There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. Professor Shan began reading to me as soon as I arrived. Sometimes she would lay snacks on the table a few biscuits, half an orange, a handful of roasted chestnuts but she herself never ate anything when I was around, so I did not touch the food either.
There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. Professor Shan began reading to me as soon as I arrived. Sometimes she would lay snacks on the table a few biscuits, half an orange, a handful of roasted chestnuts but she herself never ate anything when I was around, so I did not touch the food either.
I did not like Lawrence, and my mind began to wander to other things. I had enjoyed Dickens, who talked to me at times in a wordy manner as I imagined a grandparent would. I had never met my fathers parents, and my mothers parents had washed their hands of her, so I was only a stranger to them. I had loved Hardy, and had dreamed of the countryside in his books black-and-white dreams in which everything looked slanted as if in a woodcut print but this may have had more to do with the joy of finding myself able to understand English. I dared not show that I was annoyed by Lawrence. I had lived with a mad mother all my life and had found madness, which seemed prevalent in the stories read to me now, the most uninteresting topic. I tried to suppress a yawn and let my mind wander to a man whose name I did not know and whose face had begun to haunt me. The man lived on the second floor of Professor Shans building and had a young daughter named Nini. Ninis Papa was how I greeted him. He did not use my name he had never asked me for it, so perhaps he did not know mine either and he called me Ninis Sister, as if I were connected to his daughter by blood.
I now know his name, as he has become one of the most renowned flutists in the nation. I have seen his face on posters, and read in newspapers and magazines the story of his success after years of hardship, about his childhood spent as an orphan with distant relatives, serving in his teens as an apprentice to a blind folk musician whom he then had buried while traveling across south China, about his years of playing in the street for small change, his failed marriage and estranged daughter. The articles called him a figure of inspiration. He has not aged much in twenty-five years, though he looks less melancholy, more at ease with the world. I imagine his students in the conservatory having youthful crushes on him, love that has long been due him. Sometimes I wonder if he still remembers me, but the moment the thought occurs to me, I laugh at myself. Why should he think about someone who is a reminder of his humiliation? Only those who live in the past have space in their hearts for people from the past; the man surely has enough success to savor only the present, with many people to occupy his heart, perhaps far too many.
Ninis father had married into the flat on the second floor. Having no place of his own and, worse, no job, made him a laughingstock, or, rather, his wife. It was said that she had fallen in love with him when she saw him play his flute in the park, a near beggar who, the neighbors used to say, must have a short circuit in his brain to think of himself as an artist. Much to her parents chagrin, she made up her mind to marry him and support him while he tried his luck getting into the National Conservatory. A year later they had a daughter, and his in-laws, with whom he and his wife shared the two-bedroom flat on the second floor, refused unlike most grandparents to take care of the baby. Ninis mother worked as a clerk in a government agency, and while she was away, Ninis father could be seen walking the baby around the neighborhood. It must have been disheartening for a man, once homeless, to be made homeless again, during the daytime, along with his child, but as a young girl I did not sense the agony of his situation. Rather, I was envious of his freedom, not belonging to a school or a work unit, and I wished to be his companion during his long hours of aimless wandering.
Nini was just learning to speak when I first began to visit Professor Shan. I was not the kind of well-raised child who knew to compliment a woman on her new dress or a father on his adorable daughter, but whenever I saw Nini and her father in the late afternoons, often playing in the small garden across the narrow lane from Professor Shans building, I would greet them. I praised the girl for the stick she held in her hand, or the pebbles she gathered into a pile. Her father thanked me, speaking on her behalf, and it became a habit for both of us to speak through his daughter. Nini, have you had a good day with your baba? I would ask her. Tell your sister that weve had a good day, her father would reply, and even later, when Nini was older and chose not to acknowledge either of our existences, we would still use the girl as an intermediary to exchange words.
I never saw Ninis father play the flute. He had a gaunt look by the time I entered high school: Where there had once been a smile, there was now only a distracted look, his hair gray before its time, his back beginning to stoop. He spent less time with Nini then the girl must have been accepted by her grandparents, as a few times I saw them walk her to a preschool. I wondered what he would do with his time now that Nini was in school. When I walked past their flat on the way to Professor Shans, I studied the green wooden door, the paint peeling off at the edge, a childs doodle by the doorknob. I imagined the world behind the door, what Ninis father, when he unlocked the door, would have to brace himself to face. At night I tried to remember his face and his voice, but hard as I tried, I was never able to recall enough details to make him a real person.
On an early November afternoon, when I was locking my bicycle in front of Professor Shans building, Ninis father appeared quietly from around the corner.
How are you, Ninis Papa? I said when he did not speak. Did Nini have a good day?
An old woman exited the building and gave a meaningful glance toward him before calling out to her grandchildren to come in and do homework. In a low voice, Ninis papa asked if he could talk with me for a few minutes.
I followed him to the small garden. It was one of those mild autumn days, the last before the harsh winter would begin. The sun, half setting, was pinkish orange in the cloudless western sky, which was warm orange and pink and magenta.
The man stopped by a trellis of wisteria, the flowers long gone, the last leaves hanging on to the vine. I want to let you know that I will be leaving the neighborhood tomorrow.
I nodded, as if I had known it all along and was not surprised by the news. The streetlights, whitest blue, blinked to life with a collective buzzing.
Ninis mama and I signed the divorce papers today, he said.
I had known Ninis mother for as long as I could remember. She was fifteen years older, ordinary in all ways but for her marriage. She was too old to be part of my generation, but not old enough to become one of those ubiquitous women we called auntie, who claimed the right to yell at any child from the neighborhood, so our paths had never crossed. It occurred to me that I had never, despite all the time I spent imagining his life, thought of her as someone dear to him. I wondered if she had been forced to divorce him by her parents, or if she had, at long last, joined the world in condemning him as a useless man.
I was waiting for you to come back from school, he said. Youve always been kind to me, and I want to have a proper farewell.
Where will you be tomorrow?
He looked lost at the question, and then said that there were ways for a man to manage.
Will you still try to get into the conservatory?
I was waiting for you to come back from school, he said. Youve always been kind to me, and I want to have a proper farewell.
Where will you be tomorrow?
He looked lost at the question, and then said that there were ways for a man to manage.
Will you still try to get into the conservatory?
Perhaps he would, he said, but such things were not up to him. One should not give up, I said eagerly, quoting an old saying about fate allowing what is allowed, but it is ones responsibility to fight for what one wants before its decided by fate. He smiled, and I recognized the derision. I must have sounded childish to him, but when he spoke, his derision was directed at himself. He had fought more than his share of fights against fate, he said; perhaps he should be a warrior rather than a flutist.
I tried to find other words of comfort, but it was enough of an effort to hold back my tears. He was about to say something when a sanitation worker, sweeping a pebble path nearby, began to whistle a love song from a Romanian film from the fifties. We both turned to look at the man. I wondered, for a moment, if my father, mopping the floor of the empty department store in the middle of the night, hummed old love songs to himself.
Will you let me know when you get into the conservatory? I asked after the sweeper had moved on.
Ninis father raised his eyes as if startled by the question. Professor Shan is waiting to tutor me, I said.
He hesitated and held out a hand to shake mine. I wished I had more to say to him, and he to me. I took his hand; as soon as our fingers touched we both let go. Farewell, Ninis Sister, he said.
Farewell, Ninis Papa, I said.
Neither of us moved. A bicycle bell chimed and was followed by other chimes, none of them urgent a child must have been walking past the bicycle shed and felt the urge to test all the bells. Farewell, Ninis Papa, I said again.
He looked at me, and I wondered if he would come closer, and if I should push him away if he did. I wanted to ask him if he would miss me as I would him; I wanted to ask him if away from this sad neighborhood we could see each other again. But the love that was not yet love, the questions that were not asked thus never answered in retrospect, I wonder if it was all mere fantasy in a lonely teenagers heart. But there were things to be accounted for: the farewell that a man thought necessary for a girl he barely knew, the silence while listening to a strangers whistling, the hand that was raised to wipe my tears but that had paused midair and then patted my head. Be good, he said, and walked away into the dark shadows of the trees.