Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

“Are you one of the artists?” Boyang asked as they exited the exhibition, pointing to a poster of names on the wall, a list of the folk artists belonging to the organization.

The girl said of course she was not. Why not, Boyang asked, and the girl said that most of the artists were men, because they came from prominent families in which the secret of their trades could only be passed from father to son — and in rare cases from a father-in-law to a daughter-in-law — to ensure the purity of the art. “The rule is to teach a son but not a daughter, to teach a daughter-in-law but not a wife,” she said, no doubt quoting from her textbook. She sounded ridiculously serious and reverent of the rule.

“Then why are you here, if they are not letting you in on their secrets?”

She had been hired because she had studied the history of ancient folk art in college, the girl said. He could see that she was no more than a well-educated salesgirl, and he was also certain, from her clothes and her outdated cell phone, that she was not paid well. “What does one do after getting a degree in art history?” he asked.

“Nothing, really,” she said, slightly dejected. She was lucky to have a job, she added.

“What do your classmates do now?”

All sorts of things, the girl said, though he could see that she was not keen for the conversation to go in that direction. He would know more about what her classmates were doing than she did: those from well-connected families had gone on into a different phase of their lives, their education the perfect decoration on their résumés; then there were those who, like the girl in front of him, would have to become another Coco, or stay a salesgirl. “Why did you go to school for it if there are no good jobs?” he asked.

“But I like it,” the girl said, looking up, as if surprised by the irrelevance of his question.

“I see,” Boyang said, though he did not see. She must have been asked that question all the time by her parents and relatives; was that the only answer she could come up with?

Somewhere at the back of the house, a microwave dinged, and then a door was opened and banged closed. He imagined the girl’s days, spent in a shop that was out of the way and never advertised. Did she find this a lonely job, or did she enjoy the companionship of the objects more than that of people? Perhaps it did not bother her when no one came in, but people must inevitably stop by, an idle man like Boyang, with nothing or too much on his mind, or the old men on the artists’ roster, who would clasp her young hands in theirs while talking at length about their glamorous histories. What kind of a future did the girl envision for herself? “Maybe you can become the daughter-in-law of one of those people, to learn the secrets of a trade,” Boyang said. You are one of those girls old men love, gentlemanly or otherwise, he thought.

“But I don’t want to be locked into one trade,” the girl said with a seriousness that made him feel he had to either laugh at her or feel bad for her. Had he not drunk a bit too much at lunch, had he not just taken a sentimental walk by the lake he had often visited with Moran and Ruyu, he would have dismissed the girl as ludicrous. But he had been touched by her obstinacy, enough that he had bought the most expensive kite in the shop and later had made a secret call from her phone to his so that he could carry with him something that belonged to her.

“I could tag along with you and your friend to the show if you don’t mind,” Boyang said now. “And we can go out and fly the kite afterward.”

“But my friend won’t like it.”

“You mean you don’t like it?”

“No, my friend won’t like to have a stranger to come with us. She might want to talk about things she doesn’t want you to hear.”

“What about Sunday?”

“I have to work on Sunday.”

That seemed to have concluded their conversation; Boyang felt the girl waiting for him to hang up. He could not tell if she was alarmed or annoyed by his call, but her voice indicated neither suspicion nor impatience. “What’s your name — may I ask?”

“Wu Sizhuo.”

“What time do you get off work on Sunday?”

The girl paused and said seven o’clock.

“Can I come and meet you when you’re off?”

“Seven is too late to fly a kite.”

“But not too late for a simple dinner — if you don’t already have plans?”

The way Sizhuo said okay, without hesitation or curiosity, made Boyang’s heart sink a little. He’d been prepared for a courteous rejection, which would not have stopped him from stepping into the store a few minutes before seven on Sunday evening and saying he had reserved a table nearby, just in case she had changed her mind. Used to elusiveness and evasiveness in interactions — at least at the beginning of a game, whether it involved money or women — Boyang, like many, considered chasing and being chased the only validation of a person’s value. Slightly disoriented, he could not think of more to say when the girl confirmed the time and said good-bye.

Boyang tried to recall whether there had been any enthusiasm or readiness in Sizhuo’s voice that could have given him an excuse to cancel the dinner, but there was none. “But I like it,” he remembered her saying, looking up at him with a candidness that was at once transparent and unreadable. Oddly, he felt as though he had returned to his second-grade physical education class on the day they had been practicing hurling hand grenades. When it was Boyang’s turn, he perused the long row of hand grenades, all an old Soviet model with wooden shafts and black metal heads; he chose one carefully, and with all his might hurled it. He had been a tall boy then, athletic, and he had expected to set a class record with his throw, but the metal head, loosened after years of use in training children to become militants, dropped behind him with a thud, while the wooden shaft made a less than confident trajectory across the sky, flipping and falling before its intended target. It was the first time Boyang had understood the meaning of overreach , not in his twisted eight-year-old shoulder but somewhere inside of him, an unfamiliar befuddlement, and that was how he felt now: he had not known — or had not had the desire to know — what he had wanted when making the phone call, and now it seemed too late to go back and figure it out.

Boyang wished he had someone next to him at this moment with whom he could talk while thinking — not about the girl on the phone but about the memory of his failed grenade throw. What do children throw in their physical education classes these days, he wondered — baseballs, or a different kind of hand grenade in the shape of angry birds? He could ask Coco about it, but she would make it into a joke about something else. No, Coco was the last person with whom he could share that memory. He wanted someone to see the seriousness behind the giddy chaos: the teacher had turned pale at the accident, though, luckily for her and everyone else, the metal head had not landed on and cracked open a child’s skull; the children had gotten overexcited, as though an unexpected holiday had befallen them; Moran had looked concerned as she gently tapped his arm and shoulder to assess how much he had hurt himself, then all of a sudden broke into uncontrollable laughter. Yes, he wanted someone to see his past with him, the children in blue gym uniforms — the most unsavory kind of blue, not light enough to be associated with anything delightful, not dark enough to confer dignity; he wanted someone to laugh with his childhood friend and himself but not at them, ugly ducklings who, not knowing their lots, wholeheartedly embraced everything coming their way. But beyond that, he wanted someone to understand that a moment, even a trivial one, could in time accumulate weight and meaning. Looking back, wasn’t it a befitting role for him to be the hero whose only real accomplishment was to sacrifice himself, and those around him, too? The intention to do good, the intention to do the right thing — who could say with certainty that these were separate from the intentions to do harm, to diminish? In allowing a bedridden woman not only to exist in his life as a secret kept from his family, but to dictate how he treated the world — with distrust and aloofness — he had pushed his ex-wife into another man’s arms. In turning away from Aunt now, when she was completely alone in this world, he must be crueler than Moran and Ruyu, who had turned away long ago.