The Girl Who Played Go (2 page)

I undress and wash myself with a towel dampened in this cloudy liquid. Not far away the officers have formed a circle, and as they scrub each other’s backs, they discuss the latest news. As I go over to them, I recognize the man speaking: Captain Mori, one of the veterans who fought for Manchurian independence.

This morning’s newspaper tells us that Major Zhang Xueliang has taken Chiang Kai-shek hostage in the town of Xian,
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where he and his exiled army have sought refuge for six years. In exchange for the generalissimo’s freedom, Zhang Xueliang has demanded that the Kuomintang be reconciled with the Communist Party to reconquer Manchuria.

“Zhang Xueliang is unworthy of his good name and he’s an inveterate womanizer,” Captain Mori says dismissively. “The very day after September 18, 1931,
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when our army had surrounded the town of Shen Yang where he had his headquarters, the degenerate weakling fled without even attempting to resist us. As for Chiang Kai-shek, he’s a professional liar. He’ll welcome the Communists with open arms, the better to throttle them.”

“No Chinese army can take us on,” threw in one of the officers while his back was energetically scrubbed by his orderly. “The civil war has ruined China. One day, we’ll annex the entire territory, another Korea.
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You’ll see, our army will follow the railway that runs from northern China to the south. In three days we’ll take Peking, and six days later we’ll be marching through the streets of Nanking; eight days after that we’ll be sleeping in Hong Kong, and that will open up the doors to Southeast Asia.”

Their comments confirm various rumors, already rife in Japan, in the heart of our infantry. Despite our government’s reticence, the conquest of China becomes more inevitable every day.

That evening I go to sleep relaxed, and happy to be clean.

I am roused by a rustling of clothes: I am sleeping in my own room, and Father is sitting in the next room, wrapped in his dark-blue cotton yukata. Mother is walking up and down, the bottom of her lavender-gray kimono opening and closing over a pale-pink under-kimono. She has the face of a young woman; there is not a single wrinkle round her almond-shaped eyes. A smell of springtime wafts around her-it’s the perfume Father had sent from Paris!

I suddenly remember that she has not touched that bottle of perfume since Father died.

Cousin Lu is becoming more and more stooped. He tries to seem nonchalant, indifferent, but those dark unsettling eyes peer out of his emaciated face, watching my every move. When I look into his eyes and ask him, “What’s the matter, Cousin Lu?” he says nothing.

I challenge him to a game of go. He turns pale and fidgets on his chair; his every move betrays his volatile mood. The territory he is trying to defend on the board is either too cramped or too sprawling, and his genius is reduced to a few strange and ineffectual moves. I can tell that he has again been reading ancient tracts on go; he gets them from his neighbor, an antique dealer, and a forger of the first order. I even wonder whether, after reading so many of these manuscripts, which are said to have sacred origins and are filled with Taoist mysteries and tragic anecdotes, my cousin is going to end up succumbing to madness, as players used to in the past.

“My cousin,” I say when, instead of thinking about his position, he is staring at my plait and daydreaming, “what’s happened to you?”

Lu flushes immediately as if I have found out his secret. He gives a little cough and looks like a doddering old man.

“What have you learned from your books, my cousin?” I taunt him impatiently. “The secret of immortality? You look more and more like those dithering old alchemists who think they hold the secret of purple cinnabar.”

He isn’t listening to me. He isn’t looking at me either, but at his own last letter to me, which I have left on the table. Ever since he arrived he has been waiting for my reply to his illegible demands. I am determined not to breathe a word.

He goes home to the capital, full of flu, a broken man. I go to the station with him, and as I watch the train disappearing into the swirling snow, I have a strange feeling of relief.

At last, my first mission!

Our detachment has received orders to track down a group of terrorists who are challenging our authority on the ground in Manchuria. Disguised as Japanese soldiers, they attacked a military reserve and stole arms and munitions.

For four days we follow a river locked under ice, with the wind against us and the fallen snow swirling round our knees. Despite my new coat, the cold slices through me more sharply than a saber, and I can no longer feel my hands or feet. The marching has drained my head of all thought. Laden like an ox and with my head tucked down inside the collar of my uniform, I ruminate on the hope that I will soon be able to warm myself by a campfire.

As we reach the foot of a hill, gunshots ring out. Just in front of me several soldiers are hit and fall to the ground. We are trapped! From their positions up above, the enemy can shoot down on us and we cannot return their fire. A sharp pain twists my gut-I’m wounded! I’m dying! I feel tentatively with my hand: no wound at all, just a cramp produced by fear-a discovery that covers me in shame. I look up and wipe the snow that has stuck to my eyes, and I can see that our more experienced soldiers have leaped down onto the frozen river, where they are sheltering behind the banks and returning fire. I leap to my feet and start to run. I could be hit a thousand times, but in war the difference between life and death depends on a mysterious game of chance.

Our machine guns open fire and, covered by their powerful barrage, we make our assault. To make up for my earlier cowardice, I launch myself into battle at the head of the platoon, brandishing my saber.

I have been brought up in a world dominated by honor. I have known neither crime, poverty nor betrayal, and here I taste hatred for the first time: it is sublime, like a thirst for justice and revenge.

The sky is so charged with snow that it is threatening to collapse. The gunmen are sheltering behind huge boulders, but the smoke rising from their weapons gives away their position. I throw two grenades and when they explode, legs, arms and shreds of flesh fly out from a whirl of snow and flames. I scream with triumphant pleasure at this hellish sight and, leaping towards a survivor who is taking aim at me, I strike him with my saber. His head rolls in the snow.

At last I can look my ancestors in the face. By handing their blade down to me they also bequeathed me their courage. I have not sullied their name.

The battle leaves us in a trancelike state. Stimulated by the blood, we whip our prisoners to break them down, but the Chinese are harder than granite, and they do not falter. We weary of the game and kill them: two bullets in the head.

Night falls and, fearing there may be other traps ahead, we decide to make camp where we are. Our wounded groan in the dark, a dialogue of moans, and then silence. Their lips are frozen. They will not survive.

We gather up the bodies of the men we have lost, but the ground is so hard that we cannot even dig a ditch. Tomorrow the whole site will be picked clean by starving animals.

We wrap ourselves in anything we can find: dead men’s clothes, abandoned blankets, tree branches, snow. We huddle together like sheep, and wait.

Eventually I fall asleep, savoring the melancholy pleasures of victory. I wake with a start to a muffled sound: the wolves could not wait for us to withdraw; they are already devouring the bodies.

Cousin Lu is coming back for New Year.

At the fair at the Temple of the White Horse we lose sight of our friends in the crowd and find ourselves alone together. He begs me to walk more slowly, and takes my hand. I snatch it back in disgust and start running, eager to get back to the others, but he keeps following me like a shadow, pleading with me to stop. I lose my temper and insist that we go back home immediately. But he pretends not to hear me and stands there blocking my way, under the sloping roof of a pavilion with icicles hanging down above our heads.

His eyes are gleaming, his cheeks are frozen and look like two patches of dark-red cloth that have been stuck onto his ashen face. A thick layer of frost shimmers between his eyebrows and his fox-fur hat. I find his pathetic expression repulsive and I slip away, but he races after me and suggests that we go and see the lanterns sculpted in ice. I run all the faster. Lu strides on behind me and begs me to listen, his voice shaking and giving way to tears. I block my ears, but I am still haunted by his choked voice.

“What do you think about my letter?” he cries.

At this I stop, furious.

Intimidated, he does not dare come closer.

“Have you read it?” he goes on.

I give an unpleasant laugh.

“I tore it up,” I say, turning my back on him. He throws himself at me and crushes me in his arms.

“Listen to me!”

I push him away and say, “Cousin Lu, let’s play a game of go. If you win, I accept everything you propose. If you lose, we won’t see each other again.”

The terrorists keep slipping through our fingers, and we celebrated New Year among the wolves and the foxes.

Today’s snow is covering the snow that fell yesterday. We will pursue this enemy until he runs out of stores and ammunition.

How to describe the harshness of winter in northern China? Here the wind howls and trees are split in two by the weight of the ice. The fir trees look like funeral monuments daubed in black and white paint. Occasionally a fallow deer appears furtively, looks at us in amazement, then bolts.

We march on. It is such hard work that after an hour we are failing. We barely have time to catch our breath before the cold steals back inside our coats and freezes our limbs.

The enemy is cunning and knows the terrain well; he attacks when we least expect it, then withdraws. Despite our losses, we carry on, we persevere in this campaign of endurance.

Whosoever can resist exhaustion will be the victor.

The game begins at dawn in a corner of the living room. His eyes are bloodshot, his hair unbrushed, he drinks cup after cup of tea to stay awake and he heaves great sighs. This morning, having spent two days visiting friends to offer good wishes for the New Year, my parents have dressed in traditional garments and are at home to receive guests. We take refuge in my room in a vain attempt to escape the greetings. People keep coming to find us: for some, we have to kneel down to wish them a good year and good fortune; for others, a brief bow will do. Adults are always hungry for compliments, and when we have flattered them, they slip us some money in a red envelope and invariably say, “Run along, children, and buy yourself some sweets.”

Back at the go-board, Lu throws his envelopes onto the table scornfully. To annoy him, I open mine and count the notes, commenting on them as I do so.

“Stop it,” he says. “You’re not a child anymore.”

I pull a face.

“You’re going to be sixteen,” he mutters, exasperated. “That’s when women get married and have children.”

“Do you think you’re going to marry me then?” I ask, bursting out laughing.

He goes quiet.

At noon there are so many drums and trumpets and firecrackers that the earth shakes. Through the windows I can see over the walls to where men and women dressed in red are dancing on stilts, weaving past each other in the sky, up between the trees.

Lu blocks his ears, but I find that the popular music heightens my concentration rather than distracting me. The winter light, tinted by the bright colors in the street, plays on the go-board. All these festivities cut me off from the rest of the world. My loneliness is like a bolt of crimson silk stowed in the bottom of a wooden chest.

After lunch my cousin drifts off into some vague meditation. He wipes a few stray tears from the corners of his eyes. I can no longer play the fool, so I say nothing. A silence as heavy as a plate of cold, unsalted noodles descends on the go-board.

My cousin is uneasy; he rests his head on his hand and keeps sighing. Towards seven in the evening he makes a mistake, and later, before the game is even finished, I point out that he has already lost and that he must stick to our agreement.

He pushes back his chair and stands up.

The following morning I am told that he has left. His train is at nine o’clock, so I still have time to catch him up. At the station he seems to be waiting for me to show some remorse. Whatever he hopes, I will never beg him for anything-it would only encourage him in his stupid ideas. He has offended me and he must submit to the punishment. Later I will write to him, I will call him back to me when his impure thoughts have given way to the humility of the defeated.

Our platoon has surrounded a village shrouded in snow. The occupants were warned that we were coming, and men, women and children have fled, leaving just a few old people huddled in their tiny houses, which look all the more dismal with their scanty New Year decorations.

We round them up in the middle of the village. They have hardly any clothes, but they hide their skeletal bodies under darned old blankets, and their inane expressions under their fur hats. They shiver and moan, seeking to make us feel sorry for them. Try as I might to talk to them in Mandarin, they do not understand a word and answer in some unintelligible dialect. Exasperated, I threaten them with my pistol, and three of them throw themselves at my feet, clutching my legs and pleading their innocence in perfect Mandarin. Horrified, I try to break away by beating them back with the butt of my rifle, but they cling to me all the harder and press their heads against my thighs.

My obvious embarrassment makes the soldiers laugh.

“Come and help me, you idiot!” I call to one of them. His laughter turns to a grimace of resentment and, in one swift movement, he takes his rifle from his shoulder and plunges the bayonet into the leg of one of the old men.