Free The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa Page B

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