Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

Yet Ruyu had not asked to see where Boyang’s father, who was a specialist in high-energy physics, did his research; this, though, Moran did not want to say just for the sake of contradiction. They walked across an alley, stepping on the crunching leaves with the same rhythm.

“Where do you think people go after they die?” Ruyu asked when they turned into another alleyway.

Moran paused and turned to look at Ruyu. Her eyes were limpid enough, and there was not the coldness Moran dreaded in them. She sensed that Ruyu was in a mood to talk about something, but Moran felt tired; all she wanted was to go home and curl up in her bed. “I don’t think they go anywhere,” she said. “They’re cremated, and that’s all.”

“But that’s only according to you atheists.”

“Do you—” Moran recalled the question she had never before dared to ask. “Are you religious?”

“Why, because my grandaunts are religious?”

“Why else did you ask the question? Where do you think people go after they die?”

“Nowhere,” Ruyu said, the weariness in her voice reminding Moran of an older woman. She had seen the exhaustion in people like Aunt and her own mother, defeated by a shortage of money and food or by unfairness at work and beyond. “Are you all right?” Moran said.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“But something must have made you ask the question,” Moran said. “About people dying.”

“People die all the time. Shaoai’s grandfather will die sooner or later. One day my grandaunts will die, too. Anyone could die anytime. Even young people. Even you and I. Today. Tomorrow. Who knows?”

Moran shuddered. They had both unconsciously come to a stop under an old locust tree, its canopy of leaves — it was too dark to tell what colors they had turned or how soon they would fall — sheltering them from the deep, clear sky. Autumn crickets sang in the grasses and in the cracks of the alley wall. From a house in a nearby quadrangle, they could hear a TV commercial for Maxwell House instant coffee, a brand that had just begun to be imported into the country. It would be followed by another commercial for Nestle’s instant coffee, also newly introduced. If she closed her eyes, Moran could see the steam rising from the mugs in both commercials, the actresses taking deep, dreamlike breaths. But what did coffee smell like? No family in the quadrangle would squander their money on a jar of either brand, and it occurred to Moran only then that she had never thought about what made the actresses look blissful. How many people watching the commercials would know the fragrance of coffee? Perhaps that’s what happiness is like, looking more real when it is scripted and performed by others.

The theme song of a popular TV drama came on after the Nestle commercial. Moran’s parents would be watching it, and they would be wondering what in the world could have made her miss the show. “Did you,” Moran started the sentence, and then wavered before she could gather the resolve. “Did you take something from the lab?”

Ruyu looked calm as she studied Moran. “You must have been brought up well, not to use the word steal ,” she said finally.

“You did, didn’t you?”

“Did you see me do anything?”

“No, but I thought …”

“If you didn’t see with your own eyes, you can’t say what you think,” Ruyu said. “What you think or what anyone thinks does not count.”

“But won’t you tell me?”

Ruyu shook her head. “What’s the point of telling you anything?” she said in a quiet voice, yet rather than sarcasm, which Moran had braced herself for, the words seemed to contain a sadness she had not imagined Ruyu would be capable of showing to others.

“What did you take?” Moran asked gently.

Ruyu looked down at the tips of her shoes, and when she looked up again, the melancholy had vanished. “Are you going to report your suspicion to Boyang?” Ruyu said with half a smile.

Moran felt an acute pain she had not known before. If it were yesterday, she would have ridden into the city to find the last telephone stand open at this hour and dialed the number of Boyang’s parents; she would have weathered their questioning just to talk to him, to tell him her worries, but all, after today, had become impossible. What could she say to him, that the girl he had fallen in love with had stolen from his mother? But why, he would ask, and how did she know? — and Moran would not be able to answer. Ruyu was right. Moran had not seen anything, and she had no right to claim knowing anything. Boyang would shake his head to himself, too generous to say that he was disappointed in her, that her unfounded suspicion came from nowhere but that unkind place where jealousy fed dark imagination. The thought of living with people’s disappointments, his in particular, made Moran panic. She looked pleadingly at Ruyu. “I won’t say anything to him if you prefer that.”

“But whether you say anything to him or not should have nothing to do with me,” Ruyu said. “You can’t say you have done or not done something only for my liking. Isn’t that true?”

Moran felt overwhelmed by queasiness. “I won’t tell him. It’s my decision,” she said.

“Then that’s that,” Ruyu said. “Shall we go back? It’s late.”

“But wait. We can’t just yet,” Moran said. “Why did you take something from the lab? What are you going to do with it?”

“If I say I never took anything, will you believe me and forget about it?”

Moran took a deep breath but could not sense any relief. “No,” she said. “I can’t.”

Ruyu smiled. “People want things for different reasons. Some want money to buy things; others want money that they never spend. Some want people to be their properties; others want to be properties of other people,” she said. “If your imagination were right, have you thought that I only wanted something that could make me feel better?”

“But how?” Moran said, seized by the fear that either she was losing her mind or Ruyu was. “You’re not thinking of killing yourself?”

Ruyu’s eyes, unfocused for a split second, narrowed with derision. “I don’t know how you came up with that silly idea, Moran.”

Only that morning she had been a different person, Moran thought; she’d felt sad, but the sadness was no more than a young girl’s mood. Even sitting in the office next to Boyang, watching the sky change its hue, she had still been that person, sadder but never for a moment uncertain about the world. Between then and now, what had been was no more, but why and how this change had happened she did not know.

“Are you worried?” Ruyu said. “Are you going to talk to all the grownups so they can be alarmed? The truth is, if anyone ever wants to destroy herself, there’s nothing you can do. But at least you should know that it’s a sin, according to my grandaunts, to commit suicide. There’s no redemption for people like that.”

Words like sin and redemption did not exist in Moran’s vocabulary. She did not know half of what Ruyu knew about life, and now, was it too late? “Are you feeling unhappy?” Moran asked, trying to steer the conversation in a less treacherous direction.

“You know, I notice that you always ask people if they’re happy or not.”

Did she? Moran wondered. She had not been conscious of it, but perhaps she did have the habit. Sometimes she ran into one of the younger kids in the neighborhood, and if he or she was crying, the first question she would ask was what made you unhappy?

“I don’t think people ask that question,” Ruyu said.

“They don’t?”

“No one has ever asked me that question,” Ruyu said. “You’re the first one, and the only one. And if you think about it — I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Moran — but if you think about it, that’s the most pointless question. If the person says yes, I’m happy, then what?”