Where Reasons End

by Yiyun Li

Grownups make the same mistake over and over, he said. You like W. S. Merwin? What a coincidence—I just read a poem by him. You went to China this past summer? I did too, in 1987. Do you play any instrument? Oboe, how interesting, is that the instrument that looks like the other? Ah yes, clarinet! How wonderful you know exactly what I’m talking about. Nikolai had a dislike for people who mistook the oboe for the clarinet. Not knowing is okay, he had once said, but pretending to know is not. How about I talk back and say, How interesting, sir, you must be Jones or Smith because you also have a head and four limbs. I laughed. Critical as ever, I said.

My mind is made up, I thought. It has always been. I want yesterday and today and tomorrow, all with Nikolai in it. You often complain I want too much, he said. Any parent would want what I want, I said. Not necessarily. Any reasonable parent. Your argument doesn’t stand, he said. A reasonable person can still want too much. But a little more time, how can that be called too much? I said, though I knew I risked losing the argument. Are five years considered a little more in a lifetime? Ten? Time is like money. Don’t get into debt by spending what you don’t have, he said.

For weeks I had not read well. I picked up books and put them down after a page or two, finding little to sustain me. I was writing, though, making up stories to talk with Nikolai. (Where else can we meet but in stories now?)

It occurred to me that I had never looked up the etymology of the word settle, so I did. I read it to him: from Old English, setlan, from setl, seat—to seat, bring to rest, come to rest. Can parents’ hearts find repose after the death of a child? Perhaps I’m the one to ask the question, I said. Do you feel settled? If you mean something sinking to the bottom, he said, yes, I feel quite settled. Sedimented. What is it that’s sedimented? I asked. Everything about me that used to disturb me, he said. I’m all clear now, pure and perfect, just the way I want. Nothing will come to disturb the sediments again? What probability do you think there is for that to happen? I did not know if I was sad or relieved, or sadder because I was relieved.

Say, Nikolai said, if a self is seeking help, is it because it wants to be better at being itself, or being like others?

What if, I thought, we keep trying? What if an abyss can be made into a natural habitat? What if we accept suffering as we do our hair or eye colors? What if, having lived through a dark and bleak time, a parent can convince a child that what we need is not a light that will lead us somewhere, but the resolution to be nowhere, even if it’s ever and forever.

Time points only in one direction. A mind goes in many directions. How far digressed are we allowed to be on a one-way road before we are called lost? And if one is not lost, can one be found again?