The Book of Goose

by Yiyun Li

You can slash a book. There are different ways to measure depth, but not many readers measure a book’s depth with a knife, making a cut from the first page all the way down to the last. Why not, I wonder.

And that is where my story begins. An orange that did not think itself good enough for a knife, and an orange that never dreamed of turning itself into a knife.

But years and decades are mere words, made-up names for units of measurement. One pound of potato, two cups of flour, three oranges, but what is the measuring unit for hunger?

How do I measure Fabienne’s presence in my life—by the years we were together, or by the years we have been apart, her shadow elongating as time goes by, always touching me?

I knew I would never see anything she saw, and it was for that reason I could have no other friend but Fabienne.

This story of mine expired when I heard of Fabienne’s death. Telling a story past its expiration date is like exhuming a body long buried.

This was how it had unfolded in my memory. It was possible that it did not happen exactly so, but between facts and memories I always trust the latter. Why? Because facts do not make myths. And I was made into a minor myth by that visit. If I told people that I was once a myth, nobody would believe me. But is it a myth’s job to make you believe in it? A myth says, Take me or leave me. You can shrug, you can laugh at its face, but you cannot do anything about it. You are the one to change your mind, or not to change—either way, a myth is a complete thing, and you, a nonmyth, are a nonentity.

The single lie—or the variations of the same lie—I had told in those years was to Fabienne: I made her believe that I was like a vacant house, my mind empty of any thoughts of my own, my heart void of feelings. I was not aware of my falsity then.

Happiness, I would tell her, is to spend every day without craning one’s neck to look forward to tomorrow, next month, next year, and without holding out one’s hands to stop every day from becoming yesterday.

Everyone had a reason to do something to me in Paris.

For the first time I could imagine what she looked like to other people who did not love her.

I was not the first trespasser in paradise, but unlike other violators, my punishment was not banishment. Rather, my sentence was to testify to its marvels.