Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

On the morning of August 31, Boyang roped Ruyu’s accordion onto the back of his bicycle, and Moran sat astride her bicycle, balancing it with both legs and waiting for Aunt to finish talking with Ruyu so that she could hop onto the rear rack. It was the day the entering class was to register at the high school. In addition to a general admissions letter, Aunt handed Ruyu a note directing her to meet the music teacher after registration.

The school, No. 135, occupied an old temple. Its spacious, park-like yard was dotted with ancient elms and mulberry bushes, the well-designed garden in its center long since taken over by wildflowers and ivy. Several rows of rudely constructed, single-story brick buildings had been added as classrooms and dorms, giving the campus the look of a hastily planned people’s commune. The temple itself, which was occupied by the administrators and the teachers, had been split into two levels and divided into offices with thin walls, though signs of the original architecture — the high ceiling, the round wooden pillars, and the long narrow windows — remained visible. Inside, it was perennially dark: the walls and the ceilings retained their wooden panels painted a deep brown; the floor was the original brick one, gray and uneven and in places repaired with a patch of cement. Fluorescent tubes buzzed in the hallway and inside the offices. There was nothing to love, Ruyu reflected, about this new school.

Moran and Boyang seemed elated that all three of them were assigned to the same homeroom. After registering, they took her to meet Teacher Shu, the music instructor. The music room was in a cottage at the far end of campus, which Boyang said once served as sleeping quarters for the monks’ visiting family members. Ruyu imagined Shaoai’s friend Yening in a similar cottage at another temple, the boy she was in love with wearing a long, drab robe and counting his beads silently while she poured her heart out. How odd, Ruyu thought, finding oneself in a place that had no relevance to one’s life but was necessary for the time being: her grandaunts would not have any idea that she would be schooled in a former Buddhist temple.

Teacher Shu was one of the ugliest men Ruyu had ever met. Short, bald, with an unevenly shaven face and a pair of round eyes that were so wide open they seemed never in need of blinking, he reminded her of an owl with ruffled feathers, more clueless than menacing. When he smiled, he did so with unadorned glee, showing teeth that had been yellowed by smoking. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said when Ruyu presented herself, and waved a dismissive hand at Boyang and Moran, who dutifully left the music room but lingered on the porch, leaving the door ajar.

Ruyu played “The Song of Spanish Bullfighters” and “The Blue Danube”; when asked to keep on, she played a couple of polkas. She had not practiced for a month, and her fingers, though not uncertain, stumbled a few times at places they had not before. Teacher Shu nodded with a pensive look, and when she stopped, he asked to take a look at her accordion.

The instrument, a 120-bass model made by Parrot Accordion — the most coveted model of the best brand name, for which Ruyu’s grandaunts had paid a black market price when she had turned nine — seemed to impress him more than either Ruyu’s performance or her grade 8 certificate, which she had brought to show him. He touched the head of the golden parrot with a finger, and then wiped his fingerprint away with his sleeve. Could he have a try, he asked. Yes, Ruyu said, and refrained from looking at his cigarette-stained, stubby fingers as he buckled the instrument and loosened the straps.

“How long have you played?”

“Six years.”

Teacher Shu said that six years was not bad for a girl her age. “Do your parents play any instruments?” he asked, but before Ruyu could think of a proper reply, he launched into “The Song of Mongolian Herdsmen,” his unsightly right hand moving up and down the keyboard like a showy dancer, his left hand pulling and pressing the bellows with an effortless rhythm. In the middle of his performance, a tall, sinewy woman approached the entrance. Moran and Boyang, who had been leaning against the door frame, quickly straightened and made way for the woman. She took a seat in a nearby chair and watched Teacher Shu, her face softening without showing a definite smile. When he finished the song, she introduced herself as Headmistress Liu. Later, when Ruyu got to know Teacher Shu better, he would tell her stories about Headmistress Liu when nobody was around, how she had remained unmarried to fulfill her ambition of becoming a top educator, how underneath her stern and intimidating appearance, she was a kind woman without many people close to her.

“See, that’s how you play the accordion. It’s a one-man band, and you have to be a bit of everything yourself. You have to know how to sing and whisper and bellow and talk and croon and even weep,” Teacher Shu said, unstrapping the accordion and handing it carefully to Ruyu. “Imagine yourself as one of those bullfighters, and a giant bull is charging at you. What feeling does it give you when you launch into the song?”

Ruyu stared at him. She did not know if it was a question requiring an answer from her.

Teacher Shu scratched his head. “Well, that may be asking too much of you. All right, you can’t be a bullfighter. But picture yourself in a long, sweeping dress being waltzed around a ballroom in Vienna,” Teacher Shu said, and hummed a few measures of the “Blue Danube” and swirled himself around, his arms held up properly, his chin lifted. Boyang laughed, but was right away stopped by Moran.

“Now, how does your body move in a dance like that?” Teacher Shu said when he circled back and stopped in front of Ruyu.

“I don’t know how to dance.”

“You don’t have to know. Just imagine. Think of yourself as Princess Sissi. Think of yourself as Romy Schneider in Sissi’s shoes,” Teacher Shu said. “Do you know the movie I’m talking about?”

“No.”

Teacher Shu paused, and then made a gesture of resignation.

Ruyu wondered if she had failed her interview. Apart from Teacher Shu and her former accordion teacher, an older man her grandaunts had paid to teach her twice a week, she had not met another musician and had not given much thought to music or to those who played it. She neither liked nor disliked music, as liking or disliking anything in life was beside the point. She could just as easily have become a chess master or a painter or a ballet dancer — anything that would have differentiated her from her peers in the provincial city. That music had been chosen for her, that the accordion had been the instrument — these things Ruyu had accepted because they were part of the necessities of her life. She did not see the point of imagining herself into a princess’s body.

Teacher Shu nodded to Headmistress Liu, and they withdrew to a small office adjacent to the music room. Moran beckoned to Ruyu, and she hesitated and then moved closer to the door, carrying the accordion case with her. “Isn’t Teacher Shu the most fun person?” Moran said.

“Is he?” Ruyu said.

Moran blushed. “Oh, he may look off-putting at first, but trust me, he’s really one of the best teachers.”

“Just so you know,” Boyang whispered to Ruyu, “Moran has had a crush on Teacher Shu for three years now.”

“Hey,” Moran said. “Hey!”

“And Teacher Shu is not married,” Boyang said, still addressing Ruyu but grinning at Moran, who was about to say something when Teacher Shu and Headmistress Liu came out. He handed a folder of music sheets to Ruyu and told her that he would teach her every Tuesday at four, starting the following week. She was welcome to leave the instrument there, too, he said, and handed her two keys, a small one for the security room where all the instruments were kept, and a big copper one for the cottage door.