Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li Read Free Book Online Page B

one day I can learn English, too, so I can read the book myself,” she said, as if she had read my mind. “What do you think? Will I be able to read the book after I learn English?”
    “I don’t know, Lieutenant,” I said.
    “How long did you study English before you could read the book?”
    The digital clock on her desk said quarter to midnight. I wondered how long she would keep me. A few years, I said, and shifted in the chair.
    “A few years is not that long,” Lieutenant Wei said. “Maybe you can start teaching me now. Will I be able to read a little English by the time you leave?”
    I did not know what kind of trap she was setting. A few of the girls from the platoon had become friendly with Lieutenant Wei, but I did not see the point of befriending an officer.
    “I’ve had reports that you have received letters from your parents, is that right?” Lieutenant Wei asked.
    “Yes, Lieutenant,” I replied. My father had written twice, both letters brief, saying that he and my mother were well and that they hoped I was, too.
    “Why are you unhappy?”
    “Unhappy, Lieutenant?”
    “What’s bothering you?”
    “I don’t understand the question, Lieutenant.”
    “Did you break up with your boyfriend?” Lieutenant Wei said.
    “I have never had a boyfriend, Lieutenant,” I said. I would rather she had ripped my book and sent me back to the barracks with a week of cleaning duty at the pigsties.
    “When I enlisted,” Lieutenant Wei said, “my boyfriend saw me off at the train station and then sent a letter to the training camp to break up with me. The first letter I got in the camp. I was much younger than you are now. I was fourteen and a half. He was eighteen, and he did not have the courage to say it to my face. You think it’s the end of the world, but it is not. The army is a good place to sort these things out.”
    I wondered if other girls, for different misdemeanors, were kept hostage at odd hours in this room and informed of the love history of Lieutenant Wei. It was ludicrous of her, I decided, to think that any unhappiness could be explained by a breakup; more ludicrous if she thought she could, by recounting her own story of triumph over heartbreak, lessen other people’s pain.
    “Apparently you have no interest in this discussion about feelings,” Lieutenant Wei said.
    “I do my best to summarize my feelings in my ideological reports, Lieutenant,” I said. Every Sunday night, we read our weekly reports at the squad meeting. I always began mine that in the past week I had kept up my faith in Communism and my love of our motherland; I filled the rest of the page with military and political slogans that not even Major Tang could find fault with. I had been criticized by our squad leader for being insincere in my reports, so I learned to add personal touches. “In thepast week I have continued my efforts to understand the invincibility of Marxism,” and “In the coming week I will work on
The Communist Manifesto
.”
    Lieutenant Wei sighed. “I’m not talking about the feelings in your ideological reports.”
    “I don’t have much feeling about most people, Lieutenant,” I said. There had not been a boyfriend and perhaps there never would be one—the man who had not wiped away my tears under the wisteria trellis had later done so, repeatedly, when my memories were revised into dreams, and he who had chosen not to claim the love had left no space for others to claim it: In high school there had been a boy or two, like there is a boy or two for most girls during those years, but I had returned their letters in new envelopes, never adding a line, thinking that would be enough to end what should not have been started.
    Without a word Lieutenant Wei put the book in her drawer. I wondered how Professor Shan would have felt had she known that her beloved book had fallen into the hands of someone who, in her mind, was ill-educated. I felt a slight, vindictive joy, directed both at