by Yiyun Li
A quarter of my life gone, full of ignorance and misfortune, I said.
The next quarter is bound to be better, Hetty said.
Her faith in the right words as the remedy to fate’s wrongdoing—had Hetty been Ovid no creature would have to be metamorphosed.
I said a better future to me sounds like truffles to the pigs. They search only out of instinct and what’s their reward? What’s the difference between me and a hog, in any case?
Hetty looked as unperturbed as a glass flower. Have you ever seen a truffle hog? she asked.
No, I said.
Neither have I, she said.
I said one suspected they were like any ordinary pig. Hetty said a school friend posed with a white truffle in a cage for a photograph. Where was that, I asked, and she said at a hotel lobby in Florence. It might not be a real one, I said. But it can’t be a model truffle, she said, can it? I said why not, if there were mannequins and model train sets. She said, Ah, you do have a point, but isn’t it odd to imagine the maker of a model truffle? He can’t have much of a business going for him. Perhaps he has other models to make, I said. Who knows, the world may request more fake things than can be dreamt by you and me.
This is the kind of conversation Hetty and I are destined to have. With neither impatience or resentment between a long-married couple; nor passion, with the right proportion of misgiving and distrust and craze, between lovers. I can’t even say I am bored. One is not going to end a conversation with Hetty in any place dangerous or thrilling. More likely one ends where one starts. From nowhere to nowhere.
My uncles’ finances have improved. The Fergusons have always been lucky. But money will not salvage them from this existence they so stubbornly cling on to, and money certainly will not slow their journey to their demise. It is ungrateful of me to judge them so. But why not. They showed no curiosity about me. Their welcome, tepid, was not half of what Ethel and Bessie showed me. It is a big lie that blood is thicker than water. Blood can be thinned by leave-taking and reunion, betrayal and loyalty.
Hetty has changed, too, less prone to blushing. She left St. Mary’s at the end of the spring but did not go to Switzerland as was always planned for her. Did the FitzGeralds lose the means to send her? But she looks happy enough so perhaps there are other reasons. A suitor? Several? A marriage in the making? I wish Aunt E were here to inform me.
It is odd that Aunt E is no longer part of Elmsey. Odder that I do not seem to miss her keenly. She married the owner of a silver mine in Colorado last year. I learned about the marriage from Hetty when I was in California. For one day it hurt me to think that Aunt E did not send the news to me. I could have attended the wedding.
When Aunt Geraldine joined us, Hetty told her that it was my birthday. Many happy returns, Roland, Aunt G said a little absentmindedly. I broke her heart by leaving. She is the one to have raised me in the most consistent and conscientious manner. She would be happy to see Hetty and me marry, she would be thrilled to see us have a brood of children; and more than that, she would defend me, the penniless Roland, against any raised eyebrows or pursed lips. If that is not maternal love, I do not know what is.
Aunt G has not only found happiness in her own mediocre life but is also able to see happiness in other people’s mediocre lives. Yet how dejected she looks now. Happy people should not be allowed to live past a certain age. Feeling guilty, I asked her about every one of my cousins. From her reply one would think they all live in fairy tales. Imagine her response when someone showed the scantest interest in me.
Aunt G asked what would come next for me. She did not want to know what had come before. Nobody in the house seemed to. Hetty alone has an idea of my migration across the continent, though I did not tell her about my short stint working as a clerk in an insurance company, enough for me to know that New York is not paved with gold. I had written her letters from the road, describing the scenery rather than the woman who shared that scenery with me. I left her the impression that I was travelling with a few men of my own age. I also hinted that such a journey should be kept secret from the family. She will never betray my trust.
I mentioned a possibility in London. Some connection at an advertising agency wrote me, I said, but I’m deciding between that and a post in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong, Roland? Aunt G said. Doing what there? It’s a long way away.
I said all was not decided yet.
I’m sure your uncles can find you a good position in Halifax, she said.
Aunt G does not have a mind for irony, or else I would have laughed aloud at this suggestion. I don’t mind travelling a little and seeing the world, I said.
Of course, there’s a world out there we don’t get to see, Aunt G said wistfully.
There’s a world here that others don’t get to see, either, Hetty said.
I was taken aback. There was a time when Hetty talked about going to the school in Switzerland with some enthusiasm. I can take a Hetty who is not interested in herself, but no curiosity whatsoever in the outside world? For a moment I thought how Sidelle could annihilate Hetty with a simple look. That thought terrifies me. They shall not meet. Of this I am certain, more certain than anything I have felt so far in my life.
Still, Aunt G said, some people pity us.
I wondered if she meant me. Or Aunt E.
Oh, Aunt Geraldine, nobody pities us, Hetty said. You’re only in that mood of yours.
I did not know Aunt G had a mood of hers. This must be something new since last year.
Nobody dares to pity you, Aunt G said to Hetty. She then asked Hetty if she was still planning to visit the Reynars before the holidays. It is unlike Aunt G to exclude anyone present from a conversation. Such an abrupt shift must be her punishment for my disloyalty.
Hetty said she was postponing the trip. I told them Roland is back for a visit, she said.
I said there was no need for her to change her plans.
Oh, but family comes first, Aunt G said, speaking for Hetty.
How good we all are at pretending. Reynar. Must be a new addition to this part of the world. Who among them is courting Hetty?
* * *
GILBERT TOOK ON THE responsibility of being a father to Lucy when he was twenty. I was a mother of two children at twenty. What was Lucy doing at twenty? Bouncing from one young man to another, many of them belonging to the group who burned their draft cards in Berkeley. Gilbert didn’t say anything, but I knew he thought Lucy had got herself tangled up with the wrong crowd. One day she entertained us with the tale of her fist-fighting with an heiress at a party. She said the woman’s name as though we should’ve heard of her. Who, I asked. She told us to take a trip to the Mountain View Cemetery. Find the grandest mausoleum, she said, and that’s where her people are buried.
Gilbert was miserable then. He didn’t feel any better when Lucy and her friends helped Timmy move across the border to Vancouver. Another war, and all those young people who refused to meet their responsibilities. Gilbert didn’t understand that their dreams of love and peace were not that different from his own. Yes, love and peace never grow out of fashion.
But those miseries, what did they matter? Lucy died before the war ended. Born in peacetime and died in a war. That could fit on a tombstone, except it would tell the wrong story.
21 NOVEMBER 1930.
A nice enough day. Hetty and I took a walk down toward the public garden. The first snow came and went, both quickly. Winter is late this year.
I can’t tell what annoys me more—to run into old acquaintances who, having forgotten me (or pretending to have forgotten me?), need an explanation of who I am, or to greet those who claim to know me better than I know myself. Mr. O’Neil and I have never doubted you’d be back, Mrs. O’Neil said to me.
There was a kind of idle contentedness in Hetty, which made me feel disc
ontented. My life is full of unclassified ambitions, and Hetty seems capable of brushing them aside like cobwebs. I felt a desire to rattle her.
You know you don’t have to get stuck here, I said when we sat down at a less windy spot next to the water.
Oh, Hetty said. But I’ve never thought of myself as being stuck.
There’s a world out there, and one has to see it.
Does one have to? Hetty said.
One ought to, I said.
She threw a piece of seaweed to an old gull nearby. We had been watching it for a while. With one claw permanently curled into a ball, the gull favoured the other leg yet would neither fly nor stay still. A limping man trapped in that bird, I thought, so defiant and unrelenting, not letting the world off the hook from witnessing his misery.
Did you enjoy seeing the world? Hetty asked.
Of course, I said.
But it was because you had friends with you, no?
I’ve been to places by myself, I said, which was mostly a lie. Being alone offers the most memorable experience.
I’m alone here, Hetty said, all the time.
I looked at her. She has parents and siblings. She has relatives who praise her beauty and virtue. She has admirers. She has money. She does not know what it means to be alone.
You’re exaggerating, I said. You’re in a mood.
I don’t live a life that allows much of any mood. But it’s a fine life as it is.
One sees Hetty at thirty or forty or seventy with the same depthless serenity. Is that what one should be looking for in a wife?
But, Roland, how can you be so certain that Hetty is still yours? Chances are, you will get a telegram next month that says she is getting married. No, impossible. I can tell where her heart is. A man always knows.
* * *
NO, ROLAND, YOU DON’T. A man like you never knows.
Hetty knew more than she liked, about life, about Roland, about herself even, but she made little fuss. Yes, I make fun of her, but there is one thing she got right: She didn’t mind appearing dumb or blank. Most people live like hamsters in a wheel. There is always something to prove to the world. Hetty played possum. She might’ve secretly laughed at those proud hamsters in the spinning wheels. She had her reason to laugh.
I must be in a mood myself today. Had Hetty been born in our family she would have been like Margot.
Margot at least had children. And she was also lucky that they were all beside her bed, next to their father, when she died.
Once Margot said to me…I can’t remember when this was, but during those years when our children were still little enough for us to think of ourselves as young mothers. She said, Do you find it strange that we can be mothers? I said, What do you mean? She said, Sometimes I wonder if Mother would be disappointed in us. Why, I asked her. Just a feeling, Margot said. She’d be happier if none of us married at all. Really, I said. Oh, I mean none of us girls, she said. Of course she wanted her sons married. Really, I said again.
Sometimes I think I’m just like her, she said. When Doug and Harrison grow up, I hope they have good wives, but I don’t want Lynn or Ellie to be good wives for any man. It’d be fine if they decided not to marry.
I was startled. I wasn’t used to a Margot who thought about anything, so I told her not to talk nonsense. What I meant was: Follow your script.
I take my words back. Hetty was no Margot. Going by Roland’s diaries, she never made a slip and misspoke.
* * *
GOODNESS, HOW FAT THIS book is already becoming. Soon I will run out of pages in this notebook. And ink in this pen. And glue in this stick. Maybe Peter Wilson had a point about Roland’s repetitiveness. I used to think that Wilson cut too much from Roland’s diaries and left out many important things. But I now think Roland himself might be responsible. He just couldn’t tell what was important, and what was not.
Sometimes as I read him, with all his whys about himself, and you want to say to him: Roland, enough of these questions! Why can’t you give us some answers? Or, write more about other people. They’d help make you a more interesting man.
I mean, all of them but Hetty. If you think he becomes a bit boring in the second half of the book, let’s blame Hetty. Even a little French seamstress is more fun to read about than her.
If you want to find out everything, read on slowly. Take a self-guided tour. I’ll meet you around the corner. I’ll get some Post-its and mark what’s interesting to me. You may laugh at me, saying I’m doing the same condensing work Peter Wilson did. But there is a difference. I’ve been reading this book for a long time. Not every day Roland recorded was worth recording. Not everyone deserved his attention. My job is to find the pages you will enjoy. I don’t want you to stop reading halfway.
I’ll skip over Roland’s words like a stone skimmed on the surface of a lake. That I can do.
1 JANUARY 1931.
Dunlop stopped by in the evening and asked what I thought of Mussolini’s New Year address. I deliberately chose not to tune in for it. I was working intensely on Part II of my novel. Making a fresh start on New Year’s Day, that’s more meaningful than contemplating humankind’s common fate.
Dunlop found it unbelievable that I didn’t listen to it.
Does he speak good English? I asked.
All politicians speak all tongues well. But how can you be so impassive? We live in a historic time and we should live every moment fully.
I said people living through the Great War must’ve felt that, too. And those during the 1812 war. And those sailing with Magellan. History is a cake, I said. Anyone can help himself to a piece.
You’re too young to be a cynic, Dunlop said.
You’re too old to be a sentimentalist, I said.
I like Dunlop a great deal. He is in a similar situation, momentarily stuck with this thankless job of writing advertisements for things we cannot afford. He has set his heart on a diplomatic career. He believes that the global future lies in the hands of diplomats, and that this is the moment to enter that game.
He asked me about the news from Hong Kong. No news, I said, and he said if he were me he would take the next ship out there, news or not. The war will break out in no time, he said. The last thing you want is to get trapped here.
I looked around. A year ago I would have given anything to be where I am now. A room. A job. In New York. If this city is a trap it is a trap bigger than life.
Or enlist, he said.
In America?
Why not? But you’re luckier, you can do that in Canada, no? How I wish we could switch places. War doesn’t happen every day. We can’t let this train pass us by.
Dunlop is three years older than I am, but I can safely say I am thirty years wiser. For one thing, he is desperately in love with Millie, the little typist. Dunlop will never be able to imagine a woman like Sidelle. Sometimes I feel that I am like a millionaire who cannot really reveal my wealth to anyone.
Later.
Letter from Sidelle. She said I should make up my mind about coming to London. Why, because she is there?
* * *
ONLY A NOTE TO SAY this is the first time he didn’t obey her.
10 MARCH 1931.
Hong Kong. Arrived yesterday afternoon. Alan Prismall is working at the Maritime Customs Service, and has promised to help secure a position for me, either here or in Shanghai.
Far East. Am I then a member of the “Far West” to the natives here? Far we are from one another, far from being equally human. From the dock to the Peninsula, the man who pulled the pedicab sweated profusely. Had he been a horse I would have halted the carriage and led him to a water trough. But everyone else seems to be at ease, those being transported and those transporting others on their backs. I tried out my minimal Cantonese on the pedicab driver and the bellhop, but bo
th shook their heads disapprovingly and replied in pidgin English.
* * *
THIS REMINDS ME: I should have a chat with Cecilia. She moved in last month, and she keeps too much to herself to be healthy. She and her husband were from Hong Kong. They immigrated to America after they married, and he had a dental practice in San Francisco. One morning, as he was walking to the clinic, someone shot him dead from behind. Cecilia has never said anything about it. Elaine told us—she had followed the murder and the trial in the Chronicle back in the day, and she confirmed the story with Cecilia’s children. She probably promised the children that she and her friends would take extra care of their mother. I pity anyone who trusts Elaine.
I should talk with Cecilia. Not about her husband’s death, but about Hong Kong. Maybe she’ll feel less sad if I ask her about the hotel Roland stayed in there.
25 MARCH 1931.
On this island: Englishmen and their wives have their clubs and tea parties and picnics and dances, a society of their own; Scots and Welshmen and Irishmen enjoy a precarious brotherhood; and then there are the rest of us, an assortment of adventurers—New Zealanders, Aussies, Canadians, and of course Americans, who stand out just as much as the English. All of us float on top of a muddy current of native faces that look indistinguishable from one another. Perhaps Sidelle was right to say that I would find Hong Kong disappointing. Exoticism is like virginity. A more perverse mind may be able to make something out of it.
If you are as rootless as you say, Sidelle wrote in her last letter, why not transplant yourself to where you belong?
On the way to work, to fulfil my tedious task of representing Western civilisation, I stopped at a kiosk to read the headline of the Tribune. BHAGAT SINGH, RAJGURU AND SUKHDEV EXECUTED. Executed. I felt that the situation called for my action. Buying a copy of the paper, at the least. But like a schoolboy refusing to deliver to a master the answer demanded, I stuck my hands in my pockets and walked away. In our time, news grows stale as fast as the vegetable leaves left behind by the roadside peddlers.