52

The Chinese girl has gone home for lunch and I choose a Korean restaurant that seems to have very few customers. I order cold noodles, and sit in a corner overlooking the whole room so that I can keep an eye on the comings and goings of the waiters as I write the beginnings of a letter to my mother.

I tell her what I need: soap, towels, newspapers, books and bean-curd cakes. My years spent at the military academy made a man of me, but my time spent far from my homeland has turned me into a capricious child. I insist on particular brands, giving details of the color and the flavor. I rewrite the list twenty times before my raging nostalgia finally calms.

How are the flowers in the garden? How is Little Brother, who has been called up by the army? Does he come home once a month? Do they give him a good meal and warm sake? What is my Little Sister doing as I think about her now? What is the weather like in Tokyo?

Everyone knows that mail can be intercepted and monitored and so, for fear of betraying military secrets, our soldiers’ letters to their families are excruciatingly bland. The replies are in the same vein. When we are gone, will the fact that we do not complain or express our fears make us look like intrepid heroes?

I pull to pieces every sentence from Japan, and my family have their own way of interpreting my words. Fearing she might weaken my will, Mother has never written that she misses me. So as not to make her cry, I have never told her how I suffer away from my country.

Only the vocabulary of death is allowed between us. She writes, “Do not hesitate to die to honor the Emperor. It is the path of your fate.” And I reply, “What joy to sacrifice myself for my beloved country.” I will not tell her that I shall also die for her glory, and she will never admit that my death will destroy her.

I end my letter thus: “According to Confucius, ‘a man who knows humanity will never agree to preserve his life at the expense of that humanity.’ This courageous virtue has become the key to my very existence. Pray, venerable Mother, I beg you, that I may soon attain this ideal.”

53

At home lunch is served in the big sitting room where the shutters have been kept closed to preserve the cool of morning. My sister has come back from market, and tells us the news she has gleaned.

Last night the Japanese army arrested some members of the Resistance Movement who were secretly planning an insurrection. The firing we heard came not from an exercise, but from true carnage.

I listen to her halfheartedly; when I am in the middle of a game of go, I am completely intoxicated and cut off from the outside world. The darkness of the sitting room reminds me of the bedroom at Jing’s house, shadowy as an imperial tomb: where the black lacquered furniture exhales a heavy scent and the cracks in the walls form mysterious frescoes. The bed covered in crimson silk embroidered with gold is an eternal fire.

“An insurrection,” my sister is saying. “Don’t you see! How stupid!” she exclaims, and then she goes on, “Do you know where the would-be rioters were arrested? Wait for it: the mayor’s own son had got them together in one of his houses. Don’t look at me as if I’m making it all up. Apparently they found guns and cases of ammunition in the cellar. What? Of course they arrested him.”

The chicken I am eating suddenly tastes of nothing. To get it down I fill my mouth with rice, but I can’t swallow it.

The cook who is serving tea intervenes: “At dawn this morning the Japanese arrested Doctor Li. He was one of the conspirators.”

Father speaks up slowly.

“I knew the mayor well. Our fathers served together in the Dowager Empress’s court. We saw a great deal of each other in our youth. He wanted to go to England to study, but his family wouldn’t let him. It’s something he has always regretted. The other day he came to say hello to me after my conference. Now that he’s fifty he looks just like his father- all he needs is the hat with the peacock feathers, the coral necklaces and the brocade tunics. As he shook my hand he told me that his elder brother, a close adviser to the Emperor of Manchuria, had found a post for him at court in the New Capital. His career will be ruined now. And what of his life and his family’s future.”

“How can you feel sorry for that man,” Mother retorts. “He loathes us. When he was adviser to the previous mayor, he schemed to have your teaching hours reduced. I suspect he even tried to have your translations banned. I haven’t forgotten anything, and I don’t care if he’s in trouble now.”

I didn’t know that my parents knew Jing’s father, and I am devastated by what they are saying-there they are sitting round the table in the half-light, commenting on all this as if it was just a gang of troublemakers who had been arrested.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” my sister asks suddenly.

“I’ve got a stomachache.”

“You don’t look well. Go and lie down,” says my mother. “We’ll send some tea up for you.”

I lie on the bed and put my ice-cold hands over my stomach.

Where is Jing? Is Min with him? I can see each crack in the wall, every piece of furniture and every ornament in that house. They seem worn and peaceful, there isn’t the tiniest suggestion of revolt in them. And yet my friends managed to fool me. When Min put his arms round me and led me off to the bedroom, he was walking over the secrets in the cellar. When Jing talked to me in the garden and spied jealously on Min, there was a link far stronger than love between him and his friend. Why did they hide the truth from me? I would have joined them in their patriotic fervor, I would have gone to prison, I would have died beside them. Why did they seduce me only to exclude me?

When I hear my sister bringing me a cup of tea, I turn towards the wall and pretend to be asleep.

I remember the first time we met: the Resistance had launched their attack on the town hall. I was jostled by the crowd, I fell and a dark-skinned boy held out his hand to me. He had the fine, square face of the Manchurian aristocracy. Then there was Jing, cold and aloof. The two organizers of the revolt had just entered my life.

I roll over, take a few good sips of tea and begin to calm down. When Min talked about the revolution I thought he was dreaming. When he told me his life was dangerous, I made fun of his taste for adventure.

I remember Tang, the student girl who was invited to Jing’s birthday. Now I understand the importance of what she was saying: she was the daughter of a slave and she had found her strength and confidence in the Communist ideal. The Japanese invasion broke down our immutable hierarchies, and now Tang could communicate to Min-who was young, landed and noble-the dream of building a new society where all men would be equal. She persuaded him to take up arms and sign up to the Resistance Movement. And Min had dragged Jing into it. They would be shot, all three of them!

I slip out. The rickshaw takes me past Jing’s house, but the road is barred by guards.

On the Square of a Thousand Winds I lay out the stones in the positions I noted earlier. I stare at the checkered pattern and count the intersections, sinking into the oblivion of mathematics.