picture in my mind

I finished Pachinko in short order; it was so absorbing, though distressing, and made me cry on more than one occasion.

I really liked this bit:

He didn't want to go on anymore without Yumi, but this was something he could not say. She was his lover, but more than anything, she was his wise friend. He could never replace her. And he felt he had done her a great injustice by not having told her this. He had expected to live a long life with her, not a few years. Who would he tell when a customer did something funny? Who would he tell that their son had made him so proud, standing on crutches and shaking the hands of grown-ups and being braver than any other person in the room? When mourners wept at the sight of the little boy in the black suit, Solomon would say, "Don't cry." He calmed one hysterical woman by telling her, "Mama is in California." When the mourner looked puzzled, neither Mozasu or Solomon explained what this meant. 

He had never taken her there. They'd meant to go. With some difficulty, it was possible now for them to get 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."