Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

“Yeah, I think so. More in Tokyo and some hiding out in Manchuria. Anyway, when those guys get caught, they die. If you’re lucky, you get deported, but that’s rare. You better not do any of that stuff under my roof. That’s not why I invited you to Osaka. You have a job at the church.”

  Isak stared at Yoseb, who was raising his voice.

  “You won’t give the activists a minute. Right?” Yoseb said sternly. “It’s not just you now. You have to think of your wife and child.”

  Back home in Pyongyang, when Isak had been feeling strong enough to make the journey to Osaka, he had considered reaching out to the patriots fighting against colonization. Things were getting worse at home; even his parents had been selling parcels of their property to pay taxes from the new land surveys. Yoseb was sending them money now. Isak believed that it was Christlike to resist oppression. But in a few months, everything had changed for Isak. These ideals seemed secondary to his job and Sunja. He had to think of the safety of others.

  Isak’s silence worried Yoseb.

  “The military police will harass you until you give up or die,” Yoseb said. “And your health, Isak. You have to be careful not to get sick again. I’ve seen men arrested here. It’s not like back home. The judges here are Japanese. The police are Japanese. The laws aren’t clear. And you can’t always trust the Koreans in these independence groups. There are spies who work both sides. The poetry discussion groups have spies, and there are spies in churches, too. Eventually, each activist is picked off like ripe fruit from the same stupid tree. They’ll force you to sign a confession. Do you understand?” Yoseb slowed down his walking.

  From behind, Kyunghee touched her husband’s sleeve.

  “Yobo, you worry too much. Isak’s not going to get mixed up in such things. Let’s not spoil their first night.”

  Yoseb nodded, but the anxiety in his body felt out of control, and warning his brother—even if it meant sounding hysterical—felt necessary to dissipate some of that worry. Yoseb remembered how good it was before the Japanese came—he was ten years old when the country was colonized; and yet he couldn’t do what their elder brother, Samoel, had done so bravely—fight and end up as a martyr. Protesting was for young men without families.

  “Mother and Father will kill me if you get sick again or get into trouble. That will be on your conscience. You want me dead?”

  Isak swung his left arm around his elder brother’s shoulder and embraced him.

  “I think you’ve gotten shorter,” Isak said, smiling.

  “Are you listening to me?” Yoseb said quietly.

  “I promise to be good. I promise to listen to you. You mustn’t worry so much. Your hair will gray, or you will lose what’s left of it.”

  Yoseb laughed. This was what he had needed—to have his younger brother near him. It was good to have someone who knew him this way and to be teased even. His wife was a treasure, but it was different to have this person who’d known you almost from birth. The thought of losing Isak to the murky world of politics had scared him into lecturing his younger brother on his first night in Osaka.

  “A real Japanese bath. It’s wonderful,” Isak said. “It’s a great thing about this country. Isn’t it?”

  Yoseb nodded, praying inside that Isak would never come to any harm. His unqualified pleasure at his brother’s arrival was short-lived; he hadn’t realized what it would mean to worry about another person in this way.

  On their walk home, Kyunghee told Isak and Sunja about the famous noodle shops near the train station and promised to take them. Once they returned to the house, Kyunghee turned on the lights, and Sunja remembered that this was now where she lived. The street outside was quiet and dark, and the tiny shack was lit with a clean, bright warmth. Isak and Sunja went to their room, and Kyunghee said good night, closing the panel door behind them.

  Their windowless room was just big enough for a futon and a steamer trunk converted into a dresser. Fresh paper covered the low walls; the tatami mats had been brushed and wiped down by hand; and Kyunghee had plumped up the quilts with new cotton padding. The room had its own kerosene heater, a midpriced model that was nicer than the one in the main room, where Kyunghee and Yoseb slept, and it emitted a steady, calming hum.

  Isak and Sunja would sleep on the same pallet. Before Sunja left home, her mother had spoken to her about sex as if everything was new to her; she explained what a husband expected; and she said that relations were allowed when pregnant. Do what you can to please your husband. Men need to have sex.

  A single electric bulb hung from the ceiling and cast a pale glow about the room. Sunja glanced at it, and Isak looked up, too.

  “You must be tired,” he said.

  “I’m fine.”

  Sunja crouched down to open up the folded pallet and quilt on the floor. What would it be like to sleep beside Isak, who was now her husband? The bed was made up quickly, but they were still wearing street clothes. Sunja pulled out her nightclothes from her clothing bundle—a white muslin nightgown her mother had fashioned from two old slips. How would she change? She knelt by the pallet, the gown in her hands.

  “Would you like me to turn out the light?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Isak pulled the chain cord, and the switch made a loud clicking sound. The room was still suffused with the dim glow from the adjoining room, separated by a paper screen door. On the other side of the thin wall was the street; pedestrians talked loudly; the pigs next door squealed now and then. It felt like the street was inside rather than out. Isak removed his clothes, keeping on his underwear to sleep in—intimate garments Sunja had already seen, since she’d been doing his wash for months. She had already seen him vomit, have diarrhea, and cough up blood—aspects of illness that no young wife should have had to witness so early on in a relationship. In a way, they’d been living together longer and more intimately than most people who got married, and each had seen the other in deeply compromised situations. They shouldn’t feel nervous around the other, he told himself. And yet Isak was uncomfortable. He had never slept next to a woman, and though he knew what should happen, he was not entirely sure of how it should begin.

  Sunja removed her day clothes. At the bathhouse under the electric lights, she had been alarmed by the darkening vertical stripe reaching from her pubis to the base of her round, sloping breasts. She put on her nightgown.

  Like children fresh from their baths, Isak and Sunja slipped quickly beneath the blue-and-white quilt, carrying with them the scent of soap.

  Sunja wanted to say something to him, but she didn’t know what. They’d started off with him being ill, her having done something shameful, and him saving her. Perhaps here in their new home, they could each begin again. Lying in this room that Kyunghee had made for them, Sunja felt hopeful. It occurred to her that she’d been trying to bring Hansu back by remembering him, but that didn’t make sense. She wanted to devote herself to Isak and her child. To do that, she would have to forget Hansu.

  “Your family is very kind.”

  “I wish you could meet my parents, too. Father is like my brother—good-natured and honest. My mother is wise; she seems reserved, but she’d protect you with her life. She thinks Kyunghee is right about everything and always takes her side.” He laughed quietly.

  Sunja nodded, wondering how her mother was.

  Isak leaned his head closer to her pillow, and she held her breath.

  Could he have desire for her? she wondered. How was that possible?

  Isak noticed that when Sunja worried, she furrowed her brow like she was trying to see better. He liked being with her; she was capable and level-headed. She was not helpless, and that was appealing because, although he wasn’t helpless himself, Isak knew that he was not always sensible. Her competence would be good for what his father had once termed Isak’s “impractical nature.” Their journey from Busan would have been difficult for anyone, let alone a pregnant woman, but she hadn’t whimpered a complaint or spoken a cross word. Whenever h
e forgot to eat or drink, or to put on his coat, she reminded him with no trace of rebuke. Isak knew how to talk with people, to ask questions, and to hear the concerns in a person’s voice; she seemed to understand how to survive, and this was something he did not always know how to do. He needed her; a man needed a wife.

  “I feel well today. My chest doesn’t have that pulling feeling,” he said.

  “Maybe it was the bath. And that good dinner. I don’t remember having eaten so well. We had white rice twice this month. I feel like a rich person.”

  Isak laughed. “I wish I could get white rice for you every day.” In the service of the Lord, Isak wasn’t supposed to care about what to eat, where to sleep, or what to wear, but now that he was married, he thought he ought to care about her needs.

  “No, no. I didn’t mean that. I was just surprised by it. It’s not necessary for us to eat such luxurious things.” Sunja berated herself privately, not wanting him to think that she was spoiled.

  “I like white rice, too,” he said, though he rarely gave much thought to what he ate. He wanted to touch her shoulder to comfort her and wouldn’t have hesitated if they were dressed, but lying so close and wearing so little, he kept his hands by his sides.

  She wanted to keep talking. It felt easier to whisper to him in the dark; it had felt awkward to talk on the ferry or train when all they had was time for longer conversations.

  “Your brother is very interesting; my mother had mentioned that he told funny stories and made Father laugh—”

  “I shouldn’t have favorites, but he’s always been my closer sibling. When we were growing up, he was scolded a lot because he hated going to school. Brother had trouble with reading and writing, but he’s good with people and has a remarkable memory. He never forgets anything he hears and can pick up most languages after just a little while of hearing it. He knows some Chinese, English, and Russian, too. He’s always been good at fixing machines. Everyone in our town loved him, and no one wanted him to go to Japan. My father wanted him to be a doctor, but of course that wasn’t possible if he wasn’t good at sitting still and studying. The schoolmasters chastised him all the time for not trying hard enough. He used to wish that he was the one who was sick and had to stay home. Schoolmasters came to the house to teach me my lessons, and sometimes he’d get me to do his work for him when he’d skip school to go fishing or swimming with his buddies. I think he left for Osaka to avoid fighting with Father. He wanted to make a fortune, and he knew he’d never be a doctor. He couldn’t see how he’d ever make any money in Korea when honest Koreans were losing property every day.”

  Neither of them spoke, and they listened to the street noises—a woman yelling at her children to come inside, a group of tipsy men singing off-key, “Arirang, arirang, arariyo—” Soon, they could hear Yoseb’s snoring and Kyunghee’s light, steady breathing as if they were lying beside them.

  Isak put his right hand on her belly but felt no movement. She never spoke about the baby, but Isak often wondered what must be happening to the growing child.

  “A child is a gift from the Lord,” he said.

  “It must be, I think.”

  “Your stomach feels warm,” he said.

  The skin on the palms of her hands was rough with calluses, but the skin on her belly was smooth and taut like fine fabric. He was with his wife, and he should have been more sure of himself, but he wasn’t. Between his legs, his cock had grown to its full measure—this thing that had happened to him each morning since he was a boy felt different now that he was lying beside a woman. Of course, he had imagined what this might be like, but what he hadn’t anticipated was the warmth, the nearness of her breath, and the fear that she might dislike him. His hand covered her breast—its shape plush and heavy. Her breath changed.

  Sunja tried to relax; Hansu had never touched her like this with such care and gentleness. When she’d met him at the cove, sex was initiated in haste, with her not knowing what it was supposed to mean—the awkward thrusting, his face changing with relief and gratitude, then the need to wash her legs in cold seawater. He used to stroke her jawline and neck with his hands. He had liked to touch her hair. Once, he wanted her to take her hair out of her braids and she did so, but it had made her late in returning home. Within her body, his child was resting and growing, and he could not feel this because he was gone.

  Sunja opened her eyes; Isak’s eyes were open, too, and he was smiling at her, his hand rubbing her nipple; she quickened at his touch.

  “Yobo,” he said.

  He was her husband, and she would love him.

  14

  Early next morning, using the map his brother Yoseb had drawn for him on a scrap of butcher paper, Isak found the Hanguk Presbyterian Church—a slanted wooden frame house in the back streets of Ikaino, a few steps away from the main shotengai—its only distinguishing mark a humble white cross painted on its brown wooden door.

  Sexton Hu, a young Chinese man raised by Pastor Yoo, led Isak to the church office. Pastor Yoo was counseling a brother and sister. Hu and Isak waited by the office door. The young woman was speaking in low tones, and Yoo nodded sympathetically.

  “Should I return later?” Isak asked Hu quietly.

  “No, sir.”

  Hu, a matter-of-fact sort of person, examined the new minister carefully: Pastor Baek Isak did not look very strong. Hu was impressed by the man’s obvious handsomeness, but Hu believed that a man in the prime of his life should have greater physical stature. Pastor Yoo was once a much larger man, able to run long distances and play soccer skillfully. He was older now and diminished in size; he suffered from cataracts and glaucoma.

  “Each morning, Pastor Yoo has been asking for any word from you. We didn’t know when you’d come. If we’d known that you were arriving yesterday, I would’ve come to pick you up at the station.” Hu was no older than twenty; he spoke Japanese and Korean very well and had the mannerisms of a much older man. Hu wore a shabby white dress shirt with a blown-out collar, tucked into a pair of brown woolen trousers. His dark blue sweater was knit from heavy wool and patched in places. He was wearing the winter remnants of Canadian missionaries who hadn’t had much themselves.

  Isak turned away to cough.

  “My child, who is that with you?” Yoo turned his head to the voices by the door and pushed up his heavy horn-rimmed eyeglasses closer to his face, though doing so hardly helped to sharpen his vision. Behind the milky gray cast clouding his eyes, his expression remained calm and certain. His hearing was acute. He could not make out the shapes by the door, but he knew that one of them was Hu, the Manchurian orphan who’d been left at the church by a Japanese officer, and that the man he was speaking with had an unfamiliar voice.

  “It’s Pastor Baek,” Hu said.

  The siblings seated on the floor by the pastor turned around and bowed.

  Yoo felt impatient to end the meeting with the brother and sister, who were no closer to a resolution.

  “Come to me, Isak. It’s not so easy for me to reach you.”

  Isak obeyed.

  “You have come at last. Hallelujah.” Yoo put his right hand lightly over Isak’s head.

  “The Lord bless you, my dear child.”

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I arrived in Osaka last night,” Isak said. The elder pastor’s unfocused pupils were ringed with silver. He wasn’t blind, but the condition was severe. Despite his nearly lost vision, the minister appeared vigorous; his seated posture was straight and firm.

  “My son, come closer.”

  Isak drew near, and the older man clasped Isak’s hands at first, then cradled his face between his thick palms.

  The brother and sister looked on without saying anything. By the transom of the door, Hu sat on bended knees, waiting for Yoo’s next instruction.

  “You were sent to me, you know,” Yoo said.

  “Thank you for allowing me to come.”

  “I’m pleased that you’re here at last. Did you bring your w
ife? Hu read me your letter.”

  “She’s at home today. She will be here on Sunday.”

  “Yes, yes.” The older man nodded. “The congregation will be so pleased to have you here. Ah, you should meet this family!”

  The siblings bowed again to Isak. They’d noticed that the pastor looked happier than they’d ever seen him.

  “They’ve come to see us about a family matter,” Yoo said to Isak, then turned to the siblings.

  The sister did little to hide her irritation. The brother and sister were from a rural village in Jeju, and they were far less formal than young people from cities. The dark-skinned girl with the thick black hair was wholesome looking; she was remarkably pretty while appearing very innocent. She wore a long-sleeved white shirt buttoned to the collar and a pair of indigo-colored mompei.

  “This is the new associate pastor, Baek Isak. Should we ask for his counsel, too?” From the tone of Yoo’s voice, there was no possibility of the siblings’ dissent.

  Isak smiled at them. The sister was twenty or so; the brother was younger.

  The matter was complicated but not out of the ordinary. The brother and sister had been arguing about money. The sister had been accepting gifts of money from a Japanese manager at the textile factory where she worked. Older than their father, the manager was married with five children. He took the sister to restaurants and gave her trinkets and cash. The girl sent the entire sum to their parents living with an indigent uncle back home. The brother felt it was wrong to take anything beyond her salary; the sister disagreed.

  “What does he want from her?” the brother asked Isak bluntly. “She should be made to stop. This is a sin.”

  Yoo craned his head lower, feeling exhausted by their intransigence.

  The sister was furious that she had to be here at all, having to listen to her younger brother’s accusations. “The Japanese took our uncle’s farm. We can’t work at home because there are no jobs; if a Japanese man wants to give me some pocket money to have dinner with him, I don’t see the harm,” the sister said. “I’d take double what he gives me if I could. He doesn’t give that much.”