Shan Sa: The Girl Who Played Go

“No Chinese army can take us on,” threw in one of the officers while his back was energetically scrubbed by his orderly. “The civil war has ruined China. One day, we’ll annex the entire territory, another Korea. [5]You’ll see, our army will follow the railway that runs from northern China to the south. In three days we’ll take Peking, and six days later we’ll be marching through the streets of Nanking; eight days after that we’ll be sleeping in Hong Kong, and that will open up the doors to Southeast Asia.”

Their comments confirm various rumors, already rife in Japan, in the heart of our infantry. Despite our government’s reticence, the conquest of China becomes more inevitable every day.

That evening I go to sleep relaxed, and happy to be clean.

I am roused by a rustling of clothes: I am sleeping in my own room, and Father is sitting in the next room, wrapped in his dark-blue cotton yukata. Mother is walking up and down, the bottom of her lavender-gray kimono opening and closing over a pale-pink under-kimono. She has the face of a young woman; there is not a single wrinkle round her almond-shaped eyes. A smell of springtime wafts around her-it’s the perfume Father had sent from Paris!

I suddenly remember that she has not touched that bottle of perfume since Father died.

Cousin Lu is becoming more and more stooped. He tries to seem nonchalant, indifferent, but those dark unsettling eyes peer out of his emaciated face, watching my every move. When I look into his eyes and ask him, “What’s the matter, Cousin Lu?” he says nothing.

I challenge him to a game of go. He turns pale and fidgets on his chair; his every move betrays his volatile mood. The territory he is trying to defend on the board is either too cramped or too sprawling, and his genius is reduced to a few strange and ineffectual moves. I can tell that he has again been reading ancient tracts on go; he gets them from his neighbor, an antique dealer, and a forger of the first order. I even wonder whether, after reading so many of these manuscripts, which are said to have sacred origins and are filled with Taoist mysteries and tragic anecdotes, my cousin is going to end up succumbing to madness, as players used to in the past.

“My cousin,” I say when, instead of thinking about his position, he is staring at my plait and daydreaming, “what’s happened to you?”

Lu flushes immediately as if I have found out his secret. He gives a little cough and looks like a doddering old man.

“What have you learned from your books, my cousin?” I taunt him impatiently. “The secret of immortality? You look more and more like those dithering old alchemists who think they hold the secret of purple cinnabar.”

He isn’t listening to me. He isn’t looking at me either, but at his own last letter to me, which I have left on the table. Ever since he arrived he has been waiting for my reply to his illegible demands. I am determined not to breathe a word.

He goes home to the capital, full of flu, a broken man. I go to the station with him, and as I watch the train disappearing into the swirling snow, I have a strange feeling of relief.

At last, my first mission!

Our detachment has received orders to track down a group of terrorists who are challenging our authority on the ground in Manchuria. Disguised as Japanese soldiers, they attacked a military reserve and stole arms and munitions.

For four days we follow a river locked under ice, with the wind against us and the fallen snow swirling round our knees. Despite my new coat, the cold slices through me more sharply than a saber, and I can no longer feel my hands or feet. The marching has drained my head of all thought. Laden like an ox and with my head tucked down inside the collar of my uniform, I ruminate on the hope that I will soon be able to warm myself by a campfire.

As we reach the foot of a hill, gunshots ring out. Just in front of me several soldiers are hit and fall to the ground. We are trapped! From their positions up above, the enemy can shoot down on us and we cannot return their fire. A sharp pain twists my gut-I’m wounded! I’m dying! I feel tentatively with my hand: no wound at all, just a cramp produced by fear-a discovery that covers me in shame. I look up and wipe the snow that has stuck to my eyes, and I can see that our more experienced soldiers have leaped down onto the frozen river, where they are sheltering behind the banks and returning fire. I leap to my feet and start to run. I could be hit a thousand times, but in war the difference between life and death depends on a mysterious game of chance.

Our machine guns open fire and, covered by their powerful barrage, we make our assault. To make up for my earlier cowardice, I launch myself into battle at the head of the platoon, brandishing my saber.

I have been brought up in a world dominated by honor. I have known neither crime, poverty nor betrayal, and here I taste hatred for the first time: it is sublime, like a thirst for justice and revenge.

The sky is so charged with snow that it is threatening to collapse. The gunmen are sheltering behind huge boulders, but the smoke rising from their weapons gives away their position. I throw two grenades and when they explode, legs, arms and shreds of flesh fly out from a whirl of snow and flames. I scream with triumphant pleasure at this hellish sight and, leaping towards a survivor who is taking aim at me, I strike him with my saber. His head rolls in the snow.

At last I can look my ancestors in the face. By handing their blade down to me they also bequeathed me their courage. I have not sullied their name.

The battle leaves us in a trancelike state. Stimulated by the blood, we whip our prisoners to break them down, but the Chinese are harder than granite, and they do not falter. We weary of the game and kill them: two bullets in the head.

Night falls and, fearing there may be other traps ahead, we decide to make camp where we are. Our wounded groan in the dark, a dialogue of moans, and then silence. Their lips are frozen. They will not survive.

We gather up the bodies of the men we have lost, but the ground is so hard that we cannot even dig a ditch. Tomorrow the whole site will be picked clean by starving animals.

We wrap ourselves in anything we can find: dead men’s clothes, abandoned blankets, tree branches, snow. We huddle together like sheep, and wait.

Eventually I fall asleep, savoring the melancholy pleasures of victory. I wake with a start to a muffled sound: the wolves could not wait for us to withdraw; they are already devouring the bodies.

Cousin Lu is coming back for New Year.

At the fair at the Temple of the White Horse we lose sight of our friends in the crowd and find ourselves alone together. He begs me to walk more slowly, and takes my hand. I snatch it back in disgust and start running, eager to get back to the others, but he keeps following me like a shadow, pleading with me to stop. I lose my temper and insist that we go back home immediately. But he pretends not to hear me and stands there blocking my way, under the sloping roof of a pavilion with icicles hanging down above our heads.

His eyes are gleaming, his cheeks are frozen and look like two patches of dark-red cloth that have been stuck onto his ashen face. A thick layer of frost shimmers between his eyebrows and his fox-fur hat. I find his pathetic expression repulsive and I slip away, but he races after me and suggests that we go and see the lanterns sculpted in ice. I run all the faster. Lu strides on behind me and begs me to listen, his voice shaking and giving way to tears. I block my ears, but I am still haunted by his choked voice.

“What do you think about my letter?” he cries.