Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

  “You skinny old cunt!” the girl shouted, and Ayame could hear her throaty laugh from a distance. “You have to pay for love, you bitch!”

  Ayame ran back to the sento.

  When she finally returned home, Haruki was fixing his brother a snack.

  “Tadaima,” she said quietly.

  “Where were you, A-chan?” Daisuke asked, his face folded with worry. He had the lopsided face of a pale, gaunt man with the extraordinary eyes of a very young child—unguarded and capable of expressing joy. He wore the yellow pajamas that she had ironed for him that morning.

  Haruki nodded and smiled at her. He had never before found his brother alone. Daisuke had been crying on his bed mat, asking for his mother. He didn’t want to tell Ayame this for fear of making her feel bad about being late.

  “I was at the bath, Dai-chan. I’m very sorry I’m late. I thought you were sleeping, and it was cold so I went to have another bath.”

  “I was afraid. I was afraid,” Daisuke said, his eyes beginning to well up again. “I want Mama.”

  She felt unable to look at Haruki’s face. He had not yet removed his suit jacket.

  Daisuke went to her, leaving Haruki by the kitchen counter to put away the box of senbei.

  “A-chan is clean. She had a bath. A-chan is clean. She had a bath.” He sang the line that he liked to repeat after she came home from the sento.

  “Are you tired now?” she asked him.

  “No.”

  “Would you like me to read to you?”

  “Hai.”

  Haruki left them in the living room with her reading a picture book about old trains, and she nodded to him when he said good night before going to bed.

  7

  Yokohama, March 1976

  A retiring detective had failed to complete a report of a suicide, and eventually it landed on Haruki’s desk. A twelve-year-old Korean boy had jumped off the roof of his apartment building. The mother was too hysterical to finish the interview at the time, but the parents were willing to meet Haruki tonight after they finished work.

  The boy’s parents lived not far from Chinatown. The father was a plumber’s assistant, and the mother worked in a glove factory. Tetsuo Kimura, the jumper, was the oldest of three and had two sisters.

  Even before the apartment door opened, the familiar smells of garlic, shoyu, and the stronger miso that Koreans favored greeted him in the damp hallway. All the tenants of the six-story building owned by a Korean were also Koreans. The boy’s mother, her face downcast and meek, let him into the three-room apartment. Haruki slipped off his street shoes to put on the slippers she gave him. In the main room, the father, wearing a workman’s clean overalls, was already seated cross-legged on a blue floor cushion. The mother set out a discount-store tray brimming with teacups and wrapped biscuits from the conbini. The father held a bound book in his lap.

  After handing the father his business card with two hands, Haruki sat down on a floor cushion. The mother poured him a cup of tea and sat with her knees folded.

  “You didn’t get a chance to see this.” The father handed the book to Haruki. “You should know what happened. Those children should be punished.”

  The father, a long-waisted man with an olive complexion and a square jaw, didn’t make eye contact when speaking.

  The book was a middle school graduation album. Haruki opened the thick volume to the page marked with a slip of blank notepaper. There were rows and columns of black-and-white photographs of students, all of them wearing uniforms—a few smiling, some showing teeth, with little variation overall. Right away he spotted Tetsuo, who had his mother’s long face and his father’s small mouth—a mild-looking boy with thin shoulders. There were a few handwritten messages over the faces of the photographs.

  “Tetsuo—good luck in high school. Hiroshi Noda.”

  “You draw well. Kayako Mitsuya.”

  Haruki must have looked confused, because he didn’t notice anything unusual. Then the father prompted him to check the flyleaf.

  “Die, you ugly Korean.”

  “Stop collecting welfare. Koreans are ruining this country.”

  “Poor people smell like farts.”

  “If you kill yourself, our high school next year will have one less filthy Korean.”

  “Nobody likes you.”

  “Koreans are troublemakers and pigs. Get the hell out. Why are you here anyway?”

  “You smell like garlic and garbage!!!”

  “If I could, I’d cut your head off myself, but I don’t want to get my knife dirty!”

  The handwriting was varied and inauthentic. Some letters slanted right or left; multiple authors had tried purposefully to shield their identities.

  Haruki closed the book and laid it beside him on the clean floor. He took a sip of tea.

  “Your son, he never mentioned that others were bothering him?”

  “No,” the mother answered quickly. “He never complained. Never. He said he was never discriminated against.”

  Haruki nodded.

  “It was not because he was Korean. That sort of thing was from long ago. Things are better now. We know many kindhearted Japanese,” the mother said.

  Even with the cover closed, Haruki could see the words in his mind. The electric fan on the floor circulated a constant flow of warm air.

  “Did you speak with his teachers?” the mother asked.

  The retired detective had. The teachers had said that the boy was a strong student but too quiet.

  “He had top marks. The children were jealous of him because he was smarter than they were. My son learned to read when he was three,” the mother said.

  The father sighed and laid his hand gently on his wife’s forearm, and she said no more.

  The boy’s father said, “Last winter, Tetsuo asked if he could stop going to school and instead work in the vegetable store that his uncle owns. It’s a small shop near the little park down the street. My brother-in-law was looking for a boy to break down boxes and work as a cashier. Tetsuo said he wanted to work for him, but we said no. Neither of us finished high school, and we didn’t want him to quit. It didn’t make any sense for him to work in a job like that and to give up school when he’s such a good student. My brother-in-law is barely getting by himself, so my son would not have made much of a salary. My wife wanted him to get a good job in an electronics factory. If he had finished high school, then—”

  The father covered his head with his large, rough hands, pressing down on his coarse hair. “Working in the basement of a grocery store. Counting inventory. That’s not an easy life for anyone, you know,” he said. “He was talented. He could remember any face and draw it perfectly. He could do many things we didn’t know how to do.”

  The mother said calmly, “My son was hardworking and honest. He never hurt anyone. He helped his sisters do their homework—”

  Her voice broke off.

  Suddenly, the father turned to face Haruki.

  “The boys who wrote that should be punished. I don’t mean go to jail, but they shouldn’t be allowed to write such things.” He shook his head.

  “He should’ve quit school. It would’ve been better if he’d worked in a basement of a grocery store or peeling bags of onions in a yakiniku restaurant. I’d rather have my son than no son. My wife and I are treated badly here, but it’s because we’re poor. There are rich Koreans who are better off. We thought it could be different for our children.”

  “You were born here?” Haruki asked. Their accent was no different than that of native Japanese speakers from Yokohama.

  “Yes, of course. Our parents came from Ulsan.”

  Ulsan was in what was now South Korea, but Haruki guessed that the family was affiliated with the North Korean government, as were many of the ethnic Koreans. Mindan was much less popular. The Kimuras probably lacked the tuition for the North Korean schools and sent them to the local Japanese school.

  “You’re Chosenjin?”

  “Yes, but
what does that matter?” the father said.

  “It doesn’t. It shouldn’t. Excuse me.” Haruki glanced at the album. “Does the school know? About this? There was nothing in the report about any other kids.”

  “I took the afternoon off to show it to the principal. He said it was impossible to know who wrote those things,” the father said.

  “Soo, soo,” Haruki said.

  “Why can’t the children who wrote this be punished? Why?” the mother asked.

  “There were several people who witnessed him jump with no one else on the roof. Your son was not pushed. We cannot arrest everyone who says or writes something mean-spirited—”

  “Why can’t the police make the principal—” The father looked directly at him, then, seeing Haruki’s defeated expression, the father stared at the door instead. “You people work together to make sure nothing ever changes. Sho ga nai. Sho ga nai. That’s all I ever hear.”

  “I’m sorry. I am sorry,” he said before leaving.

  Paradaisu Yokohama was crowded at eight o’clock in the evening. The volcanic rush of tinny bells, the clanging of tiny hammers across miniature metal bowls, the beeping and flashing of colorful lights, and the throaty shouts of welcome from the obsequious staff felt like a reprieve from the painful silence in his head. Haruki didn’t even mind the thick swirls of tobacco smoke that hung like a layer of gray mist above the heads of the players seated opposite the rows upon rows of vertical, animated machines. As soon as Haruki stepped into the parlor, the Japanese floor manager rushed to him and asked if he would like tea. Boku-san was in the office in a meeting with a machine salesman and promised to be down shortly. Haruki and Mozasu had a standing dinner arrangement every Thursday, and Haruki was here to pick him up.

  It was fair to say that almost everyone at the parlor wanted to make some extra money by gambling. However, the players also came to escape the eerily quiet streets where few said hello, to keep away from the loveless homes where wives slept with children instead of husbands, and to avoid the overheated rush-hour train cars where it was okay to push but not okay to talk to strangers. When Haruki was a younger man, he had not been much of a pachinko player, but since moving to Yokohama, Haruki allowed himself to find some comfort here.

  It took no time for him to lose several thousand yen, so he bought another tray of balls. Haruki wasn’t reckless about his inheritance, but his mother had saved so much that he’d have enough even if he was fired, and even if he lost a fortune. When Haruki paid young men to sleep with him, he could afford to be generous. Of all the vices, pachinko seemed like a petty one.

  The small metal balls zigzagged rhythmically across the rectangular face of the machine, and Haruki moved the dial steadily to keep the action going. No, he had wanted to tell Tetsuo’s father, how can I prove guilt for a crime that doesn’t exist? I cannot punish and I cannot prevent. No, he could not say such things. Not to anyone. So much he could never say. Since he was a child, Haruki had wanted to hang himself, and he thought of it still. Of all the crimes, Haruki understood murder-suicides the best; if he could have, he would’ve killed Daisuke, then himself. But he could never kill Daisuke. And now he could not do such an unspeakable thing to Ayame. They were innocent.

  The machine died suddenly. He looked up and saw Mozasu holding the plug to the extension cord. He wore a black suit with a red Paradaisu Yokohama pin on his jacket lapel.

  “How much did you lose, dummy?”

  “A lot. Half my pay?”

  Mozasu pulled out his wallet and handed Haruki a sheaf of yen notes, but Haruki wouldn’t take it.

  “It’s my own fault. Sometimes I win, right?”

  “Not that often.” Mozasu tucked the money into Haruki’s coat pocket.

  At the izakaya, Mozasu ordered beer and poured Haruki his first drink from the large bottle. They sat at the long counter on carved wooden stools. The owner laid out the dish of warm, salted soybeans, because they always started with those.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Mozasu asked. “You look like shit.”

  “A kid jumped off a building. Had to talk with his parents today.”

  “Ugh. How old?”

  “Middle school. Korean.”

  “Ehh?”

  “You should have seen what the rotten kids wrote on his yearbook.”

  “Probably the same shit kids wrote in mine.”

  “Maji?”

  “Yeah, every year, a bunch of knuckleheads would tell me to go back to Korea or to die a slow death. Just mean kid stuff.”

  “Who? Anyone I know?”

  “It was a long time ago. Besides, what are you going to do? Arrest them?” Mozasu laughed. “So, you’re sad about that? About the kid?”

  Haruki nodded.

  “You have a weakness for Koreans,” Mozasu said, smiling. “You idiot.”

  Haruki started to cry.

  “What the hell? Hey, hey.” Mozasu patted his back.

  The owner behind the counter looked away and wiped down the counter space of a customer who’d just left.

  Haruki clasped his head with his right hand and closed his wet eyes.

  “The poor kid couldn’t take any more.”

  “Listen, man, there’s nothing you can do. This country isn’t going to change. Koreans like me can’t leave. Where we gonna go? But the Koreans back home aren’t changing, either. In Seoul, people like me get called Japanese bastards, and in Japan, I’m just another dirty Korean no matter how much money I make or how nice I am. So what the fuck? All those people who went back to the North are starving to death or scared shitless.”

  Mozasu patted down his pockets for cigarettes.

  “People are awful. Drink some beer.”

  Haruki took a sip and coughed, having swallowed wrong.

  “When I was a boy, I wanted to die,” Haruki said.

  “Me too. Every fucking day, I thought it would be better if I died, but I couldn’t do it to my mother. Then after I left school, I didn’t feel that way anymore. But after Yumi died, I didn’t know if I was going to make it. You know? But then I couldn’t do it to Solomon. And my mother, well, you know, she changed after Noa disappeared. I can never let her down like that. My mother said that my brother left because he couldn’t handle Waseda and was ashamed. I don’t think that’s true. Nothing in school was ever hard for him. He’s living somewhere else, and he doesn’t want us to find him. I think he just got tired of trying to be a good Korean and quit. I was never a good Korean.”

  Mozasu lit his cigarette.

  “But things get better. Life is shitty, but not all the time. Etsuko’s great. I didn’t expect her to come along. You know, I’m going to help her open a restaurant.”

  “She’s a nice lady. Maybe you’ll get married again.” Haruki liked Mozasu’s new Japanese girlfriend.

  “Etsuko doesn’t want to get married again. Her kids hate her enough already. It’d be hell for her if she married a Korean pachinko guy.” Mozasu snorted.

  Haruki’s sad expression remained.

  “Man, life’s going to keep pushing you around, but you have to keep playing.”

  Haruki nodded.

  “I used to think if my father hadn’t left, then I’d be okay,” Haruki said.

  “Forget him. Your mother was a great lady; my wife thought she was the best of the best. Tough and smart and always fair to everyone. She was better than having five fathers. Yumi said she was the only Japanese she’d ever work for.”

  “Yeah. Mama was a great lady.”

  The owner brought out the fried oysters and shishito peppers.

  Haruki wiped his eyes with a cocktail napkin, and Mozasu poured him another glass of beer.

  “I didn’t know kids wrote that stuff on your yearbooks. You were always watching out for me. I didn’t know.”

  “Forget it. I’m okay. I’m okay now.”

  8

  Nagano, August 1978

  Hansu’s driver found her waiting at the north gate of Yokohama Station as
instructed, and he led Sunja to the black sedan, where Hansu was sitting in the back.

  Sunja arranged herself in the plush velvet backseat, pulling down her suit jacket to cover the swell of her ajumma abdomen. She wore an imported French designer dress and Italian leather shoes that Mozasu’s girlfriend, Etsuko, had selected for her. At sixty-two years, Sunja looked like what she was—a mother of two grown men, a grandmother, and a woman who had spent most of her life working outdoors. Despite the clothes of a wealthy Tokyo matron, her wrinkled and spotted skin and short white hair couldn’t help but make her look rumpled and ordinary.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Nagano,” Hansu replied.

  “Is that where he is?”

  “Yes. He goes by Nobuo Ban. He’s been there continuously for sixteen years. He’s married to a Japanese woman and has four children.”

  “Solomon has four cousins! Why couldn’t he tell us?”

  “He is now Japanese. No one in Nagano knows he’s Korean. His wife and children don’t know. Everyone in his world thinks he is pure Japanese.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he does not want anyone to know about his past.”

  “Is it so easy to do this?”

  “It’s easy enough, and in his world, no one cares enough to dig around.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He runs a pachinko parlor.”

  “Like Mozasu?” There were Koreans in every aspect of the pachinko business, from the parlors and the keihin to the machine manufacturers, but she would have never expected Noa to do the same thing as Mozasu.

  “Soo nee. How is Mozasu?” Hansu asked.

  “Good.” She nodded, having a hard time concentrating.

  “His business okay?”

  “He bought another parlor in Yokohama.”

  “And Solomon? He must be very big now.”

  “He’s doing well at school. Studying hard. I want to know more about Noa.”

  “He is well off.” Hansu smiled.

  “Does he know we’re coming to see him?”