Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

“I remember you said your friend died,” Edwin said. “I hope you’re feeling better.”

Why on earth had she slipped and told him something so irrelevant? Worse, why had Edwin, who seemed a sensible person, chosen not to forget a conversation that should not have happened in the first place? To turn something into a secret — the way Edwin had with Shaoai’s death — is like inflicting a wound on one’s own body. To let the harm be known — to walk into the shop and ask about the death again — is to thrust the wound into someone else’s sight. A secret that never heals makes a person, however close, a stranger, or worse, an intimate, an enemy.

“I’m doing just fine,” Ruyu said. “Thank you for asking.”

Edwin mumbled something, and his face turned beet-colored. Ruyu sighed. As a shop assistant, she was neither impatient nor untalented when it came to small talk. People came into the store out of idleness, and idly they studied the pretty objects on the shelves: imported toffees and chocolates in exquisite wrappings and packages, handmade mugs bearing witty or cloying or nonsensical images and words, flimsy china teacups arranged around a teapot like well-behaved orphans perpetually begging to be filled with love, tin windup toys that were neither sturdy nor attractive to children today but nevertheless gave the store an old-world feeling. None of the objects for sale was essential to anyone, but because of their non-essentialness they continued to be, and continued to be cherished: much of life’s comfort comes not from the absoluteness of happiness and goodness but from the hope that something would be good enough, and one would find oneself happy enough. Perhaps it was for that reason people would walk in — La Dolce Vita was one of those stores one entered without knowing what one wanted, thinking that it would provide a clue, a solution, or at least a moment of distraction. It was Ruyu’s job to convince a customer that someone — be it a friend or a family member or even the customer herself — deserved decadence. That she spent part of her time in a store that mattered little to anyone did not bother Ruyu; these places — the shop, Celia’s kitchen, the soccer field where once in a while she drove Ginny’s son to practice and waited among a group of women who watched their children with tireless love — allowed Ruyu both to be among people and to treat them as though they were the pair of kissing Dutch dolls next to the cash register. Given enough distance, she could even let herself feel a fondness toward these men and women and children; yet out of that obliterating mist had come Edwin, who, for whatever reason, insisted on his right to be regarded as real and indispensable. “I didn’t mean to sound harsh,” Ruyu said. “I just don’t want to make a fuss about something trivial.”

“A friend’s death is not trivial.”

Ruyu looked at Edwin, uncertain as to whether she despised or pitied him, a man foolishly falling victim to his own kindness. The concern in his voice was that of a needy soul; acting as though he was agonized by her loss, he was asking her to acknowledge his right to feel her pain. “She was not a close friend,” Ruyu said, trying hard to maintain the evenness in her voice. It was his bad luck to have stepped onto that old battleground, but today she saw no need for another casualty.

“I thought you looked sad the other day.”

“Then I’m afraid you made a mistake,” Ruyu said. “She was one of those people I would not want to see or hear about ever again, and I feel no pain whatsoever about her death. No, let me take that back. The only pain I feel is that she didn’t die soon enough. Now, are you reassured that I’m going to survive just fine?”

Edwin flinched, trying to find words, and Ruyu, her mercy for him gone, stared at him, not offering any assistance in his struggle. Time, be it old or new, lived or yet to be lived, was merely a body she carried inside her heart, its weight growing less conspicuous by the day, its coldness more acclimated to, and its possessiveness easily taken, or mistaken, for composure. And then there was Celia — all the Celias of the world — who made it easy for Ruyu to be who she was: their eyes looked neither at nor through her, but looked instead for themselves in her face. Hadn’t Edwin learned anything from his marriage? Why would he come here trying to resurrect what was beyond revival? “Are you religious?” Ruyu asked.

Edwin shook his head. Baffled, he explained that his grandparents and parents had been, and they had raised him according to their faith — but no, he was not religious now.

“Then don’t try to be good to strangers,” Ruyu said. “It’s pointless.”

“I don’t understand.”

“An easy example: at this moment, shouldn’t you be worrying more about your family’s dinner getting cold than about a dead person you’ve never met?”

Edwin’s face turned red again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have intruded.”

Something softened in Ruyu’s heart. The urge to embarrass and the urge to humiliate were as treacherous as the urge to be kind, as any sentiment granted another person the status of being less hypothetical. “Let’s forget this altogether. The person has no place here, and let us not complicate life with death,” Ruyu said, gesturing to the door, where the bells were dutifully waiting to bid farewell to Edwin. “Do send my love to Celia and the kids.”

Later Ruyu walked home in the moonlight. The fog from the bay had drifted inland, and across the canyon, orange lights lit up people’s windows, just smudged enough to appear dreamy. Three nights a week Ruyu stayed at the shop until closing. The walk uphill, if she’d shared it with another person, would have been beautiful in people’s eyes; but companionless on these walks, she must cut a lonesome figure to those who knew her by sight. But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence of the world as is love: in choosing to feel lonely, as in choosing to love, one carves a space next to oneself to be filled by others — a friend, a lover, a toy poodle, a violinist on the radio.

All her life Ruyu believed she was able to fend off love and loneliness, her secret being that the present would be let live only its allowed duration. The person who dusted the shelves at the shop was as solid and real as the person who nannied two Pomeranians when their owners went to southern France or Italy for the holidays, or the person tutoring an unmotivated teenager in Mandarin. A born murderess, she had mastered the skill of snuffing out each moment before releasing it to join the other passed moments. Nothing connects one self to another; time effaced does not become memory.

Crickets chirped in the bushes, pausing with the approach of Ruyu’s steps, so that, at any given moment, she could hear only those in the distance. These autumn lamenters, even in chorus, were slyer than nightingales, bleaker than owls. It was nearly Thanksgiving, but the season was a particularly mild one, even for northern California. In Beijing, the last of the autumn crickets would be frozen now by the first cold front from Siberia.

Certain things come unannounced, like crickets, like the darkness of the season: by the time one notices them, one has already fallen victim to their wicked charm. Ruyu watched as her shadow was turned by a nearby bush into something too strange to belong to her. Instinctively she stepped back and hid from the sole street lamp behind a tree. Something slid into the bushes behind her, a squirrel or a raccoon. Nature makes one look for one’s own species, but what would one’s species do but make one lonelier?

Half a block before she reached her cottage, her cell phone rang. It was Celia, and Ruyu picked up the call: one should not neglect the mortal.