Favourite Quotes from Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (Part 2)
"Is it so terrible to be Korean?"
"It is terrible to be me."
"You people work together to make sure nothing ever changes. Sho ga nai. Sho ga nai. That's all I ever hear."
"I'm sorry. I am sorry," he said before leaving.
Etsuko wanted to justify herself - her numerous and repeated attempts - to offer proof. Being a mother was what defined her more than any other thing - more than being a daughter, wife, divorced woman, girlfriend, or restaurant owner. She hadn't done it well, but it was who she was, and it was what had changed her inside forever. From the moment Tatsuo was born, she had been filled with grief and self-doubt because she was never good enough. Even though she had failed, being a mother was eternal; a part of her life wouldn't end with her death.
"Listen, man, there's nothing you can do. This country isn't going to change. Koreans like me can't leave. Where we gonna go? But the Koreans back home aren't changing, either. In Seoul, people like me get called Japanese bastards, and in Japan, I'm just another dirty Korean no matter how much money I make or how nice I am. So what the fuck? all those people who went back to the North are starving to death or scared shitless."
"Man, life's going to keep pushing you around, but you have to keep playing."
"Forget him. Your mother was a great lady; my wife thought she was the best of the best. Tough and smart and always fair to everyone. She was better than having five fathers."
"Maybe if you see him and know that he is well, then you will not need to see him so much. He has chosen this life, Sunja, and maybe he wants us to respect that."
"Noa and Mozasu. They're my life."
Hansu nodded. He had never felt this way about his children. Not really.
"I've lived only for them."
This was wrong to say. At church, the minister preached about how mothers cared too much about their children and that worshipping the family was a kind of idolatry. One must not love one's family over God, he'd said. The minister said that families could never give you what only God could give. But being a mother who loved her children too much had helped her to understand a little of what God went through. Noa had children of his own now; perhaps he could understand how much she'd lived for him.
In life, there was so much insult and injury, and she had no choice but to collect what was hers. But now she wished to take Solomon's shame, too, and add it to her pile, though she was already overwhelmed.
When she had been a young mother there used to be only one time in her waking hours when she'd felt a kind of peace, and that was always after her children went to bed for the night. She longed to see her sons as they were back then: their legs chubby and white, their mushroom haircuts misshapen because they could never sit still at the barber. She wished she could take back the times she had scolded her children just because she was tired. There were so many errors. If life allowed revisions, she would let them stay in their bath a little longer, read them one more story before bed, and fix them another plate of shrimp.
Why did her family think pachinko was so terrible? Her father, a traveling salesman, had sold expensive life insurance policies to isolated housewives who couldn't afford them, and Mozasu created spaces where grown men and women could play pinball for money. Both men had made money from chance and fear and loneliness. Every morning, Mozasu and his men tinkered with the machines to fix the outcomes - there could only be a few winners and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones. How could you get angry at the ones who wanted to be in the game? Etsuko had failed in this important way - she had not taught her children to hope, to believe in the perhaps -absurd possibility that they might win. Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not.
"But I was born today, and isn't it funny how no one gets to remember that moment and who was there? It's all what's told to you. You're here now. You are a mother to me."
"A woman's lot is to suffer,"
All her life, Sunja had heard this sentiment from other women, that they must suffer - suffer as a girl, suffer as a wife, suffer as a mother - die suffering. Go-saeng - the word made her sick. What else was there besides this? She had suffered to create a better life for Noa, and yet it was not enough. Should she have taught her son to suffer the humiliation that she'd drunk like water? In the end, he had refused to suffer the conditions of his birth. Did mothers fail by not telling their sons that suffering would come?
Sunja watched Kyunghee pat her mother gently until she quieted down. Her mother was unrecognizable to her; it would have been easy to say that the illness had changed her, but it wasn't so simple, was it? Illness and dying had revealed her mother's truer thoughts, the ones her mother had been protecting her from. Sunja had made a mistake; however, she didn't believe that her son came from a bad seed. The Japanese said that Koreans had too much anger and heat in their blood. Seeds, blood. How could you fight such hopeless ideas? Noa had been a sensitive child who had believed that if he followed all the rules and was the best, then somehow the hostile world would change its mind. His death may have been her fault for having allowed him to believe in such cruel ideals.
Sunja knelt at her mother's pallet.
"I'm sorry, umma. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was away. I'm sorry about everything."
The old woman looked weakly at her only child, hating herself suddenly. Yang Jin wanted to say she was sorry, too, but strength passed from her body, forcing her to close her eyes.
Etsuko stood there, believing that if she could just listen and suffer, then maybe her daughter could be saved.
"In America, there is no such thing as a Kankokujin or Chosenjin. Why the hell would I be a South Korean or a North Korean? That makes no sense! I was born in Seattle, and my parents came to the States when there was only one Korea," She'd shout, relating one of the bigotry anecdotes of her day. "Why does Japan still distinguish the two countries for its Korean residents who've been here for four fucking generations? You were born here. You're not a foreigner! That's insane. Your father was born here. Why are you two carrying South Korean passports? It's bizarre."
"Listen, there is a tax, you know, on success."
"If you do well at anything, you gotta pay up to all the people who did worse. On the other hand, if you do badly, life makes you pay a shit tax, too. Everybody pays something."
Kazu looked at him soberly.
"Of course, the worst one is the tax on the mediocre. Now that one's a bitch." Kazu tossed his cigarette and crossed his arms. "Pay attention: The ones who pay the shit tax are mostly people who were born in the wrong place and the wrong time and are hanging on to the planet by their broken fingernails. They don't even know the fucking rules of the game. You can't even get mad at 'em when they lose. Life just fucks and fucks and fucks bastards like that." Kazu wrinkled his brow in resignation, like he was somewhat concerned about life's inequities but not very. He took a deep breath. "So, those losers have to climb Mount Everest to get out of hell, and maybe one or two in five hundred thousand break out, but the rest pay the shit tax all their lives, then they die. If God exists and if He's fair, then it makes sense that in the afterlife, those guys should get the better seats."
Solomon nodded, not understanding where this was going.
Kazu's stare remained unbroken. "But all those able-bodied middle-class people who are scared of their shadows, well, they pay the mediocre tax in regular quarterly installments with compounding interest. When you play it safe, that's what happens, my friend. So if I were you, I wouldn't throw any games. I'd use every fucking advantage. Beat anyone who fucks with you to a fucking pulp. Show no mercy to chumps, especially if they don't deserve it. Make the pussies cry."
"So then the success tax comes from envy, and the shit tax comes from exploitation. Okay." Solomon nodded like he was starting to get it. "Then what's the mediocre tax? How can it be wrong to - ?"
"Good question, young Jedi. The tax for being mediocre comes from you and everyone else knowing that you are mediocre. It's a heavier tax than you'd think."
Solomon had never thought of such a thing before. It wasn't like he saw himself as terribly special, but he'd never seen himself as mediocre, either. Perhaps it was unspoken, even to himself, but he did want to be good at something.
"Jedi, understand this: There's nothing fucking worse than knowing that you're just like everybody else. What a messed-up, lousy existence. And in this great country of Japan - the birth-place of all my fancy ancestors - everyone, everyone wants to be like everyone else. That's why it is such a safe place to live, but it's also a dinosaur village. It's extinct, pal. Carve up your piece and invest your spoils elsewhere. You're a young man, and someone should tell you the real truth about this country. Japan is not fucked because it lost the war or did bad things. Japan is fucked because there is no more war, and in peacetime everyone actually wants to be mediocre and is terrified of being different. The other thing is that the elite Japanese want to be English and white. That's pathetic, delusional, and merits another discussion entirely."
"This will sound stupid, but how can you get her to sign if you don't know how?" Solomon asked.
"I'm making a wish, Solly. I'm making a wish. Sometimes, that's how it starts."
"Why don't you sell the shops, too, Dad? Retire maybe. YOu're set, right? Pachinko is a lot of work."
"What? Quit the business? Pachinko put food on the table and sent you to school. I'm too young to retire!"
"And what would happen if I sell my stores? They might fire my workers. And where would my older wokrers go? And we give work to the people who make the machines. Pachinko's a bigger business in Japan than car manufacturing."
In America, everything seemed fixable, and in Japan, difficult problems were to be endured. Sho ga nai, sho ga nai. How many times had he heard these words? It cannot be helped. His mother had apparently hated that expression, and suddenly he understood her rage against this cultural resignation that violated her beliefs and wishes.
"Oh, Solomon. I don't want to go to America." Haha exhaled loudly. "I don't want to live. I'm ready to die. You know? Do you ever want to die, Solomon? I've wanted to die for so many years, but I was too cowardly to say it or to do anything to make my wish come true. Maybe you could have saved me, but you know, even wonderful you, even you, my Solomon, I don't think so. Everyone wants to die sometimes, nee?"
It's a filthy world, Solomon. No one is clean. Living makes you dirty.
I don't believe in God, but I guess that doesn't matter. I never had someone pray for me before, Solomon.
"Your grandmother Sunja and great-aunt Kyunghee visit me on Saturdays. Did you know that? They pray for me, too. I don't understand the Jesus stuff, but it's something holy to have people touch you when you're sick. The nurses here are afraid to touch me. Your grandmother Sunja holds my hands, and your great-aunt Kyunghee puts cool towels on my head when I get too hot. They're kind to me, though I'm a bad person -"
Then the whole Japan-is-evil stuff. Sure, there were assholes in Japan, but there were assholes everywhere, nee?
Kazu was 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.
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=k or the window of a bookstore, and she could feel Nora'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.
Part 1: https://www.tumblr.com/drratiosstudent/785655527266975744/favourite-quotes-from-pachinko-by-min-jin-lee?source=share
