In the dark, p.31
In the Dark, page 31
By May of 1972, my mother’s stomach pain was much more severe. She’d often be in so much pain that she couldn’t get out of bed. She’d just lie there, her whole body covered in sweat. At the time, Ah-bing was away completing his military service and I had been sent down to the countryside. Although it wasn’t too far away – just a neighbouring county, about a hundred-kilometre round trip – I couldn’t go home often. Just once a month, and only for one night at a time. As a result, I really didn’t know she was so ill. My father was worse: he didn’t have a clue. I don’t want to say that he didn’t know Mum was ill, it’s just that he probably wouldn’t even have realized if he was ill himself, to say nothing of the fact that she deliberately concealed it from him. Just think: she spent her whole life being concerned about us, but when she needed our concern, none of us were there for her. But Mum just continued to look after us, to make sure the three of us were fine, always busy … How could she find time to look after herself? There was no room in her heart for herself; we had already occupied it completely. This was a woman who had grown up with an old Red Army soldier for a father, who had been taught to love the Party and the intelligence service more than her own parents. My mother loved us as a parent ought to love her children, real human love, but she was unable to love herself. Mum, how tired and exhausted you must’ve been in such a dysfunctional family! You were seriously ill, and yet you concealed it from us – you lied to us. You seemed guilt-ridden, as though you had done something wrong. Mum, I realize now that you and Father were cut from the same cloth: you both had no place for yourselves, you were buried within your faith and idealism – but all it did was drain your blood, drop by drop, until nothing was left. And yet, both of you were satisfied with your lot in life, both of you were happy.
But you couldn’t know – nobody can – that in our hearts is buried an endless amount of remorse and guilt!
Finally, I discovered that she was ill. I had just returned from the countryside one evening. It was already late, the house was dark and the lights had been turned off. I turned on a lamp and noticed my mother’s bedroom door was ajar, but she didn’t come out to greet me as usual. I called out but there was no answer. All I heard was the quiet sound of someone moving about. I went into her room, turned on the light and saw Mum squatting down on the floor, her head propped up against the bed frame. Her face was distorted with pain, it was unnatural-looking. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her hair was a tangled mess. I rushed over to her. She grabbed me and immediately began to weep like a child. I asked her what was wrong. She cried out in a choked voice that she was dying. She called out again, asking me to take her to the hospital. Her tears and sweat glittered under the light of the lamp. I’d never seen Mum cry out in pain before. I had never seen her in such a state – her body had gone limp like vegetable leaves wilted by a frost. In the dusky glow emanating from the lamp, she looked like a mass of wrinkled clothes. The following day the doctor told me that my mother was suffering from liver cancer, already in its terminal stages – there was simply nothing that could be done.
To be honest, to write this hurts … it hurts so much! I was never willing to talk about it before, but talking about it now … I somehow feel a little better. I think, it doesn’t matter if Mum was somehow a part of Father; it seems as though we all belonged somehow to that red-walled compound, we are all somehow a part of it. Mum was Father’s wife, but she was also his comrade-in-arms; she had given her whole life to him. When I light an incense stick in memory of him, I must remember to light one for her as well, and to cry …
Day Four
Darkness has already shrouded the courtyard, but still the smells and sounds of it creep in past the metal window frame. The glow from the lamp is soft and indeterminate, it illuminates my mood. Staring at the draft paper next to the lamp, I notice that at some point it had become a kifu, a record of go games. An image of Father appears in my mind – his hand seems to move in and out from the shadows in a confused way. He longed to play a game of go again.
But who could play with him?
By the autumn of 1985, Father’s skill at go had surpassed all boundaries, and we could no longer find a willing partner to challenge him to a game. Because his reputation had spread beyond our town, occasionally uninvited guests would come in search of him – but as we expected, not only did their arrival not make Father happy, it actually often made him angry. Unimaginably angry; furious even. He had no desire to engage in a match of go with these average players and he abhorred the idea of letting them win. Could anyone still consider Father to be anything other than remarkable? No one. For over a year now, Father had immersed himself in studying the game, in learning its various techniques; he clearly understood its mysteries. He had competed with connoisseurs from all directions, and had learnt by constantly comparing notes with them and engaging them in battle. These contests had forged his talent, and he had reached an incredibly high level, at least for this city.
But our inability to find him an opponent meant he wasn’t able to play the game. So his life relapsed into one of dejected boredom. He had become trapped again – the danger of intellectual decrepitude lurked everywhere. Again we had to think of ways to keep him occupied, to give him something to do. We thought of travel, calligraphy, painting, qigong, t’ai chi – anything that might make him take an interest. But nothing worked. He was once more cold and detached – we were terribly discouraged. Once, a qigong teacher arrived in our residential area and many people decided to learn t’ai chi. I doggedly urged him to attend, for days, then a week; finally he agreed to study with a group of elderly people, about thirty men and women. Occasionally I went along with him and practised the moves, but even though Father had been going every day, and studying constantly, he still couldn’t perform the most basic moves – his movements were all over the place. He’d remember the first part of a move and then forget the final part; it was completely infuriating. Needless to say, his performance demonstrated his clumsiness. He seemed to be two different people: one a sublimely skilled go player possessed of immeasurable intelligence; the other, a clumsy old man unable to master the most basic moves of t’ai chi. It was quite bizarre. On the one hand he was a superman, a man of towering intelligence and skill; on the other, he was incorrigibly obstinate, slow-witted – nothing more than a drone. He was a man easily stuck in a rut, pigeon-holed into one particular thing that he couldn’t extricate himself from – so in a sense he was very limited. The only thing I had misgivings about was this: what was it, exactly, that allowed him to display such remarkable skill in the game of go? Was he truly a talented player who understood the game inside out, or was there some other reason for his success?
In my experience, go is a kind of test: it can uncover a person’s hitherto untapped abilities. There is a grim difference if it’s compared with other forms of chess. Chinese chess, for instance, is a more involving game that requires a greater number of pieces, but go is more complicated, more mysterious – sublime. There is no particular property for each stone in go; they can all perform the same function. They can be a general or a soldier – it all depends on where you place them and how you move them. Everything depends upon the player’s knowledge and skill, or lack thereof. Chinese chess is different – chariot, cannon, horse, all have their unique qualities: the chariot can move orthogonally, but it can’t leap over intervening pieces; the cannon can capture opposing pieces, but only by leaping over them; the horse moves orthogonally and then diagonally, but it cannot jump; the elephant moves two points diagonally to capture its opponent, and it, too, cannot jump; the soldier must advance straight towards the river, but once past it, can move diagonally to capture an opponent – but there is no retreat for the soldier. These differences, which are really limitations, mean that playing Chinese chess is comparatively easy, and not particularly profound. But the situation in go is entirely different. You could say that for Chinese chess there is a limit concerning the skill and intelligence involved, and that the opposite is true for go: the nature of its challenge is limitless. No stone has a particular property; its power comes from its placement on the board, and, in certain places, that power can be exceptional. Consequently, go requires you to have a special ability to combine things – to structure things to your advantage. You must provide the stones with the place at which they can be most effective; you must strive to connect them, to link them all together, and the connections must grow – only by growing can they survive. But this combinatorial style is also without limit: there is no set form, or rather, the form is formless. This limitlessness is sublime, alluring, imaginative – it is almost an intelligence. Victory or defeat does not depend on crafty tricks or random chance: the game is an intense battle of wits and insight, it’s a contest, a challenge. The game strengthens one’s character. The laurels of victory rest upon wisdom and intelligence, a resoluteness of character. For those who have a talent for the game, their powers of imagination, of perception, patience and technique are similar to those of mathematicians, poets and composers; the only difference is in how they combine these skills to create. The amazing ability that Father demonstrated in playing go, the unfathomable manner by which he achieved victory, as well as his obvious disdain for social niceties, his arrogant pride, aloofness, eccentricity and unwillingness to lose were not only puzzling to us, but to all those opponents who came one after another. They also couldn’t seem to grasp what he was all about; how he was able to win game after game.
It’s obvious that explaining the phenomenon of Father’s go ability as random chance is dissatisfying, but then, what else can explain his incredible prowess? Naturally, I must consider that mysterious world behind the red walls. To me, that compound was the strangest place in the world. For all those years it monopolized my vision, day and night. It possessed my mind, but never once did it let me look on it. Its walls were built high, its security was terrifying, its secrets concealed: it was a place entirely unknowable. I don’t know, nor can I know what kind of secret work Father did behind those red walls, but I couldn’t help but feel that somehow his work was intimately related to the game of go, that there was some sublime connection between them. That is to say that go perhaps played some part in his secret work, and through karma it had found him after he had been expelled from those red walls. And just like the work behind those ramparts, go didn’t allow you to just dabble with it: once you became involved, you’d be in thrall to it, just as he was to his work. Because this was an addiction, his body was not his own …
Day Five
Father was an amazing go player. His skill had grown faster than anyone could have hoped for. By the following autumn, there were no opponents left for him, and yet he still seated himself in front of the go board, waiting for his dream challenger to arrive. He believed that within the tens of thousands of people who lived in this district there had to be some who possessed consummate skill in the game. Perhaps they were living in seclusion in some unknown corner of the city; perhaps one day they would get wind of the fact that in this corner there lived a go player of immeasurable skill, and they would race over to engage in combat. But month after month passed and the only people who came to seek him out could not be considered true equals, true challengers – in fact, they hadn’t come to fight him at all but rather to learn from him. Watching Father at these times, you could see he felt no cautious modesty.
Generally those who came were strangers, people he hadn’t played against before, so he usually looked quite pleased and happy, at least at first. After a couple of games, however, his face would transform: he’d become silent and that familiar and expert look of dissatisfaction would appear. At times, his opponent’s level would simply be too low and so he would berate them, exasperated by their overall inability – it was very embarrassing. They all left feeling really upset, and I realized that the numbers of people showing up to learn from Father would become fewer and fewer; and so Father’s chances of finding a truly worthy opponent would likewise grow slimmer and slimmer – perhaps impossible. At that point I talked things over with Ah-bing, and advised him to plan to do his graduate studies in the provincial capital. I even thought if he eventually went off to study there, we could move the whole family to the provincial capital. That would have pleased Little Lü as well, since his parents lived in the capital. To tell you the truth, though, I didn’t think of this for Little Lü, I thought of it for Father. I thought perhaps he could find new challengers in the provincial capital – that there were bound to be more worthy opponents there than here. In fact, that’s why Ah-bing decided to go to graduate school. But by the time he was preparing for his final undergraduate exams two years later, Father would no longer seem to have a reason to go to the provincial capital …
One afternoon, a man came round to play go. They played five matches and, quite unexpectedly, Father failed to win a single game. This had never happened before. At first, we mistakenly believed that this man had played extraordinarily well, so we didn’t give it much thought. In fact, we thought it was incredibly fortunate; we thought that Father would now be able to satisfy his addiction to the game. But over the next few weeks, Father continued to lose every game he played, no matter who came to see him. He lost again and again, match after match. It seemed the lustre of previous times had gone. Of course, these people then went out and told everyone they could find that they had beaten Father. At first no one believed them, so there was one telephone call after another asking if it were true. We told them that, yes, Father had lost, and they all felt it was most peculiar, especially since those who had now beaten him were terribly undistinguished players. As expected, the numbers of people showing up to play Father grew and grew, and nearly every one of them had once been bested by him. Now, however, Father continued to lose. He even lost to me and Ah-bing. It seemed as though he simply couldn’t play the game any more; that all of his inordinate ability had deserted him overnight. He soon took on the look of a inveterate loser.
How could this have happened?
Gradually, we discovered that his game had become ‘sick’. It was as though he didn’t or couldn’t believe his own eyes. Even when an obviously good move was in front of him, he’d make some inexplicable move instead. It almost made you want to cry – so much so that we even tried to let him win a few games. It never worked: he’d still lose. What was even stranger, however, was that now Father didn’t even seem to care whether he won or lost – not like before when he would get angry at losing. Now losing seemed to make him happy, as if he had won. We couldn’t help but feel that this wasn’t normal, but he seemed so happy, so much more at ease than ever before – he was so much more candid and open with everyone – perhaps selfishly, we didn’t want it to go back to the way it was before.
Everything seemed fine until one evening when Ah-bing returned and Father mistook him for you. He called out your name and embraced Ah-bing. He seemed to have lost his mind. We expended much effort explaining to him that Ah-bing wasn’t you, but he wouldn’t believe us; he really seemed to be going senile. This really alarmed us and so we decided that we had to take him to the hospital. What we were not expecting, however, was that when Ah-bing returned to the living room after having changed his clothes, Father seemed to recover his senses – he no longer thought that Ah-bing was you. This was the first time we had ever seen Father ill. But it was a strange illness, something we could never have imagined.
The doctor at the hospital believed that Father’s illness was the natural beginnings of senility, a common ailment of the elderly, and nothing else. He instructed us to ensure that Father got plenty of rest and avoided excitement. Naturally, we ceased looking for go opponents and began to administer a mild sedative to him. Without the game I feared that Father would be unable to bear staying at home. I thought of Ah-bing and his impending graduate studies, but I was thankful that for now at least his work unit was being incredibly considerate by allowing him to take extended leave to look after Father. Every day when I returned home from work I’d see the two of them sitting at the table playing go. I would ask if Father had won any games and Ah-bing would always shake his head. Father’s skill with the game was growing increasingly erratic; even if we tried to lose it wouldn’t work.
Father’s skill being this bad, I feared that his senility would grow worse. As expected, it did. One morning, very early, when the sky was still hazy and Ah-bing and I still asleep, we were suddenly woken by the fuss Father was making out in the living room. I went to look first and he mistook me for Mum. He asked where he was: he didn’t recognize the place. I told him he was at home, but he flatly and doggedly refused to believe me; he wanted to leave. Then Ah-bing came into the room and Father stood for a moment, stunned and frightened. His whole body began to tremble. He kept apologizing to Ah-bing: he seemed to think that we – himself and his ‘wife’, me – had entered the wrong house and he hoped that this ‘stranger’, Ah-bing, would forgive him. Of course, we took him back to the hospital and this time asked if he could be admitted for treatment. He was, but later that same day, in the evening, he tried to run away. Nothing seemed to console him, nor could anyone stop him from going. He believed that he wasn’t ill. The doctors ran a battery of tests and confirmed that he wasn’t suffering from anything that they could detect. His state of mind was sober and clear-headed; he certainly didn’t seem to be suffering the onset of dementia.
