Must I Go

by Yiyun Li

  Early morning. A ten-hour train ride with Mrs. Ogden coming. It will be the first time I share a journey this long with a woman. Not, of course, counting the family trips, bubbling with excitement that went flat too quickly. This will be different—intimacy that is not yet intimacy. A good wine that gives one’s heart palpitations has to have the right degree of unfamiliarity.

  Last night, even though it was late, I visited the couple next door, Mr. and Mrs. Cotter. Cousin Cliona had said that in time of emergency I should seek help from the Cotters. My absence over the next few days and the parrot’s welfare—this situation I counted as an emergency. The couple were obliging. Mrs. Cotter said that she would send their niece Eileen over twice a day to look after Kotku. I didn’t know they had a niece in the house. I had only met their two young sons. Eileen is the one to trust, Mr. Cotter said, sending one of the boys to fetch the girl. Eileen, it turned out, is a more recent arrival in this city than I am. Her face would be beautiful if not for her stern eyebrows and harshly pressed lips. Perhaps they will be softened by this new world, though they could equally well be further hardened.

  Afterward I thought about Eileen’s future, feeling an authorial fondness toward the girl, whose fate in this unfriendly life remains unknown. What a grand feeling it gives one to think of all those tragedies awaiting a young soul. On the eve of a journey one often harbours tenderness toward those left behind, even if in this case it’s only a stranger one has just met.

  Night. William Penn Hotel.

  Could this day be a new chapter in my life? But this cliché makes me laugh. No, Roland, you haven’t lived enough to write even a page of prologue. A line or two of epigraph is all you have. And even that you have lifted out of Horace or Shakespeare.

  But there will be more chapters after this. Perhaps it is finally the time for me to be serious about that masterpiece I am to write.

  We left on the 8.05 train, in a compartment reserved for two. For a while Mrs. Ogden, citing a headache, lounged on the sofa, which was not long enough, so she placed her feet up on the armrest. A fine model of a reclining woman, though I could not shake the feeling that there was a better artist who could capture her entire existence with eyes more critical, less enamoured.

  I sat by the window, pretending to read. The countryside in its deepest summer green soon brought a fatigue to my eyes and my mind. A young man in his prime, travelling across a wealthy and vivacious land, in comfort and luxury, at someone else’s expense—seen through the eyes of Eileen or Amelia or even Yvette I am a lucky man. But luck is the kind of possession that only accentuates what is lacking.

  After we passed Philadelphia Mrs. Ogden joined me by the window. What are you reading? she asked.

  I showed her the book, a novel by Ronald Firbank.

  Oh, him, Mrs. Ogden said.

  Did you know him? I asked.

  Only a little, by being around. I wouldn’t get too excited about him if I were you.

  My cheeks felt warm. My taste is no less provincial than I am, I said.

  Don’t be absurd, Mrs. Ogden said. However, one Firbank would be enough use for the world.

  What if, I thought, the world does not have any use for a single Roland Bouley?

  I found him tiresome, though Charles called him a genius.

  A dead husband is like a trap, and I am the kind of creature who jumps right into it. Did he…was he…? How did he die?

  Exactly? I don’t know. I never want to know. War is a terrible, terrible thing, but that doesn’t say much. Charles could’ve stayed out of the war like Firbank. But see, they are both dead now.

  But you did love him, didn’t you?

  Why else did I marry him?

  I wondered how a woman could refrain from wanting to know the exact details of a husband’s death. But then I have never attempted to imagine my parents’ death. Their living years, though, I often contemplate.

  Death is a commonplace thing, Mrs. Ogden said. It happens to everyone. Yet most people don’t understand that. We make it sound as though it were most extraordinary. The same with birth.

  What’s extraordinary, then? I asked. Nothing, I both expected and feared that she would reply.

  I was reading Madame de Sévigné’s letters last night, Mrs. Ogden said. She complained to her daughter about her son’s love affair with an actress.

  How very French, I said.

  And when the actress was finally ready to receive the son, he could not consummate the intimacy, and Madame de Sévigné had quite a laugh out of the episode. If you were the man, it would be a most humiliating letter from your mother to your sister, don’t you think? Except it was he who rushed to his mother’s bedchamber and reported his mortification, right after his failure with the actress, all the time knowing too well that she would share this with his sister.

  For a moment I had a bitter taste in my mouth. I remembered my talking about Amelia and Yvette with Mrs. Ogden. Perhaps I, too, gave her an opportunity for a laugh with someone.

  Mrs. Ogden did not seem to notice my unease. One wonders what was going on between that mother and her two children, she said. That I would call extraordinary.

  She sounds dreadful, I said.

  We shouldn’t denounce her. Had Hugh lived to be a grown man, who could guarantee I would not have been an equally appalling mother?

  I could barely endure Mrs. Ogden’s husbands, alive or dead. Her mention of a buried child brought a chill to this late summer day. We both have untimely deaths written into our histories, but between us there remains an abyss. To me the experience is no more than knowledge. I wish we could make a pact: I would never talk about my parents again, she her child.

  * * *

  WHEN SIDELLE SAID SHE didn’t care about birth or death, it was because she couldn’t do anything about them. So what, people say that all the time, I don’t care. One of the biggest lies ever invented.

  When I think about my life now, often I think about those births and deaths: the births of my children, and grandchildren, and you, Iola. You must feel a little special because I may not meet another great-grandchild—young people nowadays like to stay spring chickens and they put off laying eggs for as long as they can.

  Each birth is like a message in a bottle. You want them to go far, and never return to you.

  And those deaths in my life—they all started as messages sent by others—yes, I’m glad that they’ve reached me. All of them but Lucy’s.

  A couple just walked past my door, drunken with good wine or the prospect of imminent bliss. I am too young to have to listen to someone else’s happiness in a lonely hotel room. Mrs. Ogden makes it sound as though nothing matters enough to perturb her. I can put up that façade, too. A performer sees through another performer.

  It would not be a tedious task to uncover what matters to her, what perturbs her. Perhaps I would even be a part of it.

  I shall rest for the night with this thought comforting me like a glass of warm milk.

  * * *

  ROLAND, WE DO AGREE sometimes.

  4 SEPTEMBER 1929.

  Mrs. Ogden and I had a touristy day in the least touristy parts of Pittsburgh today. The city is grimier and more oppressive than New York City. One almost has to admire the smoke bellowing out the chimneys. If this is the foundation of America, no wonder Mother’s family set their hearts against it. No one wants to be engulfed by something so impersonal, but Americans seem to do better than people elsewhere at being engulfed.

  Right after breakfast we were taken to visit the Heinz factory. Why Heinz, I asked Mrs. Ogden in the car. You’re not by any chance writing an epic poem about pickles? I was being flippant, but I couldn’t help it. I often sound flippant when I feel miserable. What if I become one of those people laughing out loud at a funeral, or worse, on my own deathbed?

  * * * />
  KATHERINE: DO YOU RECOGNIZE YOURSELF in Roland, a little maybe? I don’t mind if you laugh out loud at my funeral or my deathbed, but don’t feel you’re obliged to laugh when you feel miserable.

  * * *

  The stifling heat so early in the day, the haggard workers passing our car, just off the night shift most probably, white and colored, all looking grey against the blinding sun—all these make me miserable. I have always wanted to see the world. But is it necessary? If I were a bee, couldn’t I just stay contented among the flowers I knew best? Nova Scotia is the meadow I left behind. For what, though—these steel-and-concrete Venus flytraps?

  Mrs. Ogden ignored my ill disposition. As ever she steered the conversation toward strangers, when I wanted to be the subject. A friend of hers had been commissioned to do some artwork for the Heinzes, she said. He’d be glad to hear that she finally visited.

  At the factory, a Mr. Smith led the tour. I must admit that it was entertaining to see the metal sheet coming down the conveying belt, cut and folded into a tin with lid and bottom all ready to go. Four minutes and fifteen seconds, Mr. Smith timed it. It’s all about consistency, he said, everybody in his place, everything happening by the book. I watched him twisting his whiskers and could not help but feel disgust. Predictability and profit are the poisons of this century. I don’t even need to be a socialist to denounce Mr. Smith.

  Mrs. Ogden met with a few workers afterward, both men and women. She questioned them about their living and working conditions and took notes with a seriousness that baffled me. How does one connect this woman to the one lounging on the train? And what am I doing here, reading the ubiquitous Heinz 57 slogans when I should have been on an ocean liner, heading to Oxford.

  I wandered off into an adjacent hall and studied the marble sculptures portraying workers at the factory. Are these the Herculeses of our time? The thought that a factory would have an artist commit such a banal thing as making pickles to eternity made me laugh loud.

  [Yet what is immortal? Few people remember Sidelle today, fewer know her poetry. Who will remember me after my death? Heinz, however, is immortal. As individuals, and as a human race, we are destined to be outlived by machines and pickles.—RB, 28 April 1989]

  * * *

  WELL, HERE I AM, remembering you. Who remembers the pickles at last night’s dinner? Who remembers any pickle from any meal?

  5 SEPTEMBER 1929.

  We visited the U.S. Steel plant today. A negation rather than a celebration of human intelligence. The two men operating the gate to let the melted metal pour in—how I resented them, sweaty in their half-nakedness, their eyes no longer dazed by the phenomena that took our breaths away. Actors of the first-rate, holding ultimate contempt for us.

  They were Czech, they later told us in broken English. Once removed from the noise and heat, they seemed less crazed, less devilish. Still, I resented them. There is no place for poetry or philosophy in their lives, but their bodies speak with such natural eloquence.

  Yet one never wants to admit defeat. Is it for that reason that Mrs. Ogden—no, Sidelle—and I became lovers? Perhaps she is simply another flytrap. Should I have resisted? But she overwhelmed me more than the steel mills. I had no will to counter her will. A banal inevitability, surrender is.

  Anything can happen on the road. Sidelle is my fellow traveller. Who is at home? Hetty. Oh, the thought of her makes me long for my lost youth.

  Except not really.

  * * *

  PITTSBURGH: YOU WOULDN’T THINK of it as a romantic city. But romance happens everywhere. Had I known that they became lovers in Pittsburgh, I could have shown our Pittsburg to Roland. We could have lunched at the court of Los Medanos, sitting under the palm trees and clinking our wineglasses like two movie stars. I had the look. He had the air. We had the story between us.

  Los Medanos—I wonder if it still stands there. Nice old place. My father once shared a business plan with the Williamsons, our neighbors, an inn and a ranch combined to attract tourists. It wasn’t much of a success, but I did meet people during that time. Well, I say people, but what I really mean was I met Roland then. Yes, he came and stayed on our ranch for two days. And yes, I was only sixteen then, but for some people age doesn’t matter. Look at Sidelle, old enough to be Roland’s mother. But I’ve never judged her, so don’t you judge me.

  Before my father and Mr. Williamson started the business, they visited a few hotels and brought back free postcards. Of all the hotels they went to, I liked the look of Los Medanos the best. It’s in Pittsburg, my father said. The town used to be called the New York of the Pacific. Is it as glamorous as New York, we asked, and he said of course not. Otherwise the name would have stuck.

  They changed the name to Pittsburg because of the steel mills in town. They thought if the town could not be as fancy as New York it could at least be as rich as Pittsburgh. Like a woman from a family of status that lost its wealth getting married to a lesser man for money.

  My Lithuanian great-grandfather worked in a Chicago shipyard, but he could’ve worked in a pickle factory or a steel mill in Pittsburgh. The workers Sidelle and Roland met, had they been born earlier they might have joined the forty-niners. These things didn’t matter to Roland. But when I read his diaries I like to think about people from all the way back. Some of them made California. Some made us. If I think about life that way I don’t find it disappointing. We’ve all done our share, and none of us is special.

  Roland didn’t understand this. I don’t blame him. He lived in the days when he wrote these diaries. He had nothing to rely on. Sidelle and I, we have our experience.

  7 SEPTEMBER 1929.

  Sidelle asked me tonight if I would like to travel with her in the coming months. Mr. Ogden, she said, will need to stay put. Stay put where, I wondered, but she did not say. Is she paying for my trip, or is he? What am I, a secretary, a valet, a spare while the damaged tyre awaits repairing?

  [Sidelle and I travelled for the next seven months in midwestern America and southwestern America. From there we crossed the border and travelled in Mexico before returning to California. Sidelle interviewed industry workers and farmers for Harry Ogden, who was recovering from tuberculosis at a sanatorium in France.

  Harry never published the study with the information we had gathered. The documents we compiled are archived in three libraries: University of Pittsburgh, University of New Mexico, and California State University at Fresno. An interested reader could seek them out, though I wouldn’t recommend it. The papers only offer a timeline and our geographical movements along the timeline. The real stories—only I know them now.

  We returned to New York in April 1930, and Sidelle sailed for England in August 1930.

  The gap seen here is not my intention. Before Sidelle left for England, she asked that my diaries of our journey west and our sojourn in New York be destroyed. It did not occur to me to disobey her wishes then.

  My memories of those months have not faded. But I don’t feel that I can re-create the entries. Hindsight doesn’t always bring advantage. What would I not give to reread those pages?—RB, 6 May 1989]

  * * *

  WHY? BECAUSE HE WROTE too much about their romantic journey? I wonder if Sidelle personally supervised the burning of his diaries. I can see them sitting together, drinking, listening to some music, and burning the pages one by one in a fireplace. How did she persuade him to do it? What did he get in return? These things we will never know.

  Poor Roland. He was not the kind of person who would easily part with any possession. My mother was like that, too. You should have seen the years of accumulation of postcards and letters she had saved. Some people live by what they accumulate. But they forget that what’s accumulated can be destroyed in a moment by a flood or an earthquake or a fire. (My mother’s accumulation was burned by my father.)

  My rule of thumb: Whatever can be de
stroyed is not worth holding on to.

  (And yes, anything can be destroyed, if you feel ready to hear this truth.)

  I used to resent the fact that I couldn’t read about that year in his life. But now I think, so what? A missing year is nothing. Everyone’s life is like Swiss cheese.

  (This has nothing to do with anything, but Clark, the new guy who for a week or so seemed interesting to me, insisted today on giving me a lecture on Swiss cheese. He said the Swiss cheese that doesn’t have holes is called blind because those holes are called eyes. But blind people still have eyes, I said. Let’s not be too literal, he said. There are a lot of good metaphors to live by. So I asked, What is metaphor? And he said, The thing that makes the world go around. I said, I thought money makes the world go around. He said, If you think about it, Lilia, money is one of the best metaphors we human beings have ever invented. I was afraid he would never stop so I said, That’s good to know. And I left before he said anything more.)

  19 NOVEMBER 1930.

  I turned twenty today.

  Happy birthday, Hetty said in the morning when I joined her at breakfast.

  I didn’t return to celebrate my birthday, though I was not surprised that Hetty remembered it. It’s my third day back at Elmsey, half as houseguest, half as the hanger-on I once was. Why am I here, in any case? Nostalgia, perhaps, or one last effort to parse something that has never been—and perhaps never will be—understood. This house did not greet my birth and nor will it see my death. Whose child am I? Does not one need to figure out that question before one stops being anyone’s child?