Shan Sa - The Girl Who Played Go

This first day of warfare feels like a long dream. Nothing touches me, neither the atrocities of the fighting, nor the exhausting march, nor the deaths of my soldiers. I wander through a padded world where life and death are equally meaningless. For the first time the military adventure has failed to inspire me: we go to our fates just as salmon struggle back upstream-there is no beauty or grandeur in it.

That evening the medical officer notices that I am sullen and withdrawn and he diagnoses sunstroke. I let my men wrap my head in a cool, damp towel and lie down on a bale of straw, staring at the dark ceiling of the cottage appropriated as my quarters for the night. I am disgusted with myself.

We are woken by whistling and explosions in the early morning. We respond with grenades, before both sides man the machine guns. In this cacophony we suddenly recognize the bugle sounding the attack.

The division attacking us is Japanese, a mistake that costs us several lives.

A campfire crackling, Jing dozes fitfully, and all around me hundreds of other refugees are sleeping. We are like herds of deer fleeing a drought, we are thin and sick, our sleep as heavy as our bundles.

I take a pair of scissors from my bag and cut my hair as short as the strength in my arms permits. I tie my two plaits together with a ribbon and lay them next to Jing, then I climb over ten sleeping bodies and disappear into the night.

In a wood I take off my dress and slip on the clothes I have stolen from Jing. Behind the trees the dawn casts its pale light over the Peking plain. I walk in the direction opposite the flow of the refugees who have been on the move since daybreak. The women, weighed down by their bundles, drag a child with one hand and a goat with the other. From time to time the unmistakable cry of a newborn rings out. There are men carrying an elderly parent on their backs; luckier ones draw the old folks in a rickshaw. A woman who seems to be a hundred clutches a chicken in her arms as she teeters forwards on her bound feet.

My heart has been torn by a succession of such scenes ever since we fled Peking. I don’t regret following Jing into this upheaval; thanks to him, I have witnessed the strength of our people driven from their own land. The tenacious march south is like a silent protest against death. In this tidal wave of men and women a hatred mingles with hope. And this furious force of will that has infected me too will carry me to the very end of my own lonely progress.

I am like them-I want life. I want to go back to Manchuria, to find my house and my go table. I will return to the Square of a Thousand Winds and wait for my Stranger. I know he will come… one afternoon… as he did that first time.

At midday I sit under a tree by the side of the road eating a three-day-old piece of bread one crumb at a time. The silent column advances steadily past, indifferent to the droning of the airplanes and the distant explosions.

Within that human river the first Chinese soldiers appear. In their blood-splattered uniforms, their faces darkened with smoke, they remind me of the soldiers who invaded our house in 1931 after fleeing the Japanese: their eyes betray their exhaustion and the peculiar coldness of those who have left their fellows to the slaughter.

“ Peking has fallen! Hurry up, we must flee.”

“The Japanese are coming! The demons are coming!”

Amid an eruption of screaming and crying, I catch sight of Jing running with his halting limp against the flow of the refugees, and I hide behind a tree. He passes a stone’s throw from me and I hear him asking a woman whether she has seen a pale young girl with her hair cut short and dressed as a boy. His voice cracks and, holding my plaits in his hand, he spits on the ground and curses me as he calls my name.

His words cut through me but still I hide: “How could you make me suffer like this, I have been to hell and back already!”

Eventually he moves away.

An airplane that has been circling overhead for some time drops one bomb, and then another. The explosions knock me to the ground. When I come to, people are running in every direction like ants from a campfire.

When I get up I notice that my arm is bleeding. The roar of the engines in the sky grows louder and louder: more planes are coming! I take cover in a nearby field.

The Japanese bomb the road. I wander through the fields not knowing where to hide, my head is spinning and my injured arm dangles heavily by my side. When am I going to wake up from this nightmare?

Before nightfall I make out a village on the horizon and I hurry towards it. When I get there it is eerily silent. In the darkness I can just see the doors hanging open and broken pieces of furniture strewn across the streets. A little farther on I come across some bodies: four peasants skewered with bayonets. Inside the houses there is not one living thing, not one grain of rice, not one piece of straw to fuel an oven. After the massacre the Japanese army must have stripped everything.

I don’t have the strength to carry on any farther, so I go into one of the cottages. Remembering a remedy of my mother’s, I cover my wound with cold ashes before binding it with some cloth torn from my hem. I huddle against the cold, dark stove and burst into tears.

In the morning I am woken by a terrible racket, then I hear men shouting at each other in some incomprehensible language.

I open my eyes.

Soldiers have their guns trained at me.

Peking is conquered.

We have been sent orders to scour the countryside for spies and injured enemy soldiers. They must all be executed.

This morning my men came across a questionable individual; in oversize student’s clothes he obstinately stares at the ground, remaining insolently silent in the face of our interrogation.

The soldiers are loading their rifles. Lieutenant Hayashi, who is running the operation with me, draws his saber and says, “You have always boasted about your family saber, which dates back to the sixteenth century. Mine was forged a hundred years later, but it was known at the time as the ‘Head-slicer.’ I’ll give you a demonstration.”

The soldiers are fired up at the thought of this display; they click their tongues and call to each other in anticipation.

Hayashi assumes the samurai stance from ancient engravings, spreading his feet as he flexes his knees and bringing the saber up over his head.

The prisoner looks up slowly.

I suddenly feel unsteady on my feet.

“Wait!” I cry, and I run over to the young man to wipe his face, which has been blackened by mud and smoke. I can make out the tear-shaped beauty marks.

“Don’t touch me,” she screams.

“A woman,” Hayashi cries, putting his saber back in its sheath. He pushes past me to knock down the prisoner and grope inside her trousers.

My heart turns to ice. What’s she doing here in this village? When did she leave Manchuria?

“A woman!” Hayashi confirms excitedly.

The young girl struggles, screaming shrilly. He slaps her twice, takes off her shoes and pulls down her trousers. He undoes his own belt and the soldiers, mesmerized, form a circle around him.

“Out of the way!” he orders them. “You’ll each have a turn!”

“You idiot!” I say, throwing myself at the Lieutenant. He turns to me furiously, but when he sees my pistol aimed at his forehead he starts to laugh good-naturedly.

“Okay,” he says, “you’d better have her first. After all, you found her.”

I say nothing. Thinking he understands why, he whispers, “It’s the first time, isn’t it? If you don’t want to do it in public, look, go over to the temple. I’ll keep watch by the door.”