by Yiyun Li
* * *
TRUST ME, THE MOST important people in anyone’s life are like air.
You can pick up a magazine and read those articles about marriage problems, problems between parents and children, between friends, and soon you realize that the one common complaint is that people feel they’re being treated as empty air. Really, I always want to say, is that all the confidence you have in yourself? Your husband, your child, your best friend—if you truly are so important you should be exactly like air to them. If you want to be sure, take yourself away for a moment and see how they gasp for you.
I make fun of Hetty, but here’s one thing she got right. She was perfectly fine with being just air to Roland. You may want to say the same thing about Gilbert, but we raised six children together. Children are a funny business. Each child is like a new season until you get used to it, and then another one comes along. Plenty of headaches along the way, but at the beginning of every season you think something new is happening, something different.
Gilbert and I were well seasoned together. Like a pair of salted fish with plenty of spices thrown in. Norman and Milt—they came to me already pickled.
I do have one question: What were Roland and Sidelle to each other? Certainly she was not just empty air to him. What about him to her? Ninety-nine out of a hundred people would think of him as a worthless man. But she alone knew his worth to her.
22 MAY 1944.
We are back to the early days, eating and sleeping for the war, drinking and revelling despite the war, making haphazard love because of the war. It’s one of the few times that I wish I had enlisted. Sidelle points out that I would be the kind of soldier who gets shot before everyone else, who hangs on to my dear life when any other person would simply die. And then there would be those who have to sacrifice their lives for me, and in the end I would be the only one convalescing in a country house, waiting for my medal.
I said that her words would be taken by most men as an insult.
You don’t think living an entirely selfish life requires some courage? Sidelle said.
Unless egotism is one’s nature, I said.
You work so hard to make egotism your nature, Sidelle said. Trust me, egotistic people don’t walk around with their egotism pinned to their hats. It’s their virtues they want to display.
You often claim insights about me unknown to myself, I said.
Some have entertained angels unawares, Sidelle replied. Besides, you’re made by me.
Having never heard this from her yet having always suspected it to be the case, I shivered.
No, you don’t have to feel resentful, she said. We don’t bore each other, and we have made this life together because neither of us wants to be bored. We can’t undo this.
Why can’t we?
You can’t reproduce this with another woman, she said. I have no interest in reproducing this with another man.
Is that why people stay in a marriage? That getting unstuck takes too much time and effort? I said.
Oh, Roland, she said, what we have is better than any marriage.
* * *
WHAT KIND OF LIFE did Sidelle lead after Roland married Hetty? You can read on, but I bet you a hundred dollars that you won’t find out, either. Because Roland himself didn’t know. He claimed that she never took another lover. That I’m willing to believe. She had her loyalty, which was nobody’s business.
Sidelle and I are made of the same material. It’s a shame we never met. We wouldn’t have been strangers. We would’ve understood each other. Men don’t understand that all stories are, in the end, women’s stories. That’s why they start wars and make peace, so they can claim something for themselves.
The tale of Roland and Sidelle would make a good movie. A movie can skip a lot and go straight to the end. Shall I mark the page when Sidelle was on her deathbed? And Hetty on hers? It’s not a spoiler that they both died, but it would be if I were to tell you what I think of their deaths.
We’re getting closer to the UN conference. I don’t have to reread those pages. I met Roland. I met Gilbert. Gilbert and I married.
You can read and find a few lines about me in Roland’s diaries. But I won’t mark them for you. They’re less important now, just as all those men’s ambitions at the peace conference. Look at the wars coming after 1945. That peace conference achieved little, but changed some people’s lives.
“One can very well do without a fate,” there is a line like that somewhere in this book. Good wishful thinking. That is like saying one can very well do without a life.
* * *
[February 5, 1946, the Queen Mary sailed from Southampton to New York Harbour, carrying more than seventeen hundred British war brides and six hundred children to reunite with their GI husbands and fathers. A few men and I took the same transatlantic journey.—RB 2 April 1990]
* * *
I’M MARKING THIS PART for you.
Lucy was born while Roland was crossing the Atlantic. Put together a few shots of him on the ship and a few shots of baby Lucy and her new parents and add a soundtrack, it could be a movie clip. But movies are always bringing separate lives together. Real life does the opposite. Real life is all about growing apart.
Lucy was born before Roland’s marriage. I didn’t know it back then, but of course I wouldn’t have done anything differently. I had my pride.
28 JANUARY 1946.
A telegram from Johnston arrived late yesterday. He’s secured a cabin on QM for me, so I don’t have to wait for Mauretania. A miracle or an omen? This morning when I told T, she reached over for my cigarette case. I filled her cigarette case last night. I will fill it again, so why this show of greediness as a childish protest?
A few days difference only, I said.
Typical of a man to change the departure date without consulting anyone, T said.
Why do I keep having these liaisons with inconvenient women? It is high time that I make an effort to be more principled in my affairs. Though this I must have said to myself hundreds of times in the past ten years.
Return date, I corrected her. I’m homebound.
Nothing more to say about T, but I’ve been thinking of my statement. Now that my diplomatic career is in the ashes, do I want to go back to work at a public relations firm, doing what I can do with my eyes closed? Or, should I have as a new ambition to make a home for myself?
30 JANUARY 1946.
Ventured out in the rain to lunch with Sidelle. Cold, grey, miserable. Just the kind of weather that makes one wonder for what reason we’ve fought hard to win a war. I would rather still be able to open the papers and read about battles and retreats, casualties foreign and domestic. Something that makes one feel thrilled to be among the living.
Sidelle listened to my change of travelling plan, unmoved, as if I were informing her of a weekend trip without her. (Even that, one wishes, would lead to a raised eyebrow or an inquiring look.) I thought her indifference was the cause of my many pointless affairs lately. Desperate for a conversation less deadened than the sky outside, I said as much to her. She listened with a smile as though I was trying to sell her some bogus goods and she was too generous to point this out directly.
But I do feel interested, she said when I faulted her for her apathy. I genuinely like to hear the details of your life.
Which parts? I asked.
Whichever parts you’re willing to part with, she said.
Wouldn’t it be more sensible if you’re interested in what I cannot part with? I said.
The only woman you cannot part with is me. I’m not interested in myself.
I was startled. To hide it I laughed, the kind of mirthless, high-pitched laugh that draws other people’s attention. A few patrons looked at us. I stared at one of them and he shrugged.
So my going back means nothing to you? I asked
.
What do you want it to mean to me?
I wanted the farewell to hurt her. That the moment I turned to leave she would feel compelled to beg me to stay.
A farewell has many practical consequences, I said. What if I marry someone there? Say, Hetty.
What makes you think your marrying will change who we are to each other? You can’t set that as a trap for yourself, and you can’t expect me to submit myself to the trap.
One should not go into a marriage with the intention of being unfaithful, I said.
Unfaithful to whom? Sidelle said. What if I argue that your going into any marriage is being unfaithful to me? But fear not, I’m not going to make that case.
I would rather that you did, I said.
When you’re not here, I’ll miss you. A great deal I’ll miss you. But I’ve spent much of my life missing many people. Should I lie and say that I’ll feel your absence more keenly than the others’? Would you believe me?
The din in the café made me want to throw my fork at the mirror behind her. If she meant her two dead husbands and one dead son, I had no way to compete with them. Sidelle must have seen through my agitation. You’re not, she said, thinking of returning to Canada permanently?
Suppose I am?
And you want me to make a case for your staying here?
Is there a case to be made? I asked. Staying here, doing what?
Doing what you do well, she said. You’ll find a position here. Jenkins would gladly have you back.
I have told Sidelle a bare-bones version of my failure at the UN peace conference. A misstep with a wrong woman was how I presented it—many men have that in common. Sharing a story of a disgrace with Sidelle makes it sound like a joke. She is always good at taking some sting out of a situation.
Does London need one more moron devoting his life to public relations? I said. A man wants to make a difference.
Canada will let you do that?
I’ve had the suspicion, since returning from San Francisco, that somewhere, in London or in Washington, there is a dossier that has accumulated more information about me than I am comfortable with. Though perhaps that happens to all the people who showed up at the conference. Who was I but a correspondent for the Daily Worker? My conversations with people from different camps were only part of my job. Canada should have nothing against me.
At least I could make a difference to Hetty’s life, I said. Can I make a difference to your life if I stay?
Sidelle gazed at me, and I read pity in her eyes.
4 FEBRUARY 1946.
Left London. Only a handful of us in the boat train, and by five o’clock in the afternoon I was settled in my cabin. No one saw me off at the Waterloo Station but Johnston, exchanging a final handshake, full of self-congratulations over his swift arrangement of my trip.
No one will see me off when we sail tomorrow.
By evening the bubble of serenity was burst, when seventeen hundred war brides and six hundred war babies boarded. Thinking back, Johnston did have an ambiguous smile when he wished me Godspeed. He must have foreseen the chaos and had the good business sense not to warn me.
5 FEBRUARY 1946.
The Lord Mayor of Southampton came onboard and bid farewell to the war brides and their children. He reminded them that they would be the kingdom’s unofficial ambassadors. Unofficial ambassadors, I said to a man next to me. I’ve never travelled with so many diplomats in my life.
He did not reply. To ease the awkwardness, I asked him where he was travelling to. Australia via New York, he said.
6 FEBRUARY 1946.
Anyone reading this diary: I dare you to imagine sailing alongside all these war brides and war babies. The dramas with nappies and nursing and meals and emergency boat drills are enough to make each day feel like it lasts forty-eight hours. I am trying to identify one, or more than one, fragile soul among the male passengers who might be driven to madness. A man throwing himself or, worse, a baby tottering past him, to the sea—that could be the opening chapter of a novel.
So far, however, all the gentlemen have seemed sturdy enough. I have observed several of them purchasing silk stockings and perfume and chocolates among the war brides at the shops, always three or four customers deep.
I bought some fragrant soaps for T. They may not reach her, but it’s the intention that counts.
[To whom did I give the soaps? Someone onboard, I think, but there were too many women onboard. A few times in my life I have given them a moment of my thought. For many of them that crossing, free from their parents and husbands, must have been the apex of their lives. Imagine them scattered around the continent, to marriage, children, grandchildren, and then imagine that the ship had sunk on that journey. Who can say a long life provides anything but the tedium of length? Had we all gone down on that trip we would have all been immortal: young wives, angelic children, and a few men of great potential.—RB 4 April 1990]
7 FEBRUARY 1946.
I can see that after this journey, my desire for any progeny will be reduced to nil. I am looking for a wife who is not going to expand her ambitions to include motherhood. This much I know. For each child you send out to the world you are only waiting for the world to orphan him—and whose life would that boomerang take next but mine?
In that sense Sidelle would be a perfect wife. If I telegraphed her this proposal, what would she offer? Approval of my courage? Laughter at my impulse?
8 FEBRUARY 1946.
Never have I felt as bleak as I did this morning, watching the Atlantic and the sky above turn into the color of a new day as indifferent to me as any other day. It was freezing cold on the deck, but unless it is this early one cannot escape running into my fellow intrepid travellers. Yesterday was a day of seasickness, so it was quieter than the first two days. Still, a palpable excitement lives on, seasickness or not.
It’s not that I don’t find some of the war brides attractive. Why are they called that, as if they are each wed to their individual wars? Everywhere there are signs that say, FOR WAR BRIDES ONLY. Music is played for them. The ping-pong balls bounce around for them. The ocean splits itself for them.
Most of them are deliriously happy. One imagines those poor souls wandering out of a city into the forest in a Shakespeare play would feel happiness in the same abandoning manner. What will happen to them once solid land is beneath their feet again? When does a bride become simply a wife? Is it determined by time or by the corrosion of the husband’s love?
After breakfast I handed a piece of chocolate to a little girl with more curls than teeth, who mistook my leg for something more stable than the deck chair. The young mother, biting half off for herself and handing the rest to the girl, smiled at me. A conversation duly followed. The young woman’s name is Hilda, and she is nineteen. Her daughter is Ruby. They are from Cardiff, and they are going to join Earl, Hilda’s husband, in Waterloo, Iowa. Very well.
I ran into Hilda a few times. I have charmed her. I have even charmed Ruby.
Poor Earl.
I do not find Hilda unattractive. Though, like any other woman onboard she is someone else’s wife, saddled with someone else’s issue.
So. Poor me.
9 FEBRUARY 1946.
Payton, the steward who likes to remind me every hour that I can find a quiet haven in the library, said to me this afternoon, I’ve never had so many children mistaking me as their father.
They must see something in you, I said.
No, it’s them wild women. They won’t allow their children to bother you gentlemen but won’t stop them when they grab my legs.
They may be too tired. Don’t hold it against the poor mothers.
Not when two of them said I was too old to be a father, Payton said darkly.
What if I abandon that long-past-due novel about myself and write
one about Payton? A seafaring hero always provides adventures. Perhaps Payton’s undistinguished bearing only conceals an unfathomable past with secrets and dramas.
10 FEBRUARY 1946.
Roland, let us be levelheaded and stop dodging the question you must answer.
Why has marriage become an urgency to you?
—One looks for a way out of any failure. I am not a man who believes that by going on failing I can succeed.
And what does marriage mean to you?
—A marriage to either Sidelle or Hetty would change my financial prospects.
Have you imagined what a marriage to Sidelle would be like?
—She would let me retain part of my freedom.
Hetty?
—I do not know.
Think not of now but ten years from today: Would you regret then not marrying either of them?
How about twenty years, or thirty years? One gambles with time when one comes to marriage. Sidelle will be seventy-six in twenty years. In thirty years she will likely be buried. Even if she wrote me into her will I’d be an impossible heir, not getting what I want from her. I never get what I want from her. I would be submitting myself to lifelong defeat if I married her.
Hetty? I want nothing from her.
12 FEBRUARY 1946.
Posterity, take notice: two telegrams dispatched today. One to Sidelle, saying I have made up my mind about my marriage, but all will be well. She will understand that nothing will change, as nothing is changeable between us.