Wanwan Visits
She arrived on a Friday afternoon in the second week of February, carrying a duffel bag too large for her and a small thermos of soup their mother had insisted she bring.
He met her at the train station. He had taken the afternoon off — the first half-day of leave he had used since arriving in Qingyuan — and he stood on the platform in his thick wool coat and watched the train slide in from the south, the windows fogged with the bodies of strangers, until the door of the second carriage opened and a small figure with a duffel bag appeared at the top of the steps.
"Gege!"
She came down the steps too quickly and nearly tripped on the last one. He caught the duffel bag with one hand. She caught his arm with both of hers.
"I knew you'd be exactly here. Right by the second carriage. I told the auntie sitting next to me — *that's where my brother will be standing.* She said *how do you know?* I said *because he's like that.*"
"Hello, Wanwan."
"Hello, Gege."
She looked at him.
She looked at him for perhaps three full seconds, in the way of someone taking inventory of a person they had not seen in five months. Her face — which had begun to lose the last of its child-shape, now in her seventeenth year — went briefly through an expression he could not quite read.
She said: "You look — different."
"I look thinner. Mom said the same on the phone last week."
"Not thinner. *Different.* Like — your face has — moved a little."
"Moved how."
"I don't know. Like a piece of furniture has been shifted in a room. Everything is in the same place. But it's — a different room."
He took the duffel from her.
"Come. Let's get out of the station."
#
He had, in preparation for her visit, done several things.
He had cleaned the boarding house room thoroughly. He had moved the calligraphy brush case and the new books to a shelf in the wardrobe, where they would not — too obviously — invite questions. He had taken down 慢一点也不要紧 from the wall and hung in its place the older 忍, which seemed less likely to require explanation. He had bought, from the small market on the corner, an extra blanket and a folding cot.
He had also — and this had taken him longer to decide — written a short list of things he would and would not tell her.
He would tell her that he had a partner whom he had been seeing since November. He would mention her name. He would not arrange for the two of them to meet on this trip. (Su Wanyin had, when he had told her about the visit, said immediately: *Do not bring her to me. Spend the days with her. I will be at the library on Saturday as usual. You may visit me afterward, or not. The decision is yours, not your sister's.*)
He would tell Wanwan that he had survived a small workplace difficulty in December. He would not specify what. He would say only that everything had been — adequately resolved, that he had made some valuable allies in the office, and that he was now in a quiet phase.
He would not tell her about the rewind.
He would not tell her about the web.
He would not tell her about the audit maneuver, the photocopies, the Yu Donghua key card, or any of the small careful machinery of his interior life.
He had decided that she was sixteen and should remain — for as long as she could — a girl who had an older brother in the city, not a girl who was a node of any web, even by association.
#
She stayed three days.
On Friday evening they ate at the Sichuan woman's noodle shop. He had chosen it deliberately — Su Wanyin would not be there on a Friday evening; the shop had been a place he and Su Wanyin had eaten together but it would not, on this evening, be marked by her presence in any way Wanwan could see. The Sichuan woman, when they came in, gave Lin a small considering look that took in the young woman beside him, registered some small fact, and produced — without comment — two bowls of noodles, a small dish of chili oil, and a plate of pickled mustard greens.
Wanwan ate with the appetite of a sixteen-year-old who had been eating school cafeteria food for four months. She told him, between bites, about her midterms (one A, four B-pluses, one B), about Wei Lan (the rumor had — exactly as he had predicted — exhausted itself within two weeks; Wei Lan had moved on to a new feud with a girl in the parallel section; the friends who had stopped speaking to Wanwan had returned without ceremony in early December), about the boy she had mentioned to him last summer (no longer of interest; he had said something stupid in chemistry class about a girl in the year below them; Wanwan had concluded he was *a person whose intelligence does not survive contact with social pressure*).
"That's a — sophisticated assessment, Xiao Wan."
"I read it in a book."
"What book."
"A book about people. I don't remember the title. I read three pages and stopped because the rest was boring."
"What was the title of the section you read."
"*Why most people do not understand themselves.*"
He smiled. "And do you understand yourself?"
"Mostly. I understand other people better. Myself I am still — calibrating."
"*Calibrating* is a long word."
"I'm sixteen, Gege. I can know long words."
"You can know them. The question is whether they fit you."
"This one fits."
He didn't argue. They walked back to the boarding house in the cold air.
#
In the boarding house, he set up the folding cot for himself. She would sleep in the bed. She protested mildly — *but it's your room, Gege* — and he told her that he was the older brother and that he had earned, by some quiet calculus that older brothers carry in their heads, the right to insist on this small thing. She accepted.
She sat on the bed cross-legged in her sleeping clothes, brushing her hair, while he sat at the desk.
She said: "Gege."
"Yes."
"Tell me about her."
He looked at her.
"How did you know."
"Mom said. Mom called me last week. She said: *Wanwan, your brother is being — careful — about something. A young man who is being careful about something is either in trouble or in love. Find out which.* So I am asking."
"Did Mom say to ask — directly?"
"Mom said *be subtle.* I have decided not to be subtle. I have a duffel bag in your room and three days. Subtle is — inefficient."
He laughed.
He told her, carefully, the rough outline. He did not name Su Wanyin's father. He did not mention the Eastern Hall or the library staff or the careful pace of their first weeks. He said only that there was a woman, that she was twenty-six, that she worked at the municipal library, that she had a — quietness — about her that he had not expected to find in this city, and that he had, gradually, come to be — careful about her in return.
Wanwan listened.
When he had finished, she said: "Twenty-six."
"Yes."
"Older."
"Yes."
"Quieter."
"Yes."
"Gege — is she — kind?"
He thought about the question.
He thought: *Wanwan has, in her sixteen years, seen our father be kind; seen our mother be kind in a different way; seen our grandfather be kind in a third way. She has seen perhaps four or five other people be kind. She has — by her own count — mostly not. She is asking the question that, in our family, is the only real question.*
He said: "She is — kind, Xiao Wan. In a — careful way. She does not — give kindness loudly. She gives it by the way she — listens. By the things she does not do. She — has not, since I have known her, done a single thing that I would, looking back, wish she had done differently."
A pause.
"That is an — unusual thing to be able to say about a person."
"I know."
Wanwan put down her brush.
She said: "Gege. Are you going to marry her?"
He had not — quite — expected the question.
He sat for a moment, thinking.
He said: "I have not — considered it formally. We have known each other for four months. We have — kissed, once, in mid-December. We have — both — agreed that we will be careful with each other for some time."
"That is — careful."
"Yes."
"Will you marry her, eventually?"
"I think — yes. If the next several years go as I — hope. Yes."
"Good."
She picked up the brush again. She continued.
He said: "Why is that — good?"
"Because, Gege, you are — a person who needs to have someone he is being careful for. You have been — being careful for me, and for Mom and Dad, your whole life. But we are — a small audience. You need a larger one. A wife is — a separate audience. A wife is — a person who watches you closely, who is not also you, and who therefore corrects you when you are — about to do something unwise. I have been correcting you when I can, but I am sixteen, and there are some kinds of unwise things I do not yet recognize. A wife who is twenty-six — and quiet — and kind in a careful way — is — exactly the audience you need. So I am pleased."
He did not — for a long moment — know what to say.
He said: "Xiao Wan."
"Yes."
"You are sixteen."
"Yes."
"Where did you learn — to think about people like that."
She looked at him.
She said, with a small careful seriousness that he had not heard from her before: "I am Lin Zhaoxu's younger sister, Gege. I have been watching him — closely — since I was three. I have learned — to think the way he thinks. I have, recently, begun to think a little — *better* than he thinks, in certain narrow areas, because I have the advantage of watching him from outside. I think you should — perhaps — understand this. I am a useful audience. I am not only — a sister."
He looked at her.
He thought: *She has — also — moved. While I was not watching. While I was being careful in this city, she has been being careful in another city, and the carefulness has shaped her.*
He said: "You are right."
"I know I'm right."
"What else — have you noticed — about me, that I should know."
She thought.
She said, slowly: "You have — become — a person who is — calculating something most of the time. You did not used to be. When you were home in July, before you came here, you were — calculating, but you were also — sometimes not. Now I think you are — almost always. Even when you are with me, this evening, you have been — partially calculating. I do not think you can help it. But I think — your wife will need to be the kind of person who can — see when you are calculating and — interrupt it. And the kind of person you will — let interrupt it. From what you have told me, she is."
"Yes."
"Good."
A pause.
"Mom is going to ask me — when I get back — what I learned. May I tell her you are — being careful about a kind woman who is twenty-six?"
"Yes."
"May I tell her she works at the library?"
"Yes."
"May I tell her — anything else?"
"Tell her — that I — am not in trouble. That I have — survived a small thing in December. That I am — well. That I am — eating."
"You are too thin."
"I am eating."
"Eat more. I will tell Mom you said this."
He smiled.
She — smiled back, the small crooked smile that had been hers since she was four, the smile that had not changed in any of the small adjustments her face had been undergoing in the past year.
She put down the brush.
She said: "I'm going to sleep. You should sleep too."
"Yes."
She lay down. She pulled the blanket up. She said, into the pillow:
"Gege."
"Yes."
"I love you."
"I love you too, Xiao Wan."
She slept within four minutes — he could hear her breathing change.
He sat at the desk for another hour.
He did not write anything. He simply sat in the small grey light of the desk lamp and watched her sleeping form across the small room.
He thought: *I have — protected her. Tonight, I tried to protect her from the inquiry, the web, the rewind, the audit maneuver, the difficult conversations. She has — without my noticing — become a person who could have heard most of it. I have — perhaps — protected her too long.*
He thought: *I will, on the next visit — perhaps in summer — tell her about more of it. Not all. But more. She has — earned the listening.*
He turned off the lamp.
He lay on the cot.
He slept.
#
Saturday and Sunday they walked.
They walked the river path on Saturday morning. They went to the small Ming temple Lin had visited alone in early January; he stood with her at the base of the worn stone steps, and this time they went up. The temple was nearly empty in the cold February morning; they wandered through the small courtyards and the dim halls with the quietness of two people who had, once, been small children together and had not forgotten how to be silent in the same room.
They ate lunch at a small dumpling place near the temple. Wanwan ate eleven dumplings.
In the afternoon, they walked through the old quarter — he did not take her to the Eastern Hall; he did not tell her about the Eastern Hall — and looked at the small antique stalls and the calligraphy supply shops and the old bookstore where Old Zhou would not, by his own instruction, see Lin again until February twenty-third. Wanwan asked him, at one of the stalls, whether he wanted any of the small carved wooden objects on display.
He said: *No. I have begun a small private collection at my desk. I am being careful about what enters it.*
She said: *That is — like you.*
She bought, with her own money, a small carved wooden bird — a swallow, perhaps four centimeters long, in dark walnut. She gave it to him without ceremony.
She said: *For your collection. You are not allowed to refuse it. It is from Mio's Little Sister.*
(Mio was a small joke between them — an imagined younger sister whom Wanwan had invented when she was six, and who had been the perpetrator of various small mischiefs in the household for several years. By the time Wanwan was ten, Mio had become the name Wanwan used when she gave Lin a gift she did not want him to refuse for reasons of older-brother propriety.)
He took the bird. He thanked her.
That evening they ate together at the Sichuan woman's shop again. Wanwan ate twelve dumplings.
#
On Sunday morning, before her train back, he took her to a small breakfast place near the station and bought her three small steamed buns — pork, vegetable, sweet bean — and a cup of soy milk. She ate them slowly, the way she ate when she was — the only word he could find for it — *settling*. When her train was ready to board, she stood up, hugged him hard, and said:
"Take care of yourself, Gege."
"Yes."
"Eat."
"Yes."
"Be careful for her."
"Yes."
"Don't forget Mio."
"I won't."
She got on the train.
The train pulled out at one-eighteen.
He stood on the platform, with the cold concrete under his shoes and the small wooden swallow in his coat pocket, until the train was out of sight. Then he walked back through the city in the slow careful way of a man whose center of gravity had — for the second time in three months — shifted.
He walked the long way.
He thought: *I have — been seen, by my sister, in a way I did not know I needed to be seen. She has told me I am calculating most of the time. She has told me I need a wife who can interrupt the calculating. She has — at sixteen — given me a small wooden bird.*
He thought: *That is a great deal to receive in three days.*
He thought: *I will, when I am back at the boarding house, place the bird on my desk.*
#
That evening, he placed the bird on his desk, beside the calligraphy brush case, beside the new brush from the antique stall. The collection on the desk was — beginning to be — three pieces. The grandfather's brush. The 心如止水 brush. The walnut swallow.
He did not write much in his daily-record notebook. He wrote one line:
*Wanwan came. She is — older than I had realized. She gave me a small wooden swallow. The bird sits now on the desk. The desk is — beginning to be a place.*
He closed the notebook.
He read three poems by Su Shi.
He went to bed.
He slept.
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