Go

by Kazuki Kaneshiro

  Miyamoto peered into my eyes as if to coax an answer out of me. As I sat there, saying nothing, he said, “Can I ask you something?”

  I nodded.

  “You have South Korean citizenship, right?”

  I nodded again.

  Miyamoto continued. “If you don’t have any qualms about changing your citizenship, then why are you still South Korean?”

  I didn’t answer.

  A faint smile flickering on the edges of his lips, Miyamoto said, “Please don’t tell me it’s because it doesn’t affect the way you live. What about having to report to the government office every couple of years under the pretense of switching your alien registration? Or what about having to apply for a reentry permit before going overseas? We were born and raised here, and yet we have to ask permission to be allowed back in? Doesn’t it all have a huge effect on the way someone like you lives?”

  After a brief silence, I opened my mouth. “Who do you think you are? You don’t know anything about me.”

  The bell chimed the end of lunch hour.

  Miyamoto clicked his tongue and rose to his feet. “Just when it was getting interesting. I’ll be back. You can give me an answer then.”

  I went home, thinking about everything Miyamoto said.

  No one seemed to be there. My mother had entered her third week away from the house. I peeked into the living room and found a putter lying on the floor and golf balls scattered everywhere. I picked up the putter and leaned it against the sofa.

  Night came and my father still hadn’t come home. Just as I was thinking about what to order for dinner, my father called on the phone. He was really drunk.

  “Hey, are you studying or what?”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s not like you.”

  “I quit drinking the day you were born, so it’s been eighteen years.”

  “What is it? Did something good happen?”

  “The opposite.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later. Right now I need you to bring me some cash.”

  “Huh?”

  “I ran out of money, and I can’t pay the bill.”

  “You’re killing me.”

  “Sorry.”

  I got an address and hung up the phone. I changed my clothes, took out the rest of the condolence money from the desk drawer, and put it in my pocket. I left the house, locking the door behind me. The rain, which had been coming down since morning, had finally let up.

  My father stood slumped against the wall next to the main street exit of Ueno Station. He looked like he might slide down the wall and crumple on the ground any second. Next to him stood an unhappy-looking young man.

  I went through the ticket barrier and up to my father. I patted his shoulder. His body twitched as he opened his eyes.

  “Oh, my dutiful son,” he said, a wide smile spreading across his face. His breath blew into my face, reeking of alcohol.

  “Would you pay this man his money pl-eeze?”

  My father pointed at the young man. I asked him how much and paid him.

  “Maybe you should tell your father to carry a credit card,” said the young man sarcastically.

  Quite a few years back, my father applied for a credit card and was rejected on the background check. At the time, he had money to burn. The reason for the rejection was obvious: he was Korean. Ever since then, my father had a thing against credit cards.

  Annoyed, I thought of pushing the guy around a little, but my father, perhaps sensing my irritation, pushed the young man’s back and said to have a good night, as if to send him on his way. The young man clicked his tongue and moved off.

  “Can you walk?” I asked.

  “Sure I can,” my father slurred as he walked off toward the ticket machines. He dragged his feet like an actor playing drunk in a comedy sketch. His pants were muddy around the waist. I fell in line next to him and held him by the waist.

  “Let’s get a taxi,” I suggested.

  My father put his arm around my shoulder and asked if I had enough money. I nodded. As I helped my father walk slowly toward the taxi stand, he muttered, “I took two phone calls back-to-back today . . . the first one was that I was losing another one of my prize-exchange booths. The other was an international call from North Korea to tell me that Tong-il died.”

  I stopped walking. Tong-il was my uncle who had moved to North Korea.

  “How did he die?” I asked.

  “Some kind of illness. The call was from his wife. She said something about high blood pressure or malnutrition. I couldn’t make out what she was trying to say so I’m not sure what the direct cause was. We were on the phone for about half an hour, and she spent about twenty-five minutes blaming me. About how I lived such a good life but never sent my younger brother anything.”

  “You sent him plenty,” I said in a firm tone.

  “Guess it wasn’t enough.”

  My father urged me forward, saying, “Let’s go.” So I started walking again.

  We got in a taxi and told the elderly driver the destination.

  The taxi got caught in traffic and moved at a snail’s pace. Maybe because it was the end of the month and a weekend night. For a while, my father and I were quiet, sitting buried in our seats. My father looked out the front windshield in a daze. Meanwhile, I thought about the uncle that I’d never meet. How long would it take to go from Japan to North Korea by plane? Two hours? Three? I could spend roughly the same number of hours and actually arrive in South Korea. But not North Korea. How did that come to be? In the first place, both Koreas are nothing more than pieces of land. What was prohibiting me from going to North Korea? The deep ocean? The tall mountains? The big sky? It was humans. The sons of bitches that put themselves there and roped off the territory as their own were the ones keeping me from seeing my uncle. Can you believe it? Everyone’s always talking about how the technology boom has brought the world closer, but I still can’t go to a place that’s only hours away. I will never forgive the arrogant sons of bitches in North Korea. Ever.

  The taxi cleared the traffic and began to cruise at a good speed.

  “Tong-il was good at drawing,” my father suddenly began. “Soon after the war, the family moved from Osaka to Okayama near a fishing port. We didn’t stay very long, so I can’t exactly remember where. Instead of school, I went to the port every day and did simple chores like unloading the cages filled with the day’s catch from the fishing boats and cleaning the boats to get some food to eat for dinner. Since Aboji and Omoni found good work in Yamaguchi, I was in charge of looking after Tong-il. Every day Tong-il passed the time on the embankment drawing pictures with charcoal until I got done working. I was so worried that he might fall into the sea from the embankment. Tong-il could get so absorbed when he was drawing. One day, the port union boss took a look at Tong-il’s drawings and had Tong-il paint a picture on the bow of his fishing boat. It was a picture of a sun rising up over the sea. It was well drawn, and the union boss seemed happy with it. Three days later, the boss’s boat encountered a storm at sea. When it got dark, and the boat still hadn’t returned, everyone gave the boat and crew up for lost, but then the boat returned the next morning. Since that incident, rumor spread that Tong-il’s picture was a good luck charm, and suddenly people wanted Tong-il to paint something on their boats. Fishermen can be a superstitious lot. Tong-il quickly became a popular painter, and soon he was the one looking after me. Once he brought home a whole crab, something even I hadn’t done. I was so proud of him. That was the first time I ever ate crab. Tong-il, too. As embarrassing as this may sound, we cried while we ate, saying again and again how good it tasted. I wonder if he ever ate crab up north. Maybe I should have sent him some crab.”

  It was a good story. My father’s eyes had welled up with tears. I guess the ideal scenario would have been for me to put my arm around him and say cheer up, and for my father to become overcome with emoti
on and hug me. Not a chance. This old man has worked me over my entire life.

  In the spring of my second year in junior high school, I stole a moped and got caught, naturally without a license, and with two others riding with me to boot. Because I’d been caught doing all sorts of bad things in the past, this time it was entirely possible that I wouldn’t get off with a misdemeanor but would be sent to family court.

  My father came down to the station and said, “I’m sorry for what my son has done,” and pleaded for a misdemeanor charge. The instant he saw me, the old man drilled a hard right hook to my temple. Already half unconscious, I was hit in the liver with a left body hook, which was quickly followed by another left hook in the face.

  In boxing this was called a double left hook. Because of the body hook, I started vomiting; because of the left hook, I broke a molar. The tooth came out of my mouth along with stomach fluid. My father grabbed me as I was vomiting on the floor, pulled me up by the collar, and landed a right straight squarely on my chin. I don’t exactly remember what happened after that. Only the voice of the interrogating detective screaming, “Please forgive him! He’s going to die!” was echoing inside my head. When I came to, I was lying in the back seat of my father’s car. Somehow I managed to sit up and found my father beaming at me in the rearview mirror.

  “You got off with no strikes on your record,” he said, chuckling. “Be grateful.”

  That’s when I swore to myself: someday I’m going to kill this son of a bitch with my own hands.

  Anyway, so much for the ideal scenario for my father and me. Besides, until I gave my father the sound beating he deserved, he wasn’t going to be brought to his knees by anything—no matter what. Regardless of whether his business was taken away by the state, or whether his beloved younger brother died, he wasn’t going to show weakness. The only thing that was going to knock this man down—a man who’d never gone down in a fight ever—was me.

  And so I said, “Will you stop with the crab? Geez, you sound pathetic. The days when people are going to cry over your sorry sob story are over. It’s because you first- and second-generation Zainichi are so piss-poor that my generation can’t shine.”

  With tears still in his eyes, my father looked at me, shocked. I continued. “If the people up north want to eat crab, then start a freakin’ revolution. What the hell are they doing up there?”

  The tears began to recede from my father’s eyes.

  I said, “Your brother must have resented you. While he was struggling, you were off in Hawaii playing golf. I bet he’s going to show up at your pillow tonight as a ghost. Aloha!”

  A stench of alcohol so thick you could grab it came wafting from my father’s entire body. His pores must have opened. His face was a different shade of red than before. I decided to finish him off.

  “You know what? Your days are over. Your sad, pathetic days are finished.”

  An aura of alcohol and murder emanated from my father’s body. As he opened his mouth to say something, the taxi, which had been cruising along, suddenly screeched its brakes and stopped on the side of the road. After putting the car in park, the elderly taxi driver turned around. His face was crimson.

  “How dare you talk to your father like that!” he shouted at me.

  I guess I was universally incompatible with taxi drivers.

  My father said, “Looks like you got touched in the head from all that studying.”

  I answered, “Shut up, you punch-drunk.”

  My father took a deep breath and said to the taxi driver, “Please wait here. We’re going to settle this outside.”

  My father and I got out of the taxi and scanned the area. There was a park entrance up at the other end of the sidewalk. Silently we started walking that way. The taxi driver followed behind us.

  The park was big. The circular space where we entered was surrounded by benches. On the benches sat several young couples, flirting with each other. My father and I went to the center of the circle and faced each other about two yards apart. A halogen light shined like a spotlight on both of us. The taxi driver stood a bit off center between us, like a referee. For an instant, my mother’s face came to mind.

  My mother would say to me, “If you ever lay a hand on your father, I’m going to kill you and then kill myself.”

  It was the last sentiment of Confucian spirit my mother still had inside her. But no way was I going to back down now. No matter what.

  I steeled myself. I took a breath so my father wouldn’t notice and held it in my belly.

  My father opened his mouth and said in a mocking tone, “Come, Luke.”

  Shut up.

  After bending my knees into a near squat, I kicked off from the balls of my feet and dove inside his reach. Although the human eye can easily pick up lateral movements, it’s difficult to react to vertical movements. The average person would panic at the sight of me attacking from below and be KO’d with one punch, defenseless. But my father, a former nationally ranked boxer, was different. He instinctively brought his arms together in front of his face like a shield. In a split second, I changed my line of attack from the face to my father’s body. My left hook landed squarely on his liver. The average person would reflexively lower his guard to protect his body and take a second left hook in the face. My father didn’t lower his guard. I tested him again and delivered a right hook to his ribs. He let out a groan but kept his arms hard against his face.

  Around the time my father first started teaching me to box, he often would say this: “Don’t let yourself get knocked down by a body blow. You’ll never be an elite boxer. You’ve got to harden up the body. Take as many punches in the body as you can and sap your opponent of his power. But make sure you guard your head. Even if your body gets beat up, as long as you have your head, you have a chance. Always.”

  I kept pounding him in the body so as not to give him an opening to counterattack. But God, he was hard. Really hard. It was hard to believe this was the body of a man who would turn sixty in a couple of years. Who the hell did he think he was? What did you have to eat to get a body like this?

  I was getting impatient. I sidestepped his guard and began punching the side of his face. Aiming for the part right under the ear, I unleashed a steady series of hooks right and left. A good hit there could numb the semicircular canal, causing the opponent to lose his sense of balance, making it easier to knock him down. I got a couple of good hits in, and my father’s knees gradually grew wobbly. His arms, which were held up against his face, slowly began to separate to the sides to protect his ears. If I kept attacking below the ears, his arms would separate even more, leaving his face wide open, and I’d be able to punch him in the nose. Then I’d win. I’d make my father’s knees touch the mat for the first time.

  I continued to pound him with my hook, silently willing his arms to open. Open! His arms split apart about four inches, and I sighted my father’s nose and mouth. His nose was where it usually was. But his lips. He had curled his lower lip inside his mouth and was biting down on it with his front teeth. He didn’t seem to be doing it to bear the pain. Suddenly his mouth started making a chuuu chuuu sound, like he was sucking something. The old man was biting his lip and sucking something at the same time. When I got wise to his trick, it was too late.

  Suddenly my father let down his guard. The instant his eyes shone, reflecting the halogen light, the blood came spraying out of his mouth. Because I’d been mesmerized by the light in his eyes, I closed my eyes too late. A fight is always decided in an instant. The blood flew into my eyes and blinded me.

  I took three punches to the face. Boom. Boom. Boom. The first punch hit me like a hunk of concrete and made my spine creak. I felt the second punch break one of my front teeth. I locked my guard in front of my face. I took a heavy punch in the ribs, right and left. I let down my guard. Then a hook under the left ear. For an instant, a pale flame floated up and disappeared before my closed eyes. In the next instant, I collapsed. I lay down, putting my back fla
t on the ground. The earth was teetering unsteadily. I was going to be sick. Someone, stop the earth from tilting. My father’s voice came down from above. The earth stopped.

  “What idiot lets down his guard?”

  After spitting out the blood pooled in my mouth, somehow I managed to squeeze out the words, “That . . . was . . . dirty.”

  My father’s stern voice pelted my body. “Sorry. But this is how we’ve managed to scrap out a win. I can’t change my ways now.”

  I rubbed my eyes to try to see in the direction of the voice. But I couldn’t quite wipe the blood—my father’s blood—out of my eyes. Still I looked in the direction the voice was coming from. Maybe it was because I was looking up at him, but my father looked huge in my eyes. The taxi driver went to him, grabbed his right arm, and raised it above his head. The bystanders around us broke into applause. There were even a few whistles. Amid congratulations from the taxi driver and the couples, my father smiled, embarrassed. My eyes hurt, so I closed them. The tears came naturally. Blinking several times, I squeezed out the blood mixed with tears from my eyes. The applause and cheers did not stop.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it . . .

  After I washed off the blood at the water fountain, I got in the taxi again.

  I stared at the broken tooth in the palm of my hand. As I was cleaning off my face at the fountain, the taxi driver had come and given it to me. I traced what was left of my front tooth with my tongue. A pain shot through my head every time I breathed through my mouth. Maybe the nerve was exposed. I opened the window halfway and tossed the broken tooth outside. My father muttered, “You may be right about something.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “That my generation’s time has passed.”