“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.