The Girl Who Played Go

59

Huong schemes and cajoles to get me any news she can, but it is more devastating every day. Today she learned that Jing’s father has asked the Japanese authorities that his own son be given the death penalty and made a public example. I loathe her for this discovery.

My parents’ indifference brings me to despair. Moon Pearl thinks that I am in love and keeps digging for a confession.

“Are you upset about something, my sister?” she asks in a sugary voice.

“Not at all, Moon Pearl. It’s the heat, it’s making me ill.”

I find the servant Wang Ma’s monotonous lamentations maddening and in the end I burst out laughing. My parents stare at me; such scandalous behavior is beyond their understanding and they don’t know how to punish me. Wang Ma runs from the room in tears, and Mother slaps me. It is the first time she has, and my cheek burns, and my head buzzes. Mother brings her hand up in front of her face and trembles as she looks at it, before taking refuge in her bedroom. Father stamps his foot and then he too disappears.

On the Square of a Thousand Winds I can relax in front of this stranger. He is punctual, but never complains when I am late; he rarely speaks and his face never betrays any feeling. He stands up to the sun, to the wind and to my provocations. This internal strength of his must spare him from a good many forms of earthly suffering.

I am here to forget myself; no one here talks of arrests, or of the Japanese occupation. News of the outside world doesn’t reach us… only, the pain somehow manages to catch me out: a bird, a butterfly, a passerby, a simple gesture-everything brings me back to Min and Jing. I get up and walk around the square.

Under the trees the players are dotted about like earthen statues arrayed by Eternity. I am overwhelmed by a feeling of pointlessness. My legs feel shaky and my head spins. A gray curtain descends from the sky.

I stop the game.

My opponent looks up and peers at me from behind his glasses. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t get angry. He plays without asking any questions. When I leave he watches me until I am out of sight. In my thoughts, my problems have acquired a poetic grandeur; I have become a tragic actor though my only audience is the stranger.