Min Lee - Pachinko

Solomon took the train to Yokohama.

His father’s modest office was lined with gray metal shelves, and stacks of files rested on the credenzas along the walls. Three safes holding papers and the day’s receipts were located below the high windows. Mozasu sat behind the same battered oak table that he’d used as a desk for over thirty years. Noa had studied for his Waseda exams at this table, and when he moved to Tokyo, he’d left it for Mozasu.

“Papa.”

“Solomon,” Mozasu exclaimed. “Is everything okay?”

“Phoebe went back.”

Saying it to his father made it real. Solomon sat down on the empty chair.

“What? Why? Because you lost your job?”

“No. I can’t marry her. And I told her that I’d rather live in Japan. Work in pachinko.”

“What? Pachinko? No, no.” Mozasu shook his head. “You’ll get another job in banking. That’s why you went to Columbia, nee ?”

Mozasu touched his brow, genuinely confused by this announcement.

“She’s a nice girl. I thought you’d get married.”

Mozasu walked around from his desk and handed his son a packet of tissues.

“Pachinko? Honto ?”

“Yeah, why not?” Solomon blew his nose.

“You don’t want to do this. You don’t know what people say.”

“None of that stuff is true. You’re an honest business person. I know you pay your taxes and get all your licenses, and—”

“Yes, yes, I do. But people will always say things. They will always say terrible things, no matter what. It’s normal for me. I’m nobody. There’s no need for you to do this work. I wasn’t smart at school like my brother. I was good at running around and fixing things. I was good at making money. I’ve always kept my business clean and stayed away from the bad things. Goro-san taught me that it’s not worth it to get involved with the bad guys. But Solomon, this business is not easy, nee ? It’s not just tinkering with machines and ordering new ones and hiring people to work on the floor. There are so many things that can go wrong. We know lots of people who went belly-up, nee ?”

“Why don’t you want me to do this?”

“I sent you to those American schools so that no one would—” Mozasu paused. “No one is going to look down at my son.”

“Papa, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, nee ?” Solomon had never seen his father like this before.

“I worked and made money because I thought it would make me a man. I thought people would respect me if I was rich.”

Solomon looked at him and nodded. His father rarely spent on himself, but he had paid for weddings and funerals for employees and sent tuition for their children.

Mozasu’s face brightened suddenly.

“You can change your mind, Solomon. You can call Phoebe when she gets home and say you’re sorry. Your mother was a lot like Phoebe — strong-willed and smart.”

“I want to live here,” Solomon said. “She will not.”

“ Soo nee .”

Solomon picked up the ledger from his father’s table.

“Explain this to me, Papa.”

Mozasu paused, then he opened the book.

It was the first of the month, and Sunja had woken up upset. She had dreamed of Hansu again. Lately, he had been appearing in her dreams, looking the way he did when she was a girl, wearing his white linen suit and white leather shoes. He always said the same thing: “You are my girl; you are my dear girl.” Sunja would wake and feel ashamed. She should have forgotten him by now.

After breakfast, she would go the cemetery to clean Isak’s grave. As usual, Kyunghee offered to come with her, but Sunja said it was okay.

Neither woman performed the jesa . As Christians, they weren’t supposed to believe in ancestor worship. Nevertheless, both widows still wanted to talk to their husband and elders, appeal to them, seek their counsel. They missed their old rituals, so she went to the cemetery regularly. It was curious, but Sunja felt close to Isak in a way that she hadn’t when he was alive. Then she had been in awe of him and his goodness. Dead, he seemed more approachable to her.

When the train from Yokohama reached Osaka Station, Sunja bought ivory-colored chrysanthemums from the old Korean woman’s stall. She had been there for years. The way Isak had explained it, when it was time to be with the Lord, your real body would be in heaven, so what happened to your remains didn’t matter. It made no sense to bring a buried body favorite foods or incense or flowers. There was no need for bowing, since we were all equal in the eyes of the Lord, he’d said. And yet Sunja couldn’t help wanting to bring something lovely to the grave. In life, he had asked for so little from her, and when she thought of him now, she remembered her husband as someone who had praised the beauty that God had made.

She was glad that Isak had not been cremated. She had wanted a place for the boys to visit their father. Mozasu visited the grave often, and before Noa disappeared, he had come with her, too. Had they talked to him, too? she wondered. It had never occurred to her to ask them this, and now it was too late.

Lately, every time she went to the cemetery, she wondered what Isak would have thought of Noa’s death. Isak would have understood Noa’s suffering. He would have known what to say to him. Noa had been cremated by his wife, so there was no grave to visit. Sunja talked to Noa when she was alone. Sometimes, something very simple like a delicious piece of pumpkin taffy would make her sorry that now that she had money, she couldn’t buy him something that he had loved as a child. Sorry, Noa, sorry. It had been eleven years since he’d died; the pain didn’t go away, but its sharp edge had dulled and softened like sea glass.

Sunja hadn’t gone to Noa’s funeral. He hadn’t wanted his wife and children to know about her, and she had done enough already. If she hadn’t visited him the way she had, maybe he might still be alive. Hansu had not gone to the funeral, either. Noa would’ve been fifty-six years old.

In her dream last night, Sunja had been happy that Hansu had come to see her again. They met at the beach near her old home in Yeongdo to talk, and recalling the dream was like watching another person’s life. How was it possible that Isak and Noa were gone but Hansu was still alive? How was this fair? Hansu was living somewhere in Tokyo in a hospital bed under the watchful gaze of round-the-clock nurses and his daughters. She never saw him anymore and had no wish to. In her dreams, he was as vibrant as he had been when she was a girl. It was not Hansu that she missed, or even Isak. What she was seeing again in her dreams was her youth, her beginning, and her wishes — so this was how she became a woman. Without Hansu and Isak and Noa, there wouldn’t have been this pilgrimage to this land. Beyond the dailiness, there had been moments of shimmering beauty and some glory, too, even in this ajumma ’s life. Even if no one knew, it was true.

There was consolation: The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned. Sometimes, she could be in front of a train kiosk or the window of a bookstore, and she could feel Noa’s small hand when he was a boy, and she would close her eyes and think of his sweet, grassy smell and remember that he had always tried his best. At those moments, it was good to be alone to hold on to him.

She took the taxi from the train station to the cemetery, then walked the many rows to Isak’s well-maintained grave. There was no need to clean anything, but she liked to wipe down the marble tombstone before she spoke to him. Sunja fell to her knees and cleaned the flat, square tombstone with the towels she’d brought for the purpose. Isak’s name was carved in Japanese and Korean. 1907–1944. The white marble was clean now and warm from the sun.