Shan Sa - The Girl Who Played Go

Min is clearly silhouetted against the sky at the far end of the street. I have been waiting at the crossroads for hours and now, as he finally cycles towards me, he greets me with a nod. I can’t take my eyes off him. His face is smooth and doesn’t betray any sign of suffering. The sweat gleams on his forehead as he smiles at me and cycles on.

I must find Jing! I get through the cordon of Japanese soldiers and go into his house. Inside its crumbling walls the house is riddled with bullet holes, and in the garden only the crimson dahlias still hold their heads high. Jing is lying on a chaise longue playing with his bird.

“I thought you were in prison.”

He looks up, his eyes filled with hate and desire.

“You are my prison.”

I wake up.

From daybreak the crossroads in front of the temple is full of traders, people out for a morning walk and Taoist monks. I sit in front of a stall and force myself to have some wonton soup. Through the steam rising from the boiling pot, I watch for Min.

People wander past, rickshaw boys wear themselves out. Where are they going? Do they have sons and brothers who have been taken prisoner by the Japanese? I envy the Taoist monks their detachment, the tiny children their ignorance and the beggars their uncomplicated misery. When a bicycle appears on the horizon I get up anxiously. For the first time I understand why people talk about keeping their eyes “peeled.”

Soon the sun is three-quarters of the way up its celestial trajectory, and I slip under a willow tree. There are Japanese soldiers marching over the crossroads with flags fixed to their bayonets. I can make out their cruel young faces under their helmets. Short and stocky with deep slits for eyes and squashed noses above their mustaches, they are the very incarnation of their insular people who, according to legend, are descended from our own. I find them disgusting.

At eleven o’clock I decide to go to school. Huong tells me that our literature teacher noticed I wasn’t there and made a note of my name.

“Why are you late?” she asks, and I tell her what has happened.

She thinks about it and then says, “You should disappear for a while. You saw a lot of Min and Jing-the Japanese could take an interest in you.”

She makes me laugh.

“If they come to look for me,” I say, “I’d gladly give myself up. Where can I hide? If I run away my parents will be sent to prison instead of me. Let them arrest me if that’s what they want!”

Huong begs me not to do anything stupid.

“I won’t do anything. I’m too sensible and too weak. I’m never going to go and set fire to the Japanese barracks to save my friends. They’re true heroes. They know how to fire a pistol, throw grenades and set dynamite to explode. They know how to risk their lives for something they believe in. But I’ve never even touched a weapon. I don’t know what they feel like or how they work. I didn’t even recognize members of the Resistance when I met them. I’m just so ordinary.”

Captain Nakamura sees spies everywhere, even within our own army. Unsure how accurate the Chinese interpreters are, he begs me to attend the interrogations of our new prisoners.

The cells are in a courtyard in the middle of the barracks, hidden under tall plane trees. I have scarcely set foot through the door when I am hit by the same stench as a battlefield the day after combat.

I am welcomed with open arms by Lieutenant Oka, whom Captain Nakamura has already introduced to me at dinner once in town. His uniform is made to measure, his mustache impeccable; this is a man who attaches excessive importance to his appearance.

He takes me over to a second courtyard where a Chinese man is hanging from the branch of a tree by his feet. His naked body is crisscrossed with black marks. As we move closer a cloud of flies rises to reveal his flesh, which looks as if it has been plowed like a field.

“After I whipped him, I used a white-hot iron on him,” commented the Lieutenant.

The smell of decomposition intensifies inside the building, but Lieutenant Oka seems unperturbed and I force myself to ignore it too. He offers me a guided tour, and he shows me the cells along a long, dark corridor with all the relaxed confidence of a doctor proud of his model hospital. Through the bars I can make out mutilated bodies slumped on the ground. The Lieutenant explains that his first act when he arrived was to have the ceilings lowered so that the criminals could not stand upright; then he cut their food rations.

I am suffocated by the smell of excrement and blood and, while noticing my discomfort, my guide still manages to sound like a conscientious civil servant: “I’m so sorry, Lieutenant, when we hit these pigs with sticks they go and get diarrhea.”

Seeing these men dying in agony makes my skin crawl with goose pimples, but the Lieutenant’s serene and attentive expression forces me to hide my disgust. I must not show any lack of respect for his work and, afraid that he might mock my weak stomach, I choke back the bile rising in my throat and make a few complimentary remarks. He seems satisfied and smiles shyly.

The torture rooms are at the end of the corridor; the Lieutenant put them there deliberately so that the cries of the prisoners could ring throughout the entire building. Keen to show off his expertise, he tells his adjutant to carry on with an interrogation.

I hear a woman screaming.

“They’ve just put salt in the Communist’s wounds,” the Lieutenant explains. “When I was in training our instructors would often say that under torture women show more resistance than men. This one is especially stubborn.”

He pushes a door open: in the middle of the room a fire is blazing in a bronze basin, heating pokers to a red glow. The heat is unbearable. Two torturers with great hairy arms throw a bucket of water over a woman lying naked on the floor.

The Chinese interpreter bends over her and cries, “Talk! If you talk, the imperial army will leave you with your life.”

Between her moans I think I can make out the words: “Go to the devil, you Japanese dogs.”

“What is she saying?” asks Lieutenant Oka.

“She is insulting the gentlemen of the imperial army.”

“Tell her that her friends have confessed. She’s the only one who’s not cooperating. What point is there in resisting?”

She curls up on her stomach with her hands tied behind her back, shuddering with every move. The Lieutenant kicks her and, as she jerks onto her side, I see her face, which is blue and swollen.

He crushes her head with his boot and smiles.

“Tell her that if she doesn’t talk, I’ll ram this poker up her ass.”

The interpreter quickly does as he is told. The moaning stops. All eyes are riveted on the motionless figure. The Lieutenant gives a signal to the interpreter, who picks up a pen and a piece of paper. Suddenly the woman gets up to her knees, like a fury rising from the depths of hell, and she starts screaming, “Kill me! Kill me! You’re all damned…”

The Lieutenant doesn’t need the interpreter to grasp the gist of what she is saying. He has only to glance at the two torturers and they throw themselves at the woman and hold her by her shoulders, as he grabs the glowing iron.

A foul-smelling smoke rises up as the screaming woman’s flesh is seared. I look away. The Lieutenant puts the iron back into the fire and stares at me with an enigmatic smile.

“Stop for now. We’ll start again later.”

He takes me off to see other rooms and comments with all the minute detail of an impassioned scientist on the hooks, whips, sticks, needles, boiling oil, and water spiced with red-hot chilies. Then he offers me a glass of sake in his office.