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.