I was completely astonished by what she had said, and I did not say a word. She came towards me on her knees and bowed low.

“I beg you to consider it,” she said. “Do not trouble yourself with the financial details, I shall take care of that. Consider it, please…”

She stood up and disappeared behind the screens. I found the room oppressively dark. According to tradition, an apprentice geisha should be deflowered by a rich stranger. This initiation is expensive, but it is the crowning status symbol for a man of the world. No apprentice geisha has ever chosen the man who should ravish her, and I had just been asked to transgress this custom scandalously.

I was tormented with doubt and could not give my answer straightaway.

31

I didn’t see Min yesterday on my way to school and I keep asking myself whether he is ill or whether he doesn’t want to see me anymore. Is he already engaged, like many students of his age? Why should he show any interest in a schoolgirl?

He isn’t at the crossroads this morning, either. Feeling sad and indignant, I am just deciding I will have to forget him when a repeated ringing attracts my attention: I look up and see Min pedaling towards me.

“What are you doing this afternoon?” he cries.

“I’m playing go on the Square of a Thousand Winds,” I can’t help myself answering.

“You can do that another day. I’m inviting you out to lunch,” he says and, without giving me time to decline his invitation, he adds, “I’ll wait for you when you come out of school.”

Before riding past us he throws me a banknote.

“It’s for your rickshaw boy,” he says, “it’ll keep him quiet.”

At noon I come out of school after everyone else and, head lowered, I make my way along the wall. Min is not at the door. I heave a sigh of relief and get into a rickshaw, but then he looms in front of me like a ghost.

He abandons his bicycle and slips onto the seat beside me before I even have time to cry out in surprise. He puts one arm around my shoulders and with the other hand he lowers the blind on the rickshaw so that we are hidden down to our knees. Then he tells the boy to take us to the Hill of Seven Ruins.

The rickshaw trundles through the narrow streets. Inside, sheltered from the stares of passersby under the white tenting yellowed by the sun, Min’s breathing becomes heavier. He brushes my neck lightly with his fingers then buries them in my hair, massaging my nape. I hold my breath, rigid with terror and with an unfamiliar feeling of delight. Beneath the bottom of the blind I can see the rickshaw boy’s legs swinging regularly. Dogs, children and pedestrians skim by on the pavements to either side… I would like this monotonous landscape to go on forever.

On Min’s orders, the rickshaw boy stops outside a restaurant. Min sits himself down as if he were in his own home and orders some noodles. The tiny room is soon filled with the smell of cooking, which blends with the scent of the first spring flowers. The manager serves us and goes back to snooze behind his counter as the midday sun streams in through the open door. I concentrate silently on my food while Min holds forth on the class struggle. When he interrupts himself to say he has never seen a girl eat so voraciously, I don’t rise to his teasing-I find the whole situation exasperating! The young man is obviously accustomed to this sort of tête-à-tête, but I have no idea how a girl in my position should behave. Min saves me from my own confusion by suggesting we go for a walk on the Hill of Seven Ruins.

We start our climb along a shady path where all around us yellow dandelions and purple campanula are in flower. The new grass has grown in dense clumps round the charred granite blocks, the vestiges of a palace that was consumed in flames. Min asks me to sit down on a lotus flower carved in marble, and he stands back to look at me. I find the silence uncomfortable, and sit with my head lowered, bending a buttercup stem with the tip of my shoe.

I don’t know what to do. In the novels at school-Mandarin Ducks and Wild Butterflies-a description of a young man and a young woman in a garden would constitute the most awkward scene in a love story: they have so much to say to each other, but a sense of propriety forbids them from betraying their emotions. By comparing the two of us to characters in the sort of books for sale at a train station, I eventually think we are both ridiculous. What does Min expect of me? And what do I expect of him?

I don’t feel anything to compare with the thrill of our first meeting, or with the palpitations I feel every morning as I travel to school and Min simply passes by me. Is our story already coming to an end, and does love exist only in the solitude of my imagination?

Min suddenly puts his hand on my shoulder, making me quiver. I am just about to break free from him when he starts to stroke my face with the tips of his fingers, my eyebrows, eyelids, forehead, chin. Each little move he makes sends shivers through me. My cheeks are burning and I feel ashamed, I am afraid we will be seen through the foliage… but I don’t have the strength to resist.

He draws my head to his; his face approaches inch by inch. I can make out the freckles on his cheeks, the beginnings of a mustache, the misgiving in his eyes. I am too proud to let my fears show and so, instead of fighting, I fall straight into his arms. His lips brush gently onto mine. They are dry but his tongue is moist, and I am amazed when I feel it probe into my mouth. A torrent flows over me.

I have to cry, but the tears won’t come. I scratch his back and he groans. With eyes closed, cheeks flaming and blue rings under his eyes, Min kisses me with the desperate ardor of a collector who has made a rare discovery.

Above the tops of the trees, the town melts away in a light mist. My silence doesn’t discourage him: he takes me to the monastery at the top of the hill and orders some tea from a young monk. After filling my cup, he snaps open some watermelon seeds and looks out over the view, whistling. Avoiding his eyes, and the eyes of the monks who are staring at me, I drain my cup of tea, get up, smooth my crumpled skirt and go back down the steps four at a time.

The sun is sinking, a mask of red lacquer. Beyond the city walls, the melting snow reveals the scorched earth beneath. The villages blend into the parcels of black soil, and the trees flatten out and disappear into the surrounding folds created by the cloak of twilight.

That night I dream that Cousin Lu bursts into my room, comes over to me, takes my hand and presses it to his chest. I am disgusted and I try to shake him off, but his fingers are insistent and I can feel their heat. A strange languorous feeling washes over me.

Horrified, I wake to find I am bathed in sweat.