The Girl Who Played Go Read Online Free PDF Page A

Her father spits on the floor, her stepmother shrieks at everyone, and her brothers-instead of sitting properly at the table-squat on their chairs so that they can inhale their food all the more efficiently.
    It is nearly nighttime and I offer Huong my bed. She snuggles into it, next to the wall, and carries on talking until her words become muddled and her voice dwindles to a whisper.
    I stay awake for a long time. My friend is seventeen, and her father is looking for a husband for her-that will bring an end to a party that has gone on for three years. Will she ever meet a man who can change her fate?

18
    There are days when I suddenly have new strength and will, and I can look death in the face with a sense of peace and joy. Guided by my country’s need, I fulfill the destiny of an imperial soldier with my eyes closed. But the path a hero must tread is not as straight as we might imagine: it twists and turns through the harsh mountains of sacrifice.
    This morning I wake up lying on my stomach on ground that has been burned dry by the sun. I snooze on in the warmth rising up from deep in the earth. My eyes are still heavy with sleep and it is a long time before I open them and become aware of a tombstone just centimeters from my face. I have been sleeping on my mother’s tomb.
    I stifle a cry of alarm and wake myself properly this time. The winter sun is not yet up, and this room commandeered from peasants is like a cave. My soldiers are snoring in the dark. Who can give me the key to my dream? How can I know whether it was a premonition? Could it be a message from my mother before she leaves this world? Who can I find to tell me-here and now, thousands of kilometers from Tokyo? Is Mother alive and well?
    I have thought about my own death for so many years that it has become as light as a feather, but having never prepared myself for my mother’s death, I will be unable to bear its weight.
    It is impossible to reconcile family and fatherland: a soldier is a man who destroys his loved ones’ happiness. If my life has been of any use, the nation owes that to one woman’s sacrifice.
    Feeling my way in the dark, I find a piece of paper and a pencil stub. I cannot even see what I am doing, but I write a short letter to Mother, telling her of my regret. I have neglected her for so long!
    I fold it in four and slip it under my pillow. How many days do we still have to endure before we renew contact with the world?

19
    Huong makes a strange confession.
    “My father is very rich, but I have to beg him for money. He gets angry, and he ends up giving me only half what I need, throwing it down onto the table at me.” Then she goes on, “I’ll marry an older man who’ll know how to pamper me.”
    A few days later she leads me to understand that she has fallen for someone.
    “You see,” she says, “a real man is different, not like the boys with mustaches who lurk outside our school. He can guess what you’re thinking, anticipate what will make you happy. When you’re with a man, you’re no longer a girl but a goddess, a sage, an ancient soul who has lived in every era, a wonder that he contemplates with all the intense curiosity of a newborn baby.”
    Even though Huong has become my best friend, I never quite understand what she is saying. Her convoluted soul is divided between light and darkness, she is both blatant and discreet, and her life is full of mysteries despite everything she confesses to me. This Monday morning she has come to school exhausted and on edge. Although her hair is plaited, I can see evidence that it has been curled and then straightened. She is intoxicated with some joy that only she understands.
    “The best demonstration of love a man can give,” she tells me, “is his patience as he watches a virgin maturing.”
    I flush and find I can’t utter a word. She doesn’t seem at all embarrassed to be talking about something so intimate, and yet there is a grandeur, a heroism to her indiscreet