by Shan Sa
The rickshaw stops at the foot of the hill, and I start to climb. The Stranger follows me, still silent, as the wind wafts the bitter perfume of wildflowers over us. My legs are shaking and I can’t breathe very easily, but luckily I have started to sweat and the fever seems to be breaking. I wait for the Stranger, who is walking slowly with his hands crossed behind his back. He looks up, but lowers his eyes at once.
Who is he? Where is he from? The answers would only erase the peculiar and familiar, disturbing and fleeting figures that people our dreams.
We go past the path that leads to the place where I sat on the chipped marble carved into the shape of a flower and faced Min, waiting for my first kisses.
After the broken-down pavilion, I head deep into a pine wood where the path peters out. Insects are calling, the shiver of wind has dropped and here and there rays of sunlight stream through like waterfalls. A clearing.
Love has been buried forever under the leaves at my feet. I lie down on the ground and rest my head on my bag. The grass tickles my arms where I bend the stalks under my neck.
I want to sleep.
78
She leans towards me in the middle of the clearing.
“Watch over me. Don’t wake me if I fall asleep.” And she lies down in the grass under a tree, her head resting on her school bag.
I am so amazed I do not know what to do. I understand everything and I understand nothing. She wants me with her under this tree. Has this girl, who understands how dangerous it is to be surrounded, who calculates ten moves in advance to avoid a trap . . . has she just stepped into the web of human emotions and handed herself over to me?
I touch the gun hidden under my tunic. Could she have discovered my true identity? Is she setting a trap for me? The trees and bushes circle me in threat. I listen intently: nothing except for birdsong, the monotonous chirping of the cicadas and the whisper of a spring.
I go over to the Chinese girl. She has curled up on her left side with her eyes closed and her legs slightly bent. I wave a fan over her to drive away a bee, which has mistaken the fine down on her face for the pistil of a flower. She does not react; I lean closer. Her chest rises and falls with the regular rhythm of her breathing. She has gone to sleep!
I sit down against the tree that casts its shade over us. There is something moving about the young girl’s deep sleep. I decide to wait until she wakes, and surrender to a peaceful somnolence, sheltered from the heat. My eyelids grow heavy and, lulled by the insects’ monotonous hum, I close my eyes.
How did this story start? I lived in Japan and she in Manchuria. One snowy morning our division set off for the mainland. From the bridge we could see a misty sea of buffeting waves. China was a distant, invisible land, still an abstraction to me. From all this gray immobility, railways sprang up, and woods and rivers and towns. A tortuous path of fate took me to the Square of a Thousand Winds, where this adolescent girl was waiting for me.
I do not remember my first game of go; it’s been fifteen years since I learned to play. Since then I have made a point of challenging those adults who condescended to grant me handicaps. They would mock my opening tactics; my sieges were as leaden as a full meal in a starving man’s belly. At that stage in my life I could no more imagine the future than I could the past. It has taken many years for the game of go to initiate me into the freedom of slipping between yesterday, today and tomorrow. From one stone to the next, from black to white, the thousands of stones have ended up building a bridge far into the infinite expanse of China.
I open my eyes again. Up in the sky a mountain of clouds with deep valleys throws an eerie relief over the clearing. The grass, branches and flowers that were invisible in the incandescent light now have clear outlines as if newly chiseled. The trees rustle in the wind, but the Chinese girl sleeps on through this concert of kotos, flutes and samisens. Her dress covers her down to the ankles. Dead leaves have fallen onto her, transforming the violet-blue fabric, creased along the undulations of her body, into a sumptuous drape embellished with folds, furrows and unfurling waves. Will she get up and dance here on this stage, which is the preserve of the gods and of all those who dream?
The sun emerges from behind a cloud, laying a mask of gold over the sleeping girl’s face. She moans and rolls over onto her right side, her left cheek marked by twigs. I open my fan silently and hold it over her head. Her knitted brows relax and the hint of a smile appears on her lips.
I gently caress her body with this artificial shade. An uncontrollable surge of pleasure sweeps over me. I shut the fan abruptly.
How could I have confused modesty with indifference; how could I have been immune to her messages? She already loved me when I thought of her as a little girl. It must be the power of this passion that she has kept hidden for so long that has made a woman of her. Here, today, she is offering herself to me with extraordinary audacity. Compared to her I seem a coward, and only moments ago I was afraid this was a trap, I hesitated to take her in my arms, fearing for my own life.
The war is just about to explode. Tomorrow I will leave for the front and I will abandon her. How could I exploit her virginity with a clear conscience?
A soldier deserves death, not love.
I close my eyes and try to regain my senses. I set against this sun-drenched clearing the image of a snowfield, trenches dug out of frozen earth, and decomposing bodies.
Something knocks against my leg: the Chinese girl is curling up more tightly. She looks as if she is in pain. Is she cold? It can only harm a pampered creature like her to sleep on the bare ground for too long. I shake her gently, but instead of waking she shudders and goes on with her nightmare. I take her hands and hold them on my knees. She seems to calm down.
I think I can make out a glimmer of happiness through the closed lids of her eyes.
79
I have to go see Moon Pearl on the other side of town. Mother tells me not to, worrying I won’t be back in time for lunch. I laugh and say, “Look!”: as I stamp my foot I leap off the ground. But instead of falling back down to earth, I am carried, beating my wings. Our house quickly becomes a brick, then a grain of sand lost in the garden of our town.
There is not one cloud, not a single bird in front of me. I glide and bank, carried by the wind, spiraling tirelessly upwards into infinity. Suddenly eternal night falls, a deep, cold darkness. The stars don’t twinkle, they just stare thoughtfully. Drawn by their motionless brilliance, I prepare to meet them when a sharp pain pierces through my entrails.
I tumble back down, paralyzed by the spasm and flapping my hands, my feet and my wings, but there is nothing to hold me, nothing to carry me aloft. In the blink of an eye I travel back across my town, into my house, and continue to fall.
My whole body is on fire. I feel sick. I scream in horror.
Someone grabs hold of my body as I fall. Who has arms long enough to fish me from the depths of the ocean? I stop moving. I mustn’t move, so he will be able to pull me from the darkness. Firmly but gently he leads me back out of the depths, towards life, like a midwife guiding a baby to its birth. The warmth of his palms spreads through me. I am naked, creased, red, huddled. I am intimidated by the light, by the rustlings of the world. I shudder with pleasure.
When I open my eyes I look straight into the eyes of a stranger, and leap to my feet. He stands up too, but I grab my bag and run away.
The sunset has thrown its crimson cloak over the hills. Yesterday I still couldn’t face the flaming red of twilight; it reminded me of that red sun suspended in the mist on the morning of the execution. Now I look at it defiantly.
It takes me a long time to find a rickshaw. The sun is shrinking on the horizon, and crows launch themselves into the wan darkness. Soon I am swallowed up in the night. The road goes through a huge field of wheat where fireflies zigzag back and forth.
The moon looks like a line of chalk drawn on the sky.
The Stranger is following me, and I am both frightened and delighted by the sound o
f his footsteps. Will he catch up with me?
I’m no longer afraid of ghosts: Min and Tang went back to their graves last night—may they rest in peace! I am a different woman now and I carry my name the way a cicada carries the memory of the ground in which it slumbered before its metamorphosis. I am not afraid of anything anymore.
The man is keeping his distance.
Finally a rickshaw passes and I call it. I climb in alone and the boy starts to pull away.
“Wait!” The Stranger puts out his hand, holding the boy back. “Wait,” he says again in a trembling voice.
Under the streetlight, he looks oddly tall and solitary. He seems to caress my face with his eyes.
I lower my gaze and stare at the rickshaw boy’s back.
The rickshaw swings into motion, and the voice fades behind me.
“You will come and play tomorrow, won’t you?”
I look up. Through a fog of tears I look hungrily out onto the black countryside. I feel ridiculous to catch myself crying. The shadows of passersby stumble on the pavement, all the houses are lit up and hundreds of lives unreel through the windows.
80
In my exhaustion I decide to go to bed without supper. On my bed I find the mail that arrived in the afternoon.
With the unfailing fluency and calm of the cultivated woman she is, Mother records the event of the month: Little Brother has set out for China.
“At first I was amazed by the silence in the house,” she writes. “To stop myself thinking about the fact that we are all apart, I have busied myself tidying up. Organizing things helps me forget that you’re not here. When I came across the kimonos you wore as children, I could scarcely believe that you were both already fighting for the Emperor.”
In his letter, Little Brother begs me to forgive him: he had no time to ask my permission to leave our mother.
“We will see each other soon in China, at the front. You’ll be proud of me!”
I would have preferred this naive boy stay where he was, safe from the cruelties of war. But how could I deny him the chance to put his country before his own life? As a child he idolized me, but after Father’s death he rebelled against my authority. Now I am his example once again.
My poor mother; all her men have left and the gods have condemned her to live alone. I can’t bear to imagine the pain she will suffer when she will receive two urns of ashes.
Through the wall I can hear a game of cards in full swing.
“Double my stake!”
“Me too!”
Every soldier has his own way of defying the future.
I think of my mother’s slender frame wrapped in a widow’s kimono. Then I see the Chinese girl curled up on the grass. They are different but share a common fate: the insurmountable sorrow of an impossible love.
Women are the offerings we make to this vast world.
81
Mother grills me when I return home.
“Where were you? Why are you home so late?”
I lie badly, but for some strange reason she pretends to believe me. Father is reading the paper, an enigmatic smile on his lips. He doesn’t say a word to me all evening.
I gobble down the leftovers in the kitchen—my appetite is back, and for two days now I have been better able to tolerate smells. Mother comes in silently and sits down facing me. In the half-light the red lacquered table looks almost black, polished meticulously, smooth as a mirror, by the cook. Unable to avoid her gaze, I count the grains of rice on the ends of my chopsticks.
Descended from a line of Chinese nobility whose women breast-fed the Manchurian emperors, Mother has seen all her ancestors’ pomp and splendor eradicated, and her heart has hardened. She seals memories away in chests, and now she watches the world deteriorate with the cold dignity of a woman wronged.
In England she grew disenchanted with China. In fact my sister often used to say that, had it not been for Father, Mother would never have come back. Unlike most Chinese women, who overflow with maternal love, Mother maintains a courtly distance and eschews any show of affection. Her anger, too, is provoked only by formalities: being a few minutes late, a lack of courtesy, a crumpled book . . .
“You’ve lost weight,” says Mother.
My heart sinks: what is she saying?
“You don’t look well. Let me take your pulse.”
I slowly extend my left arm to her, and carry on eating with my right. Might she discover my secret?
“Weak and irregular,” she says after squeezing my wrist awhile. “I must take you to see my doctor. Girls your age are weakened by the changes in their bodies. That’s why the ancients used to marry them very young, to stabilize them.”
I don’t dare argue with her.
“You must have some swallows’ nest soup,” she says, getting up, “it warms the blood and the intestines, it harmonizes the ebb and flow of energy. And tomorrow we will go see old Master Liu for some medicinal infusions. Perhaps I’ll take you to the American hospital as well. The holidays start at the end of this week. Your sister is coming home, and I’ll keep both of you under my roof to get you both back to health.”
Panicked, I tell her that I won’t have time to go to the doctor tomorrow.
“You don’t have lessons at the end of the afternoon,” she replies.
“I have to finish my game of go. It’s very important.”
Mother is angry, but her voice stays calm.
“I have given you too much freedom, you and your sister. It does you no good. Forget your game,” she says, heading from the kitchen, then she turns in the doorway and says, “That dress belongs to your sister, it’s too long for you and the color doesn’t suit you. Where are the dresses I had made for you a couple of months ago?”
Back in my room, I slump down onto my bed. I lose less blood in the night, but I still sleep fitfully. Huong, dressed in red and covered in jewels and embroidery, bows to a horribly ugly man. She is in tears and she looks like a goddess who has been banished from the heavens. A stranger notices how sad I am, and takes my hand. His hand, rough as a pumice stone, soothes my agitated nerves. Behind him I can see Min under a tree before the Temple of the White Horse. He smiles at me before disappearing into the crowd.
In the morning my whole body feels slack and my skin dry. To please my mother I put on one of the new dresses and the stiff fabric chafes me.
At the temple crossroads I glance over at the tree where Min was standing in my dream. There is a man crouching there and when I meet his eye, my blood freezes: it’s Jing!
I jump out of the rickshaw. He has lost ten kilos, his face is hidden under a hat and has sprouted a black beard, but still I see it’s badly scarred. When I go towards him, he backs away. For a long time he says nothing, just staring at the ants climbing up the tree in an unbroken line.
“I betrayed them,” he says in a sullen voice that makes me shiver. “Their bodies were thrown into a common grave. I couldn’t even go and make my peace at their tombs.”
Jing bangs his head against the tree trunk. I take his arm, but he shakes me off.
“Don’t touch me,” he says. “I confessed it all, told them everything. It was easy as pissing, I had no shame. I wasn’t thinking about anyone. The words just came out, I couldn’t stop them. It was intoxicating, destroying everything . . .”
Jing bursts out laughing, shakes his head violently.
“You’re the only one who doesn’t look at me as if I were a monster,” he says. “My father prays for my death and forbids my mother to see me.”
He punches the tree so hard that his hand splits open.
I pass him a handkerchief and he whispers, “I can’t go back to the university now. I’m so ashamed. I live like a rat, hiding from my friends and frightening children in the street. I can’t sleep at night—the Resistance Movement will send out their killers for me. ‘In the name of the Resistance, in the name of the Chinese people, in the names of the victims and their families, we send you on your way to hell . .
.’ You’ll see my body left at the crossroads, with a sign round my neck: ‘He betrayed, now he’s paid!’ ”
I can find no words to comfort him. He looks at me searchingly, then throws himself at me and squeezes my hands so tightly that it hurts.
“You should know the truth. Min was married to Tang in prison so that he could be united with her to face death. But I’ve only ever loved you. Of the two of us, Min committed the first betrayal: he betrayed you and I was disgusted. And so I refused to follow him. I wanted to marry you, I wanted to protect you, I wanted to see you before I died, to tell you how much I loved you. I traded dishonor for love. Tell me you understand! Tell me you don’t despise me!”
Suddenly I am terribly light-headed, and I try to pull free from Jing’s embrace. He stares at me and pants, “I’ve got two passports for the inner territories. Come with me. We’ll go to Peking, we can continue our studies there. I’ll work to pay for your food, to make you happy. I’ll be a rickshaw boy if I have to. The train’s at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ve already got two tickets. Come with me!”
“Let me go!” I say, fighting him off.
“You hate me,” he says with a sigh. “Go on then, look after yourself and forget about me.”
He staggers away as though from a blow to the head.
“Wait! I need to think,” I say. “Let’s meet here tomorrow.”
He turns back.
“Tomorrow or never!” he whispers, his broken figure moving away, hugging the temple walls. I notice that he is dragging his left leg like a rotten branch. The sight fills me with pain, I lean my forehead against the tree and close my eyes. The bark transmits the feeble heat of the morning sun. It feels as if Min is there next to me.