The Girl Who Played Go

17

At my age one friendship wipes out another, flaring up like a fire then dying down; they’re never constant, but each new one glows just as fiercely as the last.

By inviting Huong to have supper with my family I am opening up my universe to her. In her quilted blue Chinese dress, and with her hair in two plaits the good little schoolgirl wins my parents over. After supper, I offer her some tea and invite her to my room. She crosses the threshold as carefully as someone stepping into a dream.

To show her how magical this old room really is-it is one of the few to have escaped the bombing-I turn out the lamps and light the candles. Scrolls of calligraphy and paintings loom out of the darkness and gradually blend with the tinted frescoes on the walls. There is a majestic set of shelves full of books at one end, and on my lacquered table little painted birds frolic among the leaves. Two pots of go-stones have pride of place atop an old carved wardrobe, to watch over me at night. Huong picks up a manual about go and leafs through it. She takes one of the combs I collect, long and fine, made of polished silver and decorated with feathers. She fingers my pearls. A long silence falls between us.

Then she sits on the edge of the bed and opens her heart to me: she was born out in the country and she lost her mother when she was eight years old. Her father remarried and was completely crushed by his new wife’s bulk and drive: she would set off every morning with a pipe in her mouth to oversee work in the fields. The stepmother hated Huong, and it was not long before the arrival of her twin stepbrothers deflected her father’s affection. To them she was just a slut. As they grew up, the boys took pleasure in hurting her: they tormented her like two young cats toying with an injured sparrow. She was constantly insulted by her stepmother, who was peculiarly eloquent when it came to insults. Huong was exiled to a little maid’s room and, at night, she would count the raindrops falling on the roof. They were innumerable, like the sorrows she had to endure.

When she was twelve she was sent to school: the stepmother was rid of the thorn in her side and Huong discovered freedom.

She was a passionate and determined child, and she shook off her accent and transformed herself into one of the young town girls. It didn’t take her long to understand what made these city-dwellers tick, and she put these mechanisms to her own use. Thanks to a few coins slipped into the boarding housemistress’s pocket and a couple of bottles of wine at the end of the year, she was given permission to go out whenever she liked. She shared a room with girls older than herself, and was initiated into the pleasures of champagne and chocolate and the waltz. By imitating them she learned to put on makeup, to lie about her age and to get herself invited to balls. Men came to fetch her in their cars, whispering empty blandishments to her and telling her how beautiful she was.

Since then, the holidays have become pure torture. Back there, the house is dark and damp, and the smell of the draft animals is disgusting. Her father spits on the floor, her stepmother shrieks at everyone, and her brothers-instead of sitting properly at the table-squat on their chairs so that they can inhale their food all the more efficiently.

It is nearly nighttime and I offer Huong my bed. She snuggles into it, next to the wall, and carries on talking until her words become muddled and her voice dwindles to a whisper.

I stay awake for a long time. My friend is seventeen, and her father is looking for a husband for her-that will bring an end to a party that has gone on for three years. Will she ever meet a man who can change her fate?