The Girl Who Played Go

Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out.

Years have passed and how I am anxiously watching the twilight of my childhood, quietly sinking, never to rise again.

Dying is so simple. A fleeting moment of suffering. In the blink of an eye you are over the threshold, into another world. No more pain, no more fears. You sleep so well there. Dying is like rubbing snow together, setting fire to a whole winter of cold and ice.

Tomorrow we will be nothing but earth and dust. Who will remember the love a soldier once knew?

I notice the silvery hair at his temples with a tinge of sadness. Why do parents grow old? Life is a castle of lies slowly dismantled by the passage of time. I regret not spending more time looking at the people I love.

Out on the street I start to run; I need to breathe in this life, the trees, the warmth of my town. I will be able to control my own fate and I will know how to be happy. Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle . . .

I have been brought up in a world dominated by honor. I have known neither crime, poverty, nor betrayal, and here I taste hatred for the first time: it is sublime, like a thirst for justice and revenge." -the girl who played go

The winter light, tinted by the bright colors in the street, plays on the go-board. All these festivities cut me off from the rest of the world. My loneliness is like a bolt of crimson silk stowed in the bottom of a wooden chest.

I splash my head with ice-cold water and turn to face the mirror. When my image appears I instinctively look away. Is there a truth on the other side that we do not want to see?

Sự si mê của đàn ông tàn lụi nhanh hơn nhan sắc đàn bà

. . . I have witnessed the strength of our people driven from their own land. The tenacious march south is like a silent protest against death. In this tidal wave of men and woman a hatred mingles with hope. And this furious force of will that has infected me too will carry me to the very end of my own lonely progress.

I am like them-I want life. I want to go back to Manchuria, to find my house and my go table. I will return to the Square of a Thousand Winds and wait for my Stranger. I know he will come ... one afternoon ... as he did that first time.

Love has been buried forever under the leaves at my feet. I lie down on the ground and rest my head on my bag. The grass tickles my arms where I bend the stalks under my neck. I want to sleep.

I am terrified by the dizzying pleasure of it: I am both here and over there; I am be and I am no longer me! Am I already dead?

Inside its crumbling walls the house is riddled with bullet holes, and in its garden only the crimson dahlias still hold their heads high. Jing is lying on a chaise longue [sic] playing with his bird. 'I thought you were in prison.' He looks up, his eyes filled with hate and desire. 'You are my prison.

Every man has to die. Choosing oblivion is the only way of triumphing over this.

I reply with a letter as brief as his: 'My brother, after my first battle the only thing I now worship is the sun, a star that represents death's constancy. Beware of the moon, which reflects our world of beauty. It waxes and wanes, it is treacherous and ephemeral. We will all die some day . . . .

Life is an infernal loop where the day before yesterday has merged with today, and yesterday has been jettisoned. We think we are moving forward in time, but we are always prisoners of the past.

Quảng trường Thiên Phong. Đôi khi anh mở quạt, chẳng phải để tự quạt mát cho mình mà anh làm sao cho chút gió phảng phất qua mặt tôi. Kỷ niệm này làm tôi đau lòng. Tôi vẫn không hiểu tại sao anh từ chối. Tại sao những kẻ biết hạnh phúc của mình ở đâu lại cứ tìm cách trốn chạy?

Eventually I fall asleep, savoring the melancholy pleasures of victory. I wake with a start to a muffled sound: the wolves could not wait for us to withdraw; they are already devouring the bodies.

It has taken many years for the game of go to initiate me into the freedom of slipping between yesterday, today, and tomorrow. From one stone to the next, from black to white, the thousands of stones have ended up building a bridge far into the infinite expanse of China.

The trees part before her slender form and close in again behind me. The roads weave a vast labyrinth, and I am lost.

When I get out of the rickshaw I walk slowly towards the school building, taking small steps. All around me girls are running: in the morning the young are as noisy as a flock of sparrows.

I must go live at the ends of the earth and have my child there while I wait for Min and Jing to be freed. That happy day will come: two men making their way towards a little cottage lost in the open countryside. The door opens . . .

I hand the cage to him and he takes it firmly in his arms. 'Your hankie smells nice,' he says, almost in a whisper.

... trẻ con cần phải được nuôi dạy và lớn lên với sự bảo trợ của người cha, không biết đến tang tóc.

Người lính là kẻ hủy hoại hạnh phúc của những người thân. Nếu cuộc sống của tôi là có ích, chắc tổ quốc phải chịu ơn sự hy sinh của một người đàn bà.