The Girl Who Played Go

73

Chen tells me that Cousin Lu is now teaching go in Peking.

“And he’s married, too,” he says, watching my reaction, but the news leaves me cold.

Chen lives in the New Capital and claims to be my cousin’s best friend. He says that he presented Lu to the Emperor. To hear him you would think he was the most powerful man in Manchuria.

He is a Minister’s son and insufferably pleased with himself and with his carefree life. The past comes back to me in little snatches; it feels as if it was a hundred years ago: life was sweet. We were like him, my cousin and I: we thought we were the best players in the world. It was before my sister was married and we were both virgins; she would come and interrupt our games, bringing us tea and little cakes. The twilight would take its time, slowly weaving its crimson net across the sky. I knew nothing about betrayal.

Chen returns that day to the New Capital. He leaves me a perfumed card with Cousin Lu’s new address on it, and promises that he will be back soon to challenge me to a game of go.

I return to my chair, but the table is deserted, my opponent has gone without leaving a note. I am so exhausted that I don’t even feel angry. People come and go on this earth-each has his time.

I put the stones away as the sun lingers in the west and the clouds trail across the sky like long, cursive strokes. Who can decode these words that predict my fate?

I pick up one of the black stones, its shiny surface reflecting the sinking light. I envy its stony heart and icy purity.

Cousin Lu has fled from his disappointment into a new love, and I am glad that he has found happiness again so quickly. The Stranger has walked away from our game; I suppose that for him, go is just a distraction. Men don’t live for passion, they overcome periods of emotional turbulence quite comfortably and casually. Min proved that to me. The core of their lives is somewhere else altogether.

My rickshaw comes to an abrupt stop. There is a man bowing down to the ground in the middle of the road: it is the Stranger. He asks me to forgive him and begs me to carry on with our game the following afternoon. I nod vaguely at him and tell the rickshaw boy to carry on.

I have to leave him there, on his way.