The new house in Osaka was two tatami mats larger than the old one and sturdier—built out of tile, solid wood, and brick. As Hansu had predicted, the bombings had razed the original house. Kyunghee had sewn their legal documents in the lining of her good coat, and when it came time, Hansu’s lawyer made the municipal government recognize Yoseb’s property rights. With the gift money Tamaguchi had given them when they left the farm, Yoseb and Kyunghee bought the vacant lot adjacent to their original house. They rebuilt their home with the help of Hansu’s construction company. Again, Yoseb told none of their neighbors that he was the owner of the house—it always being wiser to appear poorer than you are. The exterior of the house was nearly identical to the other dwellings on their street in Ikaino. The family had agreed that Kim should live with them, and when Yoseb asked him, he did not refuse. The women papered the walls with good-quality paper and bought strong, thick glass for their little windows. They spent a little extra for better fabric to make warm quilts and floor cushions and bought a low Korean dining table for meals and for the boys to do their homework.
Though from the facade the house didn’t look like much more than a roomy shack, inside was an exceptionally clean and well-organized house with a proper kitchen that had enough space to store their food carts overnight. It had an attached outhouse, which could be entered from the kitchen door. Yangjin, Sunja, and the boys slept in the middle room, which during the day served as the main room; Yoseb and Kyunghee slept in the large storage room by the kitchen, and Kim slept in the tiny front room, its two walls made up of paper screen doors. All seven of them—three generations and one family friend—lived in the house in Ikaino. Considering the neighborhood, their accommodations were almost luxurious.
Late in the evening, when Kim finally returned home from the bar, everyone was asleep. Hansu had paid for a Korean girl, an exceptionally attractive one, and Kim went to the back room with her. Afterward, he’d wanted to go to a bathhouse, but the ones near the house were closed for the night. He washed up as well as he could in the sink by the outhouse, but he still had the waxy flavor of the girl’s frosty pink lipstick in his mouth.
The girl had been young, twenty if that, and when she wasn’t in the back rooms, she worked as a waitress. The war and the American occupation had toughened her, like the other girls who worked at the bar, and because she was so pretty, she had been with many men. She went by the name Jinah.
In one of the back rooms reserved for paying customers, Jinah shut the door and took off her floral-print dress right away. She wore no underwear. Her body was long and thin, with the round, high breasts of a young girl who didn’t need a brassiere and the skinny legs of a hungry peasant. She sat on his lap, making a soft grinding gesture, and made him hard, then gingerly led him to an oxblood-colored pallet on the floor. She undressed him, wiped him expertly with a warm, wet towel, then put a prophylactic on him with her painted mouth. It had been a long time since he had been with a girl. He’d only been with whores, but this one had the loveliest face and figure, and he could understand why she cost so much even though he wasn’t paying this time. Jinah called him Oppa, and asked if he wanted to enter her now, and he had nodded, astonished by her skillfulness—at once charming and professional. She pushed him down gently and clambered on his hips and pulled him inside her in a single thrust. She kissed his forehead and hair, letting him bury his head between her breasts as they fucked. He didn’t know if she was pretending, but she seemed to like what she was doing, unlike the other whores, who’d pretended to be virginal. There was no false protest, and Kim found himself deeply excited by her and came almost right away. She lay in his arms for a little while, then got up to get a towel for him. As she cleaned him, she called him her handsome brother and asked him to return to see her soon, because Jinah would be thinking about his eel. Kim almost wanted to stay the night to try to have her again, but Hansu was waiting for him at the bar, so Kim promised to return.