The Girl Who Played Go

80

In my exhaustion I decide to go to bed without supper. On my bed I find the mail that arrived in the afternoon.

With the unfailing fluency and calm of the cultivated woman she is, Mother records the event of the month: Little Brother has set out for China.

“At first I was amazed by the silence in the house,” she writes. “To stop myself thinking about the fact that we are all apart, I have busied myself tidying up. Organizing things helps me forget that you’re not here. When I came across the kimonos you wore as children, I could scarcely believe that you were both already fighting for the Emperor.”

In his letter, Little Brother begs me to forgive him: he had no time to ask my permission to leave our mother.

“We will see each other soon in China, at the front. You’ll be proud of me!”

I would have preferred this naive boy stay where he was, safe from the cruelties of war. But how could I deny him the chance to put his country before his own life? As a child he idolized me, but after Father’s death he rebelled against my authority. Now I am his example once again.

My poor mother; all her men have left and the gods have condemned her to live alone. I can’t bear to imagine the pain she will suffer when she will receive two urns of ashes.

Through the wall I can hear a game of cards in full swing.

“Double my stake!”

“Me too!”

Every soldier has his own way of defying the future.

I think of my mother’s slender frame wrapped in a widow’s kimono. Then I see the Chinese girl curled up on the grass. They are different but share a common fate: the insurmountable sorrow of an impossible love.

Women are the offerings we make to this vast world.