The Girl Who Played Go

74

“In this world we walk upon the roof of hell and contemplate the flowers.” [20]

Only looking upon beauty can turn a soldier’s mind from his stubborn determination. But flowers care nothing for those who admire them; they flourish so briefly, only to die.

The latest dispatches have provoked a great excitement in the barracks: having inflicted a series of defeats on the Chinese, our divisions have advanced to the outskirts of Peking. Song Zheyuan and Zhang Zizhong’s armies are now isolated and weakened, and they are more afraid of Chiang Kai-shek than of the Japanese. The generals fear that Chiang Kaishek’s troops will head north again to annex their territories, so they are refusing offers of Chinese reinforcements and suing for peace.

At the Chidori restaurant the anger builds from one table to the next. The most hawkish of the officers maintain that Peking should be conquered, while the more cautious are fearful that the Soviet Union will intervene, and recommend first and foremost that the Japanese presence in Manchuria be reinforced.

I did not go to see Orchid today so my body still feels fresh and supple, and I have not eaten much so my head is light and lucid. I do not allow myself to be dragged into the heated discussions, and I try in vain to stop my fellow officers from fighting.

The commotion goes on late into the evening and even back into some of their quarters. A few fanatical lieutenants open their shirts and swear that they will commit seppuku if the imperial army negotiates a peace with Peking, and this mention of blood fires the men up all the more.

I slip outside, and the wind blows the subtle scents of nocturnal flowers over my face as I cross the training ground. It moves me to think that I belong to a selfless generation, which aspires to a sublime cause. It is in us and through us that the spirit of the samurais-stifled by all that is modern-finds its rebirth. We are living in a period of uncertainty, and the greatness that could be ours tomorrow makes the waiting all the more unbearable.

A mournful tune slices through the silence, the clear notes of a flute carrying on the air to me. I spotted a shakuhachi in Captain Nakamura’s room. Could it be he in his melancholy drunkenness tormenting the instrument?

With each successive note the tune becomes lower until it is inaudible, then one strident note pierces the skies, cutting through me like a moonbeam projected onto a dark ocean. Today I am alive; tomorrow, at the front, I shall die. This fleeting moment of joy is more intense than an eternity of happiness.

The flute expires in an endless sigh and then falls silent. There are leaves flitting in the wind around me, and my eye is caught by a cicada clinging to a tree. Its armor shell has split open, allowing the translucent body to emerge. The new life quivers throughout its length as it spreads, stretches, twists and sways. I wait for the moment when it breaks away from the husk, and I coax it to climb onto my finger. In the clear moonlight its soft, limp body looks as if it has been sculpted in jade by a skilled craftsman. Its wings spread along the silky skin like two drops of dew ready to fall. I touch the tip of its abdomen, but my finger barely comes into contact with it before its veins lose their coherence and its transparency is marred. The insect emits an inky liquid, its body slumps, and one of its wings swells and bursts, splattering black tears.

I think of the Chinese girl and of China… which we will have to crush.