Min Lee - Pachinko

Shimamura, the owner, was sitting in his glassed-in office, the size of a utility closet. The plate glass window allowed him to check the girls’ work. If he found anything amiss, he’d call Yoseb in and tell him to give the girl a warning. On the second warning, the girl was sent home without pay even if she’d worked for six days. Shimamura kept a blue, cloth-bound ledger with warnings listed next to the names of the girls, written in his beautiful hand-lettering. His foreman, Yoseb, disliked punishing the girls, and Shimamura viewed this as yet another example of Korean weakness. The factory owner believed that if all Asian countries were run with a kind of Japanese efficiency, attention to detail, and high level of organization, Asia as a whole would prosper and rise — able to defeat the unscrupulous West. Shimamura believed he was a fair person with perhaps a too-soft heart, which explained why he hired foreigners when many of his friends wouldn’t. When they pointed to the slovenly nature of foreigners, he argued how could the foreigners ever learn unless the Japanese taught them to loathe incompetence and sloth. Shimamura felt that standards must be maintained for posterity’s sake.

Noa had been inside the factory only once, and Shimamura had not been pleased then. About a year ago, Kyunghee was sick with a high fever and had fainted in the market, and Noa was sent to fetch Yoseb. Shimamura had reluctantly allowed Yoseb to attend to his wife. The next morning, he explained to Yoseb that there would be no repeat of this incident. How could he, Shimamura asked, run two machine-based factories without the presence of a competent mechanic? If Yoseb’s wife were to get sick again, she would have to rely on a neighbor or family member; Yoseb could not just leave the factory in the middle of the day. The biscuits were war orders, and they had to be met promptly. Men were risking their lives fighting for their country; each family must make sacrifices.

So when Shimamura spotted the boy again, only a year after that uncomfortable speech that he had not wanted to make, he was furious. He snapped open his newspaper, pretending not to see the boy tapping his uncle’s lower back.

Yoseb, startled by Noa’s light touch, turned around.

“ Uh-muh , Noa, what are you doing here?”

“ Appa ’s home.”

“Really?”

“Can you come home now?” Noa asked. His mouth made a small red O.

Yoseb removed his goggles and sighed.

Noa closed his mouth and looked down. His uncle would have to get permission, the way his mother had to ask Aunt Kyunghee or Mr. Kim — the same way he had to ask his teacher to go to the bathroom. Sometimes, when it was sunny outside, Noa dreamed of not telling anyone and going to Osaka Bay. He’d been there once with his father on a Saturday afternoon when he was very small, and he always thought it would be nice to go back.

“Is he all right?” Yoseb studied Noa’s expression.

“ Appa ’s hair turned gray. He’s very dirty. Umma ’s with him. She said if you can’t come, it’s okay, but she wanted you to know. To know that appa is home now.”

“Yes, that’s right. I’m glad to know.”

Yoseb glanced at Shimamura, who was holding up his newspaper, pretending to read, but was no doubt watching him very carefully. His boss would never allow him to go home now. Also, unlike when Kyunghee fainted, Shimamura knew Isak had gone to jail because the sexton had refused to observe the Shinto ceremony. Periodically, the police came by to question Yoseb as well as to speak with Shimamura, who defended Yoseb as a model Korean. If he left, Yoseb would lose his job, and if the police picked him up for questioning, he would lose his character reference.

“Listen, Noa, work will be done in less than three hours, and then afterwards, I’ll hurry home. It’s irresponsible for me to leave now without finishing my work. As soon as I’m done, I’ll run home faster than you can run. Tell your umma that I’ll come home right away. And if your appa asks, tell him that Brother will be there very soon.”

Noa nodded, not understanding why Uncle was crying.

“I have to finish, Noa, so you run home. Okay?” Yoseb put on his safety goggles and turned around.

Noa moved quickly toward the entrance. The sweet scent of biscuits wafted out the door. The boy had never eaten one of those biscuits, never having asked for one.

Noa burst through the doors of the house, his head and heart pounding from the breathless run. Gulping in deep lungfuls of air, he told his mother, “Uncle can’t leave work.”

Sunja nodded, having expected this. She was bathing Isak with a wet towel.

Isak’s eyes were closed but his chest rose and fell slightly, punctuated now and then by a series of painful coughs. A light blanket covered his long legs. Ridges of scar tissue furrowed diagonally across Isak’s shoulders and discolored torso, making haphazard diamond-shaped intersections. Every time Isak coughed, his neck flushed red.

Noa approached his father quietly.

“No, no. Move back,” Sunja said sternly. “ Appa is very sick. He has a bad cold.”

She pulled the blanket up to Isak’s shoulders, though she wasn’t nearly finished with cleaning him. In spite of the strong soap and several changes of basin water, his body emitted a sour stench; nits clung to his hair and beard.

Isak had been alert for a few moments, his violent coughs waking him, but now when he opened his eyes, he didn’t say anything, and when he looked at her, he didn’t seem to recognize her.

Sunja changed the compress on Isak’s feverish head. The nearest hospital was a long trolley ride away, and even if she could move him by herself, an all-night wait wouldn’t ensure that a doctor would see him. If she could tuck him into the kimchi cart and wheel him to the trolley stop, she could possibly get him into the car, but then what would she do with the cart itself? It wouldn’t pass through the trolley door. Noa might be able to push it back home, but then how would she get Isak from the stop to the hospital without the cart? And what if the driver wouldn’t let them board? More than once, she’d witnessed the trolley driver asking a sick woman or man to get off.

Noa sat by his father’s legs to keep away from his coughing. He felt an urge to pat his father’s sharp knee bone — to touch him, to make sure he was real. The boy pulled out his notebook from his satchel to do his homework, keeping close watch on Isak’s breathing.

“Noa, you have to put your shoes back on. Go to the drugstore and ask Pharmacist Kong to come. Can you tell him that it’s important — that umma will pay him double?” Sunja decided that if the Korean pharmacist wouldn’t come, she’d ask Kyunghee to plead with the Japanese pharmacist to come by the house, though that was unlikely.

The boy got up and left without a murmur. She could hear him running down the street in his even, rapid steps.

Sunja wrung out the hand towel she was using to bathe Isak above the brass basin. Fresh welts from recent beatings and a number of older scars covered his wide, bony back. She felt sick as she washed his dark and bruised frame. There was no one as good as Isak. He’d tried to understand her, to respect her feelings; he’d never once brought up her shame. He’d comforted her patiently when she’d lost the pregnancies between Noa and Mozasu. Finally, when she gave birth to their son, he’d been overjoyed, but she’d been too worried about how they’d survive with so little money to feel his happiness. Now that he was back home to die, what did money matter, anyway? She should’ve done more for him; she should’ve tried to know him the way he had tried to know her; and now it was over. Even with his gashed and emaciated frame, his beauty was remarkable. He was the opposite of her, really; where she was thick and short, he was slender and long-limbed — even his torn-up feet were well shaped. If her eyes were small and anxious, his were large and full of acceptance. The basin water was now gray, and Sunja got up to change it again.