Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

  There was only a little natural light left to read by, but when a man’s shadow passed over him, he couldn’t make out the words on the page. Noticing the solemn pair of men’s work shoes a few paces from him, Mozasu glanced up.

  “Is it possible that you are studying, Mo-san? Honto?”

  “Hey, Haruki!” Mozasu shouted. “Is that you? I haven’t seen you since I don’t know when!” He clasped his friend’s hand heartily and shook it. “I’m always asking your mother about you. She’s real proud of you. Not like she’s bragging, but you know, in her quiet, polite Totoyama-san way. And look at you! Haruki, the—police officer!” Mozasu whistled at Haruki’s academy uniform. “You look really serious. Makes me want to commit a crime. You’re not going to tell on me, right?”

  Haruki smiled and hit Mozasu on the shoulder lightly with his fist, feeling shy around his old school friend. It had been difficult to keep away from Mozasu, but Haruki had done so because his feelings for him had been too strong. There had been other infatuations over the years and encounters with strangers. Recently, there was a fellow at the academy, Koji, another tough and funny guy. As he had done with Mozasu, Haruki did his best to keep away from Koji, because he knew well enough to draw a thick line between what was public and what was private.

  “What the hell are you doing around here? Don’t you live near the academy?”

  Haruki nodded. “I have the week off.”

  “So? When do you become a cop? I mean detective.” Mozasu chuckled, pretending to bow formally.

  “Two years.”

  Upon seeing Mozasu by the maple tree, Haruki had been afraid to cross the street. The mere image of him had been overwhelming. As a boy, Haruki had worshipped Mozasu, who had saved him from the anguish of school. When Mozasu had dropped out to work for Goro-san and then disappeared into his job, Haruki had felt the loss like a deadly punch to the chest. After Mozasu left to work at the pachinko parlors, the sheep, witches, and ghouls of their high school emerged to the fore, forcing Haruki to retreat to any available sanctuary. During his free periods, he had filled his burgeoning sketchbooks with pencil drawings in the safety of a kindhearted art teacher’s classroom. Home was always the same: His younger brother would never grow up, and his mother could never quit working until her eyes failed. His art teacher, whose husband and brothers were police detectives, had given Haruki the suggestion to go to the police academy. Interestingly, the teacher had not been wrong. Haruki loved the academy with its rules and hierarchy. He did what he was told to do, and he did it very well. Also, it was easier just to start again in a new place where no one knew you.

  “Why are you standing out here?” Haruki asked. The sun was very low, and its orange-red color moved him.

  “I’m waiting for Yumi. She works for your mother. No one’s supposed to know about us, though. Of course, I don’t think your mother would care. I’m not such a terrible guy.”

  “I won’t say anything,” Haruki said, thinking that Mozasu had become more appealing. He had always admired Mozasu’s smooth brow, the strong nose, and neat white teeth, but in his manager suit he looked like a grown man in charge of his life. Haruki wanted to follow him.

  The workshop windows were still brightly lit, and the girls labored with their dark heads bowed at their worktables. Mozasu could imagine Yumi’s thin fingers flying across the fabric. When she focused on her work, Yumi could not be distracted. She was like that about everything and could be left alone working for hours. Mozasu couldn’t imagine being so quiet all the time; he would miss the bustle of the pachinko parlor. He loved all the moving pieces of his large, noisy business. His Presbyterian minister father had believed in a divine design, and Mozasu believed that life was like this game where the player could adjust the dials yet also expect the uncertainty of factors he couldn’t control. He understood why his customers wanted to play something that looked fixed but which also left room for randomness and hope.

  “Do you see her?” Mozasu pointed with pride. “There! She’s the fourth desk from the—”

  “Yumi-san. Yes, I’ve met her. She’s a good seamstress. A very elegant person. You’re lucky,” Haruki said. “And how’s your work? Have you made your fortune?”

  “You should come by. I’m at the Paradaisu Seven now. Come tomorrow. I’m there all day and night nearly, except for when I meet Yumi and take her to the English class.”

  “I don’t know. I have to see my brother while I’m home.”

  “I hear he’s been a little down.”

  “That’s why I came home. Mother said he’s getting a little strange. Not giving her trouble or anything, but she says that he talks less and less. The doctors don’t know what to do. They want him to go live in an institution. They say he might be happier living with other people like himself, but I doubt that. Those places can be—” Haruki sucked wind between his clenched teeth. “Of course, Mother would never allow it. Daisuke is a very good child.” Haruki said this quietly, having known for as long as he could remember that Daisuke would be his responsibility after his mother could no longer care for him. Who Haruki married would be determined by her willingness to be good to Daisuke and his aging mother.

  “Yumi says that it might be good for him in America. Then again, she thinks everyone is better off in America. She said it’s not like it is here in Japan, where a person can’t be different.”

  Mozasu thought his girlfriend was irrationally biased in favor of America and anything from America. Like his brother, Noa, Yumi thought English was the most important language and America was the best country.

  “Yumi said there are better doctors in America.” Mozasu shrugged.

  “That’s probably true.”

  Haruki smiled, having often wished that he could live somewhere else, where he didn’t know anyone.

  As Yumi walked toward the meeting spot, she recognized her employer’s older son. It would have been awkward to turn around so she stayed her course.

  “You know Haruki-san,” Mozasu said to Yumi, smiling. “He was my only friend in high school. And now he will be fighting crime!”

  Yumi nodded, smiling uncomfortably.

  “Yumi-san. It’s good to see you again. I’m grateful to you that I got to see my friend again after so many, many years.”

  “You are home from the academy, Haruki-san?” Yumi kept her posture both formal and demure.

  Haruki nodded, then made excuses about Daisuke waiting for him at home. Before leaving them, however, Haruki promised to visit Mozasu at the pachinko parlor the following morning.

  Their English class met in the large conference room in the offices of the new Korean church, built recently with large donations from some wealthy yakiniku families. Despite his European name, the teacher, John Maryman, was a Korean who had been adopted as an infant by American missionaries. English was his first language. As a result of his superior diet, rich in both protein and calcium, John was significantly taller than the Koreans and Japanese. At nearly six feet, he caused a commotion wherever he went, as if a giant had descended from heaven. Though he spoke Japanese and Korean proficiently, he spoke both languages with an American accent. In addition to his size, his mannerisms were distinctly foreign. John liked to tease people he didn’t know well, and if something was funny, he laughed louder than most. If it hadn’t been for his patient Korean wife, who possessed masterful noonchi and was able to explain to others tactfully that John just didn’t know any better, he would have gotten into trouble far more often for his many cultural missteps. For a Presbyterian pastor, John seemed far too jovial. He was a good man whose faith and intelligence were irreproachable. His mother, Cynthia Maryman, an automobile tire heiress, had sent him to Princeton and Yale Divinity School, and to his parents’ delight, he had returned to Asia to spread the gospel. His lovely coloring was more olive than golden and his fringed, ink-black eyes, constantly bemused, invited women to linger in his presence.

  A girl normally hard to win over, Yumi admired her teacher, whom
all the students called Pastor John. To her, John represented a Korean being from a better world where Koreans weren’t whores, drunks, or thieves. Yumi’s mother, a prostitute and alcoholic, had slept with men for money or drinks, and her father, a pimp and a violent drunk, had been imprisoned often for his criminality. Yumi felt that her three elder half sisters were as sexually indiscriminate and common as barn animals. Her younger brother had died as a child, and soon after, at fourteen years old, Yumi ran away from home with her younger sister and somehow supported them with small jobs in textile factories until the younger sister died. Over the years, Yumi had become an excellent seamstress. She refused to acknowledge her family, who lived in the worst sections of Osaka. If she spotted a woman who had even a passing resemblance to her mother on any street, Yumi would cross to the other side or turn around to walk away. From watching American movies, she had decided that one day she would live in California and planned on becoming a seamstress in Hollywood. She knew Koreans who had returned to North Korea and many more who had gone back to the South, yet she could not muster any affection for either nation. To her, being Korean was just another horrible encumbrance, much like being poor or having a shameful family you could not cast off. Why would she ever live there? But she could not imagine clinging to Japan, which was like a beloved stepmother who refused to love you, so Yumi dreamed of Los Angeles. Until Mozasu, with his swagger and enormous dreams, Yumi had never let a man into her bed, and now that she had attached herself to him, she wanted both of them to go to America to make another life where they wouldn’t be despised or ignored. She could not imagine raising a child here.

  The English class had fifteen pupils who attended three nights a week. Until Mozasu showed up, Yumi had been Pastor John’s best student. Mozasu had an enormous advantage over her since he had been unintentionally studying with his brother, Noa, for years by being his at-home English quiz partner, but Yumi did not mind. She was relieved that he was better than she was at this, that he made more money than she did, and that he was relentlessly kind to her.

  Each class began with Pastor John going around the room asking each person a series of questions.

  “Moses,” Pastor John said in his teaching voice, “how is the pachinko parlor? Did you make a lot of money today?”

  Mozasu laughed. “Yes, Pastor John. Today, I earned lot money. Tomorrow, I make more! Do you need money?”

  “No, thank you, Moses. But please remember to help the poor, Moses. There are many among us.”

  “The pachinko money isn’t mine, Pastor John. My boss is rich, but I am not a rich man yet. One day, I will rich.”

  “You will be rich.”

  “Yes, I will be rich man, Pastor John. A man must have money.”

  John smiled at Moses kindly, wanting to disabuse him of such idolatrous notions, but he turned to Yumi.

  “Yumi, how many uniforms did you make today?”

  Yumi smiled and color rushed to her face.

  “Today, I made two vests, Pastor John.”

  John moved on to the others, encouraging the reserved students to talk to each other as well as to the class. He wanted the Koreans to speak well; he wanted no one ever to look down on them. He had left his beautifully comfortable life in Princeton, New Jersey, because he felt sorry for the impoverished Koreans in Japan. In his wonderful childhood, filled with the warmth of his loving parents, he had always felt bad for the Koreans who had lost their nation for good. People like Moses and Yumi had never been to Korea. There was always talk of Koreans going back home, but in a way, all of them had lost the home in their minds for good. His parents had adopted him alone, and he had no known siblings. Because John had always felt so happy with his parents, he’d felt guilty that many others hadn’t been chosen the way he was. Why was that? He wanted to know. There were unhappy adoptions, to be sure, but John knew his lot was better than almost anyone’s. “Chosen” was always the word his mother had used with him.

  “We chose you, our darling John. You had the loveliest smile, even as a small baby. The ladies at the orphanage loved holding you, because you were such an affectionate child.”

  Teaching English class wasn’t part of his job as a pastor. He didn’t proselytize his students, most of whom were not parishioners. John loved the sound of English words, the sounds of Americans talking. He wanted to give this to the poor Koreans in Osaka. He wanted them to have another language that wasn’t Japanese.

  Like his students, John was born in Japan to Korean parents. His biological parents had left him with their landlord. John didn’t know how old he was exactly. His parents had given him the birthday of Martin Luther, November 10. The only fact he knew about his birth parents was that they had left their rented room in the early hours of the morning without paying the rent and had left him behind. His adoptive mother said this must have been because the landlord had money and shelter, and wherever his biological parents were going, they may not have been able to give these things to him. Their sacrifice of leaving him was an act of love, his mother had said every time John had asked about them. Nevertheless, whenever John saw an older Korean woman or man who could be the age of his parents, he wondered. He could not help it. He wished he could give them money now, for John was a very wealthy man, and he wished he could meet his biological parents and give them a house to keep them warm and food to eat when they were hungry.

  As Pastor John teased the two sisters in the back about their fondness for sweets, Mozasu knocked his knee gently against Yumi’s. Mozasu had long thighs, and he had to move his thigh only a little to graze the skirt fabric covering Yumi’s pretty legs. She tapped him back in slight annoyance, though she did not mind.

  Pastor John had asked the younger sister about what she did when it rained, and instead of listening to the girl stumble in English, casting about for the word “umbrella,” Mozasu found himself staring at Yumi. He loved to look at her soft profile, the way her dark, sad eyes met her high cheekbones.

  “Moses, how can you learn English if you are just staring at Yumi?” John asked, laughing.

  Yumi blushed again. “Behave,” she whispered to Mozasu in Japanese.

  “I cannot stop, Pastor John. I love her,” Mozasu declared, and John clapped in delight.

  Yumi looked down at her notes.

  “Will you two marry?” Pastor John asked.

  Yumi appeared stunned at this question, though she shouldn’t have been. Pastor John was liable to say anything.

  “She will marry me,” Mozasu said. “I am confident.”

  “What?” Yumi cried.

  The women in the back were near tears laughing. Two men in the middle of the class pounded on their desks, cheering loudly.

  “This is fun,” John said. “I think we are witnessing a proposal. ‘Pro-po-sal’ means an invitation to marry.”

  “Of course, you will marry me, Yumi-chan. You love me, and I love you very much. We will marry. You see,” Mozasu said calmly in English, “I have plan.”

  Yumi rolled her eyes. He knew she wanted to go to America, but he wanted to stay in Osaka and open his own pachinko parlor in a few years. He intended to buy his mother, aunt, uncle, and grandmother a huge house when he was rich. He said that if they wanted to move back to Korea, he would make so much money that he would build them castles. He couldn’t make this kind of money in Los Angeles, he’d explained. He couldn’t leave his family, and Yumi knew this.

  “You and I love each other. Soo nee, Yumi-chan?” Mozasu smiled at her and took her hand.

  The pupils clapped loudly and stamped their feet as if watching a baseball game.

  Yumi bent her head down, mortified by his behavior, but she couldn’t be angry at him. She could never be angry with him. He was the only friend she’d ever had.

  “We’ll have to plan a wedding then,” John said.

  18

  Tokyo, March 1962

  Is he married?” Akiko asked. Her eyes brightened with anticipation.

  “Yes. He’s married, a
nd his wife is expecting in a few months,” Noa answered, almost flattening his voice.

  “I want to know more about your family. C’mon,” she pleaded.

  Noa got up to get dressed.

  She couldn’t help it. Akiko was training to be a sociologist. She collected pieces of data, and her lover was her favorite puzzle. Yet the more she inquired, the more reticent he grew. When he answered her in his pithy manner, she had a habit of saying, “Sooo?” as if the facts of his life were something marvelous to behold. Everything about him was fascinating to her, but Noa didn’t want to be fascinating. He wanted just to be with her. He didn’t mind when she turned her headlights on strangers; it was far more interesting to hear her attempts at demystifying others.

  He was Akiko’s first Korean lover. In bed, she wanted him to speak Korean.

  “How do you say ‘pretty’?” she’d asked just a few hours before.

  “Yeh-puh-dah.” Such a simple word felt strange in his mouth when he’d said it to her. Akiko was stunning; “pretty” wouldn’t suffice in describing her beauty. “Ah-reum-dop-da,” he should have said, but Noa didn’t. She was an excellent social scientist not to have asked for the Korean word for love, because he would have no doubt revealed his hesitation in the translation.

  Not wishing to be a specimen under her glass, Noa didn’t talk about his mother, who had peddled kimchi and, later, confections so he could go to school, or his father, who’d died from harsh imprisonment during the colonial era. These aspects of his biography had happened a long time ago as far as he was concerned. He wasn’t ashamed of his past; it wasn’t that. He resented her curiosity. Akiko was a Japanese girl from an upper-class family who had grown up in Minami-Azabu; her father owned a trading company and her mother played tennis with expatriates in a private club. Akiko adored rough sex, foreign books, and talking. She had pursued him, and Noa, who had never had a serious girlfriend before, did not know what to make of her.