Min Lee - Pachinko

“ Oppa , are you all right?”

He nodded. He had talked for the entire length of the walk about traveling and work, yet at the sight of the colored leaves and bumpy tree trunks, Hansu fell silent. He placed his right hand on her back and touched the end of her hair braid. He stroked her back, then removed his hand carefully.

Hansu had not been in a forest since he was a boy — that time before he became a tough teenager who could hustle and steal with the wisest street kids of Osaka. Before he moved to Japan, the wooded mountains of Jeju had been his sanctuary; he had known every tree on the volcano Halla-san. He recalled the small deer with their slender legs and mincing, flirtatious steps. The heavy scent of orange blossoms came back to him, though there were no such things in the woods of Yeongdo.

“Let’s go,” he said, walking ahead, and Sunja followed him. Less than a dozen paces in, he stopped to pluck a mushroom gently from the ground. “That’s our first,” he said, no longer crying.

He had not lied to her. Hansu was an expert at finding mushrooms, and he found numerous edible weeds for her, even explaining how to cook them.

“When you’re hungry, you’ll learn what you can eat and what you cannot.” He laughed. “I don’t like being hungry. So, where’s your spot? Which way?”

“A few minutes from here — it’s where my mother used to pick them after a heavy rain when she was a girl. She’s from this side of the island.”

“Your basket is not large enough. You could have brought two and had plenty to dry for the winter! You might have to return tomorrow.”

Sunja smiled at him. “But, Oppa , you haven’t even seen the spot!”

When they reached her mother’s mushroom spot, it was carpeted with the brown mushrooms that her father had adored.

He laughed, as pleased as he could be. “Didn’t I tell you? We should have brought something to make supper with. Next time, let’s plan to have lunch here. This is too easy!” Immediately, he began to gather mushrooms by the handful and threw them into the basket on the ground between them. When it grew full, he put more into his handkerchief, and when that was heaping, she untied the apron around her waist and gathered more.

“I don’t know how I will carry them all,” she said. “I’m being greedy.”

“You are not greedy enough.”

Hansu moved toward her. She could smell his soap and the wintergreen of his hair wax. He was cleanly shaven and handsome. She loved how white his clothes were. Why did such a thing matter? The men at the boardinghouse could not help being filthy. Their work dirtied all their things, and no amount of scrubbing would get the fish smell off their shirts and pants. Her father had taught her not to judge people on such shallow points: What a man wore or owned had nothing to do with his heart and character. She inhaled deeply, his scent mingled with the cleansing air of the forest.

Hansu slid his hands beneath her short traditional blouse, and she did not stop him. He untied the long sash that held her blouse together and opened it. Sunja started to cry quietly, and he pulled her toward him and held her, making low, soothing sounds, and she allowed him to comfort her as he did what he wanted. He lowered her on the ground tenderly.

“ Oppa is here. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

He had his hands firmly under her buttocks the entire time, and though he had tried to shield her from the twigs and leaves, bits of the forest had made red welts on the backs of her legs. When they separated, he used his handkerchief to clean the blood.

“Your body is pretty. Full of juice like a ripened fruit.”

Sunja couldn’t say anything. She had suckled him like an infant. While he was moving inside her, doing this thing that she had witnessed pigs and horses doing, she was stunned by how sharp and bright the pain was and was grateful that the ache subsided.

When they rose from the carpet of yellow and red leaves, he helped to straighten her undergarments, and he dressed her.

“You are my dear girl.”

This was what he told her when they did this again.

Hansu had gone to Japan for business. He promised there would be a surprise for her when he returned. Sunja thought it would only be a matter of time before he would speak to her of marriage. She belonged to him, and she wanted to be his wife. She didn’t want to leave her mother, but if she had to move to Osaka to be with him, she would go. Throughout the day, she wondered what he was doing at that moment. When she imagined his life away from her, she felt like she was part of something else, something outside of Yeongdo, outside of Busan, and now outside of Korea even. How was it possible that she had lived without knowing anything else beyond her father and mother? Yet that was all she had known. It was right for a girl to marry and bear children, and when she didn’t menstruate, Sunja was pleased that she would give him a child.

She counted the days until his return, and if there had been a clock in the house, she would have measured the hours and minutes. On the morning of his return, Sunja hurried to the market. She walked by the brokers’ offices until he spotted her, and in his discreet way, he set a meeting time at the cove for the following morning.

As soon as the lodgers left for work, Sunja gathered the laundry and ran to the beach, unable to wait any longer. When she saw her sweetheart waiting beside the rocks, wearing a handsome overcoat over his suit, she felt proud that a man like this had chosen her.

Unlike the other times, when she would approach him in careful, ladylike steps, today she rushed to him impatiently with the bundle of laundry clutched in her arms.

“ Oppa ! You’re back!”

“I told you — I always return.” He embraced her tightly.

“I’m so happy to see you.”

“How is my girl?”

She beamed in his presence.

“I hope you won’t go away again too soon.”

“Close your eyes,” he said, and she obeyed him.

He opened her right hand and placed a thick disc in her palm. The metal felt cool in her hand.

“It’s just like yours,” she said, opening her eyes. Hansu had a heavy gold pocket watch from England. Similarly sized, hers was made of silver with a gold wash, he said. A while back, he’d taught her the difference between the long hand and the short and how to tell time. His watch hung from a solid gold chain with a T-bar that went through his vest buttonhole.

“You press this.” Hansu pushed the crown and the pocket watch opened to reveal an elegant white face with curved numerals.

“This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Oppa , thank you. Thank you so much. Where did you get it?” She could not imagine a store where they’d sell such things.

“If you have money, there’s nothing you can’t have. I had it ordered for you from London. Now we can know exactly when we will meet.”

She couldn’t imagine being happier than she was at that moment.

Hansu stroked her face and pulled her toward him.

“I want to see you.”

She lowered her gaze and opened her blouse. The night before, she had bathed in hot water, scrubbing every pore of her body until her skin was red.

He took the watch from her hand and looped the thin sash of her slip through its hook.

“I’ll order a proper chain and pin the next time I am in Osaka.”

He pushed down her inner slip to expose her breasts and put his mouth over her. He opened her long skirt.

Her shock at the urgency of his needs had diminished somewhat since the first time they made love. They had been together many times, and by now, the pain was not as great as it had been for her initially. What Sunja liked about lovemaking was the gentle touching as well as the powerful desires of his body. She liked how his face changed from grave to innocent in those moments.