Min Lee - Pachinko

Every few weeks, he saved some of his allowance and took an inexpensive train ride home and visited his family. At the beginning of each month, Hansu took him for a sushi lunch to remind Noa of his mission in the world for some higher purpose that neither could articulate fully. His life felt ideal, and Noa was grateful.

That morning, as he walked across campus to his George Eliot seminar, he heard someone calling his name.

“Bando-san, Bando-san,” a woman shouted. It was the radical beauty on campus, Akiko Fumeki.

Noa stopped and waited. She had never spoken to him before. He was, in fact, a little afraid of her. She was always saying contrary things to Professor Kuroda, a soft-spoken woman who had grown up and studied in England. Though the professor was polite, Noa could tell that she didn’t like Akiko much; the other students, especially the females, could barely tolerate her. Noa knew it was safer to keep his distance from the students that the professors disliked. In the seminar room, Noa sat one seat away from the professor, while Akiko sat in the very back of the room below the high windows.

“Ah, Bando-san, how are you?” Akiko asked, flushed and out of breath. She spoke to him casually, as if they had talked many times before.

“Well, thank you. How are you?”

“So what do you think of Eliot’s final masterpiece?” she asked.

“It’s excellent. Everything by George Eliot is perfect.”

“Nonsense. Adam Bede is a bore. I almost died reading that thing. Silas Marner is barely tolerable.”

“Well, Adam Bede was not as exciting or developed as Middlemarch , but it remains a wonderful depiction of a brave woman and an honest man—”

“Oh, please.” Akiko rolled her eyes, and she laughed at him.

Noa laughed, too. He knew she was a Sociology major, because everyone had had to introduce himself or herself on the first day of class.

“You have read everything by George Eliot? That’s impressive,” he said, never having met anyone else who had done so.

“You’re the one who’s read absolutely everything. It’s sickening, and I’m almost irritated at you for doing so. But I admire it, too. Although, if you like everything you read, I can’t take you that seriously. Perhaps you didn’t think about these books long enough.” She said this with a serious face, not in the least bit concerned about offending him.

“ Soo nee .” Noa smiled. It had not occurred to him that any book that a professor would choose and admire could be inferior even in relation to that author’s own works. Their professor had loved Adam Bede and Silas Marner .

“You sit so close to the professor. I think she’s in love with you.”

In shock, Noa halted.

“Kuroda-san is sixty years old. Maybe seventy.” Noa moved toward the building door and opened it for her.

“You think women want to stop having sex just because they’re sixty? You’re absurd. She’s probably the most romantic woman in Waseda. She’s read far too many novels. You’re perfect for her. She’d marry you tomorrow. Oh, the scandal! Your George Eliot married a young man, too, you know. Although her groom did try to kill himself on their honeymoon!” Akiko laughed out loud, and the students who were walking up the staircase to their classroom stared at her. Everyone seemed puzzled by their interaction, since Noa was almost as famous as the campus beauty, but for being aloof.

Once in their classroom, she sat at her old seat in the back, and Noa returned to his seat by the professor. He opened his notebook and retrieved his fountain pen, then looked down at the sheet of white paper lined in pale blue ink. He was thinking about Akiko; she was even prettier up close.

Kuroda-san sat down to give her lecture. She wore a pea-green sweater over her Peter Pan — collar white blouse and a brown tweed skirt. Her tiny feet were shod with a childish pair of Mary Janes. She was so small and thin that she gave the impression that she could almost fly away like a sheet of paper or a dry leaf.

Kuroda-san’s lecture was primarily an extensive psychological portrait of the heroine in Daniel Deronda , the self-centered Gwendolen Harleth, who changes as a result of her suffering and the goodness of Daniel. The professor put great emphasis on a woman’s lot being determined by her economic position and marriage prospects. Unsurprisingly, the professor compared Gwendolen to the vain and greedy Rosamond Vincy of Middlemarch , but argued that in contrast, Gwendolen achieves the Aristotelian anagnorisis and peripeteia. Kuroda-san spent most of the lecture on Gwendolen, then right before the period ended, she spoke a little about Mirah and Daniel, the Jews of the book. Kuroda-san gave some background on Zionism and the role of Jews in Victorian novels.

“Jewish men are often seen as exceptionally brilliant, and the women are often beautiful and tragic. Here we have a situation where a man does not know his own identity as an outsider. He is like Moses, the infant in Genesis who learns that he is Jewish and not Egyptian—” As Kuroda-san was saying this, she glanced at Noa, but he was not aware of it, because he was taking notes.

“However, when Daniel learns that he is indeed a Jew, Daniel is free to love the virtuous Mirah, another talented singer like his Jewish mother, and they will go east to Israel.” Kuroda-san sighed quietly, as if she was pleased by Eliot’s ending.

“So are you saying that it is better for people to only love within their race, that people like the Jews need to live apart in their own country?” Akiko asked, without raising her hand. She did not seem to believe in that formality.

“Well, I think George Eliot is arguing that there is great nobility in being Jewish and wanting to be part of a Jewish state. Eliot recognizes that these people were often persecuted unfairly. They have every right to a Jewish state. The war has taught us that bad things happened to them, and that can’t happen again. The Jews have done no wrong, but the Europeans—” Kuroda-san spoke more quietly than usual, as if she was afraid that someone might overhear her and she would get in trouble. “It’s complicated, but Eliot was far ahead of her contemporaries to think about the issue of discrimination based on religion. Nee ?”

There were nine students in the class, and everyone nodded, including Noa, but Akiko looked irritated nonetheless.

“Japan was an ally of Germany,” Akiko said.

“That is not part of this discussion, Akiko-san.”

The professor opened her book nervously, wanting to change the subject.

“Eliot is wrong,” Akiko said, undeterred. “Maybe the Jews have a right to have their own state, but I see no need for Mirah and Daniel to have to leave England. I think this nobility argument or a greater nation for a persecuted people is a pretext to eject all the unwanted foreigners.”

Noa did not look up. He found himself writing down everything Akiko said, because it upset him to think that this could be true. He had admired Daniel’s courage and goodness throughout the book, and he had not thought much about Eliot’s political design. Was it possible that Eliot was suggesting that foreigners, no matter how much she admired them, should leave England? At this point in the course, everyone in the room despised Akiko, but suddenly he admired her courage to think so differently and to suggest such a difficult truth. He felt lucky to be at a university and not in most other settings, where the person in charge was always right. Nevertheless, until he really listened to Akiko disagree with the professor, he had not thought for himself fully, and it had never occurred to him to disagree in public.