by Shan Sa
On the Square of a Thousand Winds the players remain faithful to habit and have started their games. I keep half an ear on their conversations, but they open their mouths only to comment on the game.
The Chinese girl appears on the edge of the wood and runs over to our table, light as a bird. There are beads of sweat on her brow.
“I’m sorry,” she says as she sits down.
She unties a bundle of blue cotton cloth and hands me the lacquered pot with the black stones in it.
“Go on. It’s your turn.”
I am perplexed by the apparent indifference of these people to last night’s incidents.
51
When I woke up this morning the sun had already reached the top of the pear tree. The sprigs of new leaves on every branch look like flowers lolling open.
I am happy, but this happiness doesn’t draw on a feeling of peace, it is fed by contradictory emotions. The cicadas, acutely aware of the secrets of my soul, chant gleefully. The light of a pale sky spills onto my bed through the open curtains. I imagine my town, offered up to the light, as a naked woman waiting for her lover.
Mother has gone to the market with my sister. Father has shut himself in the library where he battles assiduously with Shakespeare’s language. The house is cool and calm, the doors and windows stand open and the smell of leaves mingles with the heady fragrance of jasmine that permeates our rooms. In the sitting room Wang Ma, the maid, is busy with a feather duster.
The poor woman’s son died of tuberculosis six months ago. She goes over and over the memories of him, and the dead boy is now more alive than ever. Father listens to her— while he goes on thinking about his books—and offers her some completely meaningless comfort: “You must have strength, my dear.” She can communicate her pain more easily to Mother and Moon Pearl. Her endless reminiscences elicit their sighs and sometimes even tears, and this is what Wang Ma wishes.
This morning my compassion has changed to uneasiness. I am carrying my happiness in my belly as if I were pregnant, and I don’t want it ruined by Wang Ma’s sobbing, not at any cost. Before she even opens her mouth, I rush outside.
“I’m going to the Square of a Thousand Winds,” I say. “I’ll be back later.”
The Stranger is already waiting for me. His face is hidden by his glasses, but I can see that it is stiff and motionless like his body. Sitting bolt upright on his stool, he looks like a guard at the gates of hell in some ancient temple.
We position our soldiers at the intersections. The Stranger delimits his territories on the outer edges of the checkerboard with prodigious economy and precision. Go reflects the soul: his is meticulous and cold.
My generosity in letting him play first gives him an advantage: he is one step ahead of me in occupying the strategic positions. Disputing these with him would disadvantage me further. I decide to take a risk: sure of my base in the northwest corner, I set out to conquer the center.
It is hot and I flap my fan in vain. I am impressed by my opponent: opposite me he sits exposed to the sun and lets it burn down on him without any sign of irritation. He sits completely motionless, his face streaming with sweat, his hands on his knees and his fan held tightly closed.
The sun is reaching its highest point. I ask to break for lunch and make a note of our positions on a piece of paper. We agree to meet after the pause.
52
The Chinese girl has gone home for lunch and I choose a Korean restaurant that seems to have very few customers. I order cold noodles, and sit in a corner overlooking the whole room so that I can keep an eye on the comings and goings of the waiters as I write the beginnings of a letter to my mother.
I tell her what I need: soap, towels, newspapers, books and bean-curd cakes. My years spent at the military academy made a man of me, but my time spent far from my homeland has turned me into a capricious child. I insist on particular brands, giving details of the color and the flavor. I rewrite the list twenty times before my raging nostalgia finally calms.
How are the flowers in the garden? How is Little Brother, who has been called up by the army? Does he come home once a month? Do they give him a good meal and warm sake? What is my Little Sister doing as I think about her now? What is the weather like in Tokyo?
Everyone knows that mail can be intercepted and monitored and so, for fear of betraying military secrets, our soldiers’ letters to their families are excruciatingly bland. The replies are in the same vein. When we are gone, will the fact that we do not complain or express our fears make us look like intrepid heroes?
I pull to pieces every sentence from Japan, and my family have their own way of interpreting my words. Fearing she might weaken my will, Mother has never written that she misses me. So as not to make her cry, I have never told her how I suffer away from my country.
Only the vocabulary of death is allowed between us. She writes, “Do not hesitate to die to honor the Emperor. It is the path of your fate.” And I reply, “What joy to sacrifice myself for my beloved country.” I will not tell her that I shall also die for her glory, and she will never admit that my death will destroy her.
I end my letter thus: “According to Confucius, ‘a man who knows humanity will never agree to preserve his life at the expense of that humanity.’ This courageous virtue has become the key to my very existence. Pray, venerable Mother, I beg you, that I may soon attain this ideal.”
53
At home lunch is served in the big sitting room where the shutters have been kept closed to preserve the cool of morning. My sister has come back from market, and tells us the news she has gleaned.
Last night the Japanese army arrested some members of the Resistance Movement who were secretly planning an insurrection. The firing we heard came not from an exercise, but from true carnage.
I listen to her halfheartedly; when I am in the middle of a game of go, I am completely intoxicated and cut off from the outside world. The darkness of the sitting room reminds me of the bedroom at Jing’s house, shadowy as an imperial tomb: where the black lacquered furniture exhales a heavy scent and the cracks in the walls form mysterious frescoes. The bed covered in crimson silk embroidered with gold is an eternal fire.
“An insurrection,” my sister is saying. “Don’t you see! How stupid!” she exclaims, and then she goes on, “Do you know where the would-be rioters were arrested? Wait for it: the mayor’s own son had got them together in one of his houses. Don’t look at me as if I’m making it all up. Apparently they found guns and cases of ammunition in the cellar. What? Of course they arrested him.”
The chicken I am eating suddenly tastes of nothing. To get it down I fill my mouth with rice, but I can’t swallow it.
The cook who is serving tea intervenes: “At dawn this morning the Japanese arrested Doctor Li. He was one of the conspirators.”
Father speaks up slowly.
“I knew the mayor well. Our fathers served together in the Dowager Empress’s court. We saw a great deal of each other in our youth. He wanted to go to England to study, but his family wouldn’t let him. It’s something he has always regretted. The other day he came to say hello to me after my conference. Now that he’s fifty he looks just like his father— all he needs is the hat with the peacock feathers, the coral necklaces and the brocade tunics. As he shook my hand he told me that his elder brother, a close adviser to the Emperor of Manchuria, had found a post for him at court in the New Capital. His career will be ruined now. And what of his life and his family’s future.”
“How can you feel sorry for that man,” Mother retorts. “He loathes us. When he was adviser to the previous mayor, he schemed to have your teaching hours reduced. I suspect he even tried to have your translations banned. I haven’t forgotten anything, and I don’t care if he’s in trouble now.”
I didn’t know that my parents knew Jing’s father, and I am devastated by what they are saying—there they are sitting round the table in the half-light, commenting on all this as if it was just a gang of troublemakers
who had been arrested.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” my sister asks suddenly.
“I’ve got a stomachache.”
“You don’t look well. Go and lie down,” says my mother. “We’ll send some tea up for you.”
I lie on the bed and put my ice-cold hands over my stomach.
Where is Jing? Is Min with him? I can see each crack in the wall, every piece of furniture and every ornament in that house. They seem worn and peaceful, there isn’t the tiniest suggestion of revolt in them. And yet my friends managed to fool me. When Min put his arms round me and led me off to the bedroom, he was walking over the secrets in the cellar. When Jing talked to me in the garden and spied jealously on Min, there was a link far stronger than love between him and his friend. Why did they hide the truth from me? I would have joined them in their patriotic fervor, I would have gone to prison, I would have died beside them. Why did they seduce me only to exclude me?
When I hear my sister bringing me a cup of tea, I turn towards the wall and pretend to be asleep.
I remember the first time we met: the Resistance had launched their attack on the town hall. I was jostled by the crowd, I fell and a dark-skinned boy held out his hand to me. He had the fine, square face of the Manchurian aristocracy. Then there was Jing, cold and aloof. The two organizers of the revolt had just entered my life.
I roll over, take a few good sips of tea and begin to calm down. When Min talked about the revolution I thought he was dreaming. When he told me his life was dangerous, I made fun of his taste for adventure.
I remember Tang, the student girl who was invited to Jing’s birthday. Now I understand the importance of what she was saying: she was the daughter of a slave and she had found her strength and confidence in the Communist ideal. The Japanese invasion broke down our immutable hierarchies, and now Tang could communicate to Min—who was young, landed and noble—the dream of building a new society where all men would be equal. She persuaded him to take up arms and sign up to the Resistance Movement. And Min had dragged Jing into it. They would be shot, all three of them!
I slip out. The rickshaw takes me past Jing’s house, but the road is barred by guards.
On the Square of a Thousand Winds I lay out the stones in the positions I noted earlier. I stare at the checkered pattern and count the intersections, sinking into the oblivion of mathematics.
54
The Chinese girl looks pale after lunch, her features altered. When she reaches for a stone her hand shakes. She is silent, forbidding me to comfort her. I affect indifference so as not to distress her; she would not want to be pitied.
She seems to have aged several years in the space of a few hours. Her cheekbones are heightened by the shadows carved across her cheeks. Her face looks longer, her chin more angular.
For a moment I glimpse the terrible pain of a child whose pride has been wounded. Has she had a row with a brother? Fallen out with one of her girlfriends? She will get over it, I should not worry about her. Girls’ moods change very quickly and she will soon be smiling again.
During the previous session she struck me as a quick and spontaneous player, but today she is deliberating for hours. With her eyes lowered and her lips clamped into a hard line, she could serve as a model for the mask of a ghost woman in the theater of Noh.
She looks exhausted sitting there with her elbows on the edge of the table and her head resting in her palms. I wonder whether she is really thinking about the game. The stones betray our thoughts. One more intersection to the east and her strike would have been more substantial.
My black stone falls in alongside her. By responding aggressively I am hoping to break through her vigilance. She looks up. I think she is going to cry, but she smiles.
“Well played! Let’s meet up again tomorrow afternoon.”
I would like to carry on now, but as a matter of principle I never argue with a woman.
She makes a note of our latest moves on her piece of paper. If a game has to be interrupted during tournaments in Japan, the judge makes a note of the positions and, in front of everyone, puts this note carefully into a locked safe.
“Would you like it?” she asks me.
“No, keep it, please.”
She looks at me for a long time, and puts her stones away.
55
Min is clearly silhouetted against the sky at the far end of the street. I have been waiting at the crossroads for hours and now, as he finally cycles towards me, he greets me with a nod. I can’t take my eyes off him. His face is smooth and doesn’t betray any sign of suffering. The sweat gleams on his forehead as he smiles at me and cycles on.
I must find Jing! I get through the cordon of Japanese soldiers and go into his house. Inside its crumbling walls the house is riddled with bullet holes, and in the garden only the crimson dahlias still hold their heads high. Jing is lying on a chaise longue playing with his bird.
“I thought you were in prison.”
He looks up, his eyes filled with hate and desire.
“You are my prison.”
I wake up.
From daybreak the crossroads in front of the temple is full of traders, people out for a morning walk and Taoist monks. I sit in front of a stall and force myself to have some wonton soup. Through the steam rising from the boiling pot, I watch for Min.
People wander past, rickshaw boys wear themselves out. Where are they going? Do they have sons and brothers who have been taken prisoner by the Japanese? I envy the Taoist monks their detachment, the tiny children their ignorance and the beggars their uncomplicated misery. When a bicycle appears on the horizon I get up anxiously. For the first time I understand why people talk about keeping their eyes “peeled.”
Soon the sun is three-quarters of the way up its celestial trajectory, and I slip under a willow tree. There are Japanese soldiers marching over the crossroads with flags fixed to their bayonets. I can make out their cruel young faces under their helmets. Short and stocky with deep slits for eyes and squashed noses above their mustaches, they are the very incarnation of their insular people who, according to legend, are descended from our own. I find them disgusting.
At eleven o’clock I decide to go to school. Huong tells me that our literature teacher noticed I wasn’t there and made a note of my name.
“Why are you late?” she asks, and I tell her what has happened.
She thinks about it and then says, “You should disappear for a while. You saw a lot of Min and Jing—the Japanese could take an interest in you.”
She makes me laugh.
“If they come to look for me,” I say, “I’d gladly give myself up. Where can I hide? If I run away my parents will be sent to prison instead of me. Let them arrest me if that’s what they want!”
Huong begs me not to do anything stupid.
“I won’t do anything. I’m too sensible and too weak. I’m never going to go and set fire to the Japanese barracks to save my friends. They’re true heroes. They know how to fire a pistol, throw grenades and set dynamite to explode. They know how to risk their lives for something they believe in. But I’ve never even touched a weapon. I don’t know what they feel like or how they work. I didn’t even recognize members of the Resistance when I met them. I’m just so ordinary.”
56
Captain Nakamura sees spies everywhere, even within our own army. Unsure how accurate the Chinese interpreters are, he begs me to attend the interrogations of our new prisoners.
The cells are in a courtyard in the middle of the barracks, hidden under tall plane trees. I have scarcely set foot through the door when I am hit by the same stench as a battlefield the day after combat.
I am welcomed with open arms by Lieutenant Oka, whom Captain Nakamura has already introduced to me at dinner once in town. His uniform is made to measure, his mustache impeccable; this is a man who attaches excessive importance to his appearance.
He takes me over to a second courtyard where a Chinese man is hanging from the branch of a
tree by his feet. His naked body is crisscrossed with black marks. As we move closer a cloud of flies rises to reveal his flesh, which looks as if it has been plowed like a field.
“After I whipped him, I used a white-hot iron on him,” commented the Lieutenant.
The smell of decomposition intensifies inside the building, but Lieutenant Oka seems unperturbed and I force myself to ignore it too. He offers me a guided tour, and he shows me the cells along a long, dark corridor with all the relaxed confidence of a doctor proud of his model hospital. Through the bars I can make out mutilated bodies slumped on the ground. The Lieutenant explains that his first act when he arrived was to have the ceilings lowered so that the criminals could not stand upright; then he cut their food rations.
I am suffocated by the smell of excrement and blood and, while noticing my discomfort, my guide still manages to sound like a conscientious civil servant: “I’m so sorry, Lieutenant, when we hit these pigs with sticks they go and get diarrhea.”
Seeing these men dying in agony makes my skin crawl with goose pimples, but the Lieutenant’s serene and attentive expression forces me to hide my disgust. I must not show any lack of respect for his work and, afraid that he might mock my weak stomach, I choke back the bile rising in my throat and make a few complimentary remarks. He seems satisfied and smiles shyly.
The torture rooms are at the end of the corridor; the Lieutenant put them there deliberately so that the cries of the prisoners could ring throughout the entire building. Keen to show off his expertise, he tells his adjutant to carry on with an interrogation.
I hear a woman screaming.
“They’ve just put salt in the Communist’s wounds,” the Lieutenant explains. “When I was in training our instructors would often say that under torture women show more resistance than men. This one is especially stubborn.”