Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

  This morning, it had occurred to Sunja that he’d ask her something like this, and she’d given thought to this God that the pastor believed in. Spirits existed in the world—she believed this even though her father had not. After he died, she felt that he was with her. When they went to his grave for the jesa, it was easy to feel his comforting presence. If there were many gods and dead spirits, then she felt that she could love his god, especially if his god could encourage Baek Isak to be such a kind and thoughtful person.

  “Yes,” she said. “I can.”

  The boat docked, and Isak helped her off. The mainland was very cold, and Sunja tucked her hands into her jacket sleeves to warm them. The sharp winds cut through their bodies. She worried that the bitter weather would be bad for the pastor.

  Neither knew where they should go next, so she pointed to the main shopping street not far from the ferry. It was the only place she’d ever gone with her parents on the mainland. She walked in that direction, not wanting to take the lead, but he did not seem to care about that. He followed her steps.

  “I’m glad you’ll try—try to love God. It means a great deal. I think we can have a good marriage if we share this faith.”

  She nodded again, not entirely understanding what he meant, but she trusted that he had a sound reason for his request.

  “Our lives will be strange at first, but we’ll ask God for his blessing—on us and the child.”

  Sunja imagined that his prayer would act like a thick cloak to shield them.

  Gulls hovered, shrieking loudly, then flew away. She realized that the marriage had a condition, but it was easy to accept it; there was no way for him to test her devotion. How do you prove that you love God? How do you prove that you love your husband? She would never betray him; she would work hard to care for him—this she could do.

  Isak paused in front of a tidy Japanese restaurant that served noodles.

  “Have you ever had udon?” He raised his eyebrows.

  She shook her head no.

  He led her inside. The customers there were Japanese, and she was the only female. The owner, a Japanese man in a spotless apron, greeted them in Japanese. The couple bowed.

  Isak asked for a table for two in Japanese, and the owner relaxed upon hearing his language spoken so well. They chatted amiably, and the owner offered them seats at the edge of the communal table near the door with no one beside them. Isak and Sunja sat opposite each other, making it impossible to avoid each other’s faces.

  Sunja couldn’t read the hand-painted menus on the plywood walls but recognized some of the Japanese numbers. Office workers and shopkeepers sat on three long tables covered in wax cloths and slurped from their steaming bowls of soupy noodles. A Japanese boy with a shaved head went around pouring brown tea from a heavy brass kettle. He tipped his head to her slightly.

  “I’ve never been to a restaurant before,” she found herself saying, more out of surprise than from a wish to talk.

  “I haven’t been to many myself. This place looks clean, though. My father said that’s important when you eat outside your home.” Isak smiled, wanting Sunja to feel more comfortable. The warmth of being inside had brought color to her face. “Are you hungry?”

  Sunja nodded. She hadn’t eaten anything that morning.

  Isak ordered two bowls of udon for them.

  “It’s like kalguksu, but the broth is different. I thought maybe you might like it. I’m sure it’s sold everywhere in Osaka. Everything there will be new for us.” More and more, Isak liked the idea of having her go with him.

  Sunja had heard many stories about Japan from Hansu already, but she couldn’t tell Isak this. Hansu had said that Osaka was an enormous place where you’d hardly ever see the same person twice.

  As he talked, Isak observed her. Sunja was a private person. Even at the house, she did not talk much to the girls who worked there or even to her mother. Was she always this way? he wondered. It was hard to imagine that she’d had a lover.

  Isak spoke to her quietly, not wishing to be heard by the others.

  “Sunja, do you think you could care for me? As your husband?” Isak clasped his hands as if in prayer.

  “Yes.” The answer came quickly because this felt true to her. She cared for him now, and she didn’t want him to think otherwise.

  Isak felt light and clean inside, as if his diseased lungs had been scoured back to health. He took a breath.

  “I expect it will be difficult, but would you try to forget him?” There, he said it. They would not have secret thoughts.

  Sunja winced, not having expected him to speak of this.

  “I’m not different from other men. I have my pride, which I know is probably wrong.” He frowned. “But I’ll love this child, and I will love you and honor you.”

  “I’ll do my best to be a good wife.”

  “Thank you,” he said. He hoped he and Sunja would be close, the way his parents were.

  When the noodles arrived, he bowed to say grace, and Sunja laced her fingers together, copying his movements.

  10

  A week later, Yangjin, Sunja, and Isak took the morning ferry to Busan. The women wore freshly laundered hanbok made of white hemp beneath padded winter jackets; Isak’s suit and coat had been brushed clean and his shoes polished bright. Pastor Shin was expecting them after breakfast.

  Upon their arrival, the church servant recognized Isak and led them to Pastor Shin’s office.

  “You’re here,” the elder pastor said, rising from his seat on the floor. He spoke with a northern accent. “Come in, come in.” Yangjin and Sunja bowed deeply. They’d never been inside a church before. Pastor Shin was a thin man whose clothes were too big for him. The sleeve hems on his aging black suit were frayed, but the white collar at his throat was clean and well starched. His unwrinkled dark clothes appeared to flatten the bent C-curve of his shoulders.

  The servant girl brought three floor cushions for the guests and laid them near the brazier in the center of the poorly heated room.

  The three guests stood awkwardly until Pastor Shin took his seat. Isak was seated beside Pastor Shin, and Yangjin and Sunja opposite the elder minister.

  Once they were seated, no one spoke, waiting for Pastor Shin to lead the meeting with a prayer. After he finished, the elder pastor took his time to assess the young woman whom Isak planned to marry. He’d been thinking a great deal about her since the young pastor’s last visit. In preparation for the interview, Shin had even reread the Book of Hosea. The elegant young man in his charcoal woolen suit contrasted dramatically with the stocky girl—Sunja’s face was round and plain, and her eyes were lowered either in modesty or shame. Nothing in her prosaic appearance conjured up the harlot the prophet Hosea had been forced to marry. She was, in fact, unremarkable in her manner. Pastor Shin didn’t believe in reading faces to determine a person’s fate as his own father had, but if he were to filter her destiny through his father’s eyes, it didn’t look as if her life would be easy, but neither was it cursed. He glanced at her stomach, but he couldn’t tell her condition under the full chima and her coat.

  “How do you feel about going to Japan with Isak?” the elder pastor asked Sunja.

  Sunja looked up, then looked down. She wasn’t sure what it was that ministers did exactly or how they exercised their powers. Pastor Shin and Pastor Isak weren’t likely to fall into spells like male shamans or chant like monks.

  “I’d like to hear what you think,” Shin said, his body leaning in toward her. “Please say something. I wouldn’t want you to leave my office without my having heard your voice.”

  Isak smiled at the women, not knowing what to make of the elder pastor’s stern tone of voice. He wanted to assure them that the pastor was well-meaning.

  Yangjin placed her hand gently on her daughter’s knee. She’d expected some sort of questioning but she hadn’t realized until now that Pastor Shin thought badly of them.

  “Sunja-ya, tell Pastor Shin what you think about
marrying Baek Isak,” Yangjin said.

  Sunja opened her mouth, then closed it. She opened it again, her voice tremulous.

  “I’m very grateful. To Pastor Baek for his painful sacrifice. I will work very hard to serve him. I will do whatever I can to make his life in Japan better.”

  Isak frowned; he could see why she’d say this, but all the same, Sunja’s sentiment saddened him.

  “Yes.” The elder pastor clasped his hands together. “This is indeed a painful sacrifice. Isak is a fine young man from a good family, and it cannot be easy for him to undertake this marriage, given your situation.”

  Isak lifted his right hand slightly in a weak protest, but he kept quiet in deference to his elder. If Pastor Shin refused to marry them, his parents and teachers would be troubled.

  Pastor Shin said to Sunja, “You’ve brought this condition upon yourself; is this not true?”

  Isak couldn’t bear to look at her hurt expression and wanted to take the women back to the boardinghouse.

  “I made a serious mistake. I’m very sorry for what I have done to my mother and for the burden I made for the good pastor.” Tears filled Sunja’s dark eyes. She looked even younger than she normally did.

  Yangjin took her daughter’s hand and held it, not knowing if it was right or wrong; she broke into sobs herself.

  “Pastor Shin, she is suffering so much already,” Isak blurted out.

  “She must recognize her sin and wish to be forgiven. If she asks, our Lord will forgive her.” Shin said each word thoughtfully.

  “I suppose she would want that.” Isak had not wanted Sunja to turn to God in this way. Love for God, he’d thought, should come naturally and not out of fear of punishment.

  Pastor Shin looked hard at Sunja.

  “Do you, Sunja? Do you want to be forgiven for your sin?” Pastor Shin didn’t know if the girl knew what sin was. In the young man’s exuberance to be a kind of martyr or prophet, had Isak explained any of this to her? How could he marry a sinful woman who would not turn from sin? And yet this was precisely what God had asked the prophet Hosea to do. Did Isak understand this?

  “To have been with a man without marrying is a sin in the eyes of God. Where is this man? Why must Isak pay for your sin?” Shin asked.

  Sunja tried to mop up the tears on her flushed cheeks using her jacket sleeve.

  In the corner, the deaf servant girl could make out some of what was being said by reading their lips. She withdrew a clean cloth from her overcoat pocket and gave it to Sunja. She gestured to Sunja to wipe her face, and Sunja smiled at her.

  Pastor Shin sighed. Although he didn’t want to upset the girl any further, he felt compelled to protect the earnest young minister.

  “Where is the father of your child, Sunja?” Pastor Shin asked.

  “She does not know, Pastor Shin,” Yangjin replied, though she was curious to know the answer herself. “She’s very sorry for this.” Yangjin turned to her daughter: “Tell the pastor—tell him that you want forgiveness from the Lord.”

  Neither Yangjin nor Sunja knew what that would mean. Would there be a ritual like when you gave the shaman a sow and money to make the crops grow? Baek Isak had never once mentioned this thing about forgiveness.

  “Could you? Could you forgive me?” Sunja asked the older minister.

  Pastor Shin felt pity for the child.

  “Sunja, it’s not up to me to forgive you,” he replied.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, finally looking directly at Pastor Shin’s face, unable to keep her eyes lowered. Her nose was running.

  “Sunja, all you have to do is ask the Lord to forgive you. Jesus has paid our debts, but you still have to ask for forgiveness. Promise that you’ll turn from sin. Repent, child, and sin no more.” Pastor Shin could sense that she wanted to learn. He felt something inside, and he was reminded of the infant within her who had done nothing wrong. Then Shin recalled Gomer, Hosea’s harlot wife, who remained unrepentant and later cheated on him again. He frowned.

  “I’m very sorry,” Sunja repeated. “I won’t do it again. I will never be with another man.”

  “It makes sense that you’d want to marry this young man. Yes, he wants to marry you and to take care of the child, but I don’t know if this is prudent. I worry that he is perhaps too idealistic. His family isn’t here, and I need to make sure that he will be all right.”

  Sunja nodded in agreement, her sobs subsiding.

  Yangjin gulped, having feared this ever since Baek Isak had mentioned that they’d need to speak with Pastor Shin.

  “Pastor Shin, I believe Sunja will be a good wife,” Isak pleaded. “Please marry us, sir. I’d like your blessing. You speak from deep and wise concern, but I believe this is the Lord’s wish. I believe this marriage will benefit me as much as it will benefit Sunja and the child.”

  Pastor Shin exhaled.

  “Do you know how difficult it is to be a pastor’s wife?” he asked Sunja.

  Sunja shook her head no. Her breathing was more normal now.

  “Have you told her?” he asked Isak.

  “I’ll be the associate pastor. I don’t expect that much will be expected of her. The congregation isn’t large. Sunja is a hard worker and learns quickly,” Isak said. He had not thought much about this, however. The pastor’s wife at his home church in Pyongyang had been a great lady, a tireless woman who’d borne eight children, worked alongside her husband to care for orphans and to serve the poor. When she died, the parishioners had wailed as if they’d lost their own mother.

  Isak, Sunja, and Yangjin sat quietly, not knowing what else to do.

  “You must swear that you’ll be faithful to this man. If you’re not, you’ll bring far greater shame on your mother and your dead father than what you’ve already done. You must ask the Lord for forgiveness, child, and ask Him for faith and courage as you make your new home in Japan. Be perfect, child. Every Korean must be on his best behavior over there. They think so little of us already. You cannot give them any room to think worse of us. One bad Korean ruins it for thousands of others. And one bad Christian hurts tens of thousands of Christians everywhere, especially in a nation of unbelievers. Do you understand my meaning?”

  “I want to,” she said. “And I want to be forgiven, sir.”

  Pastor Shin got on bended knees and placed his right hand on her shoulder. He prayed at length for her and Isak. When he finished, he got up and made the couple rise and married them. The ceremony was over in minutes.

  While Pastor Shin went with Isak and Sunja to the municipal offices and the local police station to register their marriage, Yangjin made her way to the shopping street, her steps rapid and deliberate. She felt like running. At the wedding ceremony, there were many words she had not understood. It was preposterous and ungrateful for her to have wished for a better outcome under the circumstances, but Yangjin, no matter how practical her nature, had hoped for something nicer for her only child. Although it made sense to marry at once, she hadn’t known that the wedding would take place today. Her own perfunctory wedding had taken minutes, also. Perhaps it didn’t matter, she told herself.

  When Yangjin reached the sliding door of the rice shop, she knocked on the wide frame of the entrance prior to entering. The store was empty of customers. A striped cat was slinking about the rice seller’s straw shoes and purring happily.

  “Ajumoni, it’s been a long time,” Cho greeted her. The rice seller smiled at Hoonie’s widow. There was more gray in her bun than he remembered.

  “Ajeossi, hello. I hope your wife and girls are well.”

  He nodded.

  “Could you sell me some white rice?”

  “Waaaaah, you must have an important guest staying with you. I’m sorry, but I don’t have any to sell. You know where it all goes,” he said.

  “I have money to pay,” she said, putting down the drawstring purse on the counter between them. It was Sunja who had embroidered the yellow butterflies on the blue canvas fabric of
the purse—a birthday present from two years back. The blue purse was half full, and Yangjin hoped it was enough.

  Cho grimaced. He didn’t want to sell her the rice, because he had no choice but to charge her the same price he would charge a Japanese.

  “I have so little stock, and when the Japanese customers come in and there isn’t any, I get into very hot water. You understand. Believe me, it’s not that I don’t want to sell it to you.”

  “Ajeossi, my daughter married today,” Yangjin said, trying not to cry.

  “Sunja? Who? Who did she marry?” He could picture the little girl holding her crippled father’s hand. “I didn’t know she was betrothed! Today?”

  “The guest from the North.”

  “The one with tuberculosis? That’s crazy! Why would you let your daughter marry a man who has such a thing. He’s going to drop dead any minute.”

  “He’ll take her to Osaka. Her life will be less difficult for her than living at a boardinghouse with so many men,” she said, hoping this would be the end of it.

  She wasn’t telling him the truth, and Cho knew it. The girl must have been sixteen or seventeen. Sunja was a few years younger than his second daughter; it was a good time for a girl to marry, but why would he marry her? Jun, the coal man, had said he was a fancy sort from a rich family. She also had diseases in her blood. Who wanted that? Though there weren’t as many girls in Osaka, he supposed.

  “Did he make a good offer?” Cho asked, frowning at the little purse. Kim Yangjin couldn’t have given a man like that any kind of decent dowry; the boardinghouse woman would barely have a few brass coins left after she fed those hungry fishermen and the two poor sisters she shouldn’t have taken in.

  His own daughters had married years ago. Last year, the younger one’s husband had run away to Manchuria because the police were after him for organizing demonstrations, so now Cho fed this great patriot’s children by selling his finest inventory to rich Japanese customers whom his son-in-law had been so passionate about expelling from the nation. If his Japanese customers refused to patronize him, Cho’s shop would shut down tomorrow and his family would starve.