Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

  “I’m not saying anything bad. It’s a compliment. The Koreans here are smart and rich. Just like our boy Solomon. It wasn’t like I was calling him a yakuza! You’re not going to get me killed, are you, Solly?” Giancarlo asked.

  Solomon smiled tentatively. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard these things, but it had been a very long while since anyone had mentioned his father’s business. In America, no one even knew what pachinko was. It was his father who’d been confident that there would be less bigotry at the offices of a Western bank and had encouraged him to take this job. Giancarlo wasn’t saying anything different from what other middle-class Japanese people thought or whispered; it was just strange to hear such a thing coming from a white Italian who had lived in Japan for twenty years.

  Louis cut the cards, and Kazu shuffled and dealt the guys a fresh hand.

  Solomon had three kings, but he discarded them one by one in three consecutive rounds, then folded, losing about ten thousand yen. At the end of the night, he paid the tab. Kazu said he wanted to talk to him, so they walked out to the street to hail a taxi.

  17

  You lost on purpose. The three kings came from you,” Kazu said to Solomon. They were standing outside the izakaya building. Kazu lit a Marlboro Light.

  Solomon shrugged.

  “That was dumb. Giancarlo is a social retard. He’s one of those white guys who has to live in Asia because the white people back home don’t want him. He’s been in Japan for so long that he thinks when Japanese people suck up to him, it’s because he’s so special. What a fucking fantasy. That said, not a bad guy overall. Effective. Gets shit done. You gotta know this by now, that people here, even the non-Japanese, say the dumbest things about Koreans, but you gotta forget it. When I was in the States, people used to say stupid-ass crap about Asians, like we all spoke Chinese and ate sushi for breakfast. When it came to teaching US history, they’d forget the internment and Hiroshima. Whatever, right?”

  “That stuff doesn’t get to me,” Solomon replied, scanning the dark streets for a taxi. The trains had stopped running half an hour before. “I’m good.”

  “Okay, tough guy,” Kazu said. “Listen, there is a tax, you know, on success.”

  “Huh?”

  “If you do well at anything, you gotta pay up to all the people who did worse. On the other hand, if you do badly, life makes you pay a shit tax, too. Everybody pays something.”

  Kazu looked at him soberly.

  “Of course, the worst one is the tax on the mediocre. Now, that one’s a bitch.” Kazu tossed his cigarette and crossed his arms. “Pay attention: The ones who pay the shit tax are mostly people who were born in the wrong place and the wrong time and are hanging on to the planet by their broken fingernails. They don’t even know the fucking rules of the game. You can’t even get mad at ’em when they lose. Life just fucks and fucks and fucks bastards like that.” Kazu wrinkled his brow in resignation, like he was somewhat concerned about life’s inequities but not very. He took a deep breath. “So, those losers have to climb Mount Everest to get out of hell, and maybe one or two in five hundred thousand break out, but the rest pay the shit tax all their lives, then they die. If God exists and if He’s fair, then it makes sense that in the afterlife, those guys should get the better seats.”

  Solomon nodded, not understanding where this was going.

  Kazu’s stare remained unbroken. “But all those able-bodied middle-class people who are scared of their shadows, well, they pay the mediocre tax in regular quarterly installments with compounding interest. When you play it safe, that’s what happens, my friend. So if I were you, I wouldn’t throw any games. I’d use every fucking advantage. Beat anyone who fucks with you to a fucking pulp. Show no mercy to chumps, especially if they don’t deserve it. Make the pussies cry.”

  “So then the success tax comes from envy, and the shit tax comes from exploitation. Okay.” Solomon nodded like he was starting to get it. “Then what’s the mediocre tax? How can it be wrong to—?”

  “Good question, young Jedi. The tax for being mediocre comes from you and everyone else knowing that you are mediocre. It’s a heavier tax than you’d think.”

  Solomon had never thought of such a thing before. It wasn’t like he saw himself as terribly special, but he’d never seen himself as mediocre, either. Perhaps it was unspoken, even to himself, but he did want to be good at something.

  “Jedi, understand this: There’s nothing fucking worse than knowing that you’re just like everybody else. What a messed-up, lousy existence. And in this great country of Japan—the birthplace of all my fancy ancestors—everyone, everyone wants to be like everyone else. That’s why it is such a safe place to live, but it’s also a dinosaur village. It’s extinct, pal. Carve up your piece and invest your spoils elsewhere. You’re a young man, and someone should tell you the real truth about this country. Japan is not fucked because it lost the war or did bad things. Japan is fucked because there is no more war, and in peacetime everyone actually wants to be mediocre and is terrified of being different. The other thing is that the elite Japanese want to be English and white. That’s pathetic, delusional, and merits another discussion entirely.”

  Solomon thought some of this made sense. Everyone he knew who was really Japanese did think he was middle-class even when he wasn’t. Rich kids at his high school whose fathers owned several country-club memberships worth millions and millions thought of themselves as middle-class. His uncle Noa, whom he’d never met, had apparently killed himself because he wanted to be Japanese and normal.

  An empty taxi approached them, but Solomon didn’t notice, and Kazu smiled.

  “So, yeah, idiots are going to get on your case and notice that your dad owns pachinko parlors. And how do people know this?”

  “I never talk about it.”

  “Everyone knows, Solomon. In Japan, you’re either a rich Korean or a poor Korean, and if you are a rich Korean, there’s a pachinko parlor in your background somewhere.”

  “My dad is a great guy. He’s incredibly honest.”

  “I’m sure he is.” Kazu faced him squarely, his arms still crossed against his chest.

  Solomon hesitated but said it anyway: “He’s not some gangster. He doesn’t do bad things. He’s an ordinary businessman. He pays all his taxes and does everything by the book. There are some shady guys in the business, but my dad is incredibly precise and moral. He owns three parlors. It’s not like—”

  Kazu nodded reassuringly.

  “My father’s never taken anything that wasn’t his; he doesn’t even care about money. He gives away so much of it—”

  Etsuko had told him that Mozasu paid the nursing home bills for several of his employees.

  “Solly, Solly. No, man, there’s no need to explain. It’s not like Koreans had a lot of choices in regular professions. I’m sure he chose pachinko because there wasn’t much else. He’s probably an excellent businessman. You think your poker skills came out of a vacuum? Maybe your dad could have worked for Fuji or Sony, but it wasn’t like they were going to hire a Korean, right? I doubt they’d hire you now, Mr. Columbia University. Japan still doesn’t hire Koreans to be teachers, cops, and nurses in lots of places. You couldn’t even rent your own apartment in Tokyo, and you make good money. It’s fucking 1989! Anyway, you can be polite about it, but that’s fucked up. I’m Japanese but I’m not stupid. I lived in America and Europe for a long time; it’s crazy what the Japanese have done to the Koreans and the Chinese who were born here. It’s fucking bonkers; you people should have a revolution. You don’t protest enough. You and your dad were born here, right?”

  Solomon nodded, not understanding why Kazu was getting so worked up about this.

  “Even if your dad was a hit man, I wouldn’t give a shit. And I wouldn’t turn him in.”

  “But he’s not.”

  “No, kid, of course he’s not,” Kazu said, smiling. “Go home to your girlfriend. I heard she’s a looker and smart. That’s good. Bec
ause in the end, brains matter more than you think,” he said, laughing.

  Kazu hailed a taxi and told Solomon to take it before him. Everyone said that Kazu wasn’t like regular bosses, and it was true.

  A week later, he put Solomon on the new real estate deal, and Solomon was the youngest one on the team. This was the cool transaction that all the guys in the office wanted. One of Travis’s heavyweight banking clients wanted to purchase land in Yokohama to build a world-class golf course. Nearly all the details had been worked out; they needed to get three of the remaining landowners to sign on. Two were not impossible, just expensive, but the third was a headache—the old woman had no interest in money and could not be bought out. Her lot was where the eleventh hole would be. At the morning meeting, with the client present, two of the banking directors gave a strong presentation about the beneficial ways of structuring the mortgage, and Solomon took careful notes. Right before the meeting broke up, Kazu mentioned casually that the old woman was still holding up progress. The client smiled at Kazu and said, “No doubt, you will be able to handle the matter. We are confident.”

  Kazu smiled politely.

  The client left quickly, and everyone else scattered out of the conference room shortly thereafter. Kazu stopped Solomon before he had a chance to return to his desk.

  “What are you doing for lunch, Solly?”

  “I was going to grab something from downstairs. Why? What’s up?”

  “Let’s go for a drive.”

  The chauffeur took them to the old woman’s lot in Yokohama. The gray concrete building was in decent condition, and the front yard was well maintained. No one seemed to be home. An ancient pine tree cast a triangular shade across the facade of the square structure, and a thin brook gurgled from the back of the house. It was a former fabric-dyeing factory and now the private residence of the woman. Her children were dead, and there were no obvious heirs.

  “So how do you get a person to do what you want when she doesn’t want to?” Kazu asked.

  “I don’t know,” Solomon said. He’d figured that this was a kind of field trip for Kazu, and his boss wanted the company. Rarely did Kazu go anywhere alone.

  The car was parked in the wide, dusty street opposite the old woman’s lot. If she was home, she would have noticed the black town car idling not ten yards from her house. But no one came outside or stirred within.

  Kazu stared at the house.

  “So this is where Sonoko Matsuda lives. The client is confident that I can get Matsuda-san to sell.”

  “Can you?” Solomon asked.

  “I think so, but I don’t know how,” Kazu said.

  “This will sound stupid, but how can you get her to sign if you don’t know how?” Solomon asked.

  “I’m making a wish, Solly. I’m making a wish. Sometimes, that’s how it starts.”

  Kazu asked the chauffeur to take them to an unagi restaurant not far from there.

  18

  Yokohama, 1989

  On Sunday morning, after church services, Solomon and Phoebe took the train to Yokohama for lunch with his family.

  As usual, the front door of the house was closed but unlocked, so they let themselves in. A designer friend of Etsuko’s had recently renovated it, and the house was unrecognizable from the one of Solomon’s childhood filled with dark American furniture. The designer had removed most of the original interior walls and knocked out the small back windows, replacing them with thick sheets of glass. Now it was possible to see the rock garden from the front of the house. Pale-colored furniture, white oak floors, and sculptural paper lamps filled the vast quadrant near the woodburning stove, leaving the large, square-shaped living room light and uncluttered. In the opposite corner of the room, tall branches of forsythia bloomed in an enormous celadon-colored ceramic jar on the floor. The house looked like a glamorous Buddhist temple.

  Mozasu came out from the den to greet them.

  “You’re here!” he said to Phoebe in Korean. When she spent time with Solomon’s family, the group spoke three languages. Phoebe spoke Korean with the elders and English with Solomon, while Solomon spoke mostly in Japanese to the elders and English to Phoebe; with everyone translating in bits, they made it work somehow.

  Mozasu opened the shoe closet by the door and offered them house slippers.

  “My mother and aunt have been cooking all week. I hope you’re hungry.”

  “Something smells wonderful,” she said. “Is everyone in the kitchen?”

  Phoebe smoothed her navy pleated skirt.

  “Yes. I mean, sorry, no. Etsuko couldn’t be here today. She’s very sad to miss you. She asked me to apologize.”

  Phoebe nodded, glancing briefly at Solomon. It seemed impolite for her to ask where Etsuko was, but she couldn’t understand why Solomon didn’t ask his father where she was. Phoebe was curious about Etsuko. She was the only person Phoebe couldn’t speak to directly, because neither woman spoke the other’s language. Also, she wanted to meet Hana, who was never around.

  Solomon grabbed Phoebe’s hand and led her to the kitchen. Around his family, he felt younger than usual, almost giddy. The scents of all his favorite dishes filled the wide hallway connecting the front of the house with the kitchen.

  “Solomon is here!” he shouted, no different than when he’d come home from school as a boy.

  Kyunghee and Sunja stopped their work immediately and looked up, beaming. Mozasu smiled, seeing their happiness.

  “Phoebe is here, too, Solomon!” Kyunghee said. She wiped her hands on her apron, then came out from behind the thick marble counter to embrace him.

  Sunja followed her and put her arm around Phoebe’s waist. Sunja was a head shorter than Phoebe.

  “This is for both of you.” Phoebe gave her a box of candy from the Tokyo branch of an exclusive French chocolate shop.

  Sunja smiled. “Thank you.”

  Kyunghee untied the ribbon to take a peek. It was a large box of glazed fruits dipped in chocolate. Delighted, she said, “This looks expensive. You kids should be saving money at your age. But the candies look so delicious! Thank you.”

  She inhaled the chocolate aroma dramatically.

  “It’s so good to have you here,” Sunja said in Korean, folding Phoebe’s slender shoulders into her thick embrace.

  Phoebe loved being with Solomon’s family. It was much smaller than her own, but everyone seemed closer, as if each member were organically attached to one seamless body, whereas her enormous extended family felt like cheerfully mismatched Lego bricks in a large bucket. Phoebe’s parents had at least five or six siblings each, and she had grown up with well over a dozen cousins just in California. There were relatives in New York, New Jersey, DC, Washington State, and Toronto. She had dated a couple of Korean American guys and had met their families, but Solomon’s family was different. Solomon’s family was warm but far more muted and intensely watchful. None of them seemed to miss anything.

  “Is that for pajeon?” Phoebe asked. The mixing bowl was filled with creamy pancake batter flecked with thin slices of scallion and chunks of scallops.

  “You like pajeon? So does Solomon! How does your umma make it?” Kyunghee asked; her tone was casual, though she held strong opinions about the ratio of scallions to shellfish.

  “My mother doesn’t cook,” Phoebe said, looking only a little embarrassed.

  “What?” Kyunghee gasped in horror and turned to Sunja, who raised her eyebrows, sharing her sister-in-law’s surprise.

  Phoebe laughed.

  “I grew up eating pizza and hamburgers. And lots of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I love the KFC corn on the cob.” She smiled. “Mom worked in my dad’s medical office as his office manager and was never home before eight o’clock.”

  The women nodded, trying to understanding this.

  “Mom was always working. She did all the medical paperwork at the dining table next to us kids while we did our homework. I don’t think she ever went to bed until midnight—”

 
“But you didn’t eat any Korean food?”

  Kyunghee couldn’t comprehend this.

  “On the weekends we ate it. At a restaurant.”

  The women understood that the mother was busy and hardworking, but it seemed inconceivable to them that a Korean mother didn’t cook for her family. What would Solomon eat if he married this girl? What would their children eat?

  “She didn’t have time. That makes sense, but does your mother know how to cook?” Kyunghee asked tentatively.

  “She never learned. And none of her sisters cook Korean food, either.”

  Phoebe laughed, because the fact that none of them cooked Korean food was a point of pride. Her mother and her sisters tended to look down at women who cooked a lot and constantly tried to make you eat. The four of them were very thin. Like Phoebe, they were the kind of women who were constantly moving around and seemed uninterested in eating because they were so absorbed in their work. “My favorite aunt cooks only on the weekends and only for dinner parties. She usually makes Italian food. Our family always meets at restaurants.”

  Phoebe found it amusing to see their continuing shock and disbelief at such a mundane detail of her childhood. What was the big deal? Why did women have to cook, anyway? she wondered. Her mother was her favorite person in the world. “My brother and sisters don’t even like kimchi. My mother won’t even keep it in the refrigerator because of the smell.”

  “Waaah,” Sunja sighed. “You really are American. Are your aunts married to Americans?”

  “My aunts and uncles are married to non-Koreans. My brother and sisters married ethnically Korean people, but they’re Americans like me. My older brother-in-law, the lawyer, speaks fluent Portuguese but no Korean; he grew up in Brazil. America is full of people like that.”

  “Really?” Kyunghee exclaimed.

  “Who are your aunts married to?”

  “I have aunts and uncles by marriage who are white, black, Dutch, Jewish, Filipino, Mexican, Chinese, Puerto Rican, and, let’s see, there’s one Korean American uncle and three Korean American aunts. I have a lot of cousins. Everyone’s mixed,” she added, smiling at the older women wearing spotless white aprons, who were paying such careful attention to what she was saying that it looked as if their minds were taking notes.