Yiyun Li - Gold Boy, Emerald Girl

Mr. Chang sat down on the couch before the guest did. An ill-mannered host, she must be thinking of him, but he had not invited her, and he would let her draw any conclusion she wanted to. Of the women at the Twilight Club he had avoided her more than others. A rabbit should not be chewing on the grass around his nest, Mr. Chang had told a few old men when they had hinted that, as neighbors, he and Little Goldfish could develop some convenient romance. They laughed at his cunning reply, but they, unwise old souls who could be deceived by a flirtatious gesture from a no longer young woman, could not see that certain women, Little Goldfish being one of them, were to be shunned for their shrewdness.

“We used to name the pigs after people in number three,” Meilan said, and turned around with a smile. “Of course you were one of the grown-ups then, so you wouldn’t know our tricks.”

“I didn’t know you moved back,” Mr. Chang said.

“I bought the unit downstairs for my parents,” she said. “They didn’t want to live elsewhere.”

The same with his wife and him, Mr. Chang replied, though it was only half the truth. They had helped both sons with their purchases of bigger, more modern flats so they could marry their dream lovers, and in the end, number three, with its rumbling pipes and cracking walls and the garbage chute that still attracted flies years after it had been sealed, was what Mr. Chang and his wife could afford.

Meilan nodded and sauntered to the couch. He stood up quickly and watched her take a seat close to where he had been sitting. Tea? he asked, and when she said yes, he was both horrified at her insistence on extending the visit and relieved that he had an excuse to leave the room. When he returned from the kitchen he sat down in an armchair across the room.

He had his shirt on now, buttoned to the top, and Meilan had to restrain herself from telling him that his shirttail was escaping from under his belt. The glass top of the coffee table had tea stains; a bowl of leftover noodle soup was sitting on a pile of newspaper. The flat was not one where a man could entertain a lady friend; she felt an urge to absolve him of all the women he had danced with.

“I heard about your wife’s passing,” Meilan said, eyeing the framed pictures of his wife on the wall, mostly enlarged black-and-white snapshots taken, judging from the clothes and the young look of the wife, before anyone in number three had been able to afford color film. It was strange to study his wife through an older woman’s eyes; years ago her beauty had been stifling to Meilan, but now she detected melancholy in the young face. Such a woman would let herself be defeated by an illness. “A good wife you had,” Meilan said. “I’m sorry about your loss.”

It had been eleven years, but the way she said it made the pain fresh again. He said that he had been sad to hear about her parents’ passing, too, as if by reminding her of her own loss he would be spared. It was different with one’s parents, she argued, and he had little to defend himself. The teakettle whistled, a prompt excuse for him to withdraw from her gaze.

“Have you thought of remarrying?” Meilan asked when he returned with the tea.

She must have seen his friends at the Twilight Club, so it was natural for her to regard him as an old donkey fond of fresh grass. It was better that she, or anyone else in the world, think that way. He shook his head without giving more explanation. Instead, he asked her about her marriage and her children, as if it were a game of Ping-Pong that one had to win with a tactful performance.

“No husband, no child.”

“You own a flat on Garden Road,” he said. There was little else to compliment in her situation.

“Funny thing is, we moved here when I was ten,” Meilan said, “so there must have been another home before this, but I have little recollection. Am I not a lucky one to die in the only home I’ve known?” It was meant to be a joke, but she was surprised to see that he looked pale and shaken. She had always liked to talk about her own death as if it was an event to look forward to, her secret superstition being that death, like a man, would make itself conveniently unavailable once it knew it was desired.

The only home for him, too, he thought. His sons had tried to persuade him to sell the unit in number three after his wife’s death and he had refused. It was not his responsibility to make them understand him; time would come and teach them about love, which they thought they knew about already.

Meilan studied the old man shrinking into the depth of the armchair, his eyes looking past her and dwelling on some distant past she had no place in. How many times in his life had he let himself truly see her? She remembered years ago — when gas pipes had not been installed in number three and when propane tanks had been rationed — she had often hidden behind a pile of coal bricks on the third floor landing and waited for Uncle Fatty to come back from work. How old was she then? Twelve, or perhaps thirteen, too old to pretend to be playing in the sooty hallway, but she persisted. Once, a rat came out from nowhere and jumped onto the coal, not more than five feet from where she squatted. Neither the rat nor Meilan moved for a long moment, until Uncle Fatty and his wife walked upstairs. The rat scurried away, frightening his wife with its swift movement, and Meilan remembered him looking past her to search for the offender. She had been born ten years too late to bear any meaning for him, she remembered weeping to her journal.

“I’ve always thought that one of your lady friends would be good enough to marry into number three,” Meilan said, laughing lightly. “Have you realized you’re the only one to bring your own partner to the Twilight Club?”

He would no longer, but such information he did not have to share with a stranger. After the relapse of her cancer his wife had told him to start searching for a replacement; she said she would like to see him taken care of so she could leave in peace. He obliged her as one would oblige any fantasy of a dying loved one, but he could not stop himself from strolling and dancing with strangers after her death. He would do anything to keep her alive from day to day, even if it meant being called an old donkey and using other women’s hope as an anesthesia. A week ago, when he had had to break up with his latest friend and call the matchmaking agencies, none of them had provided any new names who had shown interest in his file. A clerk at one of the agencies had even suggested that he no longer pay the fee to keep his file active; her words were subtle but there was no way to make the message less humiliating.

“Of course everything gets harder at our age,” Meilan said. Ten years could be an abyss when one was twelve, and what a relief one did not have to stay twelve all her life. She adjusted her necklace of cultured pearls and sipped the tea. “So if you ask me, I’d say you’re the smartest. It’s better just to have a few dances together. Beyond that things get complicated.”

“So you’ve always been single?” Mr. Chang asked with some curiosity. The woman, uninvited and at ease in his home, was different from his friends. Was it because she owned the patch of roof above her?

“Married twice, lost twice to mistresses,” she said. “No, you don’t have to feel sorry for me. The way I look at it — a bad marriage is like a bad tooth and it’s better to remove it than to suffer from it.”

Mr. Chang leaned forward. He had some vague recollection of her from years ago, but hard as he tried, he could not connect the woman to the young girl, whom his wife had once commented on as being intense and sad for her age. He had never doubted his wife, for whom the world seemed to be more transparent, many of its secrets laid out for her to see, but could she have made a mistake about the girl, or had time alone been able to transform a sad and serious girl into a loud and graceless woman?