Shan Sa - The Girl Who Played Go

I have to cry, but the tears won’t come. I scratch his back and he groans. With eyes closed, cheeks flaming and blue rings under his eyes, Min kisses me with the desperate ardor of a collector who has made a rare discovery.

Above the tops of the trees, the town melts away in a light mist. My silence doesn’t discourage him: he takes me to the monastery at the top of the hill and orders some tea from a young monk. After filling my cup, he snaps open some watermelon seeds and looks out over the view, whistling. Avoiding his eyes, and the eyes of the monks who are staring at me, I drain my cup of tea, get up, smooth my crumpled skirt and go back down the steps four at a time.

The sun is sinking, a mask of red lacquer. Beyond the city walls, the melting snow reveals the scorched earth beneath. The villages blend into the parcels of black soil, and the trees flatten out and disappear into the surrounding folds created by the cloak of twilight.

That night I dream that Cousin Lu bursts into my room, comes over to me, takes my hand and presses it to his chest. I am disgusted and I try to shake him off, but his fingers are insistent and I can feel their heat. A strange languorous feeling washes over me.

Horrified, I wake to find I am bathed in sweat.

At the beginning of that autumn I received a letter from a woman asking me to meet her in a park. I was sure this was to be my answer on the subject of the apprentice geisha, and I went to the appointed place at ten o’clock in the morning, having made up my mind to say no.

Under a flaming maple a woman sat on a stone bench dotted with rust-colored lichen. Her hair was knotted in a simple chignon and she was wearing an indigo-blue cotton kimono held at the waist with an orange belt.

I could not believe my eyes: it was Sunlight but, without makeup, her pale lips scarcely pink, she looked like a child of ten. She stood up and bowed in greeting.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

We sat perched at either end of the bench. She had her back half-turned to me and she remained completely silent.

I could not find the words I had prepared.

After a long while, I asked whether she would like to walk in the park. She walked behind me, taking tiny steps. All the maples were ablaze and the ginkgoes were a bright yellow; the autumn wind wafted their fiery leaves over us. We crossed a wooden bridge, circled a pool of emerald-green water bordered with chrysanthemums, and came to a stop in an open pavilion from which we could gaze out at the cloudless sky and decorative rocks crawling with ivy. The only sounds were the rustling of her kimono and the birdsong. Our shared silence was complicit. I could not break it.

As we left the park, she bowed deeply and walked away.

On the Square of a Thousand Winds I am playing against Wu, the antique dealer, having agreed to give him eight handicap points. When he is beaten, he slinks away with a sigh.

Just one game of go is enough to exhaust most players. They need to eat and sleep in order to return to their normal state, but I react differently: my mind is whirring from the very beginning of the game, and the effort of concentration stimulates a paroxysm of excitement in me. For hours after the game is over I don’t know how to let out the force that’s accumulated within me, and I search in vain for some form of release.

Today, as on every other day, I head for home, taking great powerful strides. The most extraordinary daydreams come to me: I feel as if I no longer belong to the world of mortals; I see myself joining the ranks of the gods.

A man calls out to me and I look up and see Jing crossing the road on a bicycle. There’s a birdcage covered in a blue cloth on the rack behind his seat. He brakes alongside me.

“What are you doing here with that cage?”

He tears off the cloth and proudly shows off two robins.

“These birds love going out for a ride. Usually people swing the cage along as they go for their morning walk. But I could die of boredom walking like an old man, so this is my latest invention.”

I laugh, and he asks whether I would like him to take me home. Darkness has fallen and I can no longer make out the faces of the passersby: I can climb onto his bicycle with no fear of being recognized. I’m holding the cage with my left arm and I put my right arm round Jing’s waist. He sets off and I have to cling to his waistcoat to keep my balance. My fingers slip on the silk and fur, holding firm on a level with his stomach. Under the fur-lined waistcoat he is wearing a cotton tunic. The warmth of his skin burns my hand through the weave of the fabric. With each movement of his legs, the muscles contract and relax beneath my fingers. Disconcerted, I remove my arm, but Jing then leans into a corner, forcing me to hold him all the more tightly.

I ask him to stop beside the back door. The street has high walls on both sides and is poorly lit by one feeble streetlamp. Jing’s cheeks are burning red, he is breathing noisily and fumbling for his handkerchief.

I press mine to his forehead. He thanks me and wipes his face, which is dripping with sweat. Embarrassed by my watching him, he turns towards the wall and unbuttons his tunic to run the handkerchief over his chest. I ask whether he has any news of Min.

“I’m seeing him tomorrow at the university…”

I hand the cage to him and he takes it firmly in his arms.

“Your hankie smells nice,” he says, almost in a whisper.

A loud clatter makes us both start: the bicycle was not properly balanced against the tree and it has fallen over. Jing bends over, picks it up and flees like a hunted hare.

The train comes to a sharp halt. The jolt tears me from my sleep and I hear the order to start marching. As I get out of the carriage, dawn clasps me in its icy fingers. Under a sky tinged with the tiniest hint of mauve, the scorched earth lies uninterrupted as far as the eye can see: not one crop, not a single tree.

The train leaves and we envy our comrades who are traveling on into the inner territories. Our detachment has responsibility for the security of a small town in southern Manchuria, with the curious name of A Thousand Winds.

Huddling my neck right down inside the collar of my uniform, I continue to doze and let the rhythm of the marching carry me along. In just a few months I have learned to sleep and walk at the same time. The regular swinging of my legs warms me and the rocking motion soothes me.

The “wedding night” took place in a pavilion in the middle of the park where Sunlight had already asked me to meet her. After dinner a young servant girl took me to a bedroom where a futon had been unfolded. She helped me to undress and to put on a yukata. I lay down on my back with my arms crossed and tried to gather my thoughts.

I did not know the time, but it must have been late. The silence was oppressive; it was hot. I got up and pulled aside the screens that led out onto the veranda.

The moon was ringed with opaque clouds, and the croaking toads and sighing crickets seemed to be answering each other’s calls in the darkness. I closed the doors and went back to the bed. My feeling of intoxication melted away as I became increasingly impatient. I had never come across virginity, so how would I know what to do?

An almost imperceptible sound made me look up. Sunlight was standing in the doorway, draped in a white kimono. She bowed slightly. Her face was painted in a regal mask, which made her seem all the more inaccessible. She crossed the room silently like a ghost and shut herself in the next room.

She came back out without her ceremonial kimono, but wrapped in a crimson yukata. Her jet-black hair stood out against the fiery silk. She was just a little girl.