“Do you mind if I walk with you for a while?” he says, running after me.
I don’t say anything and he shamelessly tags along and chatters away to me. In fact I don’t mind having him beside me; he is head and shoulders taller than me and I find the warm flow of his words soothing. He tells me about what he is reading, what he has been hunting and about his dreams of revolution. He asks whether I would like to go fishing on Sunday, whether I would like him to teach me how to know when fish are in love.
We go past the street where Jing lives.
“Come,” he says, pulling my arm, “I’ve got a key.”
Once we are inside, he turns to me and looks me up and down. His nerve is disarming and I huddle against the door, powerless.
He starts stroking my face and neck, his fingers brushing my shoulders. I succumb to a strange languorous feeling that sweeps over me. Min’s face is flushed and his eyes half-closed as he breathes in the smell of my skin. As his lips touch me they leave a trail of fever in their wake. When they reach my chin, I involuntarily open my mouth and Min’s tongue darts in. As his hand moves down to my breast, his touch becomes almost unbearable, the warmth of his embrace suffocating. I tell him to open the top of my dress. He seems amazed, but obeys me. His fingers fumble hopelessly with the braided buttons and I almost tear them open.
Min’s face twists into a grimace of admiration. He kneels down and buries his head between my breasts, rubbing his soft adolescent beard against them. His forehead feels white-hot, and makes me writhe as I clench my fists.
A scraping sound in the keyhole makes us both start, and I quickly push Min away. I have only just buttoned my dress when the door opens and Jing comes in, carrying his birdcage. The smile leaves his face when he sees us. He eyes me coldly and grunts a greeting to Min. I pick up my bag, barge past Jing and run off down the road.
Never before have I felt gripped by such sadness. The crows caw and wheel past each other across the sky where violet and orange gradually blend with the black of the clouds. The air is filled with the smell of flowers. With the arrival of the month of May, the poplar flowers fall to the ground like brown worms. As a child I used to throw them down my sister’s open collar and she would scream in terror.
Min kneaded my breasts so hard they are hurting. I stop under a tree to tidy my hair and to smooth out my dress with a bit of saliva in the palm of my hand. I look at myself in a little mirror: my mouth looks slightly swollen as if I have just woken from a long sleep. My cheeks are bright red, betraying my secret, forbidden dreams, and my forehead is glowing; I think that I can trace Min’s kisses on it, visible only to me.
38
We have polished our weapons and sorted out our creased uniforms before setting off again. Soon an ancient city looms on the horizon, surrounded by ramparts and with poplar trees lining the moat. Along the route there are Chinese people waving flags of the rising sun. Once we have passed through the main gate, the wealth of the town of A Thousand Winds spreads out before us: an endless expanse of tiled roofs, wide streets swarming with traders and salesmen, the deafening sound of the traffic and appetizing aromas of the restaurants. A colonel from the garrison comes towards us, flanked by lower officers and followed by the town’s mayor, a pudgy Manchurian with a mustache and his attendant representatives of the local bourgeoisie.
We cannot believe our eyes: on the pavement there are about thirty young prostitutes draped in kimonos, laughing, blushing, jostling each other and beckoning us. The shyest among them hide behind their hands as they pass comments about our faces and figures. The bolder ones string together a few words of Japanese: “So good-looking!,” “Come and see me at the Golden Lotus,” “I love you.” Forgetting how tired we are from marching, we look up proudly and take lungfuls of air to puff out our chests.
The barracks are over to the west of town, with barricades and machine guns on the gates, and barbed wire along the tops of the walls. The reserve detachment has lined up in four square formations on the parade ground to greet us.
After the welcoming parade comes the hot meal: in the canteen we hardly wait for the speeches to end before throwing ourselves on the seaweed soup with spicy beef; we fight over the plump carp, the haunches of venison and the pheasant breasts. We gulp down rice balls, marinated vegetables, dofus and raw fish beautifully laid out on dishes.
With my belly distended as a balloon, I am still ruminating on the vanished flavors as I drag myself to my room and collapse on the bed.
39
Min puts on a mysterious expression and boasts that he has copies of books that have been banned by the government: he is trying to lure me over to Jing’s house. Just thinking about the place makes me giddy, but I really have to make up my mind. There will be no going back. I am no longer—nor do I still want to be— just a little schoolgirl, happy to sit and dream. Now I must take a leap into the unknown. When the irreversible starts to happen, then, in that moment, I will know at last who I am and why I am alive.
In the library Min exhumes his “dangerous” volumes from their hiding places under piles of old books. I turn the pages, devouring the words with my eyes. Min takes the opportunity to come behind me and wrap his arms round me. His hands roam under my dress and close over my breasts.
He undresses me as if he were peeling a piece of fruit. Still in my underpants and with my arms crossed over my breasts, I tell him to put my skirt on a hanger so as not to crease it. Then he undresses, throwing his clothes to the four corners of the room. With his underpants still on, he throws himself at me and rubs his chest against mine.
I close my eyes and try to struggle against the weight of his body as Min forcibly drags me to the middle of the room and lays me down on a desk. He slowly parts my legs and I put my hands out to hide myself, but he catches hold of my arms. I twist and struggle, moaning. Trying to calm me, he kisses the end of my nipple and sucks it. I cry out in pain. He draws himself up to his full height, looming above me like a demon, as if his head were touching the ceiling. His tormented face is etched against the square of blue sky framed by the window. He stands there, his stomach between my thighs, and then suddenly moves forward.
According to legend, one form of torture that the devils in hell favor particularly is slicing the damned in half: in the popular imagination this image probably owes its origins to the first encounter between a man and a woman.
“Did it hurt?”
I bite my lower lip and refuse to say anything.
Min looks at me for a moment, then gets dressed and wipes my face with a handkerchief. He gazes into my eyes and says, “I must marry you.”
“Take me over to the bed.”
Min closes the doors, draws the curtains and lets down the mosquito netting round the bed. We wrap ourselves in a silk cover lined with cotton. I lie there in the half-light, paralyzed by the smell of rotting wood.
“It always feels a bit strange the first time,” he says comfortingly.
“You must be pretty experienced to say that!”
He doesn’t say anything, but lets his hands wander over my neck, shoulders, arms and stomach. Outside the cicadas are beginning to sing. Min is on top of me again; it hurts, but this time the surgery is more bearable. I am shaking and short of breath, my head is spinning and everything is confused. I think I see Jing, and then Cousin Lu.
Suddenly Min stares at me with a cruel but anxious glint in his eye. He lets out a series of involuntary, hoarse groans. After struggling against some invisible force, he falls down on top of me, inert.
He goes straight to sleep with his tired arms around my waist and his head nestling in the crook of my neck. Every time I move, he instinctively strokes me and draws me closer to him. I have to go back to school, but I don’t want to get up. Tomorrow I will use lies to help me; but for now my thoughts are roaming like the clouds that scud across the sky above our town to run aground behind the mountains, to the north of the Manchurian plain. I have heard that virgins lose a lot of blood, but I haven?
??t bled at all. The gods have spared me this violence that terrifies so many women. I don’t feel guilty, but pleased: life has never seemed so simple or so clear.
At the end of the afternoon we go back to the outside world. Night is already falling, but the day still hangs in the air, a ship seeking its harbor. I remember my piano lesson and think up an excuse that will convince my mother. I walk slowly. Something that has always been buried in the depths of me has been uncovered, like a sheet taken out of a trunk and aired in the sunlight. My virginity is nothing but a wound; my body has been cleaved apart, it is open and the breeze blows through me.
Min shakes me out of my reverie. “When we’ve seen off the Japanese, I’ll marry you.”
“I don’t want to get married. Go and take care of the revolution.”
He stops and looks at me with a hurt expression and a trembling lip. He is so good-looking!
“My family is descended from the yellow banner. Our land extends from the ramparts of the town all the way to the steppes of Mongolia. My father is dead and I want to dedicate my inheritance to my country’s freedom. I will be poor and I will live dangerously. As you have given me the most precious thing you have, unless you despise me, you shall be my wife.”
I start to laugh.
In the rickshaw I raise one arm to wave good-bye. Min stands on the pavement and his silhouette gradually dissolves into a dark shape and then a hazy blur against the darkness of the town.
40
As a child my dreams were fueled by the mystery of the Middle Empire. I liked drawing Mandarin pavilions, Tatar strongholds and imperial warriors. Later I devoured its classical literature.
Until yesterday the only part of China that I knew was Ha Rebin, the huge metropolis on the banks of the River Love, and that modern, cosmopolitan place now serves as my yardstick: I keep comparing the town of A Thousand Winds to it. This small city may well be a part of independent Manchuria, but it is instantly recognizable as a little chunk of the eternal Chinese nation.
There are fewer cars here than in Ha Rebin, and there are no trams. Hundreds of rickshaw boys work in shifts day and night, and bicycles are the prized possessions of students from wealthy families.
Unlike the population of Ha Rebin—a coarse-looking people descended from the exiled and the condemned—the natives here have delicate features. Their ancestors are said to have been the illegitimate offspring of princes, the blood flowing in their veins is a subtle blend of Manchurian, Mongolian and Chinese. Their faces, with their regular features, recall those of centuries long past. The men are tall, with darker skin and eyes that are slit right to the temple. The women have inherited their fairer skin, high cheekbones, almond eyes and tiny mouths from the ladies of the court.
The very day after we arrive some of the reserve officers take us off round the brothels just outside the garrison. I am convinced that prostitution was invented for the military and that the first prostitute in history was a woman who fell in love with a soldier.
Here, just as in Japan, the girls try to part us from our savings with their charming smiles. The Chinese girls stammer just enough rudimentary Japanese to agree to a price. Some of the brothels are run by our army, and these employ Japanese and Korean girls, but the prices are prohibitive. Unable to afford a compatriot, I take advice from those who know their way around, and they take me to a modest-looking establishment called the Jade Flute. In the middle of the courtyard a tree stretches up towards the sky, and on the floor above I catch glimpses of uniforms, tumbling hair and silky dresses.
The proprietress, a woman with a thick Shan Dong accent, asks the girls to parade past us. I choose Orchid, who has slanting eyes like a she-wolf and a tiny, dark mouth like a crushed blueberry. Holding her cigarette between the tips of her fingers, with a foxtail slung over her shoulder and her bare feet in stiletto shoes, she swings her hips as she climbs the stairs ahead of me.
Almost before we have touched, she tells me seriously that she is a pure Manchurian and should not be taken for a Chinese girl. Unlike Japanese prostitutes—who hold themselves back and act out their pleasure—Orchid, this daughter of the banner, succumbs and cries out. It is rare to see a prostitute having an orgasm, but there is a disarming naïveté and willingness in the way she abandons herself. When I leave this girl with her powerful, well-muscled buttocks, she leans against the doorpost, waving her green handkerchief at me.
41
At school the next day I imagine there is a glint of pride in my eye. Yesterday’s pain is still there, inside my body, burning me and eating me up—it gives me dignity. I still wear my blue dress just like the others, but I know that I am different now.
After lessons, I make a detour to go and see my sister. She is sitting by the window knitting, and I lie down opposite her on a willow couch.
Her sister-in-law has just announced that she is pregnant, and Moon Pearl bemoans the fact that her belly is still empty. I try to take her mind off this obsession by asking her, “How do you know if you’re in love?”
She wipes her tears and bursts out laughing.
“Well, well, have you found a boy you like? Why are you asking?”
“If you’re not going to answer,” I say, pretending to be put out, “I’ll leave.”
“Are you angry? Don’t you want some cake—it’s honey and acacia-flower?” and she rings for the servant and carries on with her knitting before asking, “What do you want to know?”
I hide my head behind a cushion. “How do you know if you’re in love? What does it feel like?”
“Well, first of all, you completely forget the world around you. Your friends and family just become invisible. All you can do is think about him day and night. When you see him, it’s as if he’s filled your eyes with light; and when you don’t see him, the thought of him eats away at your heart. You wonder where he is and what he’s doing every minute of the day. You invent his whole life, you live it for him: your eyes see for him, your ears hear for him . . .”
Moon Pearl takes a sip of tea before going on, “In this first stage you don’t know what the other is thinking or feeling. It’s the most poignant part. Then you open your hearts to each other and you have a brief moment of incredible happiness . . .” She drops what she is doing and gazes out of the window.
“After the sunshine comes the storm,” she goes on. “Suddenly you’re thrown into darkness, you have to feel your way and crawl along carefully as you get older. You’ll see, Little Sister, when you love and are loved by someone, you’ll know the pain of living on a white-hot grill. You won’t be sure of anything anymore.”
My sister’s lips are sore and cracked like arid soil. Hatred glows in her eyes as she struggles to find someone to blame for her unhappiness. But then she says, “You will have a happier fate. You are stronger than I am, you’ll find a way of confronting the pain and appeasing the anger of the gods who are jealous of our love.”
“Well, why do people get married then?”
“Marriage?” she asks with a mocking laugh. “It’s cold and bland, it’s a ceremony that we act out for our parents’ sake. I’ve been reduced to my own shadow. The family I have built around me weighs me down, and some days I wish I was just a piece of furniture with no feelings and nothing to think about; then I’d know how to wait for him, how best to serve him, to make his home and honor his ancestors.”
Moon Pearl gets to her feet, picks a cluster of wisteria flowers and crushes them between her trembling fingers. “I’m going to tell you the truth: I loved my husband. I gave him everything. I was like a silkworm, spewing the best of me from my insides, and now I’m just a barren husk. I know what I have to do now: I’ll give him my life. Let him live and I’ll die!”
I suddenly feel very uncomfortable and I give her the first excuse I can think of to get away. Out on the street I start to run; I need to breathe in this life, the trees, the warmth of my town. I will be able to control my own fate and I will know how to be happy. Happiness is something you lay
siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out.
42
The heat is making our training difficult.
Outside the walls of the town, the black of the open country is slowly turning into a sheet of burning-hot metal. Under the watch of the officers, the soldiers have to march, to run, to jump, to crawl, to shoot, and to bury their bayonets in the innards of straw dummies a thousand times. Those that pass out get a bucket of water poured over them and a couple of slaps in the face, but the Chinese recruits are punished more severely. It is as if our men are pieces of heated iron that need beating out to make useful weapons.
On the very first day my face caught the sun and my lips peeled. I have gone hoarse from shouting orders and my throat is burning; when I swallow a mouthful of rice it feels like grains of sand. The temperatures plummet at night, but our bodies still burn with the day’s sun. The cold and the heat are too much for me and I toss and turn on my bed, unable to sleep.
And yet I am happy to be here. Our barracks is like a forbidden city with its bars, its restaurants, its library, its pretty young nurses and its bathrooms with their great wooden tubs. Little Sister and Akiko have sent me books and literary journals, and Mother has spoiled me with a bag full of chocolates, red bean curd, and new socks and underpants.
The pornographic magazines we pass around create a ribald complicity. In the evenings our cracked voices ring out from one room to the next, massacring traditional Japanese songs. From time to time some of us will meet up for a game of cards. We play for money.
To the despair of the soldiers, the officers are allowed to come and go as they please. Little cliques of partygoers have formed and, as soon as the sun has set, we head out into the town to get drunk and take a postprandial trip to the brothels.