The Girl Who Played Go

15

One custom that we have imported from the West is that the New Year marks the beginning of the season for parties.

My sister dresses me in one of her European dresses, then she parts my hair on one side and waxes it thoroughly before opening her makeup box. In just one hour I have become unrecognizable even to myself. My face is as white as over-soaped linen, my eyelids are darker than a moth’s wings, and the fluttering false eyelashes make me look winsomely tearful.

On the square in front of the town hall the garlands are vying for attention with the stars. Carriages and cars glide over the snow and spew out “gentlemen” fingering gold-handled canes, and women in furs, their hair curled and cigarettes at the end of ivory filters held nonchalantly between their lips.

A wood of fir trees sparkling in the snow lies between the Imperial Hotel and the rest of the world. A path swept clear at the beginning of the evening zigzags between the shadows and the wavering torchlight. The hotel porters in their red capes are sharply silhouetted against the glassy clarity of the windows.

A revolving door projects me into a huge room, where red lacquered columns reach up towards a domed ceiling hung with crystal chandeliers like bouquets of fireworks. Mountains, forests and seas undulate around the walls, and the sun contemplates the moon as storks fly off towards the clouds.

My sister drags me over to a table and orders me a café au lait, a fashionable sort of drink to have in a place like this. The band accompanies a singer in a sequined dress that gleams as her body moves like a charmed snake, while her milky-white throat produces a moody, plaintive voice.

Soon my brother-in-law asks my sister to dance. Looking into each other’s eyes and holding hands, they look beautiful and elegant as they move rhythmically backwards and forwards, round and round. The music speeds up and my sister smiles and flushes as she lets herself be carried away. When the waltz ends amid general applause, my brother-in-law kisses her gently on the shoulder and I feel a constriction grip my heart: who could guess how much he makes her suffer?

I look round the tables and see Huong, who must have been watching me for a while. My classmate greets me with a little nod, and I would like to be swallowed up by the ground to hide my horrible makeup. What will she tell them tomorrow? I’m going to be a laughingstock.

As I struggle with my embarrassment, she waves to invite me over to her table. I get up slowly and, as I reach her, I can see the thick powder on her own cheeks. She is wearing a completely backless dress, and I find this extravagance reassuring. I am not the only one who looks like a caricature.

A man offers me his place and goes to find a chair. Huong introduces me to her friends, who seem a lot older. She is very friendly towards me and for the first time I can see how gracious her carefully chosen words are. Now that any animosity between us has evaporated, I can admit to her how hostile I feel towards this stuffy, hypocritical society.

She looks at me for a long time and then raises her glass towards me.

“You must drink. Otherwise you’ll always be an outsider.”

The champagne fizzes in my throat and makes me cough. I am won over by the gaiety of the evening and, encouraged by Huong, I dare to look up and meet male eyes. A man asks me to dance and I feel like a bear walking beside him. When I come back to Huong, her hysterical laughter is contagious: this girl I have never liked is suddenly my accomplice, my friend.

As we leave the hotel, still drunk, I insist that we go back to the car on foot. My sister scolds me, but it isn’t long before the idea appeals to her: I need to sober up before we get home.

One shadow stands out against the dark mass of the woods: a naked body with its arms across its belly, staring up at the sky.

Last summer the Resistance Movement attacked enemy convoys, so the Japanese burned all the fields along the railway line. Ever since, hordes of ruined peasants wander up and down our streets, begging for a few grains of rice. A corpse can no longer defend itself: the other beggars have taken all this man’s clothes.