“What is it?” she asked in a wavering voice.

“I’m so sorry.”

She burst into tears. “Oh, please.”

Her despair was indescribably distressing. I thought I knew about women but, at twenty, I did not yet know that beyond the realms of pleasure, men enter a twilight world where dignity is lost and where devastated souls stumble through the darkness masked like performers in the theater of Noh. I decided to cover her face with the sheet in which we were both lying and to lift up the bottom of her yukata. In the lamplight her legs looked deathly pale. The long cleft between her legs had sleek fur like an otter. I tried to imagine she was just a prostitute picked up in the street. I could not think of her as just a cavity to be filled by a triumphant phallus seeking its glorious release.

I masturbated, but my member did not respond. Seeing how still the young girl was, I thought suddenly that she had suffocated and was lying there dead.

I lifted the sheet: Sunlight was crying.

To save face, I cut my arm with a dagger and let my blood flow onto the strip of white cloth that was meant to be colored by her virginal blood. A little before dawn, I helped her repowder her face. She rolled up the bloodied strip, put it up her sleeve and left.

35

Huong comes home with me after lessons today. We have supper with my parents and then shut ourselves in my room to play a game of chess.

“I’m going to be married,” she announces, advancing her knight.

“Now, that’s good news,” I say, convinced she is joking. “Who’s the lucky man? Do I know him?”

She doesn’t answer and I look up to see her holding a pawn between her fingers, resting her cheek on her left hand. The lamplight picks out two lines of tears running down her nose. Horrified, I beg her to talk, but she breaks down and cries.

I watch her with a tight sensation round my heart: since I met Min and Jing, Huong has become less important to me. The parties don’t seem so much fun anymore and I refuse all her invitations. When she walks home with me after school, I hardly listen to her chattering-my mind is on other things.

“I’m engaged.”

“Who to?”

She stares at me for a long time. “The younger son of the mayor of our town.”

I roar with laughter.

“Where on earth did he spring from? You’ve never told me about him. Why were you hiding him? You must have played green plums and bamboo horses together when you were children, and then bumped into him one day in town. Where is he studying? Is he good-looking? I hope you’re going to live here. Look, I don’t know why you’re crying. Is something wrong?”

“I’ve never met him. My father and stepmother decided for me. I have to go back to the country at the end of July.”

“Don’t tell me they’re forcing you to marry a stranger!”

Huong cries all the more desperately.

“They can’t be,” I say indignantly. “Surely you’re not going to accept this nonsense? Times have changed. Nowadays girls don’t belong body and soul to their parents.”

“My father’s written to me… If I refuse, he’ll stop… he’ll stop supporting me…”

“The bastard! You’re not some trinket that can be bartered! You’ve just escaped from your stepmother’s clutches. You’re not going to let yourself fall into the hands of a mother-in-law, some rural harridan who smokes a pipe and spends her days drugged on opium, jealous because you’re young and well educated. She’ll humiliate you and belittle you until you’re like her-frustrated, sulky and nasty. You’ll have a big fat father-in-law who spends his evenings with prostitutes and comes home blind-drunk and shouts at your husband. Your husband will get bored with you; you’ll live in a huge house surrounded by women: servants, cooks, your father-in-law’s concubines, your husband’s concubines, sisters-in-law, the mothers and sisters of your sisters-in-law, and they’ll all be scheming to attract the men’s attention and to stab you in the back. You’ll be given children: if you have a son you’ll be respected, but if you have a daughter they’ll treat you like their dogs or their pigs. Then one day they’ll renounce you in a letter and you’ll bring nothing but shame on your family…”

“Stop it, please…” cries Huong, stifled by her tears.

Knowing that I have made her suffer, I go to fetch a damp towel. I make her clean up her face and drink a cup of tea.

She calms down a little.

“I know it’s difficult to disobey your father. In the past, disobedience was a crime, but nowadays it’s the only way of ensuring your happiness. If your father stops supporting you, my parents will help you. We’ll go to university together. Come on.”

Dragging Huong by the hand, I go over to the little red lacquered cupboard where I keep my treasures, and remove the padlock. Among the books, the scrolls of calligraphy and the vials of ink in their wooden case, I find my embroidered silk purse. I open it under the lamp and show Huong my jewels.

“We’ll sell them. They’ll pay for our studies.”

Her tears well up again immediately.

“My mother left me hers. My father took them from me to give to his new wife.”

“Stop sniveling. If you have a choice between money and freedom, you mustn’t hesitate for a moment. Now, dry your tears. Everything that is mine is yours. Stop torturing yourself.”

It is well into the night, and Huong has slipped into restless sleep beside me. I listen to the wind and the cats running along the 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?