Min Lee - Pachinko

Did any of this matter to Yoseb? He’d nodded at the right times and grunted affirmatively when his Japanese boss was talking about the war, because you were supposed to nod when the boss told you his stories. Nevertheless, to every Korean he knew, Japan’s expanding war in Asia seemed senseless. China was not Korea; China was not Taiwan; China could lose a million people and still keep on. Pockets of it may fall, but it was an unfathomably vast nation; it would endure by sheer number and resolve. Did Koreans want Japan to win? Hell no, but what would happen to them if Japan’s enemies won? Could the Koreans save themselves? Apparently not. So save your own ass — this was what Koreans believed privately. Save your family. Feed your belly. Pay attention, and be skeptical of the people in charge. If the Korean nationalists couldn’t get their country back, then let your kids learn Japanese and try to get ahead. Adapt. Wasn’t it as simple as that? For every patriot fighting for a free Korea, or for any unlucky Korean bastard fighting on behalf of Japan, there were ten thousand compatriots on the ground and elsewhere who were just trying to eat. In the end, your belly was your emperor.

Every minute of every day, Yoseb was worried about money. If he dropped dead, what would happen? What kind of man let his wife work in a restaurant? He knew this galbi place — who didn’t? There were three of them, and the main one was by the train station. The gangsters ate there late at night. The owners set the prices high to keep out the regular people and the Japanese. When Yoseb had needed to borrow money for Isak and Sunja’s passage to Japan, he’d gone there. Which was worse — his wife working for moneylenders or him owing money to them? For a Korean man, the choices were always shit.

May 1942

Noa Baek was not like the other eight-year-olds in the neighborhood. Each morning before he went to school, he’d scrub his face until his cheeks were pink, smooth three drops of oil on his black hair, then comb it away from his forehead as his mother had taught him to do. After a breakfast of barley porridge and miso soup, he’d rinse his mouth and check his white teeth in the small round hand mirror by the sink. No matter how tired his mother was, she made certain that Noa’s shirts were ironed the night before. In his clean, pressed clothes, Noa looked like a middle-class Japanese child from a wealthier part of town, bearing no resemblance to the unwashed ghetto children outside his door.

At school, Noa was strong in both arithmetic and writing, and he surprised the gym teacher with his adept hand-eye coordination and running speed. After classes ended, he tidied the shelves and swept the classroom floors without being asked and walked home alone, trying not to draw any undue attention to himself. The boy managed to look unafraid of the tougher children while setting himself apart with a perimeter of quiet privacy that could not be disturbed. When he got home, Noa went directly into the house to do his schoolwork without lingering on the street with the neighborhood children who played until dinnertime.

When his mother and aunt moved the kimchi-making business to the restaurant, the house no longer smelled relentlessly of fermenting cabbage and pickles. Noa hoped he’d no longer be called garlic turd. If anything, lately, their house smelled less of cooking than the others in the neighborhood, because his mother and aunt brought home cooked food from the restaurant for their family meals. Once a week, Noa got to eat tidbits of grilled meat and white rice from the restaurant.

Like all children, Noa kept secrets, but his were not ordinary ones. At school, he went by his Japanese name, Nobuo Boku, rather than Noa Baek; and though everyone in his class knew he was Korean from his Japanized surname, if he met anyone who didn’t know this fact, Noa wasn’t forthcoming about this detail. He spoke and wrote better Japanese than most native children. In class, he dreaded the mention of the peninsula where his parents were born and would look down at his papers if the teacher mentioned anything about the colony of Korea. Noa’s other secret: His father, a Protestant minister, was in jail and had not been home in over two years.

The boy tried to remember his father’s face, but couldn’t. When asked to tell family stories for class assignments, Noa would say that his father worked as a foreman at a biscuit factory, and if some children inferred that Uncle Yoseb was his father, Noa didn’t correct them. The big secret that he kept from his mother, aunt, and even his beloved uncle was that Noa did not believe in God anymore. God had allowed his gentle, kindhearted father to go to jail even though he had done nothing wrong. For two years, God had not answered Noa’s prayers, though his father had promised him that God listens very carefully to the prayers of children. Above all the other secrets that Noa could not speak of, the boy wanted to be Japanese; it was his dream to leave Ikaino and never to return.

It was a late spring afternoon; Noa returned home from school and found his snack, left out by his mother before she went to work, waiting for him on the low table where the family ate their meals and where Noa did his homework. Thirsty, he went to the kitchen to get some water, and when he returned to the front room, he screamed. Near the door, there was a gaunt and filthy man collapsed on the floor.

Unable to rise, the man leaned the weight of his torso on the crook of his left elbow and tried to push up to sitting, but couldn’t manage it.

Should he scream again? Noa wondered. Who would help him? His mother, aunt, and uncle were at work, and no one had heard him the first time. The beggar didn’t seem dangerous; he looked ill and dirty, but he could’ve been a thief, too. Uncle had warned Noa about burglars and thieves who could break into the house looking for food or valuables. He had fifty sen in his trouser pocket; he’d been saving it for an illustrated book on archery.

The man was sobbing now, and Noa felt bad for him. There were many poor people on his street, but no one looked as bad as this man. The beggar’s face was covered with sores and black scabs. Noa reached into his pocket and pulled out the coin. Afraid that the man might grab his leg, Noa stepped just close enough to place the coin on the floor near the man’s hand. Noa planned to walk backward to the kitchen and run out the back door to get help, but the man’s crying made him pause.

The boy looked carefully at the man’s gray-bearded face. His clothes were torn and grimy but the shape of them resembled the dark suits that his principal at school wore.

“It’s appa ,” the man said.

Noa gasped and shook his head no.

“Where’s your mother, child?”

It was his voice. Noa took a step forward.

“ Umma ’s at the restaurant,” Noa replied.

“Where?”

Isak was confused.

“I’ll go now. I’ll get umma . Are you okay?” The boy didn’t know what to do exactly. He was still a bit afraid, though it was certainly his father. The gentle eyes beneath the jutting cheekbones and scaly skin were the same. Perhaps his father was hungry. His shoulder bones and elbows looked like sharp tree branches beneath his clothing. “Do you want to eat something, appa ?”

Noa pointed to the snack his mother had left for him: two rice balls made from barley and millet.

Isak shook his head, smiling at the boy’s concern.

“ Aga —can you get me some water?”

When Noa returned with the cup of cold water from the kitchen, he found his father slumped to the ground with his eyes closed.

“ Appa! Appa ! Wake up! I have your water! Drink your water, appa ,” Noa cried.