by Min Jin Lee
Solomon rose from his chair and was now standing where she’d been only a moment ago. Phoebe dragged the suitcases behind her into the bedroom and shut the door quietly.
What could he say? He wouldn’t marry her. He had known it almost as soon as they’d landed in Narita. Her confidence and self-possession had mesmerized him in college. Her equanimity, which had seemed so important in the States, seemed like aloofness and arrogance in Tokyo. She had lost her life here, this was true, but marrying her didn’t seem like a solution.
Then the whole Japan-is-evil stuff. Sure, there were assholes in Japan, but there were assholes everywhere, nee? Ever since they got here, either she had changed or his feelings for her had changed. Hadn’t he been leaning toward asking her to marry him? Yet now, when she put forward the idea of marrying for citizenship, he realized that he didn’t want to become an American. It made sense for him to do so; it would have made his father happy. Was it better to be an American than a Japanese? He knew Koreans who had become naturalized Japanese, and it made sense to do so, but he didn’t want to do that now, either. Maybe one day. She was right; it was weird that he was born in Japan and had a South Korean passport. He couldn’t rule out getting naturalized. Maybe another Korean wouldn’t understand that, but he didn’t care anymore.
Kazu was a shit, but so what? He was one bad guy, and he was Japanese. Perhaps that was what going to school in America had taught him. Even if there were a hundred bad Japanese, if there was one good one, he refused to make a blanket statement. Etsuko was like a mother to him; his first love was Hana; and Totoyama was like an uncle, too. They were Japanese, and they were very good. She hadn’t known them the way he had; how could he expect her to understand?
In a way, Solomon was Japanese, too, even if the Japanese didn’t think so. Phoebe couldn’t see this. There was more to being something than just blood. The space between Phoebe and him could not close, and if he was decent, he had to let her go home.
Solomon went to the kitchen and made coffee. He poured two cups and approached the bedroom door.
“Phoebe, may I come in?”
“The door’s open.”
The suitcases on the floor were brimming with clothes folded and rolled like canisters. The closets were nearly empty. Solomon’s five dark suits and half a dozen white dress shirts hung on the long rod with a yard of hanging space left. Her neat rows of shoes still took up most of the closet floor. Phoebe’s shoes were black or brown leather; a pair of pink espadrilles, which had once given her terrible blisters, stood out from the others like a girlish mistake. During their junior year, they’d gone to a party, and she’d had to walk back to the dorm barefoot from 111th Street and Broadway because the pink espadrilles had been too narrow.
“Why do you still have those shoes?”
“Shut up, Solomon.” Phoebe started to cry.
“What did I say?”
“I have never felt so stupid in my life. Why am I here?” She took a deep breath.
Solomon stared at her, not knowing how to comfort her. He was afraid of her; perhaps he had always been afraid of her—her joy, anger, sadness, excitement—she had so many extreme feelings. The nearly empty room with the solitary rented bed and floor lamp seemed to highlight her vividness. Back in New York, she had been spirited and wonderful. Here, Phoebe was almost too stark, awkward.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No. You’re not.”
Solomon sat down on the carpeted floor cross-legged, leaning his long back against the narrow wall. The freshly painted walls were still bare. They hadn’t hung anything on them because the landlord would have fined them for each nail hole.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
Phoebe picked up her espadrilles and threw them into the overflowing waste basket.
“I think I’m going to work for my dad,” he said.
“Pachinko?”
“Yeah.” Solomon nodded to himself. It felt strange to say this out loud.
“He asked you?”
“No. I don’t think he wants me to.”
She shook her head.
“Maybe I can take over the business.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
Without saying a word, Phoebe continued to pack. She was willfully ignoring him, and he continued to look at her. She was more cute than pretty, more pretty than beautiful. He liked her long torso, slender neck, bobbed hair, and intelligent eyes. When she laughed at a joke, her laughter was whole. Nothing seemed to scare her—she thought anything was possible. Could he change her mind? Could he change his? Maybe the packing was just a dramatic gesture. What did he know about women? He’d known only two girls really.
She rolled up another sweater and dropped it on the growing pile.
“Pachinko. Well, that makes it easier then,” she said finally. “I can’t live here, Solomon. Even if you wanted to marry me, I can’t live here. I can’t breathe here.”
“That first night we arrived, when you couldn’t read the instructions on the aspirin bottle, and you started to cry. I should have known then.”
Phoebe picked up another sweater and just stared at it like she didn’t know what to do with it.
“You have to dump me,” he said.
“Yes, I do.”
She left in the morning. It was like Phoebe to make a clean exit. Solomon took her to the airport by train, and even though they were pleasant, she had changed literally overnight. She didn’t seem sad or angry; she was cordial. If anything, she seemed stronger than before. She let him hug her good-bye, but they agreed not to talk for a long time.
“It would be better,” she said, and Solomon felt powerless against her decision.
Solomon took the train to Yokohama.
His father’s modest office was lined with gray metal shelves, and stacks of files rested on the credenzas along the walls. Three safes holding papers and the day’s receipts were located below the high windows. Mozasu sat behind the same battered oak table that he’d used as a desk for over thirty years. Noa had studied for his Waseda exams at this table, and when he moved to Tokyo, he’d left it for Mozasu.
“Papa.”
“Solomon,” Mozasu exclaimed. “Is everything okay?”
“Phoebe went back.”
Saying it to his father made it real. Solomon sat down on the empty chair.
“What? Why? Because you lost your job?”
“No. I can’t marry her. And I told her that I’d rather live in Japan. Work in pachinko.”
“What? Pachinko? No, no.” Mozasu shook his head. “You’ll get another job in banking. That’s why you went to Columbia, nee?”
Mozasu touched his brow, genuinely confused by this announcement.
“She’s a nice girl. I thought you’d get married.”
Mozasu walked around from his desk and handed his son a packet of tissues.
“Pachinko? Honto?”
“Yeah, why not?” Solomon blew his nose.
“You don’t want to do this. You don’t know what people say.”
“None of that stuff is true. You’re an honest business person. I know you pay your taxes and get all your licenses, and—”
“Yes, yes, I do. But people will always say things. They will always say terrible things, no matter what. It’s normal for me. I’m nobody. There’s no need for you to do this work. I wasn’t smart at school like my brother. I was good at running around and fixing things. I was good at making money. I’ve always kept my business clean and stayed away from the bad things. Goro-san taught me that it’s not worth it to get involved with the bad guys. But Solomon, this business is not easy, nee? It’s not just tinkering with machines and ordering new ones and hiring people to work on the floor. There are so many things that can go wrong. We know lots of people who went belly-up, nee?”
“Why don’t you want me to do this?”
“I sent you to those American schools so that no one would—” Mozasu paused. “No one is go
ing to look down at my son.”
“Papa, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, nee?” Solomon had never seen his father like this before.
“I worked and made money because I thought it would make me a man. I thought people would respect me if I was rich.”
Solomon looked at him and nodded. His father rarely spent on himself, but he had paid for weddings and funerals for employees and sent tuition for their children.
Mozasu’s face brightened suddenly.
“You can change your mind, Solomon. You can call Phoebe when she gets home and say you’re sorry. Your mother was a lot like Phoebe—strong-willed and smart.”
“I want to live here,” Solomon said. “She will not.”
“Soo nee.”
Solomon picked up the ledger from his father’s table.
“Explain this to me, Papa.”
Mozasu paused, then he opened the book.
It was the first of the month, and Sunja had woken up upset. She had dreamed of Hansu again. Lately, he had been appearing in her dreams, looking the way he did when she was a girl, wearing his white linen suit and white leather shoes. He always said the same thing: “You are my girl; you are my dear girl.” Sunja would wake and feel ashamed. She should have forgotten him by now.
After breakfast, she would go the cemetery to clean Isak’s grave. As usual, Kyunghee offered to come with her, but Sunja said it was okay.
Neither woman performed the jesa. As Christians, they weren’t supposed to believe in ancestor worship. Nevertheless, both widows still wanted to talk to their husband and elders, appeal to them, seek their counsel. They missed their old rituals, so she went to the cemetery regularly. It was curious, but Sunja felt close to Isak in a way that she hadn’t when he was alive. Then she had been in awe of him and his goodness. Dead, he seemed more approachable to her.
When the train from Yokohama reached Osaka Station, Sunja bought ivory-colored chrysanthemums from the old Korean woman’s stall. She had been there for years. The way Isak had explained it, when it was time to be with the Lord, your real body would be in heaven, so what happened to your remains didn’t matter. It made no sense to bring a buried body favorite foods or incense or flowers. There was no need for bowing, since we were all equal in the eyes of the Lord, he’d said. And yet Sunja couldn’t help wanting to bring something lovely to the grave. In life, he had asked for so little from her, and when she thought of him now, she remembered her husband as someone who had praised the beauty that God had made.
She was glad that Isak had not been cremated. She had wanted a place for the boys to visit their father. Mozasu visited the grave often, and before Noa disappeared, he had come with her, too. Had they talked to him, too? she wondered. It had never occurred to her to ask them this, and now it was too late.
Lately, every time she went to the cemetery, she wondered what Isak would have thought of Noa’s death. Isak would have understood Noa’s suffering. He would have known what to say to him. Noa had been cremated by his wife, so there was no grave to visit. Sunja talked to Noa when she was alone. Sometimes, something very simple like a delicious piece of pumpkin taffy would make her sorry that now that she had money, she couldn’t buy him something that he had loved as a child. Sorry, Noa, sorry. It had been eleven years since he’d died; the pain didn’t go away, but its sharp edge had dulled and softened like sea glass.
Sunja hadn’t gone to Noa’s funeral. He hadn’t wanted his wife and children to know about her, and she had done enough already. If she hadn’t visited him the way she had, maybe he might still be alive. Hansu had not gone to the funeral, either. Noa would’ve been fifty-six years old.
In her dream last night, Sunja had been happy that Hansu had come to see her again. They met at the beach near her old home in Yeongdo to talk, and recalling the dream was like watching another person’s life. How was it possible that Isak and Noa were gone but Hansu was still alive? How was this fair? Hansu was living somewhere in Tokyo in a hospital bed under the watchful gaze of round-the-clock nurses and his daughters. She never saw him anymore and had no wish to. In her dreams, he was as vibrant as he had been when she was a girl. It was not Hansu that she missed, or even Isak. What she was seeing again in her dreams was her youth, her beginning, and her wishes—so this was how she became a woman. Without Hansu and Isak and Noa, there wouldn’t have been this pilgrimage to this land. Beyond the dailiness, there had been moments of shimmering beauty and some glory, too, even in this ajumma’s life. Even if no one knew, it was true.
There was consolation: The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned. Sometimes, she could be in front of a train kiosk or the window of a bookstore, and she could feel Noa’s small hand when he was a boy, and she would close her eyes and think of his sweet, grassy smell and remember that he had always tried his best. At those moments, it was good to be alone to hold on to him.
She took the taxi from the train station to the cemetery, then walked the many rows to Isak’s well-maintained grave. There was no need to clean anything, but she liked to wipe down the marble tombstone before she spoke to him. Sunja fell to her knees and cleaned the flat, square tombstone with the towels she’d brought for the purpose. Isak’s name was carved in Japanese and Korean. 1907–1944. The white marble was clean now and warm from the sun.
He had been such an elegant and beautiful man. Sunja could recall how the servant girls back home had admired him; Bokhee and Dokhee had never seen such a handsome man before. Mozasu took after her more and had her plain face, but he had his father’s straight carriage and steady stride.
“Yobo,” she said, “Mozasu is well. Last week, he called me, because Solomon lost his job with that foreign bank, and now he wants to work with his father. Imagine that? I wonder what you’d make of this.”
The silence encouraged her.
“I wonder how you are—” She stopped speaking when she saw Uchida-san, the groundskeeper. Sunja was sitting on the ground in her black woolen pants suit. She glanced at her handbag on the ground. It was an expensive designer bag that Etsuko had bought for her seventieth birthday.
The groundskeeper stopped before her and bowed, and she returned the bow.
Sunja smiled at the polite young man, who must have been about forty or forty-five. Uchida-san looked younger than Mozasu. How did she look to him? Her skin was deeply grooved from the years of sun, and her short hair was bright white. No matter—seventy-three did not feel very old to her. Had the groundskeeper heard her mumbling in Korean? Ever since she’d stopped working at the confectionery, her limited Japanese had deteriorated further. It was not terrible, but lately she felt shy around native speakers. Uchida-san picked up his rake and walked away.
Sunja put both hands on the white marble, as if she could touch Isak from where she was.
“I wish you could tell me what will happen to us. I wish. I wish I knew that Noa was with you.”
Several rows from her, the groundskeeper cleared wet leaves from stone markers. Now and then he would glance up at her, and Sunja felt embarrassed to be seen talking to a grave. She wanted to stay a little longer. Wanting to look like she was busy, Sunja opened her canvas bag to put away the dirty towels. In the bottom of her bag, she found her house keys on the key ring with thumbnail-sized photographs of Noa and Mozasu in a sealed acrylic frame.
Sunja started to weep, and she could not help her crying.
“Boku-san.”
“Hai?” Sunja looked up at the groundskeeper.
“May I get you something to drink? I have a thermos of tea in the cottage. It is not very fine tea, but it is warm.”
“No, no. Thank you. All time, you see people cry,” she said in broken Japanese.
“No, actually, very few people come here, but your family visits regularly. You have two sons and a grandson, Solomon. Mozasu-sama visits every month or two. I haven’t seen Noa-sama in eleven years, but he used to come on the last Thursday of each month. You could set a watch to him. How is Noa-sama?
He was a very kind man.”
“Noa come here? Come before 1978?”
“Hai.”
“From 1963 to 1978?” She mentioned the years he would have been in Nagano. She said the dates again, hoping that her Japanese was correct. Sunja pointed to Noa’s photograph on the key ring. “He visit here?”
The groundskeeper nodded with conviction at the photograph, then looked up in the sky like he was trying to see some sort of calendar in his mind.
“Hai, hai. He came in those years and before, too. Noa-sama told me to go to school and even offered to send me if I wished.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but I told him I have an empty gourd for a head, and that it would have been pointless to send me to school. Besides, I like it here. It’s quiet. Everybody who comes to visit is very kind. He asked me never to mention his visits, but I have not seen him in over a decade, and I’d wondered if he moved away to England. He told me to read good books and brought me translations of the great British author Charles Dickens.”
“Noa, my son, is dead.”
The groundskeeper opened his mouth slightly.
“My son, my son,” Sunja said quietly.
“I am very sad to hear that, Boku-san. Truly, I am,” the groundskeeper said, looking forlorn. “I’d been hoping to tell him that after I finished all the books he’d brought me, I bought more of my own. I have read through all of Mr. Dickens’s books in translations, but my favorite is the first one he gave me, David Copperfield. I admire David.”
“Noa loved to read. The best. He loved to read.”
“Have you read Mr. Dickens?”
“I don’t know how,” she said. “To read.”
“Maji? If you are Noa’s mother, you are very smart, too. Perhaps you can go to night school for adults. That is what Noa-sama told me to do.”
Sunja smiled at the groundskeeper, who seemed hopeful about sending an old woman to school. She remembered Noa cajoling Mozasu to persevere with his studies.
The groundskeeper looked at his rake. He bowed deeply, then excused himself to return to his tasks.