by Min Jin Lee
He had never taken her there. They’d meant to go. With some difficulty, it was possible now for them to get the passports, but he hadn’t bothered. Most Koreans in Japan couldn’t travel. If you wanted a Japanese passport, which would allow you to reenter without hassles, you had to become a Japanese citizen—which was almost impossible, and no one he knew would do that anyway. Otherwise, if you wanted to travel, you could get a South Korean passport through Mindan, but few wanted to be affiliated with the Republic of Korea, either, since the impoverished country was run by a dictator. The Koreans who were affiliated with North Korea couldn’t go anywhere, though some were allowed to travel to North Korea. Although nearly everyone who had returned to the North was suffering, there were still far more Koreans in Japan whose citizenship was affiliated with the North than the South. At least the North Korean government still sent money for schools for them, everyone said. Nevertheless, Mozasu wouldn’t leave the country where he was born. Where would he go, anyway? So Japan didn’t want them, so fucking what?
Images of her filled his mind, and even as the mourners spoke to him, all he could hear was her practicing English phrases from her language books. No matter how many times Mozasu had said he would not emigrate to the United States, Yumi had not given up hope that one day they would live in California. Lately, she had been suggesting New York.
“Mozasu, don’t you think it would be wonderful to live in New York City or San Francisco?” she’d ask him occasionally, and it was his job to say that he couldn’t decide between the two coasts.
“There, no one would care that we are not Japanese,” she’d say. Hello, my name is Yumi Baek. This is my son, Solomon. He is three years old. How are you? Once, when Solomon asked her what California was, she had replied, “Heaven.”
After most of the funeral guests left, Mozasu and Solomon sat down at the back of the funeral hall. Mozasu patted the boy’s back, and his son leaned into him, fitting into the crook of his father’s right arm.
“You’re a good son,” Mozasu said to him in Japanese.
“You are a good papa.”
“Do you want to get something to eat?”
Solomon shook his head and looked up when an older man approached them.
“Mozasu, are you okay?” the man asked him in Korean. He was a virile-looking gentleman in his late sixties or early seventies, wearing an expensive black suit with narrow lapels and a dark necktie.
The face was familiar, but Mozasu couldn’t place it. He felt unable to answer him. Not wanting to be rude, Mozasu smiled, but he wanted to be left alone. Perhaps it was a customer or a bank officer; Mozasu couldn’t think right now.
“It’s me. Koh Hansu. Have I aged that much?” Hansu smiled. “Your face is the same, of course, but you’ve become a man. And this is your boy?” Hansu touched Solomon’s head. Throughout the day, nearly everyone had patted the boy’s glossy chestnut-colored hair.
Mozasu shot up from his seat.
“Uh-muh. Of course, I know who you are. It’s been so long. Mother had been looking for you for a while but couldn’t get ahold of you. To see if you might know where Noa is. He’s disappeared.”
“It’s been too long.” Hansu shook his hand. “Have you heard from Noa?”
“Well, yes and no. He sends Mother money each month, but he won’t give his whereabouts. He sends a lot of money actually, so he can’t be too badly off. I just wish we knew where he—”
Hansu nodded. “He sent me money, too. To pay me back, he said. I wanted to return it, but there’s no way. I thought I’d give it to your mother for her to keep for him.”
“Are you still in Osaka?” Mozasu asked.
“No, no. I live in Tokyo now. I live near my daughters.”
Mozasu nodded. He felt weak suddenly and wanted to sit again. When Hansu’s driver appeared, Hansu promised to call on Mozasu another day.
“Sir, I am very sorry to bother you, but there is a small matter outside. The young woman said it was an emergency.”
Hansu nodded and walked out of the building with his driver.
As he approached the car, Hansu’s new girl, Noriko, beckoned him from within.
The long-haired beauty clapped when she saw him open the door. Her pink pearl nail polish glinted from her fingertips.
“Uncle is here!” she cried happily.
“What’s the matter?” Hansu asked. “I was busy.”
“Nothing. I was bored, and I missed my uncle,” she replied. “Take me shopping, please. I have waited for so long and so patiently for you to come back in this car. And the driver is no fun! My friends in Ginza told me cute bags from France came in this week!”
Hansu closed the car door. The bulletproof windows shut out all daylight. The interior lamps of the Mercedes sedan lit up Noriko’s oval-shaped face.
“You called me in here because you wanted to go shopping, nee?”
“Yes, Uncle,” she said sweetly, and extended her pretty small hand on his lap like a kitten’s paw. Her rich clients loved her petulant-niece routine. Men wanted to buy girls nice things. If Uncle wanted to remove her white cotton panties, he’d have to buy her as many luxury items from France as she wanted for months and months. Koh Hansu was the most important patron of the hostess bar where Noriko worked; Noriko’s mama-san had promised her that Koh Hansu liked spoiling his new girls. This was their second lunch date, and on their first, he had bought her a Christian Dior purse before lunch. Noriko, an eighteen-year-old former beauty contestant, was not used to being kept waiting in a car. She had worn her most expensive peach-colored georgette silk dress with matching heels and a real pearl necklace, borrowed from mama-san.
“Did you ever go to high school?” he asked.
“No, Uncle. I’m not a good schoolgirl,” she said, smiling.
“No, of course not. You are stupid. I can’t stand stupid.”
Hansu hit the girl’s face so hard that blood gushed from her pink mouth.
“Uncle, Uncle!” she cried. She swatted at his thick, clenched fist.
He hit her again and again, banging her head against the side lamp of the car until she stopped making any noise. Blood covered her face and the front of her peach-colored dress. The necklace was splattered with red spots. The driver sat motionless in the front until Hansu was finished.
“Take me to the office, then take her back to her mama-san. Tell the mama-san that I don’t care how pretty a girl is, I cannot bear a girl who does not have any sense. I was at a funeral. I will not return to the bar until this ignorant thing is removed from my sight.”
“I’m sorry, sir. She said it was an emergency. That she had to speak to you or else she would start to scream. I didn’t know what to do.”
“No hooker is ever to be given precedence over a funeral. If she was sick, then you should have taken her to hospital. Otherwise, she could have screamed her head off. What does it matter, you oaf?”
The girl was still alive. She sat crumpled and half-awake in the corner of the expansive backseat like a crushed butterfly.
The driver was terrified, because he could still be punished. He should never have listened to some bar girl and her stories. A lieutenant he knew in the organization had lost part of his ring finger for failing to line up the guests’ shoes properly outside Koh Hansu’s apartment when he was much younger and training through the ranks.
“I am sorry, sir. I am very sorry. Please forgive me, sir.”
“Shut up. Go to the office.” Hansu closed his eyes and leaned his head against the leather-covered rest.
After the driver dropped Hansu off, he took Noriko to the bar where she worked. The horrified mama-san took her to the hospital, and even after the surgeons did their work, the girl’s nose would never look the same again. Noriko was ruined. The mama-san couldn’t recover her expenses so she sent Noriko off to a toruko where she would have to bathe and serve men in the nude until she was too old to work that job. Her tits and ass would last half a dozen years at most in the hot water. Then
she would have to find something else to do.
Six days a week, Sunja took her grandson to school and picked him up. Solomon attended an international preschool where only English was spoken. At school, he spoke English and at home, Japanese. Sunja spoke to him in Korean, and he answered in Japanese sprinkled with a few words in Korean. Solomon loved going to school, and Mozasu thought it was good to keep him occupied. He was a cheerful child who wanted to please his teachers and elders. Wherever he went, the news of his mother’s death preceded him, wrapping the child in a kind of protective cloud; teachers and mothers of his friends were watchful on his behalf. Solomon was certain that he would see his mama in heaven; he believed that she could see him. She visited him in his dreams, he said, and told him that she missed holding him.
In the evenings, grandmother, father, and son ate dinner together even if Mozasu had to return to work immediately after his meal. Twice, Mozasu’s friend Haruki Totoyama had come from Osaka to visit, and once, they’d gone to Osaka to see the family, since Uncle Yoseb was too frail to travel.
Another school day almost over, Sunja waited patiently outside the preschool alongside the sweet-natured Filipina nannies and the friendly Western mothers who were also waiting to collect their children. Sunja couldn’t speak to them, but she smiled and nodded in their presence. As usual, Solomon was one of the first to run out. He shouted good-bye to his teachers, then bolted outside to hug his grandmother’s torso before joining the other boys to race to the corner candy store. Sunja tried to keep up with his pace. She was oblivious to Hansu, who’d been watching her from his car.
Sunja was wearing a black wool coat, nothing expensive but not shabby, either. It looked store-bought. She had aged considerably, and Hansu felt sorry for her. Only a little over fifty, she looked much older than that. As a girl, she had been bright and taut, so very appealing. The memory of her fullness and vitality aroused him. The years in the sun had darkened her face and covered her hands lightly with pale brown spots. Shallow crags had settled in her once-smooth brow. In place of the maiden’s dark, glossy braids, she now kept her hair short, and it was gray mostly. Her middle had thickened. Hansu remembered her large breasts and lovely pink nipples. They had never spent more than a few hours together, and it had always been a wish of his to make love to her more than once in the course of a day. He’d had many women and girls, yet her innocence and trust had excited him more than even the sexiest of whores who were willing to do anything.
Her pretty eyes were still the same—bright and hard like river stones—the light shimmered in them. He had loved her passionately, the way an older man could love a young girl who could restore his youth and vigor; he had loved her with a kind of gratitude. He knew that he’d loved her more than any other girl. She was not beautiful anymore, but he desired her still. The recollection of taking her in the forest often made him hard, and if he had been alone in the car, he would have jerked off, happy for the rare erection.
Several times each day, Hansu thought of her. What was she doing at the moment? Was she all right? Did she think of him? His mind turned to her as often as it did toward his dead father. When Hansu learned that she was looking for him to find out where Noa was, he did not contact her, because he had no news. He could not imagine disappointing Sunja. He had used every resource to locate the boy but to no avail. Noa had disappeared so perfectly that if Hansu hadn’t had the mortuary logs inspected regularly throughout Japan, he might have thought that the boy was dead. At the funeral, he learned that Noa still sent his mother money. That was a relief. The boy was alive, then, and living somewhere in Japan. It had been Hansu’s plan to find Noa first, then to contact Sunja, but Yumi’s funeral had reminded him that time was not always in his favor. Then last month, his doctor had diagnosed him with prostate cancer.
As Sunja walked past his car, Hansu rolled down the car window.
“Sunja, Sunja.”
She gasped.
Hansu told his driver to stay and opened the car door himself to get out.
“Listen, I got to Yumi’s funeral late. Mozasu said you’d left. You live with him now, right?”
Sunja stood on the pavement and stared at him. He didn’t seem to age. Had it really been eleven years since she last saw him? It had been at his office with Noa, then that expensive dinner to celebrate Noa’s admission to Waseda. Noa had been gone six years now. Sunja glanced in the direction of her grandson, who’d run into the store with the other boys to look over comics and debate over which candies to purchase. Without replying, Sunja walked in Solomon’s direction. Mozasu had mentioned that Hansu had come to the funeral, that when asked about Noa, Hansu had said nothing.
“Can’t you stop for a moment to speak with me? The little boy’s fine. He’s in the shop. You can see him through the glass.” Solomon was in the cluster of boys standing by the rotating comic-book kiosk.
“I begged your wife to tell you that I was looking for you. The gardening boy. I’m sure he gave you my message even if she didn’t. Since I’ve known you, I’ve done everything I could to never be a burden to you; I have asked you for nothing. Six years have passed since I went to your house. Six.”
Hansu opened his mouth, but Sunja spoke again.
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
Sunja walked toward the candy store.
Hansu touched her arm, and Sunja pushed him back hard with the palm of her hand, knocking him back a step. The chauffeur and bodyguard, who’d been standing near the car, ran toward him, but he waved them away.
“I’m fine,” he mouthed to them.
“Go back to your car,” she said. “Go back to your crooked life.”
“Sunja—”
“Why do you bother me now? How can you not see that you’ve destroyed me? Why can’t you let me alone? Noa is gone from me. There is nothing between us.”
Her wet, shining eyes blinked, lit up like lanterns. Her young face shone through the old one.
“Can I drive you and Solomon home? Maybe we can go to a café? I need to speak to you.”
Sunja looked down at the large squares of concrete below her feet, unable to stop the flow of tears.
“I want my son. What did you do to him?”
“How can you blame me for that? I just wanted to send him to school.”
Sunja sobbed. “It’s my fault that I let you know him. You’re a selfish person who’d take whatever you want, no matter the consequences. I wish I’d never met you.”
Passersby gaped until Hansu stared back at them, forcing them to look away. The boy was still in the shop.
“You’re the worst kind of man, because you won’t let go until you get your way.”
“Sunja, I’m dying.”
4
Cradling his copies of Tetsuwan Atomu and Ultraman, Solomon sat quietly between Sunja and Hansu in the backseat of the large sedan.
“How old are you?” Hansu asked.
Solomon held up three fingers.
“Soo nee. Are you going to read those now?” Hansu asked, pointing to the boy’s new comics. “Can you read already?”
Solomon shook his head. “I’m going to wait until Toto comes tonight so he can read them to me.” He opened up his red satchel and put the comics inside.
“Who is Toto?” Hansu asked.
“He’s my papa’s friend from when they were boys. He’s a real Japanese policeman. He’s caught murderers and robbers. I’ve known him since I was born.”
“Is that so? All that time?” Hansu smiled.
The small boy nodded gravely.
“Grandma, what will you make Toto for dinner?” Solomon asked.
“Fish jeon and chicken jorim,” Sunja replied. Mozasu’s friend Haruki Totoyama would arrive this evening and stay for the weekend, and she’d already planned all the meals.
“But Toto likes bulgogi. It’s his favorite meal.”
“I can make that tomorrow night. He won’t leave until Sunday afternoon.”
S
olomon looked worried.
Hansu, who’d been observing Solomon carefully, said, “I love chicken jorim. That’s the kind of dish you can only get at a nice home. Anyone can have bulgogi at a restaurant, but only your grandmother can make—”
“Do you want to meet Toto? He’s my best grown-up friend.”
Sunja shook her head, but Hansu ignored her.
“I’ve known your father since he was a boy your age. I’d love to have dinner at your house. Thank you, Solomon.”
In the front hall, Sunja removed her coat and helped Solomon with his. With his right forearm raised and his left tucked close to his body, the boy ran to the den to watch Tetsuwan Atomu. Hansu followed Sunja to the kitchen.
She poured shrimp chips into a small basket and retrieved a yogurt drink from the refrigerator and arranged them on the round Ultraman tray.
“Solomon,” she called out.
The boy came to the kitchen to take the tray, and he carried it carefully back to the den to watch his programs.
Hansu sat down by the Western-style breakfast table.
“This is a good house.”
Sunja didn’t reply.
It was a brand-new three-bedroom in the Westerners’ section of Yokohama. Of course, Hansu had driven past it before; he’d seen the exterior of every place she’d ever lived. With the exception of the farmhouse during the war, this was the first one he’d been inside. The furnishings resembled sets from American films—upholstered sofas, high wooden dining tables, crystal chandeliers, and leather armchairs. Hansu guessed that the family slept on beds rather than on the floor or on futons. There were no old things in the house—no traces of anything from Korea or Japan. The spacious, windowed kitchen looked out onto the neighbors’ rock garden.
