Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

“I played the piano at your age,” Yening said. Ridiculous, Ruyu thought, her speaking as though they were from different generations. “I practiced all the time. I didn’t have enough time, though, and wouldn’t have minded having forty-eight hours a day for piano. I’m surprised, according to our friend out there, that you haven’t touched your instrument since you came.”

“The accordion is a loud instrument.”

“All instruments are loud.”

“I don’t want to disturb Grandpa.”

“How do you know you can even disturb him?” Yening said, and then softened her voice. “I’m worried that you’ll lose your touch if you don’t practice every day.”

“I can wait until school starts. Moran said there’s a music room in the school.”

“Still, your neighbors must think you’re too haughty to play for them.”

“Nobody thinks that,” Ruyu protested.

“How can you be so certain?” Yening asked, opening her eyes innocently before narrowing them again. “You’re too young to know anything. You don’t know half of what people think of you,” she said with the dismissive gentleness people reserve for crippled animals and dead babies.

Ruyu flinched. Indeed, quite a few neighbors had asked her to perform an evening concert for the quadrangle. She’d shaken her head politely at the requests and wondered why people were persistent in their efforts to make her do things that she had made clear she would not do. She neither liked nor disliked the accordion, which had been chosen for her by her grandaunts. In fact, the instrument suited her poorly. Its bulky body felt like an inelegant extension of her chest. Sounds coming from it were too loud, the music she played — polkas and waltzes from places she imagined as being perennially sunny — too cheerful. Back home, she sometimes practiced by pressing the keyboards without unbuttoning the bellows; only then could she see herself as a musician, the silent tunes an extension of her thoughts, heard by nobody, heeded by no one.

“What charming, endearing innocence,” Yening said, smiling to herself as if savoring the comment, but before Ruyu replied, she started to pat her pillow. “Which side of the bed do you take?” she said, her face all of a sudden frosty, as though she had exhausted her goodwill and wished to be left alone.

Later, lying awake, Ruyu heard Shaoai climb into bed between her and Yening. Neither of the girls was pleasant, and Ruyu wondered how they’d become friends. Or perhaps that was how things had to be for those two, one person’s edge constantly cutting into the other person’s edge, those who hurt others seeking likewise to be hurt.

Much later, Ruyu was awakened by an angry exchange of whispers. She did not know what time it was or how long the quarrel had been going on. She stayed as still as she could and kept her breathing even, and soon it became clear that the two girls were arguing about a boy.

“Let him go off to be a monk,” Shaoai said, “if he doesn’t have the courage to stand up for himself.”

“It’s not a question of courage. The question is, what’s better for him?”

“Or should we ask what’s better for you? Certainly it’d be harder for you to seduce him if he shaves his head and lives in a temple.”

“That’s distasteful, Shaoai.”

“I don’t think truth ever tastes good to anyone’s palate.”

“But you’re unfairly harsh toward him because you’re jealous of him.”

“Jealous is the wrong word,” Shaoai said. “He’s not worthy of my jealousy.”

“Of course not,” Yening said. “Any boy I lay my eyes on is a low creature for you. All you want is for me to love no one, and to be stuck with you.”

“If it feels that way, you are welcome to get yourself unstuck any time.”

“Certainly you’d say so, now that you have a cute and dumb girl sharing your bed.”

Both girls were quiet for a moment, and then Ruyu felt a slight breeze on her cheek as Yening lifted the mosquito netting. “Where are you going?” Shaoai asked. Yening did not answer, and a moment later Ruyu heard her tattered slippers going off toward the living room. She waited for the bell on top of the door to jingle, but it did not.

“Have you eavesdropped enough?” Shaoai said, her voice low but not whispering.

Ruyu stayed still.

“I know you’re awake,” Shaoai said. “Just so you don’t misunderstand the situation: the boy we were talking about used to be a friend of mine, too, but now he’s worried about disciplinary action against him for what he did in the protest. His parents arranged for him to leave the university and go to a temple for a while. Imagine that. To be exempt from secular matters.”

Please make her stop. Please make her vanish, because she doesn’t matter to you, and so she doesn’t matter to me.

“I guess all you need to know is that Yening and I disagreed about his decision,” Shaoai said. “She thinks it’s a good idea. She thinks any idea that saves his ass is a good idea. But then she feels miserable about letting him go into a world where she has no right to be. Wouldn’t it be nicer if she could be his personal temple?”

The bitterness in Shaoai’s words was too much. “I didn’t ask you to tell me,” Ruyu said.

“I’m telling you to spare you the extra time you’d spend dwelling on it,” Shaoai said. “Now you know the whole story; you’d better forget it tomorrow.”

Yet there was more to it, Ruyu knew, but that mattered little to her because it was not her position to discern the true from the untrue: secrets of any kind breed ugliness. Ruyu felt an uncleanness clinging to her the way she had read in books a leech attached itself to a body.

“Though, to think about it, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing for you to know a little more about how the world works,” Shaoai said. “Who knows what your grandaunts have done to taint you?”

“You don’t even know them,” Ruyu said.

“Do I want to know them?” Shaoai retorted. “From how they’ve brought you up, I would advise that a young person should run the moment she sees them.”

Back home when Ruyu had seen people exchange mocking looks behind her grandaunts’ backs, she had learned not to feel bothered: none of those people understood her grandaunts, and, more important, her grandaunts did not need the understanding of others. She wished she could now treat Shaoai’s chatter as one of those irrelevant voices, but Shaoai seemed to have made up her mind not to be dismissed. “Now let me explain to you what I mean,” Shaoai said. “What do you think of Yening? Is she a good person in your eyes? Would she be a good person in your grandaunts’ opinion?”

“She’s your friend,” Ruyu said. “Why do you need my opinion?”

“See, your answer proves my exact point. Before she’s my friend, she is a being out there , a fact ; anyone should be able to form an opinion of her. My mother thinks her eccentric. My father probably thinks of her as a spoiled child, as I am. Our very cowardly friend — the would-be monk — thinks she is wickedly attractive and wants her to wait for him to finish his stint in the temple so he can marry her. But you, what’s your opinion? All you do is look at her coldly and say to yourself: she has nothing to do with me. And then she becomes nothing to you. Do you see that? There is a human being there, whom you, with whatever absurd logic your grandaunts have given you, turn into a non-being.”

Ruyu felt as though she were being swept into an abyss by Shaoai’s words, which were ludicrous yet had the irresistible force of insanity. “But it’s true that Yening and I have nothing to do with each other,” she said, but realized her error right away. To give up a position of silence, to allow oneself to be engaged — already she was allowing Shaoai what she did not deserve.