Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

It’s not hygienic, Ruyu replied. The class monitor stared at her, horrified by such an impertinent comment, but Ruyu only half-smiled; her contempt, which she had no intention to hide, contrasted with the class monitor’s fury, her face flushed, her chest heaving, words partially formed and sputtering out.

The class monitor was not a likable girl, and already Moran could see that she would grow up into someone who would not hesitate to mistreat those who were less fortunate than she was. Still, Moran felt bad for her, fearing that in Ruyu’s eyes Moran herself occupied a position not much different from the class monitor’s. Moran sighed, and stepped in between the class monitor and Ruyu. “Let’s not make a big fuss,” said Moran to the monitor placatingly. “It would make Headmistress Liu think you can’t do your job well.”

Everyone seemed to enjoy the night. The students milled in tight circles, as the loudspeakers blared across the ocean of people the fourteen songs they were to dance to. Every thirty minutes there was a fifteen-minute break for fireworks.

When the boom-booming shook the ground, Moran watched her schoolmates cheer, their upturned faces lit by the flashing in the sky. A boy climbed on top of another boy and hailed the crowd: “Look at me!” Few looked, but when the boy jumped back down, he raved about the number of people. Four hundred thousand, he said, you don’t get noticed by four hundred thousand people every day of your life.

A classmate, whose father was said to be the Party branch leader of a photography agency, came over with an expensive-looking camera and asked to take a picture of Ruyu and Moran. Moran suspected that the boy had a crush on Ruyu; several boys in the class did, and through their eyes, Moran felt she could understand more about Ruyu than she could through her own eyes. Without any reciprocal affection, Ruyu would nevertheless allow them to seek her out at recess, asking them questions and listening to their answers with an attentiveness that must have been both flattering and unnerving for the boys; sometimes they blushed or stammered, unable to stand her scrutiny.

The boy had Ruyu and Moran stand together. He squatted to adjust the angle and the focus of his camera and then positioned himself lower to the ground. Where did he want them to look, Moran asked, and the boy said to look forward, so they would appear as though they were women warriors.

Unlike the boys, not many girls in their class seemed to like Ruyu, and none had befriended her. It must not matter much to Ruyu, but Moran felt both offended on Ruyu’s behalf and lucky that she herself had been allowed to be, however limited, a friend.

A boom, and the sky lit up. A split second before the shutter clicked, Boyang jumped into the picture, his hands on the shoulders of both girls to balance himself. In the final print, Moran was facing forward, as directed by the boy photographer, looking more astonished than heroic; Ruyu had turned to look at the intruder, the photo capturing only the side of her face, behind which Boyang was laughing with wild triumph; on top of all three heads hung full blossoms of red and orange and purple and silver.

Eventually the boy photographer, unhappy with his altered masterpiece, would reluctantly make prints of the picture, though by then — Shaoai was already poisoned — Moran would feel differently toward the photo. She would be probing alone, half-blindly as though she were looking for a lost companion in a heavy fog: when at last she located a shadowy figure, when she reached a hand out, what she touched would be a shop window coldly reflecting her blurry image.

They returned from the celebration near midnight, tired, thirsty, yet lively, like all young people coming back from a party. On the back of Boyang’s bicycle, looking unusually flushed, Ruyu told the other two that this was the first time she had seen fireworks at such a close distance. Back home, her grandaunts chose not to participate in any festivity on the eve of Lunar New Year, their curtains always pulled closed before night fell; one time, though, someone had pointed an eight-flash-booster toward their third-floor window — it had exploded a window pane, and their curtain had caught fire.

“How terrible,” Moran said. “Did your grandaunts catch the person who did it?”

Ruyu shook her head and said it didn’t matter who had done it. She remembered the momentary fear she had felt, though her grandaunts had never lost their composure, even as they put out the fire. Through the broken window, the freezing air of the January night had rushed into the apartment. No one had stepped out of the festivities to admit the wrongdoing. As she helped her grandaunts nail a piece of cardboard over the window, she’d looked below and wondered if the people down there were laughing at her and her grandaunts. She had no doubt the accident was more than accidental.

“Why would someone do that?” Moran said. “It was dangerous.”

“People are idiots,” Ruyu said. Moran looked at Ruyu, the contempt in her face the same as when she had told the class monitor earlier that the lipstick was unhygienic. Boyang, having not discerned the coldness in her words, replied that had he been there, he would have lit and stuck a two-banger into the villain’s sleeve.

The families around the quadrangle had turned in, but waiting lamps had been left burning in the windows of all three houses for their return. When they were about to say farewell to one another, something moved in the darkness under the grape trellis. A feral cat was Moran’s thought, but when Boyang went closer to investigate, he found Shaoai sitting on an overturned bucket and sipping from a bottle of yam liquor.

“Did you all have spectacular fun?” she said, enunciating each word with care, which made her sound more drunk.

“Are you all right, Sister Shaoai?” Moran asked.

“You’re celebrating with the masses, and I’m celebrating here by myself,” Shaoai said. “The nation needs young people like you, and the dead and the forgotten, alas, have only me.” Pointing to the sky unsteadily with the bottle, she started to recite a poem by Li Po.

Amongst the flowers is a pot of wine

I pour alone but with no friend at hand

So I lift the cup to invite the shining moon ,

Along with my shadow we become party of three

The moon although understands none of drinking, and

The shadow just follows my body vainly

Still I make the moon and the shadow my company

To enjoy the springtime before too late

The moon lingers while I am singing

The shadow scatters while I am dancing

We cheer in delight when being awake

We separate apart after getting drunk

There was no moon in the sky, and the flowers in the courtyard had long passed their prime. Moran looked around, fearful that Shaoai would wake up the neighbors. None of the houses seemed to be stirring — or could it be that everyone was listening, hiding behind the curtains? There was something intrusive about Shaoai’s drunkenness, melodramatic even. Moran wished she had been the only one to have seen Shaoai in this state; she wished she could put a veil over the whole scene — to protect whom, though? Shaoai never needed protection, and Moran could not help feeling embarrassed for her own timidity. Shaoai had always been the one to say what was on her mind, to do what she deemed the right thing. Uneasily Moran turned to her friends, and caught sight of Ruyu, who, standing apart from her and Boyang yet close enough to see Shaoai, looked on with an icy light in her eyes.

“You three!” Shaoai said, turning her face toward Ruyu. “Why not come here and join me?”