Kinder Than Solitude

18

Against his better judgment, Boyang did not stop pursuing Sizhuo. He recognized the peril of his persistence. What did a man want when he courted a woman? With his ex-wife, he had believed in a fresh start, that they could bring what they liked from their separate pasts and build a new world with only those good things; he had not realized that in choosing what to contribute, he had already cordoned off part of his life. Having erred age-befittingly, his only guilt was that the divorce had affected his ex-wife more; but that should be expected, as it was always a greater risk to be a woman than to be a man.

What about Sizhuo and himself, though? Boyang could not see their transaction with clarity. Her impertinence, her scrutiny of her surroundings, and her unsmiling expression at times reminded him of Ruyu, but Sizhuo’s heart was too affectionate, her view of the world too moral, her dreams too many. Or was he only grafting some of Moran’s qualities onto a person that he wished to be his first love? Boyang recognized the absurdity of this possibility: if he did not watch out, one day he would become one of those dotty old men who looked in every young woman’s face for his dead wife or his lost first love.

Once upon a time, Boyang had thought that he had fallen in love with Ruyu, but what he had wanted, he understood now, was to be seen by her, not only in that moment but also in those moments before and after. Call it youthful conceit, but to be seen — and to be seen as someone with a past and a future — is that not our most sincere design for love? Our greediest, too: in wishing for such continuity, one places oneself — with arrogance and delusion — beyond the erosion of time.

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.

“Do you know all the places you bring me to?”

“More or less,” Boyang said. “Generally speaking, I want to know what I’m doing.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Enjoying an outing with you.”

“But why do you agree to come, when it’s cold and boring like this? It can’t be hard for you to find a more exciting way to spend your afternoons.”

“If you mean to kill time — yes, I have other ways, but I wouldn’t call this misspent time,” Boyang said, and opened the car door for Sizhuo.

She ungloved her hands and put them in front of the heater when he started the car. “Don’t do that,” he said. “You could get chilblains.”

She looked at him oddly and put her gloves back on without saying a word.

“What? Did I say something wrong?”

“Nobody gets chilblains these days.”

Boyang wondered if that was true. He remembered the winters in grade school, when the boys all had swollen red fingers, and sometimes the girls, too, though Moran had never had them. She had been the one who had reminded Boyang, every time they entered a room, not to go right away to the heater but to rub his hands first. Always the one to offer a solution to any problem, Boyang thought; always there, always, counting a hundred before letting him go to the heater. What kind of comfort does a good person like that offer? Less than she has imagined, alas.

“You look annoyed,” Sizhuo said.

“Why don’t kids have chilblains now?” he asked.

“Why should they? The world is enough of a bad place without chilblains.”

Boyang looked at Sizhuo, who only looked down at the fingertips of her gloves. He wondered what had brought on her mood today. “The world would be a good place if all we had to worry about were chilblains,” he said.

“That must make you feel good, then?”

“What?”

“That your only concern about me today is that I don’t get chilblains.”

“How do you know that’s my only concern?”

“Why do I want to know?” Sizhuo said.

“It’s natural for a person to want to know another person’s thoughts,” Boyang said. “That is, if they’re next to each other.”

“Natural?” Sizhuo pointed to a giant crow spreading its wings and hopping to the other side of the road, to make way rather than fly away. “That,” she said, “is a perfect example that nothing is natural in this city.”

“Where did that criticism come from?”

“Shouldn’t a bird take flight when a car comes?” Sizhuo asked. Somewhere she had read, she said, that the only emotion birds felt was fear.

“Maybe the crows are used to the cars.”

“Does that mean they can’t feel fear anymore? That they have been robbed of their only emotion?”

Boyang turned down a narrow lane. He had a sense that something had gone awry. He thought back to the afternoon — she had looked calmly engaged when she had photographed the kite; she had not shown any sign of listlessness when he had picked her up that afternoon. His comment on chilblains ought to have been taken as both considerate and innocuous. “I don’t know if you’re only talking about the birds or about something else,” he said.

“There’s always something else, no?”

What he thought of her, which he hated even to sort out in his mind, and what she thought of him, which he had no way of knowing — these questions were their companions on their outings, though they had never stopped and faced their silent followers. “And what’s that something in this case?” Boyang asked.

Sizhuo stared ahead — the car was coming to the end of the lane, which was blocked by metal chains. On the other side of the chains was an open lot. Boyang honked, and someone looked out a window of a bungalow, and then unlocked a door. It was an older man, whose face showed no expression when he walked across the lot and told them that the place was not open. “Not open?” Boyang said. “It’s almost five o’clock.”

“Not open,” repeated the old man, turning around the cardboard sign hanging on the chain so they could see it. Sold, it said.

Boyang leaned over and apologized to Sizhuo, who sat straighter to make room for him as he felt around in the glove compartment. Finally he located the right pack of cigarettes, half-full — he kept three packs of different brands, which, depending on whom he was speaking with, he would choose from accordingly. “Sold to whom, Uncle?” he said, handing over a cigarette.

The old man sniffed the cigarette — the least expensive brand Boyang carried in the car — and nodded to himself. “City Ocean,” he said.

City Ocean, Boyang thought to himself. “Not by any chance Metropolitan Ocean?” he asked.

The old man said yes, indeed it was Metropolitan Ocean. Boyang asked a few other questions, which the old man waved off. “Ask my son,” the old man said and turned away. Boyang wondered if the old man was playing dumb, but there was little else he could do, so he backed the car out of the lane.

They stopped at another eatery a few kilometers down the road. When the waitress came with their menus, Sizhuo said she only wanted a pot of hot tea. “Did you get a chill?” Boyang asked. He would have made an effort to cheer her up if he hadn’t just discovered the sale of the land around the old pub to Metropolitan Ocean. Distracted more than distressed, he ordered a pot of tea for Sizhuo and some dumplings to go.

“Why don’t you eat?” Sizhuo said. “You said earlier you were hungry.”

“If you’re not feeling well, I’d prefer to get back to the city as soon as we can,” Boyang said.

“Or you need to get back for a business reason, and my not feeling well provides a perfect excuse.”

“I don’t work on Saturdays.”

The waitress brought the tea, and Sizhuo asked if she could order the peasant stew on the menu. “That’ll take some time,” the waitress, a middle-aged woman who no doubt recognized Boyang’s role, replied with her face turned to him. He said they had plenty of time.

“I see someone is moody today,” Boyang said when the waitress left.

“Is that part of your being a good man, catering to every mood of mine?”

“You’re the least moody woman I’ve met.”

“So you’ve had your share of women with bad moods?” Sizhuo said. “How many of them have you known?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Do I not have a right to be curious?”

In her eyes he saw defiance mixed with resignation; it was a look he hadn’t seen before. Could it be that she, being the less experienced of the two, had finally cracked, as he had feared would happen to himself? He felt a surge of satisfaction — until that moment, he had not caught any sign that he existed in her world as more than a chauffeur and a walking companion, and had been both amused and puzzled by her patience. “Of course you have every right to be curious,” he said, pouring the tea for her. “But what I don’t understand is this: my comment about the chilblains seemed to upset you.”

“What does it matter to you if I get chilblains or not?”

“Now, that is childish.”

“I don’t understand why, week after week, we meet for a walk, sit down and talk about trivial matters, and then disappear from each other’s worlds for the rest of the week as though nothing happened. You don’t like my photography. You have better ways to entertain yourself. Why do you humor me?”

“I’ve never had a chance to see the final prints. How do you know I don’t like them?”

“You’d have asked if you were interested.”

“Is it too late to ask now?”

Sizhuo looked at Boyang, and he could see the confusion in her eyes. “Listen,” he said and glanced at her hands on the table. He calculated the effect of covering her hands with his, but decided against it. “You must know I like you. A lot. So however we spend time together makes me happy.” Or was it a misstep to say “happy,” when he did not really believe in happiness? “I never got the sense that you hated these outings, but if that’s the case, I will certainly leave you alone.”

“I didn’t say I hated them,” Sizhuo said.

“Then what’s upsetting you?”

“I don’t know what we are to each other. Perhaps this is never a problem for you, but it’s unnatural.”

“What’s unnatural about being friendly?”

“We’re not meant to be friends.”

“So we should either be lovers,” he said, and watched Sizhuo blush—“or strangers. Are those the only two options? Is there not space in between for us to be genuinely affectionate toward each other?”

Sizhuo looked agonized, cornered by a mind more lucid than hers, though what could his lucidity do but confirm the distance between them? The truth was, wherever they were at this moment — no, before this moment, before she laid out in the open the questions they both must have been asking themselves — whatever they had been then was better. Why, thought Boyang with a weary sadness, couldn’t people stay in a place they could not name, rather than wanting to know, always wanting to know, more of the truth? Everything comes to an end when explained, rightly or wrongly.

“Can I tell you a story?” Sizhuo asked.

Don’t, his heart cried out. Do not tell your story to me; I’m not one to whom you should entrust your secret. When you hand it to me, you will either expect me to hold it as something precious, or, in exchange, you will expect me to offer you a story of my own. Can’t you see that I’m going to fail you on both accounts? “Certainly,” Boyang said. He had known that sooner or later one of them would have to take a step to make things go one way or another. At least he should be glad that he was not the one who’d lost his poise first. “Do tell.”

“Yet you don’t want to hear it.”

“Of course I do,” Boyang said, turning his eyes away from Sizhuo’s stare. This was going to be the end of something that had not begun properly; would that make everything easier for him, and for her?

“I know you’re lying, but I don’t mind being lied to today,” Sizhuo said. “It’s time to stop this silliness of seeing you every week and pretending all is happy and normal.”

“I haven’t been pretending.”

Sizhuo ignored Boyang’s words, and when she spoke again there was a note of abandonment in her voice. Do not lose your composure over the past, Boyang wanted to advise the girl; what you think of as tragic will one day make you laugh.

The story, as he had guessed, featured a boy and a girl — Sizhuo herself — and would no doubt turn out to be a failed love story of the most heartbreaking kind. He braced himself for the moment when he was expected to offer something — comfort, wisdom, forgiveness.

The two had been playmates, Sizhuo said, having known each other all their lives. The boy, three months older, had taken on the role of big brother — the one to provide and to protect. When their parents could not offer enough food, there had been sparrows killed by a homemade slingshot, cicadas caught with glue attached to the top of a bamboo pole, frogs, hedgehogs, grasshoppers, all roasted in hot ash. The boy had not been interested in education and had failed school early on; nevertheless, he had been called a smart boy, too smart for his own good in the eyes of his elders. When her parents’ income could not satisfy her need for more books, he had invested his intelligence in stealing: copper wires dug out of the ground, wild ginseng and rare dried mushrooms swiped from the packing factory, small items that people had left around their yards. She had not asked to whom he brought these things — at age ten he was already connected to dubious people out in the world. She had not approved of these misdemeanors, yet neither had she declined the offerings. When she had left her hometown for college in Beijing, he had followed her, discarding a network of friends that could have made his life more convenient in the provincial town. In Beijing he had become an illegal transient, working odd jobs and living a life that did not cross paths with her college life. They met once a month far from campus to take a walk, and always, before parting ways, he would put an envelope of money into her hands and tell her to buy the namebrand clothes that the other girls in the city were wearing.

“What are you thinking?” Sizhuo stopped and asked.

“I was thinking that in everyone’s heart, there’s a graveyard for first love.”

“Of course to you there’s nothing special about the boy’s love.”

“I didn’t say that. He was in love with you, but the question is: were you — or are you — in love with him?”

Sizhuo looked at him strangely. “You can’t be in love with a dead person.”

Boyang felt a pang. How do you, he asked himself, compete with a young man in the grave for a woman’s heart?

The story that followed belonged to the metro section of the evening newspaper, one of those tales in which a young man, having no legal residency in Beijing, brought nothing to the city but chaos and danger. One night he had broken into a rental shared by three young women. He had thought they were out of town for the Lunar New Year, not realizing that one had returned early. Out of panic, he had stabbed and killed the woman, a journalist whose next assignment was to interview a rising star in local politics.

No doubt the young man’s execution would forever be the pinnacle of a tragedy that Sizhuo thought she could have prevented. Yet he — uneducated, without any connections or means — stood no chance in this city. Apart from some perfunctory sympathy for a life lost, Boyang felt little for the young man. Any premature death could be called a tragedy, but how many tragedies would one be willing to admit into one’s thoughts? There were worse losses: Shaoai, for instance, locked in her own body for twenty-one years. The life she could have made — a brilliant career, a successful family, influences on many lives, good use of her time on earth. Could he explain to Sizhuo that sometimes death was a mercy — that it was worse for the dead to go on living? In an ideal world, death should be the end of the story, but in this world, where they had to make do with muddles, death never ended anything neatly. “Your friend made a mistake,” Boyang said. “And yes, a pricey one. But if I were you, I wouldn’t burden myself with unnecessary guilt.”

“But you are not me.”

“You wouldn’t have changed many things in his life.”

“At least I could have let him believe he had a chance.”

“At what? Your love, or a better life in this city?”

“Either,” Sizhuo said hesitantly. “Or both.”

“But you were not in love with him, and you know that. You couldn’t have gotten him a better job, and you know that, too. What’s the point of regretting something you haven’t done wrong? The same misfortune could have befallen him all the same, and you would be sitting here feeling guilty for having lied to him about your love.”

Sizhuo looked a little dazed. “But in his mind, he must have thought part of his misfortune my responsibility.”

“Did he say that to you?”

“He always asked me why I hadn’t been like the other girls and found a sugar daddy in this city.”

Boyang cringed. That she had no trouble saying the words sugar daddy made him sad.

“He considered all men who were richer and older his enemies. He considered the young men whose parents had already bought them apartments in Beijing, and who already had the best jobs lined up for them, his enemies. But you must admit that he was not wrong. What did he have but his wish to make a better case for his love?”

Boyang felt an icy tingling on his back. Somewhere, the ghost of the young man must be glaring at him, resenting him, because he possessed what the young man would never be able to have.

“He always said he knew what I was going to do,” said Sizhuo. “He said that I would sell out in exchange for a comfortable life.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Does that mean that I haven’t thought about it, or I won’t ever? What am I doing here with you if I am not considering that possibility? If I were a better person, I would have said no to you right away because everything in connection with you proves him right.”

“Why not look at it this way? You didn’t say no because I didn’t come simply to propose that I become your sugar daddy.”

“But what do you call what we’ve been doing?”

“We’re trying to get to know each other.”

“Is that what we’re doing? Do we know each other better than we did four weeks ago?” Sizhuo said. “Or are we just avoiding getting to know each other, because it’s too much of a risk for you?”

Again Boyang was frightened by the abandonment in her tone. “But not a risk for you?” he asked.

“What do I have to lose?” Sizhuo said.

Her childlike defiance unnerved him. He had never asked himself if she was worth his effort because to ask was to admit that this was more than a game. He had believed that at any moment he could leave, but what he hadn’t realized was that she had, without his knowing it, taken his deposit — of what? — his honor, his peace, or even his hope of building something called a life with her. How could he explain to her that she had too much to lose, not only on her own behalf, but on his, too? “What,” he said with some difficulty, “can I do to make things better?”

“It’s not what you can do, don’t you see?” Sizhuo said. “It’s what kind of person you are, but I don’t know who you are, or what you are. Sometimes I think maybe I did make the mistake of never committing to any position — had I chosen to be practical, had I chosen to be like some of my classmates from freshman year, my friend might have lost hope in this city and might not have stayed. So why didn’t I? Did I think I deserved great love, when other girls like me had resigned themselves to reality? But if I didn’t want to sell out, I should’ve been stronger. I should’ve believed in building a future with him in this place, however hard it would have been; I should’ve received his presents and returned with …”

Abruptly Sizhuo broke off. The waitress was coming with a steaming pot but had stopped a couple of steps away, lest it was not the right time. Sizhuo looked away with a flushed face, and Boyang motioned for the waitress to bring the stew over. She ladled the soup into two bowls and told them to enjoy. The moment before she turned away, Boyang caught a slight mocking smile on the face of the middle-aged woman.

“Well, eat something hot,” Boyang said.

Sizhuo made no movement to touch the food. “I was thinking before you picked me up today that we should stop this nonsense.”

“Why do you call it nonsense, when it seems to me to be the most sensible thing for two people to get to know each other?”

“It won’t work out in the end.”

“You don’t know that if we haven’t tried.”

Sizhuo looked at him sadly. “You know what’s the only thing that could absolve me? To fall in love with you, to have you fall in love with me — no, not you, but any man who is in a better position than my friend. Only love can absolve me, can’t you see? If only I could prove to my friend that a man richer and older than he can love as he did — do you see?”

Could he, or anyone, love as the dead boy had?

“You look hesitant. And you’re right to hesitate. You don’t feel up to the challenge, or perhaps it’s not even fair to ask you to try, because you would always suspect that I would compare you to him, or else I would use you. Sometimes I thought it would be better if I found another boy like him, who had nothing to his name, and we would support each other in our struggling. No, you’re laughing, and you’re right that however honorable that sounds, we would not get very far. Yes, I know that, but it isn’t for that reason that I’m not dating another boy like him,” Sizhuo said, looking into Boyang’s eyes, the tears she had been holding back now rolling down without inhibition. “But this: if I could make a life with someone like him, why not with him in the first place?”

Sizhuo stood abruptly and said she would be right back. For a moment Boyang worried that she would leave without him — he could see her do that, sneaking out of the restaurant and walking to the nearest bus stop, asking a passerby the bus schedule, playing hide-and-seek when he went to hunt for her. But to allow himself to panic was to surrender to a situation where he should have control. To distract himself, he took out his phone to see if anyone had contacted him in the past few hours.

An email from Ruyu was waiting for him, in his regular account, and only later did he figure out that it must not have been difficult for her to find that address. He had registered with that email on a few social media websites, and he had a microblog connected to the email.

The message was short: Ruyu gave the address of a hotel and the telephone number, and said that she would like to meet. There was no mention of how long she would stay, or when would be a good time for her.

Boyang felt sweat on his palms. The most sensible thing would be to call now rather than later, though Sizhuo would be back any minute. He looked around and signaled for the waitress to bring the check. “To-go containers?” she asked, looking at the untouched food.

“No, just bring me the bill.”

The waitress gave him an I-knew-it look. As she walked to the counter, she looked at Sizhuo, who had come out of the ladies’ room with slightly swollen eyes, without hiding her interest. With so many people coming and going through her restaurant, Boyang thought, the waitress must need to find a way to score points over the customers, morally or in another manner, but don’t we all do that? “I hope you don’t mind that I asked for the check,” he said when Sizhuo sat down.

She shook her head and said she was ready to leave.

He drove faster than usual on the way back, honking at the slower cars and cursing under his breath at the trucks. He was aware that Sizhuo watched him critically, and he wondered whether this behavior would be misunderstood — though did it really matter now if he was misunderstood by her? As they approached the city, traffic slowed to a worm’s speed, and he could not help but press his upper body against the steering wheel from time to time and join the chorus of honking. The fourth time he did this, Sizhuo looked at him coolly and said, “Do you think that’s going to change anything?”

“I’m not doing it to change anything.”

“Complaining?”

“Protesting.”

“What’s the difference between the two?”

“Protesting makes one feel a better person,” he said. “Though there’s really not any difference, if you ask me.”

“Do you protest often?”

“No,” he said. “I often don’t see the point.”

“Then what’s the point today?”

He turned to look at her. “What do you mean?”

“I think something I said put you into this protesting mood. What was it? Did I overstep and share too much information? Did I disappoint you because I’ve decided to stop playing your game?”

He sighed. “I’ve not been playing a game with you.”

“How do I know that?”

How does anyone know anything about another person? Our mind, a slate that does not begin as large as we wish, grows smaller with what we believe to be experience: anything we put down has to be erasable, one passion making way for another, one connection replaced by an equally precarious one. Once and again we lie to ourselves about starting with a clean slate, but even the most diligent wiping leaves streaks — fears, distrusts, the necessity of forever questioning the motives of others.

Later, as Boyang sat in the hotel lobby, he tried to focus his thoughts on Sizhuo; his standing with her in the immediate future — the next day, the next week — provided solid footing for him as he waited for Ruyu. Sizhuo had been quiet when he dropped her off; he had promised to call soon. He would have to say something when he saw her again — what, though? She had given him an ultimatum; in laying her past open, she had demanded from him a kind of honesty he did not believe he had in him.

He looked up at the clock — ten past seven, not far enough into the hour to think of Ruyu as being late, but what if she had had a change of heart and would never show up? He brought out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He wondered if he should go to the receptionist and announce himself, though that would indicate impatience, and worse, loss of faith in the eventuality of their meeting. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. This, he told himself, was not a first date, nor an illicit rendezvous.

The elevator door opened, releasing Ruyu among a few other guests. He recognized her at once. Her body was no longer a girl’s but remained slim; her face was serene with an expression closest to contentment. He wished, against logic, that she were attached to one of the other guests and would disappear in a moment, but they quickly dispersed, leaving Ruyu, who met his eyes but did not move closer. He stood up and stepped forward. Having neither the proper gesture nor the right words for a greeting, he felt caught again, underprepared. “Here we are,” he said finally.

Ruyu studied him with an unequivocal gaze. “I imagine you know a quiet place nearby, where we can sit down and talk?”

Of course, he said, and added that he had called to reserve a private room at a nearby restaurant. “It’s Sichuan-style. I’m not sure if you eat spicy food, but they have good non-spicy choices, too. It’s just across the street, and it’s quite clean there. But if you prefer somewhere else, we could find another place.”

She said that sounded fine, and he led the way. Neither spoke until they were shown to the reserved room, the glass door of which bore the name “Reuters” and was a one-way mirror, allowing those eating inside to view the restaurant without being observed. Ruyu pointed that out to him and asked if this was a place for foreign journalists to gather, and he said that he doubted that was why the room was named as it was. There were other rooms in the restaurant that had names like CNN, BBC, Agence. Not Xinhua? she asked, and he said no, no one wanted to dine in a room named after a news agency they could not trust. Ruyu said she could not see how any of the foreign agencies were more trustworthy. “They are all the same,” she said.

“Surely that can’t be,” he said.

“They are the same the way people are the same,” she said. “Would you look for a better person in a foreign country if you couldn’t find one at home?”

“To you, perhaps, but not many people have seen the world as you have. You’ve got to allow people the hope for something better.”

The waitress brought tea and started to recite the restaurant’s Saturday special. Boyang stopped her and told her to leave the menu with them and wait outside the door. The waitress readily gave up her post.

Through the glass, Ruyu watched the waitress standing straight next to the door. “I haven’t seen the world as you think,” she said, turning her attention to Boyang. “But that’s all right, as I don’t see the point in doing that. But you, what is your life like these days? To get away from whatever engagement you have for a Saturday night at such short notice — you must be in a good position to be able to do that.”

Her words had an undertone that he could not read well, or perhaps he’d forgotten how she always seemed to be asking for more than an answer. “There’s nothing more important than seeing you,” he said.

“Why?”

“You don’t happen to be in town often. Or at least I don’t happen to hear from you often.”

“You’ve heard from me and seen me in person. Now what? You can go home to your wife and child with one thing ticked off your list, no?”

“I have neither of those, as a matter of fact.”

“Why not? Isn’t that bad news for a man your age? Or you prefer the freedom of a diamond bachelor?”

“I was married once. It didn’t work out.”

“You don’t want to try again?”

“Once bitten by a snake, one has to be cautious around ropes for ten years,” he said, feeling momentarily apologetic toward his ex-wife. Though she had been the who had betrayed the marriage, what was wrong with his playing the victim for now? “And you? Are you visiting the country by yourself?”

“I suppose it’s only fair that you get a chance to ask me about my personal life, too,” Ruyu said. “I had two marriages. Neither worked, of course, as you can very well imagine.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“That I could fail at not one but two marriages?”

“That you would ever be married.”

“But you knew I left the university to get married.”

“You left the university to go to America was how I looked at it,” Boyang said. “I don’t count that marriage as a real one. And the second — was it a better … a different kind of marriage?”

She shook her head. “As pointless as the first one.”

“Why get married at all, then?”

“Why not? You got married, too.”

“Mine was a real marriage,” he said. At least for a while; at least he preferred to think so.

Ruyu smiled. The expression seemed a new addition; it occurred to Boyang that he had never seen her smile. “I can’t, of course, defend my marriages. I would have preferred not to use marriage to solve my problems, but there are issues of practicality. And I don’t think I’m good at figuring them out.”

“So marrying yourself off was the only option?” Boyang said, and realized that he sounded more bitter than he meant to. Selling yourself off, Sizhuo would say.

“Certainly not the only one.”

“But the easiest one?”

“Let’s not get into these arguments,” Ruyu said. “I’m not back here to discuss my marriages with you, and I’m sure there is little I can say about yours.”

“What are you here for?”

“To see you, of course.”

“That’s it?”

“Who else? There are not many people for me to see in this country.”

“Your grandaunts, are they still … around?”

“They are with their god now.”

“When did that happen?”

“Maybe nine, ten years ago?” Ruyu said. “You don’t have to look at me that way. I know how ungrateful I must sound to you. To be honest, I only got the news afterward. No, I didn’t come back for either of them.”

“Typical of you not to return for a funeral.”

Ruyu opened her mouth as though she had something to say, and then smiled forgivingly. Boyang apologized for his unfriendly tone.

“You don’t have to apologize. I’m as heartless as everyone thinks,” she said. “Though my grandaunts would not have liked me to come back either. They disowned me when I left China for the marriage, you see.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t turn out as they wished, and then they also found out that their little brother was alive in Taiwan, with a full family of children and grandchildren. So everything worked out just fine.”

“For whom?”

“For them, and for me too,” she said. “They didn’t raise me to be someone’s wife, nor did they raise me to defy God’s will by speaking of suicide. But then they didn’t expect to find their brother, so I suppose they were two happy women in the end. Perhaps their god did see how much they sacrificed to raise me and grant them something better than me as a reward. Who knows? They might have told each other that God had other plans for me, and it was good for them to wash their hands of me.”

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.”

“You mean you’d kill yourself? Didn’t you use that once as your defense?”

“You could call that a lie. I’ve never been suicidal. You either have that in you, or you don’t,” Ruyu said. “I don’t have that. All I’m saying is, I would have been much less lenient if I’d found someone like myself.”

“Have you ever found anyone like yourself?”

“People in general are kinder than I,” Ruyu said.

“But have you ever felt guilty?”

“About what?”

“About Shaoai,” Boyang said. And about Moran, and himself, all these people left behind.

“All I wanted to do was to mind my own business. If there was a poisonous drink I mixed up and left on my desk, it was my own business,” Ruyu said. “Shaoai’s problem, like many people’s, was not knowing how not to mind other people’s business.”

“Yes, she could be bossy. She could be unfriendly. But was that enough for her to suffer the way she did?”

Ruyu paused. “That, I have to say, was her bad luck.”

“Do you have a heart? Do you not have any remorse in you?”

“Point out to me one person who could benefit from my having a heart.”

Boyang stared at Ruyu. Her look, candid, without animosity, could have belonged to the most innocent person.

“Would you feel better if I lied, and said I felt some remorse?” Ruyu asked gently.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s what I thought,” Ruyu said. “No, nothing can be changed. You asked me to go visit Aunt. Do you think seeing me would do her any good? No, I don’t think so. What people deserve is peace, and I’m afraid I am not a person who can leave anyone in peace.”

“Then why did you come back to see me? Do I not deserve peace?”

“Would you prefer that I hadn’t come back?” Ruyu said, her voice softened. “Have you already found peace? Have I disturbed it by coming back to look for you?”

Boyang shook his head. Peace, he knew, was the last thing he wanted at the moment.