Shan Sa - The Girl Who Played Go

I stroke my belly and reality intrudes once more: Min is a prisoner of the Japanese; when will he be released? I don’t know his family. If I go to his house, they will drive me away. At school my name will be written in the roll of shame, and I will be expelled. The whole town will know. Even if I can accept the humiliation, my parents couldn’t bear the sneers and the whispers. Children in the street will throw stones at Moon Pearl, jeering, “Your sister is a whore!”

I switch the light on. My belly looks flat, below my navel a line of fine fluffy hair runs down to the denser growth below. When our nurse washed me as a child, this hair used to make her laugh: she said it meant I would have a boy.

I will go down on my knees before my parents, I will beat my head on the ground to beg their clemency. I must go live at the ends of the earth and have my child there while I wait for Min and Jing to be freed.

That happy day will come: two men making their way towards a little cottage lost in the open countryside. The door opens…

On July 7, our regiment, posted to Feng

Tai, loses a soldier after a night exercise. The Chinese army refuses us permission to search the town of Wang Ping. The two forces have their first exchange of fire.

On July 8, a second confrontation flares up around the bridge of the Valley of Reeds.

On July 9, the senior officers give the order to the various regiments garrisoned on the plain around Peking to prepare for combat. In Tokyo, the government, responding to international pressure, opts for a low profile: “We should not aggravate the situation. The problem should be solved on the ground.”

The senior officers propose a ceasefire on four conditions: that the Chinese withdraw their garrison from the bridge in the Valley of Reeds; that they guarantee the safety of our men; that they hand over the terrorists; and that they apologize.

The Chinese reject the offer in its entirety.

On July 10, Chiang Kai-shek’s battalions move towards Peking. The first reinforcements of our Manchurian regiments cross the Great Wall.

On July 11, the Tokyo government finally acknowledges the urgency of the situation. It decides to send our battalions from Korea as reinforcements.

The earth underfoot hums in unison with the skies as the first bomber squadrons head for the Chinese interior. Our hearts swell to see our flag painted on the fuselage: a crimson sun against immaculate white snow.

The men begin to shout, “To Peking! To Peking!”

The Japanese propaganda machine has been set in motion. The incident in the Valley of Reeds is already in the newspapers: stories pillory the Chinese generals who publicly support the terrorist movement, violating the peace agreement. Blamed for this latest crisis they are called upon to offer their apologies to the Emperor of Japan.

Mother, accustomed since her childhood to endless military conflicts, places her faith in prevailing apathy and in American diplomacy to calm the warmongers. Father sighs: once again the Japanese will improve their financial standing. The public is happy and confident: the Manchurian Emperor is keeping his country out of the conflict. For these cowards, the Sino-Japanese war will only ever be a fire burning on the farther bank-a sideshow.

White has become black, patriots are imprisoned alongside rapists and assassins, the foreign army marches through our streets and we thank them for keeping the peace. Could it be this disorder in the outside world that has turned my own life upside down?

My sister blossoms more each day, and there is no longer any hint of sadness in her face. Her dresses have been refitted to hug her slender body. Mother has heard the good news and hectors Wang Ma to make up the baby’s layette.

I am dazed at my sister’s beauty-each of her smiles weighs on my heart. Her son will be the joy of the whole household, even if mine will be cursed.

In six nights Wang Ma has made a quilt for my future nephew. On a background of deep-red silk she has embroidered with tiny stitches lotuses, cherry and peach trees and peonies blooming in a celestial garden with swathes of silvery mist. I smile as I look at this beautiful creation-my son will be wrapped in an old cloth, but he will be the most beautiful baby in the world.

Coming towards me is a woman in a huge hat and a dress that shimmers with every nonchalant sway of her hips. I scarcely have time to wonder who she is before she sits down opposite me, quite out of breath.

The sun filters through the weave of the hat, laying a mysterious veil over her face. A fine vein crawls over her left temple and disappears into her hairline. There are tiny, tear-shaped moles dotting her dark skin.

A sharp slapping sound-the girl has just played her turn. Her hand stays on the board for a moment and I see that her nails are clean and painted orange.

I always listen to the sound the stones make, it betrays what the opponent is thinking. Early on in our game the Chinese girl would hold the stones between her first and second fingers and smack them gleefully onto the board; then, as the impact became quieter, her darker moods revealed themselves to me. Today it is a short, crystal-clear sound- she has rediscovered her confidence and vitality!

And she has undertaken a very original counterattack.

While she pauses to take a walk through the nearby woods, I think about the game in a very particular way: we have exchanged more than a hundred moves, but I forbid myself any calculations and I look at the board as a painter would an unfinished canvas. My stones are patches of ink with which I draw places and gaps. In the game of go, only aesthetic perfection leads to victory.

The Chinese girl returns and when she sits down, the shadow of her hat caresses my chest. The ribbon around it flutters to the same accelerated rhythm as my heart. I cannot begin to imagine why she has dressed herself today as an adult. I do not know her name, how old she is, what her life might be. She is a mountain that protrudes from a cloudy sky, only to melt all the more surely into the fog.

A drone grows louder and interrupts my daydream. Our planes are overhead, bombs fixed below their steel wings. I watch my opponent out of the corner of my eye: she does not look up.

It is easier for my fellow officers to fly over China than for me to read the thoughts of the girl who plays go.

Someone comes into my room and shakes me violently. Is it Moon Pearl trying to wake me for the Sunday market? I turn my back on her, but she sits down on my bed, tugs my shoulder and starts to moan.

Irritated, I sit up abruptly, but when I open my eyes it is not my sister I see but Huong, in tears.

“Get up. The Resistance fighters are going to be executed this morning.”

My words catch in my throat. “Who… who told you?”

“The matron in my dormitory. Apparently the procession is going to go past the North Gate. Get dressed! I think it might be too late.”

I put on the first dress I find, but my fingers are shaking too much to button it up. I run out of the room still coiling my hair up into a chignon.

“Where are you going?” asks my father.

I find the strength to lie. “I’ve got a game of go, I’m late!”

At the far end of the garden I bump into my sister coming in through the gate.

“Where are you going?” she asks, catching hold of my arm.

“Let me go. I’m not going to the market.”

She gives Huong a fierce stare and takes me to one side.

“I’ve got to talk to you,” she says and it makes me shiver-does she know something about Min and Jing? “I haven’t slept all night…”