by Shan Sa
As I can speak their language, my relationship with the local women takes an unusual turn: the ability to communicate fosters tenderness in even the bitterest heart. Orchid has become very attached to me; I have tamed her physically and she now swears an undying passion for me.
In her imagination this straightforward encounter between a soldier and a prostitute has been turned into a great love story. She claims that she noticed me the very day we first arrived: I was the only one out of all the soldiers streaming through who caught her eye.
She has told me she loves me so many times that I have become faithful to her. She is so ardent and open—not characteristics of our courtesans at home—that I am enchanted. She makes little presents of her handkerchiefs, her socks, locks of her hair and even a little satin cushion embroidered with erotic images. I am as delighted and flattered by these modest little tokens as I am by her frenetic desire.
43
In my country the mild and luminous month of May is more fleeting than the leap a frog makes from the bank into the water: summer is already on its way.
The first waves of heat irresistibly move my parents to take a long nap after lunch. I tiptoe through the house, slip out into the garden and leave by the back gate. I follow winding roads where the trees provide patches of shade as the sun pours its molten gold onto my head. I’m sweating and not thinking about anything.
At Jing’s house we are intoxicated by the scent of lilacs. Min is waiting for me in the bed; he has sprinkled himself from head to foot with water from the well. He is icy-cold like a pebble taken from the bottom of a stream. I throw myself at him and my burning skin almost steams as it comes into contact with his.
As I gradually discover Min’s body, inch by inch, it becomes an infinite territory to explore, as I listen to the sighs of his skin and read the map of his veins. With the tip of my tongue I write characters on his chest and he has to guess what they are. I bring my stomach to his mouth, my breasts to his forehead. Min climbs onto me in a position of prayer and, with every move he makes, he has to recite a poem. His hair tickles me and I laugh, and to punish me for making fun of him, he thrusts hard into me. The whole world is torn open, my eyes go hazy, my ears hum. I bury my fingers in my hair and bite the corner of the sheet. My eyes are half-closed and in the shadows I think I can see bright blocks of color like flags waving. Contours emerge and disappear, creatures loom out of the dark and melt away again. I am going to die. I suddenly feel as if there are two of me: one part of me leaves my body and floats in the air. She watches me, listens to my moaning and my rasping breath, then rises and disappears into some high unknown place like a bird swooping over a mountain pass, and I can no longer see her.
Min slumps down and goes to sleep with his arm over my breast. He has left a few white droplets on my stomach. They’re warm and slip smoothly over my fingers like silk threads. Men are spiders who weave traps for women from their seed.
I get up gently. I am filled with a new energy and I feel ready to embark on a game of go. With a straw hat over his face Jing is snoozing on a chaise longue under a tree in the garden. I don’t know when he arrived or whether he watched our exploits. I am just about to leave when he suddenly lifts the hat and stares at me pointedly. I am secretly delighted by the look of despair and contempt I can read in his face, and I meet his eye defiantly. His lips tremble and he can’t say a word.
The long drawn-out cries of a fruit vendor reach us.
“I’d like some peaches,” I say.
Jing punches his chair with his fist, gets to his feet and runs off. He comes back with a basket of fruit and cleans them over by the well before choosing the biggest one for me. We eat our peaches in silence. The juice sprays out of Jing’s mouth and runs down onto his shirt.
The cicadas sing their strident song: the smell of leaves burned by the sun mingles with the smell of my hair. A carp pirouettes in a large jar that serves as an aquarium.
44
Among the new faces in the barracks
Captain Nakamura, the information officer, stands out from those keen to find women—he chooses a solitary existence. Despite his rank, he encourages our outrageous jokes about him and willingly plays the role of Kyogen.15
In restaurants he typically drinks twenty bottles of sake one after the other and then falls asleep snoring loudly. One day we are emboldened to rouse this ostentatiously noisy sleeper: I give him a dig with my elbow and start interrogating him like a Zen master talking to his pupil.
“Eating, drinking and seeing women are the vanities of the flesh. Tell me, Captain, what is the vanity of the soul?”
He gets up like a ghost rising from the grave and, oblivious to our laughter, he chants:
The insect cries,
Growing weaker and quieter,
The passing of autumn,
And I, regretting its passing,
Shall disappear before it . . .
“Yes, the vanity of the soul is death!”
Holding back my smile, I ask him, “Captain, what is the vanity of vanity?” He is slightly taken aback and scratches his head before replying:
The world in which we live
is no more real
than a moonbeam
reflected in water
drawn from the palm of the hand . . .
“The vanity of vanity . . . the vanity of vanity is . . .”
To prolong his torment, I separate out each syllable as I speak: “Vanity is vain, the vanity of vanities is doubly vain. Now, vanity and vanity cancel each other out. The vanity of the soul is death, the vanity of the vanity of the soul is life. In between life and death, who are we?”
He looks at me and his astonished expression elicits a roar of laughter around us.
When I visit his room one afternoon I see a go-set. We start to play a game straightaway and, to my great surprise, the Captain who is such an awkward muddler in life plays with considerable ability and an offhandedness that bespeaks confidence. He has earned a reputation as a madman in the barracks because he thinks he sees plots and schemes everywhere, an obsessiveness that manifests itself as exaggerated wariness when he plays go.
After his defeat the Captain invites me for dinner, and a few glasses of sake are enough to make us the best friends in the world. We talk about Chinese literature and he is amazed that I speak Mandarin. The game of go sets people against each other across the checkered board, but it gives them a reciprocal sense of trust in life. Without any hesitation I open my heart to him.
A woman from Peking followed her student husband to Tokyo. The man died of cancer, leaving her alone in the world with a newborn baby. She spoke only a few words of Japanese and had no money, but she knocked on doors asking for work. Mother took her in as a nanny, she was a gift sent from Buddha. My parents, like all Japanese parents, had given me an implacably strict upbringing: one wrong step and I would get a slap. With cheeks burning, eyes brimming with tears and an aching heart, I would run into the arms of my Chinese nanny, who would weep for me. To wash away my pain she would hug me and tell me legends from her homeland. For me, Chinese was the language of dreams and of consolation. Later, she taught me to recite poems from the Tang dynasty and to write. She taught me Confucius’s ethics and introduced me to the Dream of the Red Pavilion. When I read these out loud, my Peking pronunciation made her sob with joy. She breast-fed my brother and sister, and she bewitched us all with her gentleness. Then one morning she vanished. A year later Mother destroyed all my illusions: she had gone back to her own country and would never return.
The Captain sighs as he listens to my story. He empties a glass of sake, gets up and, imitating the poses of a Noh actor, uses a chopstick as a fan as he sings:
If he had stayed alive
Nothing would be lost, just lost from sight.
What is the point of living on after him
When, like a tree blowing in the wind,
Sometimes I see him,
Sometimes he disappears,
Fleeting and unsure as ever in this world.
What misery there is in the life of man
Like all the splendor of a flower
Blown by the winds of uncertainty
Which rage all through the night,
Telling us of life and of death,
Covering the unsteady moonlight with clouds
In truth, to my eyes, the miseries of this world . . .
I am overcome with sadness and I clap as the Captain bows and empties another glass. Then he changes the subject.
“Did you know that there is a place in the middle of town where the Chinese meet to play go? It’s the most incredible sight. Players sit down at tables that have the squares carved onto them, and they wait for someone to come and challenge them. You speak Chinese with such a good Peking accent that you should dress up in civilian clothes and take up their challenge, play a game of go.”
He drinks another glass of sake before going on, “I’ve been intrigued by this setup of theirs for a long time, but I’ve never dared go near them. I don’t care how often my informers tell me they’re harmless, I’m sure they can’t be. Ever since the terrorists managed to get into the town, I keep my eye on everyone, and these people are scheming to bring us down. The game of go is just a camouflage: it’s there on that square, as they pretend to play their war game, that our enemies are putting together their twisted strategies.”
The Captain is flushed scarlet and starting to drift into some imaginary universe. I try to sound interested. “But how could I disguise myself? Would I have to hire a hotel room to get changed in?”
He takes my question seriously. “This will stay between you and me, I’ll cover for you. Tomorrow you can go to one of my men who owns the Chidori restaurant; he’ll lend you what you need and he’ll tell you how to trick the Chinese, however wary they are. Even though the terrorists have withdrawn from here, their agents are everywhere. They’re planning another uprising, but I’ll get them this time. Thank you for sacrificing your spare time in the service of the fatherland. Come on, Lieutenant, let’s drink to the Emperor.”
I now realize that it was not a joke and it is too late to say no. I empty my glass of sake and seal our agreement. The Captain is actually very clever and his quirkiness is deliberate and deceptive. The minute I stepped inside his room he already knew he would use me somehow. As we played go together, he was setting the trap in which I am now caught: I have no choice but to slip into the skin of a Chinese.
45
Min loathes games, he thinks they’re a waste of time, but this afternoon, after prolonged pleading, I have managed to make him change his mind. He agrees to play cards on condition that we stay in bed and my stomach serves as the table. For him, every pleasure is ultimately related to erotic gratification. He is quite incapable of working out his opponent’s strategy and loses gloriously, rushing to throw his cards down between my breasts. I find his laziness and his flippant attitude exasperating and, to punish him, I leave the room on some flimsy pretext and head off to the Square of a Thousand Winds.
The players are sitting there meditating and snoozing. Having failed to find a partner, I sit myself down at a table and wait for an amateur to come past. With my head resting on one hand, I lay out the stones and start an imaginary game against Min. A shadow falls over me and I look up. A stranger, with a panama hat pulled right down over his tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses, inclines his head slightly. I reply with a nod and gesture towards the chair opposite me. The Stranger doesn’t seem to understand and makes as if to move away, but I stop him.
“Do you know how to play go?”
He still doesn’t speak.
“Come on, you look like a connoisseur. Sit down, let’s play.”
“May I ask at what level you play?” the lump asks me with a terrible Peking accent.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to play without some knowledge of your handicap.”
“Let’s start a game. I’ll give you a little demonstration!”
He hesitates for a moment and eventually sits down. It’s obvious that this stranger has no idea of my reputation. Like many stupid people, he is deceived by my appearance.
I push the black stones towards him noisily.
“Over to you.”16
He puts his first stone down in the northwest corner. His pretentious behavior earlier is still niggling at me and I decide to play a nasty trick on him. I reply by sticking a white stone alongside it. You never start the battle with such close combat. That is one of the golden rules of the game.
Disconcerted, he looks up at me and sinks into thought for a long time.
The stones fight over the 361 intersections formed by the nineteen horizontal lines and the nineteen vertical lines on the square board. The two players divide up this virgin land and, at the end, compare the extent of their occupied territories. I prefer go to chess because it is so much freer: in chess the two kingdoms with their armored warriors confront each other across the board, but the agile, twirling stones in a game of go spiral round each other, setting traps—daring and imagination are the qualities that lead to victory.
Instead of establishing my frontiers, I attack my opponent head-on. My white number four lures him into a duel. He stops to think again.
My number six is blocking his black number five, and rallies with the others to surround his number one.
In extremis, he parries by placing his number seven.
I smile. The joke is over, now I am constructing my game.
The Stranger’s play is infinitely slow. I am surprised by his convoluted deliberations: each of his moves translates a desire for harmony within the whole. His stones make a subtle, airborne sort of progress like the dance of the cranes. I didn’t know that there was a school in Peking where elegance had the edge over violence. Now it is my turn to be perplexed, and I let myself be carried away by his rhythm.
The Stranger suddenly interrupts the game just when it is becoming really exciting.
“I have a meeting,” he says gruffly.
A little put out and wanting to resume the game as soon as possible, I say, “Come back at ten o’clock on Sunday morning.”
Through his glasses I can see that there still isn’t a glimmer of enthusiasm in his eyes.
“Never mind, then,” I say, standing up.
“All right,” he agrees eventually.
I make a note of the positions of the stones on a piece of paper and gratify the Stranger with a smile. Having used it on Cousin Lu, Min and Jing, I know my weapon well.
And he does indeed look away.
46
The disguise I have chosen—a linen tunic, a panama hat and a fan embellished with calligraphy—gives me something of the solemnity of an imperial official, and the pair of glasses makes him look like an academic.
The rickshaw boy can tell straightaway that I am not from the area, and he decides to swindle me: instead of going straight to the Square of a Thousand Winds, he sets off on a long detour round the town. His voice shuddering with the physical effort, he tells me some of the history of the region. Four hundred years ago the court nobles discovered the local forest and built sumptuous palaces on its fringes. For many centuries they cherished these lands, which were rich in game and beautiful women. A Thousand Winds, which was originally just a small village, grew into a town where trade and local crafts could flourish. The city is like a miniature copy of Peking, with the same rectangular layout. When the Manchurian Empire disintegrated, some of the Peking aristocracy followed the Emperor to the New Capital; others took refuge here. They can be identified by their elegant brand of poverty: they wear outdated robes, and they oppose any form of modernity by keeping their nails long (a sign of the leisured classes) and their heads shaved with the traditional little plait at the back.
After taking me along the ramparts, rife with beggars, firebreathers and monkey trainers, and after showing me the main square with its large, old-fashioned private houses, he eventuall
y comes to a stop on the edge of a wooded square.
“This is the Square of a Thousand Winds,” he says and then asks mysteriously, “Do you play?”
I do not answer.
All round the park players confront each other in silence across the low tables, and judging by their clothes they come from all levels of society. If I had not come here I would never have believed such a place existed where a passerby could be offered a game of go. I have always thought that go was the exclusive reserve of the elite, each game a ceremony carried out with the greatest of respect.
I do not find this phenomenon altogether surprising, though. According to legend, this extraordinary game was invented by the Chinese 4,000 years ago, but during the course of its over-long history, its traditions have been worn away, and the game has lost its air of refinement and the purity of its origins. Go was introduced to Japan over a thousand years ago and there it has been meditated over and perfected to the point of becoming a divine art. In this too, my country has demonstrated its superiority over China.
In the distance I can see a young woman playing against herself. At home it would be unthinkable for a woman to be alone in a place where there are so many men. Intrigued, I move closer.
She is younger than I thought, and she is wearing a school dress. Sitting with her head resting in the hollow of her hand, she is deep in thought. The stones have been laid out on the board with considerable skill, and I am drawn in to examine them more closely.
She looks up, wide forehead and slanting eyes like two finely drawn willow leaves. It is as if I am looking at Sunlight aged sixteen, but the illusion is short-lived: the apprentice geisha had a shy, closed sort of beauty, but this Chinese girl sits watching me unabashed. At home, elegance is associated with pallor and women avoid the sun; this girl has spent so much time playing outside that her face glows with a strange charm. Her eyes meet mine before I can look away.
