable of unflinchingly watching a movie in which a monster eats someone’s guts out, but it didn’t excite me in any way. I had no particular desire to see a woman writhing in agony. My interest was simply in the kind of excitement derived from the act of destroying some form of life, and in the extraordinariness of that. It was the process, rather than the outcome; more than the blood and gore on the screen, it was the tension evoked by what I saw that aroused my interest.

I lay down on my bed and wondered about who first thought up such a device and decided to create it. I imagined the gun’s predecessor must be something like a cannon, which developed into a long rifle, like a musket, before evolving into a pistol. Naturally, it goes without saying, they all shared the common purpose of killing living things. A knife or a sword served the same objective, but what was fundamentally different about these was the risk involved. In order to kill someone with a knife, you needed to get close to him. The implication being that you would likely be prone to a counterattack — that is to say, someone trying to kill you — this was the specific risk involved. But that wasn’t the case with a gun. Of course, if the other guy had a gun too then it would turn into a shootout, but you could take aim from a protected position, and if you hit your target, your foe might die without knowing who killed him. On the part of the killer, it still guaranteed a considerable — not to say absolute — degree of safety, compared to a knife or a sword. As well as the fact that there would be virtually no immediate sensation of having killed someone — no slicing through flesh or shattering bones. Naturally the killer must experience something, but with a gun, it was only the impact of the bullets being fired; there was no point of contact with your foe’s flesh and bone. It didn’t require the effort of a cannon or a bow and arrow, nor did it expose your own person to the danger of a bomb or the like. A pistol was even more portable than a rifle, all it took was the pull of your fingertip. The silver of the metal seemed to embody the desire of the inventor who sought an easy way to kill someone. It made me a little uncomfortable to put words like “ease” and “death” together. Once again, I picked up this device that equated such contradictory concepts in my hand, and I studied it closely. The gun brought murder closer, and yet, it seemed to enable the murderer himself to stand by and watch the crime being committed. And it came in such a beautiful shape. I thought that its creator must have made it look this way in order to arouse the desire to acquire it, or perhaps it was through this proximity to death that its shape evolved organically, and that was what the creator found beautiful. Yet an arrow or a knife were also beautiful in the same way. Did people experience beauty in things that were associated with death? Or is that what they sought? I turned these thoughts over, but I couldn’t be sure. I decided that I wasn’t supposed to understand.