Min Lee - Pachinko

“Goro-san, I shall have the jackets and trousers ready by the end of the week. I will work on the coat last. Mozasu-san will come again to try on the jacket, please. Can you come by in three days?”

Mozasu glanced at Goro-san, who nodded firmly.

“Come along, Mozasu. We mustn’t keep the customers waiting.”

Mozasu followed his boss out the door, unable to find out anything about his friend, who would be suffering through morning classes about now.

Totoyama bowed when they left and remained at the threshold until they turned the corner and could no longer see her. She shut the door tight and locked the door behind her. There would be money for rent and food that month. Totoyama sat down in front of her door and cried from relief.

1957

There has to be a way to raise that money,” Kyunghee said.

“We have whatever’s left from the savings for the shop,” Yangjin said.

“It’s mostly gone,” Sunja whispered. Trying to save money while paying medical bills was like pouring oil into a broken jar.

The women were speaking in low voices in the kitchen for fear of waking Yoseb. His latest skin infection made him itch terribly and kept him from resting. He had only just gone to bed after taking a large draft of Chinese medicine. The herbalist had given him a very strong dose this time, and it had worked. After all these years, the women were used to paying a lot for the medications, but this concoction had been shockingly expensive. Regular medicines no longer worked for his ailments, and he continued to suffer a great deal. Mozasu, who gave his full pay envelope each week to his mother, said that whatever they had left after living expenses should go toward the best possible care for Uncle Yoseb. Noa felt the same way. Despite the family’s thrift and diligence, the savings seemed to vanish with each visit to the pharmacy. How would they pay for Waseda?

At last, Noa had passed the entrance exam. This should have been a good day, perhaps the greatest day in the family’s life, but they didn’t know how to pay even a portion of his first tuition bill. Also, the school was in Tokyo, and he would need room and board in the most expensive city in the country.

Noa intended to continue working for Hoji-san up until almost the first day of school, then get a job in Tokyo while going to university. Sunja didn’t know how that could be possible. Koreans didn’t get jobs so easily, and they knew no one in Tokyo. Noa’s boss, Hoji-san, was furious that his best bookkeeper was going to quit working to study something as useless as English literature. Hoji-san would never help Noa get a job in Tokyo.

Kyunghee thought they should buy another cart and set up in another part of town to try to double their earnings, but Yoseb could not be left alone. He could no longer walk, and the muscles in his legs had atrophied so much that what had once been thick, powerful calves were now bony stalks sheathed with scabs.

He was not asleep, and he could hear them. The women were in the kitchen worrying about Noa’s tuition. They were worried when he was studying for his exams, and now that he had finally passed, they were worried about how they would pay. Somehow, they had to live without Noa’s salary, come up with the cost of the boy’s education, and pay for his medicines. It would have been better if he were dead. Everyone knew it. As a young man, the only thing Yoseb had wanted to do was to take care of his family, and now that he was helpless to do so, he could not even die to help them. The worst thing had happened: He was eating up his family’s future. Back home, in the olden days, he could have asked someone to carry him off to the mountains to die, perhaps to be eaten by tigers. He lived in Osaka, and there were no wild animals here — only expensive herbalists and doctors who could not help him get well, but rather keep him from just enough agony to fear death more while hating himself.

What surprised him was that as he felt closer to death, he felt the terror of death, its very finality. There were so many things he had failed to do. There were even more things he should never have done. He thought of his parents, whom he should never have left; his brother, whom he should never have brought to Osaka; and he thought of the job in Nagasaki he should never have taken. He had no children of his own. Why did God bring him this far? He was suffering, and in a way, he could manage that; but he had caused others to suffer, and he did not know why he had to live now and recall the series of terrible choices that had not looked so terrible at the time. Was that how it was for most people? Since the fire, in the few moments when he felt clear and grateful to breathe without pain, Yoseb wanted to see the good in his life, but he couldn’t. He lay on his well-laundered pallet, dwelling on the mistakes that seemed so obvious in hindsight. He was no longer angry at Korea or Japan; most of all, he was angry about his own foolishness. He prayed that God would forgive him for being an ungrateful old man.

Softly, he called out “ Yobo .” He didn’t want to wake the boys, who were sleeping in the back room, and Changho, who slept in the room by the front door. Yoseb tapped the floor gently in case Kyunghee could not hear him.

When he saw her at the threshold, he asked her to bring Sunja and Yangjin.

The three women sat on the floor by his pallet.

“You can sell my tools first,” he said. “They’re worth something. Maybe they’ll pay for his books and his moving fees. You should sell all the jewelry you have. That will help, too.”

The women nodded. Among the three of them, they had two gold rings left.

“Mozasu should ask his boss, Goro-san, for an advance against his salary equal to Noa’s tuition, room, and board. And the three of you and he can work down the debt. During the school breaks, Noa can find whatever temporary jobs he can get and save. The boy has to go to Waseda. He deserves to go. Even if no one hires Koreans here, with his degree he can go back to Korea and work for a better salary. Or move to the United States. He’ll know how to speak English. We have to think of his education as an investment.”

He wanted to say more. He wanted to apologize for not providing for them and for the expense he caused them, but he couldn’t say these things now.

“The Lord will provide,” Kyunghee said. “He’s always taken care of our every need. When the Lord saved your life, he saved our lives.”

“Send Mozasu to me when he comes home. I’ll tell him that he must ask for an advance from Goro-san so he can pay for the tuition.”

Sunja shook her head slightly.

“Noa won’t allow his younger brother to pay for his tuition,” she said. “He’s already told me so.” She didn’t look at him while speaking. “Koh Hansu has said that he would pay for the tuition and board. Even if Mozasu got an advance—”

“No. That’s the foolish talk of an unthinking woman! You can’t take that bastard’s money! It’s filthy.”

“Shhh,” Kyunghee said gently. “Please don’t get upset.” She didn’t want Kim Changho to hear them talking about his boss. “Noa said that he’ll get a job in Tokyo, and it’s true, he did say that Mozasu cannot pay for the tuition. That he’ll manage. You know Noa won’t go if Mozasu pays.”

“I should be dead,” Yoseb said. “I’d rather be dead than listen to this. How can that boy work and go to a school like Waseda? Impossible. A boy who studied hard like this must go. I’ll ask Goro-san myself if Noa can borrow the money. I’ll tell Noa that he has to take it from him.”

“But we don’t know if Goro-san will lend it. And asking him could hurt Mozasu’s job. I don’t want to let Koh Hansu pay for the fees, either, but how else? We can make it a loan, and we can pay it back in increments so that Noa doesn’t owe him anything,” Sunja said.