The Book of Goose

by Yiyun Li

AM I MAKING EVERYTHING on this trip sound easy? Am I painting myself as, in M. Bazin’s words, a natural—impersonating a child prodigy? But here is an explanation, maybe, for the success of my trip. Life is most difficult for those who know what they want and also know what makes it impossible for them to get what they want. Life is still difficult, but less so, for those who know what they want but have not realized that they will never get it. It is the least difficult for people who do not know what they want. I did not know what I wanted on this trip to Paris. Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that most of my life I have benefited from not knowing. Some people have to figure out what they want from a life before they commit to that life. Some, like me, can commit to anything, which is like committing to nothing. Perhaps that is why my American relatives call me passive. Often I imagine that living is a game of rock-paper-scissors: fate beats hope, hope beats ignorance, and ignorance beats fate. Or, in a version that has preoccupied me: the fatalistic attracts the

hopeful, the hopeful attracts the ignorant, and the ignorant, the fatalistic.

Childhood friendship, much more fatal, simply happens.

Fabienne did not speak for a moment, then she closed her eyes. I looked at the dappled sunlight on her pale eyelids. “It might not be as bad as you think,” she said. I put my hands over her eyes and blocked out the sun. “Being blind would be even darker than this,” I said. “How do you know? You’ve never been blind.” “Well, I hear people say the world is dark when you are blind.” “I think you’re stupid to believe people. They say all sorts of things without knowing anything,” Fabienne said. She pulled my hands closer and pressed them down on her eyes hard. “This is not too bad. We would get used to it after a while.” “It would make the whole world feel like a minefield,” I said. “And I would never be able to take a step.” “No, the opposite,” she said. “It should make you feel that whether you put down your foot here or there doesn’t make a difference. In a minefield a blind