The man is keeping his distance.

Finally a rickshaw passes and I call it. I climb in alone and the boy starts to pull away.

“Wait!” The Stranger puts out his hand, holding the boy back. “Wait,” he says again in a trembling voice.

Under the streetlight, he looks oddly tall and solitary. He seems to caress my face with his eyes.

I lower my gaze and stare at the rickshaw boy’s back.

The rickshaw swings into motion, and the voice fades behind me.

“You will come and play tomorrow, won’t you?”

I look up. Through a fog of tears I look hungrily out onto the black countryside. I feel ridiculous to catch myself crying. The shadows of passersby stumble on the pavement, all the houses are lit up and hundreds of lives unreel through the windows.

80

In my exhaustion I decide to go to bed without supper. On my bed I find the mail that arrived in the afternoon.

With the unfailing fluency and calm of the cultivated woman she is, Mother records the event of the month: Little Brother has set out for China.

“At first I was amazed by the silence in the house,” she writes. “To stop myself thinking about the fact that we are all apart, I have busied myself tidying up. Organizing things helps me forget that you’re not here. When I came across the kimonos you wore as children, I could scarcely believe that you were both already fighting for the Emperor.”

In his letter, Little Brother begs me to forgive him: he had no time to ask my permission to leave our mother.

“We will see each other soon in China, at the front. You’ll be proud of me!”

I would have preferred this naive boy stay where he was, safe from the cruelties of war. But how could I deny him the chance to put his country before his own life? As a child he idolized me, but after Father’s death he rebelled against my authority. Now I am his example once again.

My poor mother; all her men have left and the gods have condemned her to live alone. I can’t bear to imagine the pain she will suffer when she will receive two urns of ashes.

Through the wall I can hear a game of cards in full swing.

“Double my stake!”

“Me too!”

Every soldier has his own way of defying the future.

I think of my mother’s slender frame wrapped in a widow’s kimono. Then I see the Chinese girl curled up on the grass. They are different but share a common fate: the insurmountable sorrow of an impossible love.

Women are the offerings we make to this vast world.

81

Mother grills me when I return home.

“Where were you? Why are you home so late?”

I lie badly, but for some strange reason she pretends to believe me. Father is reading the paper, an enigmatic smile on his lips. He doesn’t say a word to me all evening.

I gobble down the leftovers in the kitchen-my appetite is back, and for two days now I have been better able to tolerate smells. Mother comes in silently and sits down facing me. In the half-light the red lacquered table looks almost black, polished meticulously, smooth as a mirror, by the cook. Unable to avoid her gaze, I count the grains of rice on the ends of my chopsticks.

Descended from a line of Chinese nobility whose women breast-fed the Manchurian emperors, Mother has seen all her ancestors’ pomp and splendor eradicated, and her heart has hardened. She seals memories away in chests, and now she watches the world deteriorate with the cold dignity of a woman wronged.

In England she grew disenchanted with China. In fact my sister often used to say that, had it not been for Father, Mother would never have come back. Unlike most Chinese women, who overflow with maternal love, Mother maintains a courtly distance and eschews any show of affection. Her anger, too, is provoked only by formalities: being a few minutes late, a lack of courtesy, a crumpled book…

“You’ve lost weight,” says Mother.

My heart sinks: what is she saying?

“You don’t look well. Let me take your pulse.”

I slowly extend my left arm to her, and carry on eating with my right. Might she discover my secret?

“Weak and irregular,” she says after squeezing my wrist awhile. “I must take you to see my doctor. Girls your age are weakened by the changes in their bodies. That’s why the ancients used to marry them very young, to stabilize them.”

I don’t dare argue with her.

“You must have some swallows’ nest soup,” she says, getting up, “it warms the blood and the intestines, it harmonizes the ebb and flow of energy. And tomorrow we will go see old Master Liu for some medicinal infusions. Perhaps I’ll take you to the American hospital as well. The holidays start at the end of this week. Your sister is coming home, and I’ll keep both of you under my roof to get you both back to health.”

Panicked, I tell her that I won’t have time to go to the doctor tomorrow.

“You don’t have lessons at the end of the afternoon,” she replies.

“I have to finish my game of go. It’s very important.”

Mother is angry, but her voice stays calm.

“I have given you too much freedom, you and your sister. It does you no good. Forget your game,” she says, heading from the kitchen, then she turns in the doorway and says, “That dress belongs to your sister, it’s too long for you and the color doesn’t suit you. Where are the dresses I had made for you a couple of months ago?”

Back in my room, I slump down onto my bed. I lose less blood in the night, but I still sleep fitfully. Huong, dressed in red and covered in jewels and embroidery, bows to a horribly ugly man. She is in tears and she looks like a goddess who has been banished from the heavens. A stranger notices how sad I am, and takes my hand. His hand, rough as a pumice stone, soothes my agitated nerves. Behind him I can see Min under a tree before the Temple of the White Horse. He smiles at me before disappearing into the crowd.

In the morning my whole body feels slack and my skin dry. To please my mother I put on one of the new dresses and the stiff fabric chafes me.

At the temple crossroads I glance over at the tree where Min was standing in my dream. There is a man crouching there and when I meet his eye, my blood freezes: it’s Jing!

I jump out of the rickshaw. He has lost ten kilos, his face is hidden under a hat and has sprouted a black beard, but still I see it’s badly scarred. When I go towards him, he backs away. For a long time he says nothing, just staring at the ants climbing up the tree in an unbroken line.

“I betrayed them,” he says in a sullen voice that makes me shiver. “Their bodies were thrown into a common grave. I couldn’t even go and make my peace at their tombs.”

Jing bangs his head against the tree trunk. I take his arm, but he shakes me off.

“Don’t touch me,” he says. “I confessed it all, told them everything. It was easy as pissing, I had no shame. I wasn’t thinking about anyone. The words just came out, I couldn’t stop them. It was intoxicating, destroying everything…”

Jing bursts out laughing, shakes his head violently.

“You’re the only one who doesn’t look at me as if I were a monster,” he says. “My father prays for my death and forbids my mother to see me.”

He punches the tree so hard that his hand splits open.

I pass him a handkerchief and he whispers, “I can’t go back to the university now. I’m so ashamed. I live like a rat, hiding from my friends and frightening children in the street. I can’t sleep at night-the Resistance Movement will send out their killers for me. ‘In the name of the Resistance, in the name of the Chinese people, in the names of the victims and their families, we send you on your way to hell…’ You’ll see my body left at the crossroads, with a sign round my neck: ‘He betrayed, now he’s paid!’ ”