Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

Whenever she found an opportunity, Ruyu snuck into the old man’s bedroom. A homemade wooden shelf stood at the end of the bed, empty but for a coil of bug-repelling incense, a jar of ointment for bedsores, and a framed family picture taken years ago: Shaoai, a toddler with pigtails, sat between her grandparents, and her parents, young and docile looking, stood behind. A folding chair — in which Aunt and sometimes Uncle would sit to feed the old man — leaned against the wall. A small window high up on the wall was kept open, though the air smelled constantly of stale bedding, wet pad, smoky incense, and pungent ointment.

The room, unlike the rest of the house, was not cluttered, and oddly it reminded Ruyu of her grandaunts’ place. They were pristine housekeepers, and Ruyu knew that they would not find it flattering to be associated, even in her most private thoughts, with the unseemliness of sickness and decay in Grandpa’s room. But her grandaunts would never ask for her opinions on such things, so they would not know what was on her mind.

Ruyu had not found the silence of her old home extraordinary until she arrived in Beijing; here words were used as a lubricant of everyday life, and the clutter in people’s lives — meaningless events, small objects — offered endless subjects for a chat. In her grandaunt’s apartment, there were no potted plants to leak muddy water or to drop stale flowers as Ruyu had seen in Aunt’s house; there were no stacks of old brown wrapping paper to collect dust, no strands of plastic strings to get tangled, awaiting reuse. Twice a year — once before the summer, and again before the winter — her grandaunts brought out their sewing machine. During the next few days, the apartment took on a busy chaos that Ruyu never tired of: old skirts and blouses were carefully unstitched at the seams with a small pair of scissors, then rearranged and chalked, on top of paper samples, to become parts of new clothes; the small drum that dripped oil into every joint of the machine made soothing tut-tutting sounds when you pressed it; spools of thread, in different hues of blue and gray, were lined up to match the fabrics; when one of her grandaunts pedaled the sewing machine, the silver needle took on a life of its own, darting in and out of the fabric. But even during those festive days of sewing, Ruyu had learned the importance of calm and order. She helped her grandaunts thread their needles; she cleaned up small pieces of fabric and thread, and, when allowed by her grandaunts, sewed them into a small ball — yet her relish in doing these things she knew to hide: making their own clothes was, more than a necessity, a way for them to differentiate themselves from a world to which they did not conform; finding happiness in one’s duty was, to say the least, an act of arrogance before God.

And it was God who had led her to Grandpa’s room, which made Ruyu feel at home: its emptiness was inviting more than oppressive, its quietness keeping the world at bay.

At first Ruyu only stood at the entrance, ready to leave if the old man expressed any displeasure. Sometimes he turned his murky eyes to her, but most of the time he did not acknowledge her — she was never the one to come with food or drink or a pair of caring hands. When he did not protest in any noticeable way, she felt more at ease and began sitting next to the bed. She would bring a bamboo fan with her as a pretext, and a few times when she was found in the old man’s room by Aunt, she was cooling him down with the fan’s gentle movement.

“You’re very good to Grandpa,” Aunt said when she came in one evening with a basin of water and a wash towel. “But I can’t say that I like you to spend so much time with him.”

“Why?” Ruyu said. “Does Grandpa mind?”

“What does he know?” Aunt said. “I don’t think it’s good for you.”

The old man’s eyes showed little expression at the exchange. The fact that he was closer to death than anyone Ruyu had met made her wonder if he knew things that others did not; that he could not speak elevated him in her eyes, as the speechlessness must be a punishment for what he had gained in life. Watching Grandpa, she felt an inexplicable kinship: he, like her, must have the power to see through things and people, even if his silence was by now unwilling, and hers always a choice.

When Ruyu remained quiet Aunt sighed. “You’re still a child. You shouldn’t spend so much time ruminating.”

Ruyu moved over so Aunt could place the basin on the chair. “I don’t mind sitting with Grandpa.”

“Your grandaunts did not send you here to nanny an invalid,” Aunt said.

Ruyu, rather than a poor relation imposed on Aunt and Uncle, was a paid guest. Before she had left, her grandaunts had explained that they would be paying a hundred yuan a month for her upkeep, more than either one of the couple earned. That hosting Ruyu was a substantial financial gain for the family was not directly stated, though she could see that it was what her grandaunts wanted her to understand. “I’m not really doing anything for Grandpa,” Ruyu said. “I’m only sitting here.”

“A young person should be with her friends,” Aunt said. “Why don’t you find Boyang or Moran and go out for a bike ride?”

Ruyu did not know how to ride a bike — nobody, not even the nosiest neighbors back at home, would expect her grandaunts to run after a youth barely balanced on a bike, ready to catch her when she skidded and fell. This deficiency seemed to have perplexed Moran and Boyang at first — they were the real children of this city, growing up on bicycles as the children of Mongolian herdsmen were raised on horseback. For them, the buses and trolleys and subways were for the very old and very young, and for the unfortunate ones who, for whatever reason, were deprived of the freedom of a bike.

Ruyu had spent much of her time with Boyang and Moran in the past weeks. Knowing the city by heart, they took Ruyu on the rear racks of their bikes in turn, riding through side streets and alleyways so that they would not be caught by the traffic police — two people on one bike was illegal. When they could not avoid a stretch of thoroughfare or boulevard, the two of them would push their bikes and walk beside Ruyu, pointing out old seamstresses’ shops and hundred-year-old butcheries and bakeries along the road.

Ruyu did not mind being left alone, though others — Boyang and Moran, and the neighbors — seemed to find her ease with aloneness unnerving. To Aunt, any time Ruyu spent by herself bore an accusation of sorts. The desperateness of the world to make her less of herself made her look at it askance. Why, she sometimes thought, are people allowed to be so stupid?

When Ruyu did not reply, Aunt said that it was unfair of her to think so, but compared with other kids her age, Ruyu had spent too much time with old people. But Boyang lived with his grandmother, Ruyu said, and Aunt said that it was different with him, meaning, Ruyu guessed, that Boyang had his parents. The fact that Ruyu came from parents unknown to her was on the mind of everyone who knew her story, because, to the rest of the world, a child had to be born to a pair of parents. A child could not sprout like a small plant from a crack in the road; but Ruyu wanted the world to believe that she was rather like that — a life dropped in the crack between her two grandaunts. That this was the most natural thing that had occurred to the three of them would never be understood by a person like Aunt.

Ruyu turned to the old man, who had half closed his eyes out of boredom or exhaustion. She wondered if he understood that all the people around him but herself would be relieved, if not happy, when he died; she might be the only person to feel a sense of loss, though she did not know him at all.