“Have you gone mad? Why are you coming out with all this rubbish?”
A long time passes before Huong replies, her pen scratching squeakily on the scrap of paper: “I’ve never admitted this to you, but I met a banker two years ago and I became his mistress yesterday. He will come collect me from school later and he’ll set me up in one of his houses. He will pay my father a substantial sum and I won’t have to see the old man again.”
As I wonder which of the two of us has lost her senses, our frantic correspondence is interrupted by the bell. I put my things in my bag and leave the room without saying a word to Huong.
“You’re ashamed of me, aren’t you?” she says, stopping me in the street.
I shake my head and start to move away from her quickly. She throws herself after me.
“Please,” she begs, “don’t abandon me! Don’t go to Peking! I can feel something terrible will happen to you there. Swear to me that you won’t see Jing again. Swear to me that you’ll stay! I’ll tell your parents. They’ll shut you in…”
As I barge past her she trips and falls. I immediately regret knocking her down, but I can’t find it in myself to hold out a hand to help her up, and I run away.
84
Orchid is surprised and obviously very happy to see me. In no time she has slipped out of her dress and taken off my uniform. I let myself be manipulated. Her nakedness gives me an erection and the pleasure I experience as I penetrate her is as confusing as the half-day that has preceded it. The Manchurian girl screams, and her cries give me a headache. When suddenly she loosens her grip and tries to push me away, I do not retreat until I have reached a violent climax. She writhes on the bed, hiding her crotch with her hands and sobbing. I cannot believe it. This madwoman is still jealous!
Sitting on a chair I gulp down a cup of tea. With her still sniveling, I wash myself meticulously and dress to leave.
“Go away!” she shrieks in a cracked voice. “Go away, and don’t come back again.”
I head for the door, but she throws herself at me, showering my boots with her tears.
“Forgive me,” she moans, “don’t leave me…”
I push her aside with my foot.
As I head for the Square of a Thousand Winds I realize that I am the most pitiful man in the world-something in me has broken. It’s the same feeling I had as a child after the earthquake: an inescapable emptiness and a constant buzzing in my ears. Reason tells me I should not return to the go table, but my legs carry me there all the same. Though I want to run away from what I am losing, I rush headlong towards disaster.
The Chinese girl is already there, wearing a new dress. Her stiff collar, held tightly closed by two covered buttons, gives her face a dignity I haven’t seen before. My heart beats painfully fast and my face burns. Keeping my eyes fixed on the stones, I bow to her and sit down.
The checkered board is a violent sea with white and black waves chasing and crashing into each other. Towards the four shores they draw back, spin round and head for the skies. But where they mingle, they clash and come together in a fierce embrace.
As usual, she says nothing-silence is an impenetrable mystery of all women, but hers particularly stifles me. What is she thinking about? Why does she not talk to me? They say women have no memory… Has she forgotten everything already?
It is true that yesterday evening as we walked down the hill I lacked the courage to take her in my arms. She expected from me the love that a Chinese man would show a Chinese woman. But how could I open my heart without betraying my country? How could I tell her that we are separated by a looking glass, going round in circles, each in a world hostile to the other’s?
Her stones are soaring now. Her moves come faster and faster. Her varied stratagems multiply, filling me with awe.
Suddenly her rhythm slows.
85
Each move sees my sinking soul take another step downwards. I have always loved the game of go for its labyrinths. Each stone’s position evolves as you move the others around it. As the relationships among them grow more and more complex, the transformations never quite tally with what you had conceived. Go makes nonsense of your calculations, and defies your imagination. Each new formation is as unpredictable as the choreography of the clouds, a betrayal of what might have been. There is no rest, you’re always on the alert, always faster, heading for some part of yourself that is slyer and freer, but also colder, more calculating and more deadly. Go is a game of lies; you surround the enemy with monstrous traps for the sake of the only truth-which is death.
Rather than go home, where Mother is waiting to take me to the doctor, I have resolved to brave the game’s crushing authority.
So, here I am facing the board and my stranger.
He looks so ordinary in his slightly outdated tunic, his hat and his glasses, but there is something about him that betrays a change in him. Though he has shaved carefully, the powerful growth of his stubble gives his tanned cheeks a bluish shadow. Nestled between his thick black eyelashes gleam two diamonds with thin ellipses of purple under these sparkling eyes. I remember Min’s eyes held the same fire after he had climaxed inside me.
Embarrassed, I look away. The other tables on the Square of a Thousand Winds are deserted. My countless games of go are rushing back to me: almost forgotten faces merge together in the mask of my opponent’s face. He has the nobility of a man who prefers the turnings of the mind to the barbarities of life.
If I leave with Jing I would be entrusting my new life to him. But I am no longer attracted to him. His dark face used to fire my imagination. His jealousy intoxicated me. The tips of my fingers still recall the smooth, firm feel of his skin that day he gave me a lift on his bicycle. Now he is nothing but a beggar plaguing me.
The convoluted spell that bound Min, Jing and me has been broken. I was fascinated by a hero with two heads: Jing is nothing without Min, and Min wouldn’t have meant anything without Jing. The love of a survivor would stifle me with its weight. How can I explain to him all that remains between us is a nostalgia for a lost happiness and a bit of affectionate pity?
But if I don’t run away today, my mother will force me to see the doctor and he will surely find me out. Huong has chosen to sell herself, but I refuse to see her wearing expensive clothes and an affable little smile. Min is dead and Jing has been struck down, diminished forever. This town is a graveyard. What is there to keep me here?
My opponent leans towards me and whispers, “I’m sorry, I have to go. Can we meet again tomorrow?”
I am devastated by these terribly ordinary words. The game of go has made it possible for me to overcome my pain; one move at a time I have come back to life. If I leave the game now I would be betraying the one man who has remained faithful to me.
86
Night is falling, reminding me that I have a barracks to get back to and a meeting with Captain Nakamura. The Chinese girl carries on playing in the dark. I am already late, but the thought of being alone with her under a starry sky inspires a breezy whim: “I’m sorry, Captain, you’ll just have to wait.”