Must I Go

by Yiyun Li

  But your parents, are they not worried?

  Her sunny face turned less bright. I was almost certain that she would say she was an orphan. And I was ready to offer my own story so that she would feel closer to me immediately.

  They’re fine with the idea, she said. They’re patriotic parents.

  Are you the only one here?

  My brother, too, she said. He’s a pilot.

  I asked to see her tomorrow. She is staying in London for a few days.

  It is like a change in the weather. One always feels heartened when that happens.

  * * *

  HERE’S A THOUGHT. ROLAND never had a woman whose name starts with Z. From A to Z could never be his boast. Zoe, Zelda, Zsa Zsa, you name it, he missed them all.

  This morning, at my eye checkup, Dr. Atler told me my vision was as beautiful as a 1958 Impala. I could see he was having a slow day. I told him that if he thought he could flirt with me, then he was wrong. Do the math, Doctor, I said to him. In 1958 I already had four children. He blushed! He said I was just like his mother. It’s her job to embarrass you, I said, not mine.

  No man should be dumb enough to talk about a woman with another woman. (I wonder if that was how Dr. Atler earned his divorce, praising a woman patient’s vision to his wife.) But to go on talking about his mother with another mother…As though I cared!

  May the poor woman rest in peace. What would she think if she knew her son talks about her all the time to his patients? I’m sure I’m not the only one who gets to hear about her in that dark office, reading the chart and trying to guess which option is better, one or two.

  I won’t bore you with too many of her stories, but today Dr. Atler got misty-eyed when he said she gave him a surprise gift when he turned fifty. He’d played clarinet throughout school, he said. His teacher thought he could go on as a professional musician, but his parents thought there was no money in music. He followed their advice, built a good practice, and on his fiftieth birthday his mother gave him a lamp made from his old clarinet.

  He even showed me the picture on his phone. It’s a nice-looking lamp, I said. Suits you well because you’re not making music on it but making your patients see the light.

  He thanked me as though I meant it as a compliment.

  I feel bad for the clarinet. If there is a cemetery for old musical instruments the clarinet might prefer to go there. Who knows? The instruments might rise from their graves in the middle of the night and conduct themselves in a ghost symphony. All but this one.

  Maybe after I’m gone, none of my children will become misty-eyed about any present I’ve given them. On the other hand, I’ve never taken something away from them and made it into a mummy for them.

  2 SEPTEMBER 1943.

  Another date with D before she returns to her post at Thayer House. One has to acknowledge that, not having liberated anyone in this war yet, we at least have liberated ourselves.

  * * *

  THIS IS THE LAST woman I will mark for you. There are plenty more to come. I know them all by heart now, and reading about them again tires me out. It’s amazing that Roland never seemed to get tired. Men are amazing. In the most predictable ways.

  I decided not to attend the murder trial of the Russian mail-order bride/spy. Nancy told me that they put the boy on the witness stand. He curled up on the floor, to show what his mother looked like when he found her. You would think every adult in that courthouse should have enough sense not to make a child act that out. And they should have enough decency to close their eyes when he did.

  People are born gawkers. You don’t even want to hear about the days after Lucy’s death.

  Poor Lucy. Since she was a teenager she hated it when I came near her. Lucy, so headstrong, so good at pushing everyone away, but in the end she knew we would have to take care of what she left behind.

  Last night I thought of the boy on the witness stand. If I were his mother I would rise from the grave and weep for him as I did not for Lucy.

  10 OCTOBER 1943.

  I went to Oakridge House for a weekend with Malcolm. He has not changed much since we last saw each other, when he sailed for Oxford. I suspect that I have not been keeping in touch out of jealousy.

  But that is all water under the bridge now. One must credit the war, which can transform anything into water under the bridge. What remains is this precious life. By which I mean, my previous life.

  We arrived in the evening. His uncle and aunt have no children. No doubt Malcolm is their heir. They certainly treat him as such.

  After dinner, over a glass of port, Uncle Edmund began to sing “Rule Britannia!” Afterward Uncle Edmund said that during the war—it took me a moment to realise he was talking about the Boer War—people used to go to Buckingham Palace after dinner parties and sing patriotic songs outside. To cheer up Her Majesty, he said. One night, he said, it was foggy and cold, and some of us started a bonfire. And then one of the rooms lit up, and we all turned quiet. The French door to the balcony opened and out walked two guards, and in between a small black-clad figure.

  Uncle Edmund’s nostalgia was so poetic that I joined him afterward, singing “God Save the Queen.” I expected Malcolm to mock us but he looked as though his mind was elsewhere.

  Not many Englishmen, Malcolm said later, understand what the USSR is doing for us. We discuss postwar Europe and policy making as though we are winning this war by ourselves. But how many of us ask, what is the true meaning of this war? Perhaps in a hundred years people will say we lived at this turning point where the Nazis gave an opportunity for the rise of communism.

  I would not be surprised if after this war some of us will be ready to pick up the hammer and sickle, Malcolm said. It’s time for this island or even the whole world to turn red.

  * * *

  I WON’T PRETEND I know history well. But I do know it’s only by the throw of the dice that Gilbert was not a communist. Young men dream in all colors. Gilbert’s dream was in olive green and dove white, but he could’ve dreamed in red, and he would still be the same dear old Gilbert.

  My little brother Kenny also dreamed in green, but money green, and when that dream led him astray he landed behind bars. I don’t know what colors his dreams were then, or after he came out of prison. We lost touch with him, but if he had died as a child, we would’ve always remembered him.

  What colors were Roland’s dreams? Maybe he himself wouldn’t know. What are the colors of fame and success and immortality? Rainbow sprinkles?

  Not long after Lucy died, Gilbert told me that the world felt too bright to him.

  What do you mean? I asked. People often say the opposite, I thought. After someone dies the world loses some light. You see that in movies. Things turning gray.

  He said the colors looked different. Red too red, green too green, blue too blue, white too white. Maybe you should have your eyes checked, I said. All those tears for Lucy must have done something funny to your eyes. Then Gilbert looked at me strangely and said, You really don’t want to understand, Lilia. What don’t I want to understand, I asked, but the truth was that I knew exactly what he meant.

  Lucy died in May, at the end of the rainy season. Rain and fog would have suited us better that year. But in May it was sunshine again, with golden poppies popping out everywhere.

  All my life, from then on, when I see golden poppies I think of Lucy.

  Gilbert might have thought I wasn’t mourning Lucy as a mother should. I wouldn’t defend myself, not because I couldn’t, but because no tears, no defense, nothing would bring her back.

  Gilbert was so hard-hit by Lucy’s death that I often think he lost twenty years due to a broken heart. You would think that it should’ve happened to me. You could say that Gilbert took a bullet for me. He was willing to do it from the very beginning. He even told me that when he was courting
me, though he meant it differently then. Who knew that the bullet wouldn’t come from a war, but from the daughter we raised together?

  I’m all over the place today. I was trying to remember something else. But what is it?

  14 OCTOBER 1943.

  Lunch with Malcolm. If not for his sarcasm I would think his interest in the USSR bodes ominously for his new political fervour.

  He said that the Russian Orthodox Church has been praying for the victory of the Soviet Union over Hitler, and the Archbishop of Canterbury looked for (or found?) Christian seeds in communism. And mark this, he said, we’re obsessed with talking about peace and postwar order as though we believe the Soviet Union will dutifully and virtuously leave Europe to us and go on tilling their socialist land.

  The last comment makes me think perhaps Malcolm is not so pro-Soviet as I feared.

  [In retrospect, I would like to point out that Malcolm Hobbs changed the course of my life without suffering any substantial consequence. What can I say? He was an amateur dallying in politics because he could afford to do it. I, without a definite future at the time, seized any opportunity to advance my position.—RB, 6 June 1990]

  * * *

  NOW I REMEMBER WHAT I forgot to say. What did Molly mean when she said that Gilbert had talked with the children about Lucy? Do they all think I killed Lucy? Do they think I’ve gone on with my life without suffering any consequences?

  31 DECEMBER 1943.

  What a year we have had, though this can be said of every year.

  Spent the day with Sidelle, who was sentimental tonight. Illness or a glass of wine too many? Out of the blue—or after a glass too many—I asked her, Do you have other lovers?

  Funny you would think so, she said.

  Funny it’s taken me so long to ask, I said.

  You should know that by nature I am a lazy woman.

  That might be the most insulting answer one could get from a woman. I tried to keep my voice even. We’ve known each other for some time, I said. What did you see in me in the first place—inexperience, youth, snobbishness, greed for your status and attention? What has made us carry on—habit, familiarity, obsession, or what?

  Can’t it be out of a little love? she said.

  A little love, I said. You make us sound like an old couple, with nothing but a little love left.

  Not many men can boast of a little love from me.

  Some must have, I said. What did they do then? Fall on their knees and ask for your hand?

  Roland, I’ve married twice, once for love and once for security. I’ve had enough.

  So what you’re really saying is, wouldn’t it be nice to string me along because I’m a safe choice? No money, no status, no future, so you don’t have to worry about being ensnared by me.

  Why can’t a woman want a man because she feels happy when she’s with him, Sidelle said, clinking her glass on the edge of mine.

  I have nothing to say about that, I said, though rather weakly.

  Oh, Roland, we’re a little happy together, aren’t we?

  I realised that Sidelle, who never gets drunk, must have got herself drunk because it suited her mood tonight. Sure, I said.

  To the world we may look like two misers begrudging each other something better, Sidelle said. But we are our best selves when we don’t give too much away. In that sense we are a perfect match. You have to trust me in this, as I’m so rarely wrong.

  Is that so?

  Why else, she said, do I not feel threatened at all by your army of lovers?

  * * *

  DID THEY STILL MAKE LOVE at this point in their affair? I hardly think so. What a pity for Sidelle.

  1 JANUARY 1944.

  Another year. The same war. Human casualties mounting like numbers on the scoreboard of a school game.

  I’ve become involved in the International Labour Conference. I enjoy it more than writing propaganda. All the players, major or minor, treat the game as seriously as schoolboys on the rugby field. And the less experienced the player, the more fearless and desperate he is.

  Yesterday Malcolm said that the Allies dreamed of Germany beating the Soviet Union and then simultaneously evaporating in its success. He gave me a copy of The Art of War, a perfect gift for my current pursuit. The translator, it turned out, was at Oxford with Malcolm’s father.

  I reread last year’s diary. What a good liar I have become. Or what a lousy liar. Wouldn’t anyone, reading these entries so packed with self-delusions, see through me?

  Do other people lie in their diaries? They must.

  * * *

  ROLAND, DID YOU REALLY believe that people would one day read your diaries?

  Sure, here I am, reading his diaries. But I’m only doing this by chance. Life has taken turns and led me here. I’m not surprised. But I wouldn’t be surprised if life had taken different turns. Then I would’ve forgotten him. Or would’ve never known him in the first place.

  But imagine him with his years of diaries. He would have to pack those notebooks every time he moved, and the suitcase would be getting heavier each year. He was almost homeless before his marriage to Hetty, and a homeless man unable to part with his words deserved some respect. What I don’t quite understand is why he left Peter Wilson to finish the work for him. Toward the end of the book he said he arranged with a friend’s press for the printing of his diaries. Why not do it then, so he could see the final product, three volumes instead of being reduced to one volume?

  But it would’ve been hard for him not to go to the bookstores now and then and ask if anyone had bought a copy of his diaries. Maybe it’s easier to imagine all those people getting to know him after his death.

  4 MAY 1944.

  Infidelity of any kind breeds a higher standard of loyalty. These days I find my new life more exhilarating. It used to be that I would imagine that everything I did was for the writing of those great novels that would bear my name. Now I convince myself that I am working for the future of America, of Europe, and of mankind. For the postwar order. It sounds terrific and glorifying.

  Today Sidelle commented that I looked more purposeful. The thought of world peace must be doing you good, she said.

  Something has to come along and disrupt the order of the old world, I said. Or else this war would be fought for nothing, and people would have died for nothing.

  You sound like a socialist.

  I thought about Malcolm. Interesting and alarming, how he can still influence my thinking.

  And there’s nothing wrong with your thinking that way for a day or two, Sidelle said. But trust me, you’d be equally bored if you joined that circle.

  Which circle?

  People who take great pleasure from dismantling the old order.

  You think so?

  Why else do you think I left poetry and painting?

  You also painted? I asked. I never knew.

  With even less talent than I wrote poetry.

  Perhaps you’re too modest.

  Sometimes I think that I could write an old-fashioned novel in verse, about everyone I know, which nobody would care to read so nobody would know they are part of the novel.

  Why not? I said. You could be the Pushkina of our time. Or an operetta?

  With these modernist poets flipping and flapping across the stage? Just imagine Lizzie’s horror, Sidelle said.

  Lizzie?

  I forgot. Your Madame Z.

  * * *

  I HAVE NEVER BOTHERED to ask Mrs. Anderson, the librarian, about Madame Z. Maybe she was a well-known writer, maybe she was little more than a nobody. What are the mathematics that determine how fast a person is forgotten? If I raised that question at breakfast, there would be quite a few men competing to give me answers. With long formulas and complicated graphics.

  Sid
elle only occupies a page in another poet’s biography. How many people remembered her after she died? I wouldn’t expect anything different after I myself die. We—I mean Sidelle and I—haven’t lived to be remembered. We haven’t even cared to change anyone’s life. If people are influenced by us, for good or for bad, they themselves have to answer for that.

  9 MAY 1944.

  At lunch Malcolm said his doorman had been pestering him for his not-too-old suit.

  Imagine if the Soviet Union won this war singlehandedly, I said. All the porters and doormen and waiters in London would demand what they would think of as theirs.

  All the more reason we need to make sure such things don’t happen in England. We need a progressive and fair system, not one to fight against Bolshevism. That fight would only cultivate Bolshevism.

  I have a feeling I might have misread Malcolm. The Slavs are our hope, he said today, and then loaned me the Yugoslavia book by Rebecca West.

  Later.

  America, I imagine, I said when Sidelle asked me where I see myself after the war. Canada was my boyhood, I said. America will be my adulthood.

  And England?

  My romance, I said.

  What a poetic trinity, Sidelle said.

  This conversation took place after I spent an evening with her. Malcolm always makes me feel the urge to act, to take up a cause, to find higher meanings. Sidelle reminds me of the pleasure of making no commitment.

  Still later.

  A letter from Hetty, a timely reprimand. When was the last time I thought about her? When was the last time she appeared in these pages? Oh, Hetty. Really one of the most important people in my life, who slips from my mind so easily that no one would believe me if I say I do miss her.