The Girl Who Played Go

66

Orchid, my Manchurian prostitute, is slumped in her chair, sulking.

“You’ve changed,” she says.

I lie down on her bed, but instead of undressing me, as she usually does, she waves her handkerchief.

“You used to come to see me every two or three days, but you haven’t been here for almost two weeks. Have you met someone new?”

“I haven’t seen anyone except you since I’ve been garrisoned here,” I try to reason, though there are hardly any grounds for her to be jealous.

In fact her charms have had no effect on me for a while. I find her skin coarse, her flesh flaccid and our couplings more and more boring.

“I don’t believe you,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “I love you and you love someone else.”

“You’re being stupid. I could leave tomorrow and never set foot in this town again. I’ll be killed one day. Why do you love me? You shouldn’t get attached to someone who’s just passing through. Love someone who can marry you. Forget about me.”

She cries all the more bitterly and I find her tears arousing. I push her onto the bed and take off her dress.

As she lies beneath me, Orchid’s face begins to flush and she shudders and gasps between her sobs. I ejaculate, but the climax no longer has the intensity it once did.

Orchid lies next to me smoking and waving a fan with her free hand. I too light a cigarette.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks me gloomily.

I do not answer. The white cigarette smoke, dispersed by the fan, rises slowly towards the ceiling in a series of scrolled waves.

“Is she Chinese or Japanese?” she insists.

I jump to my feet.