The Girl Who Played Go

79

I have to go see Moon Pearl on the other side of town. Mother tells me not to, worrying I won’t be back in time for lunch. I laugh and say, “Look!”: as I stamp my foot I leap off the ground. But instead of falling back down to earth, I am carried, beating my wings. Our house quickly becomes a brick, then a grain of sand lost in the garden of our town.

There is not one cloud, not a single bird in front of me. I glide and bank, carried by the wind, spiraling tirelessly upwards into infinity. Suddenly eternal night falls, a deep, cold darkness. The stars don’t twinkle, they just stare thoughtfully. Drawn by their motionless brilliance, I prepare to meet them when a sharp pain pierces through my entrails.

I tumble back down, paralyzed by the spasm and flapping my hands, my feet and my wings, but there is nothing to hold me, nothing to carry me aloft. In the blink of an eye I travel back across my town, into my house, and continue to fall.

My whole body is on fire. I feel sick. I scream in horror.

Someone grabs hold of my body as I fall. Who has arms long enough to fish me from the depths of the ocean? I stop moving. I mustn’t move, so he will be able to pull me from the darkness. Firmly but gently he leads me back out of the depths, towards life, like a midwife guiding a baby to its birth. The warmth of his palms spreads through me. I am naked, creased, red, huddled. I am intimidated by the light, by the rustlings of the world. I shudder with pleasure.

When I open my eyes I look straight into the eyes of a stranger, and leap to my feet. He stands up too, but I grab my bag and run away.

The sunset has thrown its crimson cloak over the hills. Yesterday I still couldn’t face the flaming red of twilight; it reminded me of that red sun suspended in the mist on the morning of the execution. Now I look at it defiantly.

It takes me a long time to find a rickshaw. The sun is shrinking on the horizon, and crows launch themselves into the wan darkness. Soon I am swallowed up in the night. The road goes through a huge field of wheat where fireflies zigzag back and forth.

The moon looks like a line of chalk drawn on the sky.

The Stranger is following me, and I am both frightened and delighted by the sound of his footsteps. Will he catch up with me?

I’m no longer afraid of ghosts: Min and Tang went back to their graves last night-may they rest in peace! I am a different woman now and I carry my name the way a cicada carries the memory of the ground in which it slumbered before its metamorphosis. I am not afraid of anything anymore.

The man is keeping his distance.

Finally a rickshaw passes and I call it. I climb in alone and the boy starts to pull away.

“Wait!” The Stranger puts out his hand, holding the boy back. “Wait,” he says again in a trembling voice.

Under the streetlight, he looks oddly tall and solitary. He seems to caress my face with his eyes.

I lower my gaze and stare at the rickshaw boy’s back.

The rickshaw swings into motion, and the voice fades behind me.

“You will come and play tomorrow, won’t you?”

I look up. Through a fog of tears I look hungrily out onto the black countryside. I feel ridiculous to catch myself crying. The shadows of passersby stumble on the pavement, all the houses are lit up and hundreds of lives unreel through the windows.