The Girl Who Played Go

42

The heat is making our training difficult.

Outside the walls of the town, the black of the open country is slowly turning into a sheet of burning-hot metal. Under the watch of the officers, the soldiers have to march, to run, to jump, to crawl, to shoot, and to bury their bayonets in the innards of straw dummies a thousand times. Those that pass out get a bucket of water poured over them and a couple of slaps in the face, but the Chinese recruits are punished more severely. It is as if our men are pieces of heated iron that need beating out to make useful weapons.

On the very first day my face caught the sun and my lips peeled. I have gone hoarse from shouting orders and my throat is burning; when I swallow a mouthful of rice it feels like grains of sand. The temperatures plummet at night, but our bodies still burn with the day’s sun. The cold and the heat are too much for me and I toss and turn on my bed, unable to sleep.

And yet I am happy to be here. Our barracks is like a forbidden city with its bars, its restaurants, its library, its pretty young nurses and its bathrooms with their great wooden tubs. Little Sister and Akiko have sent me books and literary journals, and Mother has spoiled me with a bag full of chocolates, red bean curd, and new socks and underpants.

The pornographic magazines we pass around create a ribald complicity. In the evenings our cracked voices ring out from one room to the next, massacring traditional Japanese songs. From time to time some of us will meet up for a game of cards. We play for money.

To the despair of the soldiers, the officers are allowed to come and go as they please. Little cliques of partygoers have formed and, as soon as the sun has set, we head out into the town to get drunk and take a postprandial trip to the brothels.

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.