by Shan Sa
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.
7
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.”
8
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.
9
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.
10
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.
The wounded man rolls on the ground, howling in pain, and his two terrified companions fall away from me. Having recovered from the initial shock, I yell at the soldier, “You bloody fool, you could have injured me.”
Another burst of laughter from the spectators.
The cruelty of our troops is fed by our harsh upbringing: slaps, punches and insults are daily reprimands for children. As a way of cultivating submission and humility in the army, officers beat the lower rank
ing officers and soldiers until they bleed, or they slash their cheeks with specially sharpened bamboo rulers.
I find it repulsive to torture innocent people, and I feel sorry for these Chinese peasants who live in ignorance, poverty and squalor. They would scarcely care whether they had to obey a Manchurian emperor, a Chinese warlord or a Japanese emperor so long as their bellies were filled every day.
I order my soldiers to bandage the wounded man and to take the threesome back to their homes. We search their houses and take all their provisions, down to the last pinch of flour. I promise to return everything if they tell us where the terrorists are hiding.
The next day, before dawn, someone comes to wake us.
Hunger has loosened his tongue. We do not wait for the sun to rise before setting off into the snowstorm.
11
Ten days later I receive a letter from Lu. He tells me he has obtained a passport for the inner territories,6 and that by the time I read his letter he will have left for Peking. I feel strangely sad as I decipher his words. I go to the Square of a Thousand Winds, where the players, unperturbed, abandon themselves to their accustomed passion.
As a little girl I used to follow my cousin wherever he played. Once he was so much consumed by a fever that he passed out on the go-board, and I won the tournament for him, a victory by which I became the only woman to be admitted into the exclusive society of true enthusiasts.
Years have passed and now I am anxiously watching the twilight of my childhood, quietly sinking, never to rise again.
Lu doesn’t understand. He wants me to join him in the adult world, but he doesn’t realize that I think it is a sad place full of vanity, and it frightens me.
12
New orders have reached us. We have to burn the stores in all the villages so that the terrorists will have no source of supplies.
A village we have ransacked seems as forlorn as a grave. The wind’s howl mingles with the weeping of the peasants as they prostrate themselves before the ocher flames and black smoke.
For three months now the snow-clad forest has cut us off from the outside world. There is more and more violence among my men, who spend their time getting drunk and quarreling. The white, the gray, the reflected light and the endless marching are all slowly driving us mad. The day before yesterday a corporal took all his clothes off and fled. He was found unconscious in a ravine, and now we have to tie him up and pull him along by a rope round his neck. I can hear in his curses and his piercing laughter the echo of many of the ideas spinning round and round in my own head like a refrain.
We have to keep on advancing, through the snow, towards the snow.
13
I am bored at my girls’ school.
Our national education system churns out laughably affected “young ladies,” and one day my classmates will be irreproachable society women. The prettiest of them is called Huong. Her eyebrows are carefully plucked to form two perfect crescent moons above her eyes. She draws them together, screws them up, smooths them out again. But these gestures, like her mannered laugh, can’t completely disguise the uneasiness of her changing body.
The ugliest of them, although she does in fact have the longest hair in class, is called Zhou. Her unfortunate face frees her to judge things with as much scorn and bitterness as she pleases, and that is her charm. Apparently her mother, a woman built like a Mongol wrestler and the niece of a very high-ranking officer, has lost no time throwing her weight about in the capital.
Between lessons the girls talk about film stars, dresses, jewelry, marriage and the Empress’s secret affairs. No one reads any of the new literature, which venomously attacks our crumbling society; no one mentions the latest political events, which are more devastating every day. Romantic novels handed from one girl to the next elicit easy tears. In independent Manchuria we are cut off from the rest of China. It is like a silk factory, producing something so soft and wonderful, but the silkworms themselves die in a boiling bath once they have woven their delicate cocoons.
After lessons, I go to the Square of a Thousand Winds. Everything about the game of go propels me towards the world where things move and evolve. The constantly changing faces help me to forget the false certainties of my everyday life.
The girls at school have nicknamed me the “foreigner.” To them, my passion for go is like some exotic madness. The players themselves, to their credit, tend to be indulgent, so they tolerate my extravagant enthusiasm.
Twenty years ago, after he was married, Father persuaded Grandfather to send him to England to study. When he returned a year later, Father was changed and abandoned tradition: entrusting my sister, Moon Pearl, to his mother, he took my mother with him to share his troubled life in the West. This caused a great scandal in Peking, where both families were living. Maternal Grandfather, a retired court dignitary, broke off relations with Paternal Grandfather, who still held an honorable position at court. I was born in the mists of London, and it would be said that the evils of this displaced birth were soon manifested in the willfulness of my troubled soul. Sadly, I don’t have any memories of my early childhood. When the Empire collapsed, the two old men were reconciled, united in their loathing of the republicans, and they died within days of each other. My parents came back for the period of mourning and they obeyed my grandmother’s orders by leaving Peking and coming here, where my ancestors had built their hunting lodge.
Grandmother, who dreamed of peace, died the day after the war of September 18, 1931. When Chinese soldiers took refuge in our town five days after their defeat, they broke our door down, occupied the house and installed their wounded in it.
The Japanese besieged us, and the shelling went on for three days. A bomb exploded on our house and a great deal of our precious furniture served to feed the triumphant flames. The Chinese army capitulated and we never saw the soldiers again. According to the rumors, 3,000 men were taken outside the town and shot.
After Grandmother died, our life gradually resumed its normal course. The Japanese appointed a new mayor, the barricades disappeared, enemy flags flew above the roofs, Japanese shops opened and, in restaurants, the traditional white-cotton door blind was replaced with one printed with Japanese writing. Japanese women with their tall, glossy, lacquered chignons walked along our streets. Constrained by their narrow kimonos, they took tiny little steps, clacking their clogs on the cobblestones.
We had to build a new house, but inflation had made us poor. Mother dismissed her chambermaids, and kept only the cook and one maid. The ruined aristocracy was replaced by the nouveaux riches, who brought a sort of pompous gaiety to the town. Hotels, luxurious shops and elegant restaurants opened—the avenues of our town had never been so prosperous.
My parents each found their own way of escaping reality: Father toiled over the translation of an anthology of English poetry; Mother busied herself copying out his manuscript, replacing his over-hurried words with her careful calligraphy.
Mother sealed her overseas memories in a chest. When she is away I take the opportunity to steal the key, which she keeps in a vase. Photographs, clothes, letters and printed fabrics in extraordinary designs that exude a bewitching smell . . . not musk, or cedar, or sandalwood; not the flowers we have in our garden, the trees we have in our towns; but a perfume that transports me to another world.
Dreaming only deepens my sadness.
14
At last! After a month of arduous tracking through the mountains, we have trapped the terrorists. We have cornered them on the edge of a precipice, with no escape unless they can fly.
We finished the bulk of our provisions a long time ago, and while we waited for new supplies, we shared what little we had. We can each count on the fingers of one hand the biscuits that have been handed out, and which we eat with mouthfuls of snow.
Yesterday at noon, with all our ammunition spent, we decided to charge straight on at the Chinese with fixed bayonets.
This morning a strange feeling of calm has settled on
the mountain. There is not a breath of wind and only the cries of pheasants stand out against the silence. I am writing my will—the words of farewell calm my nerves.
I slowly draw the saber from its sheath, and wipe the blade with my handkerchief. This steel forged at the beginning of the sixteenth century has never shined so bright. In the past it has sliced off countless heads in the service of my ancestors. Today it is a mirror, reflecting the menacing purity of death.
Suddenly a bugle sounds. I bound out of the trench and hurl myself towards the enemy with a fierce war cry. Up on the mountaintop nothing moves: not one shadow, not a single man. The terrorists have flown away! A soldier is waving to us from the edge of the precipice. About a hundred meters below, the snow is dotted with bodies. The gunmen must have thrown down their weapons, their dead and their wounded, before hurling themselves over the edge. Now I understand why at about midday yesterday, after a violent exchange of fire, their guns fell silent.
The ammunition in both camps ran out at the same time, but neither knew of the other’s plight. We were all on the verge of collapse.
The Japanese had chosen to be glorious in their action, and the Chinese in their deaths. The pathetic heroism of their collective suicide is tainted by a sad irony: killing yourself too soon is a shameful form of surrender. The Chinese civilization is several thousand years old and has produced untold philosophers, thinkers and poets. But not one of them has grasped the irreplaceable energy of death.