Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

  “He’s fine. I just stepped out. Before he went to sleep, he asked me to get him some papers for when he wakes up. He wanted me to get some air.”

  Kyunghee nodded and turned from him to rush home.

  “Sister, I was hoping I’d get a chance to speak with you.”

  “Oh? Let’s go back home. I better start dinner. He’ll be hungry.”

  “Wait. Can you sit with me? Can I get you a juice from the store?”

  “No, no. I’m all right.” She smiled at him and sat down, her hands folded over her lap. She was wearing her winter Sunday coat over her navy wool dress with her nice leather shoes.

  Without delay, Changho told her what her husband said, almost word for word. He was nervous, but he knew he had to do it now.

  “You could come with me. The first ship leaves next week, but we can go later. Korea needs more people who have the energy to rebuild a nation. We’re supposed to get our own apartment with all the latest appliances, and we’ll be in our own country. White rice three times a day. We can take his ashes there, and we can visit your parents’ graves. Do a proper jesa. We can go home. You can be my wife.”

  Stunned, Kyunghee said nothing. She could not imagine that Yoseb would have offered her to him, but she could not imagine that Changho would lie to her. The only thing that made sense was that Yoseb was worried enough about her to suggest such a plan. After the meeting at the church broke up, she had asked the minister to pray for Changho’s journey and well-being in Pyongyang. Changho didn’t believe in God or Christianity, but Kyunghee had wanted to pray for him, because she didn’t know what else she could do for him. If the Lord watched over him, then she would not worry.

  He had told her that he was leaving only a week ago, and it was difficult to think of him being gone, but it was the right thing. He was a young man who believed in building a great country for others. She admired him, because he didn’t even have to go there. He had a good job and friends. Pyongyang wasn’t even his home—Changho was from Kyungsangdo. It was she who was from the North.

  “Is it possible?” he asked.

  “But you said—that you wanted to go. I thought you’d marry someone back home.”

  “But you know that—that I’ve cared. That I do—”

  Kyunghee looked around. The shopkeeper of the convenience store was seated in the back and couldn’t hear them over the noise of his radio program. On the road, a few cars and bicycles passed by, but not many, because it was Saturday morning. The red-and-white pinwheels attached to the store awning spun slowly in the light winter breeze.

  “If you said it is possible—”

  “You can’t talk that way,” she said softly. She didn’t want to hurt him. All these years, his adoration and kindness had nourished her but had also caused her anguish, because she could not care for him in that way. It was wrong to do so. “Changho, you have a future. You must find a young woman and have children. There isn’t a day when I don’t feel heartbroken that my husband and I couldn’t have them. I know it was the Lord’s plan for me, but I think you might have some. You’d make a wonderful husband and father. I couldn’t ask you to wait. It would be sinful.”

  “It’s because you don’t want me to wait. Because I would if you told me to.”

  Kyunghee bit her lip. She felt cold suddenly and put on her blue wool mittens.

  “I have to make dinner.”

  “I leave tomorrow. Your husband said I should wait. Isn’t that what you wanted? For him to give you permission? Wouldn’t that make it okay in the eyes of your god?”

  “It isn’t up to Yoseb to change God’s laws. My husband is alive, and I wouldn’t want to hasten his death. I care for you very much, Changho. You have been the dearest friend to me. I’m not sure if I can bear it when you go, but I know we’re not supposed to be man and wife. To even talk about it while he is alive cannot be right. I pray that you’ll understand.”

  “No. I don’t understand. I will never understand. How could your faith allow such suffering?”

  “It isn’t just suffering. It isn’t. I pray that you will forgive me. That you will—”

  Changho laid down the juice bottle carefully on the bench and got up.

  “I’m not like you,” he said. “I’m just a man. I don’t want to be holy. I’m a minor patriot.” He left, walking away from the direction of the house and didn’t return until late in the evening when everyone was asleep.

  Early in the morning, when Kyunghee went to the kitchen to get water for Yoseb, she saw that Changho’s room door was open. She looked in, and he was gone. The bedding had been folded neatly. Changho had never had many possessions, but the room looked even more empty without his pile of books, his extra pair of glasses resting on top of them. The family was supposed to have accompanied him to Osaka Station to see him off, but he had taken an earlier train.

  Kyunghee stood by his door crying, when Sunja touched her arm. She was wearing her work apron over her nightclothes.

  “He left in the middle of the night. He told me to tell everyone good-bye. I only saw him because I got up to make candy.”

  “Why didn’t he wait? Until we could go with him to the train station?”

  “He said he didn’t want to make a fuss. He said he had to go. I tried to make him breakfast, but he said he’d buy something later. That he couldn’t eat.”

  “He wanted to marry me. After Yoseb died. Yoseb had told him that it was okay.”

  “Uh-muh,” Sunja gasped.

  “But that’s not right, is it? He should be with someone young. He has a right to have children. I couldn’t give him any. I don’t even have blood anymore.”

  “Maybe you’re more important than children.”

  “No. I could not disappoint two men,” she said. “He is a good man.”

  Sunja held her sister-in-law’s hand.

  “You told him no?” Her sister-in-law’s face was wet with tears, and Sunja wiped it with a corner of her apron.

  “I have to get water for Yoseb,” Kyunghee said, remembering suddenly why she’d gotten out of bed.

  “Sister, he would not have cared about children. He would have been happy to have just been with you. You are like an angel in this world.”

  “No. I’m selfish. Yoseb isn’t.”

  Sunja didn’t understand.

  “It was selfish to keep him here, but I did because he meant so much to me. I prayed every day for the courage to let him go, and I know the Lord wanted me to let him go. It cannot be right to have two men care for you that way and to allow it.”

  Sunja nodded, but it didn’t make sense. Were you supposed to have only one person in your life? Her mother had her father and no one else. Was her person Hansu or Isak? Did Hansu love her or had he just wanted to use her? If love required sacrifice, then Isak had really loved her. Kyunghee had served her husband faithfully without complaint. There was no one as kindhearted and lovely as her sister-in-law—why couldn’t she have more than one man love her? Why did men get to leave when they didn’t get what they wanted? Or had Changho suffered enough waiting? Sunja wanted her sister-in-law to make Changho wait, but it wouldn’t have been Kyunghee if she had made him do so. Changho had loved someone who would not betray her husband, and perhaps that was why he had loved her. She could not violate who she was.

  Kyunghee moved toward the kitchen, and Sunja followed, a few steps behind. Morning sunlight broke through the kitchen window, and it was hard to see straight ahead, but the light cast a glowing outline around her sister-in-law’s slight frame.

  15

  Tokyo, 1960

  It took some time, but after two years at Waseda, Noa finally felt comfortable about his place there. Always an excellent student with good habits, after a few hiccups and several thoughtful attempts, Noa learned how to write English literature papers and take university-level exams. University life was glorious in contrast to secondary school, where he had learned and memorized many things he no longer valued. None of his requirements eve
n seemed like work; Waseda was pure joy to him. He read as much as he could without straining his eyes, and there was time to read and write and think. His professors at Waseda cared deeply about the subjects they taught, and Noa could not understand how anyone could ever complain.

  Hansu had procured for him a well-appointed apartment and gave him a generous allowance, so Noa did not have to worry about housing, money, or food. He lived simply and managed to send some money home each month. “Just study,” Hansu had said. “Learn everything. Fill your mind with knowledge—it’s the only kind of power no one can take away from you.” Hansu never told him to study, but rather to learn, and it occurred to Noa that there was a marked difference. Learning was like playing, not labor.

  Noa was able to buy every book he needed for his classes, and when he couldn’t find one at the bookstore, all he had to do was go to the immense university library, which was deeply underutilized by his peers. He didn’t understand the Japanese students around him, because they seemed so much more interested in things outside of school rather than learning. He knew well enough from schools past that the Japanese didn’t want much to do with Koreans, so Noa kept to himself, no different than when he was a boy. There were some Koreans at Waseda, but he avoided them, too, because they seemed too political. During one of their monthly lunches, Hansu had said that the leftists were “a bunch of whiners” and the rightists were “plain stupid.” Noa was alone mostly, but he didn’t feel lonely. Even after two years, he was still in thrall with just being at Waseda, with just having a quiet room to read in. Like a man starved, Noa filled his mind, ravenous for good books. He read through Dickens, Thackeray, Hardy, Austen, and Trollope, then moved on to the Continent to read through much of Balzac, Zola, and Flaubert, then fell in love with Tolstoy. His favorite was Goethe; he must have read The Sorrows of Young Werther at least half a dozen times.

  If he had an embarrassing wish, it was this: He would be a European from a long time ago. He didn’t want to be a king or a general—he was too old for such simple wishes. If anything, he wanted a very simple life filled with nature, books, and perhaps a few children. He knew that later in life, he also wanted to be let alone to read and to be quiet. In his new life in Tokyo, he had discovered jazz music, and he liked going to bars by himself and listening to records that the owners would select from bins. Listening to live music was too expensive, but he hoped that one day, when he had a job again, he would be able to go to a jazz club. At the bar, he would have one drink that he’d barely touch to pay for his seat, then he’d go back to his room, read some more, write letters to his family, then go to sleep.

  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.