Shan Sa - The Girl Who Played Go

“Tell me what it is, please. I’m in a hurry!”

“I spoke to Doctor Zhang yesterday, I’m not pregnant. It’s a false pregnancy,” she says, her eyes streaming with tears.

“You must go see someone else,” I say to shake her off. “Doctors can make mistakes.”

She looks up, her face a twist of anguish, and says, “I got my period this morning.”

Moon Pearl throws herself into my arms and I drag her over to the house, where Wang Ma and the cook hurry to help me. I take advantage of the commotion to slip away.

There are hundreds thronging round the foot of the ramparts at the North Gate. The Japanese soldiers drive them back with the butts of their rifles. My blood freezes as I realize something terrible is going to happen before my very eyes.

An old man is jabbering away somewhere behind me: “In the old days the condemned would be blind drunk and they would sing at the top of their lungs before they died. The executioner’s saber would come down in a flash, and the body would often stay standing while the head rolled on the floor. The blood spurting from the neck sometimes shot two meters into the air!”

The men listening click their tongues; these people are here because for them executions are a supreme form of entertainment. Furious, I step on the filthy old pig’s foot and he gives a little cry of pain.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!” cries a child.

Standing on tiptoe, I can see a black ox pulling a cart bearing a cage with three men in it. Their mouths are full of blood and they are screaming out unintelligibly.

“They’ve cut out their tongues,” someone in the crowd whispers.

Now that they have been almost tortured to death, all the condemned look the same: just bloodied flesh still barely breathing.

The cart and others like it crawl through the North Gate. Huong tells me she can’t watch anymore and will wait for me in town. But I am carried along by some indomitable inner force and I want to watch them to the very end. I have to know whether Min and Jing are going to die.

The procession comes to a halt by a deserted stretch of wasteland. The soldiers open the cages and drive the prisoners on with their bayonets. One of them is nearly dead, and two soldiers drag him along like an empty flour sack.

There are cries in the crowd. With the help of two sturdy servants, a finely dressed woman pushes past the people in her way, and reaches the military cordon.

“Min, my son!”

Far over there, a man turns round, falls to his knees and kowtows three times in our direction. My heart stops. The soldiers throw themselves at him and beat him.

The condemned men kneel in a long line. One of the soldiers brandishes the flag as all the others raise their rifles.

Min’s mother faints.

Min doesn’t look at me, he doesn’t look at anyone. For him there is nothing except for the rustling of the grass, the quiet song of the insects and the breeze on the back of his neck.

Is he thinking about me-his child inside me?

The soldiers load their rifles.

Min turns his head and stares hungrily at the person to his left. I eventually realize that it is Tang! They smile at each other. Min leans painfully towards her and manages to put his lips to the young girl’s mouth.

The shots crackle loudly.

My ears buzz and I can smell rust mingled with sweat. Is that the smell of death? I sway as my stomach contracts and I bend forward to vomit.

Orchid, my Manchurian prostitute, is slumped in her chair, sulking.

“You’ve changed,” she says.

I lie down on her bed, but instead of undressing me, as she usually does, she waves her handkerchief.

“You used to come to see me every two or three days, but you haven’t been here for almost two weeks. Have you met someone new?”

“I haven’t seen anyone except you since I’ve been garrisoned here,” I try to reason, though there are hardly any grounds for her to be jealous.

In fact her charms have had no effect on me for a while. I find her skin coarse, her flesh flaccid and our couplings more and more boring.

“I don’t believe you,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “I love you and you love someone else.”

“You’re being stupid. I could leave tomorrow and never set foot in this town again. I’ll be killed one day. Why do you love me? You shouldn’t get attached to someone who’s just passing through. Love someone who can marry you. Forget about me.”

She cries all the more bitterly and I find her tears arousing. I push her onto the bed and take off her dress.

As she lies beneath me, Orchid’s face begins to flush and she shudders and gasps between her sobs. I ejaculate, but the climax no longer has the intensity it once did.

Orchid lies next to me smoking and waving a fan with her free hand. I too light a cigarette.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks me gloomily.

I do not answer. The white cigarette smoke, dispersed by the fan, rises slowly towards the ceiling in a series of scrolled waves.

“Is she Chinese or Japanese?” she insists.

I jump to my feet.

As I wander the streets, my whole body is stiff with horror.

“Go home,” says Huong.

“Leave me alone.”

“Please, go home.”

“I hate my home.”

“Well, cry then. Let it all out, please,” she begs me.

“I don’t have any tears.”

She buys some stuffed rolls from a peddler and says, “Well, eat then!”

“They smell horrible.”

“What makes you say that? They smell good.”

“They’re rotten. Can’t you smell the vegetables are bitter? It’s like blood. Oh, please throw them away or…” My stomach lurches and I am sick. Terrified, Huong throws the rolls to some cats stalking nearby.

I curl up on myself and hear Huong saying, “Jing is alive.” But this good news is not enough for me.

“I’m carrying a dead man’s baby. I’ll have to kill myself.”

“You’ve gone mad!” she says, shaking me by my shoulders. “You’re mad! Tell me you’re delirious!”

I don’t answer.

“Well then, hang yourself,” she says, hiding her face in her hands, “no one can save you.” Then after a long silence she adds, “Have you seen a doctor? It could be nothing.”

“I don’t trust anyone,” I say.

“I’ll find you a doctor.”

“What’s the point? Min’s betrayed me. I have to die.”

The Chinese girl arrived before me and she has put the stones out on the board. Her eyes are swollen and they have dark shadows under them; she has not combed her hair but rolled it haphazardly into a simple chignon. She has slippers on her feet. She looks ill, like a patient just escaped from a hospital.

As I play she stares at the branches of a willow tree; the look in her eye is disturbing. Then she takes her handkerchief out and puts it over her mouth and nose as if she is feeling sick.

Being so obsessive about cleanliness I am tortured to think that I smell and that this is what is bothering her. I breathe in deeply: all I can smell is the rotting grass, a sign that rain is on the way.

Can she smell Orchid’s perfume on me? The prostitute uses so much, perhaps trying to leave her mark on me.

The sky has darkened and a clammy wind whisks up the leaves. The players pack their stones noisily, but the Chinese girl is lost in thought and does not move. When I point out that we are the only players left on the square, she says nothing but makes a note of our new positions on her sheet of paper, and leaves without saying good-bye.

Her strange behavior arouses my suspicion and so I get up, hail a rickshaw and, hiding under its awning, tell the boy to follow her. She walks down the dusky market streets: traders taking down their stands, women bringing in their washing and pedestrians jostling past each other. Swallows under the canopies give out their little cries of distress. The sky is black, and fat raindrops begin to fall to the ground. Soon torrents of water are beating down on us, accompanied by thunderclaps.