Min Lee - Pachinko

Hansu nodded, trying not to show his irritation. He’d expected Sunja to work, but it hadn’t occurred to him that she’d be doing outdoor labor.

Kyoko sensed the man’s displeasure. “Surely, you must want to see your daughter, ma’am. Tako-chan, please accompany our guest to her daughter.”

Tako, the middle of the three sisters, complied because she had no choice; it was pointless to defy Kyoko, who could hold a grudge for days in punitive silence. Hansu told Yangjin in Korean to follow the girl who’d take her to Sunja. As Tako put on her shoes in the stone-paved foyer, she caught a whiff of the old woman’s sour, peculiar odor, only aggravated by two days of travel. Filthy, she thought. Tako walked briskly ahead of her, keeping as many paces between them as she could.

After Kyoko poured the tea that Ume had brought from the kitchen, the women disappeared, leaving the men to speak alone in the living room.

The farmer asked Hansu for news of the war.

“It can’t last much longer. The Germans are being crushed, and the Americans are just getting started. Japan will lose this war. It’s a matter of when.” Hansu said this without a trace of regret or joy. “It’s better to stop this madness sooner than later than to have more nice boys get killed, is it not?”

“Yes, yes. That is so, isn’t it?” Tamaguchi replied in a whisper, dispirited. Of course, he wanted Japan to win, and no doubt Hansu knew the realities, but even if Japan would not win, the farmer had no wish for the war to end just yet. There had been talk of fermenting sweet potatoes into airplane fuel; if that happened, and even if the government paid only a little — if anything at all — the farmer expected prices to rise even higher on the black market, because the cities were desperate for food and alcohol. With just one or two more harvests, Tamaguchi would have enough gold to buy the two vast tracts of land beside his. The owner of the plots was only getting older and less interested in working. To own the entire south side of the region in one unbroken lot had been his grandfather’s dearest wish.

Hansu interrupted the farmer’s reverie.

“So, how is it? Having them here?”

Tamaguchi nodded favorably. “They help a great deal. I wish they didn’t have to work so much, but, as you know, I’m short on men—”

“They’d expected to work.” Hansu nodded reassuringly, fully cognizant that the farmer was getting back his room and board and making a large profit, but this was okay with him as long as Sunja and her family weren’t being mistreated.

“Will you stay with us tonight?” Tamaguchi asked. “It’s too late to travel, and you must have dinner with us. Kyunghee-san is an exceptional cook.”

Tako didn’t have to walk the old woman far. When Yangjin spotted her daughter bent over in the vast, dark field, she grabbed the tail end of her long skirt and wound it around her body to free her legs. She ran as fast as she could in the direction of her daughter.

Sunja, who heard the rushed footfalls, looked up from her planting. A tiny woman in an off-white-colored hanbok was running toward her, and Sunja dropped her hoe. The small shoulders, the gray bun gathered at the base of the neck, the bow of the short blouse knotted neatly in a soft rectangle: Umma . How was that possible? Sunja trampled the potato slips in her path to get to her.

“Oh, my child. My child. Oh, my child.”

Sunja held her mother close, able to feel the sharpness of Yangjin’s collarbone beneath the blouse fabric. Her mother had shrunk.

Hansu ate his dinner quickly, then went to the barn to speak with the others. He wanted merely to sit with them, not to have them fuss over him. He would have preferred to eat with Sunja and her family, but he didn’t want to offend Tamaguchi. During the meal, he had thought only of her and the boy. They had never shared a meal. It was hard to explain, even to himself, his yearning to be with them. In the barn, he realized that Kyunghee had made two dinners in the Tamaguchi kitchen — a Japanese one for the Tamaguchi family and a Korean for the others. In the barn, the Koreans ate their meals on a low, oilcloth-covered table that Kim had built for them with leftover beams. Sunja had just cleared the dinner dishes. Everyone looked up when he walked in.

The animals were quieter in the evening, but they were not silent. The smells were stronger than Hansu remembered, but he knew the odor would be less noticeable soon enough. The Koreans were housed in the back part of the barn, and the animals were nearer the front, with haystacks between them. Kim had built a wooden partition, and he and the boys slept on one side with the women on the other.

Yangjin, who’d been sitting on the ground between her grandsons, got up and bowed to him. On the way to the farm, she’d thanked him numerous times, and now, reunited with her family, she kept repeating thank you, thank you, clutching on to her grandsons, who looked embarrassed. She bawled like an old Korean woman.

Kyunghee was still in the farmhouse kitchen, washing the dinner dishes. When she finished with that, she would prepare the guest room for Hansu. Kim was in the shed behind the barn that was used for bathing, busy heating water for everyone’s bath. Kyunghee and Kim had taken over Sunja’s evening chores to allow her to remain with her mother. None of them suspected the reasons why Hansu had gone through the trouble of getting Yangjin from Korea. As Yangjin sobbed, Sunja observed Hansu, unable to make sense of this man who had never left her life.

Hansu sat down on the thick pile of hay, opposite the boys.

“Did you eat enough dinner?” Hansu asked them in plain Korean.

The boys looked up, surprised that Hansu spoke Korean so well. They’d thought that the man who’d brought their grandmother might be Japanese, because he was so well dressed and since Tamaguchi-san had treated him with such deference.

“You are Noa,” Hansu said, considering the boy’s face carefully. “You are twelve years old.”

“Yes, sir,” Noa replied. The man wore very fine clothes and beautiful leather shoes. He looked like a judge or an important person in a movie poster.

“How do you like being on the farm?”

“It is good, sir.”

“I’m almost six years old,” Mozasu interrupted, something he did out of habit whenever his older brother spoke. “We eat a lot of rice here. I can eat bowls and bowls of rice. Tamaguchi-san said that I need to eat well to grow. He told me not to eat potatoes but to eat rice! Do you like rice, sir?” the boy asked Hansu. “Noa and I will have baths tonight. In Osaka, we couldn’t take baths often because there was no fuel for hot water. I like the baths on the farm better because the tub is smaller than the one at the sento . Do you like baths? The water is so hot, but you get used it, nee , and the tips of my fingers get wrinkled like an old man when I don’t come out of the water.” Mozasu opened his eyes wide. “My face doesn’t wrinkle, though, because I am young.”

Hansu laughed. The younger child had none of Noa’s formality. He seemed so free.

“I’m glad you’re eating well here. That’s good to know. Tamaguchi-san said that you boys are excellent workers.”

“Thank you, sir,” Mozasu said, wanting to ask the man more questions but stopping himself when the man addressed his brother.

“What are your chores, Noa?”

“We clean the stalls here, feed the animals, and take care of the chickens. I also keep records for Tamaguchi-san when we go to the market.”

“Do you miss school?”

Noa did not reply. He missed doing math problems and writing Japanese. He missed the quiet of doing his work — how no one bothered him when he was doing his homework. There was never any time to read at the farm, and he had no books of his own.