Shan Sa - The Girl Who Played Go

Only the vocabulary of death is allowed between us. She writes, “Do not hesitate to die to honor the Emperor. It is the path of your fate.” And I reply, “What joy to sacrifice myself for my beloved country.” I will not tell her that I shall also die for her glory, and she will never admit that my death will destroy her.

I end my letter thus: “According to Confucius, ‘a man who knows humanity will never agree to preserve his life at the expense of that humanity.’ This courageous virtue has become the key to my very existence. Pray, venerable Mother, I beg you, that I may soon attain this ideal.”

At home lunch is served in the big sitting room where the shutters have been kept closed to preserve the cool of morning. My sister has come back from market, and tells us the news she has gleaned.

Last night the Japanese army arrested some members of the Resistance Movement who were secretly planning an insurrection. The firing we heard came not from an exercise, but from true carnage.

I listen to her halfheartedly; when I am in the middle of a game of go, I am completely intoxicated and cut off from the outside world. The darkness of the sitting room reminds me of the bedroom at Jing’s house, shadowy as an imperial tomb: where the black lacquered furniture exhales a heavy scent and the cracks in the walls form mysterious frescoes. The bed covered in crimson silk embroidered with gold is an eternal fire.

“An insurrection,” my sister is saying. “Don’t you see! How stupid!” she exclaims, and then she goes on, “Do you know where the would-be rioters were arrested? Wait for it: the mayor’s own son had got them together in one of his houses. Don’t look at me as if I’m making it all up. Apparently they found guns and cases of ammunition in the cellar. What? Of course they arrested him.”

The chicken I am eating suddenly tastes of nothing. To get it down I fill my mouth with rice, but I can’t swallow it.

The cook who is serving tea intervenes: “At dawn this morning the Japanese arrested Doctor Li. He was one of the conspirators.”

Father speaks up slowly.

“I knew the mayor well. Our fathers served together in the Dowager Empress’s court. We saw a great deal of each other in our youth. He wanted to go to England to study, but his family wouldn’t let him. It’s something he has always regretted. The other day he came to say hello to me after my conference. Now that he’s fifty he looks just like his father- all he needs is the hat with the peacock feathers, the coral necklaces and the brocade tunics. As he shook my hand he told me that his elder brother, a close adviser to the Emperor of Manchuria, had found a post for him at court in the New Capital. His career will be ruined now. And what of his life and his family’s future.”

“How can you feel sorry for that man,” Mother retorts. “He loathes us. When he was adviser to the previous mayor, he schemed to have your teaching hours reduced. I suspect he even tried to have your translations banned. I haven’t forgotten anything, and I don’t care if he’s in trouble now.”

I didn’t know that my parents knew Jing’s father, and I am devastated by what they are saying-there they are sitting round the table in the half-light, commenting on all this as if it was just a gang of troublemakers who had been arrested.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” my sister asks suddenly.

“I’ve got a stomachache.”

“You don’t look well. Go and lie down,” says my mother. “We’ll send some tea up for you.”

I lie on the bed and put my ice-cold hands over my stomach.

Where is Jing? Is Min with him? I can see each crack in the wall, every piece of furniture and every ornament in that house. They seem worn and peaceful, there isn’t the tiniest suggestion of revolt in them. And yet my friends managed to fool me. When Min put his arms round me and led me off to the bedroom, he was walking over the secrets in the cellar. When Jing talked to me in the garden and spied jealously on Min, there was a link far stronger than love between him and his friend. Why did they hide the truth from me? I would have joined them in their patriotic fervor, I would have gone to prison, I would have died beside them. Why did they seduce me only to exclude me?

When I hear my sister bringing me a cup of tea, I turn towards the wall and pretend to be asleep.

I remember the first time we met: the Resistance had launched their attack on the town hall. I was jostled by the crowd, I fell and a dark-skinned boy held out his hand to me. He had the fine, square face of the Manchurian aristocracy. Then there was Jing, cold and aloof. The two organizers of the revolt had just entered my life.

I roll over, take a few good sips of tea and begin to calm down. When Min talked about the revolution I thought he was dreaming. When he told me his life was dangerous, I made fun of his taste for adventure.

I remember Tang, the student girl who was invited to Jing’s birthday. Now I understand the importance of what she was saying: she was the daughter of a slave and she had found her strength and confidence in the Communist ideal. The Japanese invasion broke down our immutable hierarchies, and now Tang could communicate to Min-who was young, landed and noble-the dream of building a new society where all men would be equal. She persuaded him to take up arms and sign up to the Resistance Movement. And Min had dragged Jing into it. They would be shot, all three of them!

I slip out. The rickshaw takes me past Jing’s house, but the road is barred by guards.

On the Square of a Thousand Winds I lay out the stones in the positions I noted earlier. I stare at the checkered pattern and count the intersections, sinking into the oblivion of mathematics.

The Chinese girl looks pale after lunch, her features altered. When she reaches for a stone her hand shakes. She is silent, forbidding me to comfort her. I affect indifference so as not to distress her; she would not want to be pitied.

She seems to have aged several years in the space of a few hours. Her cheekbones are heightened by the shadows carved across her cheeks. Her face looks longer, her chin more angular.

For a moment I glimpse the terrible pain of a child whose pride has been wounded. Has she had a row with a brother? Fallen out with one of her girlfriends? She will get over it, I should not worry about her. Girls’ moods change very quickly and she will soon be smiling again.

During the previous session she struck me as a quick and spontaneous player, but today she is deliberating for hours. With her eyes lowered and her lips clamped into a hard line, she could serve as a model for the mask of a ghost woman in the theater of Noh.

She looks exhausted sitting there with her elbows on the edge of the table and her head resting in her palms. I wonder whether she is really thinking about the game. The stones betray our thoughts. One more intersection to the east and her strike would have been more substantial.

My black stone falls in alongside her. By responding aggressively I am hoping to break through her vigilance. She looks up. I think she is going to cry, but she smiles.

“Well played! Let’s meet up again tomorrow afternoon.”

I would like to carry on now, but as a matter of principle I never argue with a woman.

She makes a note of our latest moves on her piece of paper. If a game has to be interrupted during tournaments in Japan, the judge makes a note of the positions and, in front of everyone, puts this note carefully into a locked safe.

“Would you like it?” she asks me.

“No, keep it, please.”

She looks at me for a long time, and puts her stones away.