by Shan Sa
I have to cry, but the tears won’t come. I scratch his back and he groans. With eyes closed, cheeks flaming and blue rings under his eyes, Min kisses me with the desperate ardor of a collector who has made a rare discovery.
Above the tops of the trees, the town melts away in a light mist. My silence doesn’t discourage him: he takes me to the monastery at the top of the hill and orders some tea from a young monk. After filling my cup, he snaps open some watermelon seeds and looks out over the view, whistling. Avoiding his eyes, and the eyes of the monks who are staring at me, I drain my cup of tea, get up, smooth my crumpled skirt and go back down the steps four at a time.
The sun is sinking, a mask of red lacquer. Beyond the city walls, the melting snow reveals the scorched earth beneath. The villages blend into the parcels of black soil, and the trees flatten out and disappear into the surrounding folds created by the cloak of twilight.
That night I dream that Cousin Lu bursts into my room, comes over to me, takes my hand and presses it to his chest. I am disgusted and I try to shake him off, but his fingers are insistent and I can feel their heat. A strange languorous feeling washes over me.
Horrified, I wake to find I am bathed in sweat.
32
At the beginning of that autumn I received a letter from a woman asking me to meet her in a park. I was sure this was to be my answer on the subject of the apprentice geisha, and I went to the appointed place at ten o’clock in the morning, having made up my mind to say no.
Under a flaming maple a woman sat on a stone bench dotted with rust-colored lichen. Her hair was knotted in a simple chignon and she was wearing an indigo-blue cotton kimono held at the waist with an orange belt.
I could not believe my eyes: it was Sunlight but, without makeup, her pale lips scarcely pink, she looked like a child of ten. She stood up and bowed in greeting.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
We sat perched at either end of the bench. She had her back half-turned to me and she remained completely silent.
I could not find the words I had prepared.
After a long while, I asked whether she would like to walk in the park. She walked behind me, taking tiny steps. All the maples were ablaze and the ginkgoes were a bright yellow; the autumn wind wafted their fiery leaves over us. We crossed a wooden bridge, circled a pool of emerald-green water bordered with chrysanthemums, and came to a stop in an open pavilion from which we could gaze out at the cloudless sky and decorative rocks crawling with ivy. The only sounds were the rustling of her kimono and the birdsong. Our shared silence was complicit. I could not break it.
As we left the park, she bowed deeply and walked away.
33
On the Square of a Thousand Winds I am playing against Wu, the antique dealer, having agreed to give him eight handicap points. When he is beaten, he slinks away with a sigh.
Just one game of go is enough to exhaust most players. They need to eat and sleep in order to return to their normal state, but I react differently: my mind is whirring from the very beginning of the game, and the effort of concentration stimulates a paroxysm of excitement in me. For hours after the game is over I don’t know how to let out the force that’s accumulated within me, and I search in vain for some form of release.
Today, as on every other day, I head for home, taking great powerful strides. The most extraordinary daydreams come to me: I feel as if I no longer belong to the world of mortals; I see myself joining the ranks of the gods.
A man calls out to me and I look up and see Jing crossing the road on a bicycle. There’s a birdcage covered in a blue cloth on the rack behind his seat. He brakes alongside me.
“What are you doing here with that cage?”
He tears off the cloth and proudly shows off two robins.
“These birds love going out for a ride. Usually people swing the cage along as they go for their morning walk. But I could die of boredom walking like an old man, so this is my latest invention.”
I laugh, and he asks whether I would like him to take me home. Darkness has fallen and I can no longer make out the faces of the passersby: I can climb onto his bicycle with no fear of being recognized. I’m holding the cage with my left arm and I put my right arm round Jing’s waist. He sets off and I have to cling to his waistcoat to keep my balance. My fingers slip on the silk and fur, holding firm on a level with his stomach. Under the fur-lined waistcoat he is wearing a cotton tunic. The warmth of his skin burns my hand through the weave of the fabric. With each movement of his legs, the muscles contract and relax beneath my fingers. Disconcerted, I remove my arm, but Jing then leans into a corner, forcing me to hold him all the more tightly.
I ask him to stop beside the back door. The street has high walls on both sides and is poorly lit by one feeble streetlamp. Jing’s cheeks are burning red, he is breathing noisily and fumbling for his handkerchief.
I press mine to his forehead. He thanks me and wipes his face, which is dripping with sweat. Embarrassed by my watching him, he turns towards the wall and unbuttons his tunic to run the handkerchief over his chest. I ask whether he has any news of Min.
“I’m seeing him tomorrow at the university . . .”
I hand the cage to him and he takes it firmly in his arms.
“Your hankie smells nice,” he says, almost in a whisper.
A loud clatter makes us both start: the bicycle was not properly balanced against the tree and it has fallen over. Jing bends over, picks it up and flees like a hunted hare.
34
The train comes to a sharp halt. The jolt tears me from my sleep and I hear the order to start marching. As I get out of the carriage, dawn clasps me in its icy fingers. Under a sky tinged with the tiniest hint of mauve, the scorched earth lies uninterrupted as far as the eye can see: not one crop, not a single tree.
The train leaves and we envy our comrades who are traveling on into the inner territories. Our detachment has responsibility for the security of a small town in southern Manchuria, with the curious name of A Thousand Winds.
Huddling my neck right down inside the collar of my uniform, I continue to doze and let the rhythm of the marching carry me along. In just a few months I have learned to sleep and walk at the same time. The regular swinging of my legs warms me and the rocking motion soothes me.
The “wedding night” took place in a pavilion in the middle of the park where Sunlight had already asked me to meet her. After dinner a young servant girl took me to a bedroom where a futon had been unfolded. She helped me to undress and to put on a yukata. I lay down on my back with my arms crossed and tried to gather my thoughts.
I did not know the time, but it must have been late. The silence was oppressive; it was hot. I got up and pulled aside the screens that led out onto the veranda.
The moon was ringed with opaque clouds, and the croaking toads and sighing crickets seemed to be answering each other’s calls in the darkness. I closed the doors and went back to the bed. My feeling of intoxication melted away as I became increasingly impatient. I had never come across virginity, so how would I know what to do?
An almost imperceptible sound made me look up. Sunlight was standing in the doorway, draped in a white kimono. She bowed slightly. Her face was painted in a regal mask, which made her seem all the more inaccessible. She crossed the room silently like a ghost and shut herself in the next room.
She came back out without her ceremonial kimono, but wrapped in a crimson yukata. Her jet-black hair stood out against the fiery silk. She was just a little girl.
She sat for a long time with her hands on her knees, staring into space, then suddenly broke the silence: “Take me in your arms, please.”
I held her awkwardly, pressing my cheek against hers. Her perfume wafted from the neckline of her yukata, making my heart pound.
She lay with her arms by her sides as if she were dead. When I parted her legs she nervously held me to her with all her might. I had to force open her tightly clamped thighs and found that she
was icy-cold between her legs. I was dripping with sweat and my sweat mingled with hers, carving dark furrows through her white makeup. Her soaked hair snaked across her cheeks, sometimes creeping into my mouth. She was like a strangled animal, unable to let out even the slightest sound. I wanted to kiss her, but I found the bright-red lipstick repulsive. I stroked her body, enveloped as it was in the yukata. It felt clammy and feverish, and her flesh puckered into goose pimples wherever my fingers touched. In the depths of her pupils I suddenly saw the same terrible fear I had seen in the eyes of condemned men before their execution.
I felt crushed and overwhelmingly discouraged. I let myself fall away from her body and went down on my knees.
“What is it?” she asked in a wavering voice.
“I’m so sorry.”
She burst into tears. “Oh, please.”
Her despair was indescribably distressing. I thought I knew about women but, at twenty, I did not yet know that beyond the realms of pleasure, men enter a twilight world where dignity is lost and where devastated souls stumble through the darkness masked like performers in the theater of Noh. I decided to cover her face with the sheet in which we were both lying and to lift up the bottom of her yukata. In the lamplight her legs looked deathly pale. The long cleft between her legs had sleek fur like an otter. I tried to imagine she was just a prostitute picked up in the street. I could not think of her as just a cavity to be filled by a triumphant phallus seeking its glorious release.
I masturbated, but my member did not respond. Seeing how still the young girl was, I thought suddenly that she had suffocated and was lying there dead.
I lifted the sheet: Sunlight was crying.
To save face, I cut my arm with a dagger and let my blood flow onto the strip of white cloth that was meant to be colored by her virginal blood. A little before dawn, I helped her repowder her face. She rolled up the bloodied strip, put it up her sleeve and left.
35
Huong comes home with me after lessons today. We have supper with my parents and then shut ourselves in my room to play a game of chess.
“I’m going to be married,” she announces, advancing her knight.
“Now, that’s good news,” I say, convinced she is joking. “Who’s the lucky man? Do I know him?”
She doesn’t answer and I look up to see her holding a pawn between her fingers, resting her cheek on her left hand. The lamplight picks out two lines of tears running down her nose. Horrified, I beg her to talk, but she breaks down and cries.
I watch her with a tight sensation round my heart: since I met Min and Jing, Huong has become less important to me. The parties don’t seem so much fun anymore and I refuse all her invitations. When she walks home with me after school, I hardly listen to her chattering—my mind is on other things.
“I’m engaged.”
“Who to?”
She stares at me for a long time. “The younger son of the mayor of our town.”
I roar with laughter.
“Where on earth did he spring from? You’ve never told me about him. Why were you hiding him? You must have played green plums and bamboo horses together when you were children, and then bumped into him one day in town. Where is he studying? Is he good-looking? I hope you’re going to live here. Look, I don’t know why you’re crying. Is something wrong?”
“I’ve never met him. My father and stepmother decided for me. I have to go back to the country at the end of July.”
“Don’t tell me they’re forcing you to marry a stranger!”
Huong cries all the more desperately.
“They can’t be,” I say indignantly. “Surely you’re not going to accept this nonsense? Times have changed. Nowadays girls don’t belong body and soul to their parents.”
“My father’s written to me . . . If I refuse, he’ll stop . . . he’ll stop supporting me . . .”
“The bastard! You’re not some trinket that can be bartered! You’ve just escaped from your stepmother’s clutches. You’re not going to let yourself fall into the hands of a mother-in-law, some rural harridan who smokes a pipe and spends her days drugged on opium, jealous because you’re young and well educated. She’ll humiliate you and belittle you until you’re like her—frustrated, sulky and nasty. You’ll have a big fat father-in-law who spends his evenings with prostitutes and comes home blind-drunk and shouts at your husband. Your husband will get bored with you; you’ll live in a huge house surrounded by women: servants, cooks, your father-in-law’s concubines, your husband’s concubines, sisters-in-law, the mothers and sisters of your sisters-in-law, and they’ll all be scheming to attract the men’s attention and to stab you in the back. You’ll be given children: if you have a son you’ll be respected, but if you have a daughter they’ll treat you like their dogs or their pigs. Then one day they’ll renounce you in a letter and you’ll bring nothing but shame on your family . . .”
“Stop it, please . . .” cries Huong, stifled by her tears.
Knowing that I have made her suffer, I go to fetch a damp towel. I make her clean up her face and drink a cup of tea.
She calms down a little.
“I know it’s difficult to disobey your father. In the past, disobedience was a crime, but nowadays it’s the only way of ensuring your happiness. If your father stops supporting you, my parents will help you. We’ll go to university together. Come on.”
Dragging Huong by the hand, I go over to the little red lacquered cupboard where I keep my treasures, and remove the padlock. Among the books, the scrolls of calligraphy and the vials of ink in their wooden case, I find my embroidered silk purse. I open it under the lamp and show Huong my jewels.
“We’ll sell them. They’ll pay for our studies.”
Her tears well up again immediately.
“My mother left me hers. My father took them from me to give to his new wife.”
“Stop sniveling. If you have a choice between money and freedom, you mustn’t hesitate for a moment. Now, dry your tears. Everything that is mine is yours. Stop torturing yourself.”
It is well into the night, and Huong has slipped into restless sleep beside me. I listen to the wind and the cats running along the rooftops.
The image of my sister Moon Pearl comes into my mind: her legs are svelte, fine as bamboo stalks. She is proudly showing me the present my brother-in-law gave her for their reconciliation, a pair of milky-white satin shoes embroidered with tiny butterflies. Her naked foot inside this dazzling shoe is as beautiful as her hand, gloved in silk and bearing a pink coral ring. Then the happiness falls from her face. She looks pale, her hair is unkempt, she has dark rings under her eyes and lines on her forehead. Her eyes are lifeless, and she stares vacantly into the distance. She is counting the minutes and praying that her husband will be home before midnight. There is something terrible about this body already withering with old age and ugliness. To me, Moon Pearl is not a woman but a flower slowly wilting.
My mother is not a woman, either: she belongs to the race of the crucified. I see her copying out Father’s manuscript and researching information for him. Her eyesight is failing, her back hurts, she is wearing herself out for something that will never bring her honor in her own right. When Father is maligned and persecuted by his jealous colleagues, she consoles him and defends him. Three years ago, when he had a child with a young student, she hid her pain, and when the girl came to our door one morning with the baby in her arms, Mother gave her everything she had and then sent her away. She bought peace in our household at the expense of her own soul. She never cried once.
Who really deserves to be called a woman?
36
I went back to the prostitutes: I found them reassuring and I was certain they would give me an erection, but I was so haunted by the image of Sunlight that my moment of ecstasy was shot through with pain. The geisha now had a banker as her protector, and she was beginning to make a reputation for herself. It was not long before she moved only in the most elevated circles and I lost track of
her.
I saw her again one misty evening two years later, climbing into a rickshaw on the other side of the road. She was wearing a heavy, rounded headdress and a sumptuous coat. She saw me, pretended not to notice and glided off into the darkness like a goddess returning to the heavens.
When I returned from my posting in Manchuria, I went to her house and her mother invited me in. I waited in a silent room, sipping sake for what seemed like a long time. Late into the night she came home from an official reception, wearing a black kimono which had golden waves embroidered along the hem over a hand-painted gray sea. Her hair was wet because of the thin, icy rain, and she wiped her handkerchief over it. I had not seen her for years: the slight hollowness of her cheeks accentuated the hard look in her eyes. She seemed exhausted, spent. As I studied her face— which had become the face of a woman—I felt I had been betrayed.
She sat down opposite me with her eyes lowered and her hands on her knees, and her shyness reminded me of our walk in the park. We sat in silence for a long time: a great river lay between us and neither of us had the strength to cross it.
“I’m leaving for Manchuria.”
Unmoved, she did not even blink.
“I shall never forget you,” she said.
Those words were enough; I bowed deeply and got to my feet. She stayed there motionless. There was not a tear or even the slightest sigh to mark this bitter, liberating farewell.
37
As I come out of school I see Min leaning up against a tree. I catch his eye and then lower my head and continue on my way.