The Girl Who Played Go

54

The Chinese girl looks pale after lunch, her features altered. When she reaches for a stone her hand shakes. She is silent, forbidding me to comfort her. I affect indifference so as not to distress her; she would not want to be pitied.

She seems to have aged several years in the space of a few hours. Her cheekbones are heightened by the shadows carved across her cheeks. Her face looks longer, her chin more angular.

For a moment I glimpse the terrible pain of a child whose pride has been wounded. Has she had a row with a brother? Fallen out with one of her girlfriends? She will get over it, I should not worry about her. Girls’ moods change very quickly and she will soon be smiling again.

During the previous session she struck me as a quick and spontaneous player, but today she is deliberating for hours. With her eyes lowered and her lips clamped into a hard line, she could serve as a model for the mask of a ghost woman in the theater of Noh.

She looks exhausted sitting there with her elbows on the edge of the table and her head resting in her palms. I wonder whether she is really thinking about the game. The stones betray our thoughts. One more intersection to the east and her strike would have been more substantial.

My black stone falls in alongside her. By responding aggressively I am hoping to break through her vigilance. She looks up. I think she is going to cry, but she smiles.

“Well played! Let’s meet up again tomorrow afternoon.”

I would like to carry on now, but as a matter of principle I never argue with a woman.

She makes a note of our latest moves on her piece of paper. If a game has to be interrupted during tournaments in Japan, the judge makes a note of the positions and, in front of everyone, puts this note carefully into a locked safe.

“Would you like it?” she asks me.

“No, keep it, please.”

She looks at me for a long time, and puts her stones away.