FRAGMENT 69
My Eyes Became Clear and Bright
Fragments: The Song of Finding the Same Frequency | Exceptionally Pure and Genuine Sound Waves
Time & Location: Summer 2007 · Xiyuan Magazine Office, Beijing
After serving as the president of an international media company, returning to the role of editor-in-chief of an official magazine inevitably meant a sharp decline in both income and vanity.
Tian Xiaoning schemed long and hard before finally securing the position of deputy editor-in-chief.
I took the opportunity to submit my resignation.
Then I returned to my office and began packing my belongings.
Old Tong informed me that the entire magazine staff would soon move back to Compound No. 7.
All the buildings in Chegongzhuang would remain under my control, free of charge.
The news delighted me.
I had the largest room repainted white and transformed it into a Go tea room exclusively for Orchid.
She looked around the room.
Then she turned and embraced me.
“Thank you, Boss Bai. You're amazing!”
Without removing her hands from my waist, she leaned back slightly and asked,
“Want a kiss?”
“Hahaha. No, no.”
I stepped aside.
Orchid's tea room was often crowded with visitors.
National Go champions came and went.
So did senior officials whose kindness felt carefully rehearsed.
There were also endless waves of young women fluttering through the room like skylarks.
Whenever an important guest arrived, Lan Hui would ask whether I wished to meet them.
I almost always declined.
None of them loved silence as much as I did.
One afternoon, she rushed in without knocking.
“Hey, I'm going to Zhongnanhai later to play Go with a senior leader. Why don't you come with me?”
I froze.
Almost instinctively, I lit a cigarette.
It was not because a fortune teller had once predicted that I would one day “walk straight through Zhongnanhai.”
Nor was it because I disliked accompanying her into that gloomy compound.
The real reason was simpler.
I could hear my own heart accelerating.
And I could hear something else.
Within her pulse was a kind of joyful singing—
the sound of finding the same frequency.
The gap between our generations was simply too great.
Distance had to be maintained.
Suddenly, my eyes became clear and bright.
For the first time in my life, exceptionally pure and genuine sound waves poured through my eardrums.
I lit another cigarette.
She immediately snatched it away.
“Stop smoking. Are you trying to kill yourself, you old chimney?”
“I've got something else to do. I won't go with you today. All right?”
“Okay! Next time, then.”
She ran off.
Her long hair floated behind her.
Click.
I heard a Go stone land crisply on a beechwood board.
The scars between my fingers, worn smooth long ago by a toothbrush, felt as though someone had rubbed them with cooling balm.
FRAGMENT 70
Her Go Board
Fragments: Breathing as Steady as the Four Corners of a Go Board | The Purest Fracture in the World
Time & Location: Summer 2007 · Xiyuan Magazine Office, Beijing
Orchid was alone in the Go room.
One minute.
Five minutes.
Ten minutes.
Not a second stone had touched the board.
I walked over and saw her sitting with lowered eyes, staring at the board.
A single black stone rested on a star point.
Rustle.
Her fingers reached into the sandalwood bowl containing the white stones.
Click.
A white stone came down on the komoku point opposite the black one.
She was playing against herself.
I sat down and stubbed out my cigarette.
She did not look at me.
She looked only at the board.
There were no unusual fluctuations in her pulse.
Her breathing was as steady as the four corners of the board.
Black and white had each made a single move.
No one could predict where the next stone would appear.
I knew that, in her eyes, the board was already crowded with stones that did not yet exist.
I also knew that the next move, and many moves after it—dozens, perhaps hundreds—had already been calculated inside her mind.
What she was doing now was nothing more than final verification and correction.
I intended to watch the entire game unfold.
I felt no craving for cigarettes.
No craving at all.
“All right.”
She swept the two stones back into their bowls and stood up.
Stretching lazily, she smiled at me.
“Take me out for Mongolian hotpot?”
At that moment, her long tapered legs, her slender waist, her neck, and the gentle curve of her chest rushed through the subterranean chambers of my nervous system.
Yet I felt no impulse.
No physical desire.
Across the blank board inside my mind, lines of logic began to appear.
Straight lines intersecting one another.
Beautiful as the connections between stars.
“Let's go. Hotpot.”
I stood as well and strode out of the tea room.
Two weeks later, Orchid pushed open my office door.
The setting sun made her shield her eyes with one hand.
“I'm leaving for the Kansai Ki-in in Japan.”
She lowered her hand.
“Oh? When?”
“Tomorrow. Three to five years.”
She grabbed my hand.
As she pushed me toward the Go room, she plucked the still-burning cigarette from between my fingers.
“Come on. Let's play a game.”
I looked toward the silent gravestones outside the window.
Matteo Ricci was stone.
Johann Adam Schall von Bell was stone.
Yehenara Orchid, seated before the board, was stone as well.
Within that cold logic, I felt a complete and merciless calm.
Orchid lifted a stone gently.
Then lowered it gently.
At the precise instant the stone touched the board, she pressed down and fixed it in place.
The purest fracture in the world.
That single move shattered every internal report, every minister, every scheme for power.
A perfectly precise physical judgment.
I looked at Orchid.
Then at the row of gravestones.
The steel wire that had been stretched tight inside me for more than twenty years—the wire that always wanted to win—suddenly snapped.
Effortlessly.
Without regret.
“How would you answer this move?”
She placed another stone on the intersection I feared most.
Click.
I set my stone beside the board.
Resignation.
“I've got you.”
She laughed.
Then she stood.
“I'm off.”
The hem of her ivory-white dress traced the same arc in the breeze as a white stone descending onto a Go board.
