Shan Sa: The Girl Who Played Go

Like him, I listen to every sound. Only Min seems to be calm, whistling an opera tune as he works. A delicious smell wafts over from the cooking pot and it isn’t long before Min proudly presents me with a bowl of noodles with beef and sweet-and-sour cabbage. He hands me a pair of chopsticks.

That is when I remember that they are waiting for me at home to celebrate my sixteenth birthday.

At Ha Rebin the sunlight pierces the eyes.

In springtime, there is a constant thundering as the great debris of ice is buffeted, thrown up and submerged in the foaming torrents of the River Love.

A rich salesman has just set up a lottery stand in the town center, and he is announcing the results of the draw from a raised platform. Beggars with hardly a shred of clothing shiver beside men in thick furs. The whole town is here, the thieves and the thankless, the military and the students, the rich housewives and the prostitutes, all waiting impatiently. The long-awaited announcement is greeted with groans of despair and some cries of joy from the crowd. Fights break out, husbands beat their wives because they changed their numbers, and those who have just gambled their last few coins are threatening to commit suicide. There are also creditors claiming their dues, and winners who can no longer find their tickets.

I have never known a place where the wealthy are so conscious of their riches while the poor struggle so desperately. The lack of purpose in this population confirms my opinion: the Chinese Empire has sunk irretrievably into chaos. This ancient civilization has imploded under the reign of the Manchurians, who refused openness, science and modernization. Today, as the chosen prey of the Western powers, it survives by relinquishing land and autonomy. Only the Japanese, who have inherited a pure, unhybridized version of Chinese culture, [7]have made it their vocation to liberate the Empire from the European yoke. We will give her people back their peace and dignity.

We are their saviors.

Jing has gone to find out what is going on and he tells us that rebels have occupied the town hall and thrown the mayor’s body over the balcony. In the space of a few hours, hatred has spread through the town, and the people, stirred up by the bloodshed, are massacring collaborators and Japanese immigrants. Some Chinese soldiers who were enrolled into the Manchurian army have turned against the Japanese and are now surrounding the enemy division in their barracks.

Min puts a ladder up against the wall and we climb onto the roof. The town spreads out before our eyes, an infinity of serried rooftops, gray fish scales glinting silver. Sinuous roads cut deep, dark furrows. The naked plane trees spell out their arid calligraphy, and columns of black smoke rise from the town center, piercing the violet and yellow sky where thousands of sparrows circle in panic.

We can hear shots among the shouting, the cheering and the celebratory drumming. Some areas look deserted and mournful, others jubilant and full of life. In the distance the ramparts of the town meander through a thick mist.

Will they be strong enough to withstand the Japanese reinforcements?

During our brief exchange of courtesies I discover that Madame Violette, Masayo’s employer, is also originally from Tokyo. Meeting compatriots on foreign soil produces a melancholy happiness and turns complete strangers into close friends. Within moments she is offering me some sake and bombarding me with questions about my life. I then ask her about her family, and she says that her husband and children were killed in the earthquake. From the sleeve of her kimono she produces a tiny child’s sandal, the only reminder she has of her son. Fourteen years have elapsed and I have managed to banish the images of that seismic disaster to the farthest recesses of my memory, but Madame Violette’s tears bring back those scenes of devastation.

Catastrophe struck at noon. The bells ringing for the end of morning lessons had only just begun to sound when chairs suddenly overturned around us and sticks of chalk flew through the air. Thinking this was some prank played by my classmates, I started laughing and clapping, until the blackboard came crashing down with a thud, injuring several children as it shattered. The walls shook and our heavy wooden worktables began gliding from one side of the room to the other. One boy got trapped under the furniture and screamed in terror. We had only just extricated him when a hail of plaster pelted down on us.

Our teacher, also covered in the white powder, ran to the window, opened it, and ordered us to jump. I was the first to throw myself out into the void: our classroom was on the second floor and I landed unharmed on my hands and feet in the grass below. Others followed me. Some of the boys jumping from the floors above injured themselves and we dragged them by the shoulders towards the garden. The whole façade of the building shuddered. The three entrance doors spewed a constant stream of pupils who had fought their way to the doors bareheaded, with torn uniforms and bloodied shirts. Suddenly the central building caved in on itself in one slow, irresistible descent, heaving with it the wings on either side.

The garden was seething with people screaming, groaning, running and crawling as the ground rippled beneath them. The paved paths that I had trodden so many times twisted like lengths of ribbon, and the trees we clung to arched and teetered before hurling us to the ground. We tried with no more success to cling to the grass and shrubs. A strange roaring sound rose from the center of the earth, and a torrent of rock and stone, the harsh, dry sound of torn silk.

When the tremors stopped, the staff and prefects grouped us together and made us sit in a circle on the sports ground. They told us not to move, and started to tend the injured and count the missing. I caught a glimpse of my younger brother in the distance and the joy of seeing him brought tears to my eyes. Somewhere in the crowd a boy was wailing and soon everyone had joined him.

We were forbidden to go anywhere near the rubble to look for survivors: we were ordered to wait for the emergency services, but at five o’clock in the afternoon still no one had come. By then the wind was stronger and, when flames flickered up from a building, suffocating billows of black smoke were buffeted and spread by the typhoon. Making the most of the confusion, I hopped over a collapsed wall and ran away along the street.

The scenes that greeted me came straight from hell. Tokyo had disappeared. Although some buildings were still standing, scarcely holding each other up, the roads had been submerged under a thick layer of bricks, wood and glass. People looked for their loved ones, helplessly calling their names. A madman wandered through the ruins laughing. Three nuns were crouched over the remains of a church, digging with their bare hands in the hope of finding a living soul.

Houses were burning and, with the aid of the wind, the fires spread. It was six o’clock in the evening and the dark ash whirling through the sky made the night close in. What happened next is confused in my memory. I can see myself feeling my way through this suffocating darkness, my path strewn with broken masonry, with people trying to flee and with dead bodies. I do not remember how I managed to reach our doorstep. I saw my mother sitting on a tree trunk, looking at the few things she had been able to save, with Little Sister at her feet, clinging to her legs. The sound of my footsteps woke her from her dazed silence and she looked up sharply. From the way she threw herself at me I could tell some great sadness was going to carve its way into me like an arrowhead.

“Father has just left us.”