Kinder Than Solitude (15 page)

Soundlessly someone entered the room, but only when she dropped a pillow on the bed did Ruyu sense her presence. Ruyu turned around abruptly to face Yening, who was sitting on the bed, her eyes fixed on Ruyu yet unfocused, perhaps seeing nothing but phantoms in her own mind. At dinner, Ruyu had noticed that Yening, a tall and wispy girl, had been courteous toward everyone but had not eaten or talked much. Aunt had not bombarded her with questions, nor had she pushed more food onto the guest; though, nervous, with her incessant chattering, Aunt had been stupider than ever. Ruyu had noticed—and having a visitor among them confirmed her observation—that Aunt seemed superstitiously fearful of quiet, as though any moment not filled with some kind of back-and-forth indicated a failure on her part, or worse, some sort of impending disaster.

“I thought you were watching TV with Shaoai,” Ruyu said when the older girl did not speak or avert her stare. There was something in Yening that Ruyu found unsettling, but she was too young to know the reason: the older girl occupied the same impertinent role in life as Ruyu did; the hardest loss is to be defeated by one’s own strategy in others’ hands.

Yening shrugged. From the living room they could hear Shaoai change channels. “What were you doing when I came in?” Yening asked.

“Nothing.”

“You can’t be doing nothing.”

“I was only sitting here and thinking.”

“Thinking of what? Or whom?”

Ruyu shrugged, then realized that she had just learned the distasteful gesture from Yening.

“Were you, by any chance, talking to your god? Shaoai said you conversed with your god more than you conversed with us mortals,” Yening said, choosing her words with a malicious care.

Ruyu stared back. Yening waited, and when no reply came, she pointed to the accordion case in the corner of the room with her chin. “Is that your accordion?”

“Yes.”

“I heard no one around here could make you condescend to play.”

Ruyu wondered if Shaoai had sent her friend in to humiliate her. Why else would Shaoai even talk to her friend about Ruyu? Shaoai did not like Ruyu, that much was clear: she seldom talked to Ruyu, which was, in fact, fine because Shaoai rarely talked to anyone these days without making sharp comments. But at night she never seemed to tire of putting on a show of hostility and disgust. She waited until Ruyu went to bed and then would turn off the light while continuing to read with a handheld lamp, furiously turning pages and sometimes ending her reading by throwing the book out of the mosquito netting so that it dropped on the floor with a thud. Ruyu, who got up as early as possible—fortunately, Shaoai never woke up early enough to trap Ruyu with another round of confrontational displays—sometimes stole a glance at the book on the floor if the cover was facing up. For several days in a row it was a book called
The Second Sex
by someone named de Beauvoir; the book’s title made Ruyu uncomfortable, and
once she knew its yellow spine and dog-eared look, she avoided looking at the title even if it was staring back at her from the floor. There were other books too, thinner, all with disagreeable titles:
Nausea, The Flies, The Plague
. One book, though, had caught Ruyu’s attention—
The Confessions of a Child of the Century
; she would like to know what the book was about, but she dared not move a page for fear that Shaoai would wake up and catch her.

“I played the piano at your age,” Yening said. Ridiculous, Ruyu thought, her speaking as though they were from different generations. “I practiced all the time. I didn’t have enough time, though, and wouldn’t have minded having forty-eight hours a day for piano. I’m surprised, according to our friend out there, that you haven’t touched your instrument since you came.”

“The accordion is a loud instrument.”

“All instruments are loud.”

“I don’t want to disturb Grandpa.”

“How do you know you can even disturb him?” Yening said, and then softened her voice. “I’m worried that you’ll lose your touch if you don’t practice every day.”

“I can wait until school starts. Moran said there’s a music room in the school.”

“Still, your neighbors must think you’re too haughty to play for them.”

“Nobody thinks that,” Ruyu protested.

“How can you be so certain?” Yening asked, opening her eyes innocently before narrowing them again. “You’re too young to know anything. You don’t know half of what people think of you,” she said with the dismissive gentleness people reserve for crippled animals and dead babies.

Ruyu flinched. Indeed, quite a few neighbors had asked her to perform an evening concert for the quadrangle. She’d shaken her head politely at the requests and wondered why people were persistent in their efforts to make her do things that she had made clear she
would not do. She neither liked nor disliked the accordion, which had been chosen for her by her grandaunts. In fact, the instrument suited her poorly. Its bulky body felt like an inelegant extension of her chest. Sounds coming from it were too loud, the music she played—polkas and waltzes from places she imagined as being perennially sunny—too cheerful. Back home, she sometimes practiced by pressing the keyboards without unbuttoning the bellows; only then could she see herself as a musician, the silent tunes an extension of her thoughts, heard by nobody, heeded by no one.

“What charming, endearing innocence,” Yening said, smiling to herself as if savoring the comment, but before Ruyu replied, she started to pat her pillow. “Which side of the bed do you take?” she said, her face all of a sudden frosty, as though she had exhausted her goodwill and wished to be left alone.

Later, lying awake, Ruyu heard Shaoai climb into bed between her and Yening. Neither of the girls was pleasant, and Ruyu wondered how they’d become friends. Or perhaps that was how things had to be for those two, one person’s edge constantly cutting into the other person’s edge, those who hurt others seeking likewise to be hurt.

Much later, Ruyu was awakened by an angry exchange of whispers. She did not know what time it was or how long the quarrel had been going on. She stayed as still as she could and kept her breathing even, and soon it became clear that the two girls were arguing about a boy.

“Let him go off to be a monk,” Shaoai said, “if he doesn’t have the courage to stand up for himself.”

“It’s not a question of courage. The question is, what’s better for him?”

“Or should we ask what’s better for you? Certainly it’d be harder for you to seduce him if he shaves his head and lives in a temple.”

“That’s distasteful, Shaoai.”

“I don’t think truth ever tastes good to anyone’s palate.”

“But you’re unfairly harsh toward him because you’re jealous of him.”

“Jealous is the wrong word,” Shaoai said. “He’s not worthy of my jealousy.”

“Of course not,” Yening said. “Any boy I lay my eyes on is a low creature for you. All you want is for me to love no one, and to be stuck with you.”

“If it feels that way, you are welcome to get yourself unstuck any time.”

“Certainly you’d say so, now that you have a cute and dumb girl sharing your bed.”

Both girls were quiet for a moment, and then Ruyu felt a slight breeze on her cheek as Yening lifted the mosquito netting. “Where are you going?” Shaoai asked. Yening did not answer, and a moment later Ruyu heard her tattered slippers going off toward the living room. She waited for the bell on top of the door to jingle, but it did not.

“Have you eavesdropped enough?” Shaoai said, her voice low but not whispering.

Ruyu stayed still.

“I know you’re awake,” Shaoai said. “Just so you don’t misunderstand the situation: the boy we were talking about used to be a friend of mine, too, but now he’s worried about disciplinary action against him for what he did in the protest. His parents arranged for him to leave the university and go to a temple for a while. Imagine that. To be exempt from secular matters.”

Please make her stop. Please make her vanish, because she doesn’t matter to you, and so she doesn’t matter to me.

“I guess all you need to know is that Yening and I disagreed about his decision,” Shaoai said. “She thinks it’s a good idea. She thinks any idea that saves his ass is a good idea. But then she feels miserable about letting him go into a world where she has no right to be. Wouldn’t it be nicer if she could be his personal temple?”

The bitterness in Shaoai’s words was too much. “I didn’t ask you to tell me,” Ruyu said.

“I’m telling you to spare you the extra time you’d spend dwelling on it,” Shaoai said. “Now you know the whole story; you’d better forget it tomorrow.”

Yet there was more to it, Ruyu knew, but that mattered little to her because it was not her position to discern the true from the untrue: secrets of any kind breed ugliness. Ruyu felt an uncleanness clinging to her the way she had read in books a leech attached itself to a body.

“Though, to think about it, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing for you to know a little more about how the world works,” Shaoai said. “Who knows what your grandaunts have done to taint you?”

“You don’t even know them,” Ruyu said.

“Do I want to know them?” Shaoai retorted. “From how they’ve brought you up, I would advise that a young person should run the moment she sees them.”

Back home when Ruyu had seen people exchange mocking looks behind her grandaunts’ backs, she had learned not to feel bothered: none of those people understood her grandaunts, and, more important, her grandaunts did not need the understanding of others. She wished she could now treat Shaoai’s chatter as one of those irrelevant voices, but Shaoai seemed to have made up her mind not to be dismissed. “Now let me explain to you what I mean,” Shaoai said. “What do you think of Yening? Is she a good person in your eyes? Would she be a good person in your grandaunts’ opinion?”

“She’s your friend,” Ruyu said. “Why do you need my opinion?”

“See, your answer proves my exact point. Before she’s my friend, she is a being
out there
, a
fact
; anyone should be able to form an opinion of her. My mother thinks her eccentric. My father probably thinks of her as a spoiled child, as I am. Our very cowardly friend—the would-be monk—thinks she is wickedly attractive and wants her to wait for him to finish his stint in the temple so he can marry her. But you, what’s your opinion? All you do is look at her coldly and say to
yourself: she has nothing to do with me. And then she becomes nothing to you. Do you see that? There is a human being there, whom you, with whatever absurd logic your grandaunts have given you, turn into a non-being.”

Ruyu felt as though she were being swept into an abyss by Shaoai’s words, which were ludicrous yet had the irresistible force of insanity. “But it’s true that Yening and I have nothing to do with each other,” she said, but realized her error right away. To give up a position of silence, to allow oneself to be engaged—already she was allowing Shaoai what she did not deserve.

“You missed my point,” Shaoai said. “I am only using her as an example. Or maybe she is the wrong example. But those people shot dead in Tiananmen Square? Have you found yourself thinking, for even a moment, about them or their families? Have you asked Moran or Boyang about what they have seen or heard? No, and no, because those dead people have nothing to do with you; hence, they are nothing to you. Rest assured, you are not the only one who maintains that stance. More and more people will choose that attitude now that a revolution has been crushed, but that does not exempt you. In fact, I have to say, you must have been born a heartless person, or else you must have been thoroughly brainwashed by your grandaunts. Either way, I find your lack of interest in anything but your own little faith to be more than horrifying. Of course you can shrug your dainty shoulders and say, what does your opinion have to do with me?”

Ruyu did not speak when Shaoai finished her monologue. Her silence seemed to infuriate Shaoai even more. “Well?” she said. “Have you made up your mind not to condescend to answer me?”

“What do you want me to say?” Ruyu said.

“It’s not what I want you to say. It’s what you want to say for yourself. Come on, defend yourself. Defend your grandaunts. Let’s at least have some fair play.”

“My grandaunts don’t need me to defend them.”

“And you yourself?”

“I’m fine with your thinking of me as anything, or nothing,” Ruyu said, and was relieved to hear Yening’s shuffling steps nearing the bedroom. Before Shaoai could find more words, Yening entered the room. “Why the silence all of a sudden?” she said to the dark room, laughing lightly. “I thought you two were having a good time.”

The next day, Shaoai helped Yening move back into her dorm, and when she did not return for dinner, Aunt wondered aloud if she had missed Shaoai saying that she was going to move back into the dorm that day, too. “You’d think I wouldn’t miss something so important,” Aunt said to Uncle, who comforted her, and said he himself had missed it too, if that indeed was Shaoai’s plan.

When Aunt asked Ruyu, she said she didn’t know of any such plan, either. Perhaps in Shaoai’s eyes, Ruyu was like one of those birds that occupied another bird’s nest; but the thought did not bring Ruyu any remorse, nor did it diminish her relief that soon Shaoai would move out of the house, and she would have a bedroom to herself.

Just as the dinner was ending, Shaoai returned and with a stern face announced that she had decided to commute for the new semester. Uncle and Aunt exchanged a nervous look. “Did any school official talk to you?” Aunt asked.

“No.”

“Does that mean everything will be all right?”

“Nothing is ever all right, if you ask me,” Shaoai said.

“But the school—will they … will you …” Aunt tried in vain to find the right words.

“You’re worried that I’ll be expelled? And I won’t graduate and won’t have a job and will remain a burden to you forever?” Shaoai said. “Let me say this: there are worse things in the world than not graduating with a useless degree in international trade and relations.”

Aunt and Uncle watched as Shaoai stormed back to her bedroom. Had there been a door, Ruyu thought, Shaoai would have banged it
shut as befitting her drama, and, as though the same thought had occurred to Shaoai, she came out of the bedroom and said that it was stuffy in the house and she was going for a walk. Aunt glanced at the clock on the wall and was about to say something, but Uncle shook his head discreetly at her. A moment later, the door was slammed shut; the bell on top, unconstrained, swung back and forth furiously.