Min Lee - Pachinko

At home, Noa asked his aunt for snacks and meals that didn’t contain garlic, hoping this would keep the children from saying bad things to him. When she asked him why, Noa told his aunt the truth. Even though it cost more, Kyunghee bought Noa large milk rolls from the bakery for his breakfast and made him potato korokke or yakisoba for his school bento.

The children were merciless, but Noa didn’t fight them; rather, he worked harder on his studies, and to the surprise of his teachers, he was the first or second in academic rank in his second grade class. At school, Noa didn’t have any friends, and when the Korean children played in the streets, he didn’t join them. The only person he looked forward to seeing was his uncle, but these days, when Yoseb was home, he was not himself.

In the street, Kyunghee and Sunja stood quietly in front of the restaurant, unable to enter. The door was ajar, but it was not open for business. Despite Kyunghee’s initial excitement at the prospect of selling more kimchi, she’d been reasonably skeptical of the offer and had refused to let Sunja go to an unknown place by herself. She’d insisted on coming along, toting Mozasu on her back. They didn’t tell Yoseb about coming here, but they planned on telling him everything after the first meeting.

“I’ll stay out here with the cart and wait,” Kyunghee said, patting Mozasu rhythmically with her right hand. The baby was resting calmly in the sling on Kyunghee’s back.

“Shouldn’t I bring the kimchi in?” Sunja said.

“Why don’t you ask him to come outside?”

“We can both go in.”

“I’ll wait outside. But if you don’t come outside soon, then I’ll come in, all right?”

“But how will you push the cart and—”

“I can push the cart. Mozasu is fine.” The baby was now laying his head drowsily on her back, and she kept up a reliable rocking motion.

“Go on inside, and I’ll wait. Just ask Kim Changho to come out here. Don’t keep talking to him inside, all right?”

“But I thought we’d talk to him together.”

Sunja stared at her sister-in-law, not knowing what she should do, and then it occurred to her that her sister-in-law was afraid of going into the restaurant. If her husband asked her what had happened, she could say honestly that she was outside the whole time.

April 1940

It was the second restaurant she’d ever entered in her life. The main dining room was nearly five times the size of the udon shop in Busan that she’d gone to with Isak. The lingering smells of burnt meat and stale cigarettes from the previous night scraped against her throat. There were two rows of dining tables on a raised tatami-covered platform. Below the platform was a space for the guests’ shoes. In the open kitchen, a teenage boy wearing a white undershirt washed beer glasses two at a time. With the water running and the clinking of the glasses, he didn’t hear Sunja coming into the restaurant; she stared at his sharp profile as he concentrated on his work, hoping he’d notice her.

The man from the market had never specified the time of day for her to show up with the kimchi, and it had never occurred to her to ask whether to come by in the morning or afternoon. Kim Changho was nowhere to be seen. What if he was out today, or only came to work in the afternoons or evenings? If she went outside without speaking to anyone, Kyunghee wouldn’t know what to do, either. Her sister-in-law was susceptible to endless worrying, and Sunja didn’t want to trouble her.

The water in the sink stopped running, and the boy, exhausted from the night-to-morning shift, stretched his neck from side to side. The sight of the young woman surprised him. She wore Japanese trousers and a blue padded jacket that had faded from wear.

“ Agasshi , we’re not open right now,” he said in Korean. She wasn’t a customer, but she wasn’t a beggar, either.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry to bother you, but do you know where Kim Changho is? He asked me to come by with the kimchi. I wasn’t sure when I—”

“Oh! Is that you?” The boy grinned in relief. “He’s just down the street. Boss told me to get him if you came by today. Why don’t you sit down and wait. Did you bring the kimchi? The customers have been complaining about the side dishes for weeks. Are you going to work here, too? Hey, how old are you anyway?” The boy wiped his hands and opened the kitchen door in the back. The new girl was sweet looking, he thought. The last kimchi ajumma had been a toothless granny who’d yell at him for nothing. She’d been fired for drinking too much, but this one looked younger than he was.

Sunja was confused. “Wait, Kim Changho isn’t here?”

“Have a seat. I’ll be right back!”

The boy dashed out the door.

Sunja looked around, and, realizing that she was alone, she went outside.

Kyunghee whispered, “The baby’s sleeping now.”

She was sitting on the stubby market stool that normally hung on the side of the cart. In the bright sun, a slight breeze blew against the puffy tufts of Mozasu’s hair and his smooth brow. It was early in the morning, and there were hardly any passersby on the street. The pharmacy hadn’t even opened yet.

“Sister, the manager’s on his way. Do you still want to wait outside?” Sunja asked.

“I’ll be fine here. You go in and wait by the window so I can see you. But come out when he gets here, okay?”

Back inside the restaurant, Sunja was afraid to sit down, so she stood a foot away from the door. She knew they could have sold this kimchi today at the market. She was here because the man said he could get her cabbage — that alone was enough to make her stay and wait for him. Without the cabbage, they didn’t have a business.

“How nice to see you!” Changho shouted, entering from the kitchen door. “Did you bring the kimchi?”

“My sister-in-law is watching the cart outside. We brought a lot.”

“I hope you can make more.”

“You haven’t even tried it,” she said quietly, confused by his enthusiasm.

“I’m not worried. I did my homework. I heard it’s the most delicious kimchi in Osaka,” he said, walking briskly toward her. “Let’s go outside then.”

Kyunghee bowed as soon as she saw him, but she didn’t speak.

“Hello, my name is Kim Changho,” he said to Kyunghee, a little startled by the woman’s beauty. He couldn’t tell how old she was, but the baby strapped to her back was not more than six months.

Kyunghee said nothing. She looked like a lovely, nervous mute.

“Is this your baby?” he asked.

Kyunghee shook her head, glancing at Sunja. This wasn’t like talking to Japanese merchants — something she had to do to buy groceries or things needed for the house. Yoseb had told her on numerous occasions that money and business were men’s issues, and suddenly she felt incapable of saying anything. Before getting here, it had been her plan to help Sunja with the negotiations, but now she felt like if she said anything at all, it would be unhelpful or wrong.

Sunja asked, “Do you know how much kimchi you’d like? On a regular basis, I mean. Do you want to wait to make an order after you try this batch?”

“I’ll take all that you can make. I’d prefer it if you could make the kimchi here. We have refrigerators and a very cold basement that might be good for your purposes.”

“In the kitchen? You want me to pickle the cabbages in there?” Sunja pointed to the restaurant door.

“Yes.” He smiled. “In the mornings, you two can come here and make the kimchi and the side dishes. I have cooks who come in the afternoon to cut up the meat and fix the marinades, but they can’t handle the kimchi and banchan . That sort of thing requires more skills. The customers want more home-style dishes for the pickles. Any fool can make a marinade and grill meat, but the customer needs a fine array of banchan to make him feel like he’s dining like a king, wouldn’t you say?”