Yiyun Li - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

“Baba,” Mr. Shi’s daughter said, pity in her eyes. “You know it’s a lie, too. You were never a rocket scientist. Mama knew. I knew. Everybody knew.”

Mr. Shi stares at his daughter for a long time. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“But you know, Baba. You never talked about what you did at work, true, but other people — they talked about you.”

Mr. Shi tries to find some words to defend himself, but his lips quiver without making a sound.

His daughter says, “I’m sorry, Baba. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Mr. Shi takes long breaths and tries to maintain his dignity. It is not hard to do so, after all, as he has, for all his life, remained calm about disasters. “You didn’t hurt me. Like you said, you were only talking about truth,” he says, and stands up. Before he retreats to the guest bedroom, she says quietly behind him, “Baba, I’ll book the tours for you tomorrow.”

MR. SHISITS in the park and waits to say his farewell to Madam. He has asked his daughter to arrange for him to leave from San Francisco after his tour of America. There’ll still be a week before he leaves, but he has only the courage to talk to Madam one last time, to clarify all the lies he has told about himself. He was not a rocket scientist. He had had the training, and had been one for three years out of the thirty-eight years he worked for the Institute. Hard for a young man to remain quiet about his work, Mr. Shi rehearses in his mind. A young rocket scientist, such pride and glory. You just wanted to share the excitement with someone.

That someone — twenty-five years old, forty-two years ago — was the girl working on the card-punching machine for Mr. Shi. Punchers they were called back then, a profession that has long been replaced by more advanced computers, but of all the things that have disappeared from his life, a card puncher is what he misses most. His card puncher. “ Name is Yilan, ” Mr. Shi says aloud to the air, and someone greets the name with a happy hello. Madam is walking toward him with basket of autumn leaves. She picks up one and hands it to Mr. Shi. “Beautiful,” she says.

Mr. Shi studies the leaf, its veins to the tiniest branches, the different shades of yellow and orange. Never before has he seen the world in such detail. He tries to remember the softened edges and dulled colors he was more used to, but like a patient with his cataracts taken away, he finds everything sharp and bright, appalling yet attractive. “I want to tell something to you,” Mr. Shi says, and Madam flashes an eager smile. Mr. Shi shifts on the bench, and says in English, “I was not a rocket scientist.”

Madam nods hard. Mr. Shi looks at her, and then looks away. “I was not a rocket scientist because of a woman. The only thing we did was talk. Nothing wrong with talking, you would imagine, but no, talking between a married man and an unmarried girl was not accepted. That’s how sad our time was back then.” Yes, sad is the word, not crazy as young people use to talk about that period. “One would always want to talk, even when not talking was part of our training.” And talking, such a commonplace thing, but how people got addicted to it! Their talking started from five minutes of break in the office, and later they sat in the cafeteria and talked the whole lunch break. They talked about their hope and excitement in the grand history they were taking part in, of building the first rocket for their young communist mother.

“ Once you started talking, you talked more, and more. It was different than going home and talking to your wife because you didn’t have to hide anything. We talked about our own lives, of course. Talking is like riding with an unreined horse, you don’t know where you end up and you don’t have to think about it. That’s what our talking was like, but we weren’t having an affair as they said. We were never in love, ” Mr. Shi says, and then, for a short moment, is confused by his own words. What kind of love is he talking about? Surely they were in love, not the love they were suspected of having — he always kept a respectful distance, their hands never touched. But a love in which they talked freely, a love in which their minds touched — wasn’t it love, too? Wasn’t it how his daughter ended her marriage, because of all the talking with another man? Mr. Shi shifts on the bench, and starts to sweat despite the cool breeze of October. He insisted they were innocent when they were accused of having an affair; he appealed for her when she was sent down to a provincial town. She was a good puncher, but a puncher was always easier to train. He was, however, promised to remain in the position on the condition that he publicly admitted his love affair and gave a self-criticism. He refused because he believed he was wronged. “I stopped being a rocket scientist at thirty-two. Never was I involved in any research after that, but everything at work was confidential so the wife didn’t know.” At least that was what he thought until the previous night. He was assigned to the lowest position that could happen to someone with his training — he decorated offices for the birthdays of Chairman Mao and the Party; he wheeled the notebooks and paperwork from one research group to the other; in the evening he collected his colleagues’ notebooks and paperwork, logged them in, and locked them in the file cabinet in the presence of two security guards. He maintained his dignity at work, and went home to his wife as a preoccupied and silent rocket scientist. He looked away from the questions in his wife’s eyes until the questions disappeared one day; he watched his daughter grow up, quiet and understanding as his wife was, a good girl, a good woman. Thirty-two guards he worked with during his career, young men in uniforms and carrying empty holsters on their belts, but the bayonets on their rifles were real.

But then, there was no other choice for him. The decision he made — wasn’t it out of loyalty to the wife, and to the other woman? How could he have admitted the love affair, hurt his good wife, and remained a selfish rocket scientist— or, even more impossible, given up a career, a wife, and a two-year-old daughter for the not so glorious desire to spend a lifetime with another woman? “ It is what we sacrifice that makes life meaningful ”—Mr. Shi says the line that was often repeated in their training. He shakes his head hard. A foreign country gives one foreign thoughts, he thinks. For an old man like him, it is not healthy to ponder too much over memory. A good man should live in the present moment, with Madam, a dear friend sitting next to him, holding up a perfect golden ginkgo leaf to the sunshine for him to see.

I am deeply grateful to Kate Medina, my editor, and Richard Abate, my agent, for their trust, insight, and support; Kate Lee and Danielle Posen for all the hard work; editors who have taken risks on a new voice: Brigid Hughes, Cressida Leyshon, Deborah Treisman, Don Lee, Alex Linklater, Michael Ray, Linda Swanson-Davies, Susan Burmeister-Brown, and David Hamilton; the Paris Review Foundation and the Medway Institute for their generosity in offering space and time for this project; and Connie Brothers, whom I admire for countless reasons.

To teachers and writers whose wisdom has inspired me in the past two years: Marilynne Robinson, Frank Conroy, Edward Carey, and Stuart Dybek.

To friends for their support: Chen Reis, Amy Leach, Jebediah Reed, Kerry Reilly, Paul Ingram, Marilyn Abildskov, Katherine Bell, Timothy O’Sullivan, and Anne O’Reilly.

To my family for believing in everything I do.

Endless gratitude to the following people, who have changed my life: James Alan McPherson, my mentor; Barbara Bryan, my forever first reader; and Aviya Kushner, the enhancer of everything good in the world.