by Min Jin Lee
“No.”
“But—”
“He doesn’t want to see us. Well, he doesn’t want to see me. He may want to see you, but if he had, surely he would’ve let you know sooner.”
“Then—”
“We should not speak to him today, but I thought if you wanted to see him with your own eyes, you could. He is going to be at his main office.”
“How do you know this?”
“I just do,” Hansu said, closing his eyes and leaning against the white lace-covered headrest. He was taking several medications, and they made him feel foggy.
It was his plan to wait until Noa came out of his office as he usually did to have lunch at the soba-ya across the street. Each weekday, he ate a simple lunch at a different restaurant, and on Wednesdays he ate soba. Hansu’s private investigators had detailed Noa’s life in Nagano in a twenty-six-page report, and what was most notable was his unwavering need for routine. Noa did not drink alcohol, gamble, or fool around with women. He had no apparent religion, and his wife and four children lived like a middle-class Japanese family in a modest house.
“Will he eat lunch by himself, do you think?”
“He always eats lunch by himself. Today is Wednesday so he will eat zaru soba, taking less than fifteen minutes. He will read a little of his English novel, then return to his office. This is why he is so successful, I think. He does not make mistakes. Noa has a plan.” There was a kind of territorial pride in Hansu’s voice.
“Do you think he’ll see me?”
“It’s hard to tell,” he said. “You should wait in the car and get a glimpse of him, then the driver will take us back to Yokohama. We can return next week if you like. Maybe you can write to him first.”
“What’s the difference between today and next week?”
“Maybe if you see him and know that he is well, then you will not need to see him so much. He has chosen this life, Sunja, and maybe he wants us to respect that.”
“He’s my son.”
“And mine.”
“Noa and Mozasu. They’re my life.”
Hansu nodded. He had never felt this way about his children. Not really.
“I’ve lived only for them.”
This was wrong to say. At church, the minister preached about how mothers cared too much about their children and that worshipping the family was a kind of idolatry. One must not love one’s family over God, he’d said. The minister said that families could never give you what only God could give. But being a mother who loved her children too much had helped her to understand a little of what God went through. Noa had children of his own now; perhaps he could understand how much she’d lived for him.
“Look. He’s coming out,” Hansu said.
Her son’s face had changed only a little. The graying hair along the temples surprised her, but Noa was forty-five years old and no longer the university student. He wore round, golden spectacles much like those Isak used to wear, and his black suit hung simply on his lean frame. His face was a copy of Hansu’s.
Sunja opened the car door and stepped out.
“Noa!” she cried, and rushed toward him.
He turned around and stared at his mother, who stood not ten paces from him.
“Umma,” he murmured. Noa moved close to her and touched her arm. He had not seen his mother cry since Isak’s funeral. She was not the sort to cry easily, and he felt bad for her. He had imagined that this day would come and had prepared for it, but now that she was here, he was surprised by his own sense of relief.
“There’s no need to be upset. We should go inside my office,” he said. “How did you get here?”
Sunja couldn’t speak because she was heaving. She took a deep breath. “Koh Hansu brought me here. He found you, and he brought me here because I wanted to see you. He’s in the car.”
“I see,” he said. “Well, he can stay there.”
Upon his return to the office, his employees bowed, and Sunja followed behind. He offered her a seat in his office and closed the door.
“You look well, umma,” Noa said.
“It has been such a long time, Noa. I’ve worried so much about you.”
Seeing his hurt expression, she stopped herself. “But I’m glad you wrote to me. I have saved all the money you sent. It was very thoughtful of you to do that.”
Noa nodded.
“Hansu told me that you’re married and you have children.”
Noa smiled. “I have one boy and three girls. They are very good kids. All of them study except for my son, who is a good baseball player. He is my wife’s favorite. He looks like Mozasu and acts like him, too.”
“I know Mozasu would like to see you. When can you come to see us?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I can.”
“Haven’t we wasted enough time? All these years. Noa, have mercy. Have mercy, please. Umma was a girl when I met Hansu. I didn’t know he was married, and when I found out, I refused to be his mistress. Then your father married me so you could have a proper name. All my life, I was faithful to your father, Baek Isak, who was a great man. Even after he died, I have been true to his—”
“I understand what you did. However, my blood father is Koh Hansu. That cannot change,” Noa said flatly.
“Yes.”
“I’m a Korean working in this filthy business. I suppose having yakuza in your blood is something that controls you. I can never be clean of him.” He laughed. “This is my curse.”
“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.
9
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.
The spring before her thirty-sixth birthday, when she was still married and living in Hokkaido, Etsuko had seduced another one of her high school boyfriends. She had been having a series of affairs for almost three years with various men from her adolescence. What amazed her was how difficult it was the first time but how effortless it was to have all the others that followed. Married men wanted invitations from married women. It was no trouble to phone a man she had slept with twenty years ago and invite him to her house for lunch when her children were at school.
That spring, she began sleeping with a boyfriend from her freshman year in high school. He’d grown into a handsome, married playboy who still had the tendency to talk too much. One afternoon, in her tiny Hokkaido living room, as the playboy was getting dressed to return to his office, he bemoaned the fact that she wouldn’t leave her husband, who preferred the company of his work colleagues to hers. He laid his head between her small breasts and said, “But I can leave my wife. Tell me to do it.” To this, she said nothing. Etsuko had no intention of leaving Nori and the children. Her complaint about her husband was not that he was boring or that he wasn’t home enough. Nori was not a bad person. It was just that she felt like she had no clear sense of him after nineteen years of marriage, and she doubted that she ever would. He didn’t seem to need her except to be a wife in name and a mother to his children. For Nori, this was enough.
There was no good excuse for her behavior. She knew that. But at night, when Nori sat at the kitchen table to eat the dinner that had gotten cold because he’d come home late once again from another company gathering, she waited for something to come, some insight, some feeling. As she watched him with his eyes locked to his rice bowl, she wanted to shake him, because in all her life she had never expected this kind of loneliness. Around that time, someone had handed her a cult pamphlet as she came out of the grocery store. On the flimsy cover, a middle-aged housewife was pictured as half skeleton and half flesh. On the bottom of the page it said, “Every day you are closer to your death. You are half-dead already. Where does your identity come from?” She tossed the pamphlet away almost as soon as she got it, but the picture stayed with her for a long while.
The last time she saw the playboy, he gave her a sheaf of poems that he had written for her. As he left through the kitchen door,
he confessed that he loved only her. His eyes pooled with tears as he told her that she was his heart. For the rest of the day, she ignored the housework and read and reread the maudlin and erotic poems. She couldn’t say if they were good or not, but she was pleased by them. Etsuko privately marveled at the effort they must have taken, and she reasoned that in his showy way, he did love her. Finally, this one affair had given her what she had wanted from all the others—an assurance that whatever she had handed out so freely in her youth had neither died nor disappeared.
That night, when her family was sleeping, Etsuko soaked in the wooden tub and glowed in what felt to her like a victory. After her bath, she dressed in her blue-and-white yukata and headed toward her bedroom, where her innocent husband was snoring gently. One sad thing seemed clear to her: If she needed all the men who had ever loved her to continue loving her, she would always be divided. She would always cheat, and she’d never be a good person. It dawned on her then that being a good person was something she had not given up on completely after all. Would she die living this way? In the morning, she told the playboy not to call her anymore, and he didn’t. He just moved on to the next pretty housewife in town.
But a few months later, Nori found the poems that she should have destroyed, and he beat her for the first time in their marriage. Her sons tried to stop him, and Hana, just nine years old then, screamed and screamed. That evening, Nori threw her out, and she made her way to her sister’s house. Later, the lawyer said it would be pointless for her to try to get custody of the children since she had no job and no skills. He coughed in what seemed like politeness or discomfort and said it would also be pointless because of what she had done. Etsuko nodded and decided to give up her children, thinking that she would not trouble them anymore. Then, following a want ad for a restaurant hostess, Etsuko moved to Yokohama, where she knew no one.
Etsuko wanted to believe that being with Mozasu was changing her. That she was sexually faithful to him, she took as proof. She had once tried to explain this to her sister, and Mari had replied, “A snake that sheds its skin is still a snake.” And her mother, on hearing that Mozasu wanted to marry her, said, “Honto? To a pachinko Korean? Haven’t you done enough to your poor children? Why not just kill them?”