Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

Boyang shifted in his seat. He had once wanted so much to ask Ruyu about her grandaunts, but being young then, he had not found the courage or the right words, and now the women were just two anecdotal names in her life. If he asked about her ex-husbands, would she shrug and say there was little to tell? Did everyone in her life end up like that — had he himself already been in that position? No, he denied this violently: she would not have come back to see him if he had already become a fossil.

“Does this make you uncomfortable?” Ruyu asked. “Shall we order something so the poor girl doesn’t have to stand there all night?”

He ignored her prompting. “Did you … love them?”

“My grandaunts?”

“Yes,” he said. “Did they love you?”

“I’m afraid that was beyond their capacity. I don’t think they loved me more than one would love a pig one raises as a sacrifice. Why? Do you think I’m unfairly harsh toward them? Perhaps I should withdraw that comment. No, they might have loved me in a way I didn’t understand. As for me, they were the only family I had, but I wasn’t raised to love them, or any mortal.”

“That must be a difficult place to be in.”

“I would say there’s no better place for anyone.”

“Do you really believe that?” Boyang asked, looking into Ruyu’s eyes.

She did not avert her eyes from his gaze. “At least I want to believe it.”

“Have you ever wondered if that’s unnatural?” Unnatural— Sizhuo’s word, but what could he use to protect himself but the younger woman’s willfulness?

“Nothing,” Ruyu said, “is natural with my life.”

“Including coming back?” he said.

“In fact — you don’t have to believe it — but coming back seems the most natural thing that has happened to me.”

“Did you come back because Sister Shaoai died?”

Ruyu’s eyes looked strangely out of focus for a brief moment. “No,” she said. “I’d have come back earlier, in time for her funeral, if it were for her.”

“Her ashes are not buried yet.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps Aunt is not ready to bury her yet.”

“How is Aunt?”

“I can take you to see her tonight,” he said. “Or tomorrow. Or anytime.”

“I think we should order now,” Ruyu said and leaned over to tap the window. The waitress came in right away. Ruyu, without consulting Boyang, asked for enough food for two.

“Why change the subject?” Boyang said, watching the waitress close the door behind her. “You don’t like to hear about how Aunt has been struggling all these years?”

“I’ve not seen one person in this world who’s not struggling,” Ruyu said.

“That is quite a coldhearted comment,” Boyang said.

“Yet it is true. You’re implying that I’m responsible for Aunt’s struggling and should feel some sort of guilt. But the thing is, if it weren’t this struggle, it would have been another. If Shaoai had not taken ill, she would have turned out to be a pain for Aunt still.”

“Shaoai did not take ill. She was poisoned.”

Ruyu remained silent, her expression frosty — a more familiar face to Boyang.

“What? You don’t like me to remind you of that fact?”

“What,” Ruyu said, turning her eyes to Boyang and for the first time looking baffled, “do you want me to say?”

“Did you poison Shaoai?”

“Is that all you want to know?”

“I suppose, in a way, everyone wanted to know,” Boyang said. “I’ve never stopped wanting to know.”

“Who is everyone?”

“Me, my parents, Aunt and Uncle, the neighbors.”

“Moran, too?”

Boyang had been wondering when and how this would happen — he had not had the courage to bring Moran’s name into the conversation. “I suppose she must want to know, too,” he said.

“How is she doing these days? Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t keep in touch with her?”

“The way I’ve kept in touch with you, yes, but I’ve never heard from her.”

“Are you not curious about how she is? Are her parents still around?”

“Yes, but I’ve never asked them about her. I haven’t talked to them for years.”

“Why not?”

“She has a right to stay away.”

Ruyu smiled. “How sad for her.”

“Why?”

“If she mattered to you more than she does, you’d have sought her out,” Ruyu said. “It’s not as though this is a world where a person can hide away forever.”

“Perhaps I have reasons not to seek her out.”

“That’s why I feel sad for her.”

“Why?”

“She was quite smitten with you, wasn’t she?”

“Everyone has an adolescent crush. But that’s not a reason for me to continue being in her world,” Boyang said.

“I remember that Shaoai once said Moran was only a child,” Ruyu said, the expression on her face turning hazy. “Poor child.”

“What do you mean?”

“She really was a child when we knew her, no?” Ruyu said. “I always feel bad about all those things happening to her.”

“To her only?” Boyang said, feeling a sudden rage. “But was I not a child? For heaven’s sake, Shaoai was only twenty-two. Was she not still a child, in a way?”

Ruyu looked at Boyang as though amused by his anger. “Oh, don’t look like your life’s been destroyed. I imagine you’ve come through with little harm — right?”

He wanted to argue that that was not the case. He wanted to list the years of care he had dedicated to Shaoai, watching her deteriorate and hiding her from his ex-wife and friends, separating his life into two compartments, neither of them real enough. But whatever he said would only amuse Ruyu more. “So you did poison Shaoai, didn’t you?” he said. He had only that question as a weapon.

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” Ruyu said. “Though I should say, I didn’t mean to not kill her and leave her as a burden for you and the others. But is either statement true? No, I would say no. I didn’t even know if I wanted her to take the poisonous drink or not. She had drunk it before I made up my mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“If there was a cup of orange juice in a room that she shared with another person, she would think she had the claim to it. Why didn’t she ask me first if I wanted it? She felt entitled to everything.”

“So it was the Tang you used,” he said. “I always wondered.”

The door was pushed open, and the waitress wheeled in their dishes. Boyang looked at the food; it occurred to him that this would be the second meal of the day that he would pay for without touching. Ruyu signaled to the dishes, and he shook his head.

“I didn’t put poison in them,” she said with a smile.

Boyang felt an urge to hit her, to make her repent, but more than that: to make her cry, to make her feel the pain, to leave her wounded and never healed.

“Go ahead,” Ruyu said, watching him calmly. “If it would make you feel better.”

“What?”

“You look as though you want to slap me.”

Boyang felt a pang. It was the same indestructible Ruyu no matter where their encounter occurred in life. Could it be that his youthful love for her had been a desire to weaken her so that she would need him? His desire to hurt her now — could it be his only way to love her? “I don’t hit women,” he said.

“Or perhaps you want to kill me,” Ruyu said. “Which is understandable, too.”

“Why would I want to kill you?”

“That’s one way to destroy me,” Ruyu said. “There aren’t many ways. If I were a real killer — you see, I’m not defending myself in any way, but I can say with absolute honesty that it was partly an accident with Shaoai due to my indecision — but if I were a real killer, I would seek out someone like me. Shaoai was not that kind of person. Yes, I despised her, and I pitied her, but you have to know that neither would be a sufficient reason for one to kill a person.”