I have hardly moved my black stone before her white one takes over a neighboring intersection. She has never reacted so quickly and yet the move itself is irreproachable. I look up again, our eyes meet and she stares at me. A shiver runs through me and, to hide my uneasiness, I pretend to be thinking.

She carries on staring at me; I can feel my forehead burning under her gaze. Then suddenly her voice rings out: “Would you do me a favor?”

“How could I be of use to you?”

“Let’s leave this place, I’ll explain.”

I help her make a note of our positions and put the stones away in their pots. When she has put everything away in her bag, she asks me to follow her. She walks ahead, and I follow behind. She takes small steps and a few strands of her hair beat the rhythm in the air as she walks on.

My heart feels heavy and a strange feeling of anguish comes over me. Where is she taking me? The trees part before her slender form and close in again behind me. The roads weave a vast labyrinth, and I am lost.

Sometimes she looks round and smiles; the coolness in her eye has gone. She lifts her arm to hail a rickshaw, and tells me to sit down next to her.

“The Hill of the Seven Ruins, please.”

The sunlight streaming through the blind throws a golden veil over her face. Tiny motes of dust fall twinkling from the ceiling and come to rest on the ends of her eyelashes. I try desperately to keep to the far end of the narrow bench seat, but even so when we come to a bend in the road my arm brushes against hers. Her icy skin leaves its imprint on mine as if I have been bitten. She pretends not to notice. The distinctive fragrance of a young girl wafts from her neck, a blend of green tea and soap. The rickshaw trundles over a pebble and my thigh presses against hers.

I am strangled by my feelings of arousal and shame.

I so much want to hold her it is killing me! Since I cannot put my arm around her shoulders and rest her head on my chest, I would be content just to brush my hand over her fingers. I watch her face carefully out of the corner of my eye, ready to surrender myself like a moth drawn to a light. But the Chinese girl’s face remains closed. She sits there with her brows knitted, watching the back of the rickshaw boy as he runs.

I keep my hands clamped on my knees.

The rickshaw stops and we get out. I throw my head back and my eyes climb up a wooded hillside. At the top, lost in the sunlight, I can just make out a pagoda overlooking the exuberant vegetation.

In front of us a slate path snakes between shrubs and tall grasses, and disappears as it climbs upwards through the shade of the trees and the reeds.

77

In class Huong passes a note to me under the table. I unfold it: “Well?”

I tear off a sheet and reply: “!”

A few minutes later another missive arrives, and the writing is so violent that it has broken through the paper in places: “My father arrived this morning. He’s taking me away with him at the end of the academic year. I’ve had it!”

Our lessons end this week. I despair at the thought of Huong being married off to the son of some minor country dignitary, and the effect of this emotion brings on the contractions again. As soon as the bell sounds, I bow to my teacher and hurtle to the toilets with my bag full of wadding.

Huong has followed and is waiting for me outside the door. Her lips are trembling and she can hardly speak. I drag her away from the other pupils and she bursts into tears. My stomach hurts, but Huong throws herself into my arms so that I can’t bend over to repress the spasms. I hold her to me and my sweat mingles with her tears.

She has to have lunch with her father, and she begs me to go with her. She wants to negotiate a year’s reprieve.

With his silk tunic and his watch on the end of a gold chain, my poor friend’s father is a farmer dressed up as a gentleman. He takes us to a luxurious restaurant and we have hardly sat down when he starts enumerating the expenses of her education, all that money earned by the sweat of his brow.

“Anyway,” he says, striking the table with his fist, “all that nonsensical investment is coming to term. You’re packing your bags.”

His yellow teeth are disgusting. Huong is white as paper, she daren’t open her mouth.

I feel terrible. Every now and then the clatter of plates and conversation swells to a deafening thrum. I drop my chopsticks and bend over to pick them up. Huong leans over and whispers, “Go on! Say something!”

What should I say? Where do I start? My friend is putting all the weight of her happiness on my shoulders. Struggling against the pain gnawing away at me, I drink three cups of tea in quick succession and, feeling a bit stronger, I try to explain to the old crook that his daughter really should finish her studies and get a diploma.

“How much does a diploma cost?” he splutters in my face. “I can’t read and I’m doing well enough! I’ve had enough of plowing my money into this chamber pot. She needs to show me a bit of a return now! And as for you, Miss Stick-your-nose-in-everything, you should think of your own future. You’re not bad-looking, your parents should hurry up and find you a good match.”

I stand and leave the restaurant. Behind me I can hear the old man shrieking with laughter.

“Is that your best friend? Little bitch. I’ll tear your eyes out if you see her again. After lunch I’m taking you to buy some dresses. You’ll see, you’ll have the best dowry in the region.”

I hail a rickshaw in the street.

There has been less blood since midday, but I am exhausted. I long to sink into a deep sleep. Mother is at home: to return now would mean being exposed to her sharp eye. If I go to bed it would be like admitting that I am ill, and they would soon find the cause.

I snooze in the rickshaw and, after making the boy wander around for a long time, I remember I have arranged to play go. I return home immediately but remain hidden in the rickshaw and send the boy to ask the housekeeper to get the two pots of stones.

The terra-cotta statue is already there on the Square of a Thousand Winds.

Our game is moving towards its final phase, and I regain some of my old energy and dignity as I play. But time is against me: I am dazed by the sunlight while my opponent meditates at length. I close my eyes, but my ears are filled with endless waves of muffled rustling. There is a huge clearing opening at my feet, and I lie down on the cool grass.

I am woken by the click of a stone on the board: my opponent has just played his turn. Our eyes meet.

“Would you do me a favor?” I have hardly formulated this request in my mind before it leaves my mouth. He doesn’t even know my name.

I get up, feeling feverish and racked by the pain in my stomach. I need to run away from these players, from the game of go, from the whole town.

I get into a rickshaw and my opponent sits down next to me. He has more pronounced muscles and wider shoulders than Min; and so the bench seat seems narrow. Lulled by the rolling motion, I feel as if I am setting off on a long journey. I am no longer myself, I am floating.

The rickshaw stops at the foot of the hill, and I start to climb. The Stranger follows me, still silent, as the wind wafts the bitter perfume of wildflowers over us. My legs are shaking and I can’t breathe very easily, but luckily I have started to sweat and the fever seems to be breaking. I wait for the Stranger, who is walking slowly with his hands crossed behind his back. He looks up, but lowers his eyes at once.

Who is he? Where is he from? The answers would only erase the peculiar and familiar, disturbing and fleeting figures that people our dreams.

We go past the path that leads to the place where I sat on the chipped marble carved into the shape of a flower and faced Min, waiting for my first kisses.