The Girl Who Played Go

64

Coming towards me is a woman in a huge hat and a dress that shimmers with every nonchalant sway of her hips. I scarcely have time to wonder who she is before she sits down opposite me, quite out of breath.

The sun filters through the weave of the hat, laying a mysterious veil over her face. A fine vein crawls over her left temple and disappears into her hairline. There are tiny, tear-shaped moles dotting her dark skin.

A sharp slapping sound-the girl has just played her turn. Her hand stays on the board for a moment and I see that her nails are clean and painted orange.

I always listen to the sound the stones make, it betrays what the opponent is thinking. Early on in our game the Chinese girl would hold the stones between her first and second fingers and smack them gleefully onto the board; then, as the impact became quieter, her darker moods revealed themselves to me. Today it is a short, crystal-clear sound- she has rediscovered her confidence and vitality!

And she has undertaken a very original counterattack.

While she pauses to take a walk through the nearby woods, I think about the game in a very particular way: we have exchanged more than a hundred moves, but I forbid myself any calculations and I look at the board as a painter would an unfinished canvas. My stones are patches of ink with which I draw places and gaps. In the game of go, only aesthetic perfection leads to victory.

The Chinese girl returns and when she sits down, the shadow of her hat caresses my chest. The ribbon around it flutters to the same accelerated rhythm as my heart. I cannot begin to imagine why she has dressed herself today as an adult. I do not know her name, how old she is, what her life might be. She is a mountain that protrudes from a cloudy sky, only to melt all the more surely into the fog.

A drone grows louder and interrupts my daydream. Our planes are overhead, bombs fixed below their steel wings. I watch my opponent out of the corner of my eye: she does not look up.

It is easier for my fellow officers to fly over China than for me to read the thoughts of the girl who plays go.