Min Lee - Pachinko

“But you’re not a yakuza,” she protested. “Are you? Mozasu owns pachinko parlors and he’s very honest. He’s always saying how it is possible to be a good employer and to avoid the bad people as long as you—”

Noa shook his head.

“ Umma , I am honest, but there are people you cannot avoid in this business. I run a very large company, and I do what I have to do.” He made a face like he’d tasted something sour.

“You’re a good boy, Noa. I know you are—” she said, then felt foolish for having called him a child. “I mean, I’m sure you’re a good businessman. And honest.”

The two sat quietly. Noa covered his mouth with his right hand. His mother looked like an old exhausted woman.

“Do you want some tea?” he asked. Over the years, Noa had imagined his mother or brother coming to his house, discovering him there rather than in his white, sun-filled office. She’d made it easier for him by coming here instead. Would Hansu come to his office next? he wondered. It had taken longer for Hansu to find him than he’d expected.

“Would you like something to eat? I can order something—”

Sunja shook her head. “You should come home.”

He laughed. “This is my home. I am not a boy.”

“I’m not sorry to have had you. You are a treasure to me. I won’t leave—”

“No one knows I’m Korean. Not one person.”

“I won’t tell anyone. I understand. I’ll do whatever—”

“My wife doesn’t know. Her mother would never tolerate it. My own children don’t know, and I will not tell them. My boss would fire me. He doesn’t employ foreigners. Umma , no one can know—”

“Is it so terrible to be Korean?”

“It is terrible to be me.”

Sunja nodded and stared at her folded hands.

“I have prayed for you, Noa. I have prayed that God would protect you. It is all a mother can do. I’m glad you are well.” Each morning, she went to the dawn service and prayed for her children and grandson. She had prayed for this moment.

“The children, what are their names?”

“What does it matter?”

“Noa, I’m so sorry. Your father brought us to Japan, and then, you know, we couldn’t leave because of the war here and then the war there. There was no life for us back home, and now it’s too late. Even for me.”

“I went back,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a Japanese citizen now, and I can travel. I went to South Korea to visit. To see my supposed motherland.”

“You’re a Japanese citizen? How? Really?”

“It’s possible. It is always possible.”

“And did you go to Busan?”

“Yes, and I visited Yeongdo. It was tiny but beautiful,” he said.

Sunja’s eyes filled with tears.

“ Umma , I have a meeting now. I’m sorry, but why don’t we see each other next week? I’ll come by. I want to see Mozasu again. I have to take care of some urgent things now.”

“Really? You’ll come?” Sunja smiled. “Oh, thank you, Noa. I’m so glad. You’re such a good—”

“It’s best if you leave now. I’ll phone you later tonight when you get home.”

Sunja got up quickly from her seat, and Noa walked her back to the spot where they met. He would not look into Hansu’s car.

“We’ll talk later,” he said, and crossed the street toward his building.

Sunja watched her son enter his office building, then tapped the passenger door of Hansu’s car. The driver came out and held the door open for her.

Hansu nodded.

Sunja smiled, feeling light and hopeful.

Hansu looked at her face carefully and frowned.

“You should not have seen him.”

“It went well. He’ll come to Yokohama next week. Mozasu will be so happy.”

Hansu told the driver to go. He listened to her talk about their meeting.

That evening, when Noa did not call her, she realized that she had not given him her home number in Yokohama. In the morning, Hansu phoned her. Noa had shot himself a few minutes after she’d left his office.

Yokohama, 1979

Etsuko Nagatomi loved all three of her children, but she did not love them all the same. Being a mother had taught her that this kind of emotional injustice was perhaps inevitable.

By midmorning, Etsuko had finished everything she had to get done for Solomon’s party and was sitting in her office in the back of the airy, birch-paneled restaurant. She was forty-two years old, a native of Hokkaido who’d moved to Yokohama following her divorce six years before. She had maintained a youthful prettiness that she felt was important to being a restaurant owner. Etsuko wore her jet-colored hair in a chignon style to set off her lively, egg-shaped face. From afar she could appear stern, but up close her face was animated, and her small, friendly eyes missed nothing. She applied her makeup expertly, having worn rouge and powder since middle school, and the red wool Saint Laurent suit that Mozasu had bought her flattered her reedy figure.

Though Etsuko would normally have been pleased with herself for being so ahead of schedule, today she was not. She continued to stare at the phone message from her high school — aged daughter, Hana, with an unfamiliar Tokyo number. How did Hana get there from Hokkaido? Calls with her daughter could take five minutes or an hour, depending, and Mozasu was coming to pick her up soon. Her boyfriend was a patient man about many things, but he liked her to be punctual. Etsuko dialed anyway, and Hana picked up on the first ring.

“I’ve been waiting.”

“I’m sorry. I just got the message.” Etsuko was afraid of her fifteen-year-old daughter, but she had been trying to sound more firm, the way she was with her staff.

“Where are you?”

“I’m four months pregnant.”

“ Nani ?”

Etsuko could almost see her daughter’s large, unblinking eyes. Hana resembled the girls in comic books with her cute lollipop head and small, girlish body. She dressed to get attention — short skirts, sheer blouses, and high-heeled boots — and accordingly, she received that attention from all kinds of men. This was her unmei , Etsuko thought; her ex-husband used to dismiss this idea of fate as a lazy explanation for the bad choices people made. Regardless, life had only confirmed her belief that there was indeed a pattern to it all. To Etsuko, this had to happen, because as a girl she had been no different. When she was seventeen, she had been pregnant with Tatsuo, Hana’s oldest brother.

Etsuko and Hana remained silent on the line, but the poor phone reception crackled like a campfire.

“I’m in Tokyo at a friend’s.”

“Who?”

“It’s just some friend’s cousin who lives here. Listen, I want to come to your place right away.”

“Why?”

“What do you think? You have to help me with this.”

“Does your father know?”

“Are you stupid?”

“Hana—”

“I know how to get to you. I have the money. I’ll call you when I arrive.” Hana hung up.

Two years after the divorce, when Hana was eleven, she’d asked Etsuko if they could talk to each other like friends rather than mother and child, and Etsuko had agreed because she was grateful that her daughter continued to talk to her at all. Also, Etsuko agreed because when she’d been a girl, she had lied to her mother and father about everything. But Etsuko found that being detached as a mother had its own burdens. She wasn’t allowed to ask any prying questions, and if she sounded too concerned (something Hana hated), her daughter hung up the phone and wouldn’t call for weeks.

Etsuko had many regrets about her life in Hokkaido, but what she was most sorry about was what her reputation had done to her children. Her grown sons still refused to talk to her. And she had only worsened matters by continuing to see Mozasu. Her sister Mari and her mother urged her to end it. The pinball business was dirty, they said; pachinko gave off a strong odor of poverty and criminality. But she couldn’t give him up. Mozasu had changed her life. He was the only man she had never cheated on — something Etsuko had never believed could be possible.