Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

  “The boardinghouse ajumoni saved my life. Maybe my life can matter to this family. I had always wanted to do something important before I died. Like my brother Samoel.”

  Shin nodded. He had heard from his seminary friends that Samoel Baek had been a leader in the independence movement.

  “Maybe my life can be significant—not on a grand scale like my brother, but to a few people. Maybe I can help this young woman and her child. And they will be helping me, because I will have a family of my own—a great blessing no matter how you look at it.”

  The young pastor was beyond dissuading. Shin took a breath.

  “Before you do anything, I would like to meet her. And her mother.”

  “I’ll ask them to come. That is if Sunja agrees to marry me. She doesn’t know me really.”

  “That hardly matters.” Shin shrugged. “I didn’t see my wife until the wedding day. I understand your impulse to help, but marriage is a serious covenant made before God. You know that. Please bring them when you can.”

  The elder pastor put his hands on Isak’s shoulders and prayed over him before he left.

  When Isak returned to the boardinghouse, the Chung brothers were sprawled out on the heated floor. They had eaten their supper, and the women were clearing away the last of the dishes.

  “Ah, has the pastor been walking around town? You must be well enough now to have a drink with us?” Gombo, the eldest brother, winked. Getting Isak to have a drink with them was a joke the brothers had kept up for months.

  “How was the catch?” Isak asked.

  “No mermaids,” Fatso, the youngest brother, answered with disappointment.

  “That’s a shame,” Isak said.

  “Pastor, would you like your dinner now?” Yangjin asked.

  “Yes, thank you.” Being outdoors had made him hungry, and it felt wonderful to want food in his stomach again.

  The Chung brothers had no intention of sitting up properly, but they made room for him. Gombo patted Isak on the back like an old friend.

  Around the lodgers, especially the good-natured Chung brothers, Isak felt more like a man, not a sickly student who’d spent most of his life indoors with books.

  Sunja carried in a low dinner table for him, its small surface covered with side dishes, a piping hotpot brimming with stew, and a generously rounded portion of steamed millet and barley rice.

  Isak bowed his head in prayer, and everyone else remained silent, feeling awkward, until he raised his head again.

  “So, the good-looking pastor gets far more rice than I do,” complained Fatso. “Why should I be surprised?” He tried to make an angry face at Sunja, but she didn’t pay him any mind.

  “Have you eaten?” Isak lifted his bowl to Fatso. “There’s plenty here—”

  The middle Chung brother, the sensible one, pulled back the pastor’s outstretched arm.

  “Fatso ate three bowls of millet and two bowls of soup. This one has never missed a meal. If we don’t make sure that he’s well fed, he’d chew off my arm! He’s a pig.”

  Fatso poked his brother in the ribs.

  “A strong man has a strong appetite. You’re just jealous because mermaids prefer me to you. One day, I’m going to marry a beautiful market girl and have her work for me the rest of my days. You can repair the fishing nets by yourself.”

  Gombo and the middle brother laughed, but Fatso ignored them.

  “Maybe I should have another bowl of rice. Is there any left in the kitchen?” he asked Sunja.

  “Don’t you want to leave some for the women?” Gombo interjected.

  “Is there enough food for the women?” Isak put down his spoon.

  “Yes, yes, there’s plenty of food for us. Please don’t worry. If Fatso wants more food, we can bring him some,” Yangjin assured him.

  Fatso looked sheepish.

  “I’m not hungry. We should smoke a pipe.” He rooted in his pockets for his tobacco.

  “So, Pastor Isak, will you be leaving us soon for Osaka? Or will you join us on the boat and look for mermaids? You look strong enough to pull in the nets now,” Fatso said. He lit the pipe and handed it to his eldest brother before smoking it himself. “Why would you leave this beautiful island for a cold city?”

  Isak laughed. “I’m waiting for a reply from my brother. And as soon as I feel well enough to travel, I’ll go to my church in Osaka.”

  “Think of the mermaids of Yeongdo.” Fatso waved at Sunja, who was heading to the kitchen. “They will not be the same in Japan.”

  “Your offer is tempting. Perhaps I should find a mermaid to go with me to Osaka.”

  Isak raised his eyebrows.

  “Is the pastor making a joke?” Fatso slapped the floor with delight.

  Isak took a sip of his tea.

  “It might be better if I had a wife for my new life in Osaka.”

  “Put down your tea. Let’s pour this groom a real drink!” Gombo shouted.

  The brothers laughed out loud and the pastor laughed, too.

  In the small house, the women overheard everything the men said. At the thought of the pastor marrying, Dokhee’s neck flushed scarlet with desire, and her sister shot her a look like she was crazy. In the kitchen, Sunja unloaded the dinner trays; she crouched down before the large brass basin and began to wash the dishes.

  9

  After she finished cleaning up in the kitchen, Sunja said good night to her mother and retreated to the makeshift bedroom they shared with the servant girls. Normally, Sunja went to bed at the same time as the others, but in the past month, she’d been more tired than she’d ever been; it was no longer possible to wait for them to finish their work. Waking up was no less difficult; in the morning, strong hands seemed to clamp down on her shoulders to keep her from rising. Sunja undressed quickly in the cold room and slipped under the thick quilt. The floor was warm; Sunja rested her heavy head on the lozenge-shaped pillow. Her first thought was of him.

  Hansu was no longer in Busan. The morning after she’d left him at the beach, she’d asked her mother to go to the market in her place, claiming that she was nauseous and couldn’t be far from the outhouse. For a week, she didn’t go to the market. When Sunja finally returned to her usual routine of food shopping for the house, Hansu was no longer there. Each morning that she went to the market, she had looked for him, but he was not there.

  The heat from the ondol floor warmed the pallet beneath her; all day she had been feeling chilled. Her eyes finally closed, Sunja rested her hands over the slight swell of her stomach. She could not yet feel the child, but her body was changing. Her keener sense of smell was the most noticeable change and hard to bear: Walking through the fish stalls made her feel sick; the worst was the smell of crabs and shrimp. Her limbs felt puffier, almost spongy. She knew nothing about having a baby. What she was growing inside her was a secret—mysterious even to herself. What would the child be like? she wondered. Sunja wanted to talk about these things with him.

  Since Sunja’s confession to her mother, neither of them talked again about the pregnancy. Anguish had deepened the lines along her mother’s mouth like a frown setting in for good. During the day, Sunja went about her work faithfully, but at night, before she went to bed, she wondered if he thought about her and their child.

  If she had agreed to remain his mistress and waited for him to visit her, she would have been able to keep him. He could’ve gone to see his wife and daughters in Japan whenever he wanted. Yet this arrangement had felt impossible to her, and even in her present weakness, it felt untenable. She missed him, but she couldn’t imagine sharing him with another woman he also loved.

  Sunja had been foolish. Why had she supposed that a man of his age and position wouldn’t have a wife and children? That he could want to marry some ignorant peasant girl was absurd indeed. Wealthy men had wives and mistresses, sometimes even in the same household. She couldn’t be his mistress, however. Her crippled father had loved her mother, who had grown up even poorer than most; he h
ad treasured her. When he was alive, after the boardinghouse guests were served their meals, the three would eat together as a family at the same low dinner table. Her father could’ve eaten before the women, but he’d never wanted that. At the table, he’d make sure that her mother had as much meat and fish on her plate as he did. In the summer, after finishing a long day, he’d tend to the watermelon patch because it was his wife’s favorite fruit. Each winter, he’d procure fresh cotton wool to pad their jackets, and if there wasn’t enough, he’d claim his own jacket didn’t need new filling.

  “You have the kindest father in the land,” her mother would often remark, and Sunja had been proud of his love for them, the way a child from a rich family might have been proud of her father’s numerous bags of rice and piles of gold rings.

  Nevertheless, she couldn’t stop thinking of Hansu. Whenever she’d met him at the cove, the cloudless sky and jade-colored water would recede from her sight, leaving only the images of him, and she used to wonder how their time together could vanish so quickly. What amusing story would he tell her? What could she do to make him stay even a few minutes longer?

  So when he would tuck her in between two sheltering boulders and untie the long sash of her blouse, she let him do what he wanted even though the cold air cut her. She’d dissolve herself into his warm mouth and skin. When he slid his hands below her long skirt and lifted her bottom to him, she understood that this was what a man wanted from his woman. Lovemaking would make her feel alert; her body seemed to want this touch; and her lower parts accommodated the pressure of him. Sunja had believed that he would do what was good for her.

  Sometimes, she imagined that if she carried the load of wash on her head and walked to the beach, he’d be waiting for her on that steep rock by the clear water, his open newspaper flapping noisily in the breeze. He’d lift the bundle from her head, tug at her braid gently, and say, “My girl, where were you? Do you know I would have waited for you until the morning.” Last week, she’d felt the call of him so strongly that she made an excuse one afternoon and ran to the cove, and of course, it had been in vain. The chalk-marked rock they used to leave behind like a message was no longer in its crevice, and she was bereft because she would have liked to have drawn an X and left it in the hollow of the rocks to show him that she had come back and waited for him.

  He had cared for her; those feelings were true. He had not been lying, she thought, but it was little consolation. Sunja opened her eyes suddenly when she heard the servant girls laughing in the kitchen, then quieting down. There was no sound of her mother. Sunja shifted her body away from the door to face the interior wall and placed her hand on her cheek to imitate his caress. Whenever he saw her, he would touch her constantly, like he could not help from doing so; after making love, his finger traced the curve of her face from her small, round chin to the bend of her ears to the expanse of her pale brow. Why had she never touched him that way? She’d never touched him first; it was he who’d reached for her. She wanted to touch his face now—to memorize the continuous line of his bones.

  In the morning, Isak put on his navy woolen sweater over his warmest undershirt and dress shirt and sat on the floor of the front room using a low dining table as his desk. The lodgers had left already, and the house was quiet except for the sounds of the women working. Isak’s Bible lay open on the table; Isak had not begun his morning studies, because he couldn’t concentrate. In the small foyer by the front room, Yangjin tended to the brazier filled with hot coals. He wanted to speak to her, yet feeling shy, Isak waited. Yangjin stirred the coals using a crude poker, observing the glowing embers.

  “Are you warm enough? I’ll put this by you.” Yangjin got on her knees and pushed the brazier to where he was seated.

  “Let me help you,” Isak said, getting up.

  “No, stay where you are. You just slide it.” This was how her husband, Hoonie, used to move the brazier.

  As she moved closer, he looked around to see if the others could hear.

  “Ajumoni,” Isak whispered, “do you think she would have me as a husband? If I asked her?”

  Yangjin’s crinkled eyes widened, and she dropped the poker, making a clanging sound. She picked up the metal stick quickly and laid it down with care as if to correct her earlier movement. She slumped beside him, closer than she’d ever sat next to another man except for her husband and father.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Why? Why would you do this?”

  “If I had a wife, my life would be better in Osaka, I think. I’ve written my brother already. I know he and his wife would welcome her.”

  “And your parents?”

  “They’ve wanted me to marry for years. I’ve always said no.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve always been ill. I feel well now, but it’s not possible to know how and when I might die. Sunja knows this already. None of this would be a surprise.”

  “But, you know that she is—”

  “Yes. And it is also likely that I’ll make her a young widow. And you know that’s not easy, but I would be the father. Until I die.”

  Yangjin said nothing; she was a young widow herself. Her husband was an honest man who had made the best of a difficult birth. When he died, she knew that he had been a very special man. She wished he were here to tell her what to do.

  “I didn’t mean to trouble you,” Isak said, seeing the shock in her face. “I thought it might be something she could want. For the child’s future. Do you think she’d agree? Perhaps she intends to stay here with you. Would that be better for her and the child?”

  “No, no. Of course it would be far better for them if she went away,” Yangjin replied, knowing the hard truth. “The child would have a terrible life here. You’d be saving my daughter’s life as well. If you would take care of my daughter, I’d gladly pay you with my life, sir. I’d pay twice if I could.” She bowed low, her head almost touching the yellow floor, and wiped her eyes.

  “No, you mustn’t say that. You and your daughter have been angels.”

  “I’ll speak to her right away, sir. She’ll be grateful.”

  Isak got quiet. He wanted to know how to say this next thing properly.

  “I don’t want that,” he said, feeling embarrassed. “I’d like to ask her, to ask her about her heart. I’d like to know if she could love me one day.” Isak felt embarrassed, because it had occurred to him that, like an ordinary man, he wanted a wife who’d love him, not just feel indebted to him.

  “What do you think?”

  “You should speak to her.” How could Sunja not care for a man like this?

  Isak whispered, “She’s not getting a good bargain. I may fall ill again soon. But I’d try to be a decent husband. And I would love the child. He would be mine, too.” Isak felt happy thinking of living long enough to raise a child.

  “Please walk with her tomorrow. You can speak to her about all these things.”

  Her mother told her Baek Isak’s intentions, and Sunja prepared herself to be his wife. If Baek Isak married her, a painful sentence would be lifted from her mother, the boardinghouse, herself, and the child. An honorable man from a good family would give the child his name. Sunja couldn’t comprehend his reasons. Her mother had tried to explain, but neither thought what they’d done for him was so unusual. They would have done it for any lodger, and he had even paid his fees on time. “No normal man would want to raise another man’s child unless he was an angel or a fool,” her mother said.

  He didn’t seem like a fool. Perhaps he needed a housekeeper, yet that didn’t seem like him. As soon as the pastor had been feeling better, and even when he wasn’t entirely well, he’d carried his finished meal trays to the threshold of the kitchen. In the mornings, he shook out his own bedding and put away the pallet. He did more to care for himself than any of the lodgers. She’d never imagined an educated man from an upper-class family who’d grown up in a household with servants would ever do these things.


  Sunja put on her thick coat. She wore straw sandals over two pairs of white cotton socks and waited by the door outside. The air was frigid and misty. In a month or so, it would be spring, but it felt like deep winter still. Her mother had asked the pastor to meet her outside, not wanting the servants to see the two together.

  Isak came out momentarily, holding his felt hat.

  “Are you well?” Isak stood parallel to her, not knowing where they should go. He’d never been out with a young woman before—not in this way, and never with the intention of asking her to marry him. He tried to pretend that he was counseling a female parishioner—something he had done many times back home.

  “Would you like to go into town? We could take the ferry.” The suggestion came to him spontaneously.

  Sunja nodded and draped her head with a thick muslin scarf to cover her exposed ears. She resembled the women selling fish in the market.

  They walked quietly toward the Yeongdo ferry, not knowing what the others who saw them together might think. The boatman accepted their fares.

  The wooden boat was mostly empty, so they sat together for the duration of the short trip.

  “Your mother spoke to you,” Isak said, trying to keep his voice level.

  “Yes.”

  He tried to read her feelings in her young, pretty face. She looked terrified.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “What do you think of it?”

  “I’m very grateful. It’s a heavy burden that you’ve taken off our shoulders. We don’t know how to thank you.”

  “My life is nothing. It wouldn’t have any meaning without putting it to good use. Don’t you think?”

  Sunja played with the side edge of her chima.

  “I have a question,” Isak said.

  Sunja kept her eyes lowered.

  “Do you think you can love God?” He inhaled. “If you could love God, then I know everything will be all right. It’s a lot, I think, to ask of you. It might not make sense now. It will take time. I do understand that.”