Free The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa

rooftops.
    The image of my sister Moon Pearl comes into my mind: her legs are svelte, fine as bamboo stalks. She is proudly showing me the present my brother-in-law gave her for their reconciliation, a pair of milky-white satin shoes embroidered with tiny butterflies. Her naked foot inside this dazzling shoe is as beautiful as her hand, gloved in silk and bearing a pink coral ring. Then the happiness falls from her face. She looks pale, her hair is unkempt, she has dark rings under her eyes and lines on her forehead. Her eyes are lifeless, and she stares vacantly into the distance. She is counting the minutes and praying that her husband will be home before midnight. There is something terrible about this body already withering with old age and ugliness. To me, Moon Pearl is not a woman but a flower slowly wilting.
    My mother is not a woman, either: she belongs to the race of the crucified. I see her copying out Father’s manuscript and researching information for him. Her eyesight is failing, her back hurts, she is wearing herself out for something that will never bring her honor in her own right. When Father is maligned and persecuted by his jealous colleagues, she consoles him and defends him. Three years ago, when he had a child with a young student, she hid her pain, and when the girl came to our door one morning with the baby in her arms, Mother gave her everything she had and then sent her away. She bought peace in our household at the expense of her own soul. She never cried once.
    Who really deserves to be called a woman?

36
    I went back to the prostitutes: I found them reassuring and I was certain they would give me an erection, but I was so haunted by the image of Sunlight that my moment of ecstasy was shot through with pain. The geisha now had a banker as her protector, and she was beginning to make a reputation for herself. It was not long before she moved only in the most elevated circles and I lost track of her.
    I saw her again one misty evening two years later, climbing into a rickshaw on the other side of the road. She was wearing a heavy, rounded headdress and a sumptuous coat. She saw me, pretended not to notice and glided off into the darkness like a goddess returning to the heavens.
    When I returned from my posting in Manchuria, I went to her house and her mother invited me in. I waited in a silent room, sipping sake for what seemed like a long time. Late into the night she came home from an official reception, wearing a black kimono which had golden waves embroidered along the hem over a hand-painted gray sea. Her hair was wet because of the thin, icy rain, and she wiped her handkerchief over it. I had not seen her for years: the slight hollowness of her cheeks accentuated the hard look in her eyes. She seemed exhausted, spent. As I studied her face- which had become the face of a woman-I felt I had been betrayed.
    She sat down opposite me with her eyes lowered and her hands on her knees, and her shyness reminded me of our walk in the park. We sat in silence for a long time: a great river lay between us and neither of us had the strength to cross it.
    “I’m leaving for Manchuria.”
    Unmoved, she did not even blink.
    “I shall never forget you,” she said.
    Those words were enough; I bowed deeply and got to my feet. She stayed there motionless. There was not a tear or even the slightest sigh to mark this bitter, liberating farewell.

37
    As I come out of school I see Min leaning up against a tree. I catch his eye and then lower my head and continue on my way.
    “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,