Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

The wish to be seen by Sizhuo, however, baffled Boyang more: he was torn between the desire for her to see him in his world, in which he could flirt with a business partner’s lover (just as he would allow Coco to be flirted with, all within mutually acceptable terms), and the desire for Sizhuo to know nothing about that part of his life. Certainly he could not singlehandedly protect her from this already corrupt world, which he had felt no aversion to, except when it threatened that strange unworldliness in Sizhuo. In a sense, what he wanted from her was impossible: he wanted her to stay unchanged, to remain the only resident in her impracticable habitat, which he alone would have the right to guard — and perhaps to taint — with his own worldliness. He wanted to be a good person for her, and he wanted only her to know that he was a good person. If she noticed any discrepancy between his behavior and his intentions, she should understand it, because in his design, she was there to see him not as who he was, but who he could have been.

These thoughts, not having an audience — all his friends were the convenient kind — took on a life of their own. If only he could say these ridiculous things aloud and get them over with: any kind of reception — whether understanding or derisive — would be better than the silence. Boyang was not a person used to silence.

Sizhuo’s ease with that silence perplexed him. What they were to each other seemed to her either irrelevant or settled, though if it were settled, he did not know on what terms.

In not wanting to bring Sizhuo into the world his friends and Coco occupied, Boyang had to carve out a space for Sizhuo in his life. This turned out to be not too difficult: she was fond of the old parts of the city, some of which had not been touched by tourists or developments for the past thirty years. Fewer and fewer of these places were left, Sizhuo explained to Boyang, as though it had not been his city to begin with.

Once a week — often on Saturday, but sometimes on Friday afternoon if he could not free himself on Saturday — he took her to one of the city neighborhoods or a village outside the city that had stayed behind the times. Authentic was the word Sizhuo used to describe these places; coming from another person, the word would have made Boyang sneer, though he felt forgiving toward Sizhuo: she was too young to immunize herself to the vocabulary of her time.

Sizhuo had an old Seagull camera that used 120 film, an ancient machine requiring one to look down on a glass plate to see through the lens, turn several knobs to adjust the focus, and crank a handle after taking each picture to advance the film. Boyang remembered these antiques from his childhood, though they had represented a different status then, owned by people who could afford a bit of luxury. In others’ eyes, Boyang could see the absurdity of these outings: a middle-aged man with a receding hairline parking his BMW in a rundown alley, a young woman photographing the cracks in the walls and the dust accumulated on a discarded bamboo stroller. He wondered if it had occurred to Sizhuo that they were both impersonators of some sort: he played the indulgent provider and keeper of a young woman, and she, having little to claim as her own, presented herself as a nostalgic soul in search of a time long lost.

They did not discuss any specific topic when they took these walks, partly because Sizhuo constantly had to pause and look through the camera’s viewfinder. She liked to show him the things she saw: a rusty bicycle lock with cobwebs; an old slogan haphazardly printed on a brick wall, calling for a Communist leap; a booth selling cigarettes and soda water that had been constructed from an old pickup truck.

The things that interested her did not interest Boyang at all. They were part of his past, which was not distant enough for them to take on any beauty in his eyes. But he liked to watch her, climbing up on an overturned handcart or getting down on her elbows to read a childish curse that must have been carved fifty years ago on the corner of a door. If she was aware of his watching, she did not alter her behavior out of self-consciousness.

At times he desired to be in her viewfinder, but he knew better than to place himself in any position that could endanger his status. If he was a sugar daddy, he was the chastest of his kind — he had not touched the girl with a single finger. He had stopped calling himself her suitor, and she did not seem to fret over the change. Were they playing a game together? Both were patient, or worse, calculating, though Boyang preferred to think that the ambiguity would sort itself out. He was not in a hurry, as he rather enjoyed these weekly outings that did not come with any burden of responsibility. For him, at least, this side project — what else could he call it? — made him more tolerant of Coco, as the vulgar straightforwardness of the latter could be refreshing, too.

One thing that Boyang noticed, not without alarm, was that his mind often wandered to Aunt, to Shaoai’s death, and to the silence of Ruyu and Moran, when he was watching Sizhuo take pictures. He had stopped by twice to see how Aunt was doing, though he had not pressed to know more when she put up a brave show of independence in her isolated apartment. He had given an additional three months’ pay to the woman who used to come every other day to watch Shaoai so Aunt could go grocery shopping or take a walk for fresh air. The woman, middle-aged and laid off from a state-owned factory, had been appreciative of his generosity, which had turned her into a friend of sorts for Aunt. It was too late, he knew, for Aunt to make new friends or get in touch with her old ones.

He had not heard from Ruyu or Moran. He wondered how much it would cost to hire someone to track them down — surely he could find someone inexpensive in Chinatown in New York City, or Los Angeles.

“What are you thinking about?” Sizhuo asked, and Boyang realized that he was particularly quiet today. They were near an old village where a stretch of abandoned railway lay among tall, dry weeds. The December sun had begun to set behind the poplar trees, a few unshed leaves shivering in the wind. Earlier, Sizhuo had turned the camera upward toward half a torn kite caught between the branches; he had even made a joke about the kite having introduced them to each other, though it had not dispelled his moodiness.

“How to be a good man,” Boyang said.

“Are you a good man?”

“I’m trying to be,” he said.

Sizhuo closed the faux-leather cover of the camera, and he handed her gloves to her, which he carried for her when she maneuvered the camera’s buttons and knobs. “Do you mean that these things you do for me are part of your trying to be a good man?” she asked.

“What kinds of things?”

“Driving me around, carrying my gloves, making sure no one abducts me …”

“You may not believe it, but I do much more for others than I do for you.”

“Then shouldn’t you already be a good man?”

Sometimes Sizhuo’s questions sounded as though she were flirting with him. He wished that were the case.

“I wonder how boring this is for you,” Sizhuo said when he did not speak.

“I’m more cold than bored,” Boyang said. “Do you want to stop by a pub? Ten minutes down that road there’s one that’s relatively clean.”

“How do you know?”

“I know this area pretty well,” Boyang said, though he did not explain that he had helped a business contact close a deal that turned the land outside the village into a holiday resort with a vineyard, winemaking being part of the newest trend. At the last minute, the contract had not gone through, though it was just as well. Boyang would have hated for the city to lose another patch of bleakness to prosperity.