Kinder Than Solitude by Yiyun Li Page B

oppressive, its quietness keeping the world at bay.
    At first Ruyu only stood at the entrance, ready to leave if the old man expressed any displeasure. Sometimes he turned his murky eyes to her, but most of the time he did not acknowledge her—she was never the one to come with food or drink or a pair of caring hands. When he did not protest in any noticeable way, she felt more at ease and began sitting next to the bed. She would bring a bamboo fan with her as a pretext, and a few times when she was found in the old man’s room by Aunt, she was cooling him down with the fan’s gentle movement.
    “You’re very good to Grandpa,” Aunt said when she came in one evening with a basin of water and a wash towel. “But I can’t say that I like you to spend so much time with him.”
    “Why?” Ruyu said. “Does Grandpa mind?”
    “What does he know?” Aunt said. “I don’t think it’s good for you.”
    The old man’s eyes showed little expression at the exchange. The fact that he was closer to death than anyone Ruyu had met made her wonder if he knew things that others did not; that he could not speak elevated him in her eyes, as the speechlessness must be a punishment for what he had gained in life. Watching Grandpa, she felt an inexplicable kinship: he, like her, must have the power to see through things and people, even if his silence was by now unwilling, and hers always a choice.
    When Ruyu remained quiet Aunt sighed. “You’re still a child. You shouldn’t spend so much time ruminating.”
    Ruyu moved over so Aunt could place the basin on the chair. “I don’t mind sitting with Grandpa.”
    “Your grandaunts did not send you here to nanny an invalid,” Aunt said.
    Ruyu, rather than a poor relation imposed on Aunt and Uncle, was a paid guest. Before she had left, her grandaunts had explained that they would be paying a hundred yuan a month for her upkeep, more than either one of the couple earned. That hosting Ruyu was a substantial financial gain for the family was not directly stated, though she could see that it was what her grandaunts wanted her to understand. “I’m not really doing anything for Grandpa,” Ruyu said. “I’m only sitting here.”
    “A young person should be with her friends,” Aunt said. “Why don’t you find Boyang or Moran and go out for a bike ride?”
    Ruyu did not know how to ride a bike—nobody, not even the nosiest neighbors back at home, would expect her grandaunts to run after a youth barely balanced on a bike, ready to catch her when she skidded and fell. This deficiency seemed to have perplexed Moran and Boyang at first—they were the real children of this city, growing up on bicycles as the children of Mongolian herdsmen were raised on horseback. For them, the buses and trolleys and subways were for the very old and very young, and for the unfortunate ones who, for whatever reason, were deprived of the freedom of a bike.
    Ruyu had spent much of her time with Boyang and Moran in the past weeks. Knowing the city by heart, they took Ruyu on the rear racks of their bikes in turn, riding through side streets and alleyways so that they would not be caught by the traffic police—two people on one bike was illegal. When they could not avoid a stretch of thoroughfare or boulevard, the two of them would push their bikes and walk beside Ruyu, pointing out old seamstresses’ shops and hundred-year-old butcheries and bakeries along the road.
    Ruyu did not mind being left alone, though others—Boyang and Moran, and the neighbors—seemed to find her ease with aloneness unnerving. To Aunt, any time Ruyu spent by herself bore an accusation of sorts. The desperateness of the world to make her less of herself made her look at it askance. Why, she sometimes thought, are people allowed to be so stupid?
    When Ruyu did not reply, Aunt said that it was unfair of her to think so, but compared with other kids her age, Ruyu had spent too much time with old people. But Boyang lived with