Shan Sa - The Girl Who Played Go

“Well, well, have you found a boy you like? Why are you asking?”

“If you’re not going to answer,” I say, pretending to be put out, “I’ll leave.”

“Are you angry? Don’t you want some cake-it’s honey and acacia-flower?” and she rings for the servant and carries on with her knitting before asking, “What do you want to know?”

I hide my head behind a cushion. “How do you know if you’re in love? What does it feel like?”

“Well, first of all, you completely forget the world around you. Your friends and family just become invisible. All you can do is think about him day and night. When you see him, it’s as if he’s filled your eyes with light; and when you don’t see him, the thought of him eats away at your heart. You wonder where he is and what he’s doing every minute of the day. You invent his whole life, you live it for him: your eyes see for him, your ears hear for him…”

Moon Pearl takes a sip of tea before going on, “In this first stage you don’t know what the other is thinking or feeling. It’s the most poignant part. Then you open your hearts to each other and you have a brief moment of incredible happiness…” She drops what she is doing and gazes out of the window.

“After the sunshine comes the storm,” she goes on. “Suddenly you’re thrown into darkness, you have to feel your way and crawl along carefully as you get older. You’ll see, Little Sister, when you love and are loved by someone, you’ll know the pain of living on a white-hot grill. You won’t be sure of anything anymore.”

My sister’s lips are sore and cracked like arid soil. Hatred glows in her eyes as she struggles to find someone to blame for her unhappiness. But then she says, “You will have a happier fate. You are stronger than I am, you’ll find a way of confronting the pain and appeasing the anger of the gods who are jealous of our love.”

“Well, why do people get married then?”

“Marriage?” she asks with a mocking laugh. “It’s cold and bland, it’s a ceremony that we act out for our parents’ sake. I’ve been reduced to my own shadow. The family I have built around me weighs me down, and some days I wish I was just a piece of furniture with no feelings and nothing to think about; then I’d know how to wait for him, how best to serve him, to make his home and honor his ancestors.”

Moon Pearl gets to her feet, picks a cluster of wisteria flowers and crushes them between her trembling fingers. “I’m going to tell you the truth: I loved my husband. I gave him everything. I was like a silkworm, spewing the best of me from my insides, and now I’m just a barren husk. I know what I have to do now: I’ll give him my life. Let him live and I’ll die!”

I suddenly feel very uncomfortable and I give her the first excuse I can think of to get away. Out on the street I start to run; I need to breathe in this life, the trees, the warmth of my town. I will be able to control my own fate and I will know how to be happy. Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out.

The heat is making our training difficult.

Outside the walls of the town, the black of the open country is slowly turning into a sheet of burning-hot metal. Under the watch of the officers, the soldiers have to march, to run, to jump, to crawl, to shoot, and to bury their bayonets in the innards of straw dummies a thousand times. Those that pass out get a bucket of water poured over them and a couple of slaps in the face, but the Chinese recruits are punished more severely. It is as if our men are pieces of heated iron that need beating out to make useful weapons.

On the very first day my face caught the sun and my lips peeled. I have gone hoarse from shouting orders and my throat is burning; when I swallow a mouthful of rice it feels like grains of sand. The temperatures plummet at night, but our bodies still burn with the day’s sun. The cold and the heat are too much for me and I toss and turn on my bed, unable to sleep.

And yet I am happy to be here. Our barracks is like a forbidden city with its bars, its restaurants, its library, its pretty young nurses and its bathrooms with their great wooden tubs. Little Sister and Akiko have sent me books and literary journals, and Mother has spoiled me with a bag full of chocolates, red bean curd, and new socks and underpants.

The pornographic magazines we pass around create a ribald complicity. In the evenings our cracked voices ring out from one room to the next, massacring traditional Japanese songs. From time to time some of us will meet up for a game of cards. We play for money.

To the despair of the soldiers, the officers are allowed to come and go as they please. Little cliques of partygoers have formed and, as soon as the sun has set, we head out into the town to get drunk and take a postprandial trip to the brothels.

As I can speak their language, my relationship with the local women takes an unusual turn: the ability to communicate fosters tenderness in even the bitterest heart. Orchid has become very attached to me; I have tamed her physically and she now swears an undying passion for me.

In her imagination this straightforward encounter between a soldier and a prostitute has been turned into a great love story. She claims that she noticed me the very day we first arrived: I was the only one out of all the soldiers streaming through who caught her eye.

She has told me she loves me so many times that I have become faithful to her. She is so ardent and open-not characteristics of our courtesans at home-that I am enchanted. She makes little presents of her handkerchiefs, her socks, locks of her hair and even a little satin cushion embroidered with erotic images. I am as delighted and flattered by these modest little tokens as I am by her frenetic desire.

In my country the mild and luminous month of May is more fleeting than the leap a frog makes from the bank into the water: summer is already on its way.

The first waves of heat irresistibly move my parents to take a long nap after lunch. I tiptoe through the house, slip out into the garden and leave by the back gate. I follow winding roads where the trees provide patches of shade as the sun pours its molten gold onto my head. I’m sweating and not thinking about anything.

At Jing’s house we are intoxicated by the scent of lilacs. Min is waiting for me in the bed; he has sprinkled himself from head to foot with water from the well. He is icy-cold like a pebble taken from the bottom of a stream. I throw myself at him and my burning skin almost steams as it comes into contact with his.

As I gradually discover Min’s body, inch by inch, it becomes an infinite territory to explore, as I listen to the sighs of his skin and read the map of his veins. With the tip of my tongue I write characters on his chest and he has to guess what they are. I bring my stomach to his mouth, my breasts to his forehead. Min climbs onto me in a position of prayer and, with every move he makes, he has to recite a poem. His hair tickles me and I laugh, and to punish me for making fun of him, he thrusts hard into me. The whole world is torn open, my eyes go hazy, my ears hum. I bury my fingers in my hair and bite the corner of the sheet. My eyes are half-closed and in the shadows I think I can see bright blocks of color like flags waving. Contours emerge and disappear, creatures loom out of the dark and melt away again. I am going to die. I suddenly feel as if there are two of me: one part of me leaves my body and floats in the air. She watches me, listens to my moaning and my rasping breath, then rises and disappears into some high unknown place like a bird swooping over a mountain pass, and I can no longer see her.