Min Lee - Pachinko

“Sunja-ya—” Kyunghee touched her forearm lightly. “We’ll always be sisters.”

The young woman nodded gratefully, devotion already taking root in her heart. The sight of the prepared dishes made her hungry for the first time in days.

Kyunghee picked up a pot lid — white rice.

“Just for today. For your first night. This is your home now.”

After dinner, the two couples walked to the public bathhouse, where the men and women bathed separately. The bathers were Japanese mostly, and they refused to acknowledge Kyunghee and Sunja. This had been expected. After scrubbing away the dirt of the long journey and having a long soak, Sunja felt elated. They put on clean undergarments beneath their street clothes and walked home, clean and ready to sleep. Yoseb sounded hopeful — yes, life in Osaka would be difficult, but things would change for the better. They’d make a tasty broth from stones and bitterness. The Japanese could think what they wanted about them, but none of it would matter if they survived and succeeded. There were four of them now, Kyunghee said, and soon five — they were stronger because they were together. “Right?” she said.

Kyunghee linked arms with Sunja. They walked closely behind the men.

Yoseb warned his brother: “Don’t get mixed up in the politics, labor organizing, or any such nonsense. Keep your head down and work. Don’t pick up or accept any of the independence-movement or socialist tracts. If the police find that stuff on you, you’ll get picked up and put in jail. I’ve seen it all.”

Isak had been too young and ill to participate in the March 1 Independence Movement, but many of its founding fathers had been graduates of his seminary in Pyongyang. Many of the seminary teachers had marched in 1919.

“Are there many activists here?” Isak whispered, though no one on the road was nearby.

“Yeah, I think so. More in Tokyo and some hiding out in Manchuria. Anyway, when those guys get caught, they die. If you’re lucky, you get deported, but that’s rare. You better not do any of that stuff under my roof. That’s not why I invited you to Osaka. You have a job at the church.”

Isak stared at Yoseb, who was raising his voice.

“You won’t give the activists a minute. Right?” Yoseb said sternly. “It’s not just you now. You have to think of your wife and child.”

Back home in Pyongyang, when Isak had been feeling strong enough to make the journey to Osaka, he had considered reaching out to the patriots fighting against colonization. Things were getting worse at home; even his parents had been selling parcels of their property to pay taxes from the new land surveys. Yoseb was sending them money now. Isak believed that it was Christlike to resist oppression. But in a few months, everything had changed for Isak. These ideals seemed secondary to his job and Sunja. He had to think of the safety of others.

Isak’s silence worried Yoseb.

“The military police will harass you until you give up or die,” Yoseb said. “And your health, Isak. You have to be careful not to get sick again. I’ve seen men arrested here. It’s not like back home. The judges here are Japanese. The police are Japanese. The laws aren’t clear. And you can’t always trust the Koreans in these independence groups. There are spies who work both sides. The poetry discussion groups have spies, and there are spies in churches, too. Eventually, each activist is picked off like ripe fruit from the same stupid tree. They’ll force you to sign a confession. Do you understand?” Yoseb slowed down his walking.

From behind, Kyunghee touched her husband’s sleeve.

“ Yobo , you worry too much. Isak’s not going to get mixed up in such things. Let’s not spoil their first night.”

Yoseb nodded, but the anxiety in his body felt out of control, and warning his brother — even if it meant sounding hysterical — felt necessary to dissipate some of that worry. Yoseb remembered how good it was before the Japanese came — he was ten years old when the country was colonized; and yet he couldn’t do what their elder brother, Samoel, had done so bravely — fight and end up as a martyr. Protesting was for young men without families.

“Mother and Father will kill me if you get sick again or get into trouble. That will be on your conscience. You want me dead?”

Isak swung his left arm around his elder brother’s shoulder and embraced him.

“I think you’ve gotten shorter,” Isak said, smiling.

“Are you listening to me?” Yoseb said quietly.

“I promise to be good. I promise to listen to you. You mustn’t worry so much. Your hair will gray, or you will lose what’s left of it.”

Yoseb laughed. This was what he had needed — to have his younger brother near him. It was good to have someone who knew him this way and to be teased even. His wife was a treasure, but it was different to have this person who’d known you almost from birth. The thought of losing Isak to the murky world of politics had scared him into lecturing his younger brother on his first night in Osaka.

“A real Japanese bath. It’s wonderful,” Isak said. “It’s a great thing about this country. Isn’t it?”

Yoseb nodded, praying inside that Isak would never come to any harm. His unqualified pleasure at his brother’s arrival was short-lived; he hadn’t realized what it would mean to worry about another person in this way.

On their walk home, Kyunghee told Isak and Sunja about the famous noodle shops near the train station and promised to take them. Once they returned to the house, Kyunghee turned on the lights, and Sunja remembered that this was now where she lived. The street outside was quiet and dark, and the tiny shack was lit with a clean, bright warmth. Isak and Sunja went to their room, and Kyunghee said good night, closing the panel door behind them.

Their windowless room was just big enough for a futon and a steamer trunk converted into a dresser. Fresh paper covered the low walls; the tatami mats had been brushed and wiped down by hand; and Kyunghee had plumped up the quilts with new cotton padding. The room had its own kerosene heater, a midpriced model that was nicer than the one in the main room, where Kyunghee and Yoseb slept, and it emitted a steady, calming hum.

Isak and Sunja would sleep on the same pallet. Before Sunja left home, her mother had spoken to her about sex as if everything was new to her; she explained what a husband expected; and she said that relations were allowed when pregnant. Do what you can to please your husband. Men need to have sex.

A single electric bulb hung from the ceiling and cast a pale glow about the room. Sunja glanced at it, and Isak looked up, too.

“You must be tired,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

Sunja crouched down to open up the folded pallet and quilt on the floor. What would it be like to sleep beside Isak, who was now her husband? The bed was made up quickly, but they were still wearing street clothes. Sunja pulled out her nightclothes from her clothing bundle — a white muslin nightgown her mother had fashioned from two old slips. How would she change? She knelt by the pallet, the gown in her hands.

“Would you like me to turn out the light?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Isak pulled the chain cord, and the switch made a loud clicking sound. The room was still suffused with the dim glow from the adjoining room, separated by a paper screen door. On the other side of the thin wall was the street; pedestrians talked loudly; the pigs next door squealed now and then. It felt like the street was inside rather than out. Isak removed his clothes, keeping on his underwear to sleep in — intimate garments Sunja had already seen, since she’d been doing his wash for months. She had already seen him vomit, have diarrhea, and cough up blood — aspects of illness that no young wife should have had to witness so early on in a relationship. In a way, they’d been living together longer and more intimately than most people who got married, and each had seen the other in deeply compromised situations. They shouldn’t feel nervous around the other, he told himself. And yet Isak was uncomfortable. He had never slept next to a woman, and though he knew what should happen, he was not entirely sure of how it should begin.