He pushes a door open: in the middle of the room a fire is blazing in a bronze basin, heating pokers to a red glow. The heat is unbearable. Two torturers with great hairy arms throw a bucket of water over a woman lying naked on the floor.
The Chinese interpreter bends over her and cries, “Talk! If you talk, the imperial army will leave you with your life.”
Between her moans I think I can make out the words: “Go to the devil, you Japanese dogs.”
“What is she saying?” asks Lieutenant Oka.
“She is insulting the gentlemen of the imperial army.”
“Tell her that her friends have confessed. She’s the only one who’s not cooperating. What point is there in resisting?”
She curls up on her stomach with her hands tied behind her back, shuddering with every move. The Lieutenant kicks her and, as she jerks onto her side, I see her face, which is blue and swollen.
He crushes her head with his boot and smiles.
“Tell her that if she doesn’t talk, I’ll ram this poker up her ass.”
The interpreter quickly does as he is told. The moaning stops. All eyes are riveted on the motionless figure. The Lieutenant gives a signal to the interpreter, who picks up a pen and a piece of paper. Suddenly the woman gets up to her knees, like a fury rising from the depths of hell, and she starts screaming, “Kill me! Kill me! You’re all damned . . .”
The Lieutenant doesn’t need the interpreter to grasp the gist of what she is saying. He has only to glance at the two torturers and they throw themselves at the woman and hold her by her shoulders, as he grabs the glowing iron.
A foul-smelling smoke rises up as the screaming woman’s flesh is seared. I look away. The Lieutenant puts the iron back into the fire and stares at me with an enigmatic smile.
“Stop for now. We’ll start again later.”
He takes me off to see other rooms and comments with all the minute detail of an impassioned scientist on the hooks, whips, sticks, needles, boiling oil, and water spiced with red-hot chilies. Then he offers me a glass of sake in his office.
“I’m sorry, I never drink during the day.”
He bursts out laughing.
“A prison is always a kingdom in its own right. We make our own laws here. Sake activates the brain. Without it our imaginations would run dry and we’d soon be exhausted.”
I take my leave, claiming that I am nearly late for a meeting. On the doorstep he says, “You will come back soon, won’t you?”
I nod vaguely in his direction.
Back in my room, I write my report for Captain Nakamura, and in it I praise Lieutenant Oka: “He is a meticulous man who is devoted to the Emperor. He must be left to act as he sees fit and with the complete cooperation of his assistants. An outsider would disrupt the precision of his work and would interfere with the smooth running of the interrogations. I myself would ask you not to send me there again, Captain. My visit there fortified my conviction that we must never allow ourselves to be taken alive by the enemy.”
Three days later a soldier brings me a message from Lieutenant Oka, who would like to talk to me about something, so I go straight over to see him. Despite the heat, the officer is wearing a new tunic over his shirt, and a pair of boots that shine in the sunlight.
He greets me with a smile.
“I have good news for you. The man you saw hanging in the courtyard cracked. In our last raid we caught a fifteenyear-old boy and his interrogation will take place this evening. Would you like to attend?”
The word “interrogation” makes me feel sick. I compliment him on the competence of the Chinese interpreter and explain that my presence would be pointless. Quite unperturbed, he looks me in the eye and insists, “You really don’t want to come? What a shame. He’s a very good-looking boy and I’ve already chosen several good strong men who’ll keep him talking all night. It’s going to be marvelous.”
It is eighty-five degrees in the shade, but the Lieutenant’s words make me shiver. My only reply is to mumble something about not liking that sort of spectacle.
“I thought you liked that sort of thing,” he says, amazed.
“Lieutenant, your job is difficult and very important to the expansion of Japan and the glory of the Emperor. I wouldn’t want to distract you from it. Allow me to decline your thoughtful invitation.”
I can see the disappointment flit across the man’s face and he looks at me sadly. Lieutenant Oka has shaved so closely that the little mustache on his upper lip looks as if it is quite separate and might fly off at any moment.
“Come on, Lieutenant,” I say, patting his shoulder, “you get back to your work. The glory of the Empire depends on it.”
57
I have waited for Min at the crossroads for a whole week, and in the afternoons I have gone up and down the boulevard outside the university in the vain hope of spotting his face.
I find the address that Tang gave me; it is a run-down house in the poor, working people’s quarter. There are children running in the streets shouting to each other and an old woman wearily beating out her sheets.
A neighbor appears.
“I have a book to give back to Tang.”
“She’s been arrested.”
Fear is out stalking the streets of my town. The Japanese seem determined to arrest someone. I am amazed that I am still free, and I lie awake at night listening for the soldiers’ rhythmic approach, the bark of dogs and the muffled thud of a fist knocking on our door. The silence is more terrifying than any amount of noise would be. I look at the ceiling, the dressing table with its mirror edged in blue silk, the writing desk on which only a vase of roses stands out against the darkness . . . All of these might be broken, ripped apart, burned. Our house might soon be like Jing’s, a charred skeleton.
I remember Min as he looked in the street. He had been running, his hair was a mess, he didn’t know that prison was waiting for him just around the corner. He said, “He loves you, he’s just told me . . . you’ll have to choose between us.” I was annoyed—it sounded like an insult, an order, and it wounded my pride. All I said was “Don’t make such a scene”: those were almost my last words to him.
I miss Jing just as much as Min; his bad moods and his aloofness seem so endearing now. How can I save them? How can I contact the Resistance? How can I visit them in prison? To add to their miseries, they were born rich: the difference between their own bedrooms and the damp cells must be unbearable. They are bound to get ill. Apparently you can soften up the guards with money . . . I’ll give everything I have.
A few shots ring out in the street and a dog howls, then the town drops back into silence like a pebble thrown into a bottomless well.
I am hot and I am cold. I am frightened, but my hate gives me strength. I open a drawer in the chest and find a little sewing case, a present for my sixteenth birthday. I take out the scissors with their gold handles and sharp, pointed little blades.
Pressed against my face, the precious weapon feels colder than a stalactite.
And I wait.
58
In uniform and in civilian clothes, I am two different people. The first dominates the town as a conqueror, the second is conquered by its beauty.
This Chinese man here is me . . . I am amazed to see him taking on the accent, changing his looks and inventing an image for himself. When I put on my disguise I lose my normal points of reference, I am distanced from myself. It has almost made a free man of me, a man who knows nothing of commitment to duty.
As a child I would often have the same dream: dressed as a black Ninja, I would creep over the roofs of a sleeping town. The night was at my feet, and the occasional lights that twinkled were like the beacons on distant ships on a dark ocean. The town was not Tokyo, it was a place I did not know, and that made it all the more frighteningly exciting. In a narrow deserted street there were lanterns hanging under the eaves, their menacing glow swinging in the wind. I would step softly from one tile to the next, right up to the edge of th
e roof, then I would leap into the abyss.
I resent Captain Nakamura for making me do this dirty work. I lack the intuition, the cynicism or the paranoia to be a spy and I certainly lack that professional eye that can pick out a darker mark on a dark piece of paper. I feel as if I am being spied on myself. Despite the stifling June heat, I wear a thick linen tunic to hide a pistol in my belt, and when I sit at the go-board I put my hands on my knees so that my right elbow covers the weapon, which obstructs the fall of the cloth.
When I raise my right hand to move one of the stones, I can feel the steel brushing against me. The weapon is my strength and my weakness: I can open fire on anything that comes my way, but I can just as easily be shot in the back by a member of the Chinese Resistance.
I learned the strict rules of the game of go in Japan, where I would play in silence in the benevolent calm of a natural setting. I would be physically relaxed and my inspiration would diffuse its energy through my body, the rhythm of my breathing guiding my thoughts, and my soul would fleetingly grasp the universal duality of things.
There is nothing spiritual about the game I am playing today. The Manchurian summer is as harsh as the winter. Anyone who has not been burned and dazzled by its sun can never know the sheer power of this black land. After the merciless training sessions, which leave me dehydrated and physically exhausted, the time I spend playing go with the Chinese girl is like an escape to a land of demons. The June heat permeates my dilated blood vessels and sharpens my senses. The smallest detail gives me an erection: her naked arm, the crumpled hem of her dress, the way her buttocks sway under the silky fabric, a fly buzzing past.
It is torture trying to maintain my dignity in front of this opponent. Over the last week her tanned skin has taken on the smooth, dark texture of a grape. Her clothes are sleeveless and these Manchurian dresses are so close-fitting that the women could not be more disquieting if they were naked. Our heads almost touch as we lean over the board. Thanks to the strong will forged by years of military discipline, I struggle against my impulses and steel myself by playing the game.
My posting to China has taught me what greatness and what misery a soldier can know: on orders he moves from one place to the next without knowing where he is going or why. A pawn among many others. He lives and dies anonymously in the name of a greater victory. The game of go is changing me into a senior officer who uses his men coldly and with calculation: the stones make their steady progress, many condemned to die for the sake of a wider strategy.
Their loss becomes confused with the deaths of my comrades.
59
Huong schemes and cajoles to get me any news she can, but it is more devastating every day. Today she learned that Jing’s father has asked the Japanese authorities that his own son be given the death penalty and made a public example. I loathe her for this discovery.
My parents’ indifference brings me to despair. Moon Pearl thinks that I am in love and keeps digging for a confession.
“Are you upset about something, my sister?” she asks in a sugary voice.
“Not at all, Moon Pearl. It’s the heat, it’s making me ill.”
I find the servant Wang Ma’s monotonous lamentations maddening and in the end I burst out laughing. My parents stare at me; such scandalous behavior is beyond their understanding and they don’t know how to punish me. Wang Ma runs from the room in tears, and Mother slaps me. It is the first time she has, and my cheek burns, and my head buzzes. Mother brings her hand up in front of her face and trembles as she looks at it, before taking refuge in her bedroom. Father stamps his foot and then he too disappears.
On the Square of a Thousand Winds I can relax in front of this stranger. He is punctual, but never complains when I am late; he rarely speaks and his face never betrays any feeling. He stands up to the sun, to the wind and to my provocations. This internal strength of his must spare him from a good many forms of earthly suffering.
I am here to forget myself; no one here talks of arrests, or of the Japanese occupation. News of the outside world doesn’t reach us . . . only, the pain somehow manages to catch me out: a bird, a butterfly, a passerby, a simple gesture—everything brings me back to Min and Jing. I get up and walk around the square.
Under the trees the players are dotted about like earthen statues arrayed by Eternity. I am overwhelmed by a feeling of pointlessness. My legs feel shaky and my head spins. A gray curtain descends from the sky.
I stop the game.
My opponent looks up and peers at me from behind his glasses. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t get angry. He plays without asking any questions. When I leave he watches me until I am out of sight. In my thoughts, my problems have acquired a poetic grandeur; I have become a tragic actor though my only audience is the stranger.
60
The Square of a Thousand Winds has laid its scents upon me. I now know its every tree, each checkered tabletop, each ray of light.
There are old men, diehards, who spend all day here with a fan in one hand, a teapot in the other and their birdcage hanging from a tree. They arrive at dawn and leave in the mid-afternoon. When one’s two pots of stones stand open, it means that he is expecting someone; if they are closed, he is waiting for someone to challenge him.
I was afraid that with time they would be able to tell a fake Chinese man, but I have swept aside this fear. Speech loses all its importance here, handing over its authority to the gentle clatter of the stones.
A false identity has been invented for me, but I have never had to use it. The girl has not even asked my name.
Probably thinking that I have already taken the bait, she no longer tries to charm me. She now seems to be saving her smiles and mischievous comments for the next player she will manage to ensnare.
And for some unfathomable reason she seems to be sulking. She has dispensed with all greetings except for a quick nod of the head, and she emerges from her silence only at the end of each session so we can arrange the next one.
In the first few days I saw something of Sunlight in her, but now there is nothing, either from a distance or close up, that reminds me of the refined geisha. She moves lugubriously, her hair messily plaited, black crescents at the ends of her nails. I take her untidiness as a sign of her complete disdain for me. Pimples have appeared on her forehead, and her face has lost all the simple grace that first attracted me. The whites of her eyes have lost their beautiful bluish gleam and her expression has darkened. Her lips are cracked and her hollowed cheeks suggest a hardened soldier. The Chinese girl is changing into a man!
I overcome this disappointment by triumphing in the first direct conflict. The whites, tightly surrounded in the southern corner of the board, are gradually surrendering.
Apparently indifferent to this loss, she makes a note of our positions and hurries away.
61
“I might be pregnant,” my sister whispers.
After supper she follows me to my bedroom and I feel I have to congratulate her. I ask her when she saw the doctor.
She hesitates for a moment and blushes as she admits, “I haven’t been to see him yet. I’m afraid . . .”
“Well, how do you know then?”
Her period is ten days late.
My heart leaps. My period is ten days late, too.
“Are you sure?”
Moon Pearl takes my hands in hers.
“Listen, I’m normally very regular. This time it’s for real! When I go to bed in the evening I feel dizzy. In the morning I feel sick. All I can eat is pickled vegetables. They say that if you want to eat acidic foods you’ll have a boy. Do you think I’ll have a boy?”
I am unmoved by my sister’s happiness. I tell her she should talk to a doctor.
“I’m frightened. I’m terrified they might tell me I’m not pregnant. I haven’t told anyone about this. It’s a secret I can share only with you. Oh, my sister, I’ve discovered again this morning what it is to be happy! I put my hands over my belly and I could almost sense th
e baby feeding within me. With him to give me strength, I can endure the infidelity, the abandonment and the lies. With him I can start a new life!”
I find my sister’s exuberance chilling. She may long for a child, but for me to be pregnant would be death.
After Moon Pearl has left, I sit down at my calligraphy table. With a fine paintbrush I sweep black strokes on the rice paper, counting the days since my last period over and over again. It should have come exactly nine days ago.
I flop down onto my bed, my head buzzing. I don’t know how long I lie there in that state, but when I come round, the clock is striking midnight. I get undressed and go to bed, but I can’t get to sleep. It is so strange to know that a new life is germinating inside another, that my body will produce fruit!
It will inherit Min’s slanting eyes. If it is a boy, he will be happy and full of seductive charm like Min, wise and serious like my father. If it is a girl, she will have my lips and my soft skin, she will be demanding and jealous like my sister, and she will have my mother’s majestic bearing. Jing will take the child for walks, proud but still bitter. On the Square of a Thousand Winds it will learn to play go and will eventually be able to beat me.
I stroke my belly and reality intrudes once more: Min is a prisoner of the Japanese; when will he be released? I don’t know his family. If I go to his house, they will drive me away. At school my name will be written in the roll of shame, and I will be expelled. The whole town will know. Even if I can accept the humiliation, my parents couldn’t bear the sneers and the whispers. Children in the street will throw stones at Moon Pearl, jeering, “Your sister is a whore!”
I switch the light on. My belly looks flat, below my navel a line of fine fluffy hair runs down to the denser growth below. When our nurse washed me as a child, this hair used to make her laugh: she said it meant I would have a boy.