Bryan Washington Reads Yiyun Li

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

“Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and”

discuss. This month we're going to hear a small flame by Ian Lee, which appeared in The New Yorker in May of 2017. She spoke English better than anyone. She had studied with a tutor since she was seven.

Something I heard of amongst her schoolmates in Beijing in 1985. What Bella had wanted to play, instead of red riding her to Cinderella, was the little match girl. The story was chosen by Brian Washington, who's the author of four books of fiction, including the novel's Family Meal and Palaver, which came out last year and was a finalist for the National

Book Award. Hi, Brian. Hi, Deborah. How are you? I'm fine.

Thank you for joining from Tokyo. Thank you so much for having me in that this hour. We're at very different hours, but we're making it work.

So how did you first come to Ian Lee's writing?

I actually first came to it through the New Yorker Fiction podcast. When I was in undergrad, I would spend a lot of time in the stacks and the University there. I attended, they had a pretty extensive backlog of periodicals and there was an entire section dedicated to the New Yorker that was separated a little bit innocuously by author. So I was in a somewhat unique position in that I immediately had access to much of the rest

of her work that she published around that time. So it was a really useful moment, narratively of someone who is trying to work out a sense of style and taste concurrently to be in proximity and to have access to an author whose sense of structure and sense of narrative and who sense of pacing was so distinctly unlike much of what I had read prior to approaching her work.

“How do you feel that she differs from most other story writers?”

As someone who just personally is a little bit obsessed with structure at the word level

at the beat level, it's striking to read someone and to know that the very first graphs

that they to are not only as at least concerned with the pace of one line of dialogue and proximity to the next line of description or the placement of a seemingly innocuous tester that ultimately ends up revealing the entirety of a character's progression or the character's lack thereof to see the narratives in which Ian has chosen to contract certain tactics or certain decisions very intentionally at various moments across the story only

to collapse them later on or to engage in the inverse and have it all make structural sense but also exists in such a way that you could really just read the story without being included in the story of phenomenal story I think there are not so many people who are in the English language right now who are able to do both right and especially impressive

since it was not her first language you very quickly decided on a small flame for the podcast

today what what is it about this story that stands out yeah my understanding is that it was a

“little bit contentious when it was first published like I think the interesting is that there”

were more than a few people were like what is going on when it was first published and what was fascinating to me it was that my first read it which was I think maybe a year or two after it was published like early 2019 it just made sense to me there was not a moment of ambiguity in regards to the structural sources there are I think just only a handful of narratives that I've been privy to have written an English language and most of them are written by you

only where you know I just read them and they make narrative sense they make emotional sense every decision that is made is just so fine tuned that I can just exist in the story will be being privy to the thoughtfulness that's required in order to craft at the level that it exists that's wonderful you get to turn off your editor's brain yes I love that sensation

flame by you and Lee a small flame a girl no older than ten a cost to bella and Peter as they

“left the restaurant famous for its pecking dock Adrian Peter's boyfriend was lagging behind”

practicing his mandarin one last time before the end of their trip by rose the girl said to Peter in English for your girlfriend thank you my dear Peter said but she's not my girlfriend the girl did not understand English she prompted him again with the memorized line quiet Bella said in Mandarin he's not my boyfriend how can it be sister he's handsome and you're pretty sister I'm old enough to be your aunt then tell my uncle to buy a rose for you the girl said

gesturing toward the cardboard science you wore like a bib 10 R&B it said with crudely drawn

flowers surrounding the price Peter shook his head and stuck both hands determined into his jacket pockets listen I'll give you the money for a rose and you leave us alone Bella said no

“the girl said you have to buy one I can't go home until I sell them all”

Bella counted out 300 R&B enough she asked the girl surrendered the entire bouquet and Bella tossed it into the cypress shrubs by the restaurant's entrance well groomed and fence stand now she said home you go the girl put the money away carefully and then standing on tiptoe tried to reach the flowers Adrian who had just come out of the restaurant jumped over the fence and retrieved the bouquet for the girl she vanished into the darkness

a swift and purposeful minnow the apronite was cool but not clear the smog bringing tears to Bella's eyes what's wrong Adrian asked you only 300 you on Bella said Adrian exchanged a look with Peter and Bella knew they were speaking to each other in that language which lovers stupidly think of as

“their own she was on a horrendous mood they were telling each other she was angry over her second”

divorce and was taking it out on them and they had to put up with her for only one more hour Bella had known Peter for 25 years they had shared a place with two other housemates in Boston when they were in law school and for as long as they had been friends they had been talking about visiting China together it was one of those promises made for not keeping similar to the solo trip to Antarctica the Bella had sometimes imagined when things were going wrong in her marriages

but China not as far fetched as Antarctica had become much closer when Peter started dating Adrian a French Canadian whose great grandfather had been among the Chinese laborers who collected bodies and duck graves on the western front in 1918 Adrian was a writer and he was working on a multi-generational and intercontinental epic based on his family history and during the past two weeks the three of them had toured a number of towns on the East China Sea sifting through local archives tracing the

traceable we know his surname was Lee Adrian had set up his great grandfather and that his family migrated from Shansu to Shandong sometime during the Qing Dynasty do you know how many people

bearing that surname live in China? Bella said 90 million it was arcs from the Bella that Adrian

had created romance as first characters and himself and the places he had the remotest reason to claim Xiangyun Hulian Marseille Ipran Buong Kuh Montreal New York with a novelistic certainty this blue eyed pale skinned man and his Chinese great grandfather would be sentimentally reunited people without genealogies Bella thought were like weeds their existence of consequence to no one but weed killers perhaps that was why any reasonable person will try to locate a family router too

from the roots to the flowers and the fruits the pension for cultivating a garden a love affair a family a friendship a made up epic seemed to be a healthy constructive habit but Bella was no horticulturist at work she read legal documents and contracts and dissected them with vehement as a out of hatred and the cab back to the hotel no one spoke Peter and Adrian said goodbye to Bella in the hallway they were to take an early flight the next morning so long farewell

she replied in a sing song voice I dare I dare to you and you and you Peter said come home soon Bella had arranged to spend a few extra days in Beijing before flying back to New York thinking

loneliness people might call it yet it was not loneliness that made her feel betrayed

“Peter had been an early friend in America made out of convenience when Bella first arrived”

but he turned out to be a rarity with a seemingly boundless memory he could recall with precision any episode from a friend's life and he had many friends if Bella had to write not a biography what a thin doll of all even that would be he would be her ghostwriter if she were to put her life on stage he would be her proctor but the ease of having her life stored in another person's memory had done little to help Bella on the strip Peter had become the wrong

accompaniment for Bella solo perhaps he and Adrian felt the same way about her what's wrong with China Bella said now this is still my home country you may not be an easygoing person Peter said

but you've always been fun here in China it's like you're stone to the wrong way

“so I'm a bore a contentious bore it had been a mistake to combine Adrian's research with her recovery holiday”

memory lane was barely wide enough for one traveler in the bathtub Bella home to herself of glad to go I cannot tell a lie I flit I float I flitly flee I fly to this day she can sing from beginning to end every song from the sound of music which she had to watch every Saturday afternoon for a year as a requirement for her high school English class it it's so second her that when the English club discusses putting on a stage reduction she threatened to quit

it was either Maria von Trapp or Bella and her classmates at chosen her oh English club the epitome of Bella's youth of course she had had a different name then but she had been Bella for the past 25 years legalized in America the name used for her passport for her marriage licenses

“and then for the divorce papers not though carved under parents grade stones”

both stones bore her Chinese name that of their only child Bella had not included her first

husband's name on her mother's grave stone her mother had given only lukewarm approval to the marriage when Bella's father died she was in her second marriage already seen cracks what she could have made enough for demand had she cared a little more she had been wise not to include a husband's name on either grave stone her parents could have been stuck for eternity with the consecutive ex sons and law though that possibility at this court it note that their marriage

known for its harmony would have had to endure posthumously entertained Bella in the Russian novels Bella had read in college English clubs hosted feasts and boasted of social status whereas the English club at her high school had merely collected a medley of students with various motivations and needs someone had to have access to the only type writer in the school and quite possibly in their lives or to the works of Charles Dickens Jane Austen,

Jack London and Ernest Hemingway among other writers which were available in the English clubs library others required extra tutoring from their teacher mischew and others chose it because unlike the science club or the mathematics club it was undermining a place to escape the heavy loan of schoolwork for a few hours Bella wanted to be near mischew there was a no other reason for Bella to be in the club which was beneath her in many ways and for which she had to tolerate the

English plays they staged she was always given the leading role no one questioned this she was

voted the school flower by the boys and on her given to the prettiest girl she spoke English better than anyone she had studied with a tutor since she was seven something unheard of among her schoolmates in Beijing in 1985 or Bella had wanted to play instead of red riding her to Cinderella was the little match girl matches matches please buy some matches or please buy some matches madam by a rose by a rose for your girlfriend but there have never been such a production the stories

do not have many roles or many lines even for the little match girl it was silly to perform very tales when the students were already in high school but most of her classmates did not speak in a English for more sophisticated work once they had ventured into the necklace by Mopasol and at a rehearsal Bella had watched with that hornets the boy who was playing her insignificant husband kick open an imaginary door Matilda he said has voice reminding Bella of an

inner tube hung at a bicycle repairman stand rubbery greasy intestine like Matilda my dear look what I have

party at the Ministry of Education it held a love poem from the boy de Bella contaminated she

“remembered the episode afterward the basement room with its buzzing fluorescent tubes a few chairs”

and curtains forming a makeshift stage and the boy's hands clasping hers part of the play too contaminated also were Bella's memories of high school the place the people the endless years but she was unfair her alma mater had received support from UNESCO and it served as a model school for foreign visitors it's cluster of marble white buildings poised like an aristocratic swan among gray alleyways and sprawling rundown water angles and Bella had been treated well by teachers

and students alike once a delegation of American politicians at tour the campus and Bella

assigned to accompany them with the headmistress had worn her favorite dress it's lavender color

matching the wasteria hanging over the pathway between the science building and the art building

“the delegation did their share of praising and the headmistress reciprocated with her share of”

appreciation Bella interpreting for the visitors believed for a brief moment that she could have anything all she needed was to walk but that blissful feeling was cut short by mischief who was walking across the lawn without casting even the most perfunctory glance of the visitors or a Bella what Bella had wanted was to be the little match girl hungry called forever backing and forever dying what she was with the opposite she had been raised in a family of stature

her father was a diplomat her mother and opera singer her maternal grandfather had been among the group of revolutionaries who established the Chinese Soviet Republic in the 1930s the only imperfection and others eyes more than in the families was that Bella was not connected to these people by blood her mother whose beauty and career were not to be destroyed by childberry had adopted a pretty baby girl from her home province at two the girl had been diagnosed in the parlance of the day

as deaf mute had been sent away not to her birth parents Bella had learned but with her nanny who had received a handsome sum of money for them to settle comfortably in the countryside Bella had come later another baby girl whose beauty was prominent and this truth

“like the story of the deaf mute had never been kept a secret from her”

a more sentimental heart would have experienced curiosity or sympathy for the girl whom she had replaced a more inventive mind would have seen herself as that deaf mute growing up in silence one time a distant cousin that Bella's grandfather had come to visit bringing with him his grand daughter who's Bella's age poor relatives Bella ten years old then instantly recognized a gentler soul would have formed a kind of kinship with the girl who is wearing a gray past

down blouse but Bella boss the girl around showing off her swish talklets her Japanese station area and her dress is made of silk and taffeta and velvet allowing the girl to touch the fabric with only one finger Bella would have tortured the deaf mute girl similarly except that the deaf mute even if she had been permitted to visit would not have understood anything Bella said to her perhaps Bella could have locked her in a closet would she have

banged on the door in panic or would she not knowing how to make a sound have waited quietly until her death once a rooftop party and keywast an old man had reminisced about an encounter years before over the boy who had been adopted to be the heir of a sion at the dinner he came and agreed everyone barely three years old and a white tuxedo I swear no boy could have been more perfect than him but the next year he was gone the reason the mother decided he wouldn't do

I've never forgotten him imagine for a year he was destined to be one of the richest people in the

country he didn't know Bella said true the man said still what a strange fate oh changelings of the world we go up and down the ladder and the circus called life and we are more entertaining and clowns more grotesque than freaks how dare Peter call her a bore Bella dried herself and put on a silk robe she uncorked a bottle of wine and thought of inviting Peter and Adrian over for a drink but they would decline saying they had to get up early

for their flight they might not even pick up the phone by the second glass Bella did not have

yet miss two would not notice the tiny bursting flying when Bella struck a match for her

“she would remain blind at the streak of light when Bella turned into a falling star”

what on earth had missed you become a wife a mother Bella sitting alone at breakfast the next day wandered miss two had been 27 when she was the advisor of the English club Bella 16 miss two would be close to 16 now old enough to be a mother a law the mathematics was disorienting Bella did not feel a moment of wistfulness with her own ageing she was the same person she had been at six or sixteen unchanged and unchangeable but other people would they stay loyal to

what her memory dictated they should be there had to be ways to find out from her school friends or perhaps by calling her high school but Bella hated to put herself in such a position whenever she traveled back to China she needed only to announce her visit and there would be plenty

“of friends and acquaintances ready to welcome her with a banquet or a tetatet this was the”

first time she had not let the news out she didn't want to see people exchanging knowing looks about her divorce she counted the days she had left avoid she'd have to fill by herself perhaps she should change her return flood of course it wasn't entirely true that Bella could

always play the homecoming queen there were people whom if she wanted to see them she would have to

seek out for instance pay pay they had been borders for three years at sunflower child care before going to elementary school their beds placed side by side in an opposite directions they had often when the teachers were not looking sneak to their hands through the rails and held each other's feet when they could not sleep they had been classmates until the first year of high school when pay

“pay discovered the man of her dreams their geography teacher Mr Wu for someone from a lesser background”

it would have been called a school girl crush but the power of pay pays passion matched that of her family Bella's grandfather had political prestige but pay pays had political influence when pay pay refused to accept any solution but a consummation of her love her grandfather had to summon Mr Wu through a secretary soon after that pay pay dropped out of school and Mr Wu stopped teaching a Cinderella Bella's mother commented and Bella wondered if an unwilling Cinderella

would make a wretched ending to a fairy tale Bella had always disdained pay pay little as she knew

others might disdain her but between pay pay and herself there was a fundamental difference pay pay had not left China did it been unnecessary she and her husband had their own fast food in hotel chains having made good use of their assets his handsomeness and his ability to discern and accept what could not be changed her pedigree Bella despite the fact that her road had been paved more smoothly than most people was on her own she had studied hard in ace to college in law school

she had overcome many hurdles to establish herself who in America would care that her grandfather was one of the founders of the Chinese Soviet Republic Bella's parents would have preferred that she stay in China they would have used their connections wisely on her behalf for that reason Bella had decided to immigrate what a waste her mother said a waste of what belasked your good looks her mother said and of course your good fortune Bella's good looks have been given to her by the people who had

conceived her she knew nothing of them but that they had had enough charity to not lower her into a tub of water like an unwanted kitten her good fortune have been given to her by her parents to throw it away was a gesture of ingratitude but by all means it's your life her mother said we aren't parents who would interfere Bella had not been particularly close to her mother but by middle school she had acquired enough sophistication to please her and they got along nicely as

two women who respected each other's beauty and brains Bella's father indulging her in an absent-minded manner did not have any real interest in her this Bella had understood and accepted what she was young as she had the story of the deaf mute her father was the kind of melancholy

man who would always be born into the wrong family married to the wrong wife settled in the wrong

profession and destined to die alone only after his death Bella's mother had been dead for four years by that had Bella wondered about her parents relationship the best marriage that once explained to Bella is one of which husband and wife treaty to others honored guests it was possible that

courteousness for so long that they had mistaken it for affection or warmth but even two guests

“living together for 50 years would have some secrets between them perhaps Bella could have”

understood them intuitively had she been their blood child in her own marriages the first to last

the 12 years the second five Bella had fared poorly as host to her husband guests your problem Peter had said after the second divorce is that you don't take yourself seriously I saw your eyes when you were walking down the aisle they snickered even though you kept your face straight with Paul Bella asked both times Peter said what do women do when they can't take them so seriously Bella asked that's not a question I can answer Peter said she wished he hadn't

taken the liberty of giving her a diagnosis without offering a cure both her ex-husbands had called her toxic she had to respect them for that but for not wanting to stay on and be poisoned she would have respected pay pay too if she had outgrown her obsession with Mr. Wu over the years Bella had successfully maintained the right distance between Mr. Wu and herself two clothes and pay pay would have felt jealous to remove pay pay would have felt slided on the half of her husband

a fondly pay pay could have an affair or better divorce her husband and send him tunneling back to the pool of conveners well she held on to the marriage with a kind of fairy tale loyalty what would Mr. Wu think of this passion which refused to die obsession that is outlived

“youth must be poisoned too perhaps that's what separates a lucky person from a locus one”

the lucky like Mr. Wu had to give up something essential in order to advance in the world

because a person of good luck could become a person of bad luck overnight the luckless like Bella or the deaf mute had no choice but to follow the path assigned to them the third lives had turned out differently was a mere accident unlike the other teachers at Bella's high school who had held permanent positions Mr. Wu had been hired on a contract that could be terminated at any time

the credential that had made Mr. Chu attracted to the school was that she had spent a year in Australia what connection it taken her there was not known to any student she had taught at Bella's school for only two years and after she quit there were rumors that she had returned to Australia Mr. Chu was not pretty her cheeks two chiseled had an unhealthy paler

“her eyebrows were constantly knitted and her eyes had a distracted and solemn luck”

if anything made her stand out it was a voice Bella from her experience with the students her mother had taken on as she grew older know that Miss Chu's voice had it been remedied with training would have become unique extraordinary even but nobody seemed to have put any work or imagination into it so it had an unpleasant quality like a piece of half-use stamp paper

it's coarseness uneven Miss Chu made little effort to hide her irritation when her students functioned at any level below her expectation yet who other than Bella could have met her demands

it was in the English club that Bella had first encountered Dom McLean in DH Lawrence

the music of the former with the soundtrack of Miss Chu's mood which she sat in the trance even the chatty's girl or the needy's boy knew to leave her alone then the work of the louder Miss Chu read aloud to them the rocking horse winner and then the princess and finally the fox was she read several times no doubt her favorite sometimes when Miss Chu went on reading for too long Bella's clubmates brought out worksheets and

math or physics or chemistry a liar is playing to a herd of cows masticating their own ignorance Bella often thought solace they were solously they treated Miss Chu Bella wanted Miss Chu to know that she understood the indifference they both had to endure she wanted Miss Chu to suffer less because she was suffering with her yet Miss Chu treated Bella with more sarcasm than

she treated the other students do not act like a drunken mouse she had managed to bella when at her rehearsal she tauded on in a pair of heels unfit slippers for an unethousiastic Cinderella but at this moment Cinderella is overwhelmed by happiness Bella argued then she's an imbecile to feel that way Miss Chu said and please stop widening your eyes like a three-year-old

was there an English teacher by that name? Pippa said I have no recollection your eyes could only see one teacher back then Bella said and your princess eyes can't put up with a grain of dust pay pay answered which is why I can't keep a husband Bella said her divorce rather than being bad news

even the most superficial tie could take permanent hold if it lasted for 40 years do you realize that only for you would I rearrange my business meetings at such short notice pay pay it said the moment she walked into the restaurant do you realize no one else would count your toes hundreds of times as I did? Bella had replied

“what about the teacher? Pippa asked now why are you looking for her?”

I'm not just curious what has become over you always fuss over this or that random person

when you go into outgrowth childishness Bella said she had no idea what pay pay was talking about all the time Pippa said remember when we used to take turns acting deaf and mute until the teacher's band that came at sunflower? Bella asked she did not remember the game in a powder that she had left such a sentimental episode in Pippa's memory when did you learn about the girl? I don't think it was ever a secret

Pippa said and after that game we pretended to be each other's nanny you said you were my altissue and I was your auntie land Bella knew of the existence of auntie land only from a few childhood pictures

she had stopped working for the family when Bella began boarding at sunflower

had she ever missed the woman who would become the only mother known to her had Bella been deemed flawed that the deaf mute was before her? Bella was surprised the pay pay like Peter remembered more about her life than she herself did friends like them gave her permission to forget but they also some of the memories that unpredictable or inconvenient moments Pippa said she would ask around about misto

Bella was certain that Pippa would help her they were each other's hostage and no ransom could rescue them from a shared past but mutual loyalty who else would remember Pippa's despair at 15 and what she held a finger to a lit match until the flame scorched her who else would recall the deaf mute a reminder that Bella had been a replacement for an imperfect product

two days later Pippa texted Bella the new name that misto was going by and the organization that she worked for once a teacher now preacher was Pippa's accompanying message Bella who had chosen her English name the moment she landed in an America found

“it ridiculous that misto needed a new Chinese name but did she think she was a celebrity?”

Bella tapped the link for the organization a non-profit advocating for LGBT rights the website listed misto as the organization's co-founder there was an audio clip of an interview she had given to a media company a list of her public appearances and blog posts signed by

her the most recent focus on a new log in domestic violence the first of its current in China

which excluded protections for victims and same-sex relationships there was no picture of misto on the website nor did a search of her new name healed in image elsewhere Bella wanted to see misto's face she wanted it to remain the same as she remembered but seeing it altered by time would bring some vindictive pleasure too faceless misto had denied Bella access she considered texting Pippa I thought your omnipotence would have arranged a dinner meeting for me by now

but what was the point of attacking Pippa? Bella played the audio clip misto's voice had not changed much though there was something different a further than it not been there before or perhaps it was simply liveliness misto discussed the grassroots effort led by her organization and some holes and interviews conducted within the LGBT community in response to the government's claim that there was no evidence of domestic violence and homosexual

relationships why is it important to you that the law recognized domestic violence and same-sex relationships the reporter a woman softening her tone in the disingenuous understanding ask when members of a heterosexual relationship outside of marriage the so-called cohabiting relationship are protected by the law while those in the same-sex relationship are not the exclusion raises questions about the legal rights we have as a community but why is it important to you personally

“have you experienced domestic violence? yes can you tell our audience more about that?”

Bella found the reporters questions in vain and misto's willingness to cooperate to stay useful it was 30 years ago I was young and I was ashamed of our relationship with another woman in our time it was called a mental illness defined as such a medical textbooks I did not know anything about domestic violence either the interview went on giving a few more details of an inexperienced woman confusing control with love compliance with devotion same-hole story

Bella thought and when the conversation turned to statistics in case studies she stopped listening

the latter had had a heart made of polished ice which and viable and immovable had long ago absorbed

“what warmth could be found in Bella's blood this stranger talking about her activism and”

revealing her personal life was a sham looking for purpose and solace in the wrong place mistakenly she thought she had found them in a just cause that basement room Bella wished she could be there now to study mistue and herself again at mistue watching the falling dusk through the narrow window near the ceiling been reliving the sorted pain another person that inflicted on her body

has she been searching for meaning and her suffering what she listened to Dawn McLean when she watched Bella's rehearsals with derision or when she dismissed Bella's attentiveness with unceying eyes was she refraining from doing harm or was she familiar with conquest and surrender relishing her power those who allow themselves to be hurt in the name of love but

“understand better than anyone that desire to hurt the hunter of the fox hunted by the fox”

Bella remembered falling under DH Lauren to spell while listening to mistue her voice almost beautiful when she herself fell under that same spell the story should be made into a stage play

why had that never occurred to Bella no doubt mistue would have scoffed her request

but Bella who lived with a will to overwrite other people's wills would not have needed her grandfather to summon mistue through a secretary she would have insisted to mistue that they play the two women in the story Bella would be the unattractive and neurotic bandford she wouldn't mind playing an unappealing role and mistue would play the other woman march and doubt for the duration of the performance

with a beauty that she had not been born with

“Bella would be killed by the end someone always asked to be in a Lawrence story”

she wouldn't mind that either because her death would leave mistue in a permanent trance why not if PayPal was right that everything was a game of pretend for Bella she could be the deaf mute she could be the fox bewitching mistue she could make up epic tales as Adrian did in imagining his ancestors Adrian was still confined by geography and family Bella had no such limits

everything could be hers men and women days and nights the stars in the sky the eternal flame in the hands of the little matchgirl make belief was her genealogy the high school had an observatory that was open a few times a year the students outside the science club and once Bella had gone there with some friends she did not recall which stars or planets they were supposed to see that night

but after the teacher left a boy from the science club in order to impress Bella

had turned the telescope toward one of the first high rises in the city

and found an uncurtoned window a man and a woman they're back to the window were watching a soap opera the actress crying unabashedly the room with a marriage in it with a drama on screen was pulled so close to Bella's eyes that for a moment when the boy touched her elbow timourously she did not bother to shake him off she could still see the space between the man and the woman they were sitting at opposite

ends of the sofa leaning on the armrest she could even see the piece of crochet placed on top of the television blue and white 30 years ago a television set had been a luxury that a woman dedicated to housekeeping would have decorated with fine need to work Bella wished that the telescope had brought into her sight that night missed you and her lover instead of the insipid couple affection and aggression passion and pain Bella wished she had seen it all

between the two women but she had been to a young one she met missed you and she had arrived too late to know the deaf mute timing had made them the unattainable in her life and the unattainable what she could neither damage nor destroy lived on as wounds even now if she called the organization and demanded to speak to missed you what could she say faceless to miss you Bella would only be a voice on the line that could be cut off at any moment

she would be the girl on a street corner forever striking matches forever reaching for a different world in the small flame would she turned into a falling star miss two herself another girl striking matches on another street corner will not even sense the vacancy left by Bella's absence that was Brian Washington reading a small flame by E and Lee the story was published in the

I'm Allen and I'm Sean and together we host the Prancing Pony podcast every week I explore

“Middle Earth with Sean or with other co-hosts late late with in-depth analysis and plenty of”

nerd humor from the Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings and more it's a great way for first

timers to experience J.R.R. Tolkien's captivating world and for longtime fans it's a deep dive into their favorite stories so if you're ready to take the next step into the most beloved world in fantasy literature and become a part of a vibrant active community of listeners then look for the Prancing Pony podcast wherever you listen. So Brian the story opens with the scene of the young girl selling roses as Bella and Peter come out of a restaurant and Bella finds her sort of irritating

or you know wants to want to stop her sort of improtuning them so she buys all of the roses and then throw them in a bush and this little girl instead of going home as she's told to

do retrieve them so that she can sell them for a second time. Why do you think the story begins that

way? It's so fascinating because in many ways it's something that you know I feel like I've been very fortunate to take from you and this particular narrative is the ability to display much of who a character is to display much of the challenges that the reader will be privy to over the course of a relatively short scene in which direct action is taking place. There's not a lot of exposition in this particular scene but we see Bella as someone who exists in one way in English as

she is interacting with Peter and then interacting with Adrian. We see how Bella is interacting

with the girl and we see Bella's frustration in and with narrative in a lot of ways. We see how she

exists in one set of narrative rules and how she tries to impart that on the little girl and this

“girl is just rejection of that narrative or this rejection of what I believe Bella thinks that”

she's supposed to be doing or how she's supposed to react or this gratitude earned or otherwise that she's the post to show. Really I think elucidates the struggle and the turn that we are privy to from Bella as it relates to the rest of her relationships over the course of the narrative as an opening I just think it's just really, really masterful. I mean obviously the little match girl is very important in the story and with this girl in some way relates to her, though she's quite different from the

little match girl and perhaps it's in that way that she sort of resists the narrative that Bella is putting on her. Yeah it's really fascinating right because it's something that I just so admire over the course of the story is that he and she splits time which is not that in herself is not terribly remarkable like there are many authors who are able to like split time over the course of an narrative which is to say that we get the sort of present tense timeline in which Bella is wrapping

up much of this trip really before she finds a new tangent or a new fixation as opposed so to speak in mischew and you know as far as page time is concerned it's a parallel timeline but as far as a story time is concerned this other timeline where we get a little bit more concretely from

“the narrative voice who Bella is or rather not even who she is I think that that is also kind of”

like a bit of a roots that you in it utilizing but more how she came to be more concretely how she came to be but it's it's really only I think for me as a reader through the corporation of both this sort of present tense timeline as we see Bella in China behaving one way and this these prior timelines where we see her upbringing with her adoptive family where we see the formation of a person that she experienced as a much younger person that we began to like have a sense I think of who

Bella may be and even that again sort of subverted by the end of the story so just like having many different iterations whether it is this girl that we see from the outside of this idea of

back to China like having all of these narratives running in parallel of who Bella is supposed to be

or who she could be or even perhaps who she is at different moments is again like not something

“that I think the author like calls attention to he and just does it she just shows it she allows”

the story to exist and lives so that by the time we come away from the narrative I think that each of us has like a pretty clear sense of who this woman is and I suppose where do you think her starting point is I mean we have we we have the childhood she's adopted more or less as a

baby she doesn't know her her biological parents she's raised in this family with of

stature that doesn't care all that much about her she's adopted because she's cute the previous adopted baby was also cute but then turned out to be deaf so it was sent away and she put into an environment where there's not a lot of love but there's a lot of wealth and power and in the midst of that environment she longs to be this homeless barefoot little girl in the cold on a street

“corner trying to sell matches so why do you think that is I think this would sit maybe”

try to purchase the question and and and to component I think that her start for me

narratively or when I began to have the inkling of an understanding of how the woman that we see in this opening scene became who she is this connection between our introduction to her and our introduction to her upbringing was the appearance of mischew so much of an in-bell is up bringing following her adoption seems and many ways predetermined seems in many ways at least surface level stable seems and in many ways is quite different from the narrative or the idea the little match girl

or the narrative or the idea of the little girl selling flowers on the side of the road mischew she still can't seem to be bothered so her seeming disdain for her students mischews her seeming in

“different toward Bella that I think in this particular moment might be the closest that she's able”

to garner to the disdain or to the indifference in this narrative of a little match girl or in this narrative of someone who has been discarded that she has been privy to like to have this adult in her life who seemingly does not care whether she lives or dies who seemingly does not care that she exists to seemingly only is tolerant of her because she is on a temporary contract and she needs to be that seems really fascinating really enticing to Bella which in and of itself like

is a little bit juvenile but that it creates I think for me as a reader a moment of just like tangible humaneness for Bella and to have it appear you know this late in the narrative after having seen this woman who is pretty tough at the outset and you know the present timeline to see the circumstances in which she came to be which are themselves very tough and very specific ways like to have this moment of just sort of like object notice me please like you know please notice me

is just a really fascinating turn but also a really difficult needle to thread like if if if you and Lee weren't you and Lee I don't think that this would have been executed in a way that it feels seamless as far as a progression is concerned at a structural level but also at a thematic level yeah I mean it's fascinating to watch the young Bella you know her mother's not very interested in her her father's really kind of uninterested in her so she doesn't have loving

attention at school she has sort of adulation she has boys who discussed her you know what a touch her hand her love notes but that's again not loving attention and she sees Miss Chu and Miss Chu also ignores her and doesn't pay attention so I wonder what is it do you think that

Bella is very aware that she will never gain that approval I think that Bella knows that she is

nothing to offer Miss Chu there's nothing that she can provide tangibly to gain her favor or to gain her attention you know there's nothing that she can provide emotionally to gain her favor to gain her attention nothing that Bella can provide structurally in order to access this woman and I think that that is what makes her just inherently attractive to her to have an object of desire even if it's only emotional desire or the idea of desire or sort of like narrative of desire you know

like it is unlikely that Bella at a certain point will be you know the little match girl it is unlikely that Bella will fight herself in moments of just sort of like dire straight so though even Ian seems to undercut that later with like this line the like perhaps

“that's what separates like a lucky person from like a luckless one the lucky like Mr. Wu had to”

give up something essential in order to advance in the world because a person of good luck

could become a person of bad luck overnight but it doesn't really seem to me at least as a reader that there is a moment after her adoption where Bella is in a position to become the person of bad luck overnight and a lot of boys her bad luck stems from her attraction to this woman who she has nothing to offer in just like a thing another really grand structural decision and like we we move from you know these graphs about Mr. Chu that that appear seemingly suddenly like

as a reader in the middle of the narrative to the first you know line of dialogue in the next

section from paper is like was there an English teacher by that name I have no recollection so that

really really solidifies the background nature of this woman missed you to seemingly everyone else in Bella's life but even that is like kind of a romantic notion right for there to be someone in one's life that you have a fixation toward even if it isn't you know necessarily explicitly

“romantic or sexual that is a really powerful thing and I think that can also be like a really”

dangerous thing and we see a sort of a danger of creating a narrative out of someone else that doesn't belong to them in Bella's fixation with this woman over the course of decades over the course of you know the passage of countries it's just really I still don't know what to make of it and they think that I think you've not in itself it's like a structural decision. I mean the way I read the beginning is you know the issue of genealogy is all important

and because she's there with Adrian who's tracking down his is one root in China and she talks about how she has no roots she has no genealogy which makes her and in her words a weed whose existence is of consequence to no one but weed killers and you can feel her grasping around for some kind of root and what she comes up with is mist you that is the root holding her to China in a way. Yes yeah it's just you only it's like making you know these sort of like

subtle turns like we're introduced to this girl on the side of the road who has a role to play as far as like the narrative of the world is concerned we see Peter who exists in his own narrative

“right Peter is Adrian's boyfriend and Adrian is Peter's boyfriend like that's how we're introduced”

to them. We're introduced to you know Bella's adoptive parents like they have their own narrative we we spend like a good deal of time on Adrian's just sort of like history the French Canadian who's great grandfather had been among the Chinese laborers who collected bodies and that graves on the western front in 1918 and Adrian is a writer which has a doubt in short of this was narrative attendance all these people that were introduced to over the course of

fan narrative like they they belong to someone or they belong to a sort of narrative at least like they slot somewhere in a fashion that Bella seems to understand or at least is able to convince herself that she understands and to have you know someone like Miss Chu who is she doesn't really slot cleanly into a particular narrative partly because of her literal inaccessibility for much

moment or you know she's asking like what on earth had Miss Chu become like a wife or mother. Bella

sitting alone at breakfast the next day wondered it doesn't seem like Bella is wondering about the outcome of very many other people in her life so so to have have this person who is just

“inaccessible and more ways than one creates distance sure but like in that distance I think Bella”

attempts to place herself to place emotions to place preconceptions or under otherwise of who she is and how she can be and how she fits in the world in that space of just sort of no ability which is very human in this particular context it's a bit sad and it becomes sour yes

a narrative progresses in like a mournful way like in a really honest way and perhaps that's another

reason that I'm just so taken by this story and that it's a very specific mournfulness that doesn't call attention to itself right like I think if an author were to say you know I'm going to write a story about someone who doesn't know who she is and it's looking for that person and other people that would not be particularly attractive but to have the many different layers of narrative that he unutilizes here in order to guide us there on our own without ever really stating it we just

sort of see Bella just sort of be miserable and you know think about this woman that she really didn't

spend very much time with at all and then we realize that oh you know this is her life you know this

is one way to spend one's life just sort of like narrativeizing others in an attempt or because of a lack of a narrative for oneself or a perceived knock of narrative just really high bar has far as like a it's was work is concerned and just really devastating I think as far as narrative is concerned yeah I mean there's a way in which Bella as a girl very much identifies with this too as you've said everyone else is part of something larger whether it's a couple or the class she's standing

out she's Bella's a loner she doesn't fit in she doesn't want to fit in and Miss Chu is also you know walking by herself across the quad paying no attention to other people but then you know in the present time she finds out that Miss Chu was in relationship with a woman particularly destructive relationship and so that sense of identifying with someone else who's alone I think

“is a little bit threatened at that moment and perhaps that's do you think that's why she has a kind”

of negative reaction to hearing Miss Chu's voice and thinking about what she was going through at the time that she knew her yeah so I started listening that's one reason as as a reader I honestly think you could have been any I think that any I think if the moment that this narrative that Bella created for Miss Chu that was solidified with distance that was solidified with unattainability that was solidified with ignorance ignorance and the sense of just simply not

knowing the moment that she could see concretely that oh Miss Chu is not a narrative she's a person and not only she's a person she's a person with a new name right like she's she does she's not

“she's she's missed you and Bella's mind seemingly only within the context of this narrative I think”

that it's underlined by the fact that she's working for this non-profit for LGBT rights specifically like in existence that is seemingly just quite far from Bella's own in this particular moment it's underlined I think by the fact that she's talking about Miss Chu when we see her struggles that are very much like her life evidence of the fact that you know she's a living breathing person with her own struggles that exist outside of Bella's preconception of who she is or

could be like really a significant struggles but Bella doesn't have access to those and perhaps more significantly within the context of this narrative she really doesn't care because they don't align or exist with the silence of the effigy you know the sort of unattainability that you know

whether that is just sort of like narrative on unattainability this person looks and seems so interesting so I can spend my life wondering what I am to them and how I exist in the context of this world in the moment that we realize that oh this is this is a person too this is a person who

“exists among other people that attractiveness is void but what's really fascinating here and I think”

the what to me at least that that really is something I returned to is is that she doesn't just

Bella just doesn't really just cast her off entirely you know like she she finally figured it out

what became of this woman she finally figures out the oh you know she was navigating significant challenges you know she figures out where she is now to an extent and what she's doing to an extent and she returns to mischew you know like we don't even get this woman's the the name that she utilizes now like her name something is like concrete is a name something is significant you know to a person is who a person is and as their name we we don't get that for Bella we get mischew and she exists has

mischew for the duration of the time that we spend with Bella and presumably for the duration of Bella's life which I think is is another one of the great scientists that we're pretty too yeah

well it's it's also true that Bella changed her name and we never hear her Chinese name

you know her only as Bella which is an interesting choice of a name for this yeah what she chose Bella I think you and Lee is very good at her job I think that's I think

“that's why we can Bella you know it's there is a fairy tale like quality to”

unattainability there is I think even in the idea of Bella like there's an narrative there you know for good or for ill you know we hear Bella like we hear you know we hear you know we hear fantasy to an extent we hear like this idea of growth like if someone who is just sort of like waiting to blossom like what only blossom could only blossom when the right circumstances like appear

and but they but they never do appear so you know she just sort of this beautiful entity locked

in stasis adopted for being beautiful yes yes yes for that yes there's another context actually I've that we and talked about in the Q&A she did about the story with the crystallization who's her editor here she mentioned that she started writing this story in November of 2016 which was a sad month in two ways one one being the election results and the other being the fact that the writer William Trevor died I'm William Trevor probably the most important

writer in Ian's own development and she chose I'm sure she chose the name Bella for many reasons but one of them was because of a character named Belle in the William Trevor story the piano tuners wives and Belle I don't know if you've read that story Belle is a character who's been in love with someone her whole life he married someone else broke her heart and then when his his first wife dies he married Belle and if she finally gets what she wants she spends the whole marriage

trying to damage the memory of the first wife trying to undo his feelings for his first wife

“and you know we have we have Bella in the story being called toxic at some point and I think Belle”

would have been called toxic if if William Trevor had written that story now but she said that the word he uses is damage the damage she does and I I've thought a lot about that word use and the difference between the two stories because damage implies you know you're you're damaged by someone or something and toxicity is kind of inborn and inherent which do you think which you think is best or most appropriate for Bella do we think she's just a toxic character do we think

she's been damaged? I think that the magic of Ian Lee's precision and craft is such that Bella is someone who presents as toxic but in learning of how she came to be we see the various damages that she navigated I think that something that I admire particularly thinking of this as a story that is written as like a minty like to take a narrative from your mentor at a deeply challenging time I understand that she wrote this quite quickly this story came together like we're

connection can be seen but one which furthers the conversation or rather more concretely furthers the

question of how can a person become who they are and to what extent is our understanding of the forces and entities that form the change or sense of who they are in the present tense that's a sticky question that's a tricky question that's one that is presented from seeing the scene from section to section but it's presented in narrative this question of damage to this it's presented in narrative this question of toxicity the question of how toxicity can form from you know a place

“that in many ways is not toxic in and of itself you know just it is in in some way I think it is”

very much like a love story or sort of doomed love story certainly but very much a love story between

Bella and if not miss to specifically the idea of miss to like a miss to and so that for me as a reader becomes the point of connection that Bella has in this narrative you know Peter and Adrian you know they have each other her parents had each other her husbands had her for a little while but they labeled her toxic and you know their situations changed even paper has again her own narrative and and Bella's narrative is continually you know caught between this idea of a little

match girl and this idea of miss to and so we have a character who you know is in love with narrative

“in a lot of ways like his in love with with ideas but with nothing concrete to attach them to”

it becomes quite a sad situation yeah there's a very sad moment that towards the end of the story where she Bella sort of equates miss to and the the death child she replaced you know she had been too young when she met miss to and she had arrived too late to know the death mute timing had made them the unattainable in her life and the unattainable which she could neither damage nor destroy lived on as wounds so the fact that these these two people these two characters were the

ones that might have made her different but they were just out of reach because one existed before her and then was removed the others to hold for her she's too young for her and she just can't

“get there she can't go back she can't go forward so she's she's stuck without them and there's kind of”

that just it turned a loneliness for her with her you know no roots yeah it's it's rough you know and this this idea narratively of you know what is you know it's sad things that happen or sad you know devastating even what might have been is horrifying and interestingly you know you're talking about the many narratives here we have we have some other concrete narratives at play of course there's a little match girl there's Cinderella there is unspoken the William

Trevor story and there's also DH Lawrence's the Fox which's another interesting story and it

is story about two women running a farm together soon after the first World War who are you know

on probably unspokenly in a in a romantic relationship and a Fox comes in and keeps killing the chickens and they can't one of them become sort of fascinated by it then a man arrives kills the Fox and marries one of the women and steals her away from the other one and this being mischews favorite story tells tells us a lot but it's also you know the story that Bella fantasizes about appearing in a dramatic version of it with mischew which is very strange many levels of

strangeness yeah yeah it's it's a bunch of levels of strangeness in this particular story like we really do see that you know these characters specifically but just us our lives generally are formed of narratives that are not necessarily our own herit or her narratives that exist in a continuum that you know we by way of timing as Ian writes here by way of luck good or bad find ourselves stuck in in some cases perhaps in Bella's case moving through or able to

allow perhaps in pay-based case are able to just sort of like navigate and go in a way that makes

know sort of a very mysterious place which I think is is the space that Bella is occupying here

“like really searching for her own narrative in a lot of ways in just really coming up short”

in a fashion that disappoints in a fashion that saddens but in an ability to elucidate an narrative doesn't eliminate you know the present tense you know Bella still exists in the present tense even if she can't attach that to an error of and one would imagine that that's quite a challenging thing yeah she hasn't she hasn't yet managed to die and become a shooting star yeah and when we end on that very sad note that even if she

did missed you wouldn't notice because she'd be on another corner selling her own matches yeah it's really horrible it's really terrible but it doesn't feel at least to me as a

reader like the first time I read a story I'm never going to read this again I don't like how this

made me feel like I don't know what this woman was thinking which he wrote this but you know she they they need to you know put it in a bottle and like put it away because she she knows too much to be putting things out on paper just the little organization of the narrative holds many different kinds of emotional weight and they grow but they also shift and change and accumulate so that for me at least by the time that I reached the end of the narrative on my very first read and most recently

my recent reads my understanding of how they came to be at the line level has certainly shifted but their validity the presence of the emotion has not changed it is still for me as a reader just as

“impactful as when I first came across this story because it's true I think it is very difficult”

to write a thing that is honest in the way that you and Lee has accomplished here yeah I've been thinking about the counterfactual narrative in the story which is that of of PayPal Mr. Wu which is very annoying to to bella because it was a fairy tale it was a Cinderella story and the fairy tale supposed to end with the marriage they're not supposed to continue on and continue this fixation and obsession and love and so on and and PayPal Mr. Wu persist in being married and

being together paper persists and loving him and refuses to divorce you know she has no reason to divorce so frustrating to bella I don't know if it's frustrating to bella because it's something that she wants like if she it's something that she there's frustration in her recognition that

“she doesn't have that and it would be quite difficult for her there's some changes that would”

have to happen in her life as a person for her to acquire that that is frustrating or if it's frustrating because it doesn't align with her comfort and the status of narrative for a sort of like stasis of Mr. as an idea or like even if there's you know a lot of mystery to be generous in her sense of who Mr. is there was comfort in that mystery like there's comfort in knowing that you know I don't know the answer to who this person is or what they could be but they could be this I could be that there's

like a lot of comfort in not knowing other can be comfort in not knowing because you can fill it up you know you can fill the vase up whatever it is that you want to but once we see that you know the vase is not a vase it's a person with their own autonomy with their own narrative that that's not as attractive you know that's that that doesn't align with the idea of fantasy that doesn't align with the idea of stasis it's a narrative that keeps going and it exists in and of itself

despite well as best attempts at control or well as best attempts to define herself inside of it and that that too is sadness and another self right like the realization that you no longer exist in

someone's narrative or perhaps in this particular case that you never exist in someone else's narrative

it is so far away from you that you know not only is it not going to happen it was never possible let's really sad yeah it is really sad but on the other hand it's what Bella clings to this idea that missed you will never actually acknowledge her will never care about her she almost wants that she she doesn't call her because she doesn't want to be wrong about this what if missed you said oh Bella so nice to hear from you know what if she did remember it's it's almost like

a kind of love story too you know it's a it's a it's a regrettable one perhaps but there there

“there is a kind of love in this sort of doomedness of unattainability yeah well thank you so much Brian”

oh yeah thank you so much to the joint it's up to you it's a joint it's hard oh yeah it's hard E and Lee has published eight books of fiction including the novels must I go and the book of

goose a winner of the Penn Faulkner Award for fiction and the story collection Wednesday's child

“which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024 her nonfiction work things in nature merely”

grow was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2025 Brian Washington a winner of the Young Lion's Fiction Award is the author of the story collection lot and the novels memorial family meal

and Palava which was also a finalist for the National Book Award in 2025 you can download more than

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Hi I'm David Remnick editor of the New Yorker at this year's Academy Awards Timothy Shalamey and Tiana Taylor aren't the only major nominees the New Yorker will be there too with two nominated short films which you can watch at New Yorker.com/video two people exchanging Saliva was executive produced by Julian Moore and Isabelle O'Pare and it's set in a dystopian Paris where kissing is illegal our animated short film retirement plan follows a man as he dreams about all the things he's going

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