The Girl Who Played Go

29

Moon Pearl keeps begging my parents to let me go with her to the new mayor’s birthday celebrations. She is convinced that her husband will be going with his mistress, and is determined to catch him in the act.

Mother couldn’t resist her tears. I find my sister’s jealousy despicable, but I do want to get out and see people… and Min may be at the party.

“Ladies, good evening…”

The footmen at the bottom of the stairs greet us with effusive little bows. One of them goes ahead of us, inviting us to enter through a red lacquered gateway, and we walk across three successive courtyards. As Moon Pearl doesn’t want her husband to see her, we have arrived after dark.

We are shown into a huge garden where about a hundred tables are dotted around under the trees and lit with good-luck lanterns to wish the mayor a long life. An orchestra in evening dress is battling desperately with its waltz tune against an opera troupe singing at the top of their lungs.

We wend our way discreetly towards a table sheltering under an umbrella pine and settle there like two huntsmen waiting for their prey. To dispel the chill of early spring, our host has lit braziers and torches, and as soon as she sits down my sister complains that the flames are blinding her and she won’t be able to recognize her unfaithful husband. I scour the area around us, looking for my brother-in-law, and I suddenly catch sight of Jing wearing a European suit and sitting alone at a table, away from the crowds. He is watching me.

I go and join him.

“Would you like some rice wine?” he asks.

“No, thank you, I can’t stand it.”

On a sign from Jing, a waiter appears and dots a dozen dishes around the table. With a pair of chopsticks, Jing serves a few slices of translucent meat into a bowl for me.

“Taste it,” he says. “It’s the pad of a bear’s paw.”

This meat, which is highly prized by the Manchurian aristocracy, slithers over my tongue. It doesn’t taste of anything.

“Here,” he says, “this is camel’s foot marinated in wine for five years. And this is the fish they call black dragon, taken from the depths of the River Love.”

Instead of tasting the food, I ask him whether Min is here.

“No,” he says.

To hide my disappointment, I admit that I was dragged here by my sister and that I don’t even know what our host, the new mayor, looks like. He points out a short, fat man of about fifty wearing a brocade tunic.

“How do you know him?”

“He’s my father.”

“Your father!”

“You’re surprised, aren’t you?” says Jing with a cold little laugh. “Before the rebels attacked, he was a council member to the former mayor. One man’s death is another man’s making. My father would manage to get himself promoted even in hell!”

Embarrassed by his admission, I can’t think how to move away.

“Look, that’s one of my stepmothers,” says Jing, pointing rather obviously at a woman who is greeting the guests like a butterfly alighting on flowers to gather nectar. She is wearing too much makeup and a richly embroidered tunic lined with fur, and a fan-shaped headdress sprinkled with pearls, coral and muslin flowers-clearly a priceless antique.

“She was a whore before she became my father’s concubine,” says Jing derisively. “She sleeps with a Japanese colonel now. Do you know why she dresses herself up as an imperial lady-in-waiting? She has always claimed to be descended from a deposed family of the pure yellow banner [11]… Now, this is my mother coming over. How can she accept that harlot under her roof?”

Following Jing’s gaze, I can make out the silhouette of a middle-aged woman. Behind her I suddenly catch sight of my brother-in-law with his hair slicked back and wearing an ostentatiously elegant suit. I ask Jing whether he knows him.

A smile appears at the corners of his mouth.

“Is that your brother-in-law? The informer?”

“Why informer? My brother-in-law is a respected journalist.”

Jing doesn’t answer. He pours himself a large glass of wine and drinks it down in one. He is a friend of Min’s, but he inspires a disturbing mixture of disgust and admiration in me. When I leave him, I am so confused that I can no longer find my sister’s table.