Min Lee - Pachinko

Yoo lifted his head and spoke firmly, like a hard-nosed merchant:

“Your wages will be fifteen yen per month. It isn’t enough for one man to live on. Hu and I don’t take a salary. Just living expenses. Also, I can’t guarantee fifteen yen per month, either. The Canadian churches send us some support, but it’s not steady, and our congregation doesn’t give much. Will you be all right?”

Isak didn’t know what to say. He’d no idea what his contribution was to be for living at his brother’s. He couldn’t imagine asking his brother to support him and his wife and child.

“Can your family help?” It had been part of Yoo’s calculation in hiring Isak. The boy’s family owned land in Pyongyang; his references there had mentioned that the family had money, so Isak’s salary would likely not be so important. They told him that he hadn’t even asked for a salary when he served as a lay pastor. Isak was sickly and not a strong hire. Yoo had been counting on Isak’s family’s financial support for the church.

“I…I cannot ask my brother for help, sir.”

“Oh? Is that so?”

“And my parents cannot help at this time.”

“I see.”

Hu felt sorry for the young pastor, who looked both stunned and ashamed.

“Our parents have been selling their land in large parcels to pay taxes, and things are precarious now. My brother has been sending them money so they could get by. I think he may also be supporting my sister-in-law’s family.”

Yoo nodded. This had not been expected, though it made sense, of course. Isak’s family was no different from the others who had been assessed egregiously by the colonial government. He’d been counting on Isak’s being able to sustain himself. With his vision so heavily impaired, Yoo needed a bilingual pastor to help him to write sermons as well as to deal with administrative matters with the local officials.

“There isn’t enough from the offerings, I suppose…” Isak said.

“No.” Yoo shook his head vigorously. There were seventy-five to eighty regular attendees on Sunday mornings, but it was really five or six of the better-off congregants who made up the lion’s share of the giving. The rest could hardly afford two shabby meals a day.

Hu picked up the empty bowls from the table.

“The Lord has always provided for us, sir,” Hu said.

“Yes, my son, you’ve spoken well.” Yoo smiled at the young man, wishing he could’ve provided him with an education. The boy had such natural intelligence and tremendous aptitude; he would have made a fine scholar, even a pastor.

“We will find a way,” Yoo said. “This must be very disappointing to you.” His tone of voice sounded the way he had spoken to the sister earlier.

“I’m grateful for this job, sir. I’ll speak with my family about the salary. Hu is right, of course; the Lord will provide,” Isak said.

“All I have needed Thy hand hath provided; Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!” Pastor Yoo sang in his rich tenor voice. “The Lord provided you for our church. Surely, He will care for all of our material needs.”

The summer had come fast. The Osaka sun felt hotter than the sun back home, and the brutal humidity slowed down Sunja’s heavy movements. However, her workdays were easy, and until the baby came, she and Kyunghee had to care only for themselves and their husbands, who didn’t come home until late in the evening. Isak spent long days and nights at the church serving the needs of a growing congregation, and Yoseb managed the biscuit factory during the day and repaired machines in factories in Ikaino in the evenings for extra money. The daily tasks of cooking, laundry, and cleaning for four were considerably less onerous than caring for a boardinghouse. Sunja’s life felt luxurious in contrast to her old life in Busan.

She loved spending the day with Kyunghee, whom she called Sister. After two brief months, they found themselves enjoying a close friendship — an unexpected gift for two women who’d neither expected nor asked for much happiness. Kyunghee was no longer alone in the house all day, and Yoseb was grateful that Isak had brought the boardinghouse daughter as his wife.

In the minds of Yoseb and Kyunghee, the cause of Sunja’s pregnancy had long been settled with a rationalization of their making: The girl had been harmed through no fault of her own, and Isak had rescued her because it was his nature to make sacrifices. No one asked her the particulars, and Sunja did not speak of the matter.

Kyunghee and Yoseb hadn’t been able to have children, but Kyunghee was undeterred. Sarah in the Bible had a child in old age, and Kyunghee didn’t believe that God had forgotten her. A devout woman, she spent her time helping the poor mothers at the church. She was also a thrifty housewife, able to save every extra sen that her husband entrusted to her. It had been Kyunghee’s idea to buy the Ikaino house with the money Yoseb’s father had given him combined with her dowry, even when Yoseb had had his doubts. “Why would we pay rent to the landlord and have nothing left when the month is over?” she’d said. Because Kyunghee stuck to a careful budget, they’d been able to send money to Yoseb’s parents and her own — both families having lost all of their arable land.

Kyunghee’s dream was to own her own business selling kimchi and pickles at the covered market near Tsuruhashi Station, and when Sunja moved in, she finally had a person who’d listen to her plans. Yoseb disapproved of her working for money. He liked coming home to a rested and pretty housewife who had his supper ready — an ideal reason for a man to work hard, he believed. Each day, Kyunghee and Sunja made three meals: a hot, traditional breakfast with soup; a packed lunch for the men to take to work; and a hot dinner. Without refrigeration or the cold Pyongyang climate, Kyunghee had to cook often to avoid waste.

It was unusually warm for the beginning of summer, and the thought of making soup on the stone stove at the back of the house would have been unappealing to any normal housewife, but Kyunghee didn’t mind. She enjoyed going to the market and thinking about what to fix for their meals. Unlike most of the Korean women in Ikaino, she spoke decent Japanese and was able to negotiate with the merchants for what she wanted.

When Kyunghee and Sunja entered the butcher shop, Tanaka-san, the tall young proprietor, snapped to attention and shouted “ Irasshai !” to welcome them.

The butcher and his helper, Koji, were delighted to see the pretty Korean and her pregnant sister-in-law. They weren’t big customers; in fact, they spent very little money, but they were steady, and as Tanaka’s father and grandfather had taught him — the eighth generation of sons to run the shop — the daily, cumulative payments were more valuable than the infrequent, outsize purchases. Housewives were the backbone of the business, and the Korean women couldn’t fuss like the local women, which made them preferable customers. It was also rumored that one of his great-grandfathers may have been Korean or burakumin , so the young butcher had been raised by his father and mother to be fair to all the customers. Times might have changed, to be sure, but butchery, which required touching dead animals, was still a shameful occupation — the chief reason given as to why the matchmaker had such difficulty arranging an omiai for him — and Tanaka couldn’t help but feel a kind of kinship with foreigners.

The men ogled Kyunghee, altogether ignoring Sunja, who had by now grown used to this invisibility whenever the two went anywhere. Kyunghee, who looked smart in her midi skirts and crisp white blouses, easily passing for a schoolteacher or a merchant’s modest wife with her fine features, was welcomed in most places. Everyone thought she was Japanese until she spoke; even then, the local men were pleasant to her. For the first time in her life, Sunja felt aware of her unacceptable plainness and inappropriate attire. She felt homely in Osaka. Her well-worn, traditional clothes were an inevitable badge of difference, and though there were enough older and poorer Koreans in the neighborhood who wore them still, she had never been looked upon with scorn with such regularity, when she had never meant to call attention to herself. Within the settled boundaries of Ikaino, one would not be stared at for wearing a white hanbok , but outside the neighborhood and farther out from the train station, the chill against identifiable Koreans was obvious. Sunja would have preferred to wear Western clothes or mompei , but it would make no sense to spend money on fabric to sew new things now. Kyunghee promised to make her new clothes after the baby was delivered.