Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Novel (39 page)

Kai said, “Comrade Sparrow’s work is a model of what this new music might be.”

The official nodded. To Sparrow he said, “You’re fortunate to have such an admirer, aren’t you?”

Above them, the ceiling fan spun, making a sound that was both monotonous and numbing.

An array of Front Gate, Hatamen, and State Express 555 cigarettes, as well foreign brands Sparrow had never seen, were arranged on a celadon platter. He sampled the Davidoff and the Marlboro, and the cigarettes left an unanticipated taste, of sweetness or sharpness, on his lips.

The official motioned Kai to the piano. Kai sat down, thought for a moment and then played, from memory, a piano transcription of Beethoven’s “Eroica.” The segments he played had been re-ordered and soldered together in ways that made Sparrow feel as if the music were being composed in this very moment or, more accurately, being dismantled. The word eroica, Sparrow said, turning to the official, means “heroic.” The man raised his glass. “To Comrade Beethoven, our revolutionary brother!”

“To our glorious Revolution,” Sparrow answered.

During the slow adumbration of the second movement, the funeral march, the official’s eyes ran with tears.

How had he never noticed, Sparrow thought tipsily, just how deeply music could lie? The smoothness of all the facades–not only of the apartment, but of everyone in the room and perhaps Beethoven himself–mesmerized him.

“Conductor Li Delun has asked specifically for you,” the official said. He was speaking to Kai with a calculating look in his eyes. “He says you’re the most gifted pianist at the Shanghai Conservatory. Your class background is exemplary.”

The ceiling fan let off squeaking, high-pitched whistles. The sounds made tiny cuts in the air. “
Let the rooms be full of guests,” the official recited drunkenly, “and the cups be full of wine. That is what I desire.”

After dinner, when the official had dismissed them, Sparrow went with Kai to his room, the same room where they had once met with the Professor, the Old Cat, San Li and Ling.

“There are opportunities, Sparrow,” Kai said. They were lying side by side, only the tips of their fingers touching. “The Conservatory is closed but the Central Philharmonic is protected by Madame Mao. Let them protect us. In Beijing, things will be different…Are you writing?” Sparrow shook his head. “We can’t stop living our lives,” Kai said. The words seemed to disintegrate as soon as they touched the air. “We can’t.”

We, Sparrow thought. We. He could not even say the word aloud.

“Remember what I told you?” Kai said. “My parents and sisters had no one to turn to. They came from a village that was considered less than nothing. I won’t go through that again. I won’t disappear. I refuse.”

That night, Sparrow was kept awake by a bright seam of light beneath Kai’s door. Kai’s hand across his stomach was heavy, damp, and he covered it with his own. The things he felt could no longer be disowned. And yet they were not the same. They had come from such different worlds and aspired to different conditions, and the fear that drove Kai did not drive him. Panic welled up in him. He tried to control his breathing, to make it quiet. He and his father had not been able to give Zhuli a proper funeral. Prokofiev, at least, had gotten a recording and fake flowers. The authorities had taken Zhuli’s body while Sparrow and his father stood by. No, they had not stood by. He and his father had praised the Chairman, the Party and the nation. They’d had no choice but, still, they had performed disturbingly well, as if words and music were only ever about repetition, as if one could just as easily play Bach as repeat the words of Chairman Mao. Pride and mastery, victory and sorrow, the orchestral language had given Sparrow a deep repertoire of feeling. But scorn, degradation, disgust, loathing, what about those emotions? What composer had written a language for them? What listener cared to hear it?

Zhuli was sitting on the edge of the mat, so alive it seemed as if he and Kai were the illusion. “Haven’t you understood yet, Sparrow?” she said. He asked her what in this world a mere sound could accomplish. She said, “The only life that matters is in your mind. The only truth is the one that lives invisibly, that waits even after you close the book. Silence, too, is a kind of music. Silence will last.” In the west, in the dry wind of the Gansu Desert, Big Mother and Swirl had finally recovered Wen the Dreamer. He stared at the illusion before him and wept.

The words shàng xī tiān (上西天) mean to “to go to the Western sky” or “to ascend to the Western heavens,” that is, to pass beyond the western border of the Great Wall, to leave this country, to let go of this life, to die and pass away. Zhuli had not been able to wait for him. She had gone ahead to find another beginning. The idea of quiet terrified him. Sparrow wanted to follow her, but even despite the promise of an ending, of freedom, this was the life he couldn’t leave behind.

—

In November, Kai left Shanghai and was appointed soloist at the Central Philharmonic in Beijing. The whereabouts of the Professor remained unknown and Sparrow dared not visit the Old Cat, Ling or San Li. He had heard that in the middle of a struggle session, the Conservatory’s resident conductor, Lu Hongwen, had taken a copy of
Quotations of Chairman Mao
and ripped the book into pieces. A Red Guard had immediately put a pistol to his face and shot him. Since August, ten faculty and eight students had died.

The year 1967 arrived, and the Conservatory remained closed. Still, Sparrow was summoned to a meeting. The meeting turned out to be solely for him. Yu Hui, the new leader of Sparrow’s work unit, had taken over He Luting’s office and redecorated it with a dozen posters of Mao Zedong and a half dozen of Madame Mao in various costumes. Yu, also a composer, had a long face that reminded Sparrow of asparagus. He seemed to take pleasure in telling Sparrow that he was being reassigned to a factory in the southern suburbs.

“May I ask what kind of factory, Comrade Yu?”

“I believe you will be making wooden crates.”

Yu Hui stood up from his desk. His face seemed to grow even longer.

Sparrow felt the eyes of a dozen Chairman Maos examining him. “When will I be transferred?”

“I am preparing your file as we speak. Be patient, we will inform you in due time.”

“Will I be allowed to compose again?”

Yu Hui smiled, as if embarrassed on Sparrow’s behalf, that he could ask such a naive question. “You know the saying:
The time has come to re-string your bow
.” He laughed at his own joke. “You’re not the only one who must reform and start again. But tell me, is it really true you turned down a position at the Central Philharmonic?”

“I was not worthy of the offer.”

Yu Hui smiled once more. He fluttered his hand lazily, dismissing him.

Sparrow walked out of the Conservatory and onto Fenyang Road. The intensity of the sun bled the street of colour, so that the bicycles and occasional truck seemed to vanish into the white curtain of the horizon.

At home, Da Shan had arrived unexpectedly from Zhejiang and was seated at the kitchen table, writing denunciations on long sheets of butcher paper. When Sparrow entered, his brother looked up, brush in his hand suspended, before looking down and continuing:
The most fundamental task of the Cultural Revolution is to eliminate the old ideology and culture, which was fostered by the exploiting class for thousands of years. Counter-revolutionaries like Wen the Dreamer will inevitably distort, resist, attack and oppose Mao Zedong thought. They appear to be human beings but are beasts at heart, they speak the human language to your face but behind your back they
…Sparrow retreated to the tiny balcony on the second floor. In the lane, a grandmother was washing her grandchild in a metal tub, and the child cooed happily. The sound lifted Sparrow from his
thoughts. He still had three cartons of Hatamen cigarettes, sent by Kai from Beijing. The cigarettes, so difficult to obtain, were as valuable as a fistful of ration coupons, perhaps more. He smoked one now, reverently; these Hatamen afforded him the greatest pleasure of his day.

In the kitchen, Ba Lute was rereading Big Mother Knife’s most recent letter.
Do you take me for a fool? Tell me what has happened
.

The envelope contained two further letters, addressed to Zhuli from her parents. So they had found Wen, Ba Lute thought. But was a miracle still a miracle if it came too late? He took out his lighter, lit the pages and dropped them into the brazier. “Nine lives, one death,” he said, reciting an old saying, watching the paper curl simultaneously away from and into the flames. “Nine lives, one death.”

Da Shan set his brush down. The poster was already four feet long. Looking up the staircase, his eyes met Sparrow’s, and the boy’s face flickered with emotion. Sparrow recognized grief, fear, remorse. The boy was a teenager and aspired to be an architect, but the red scarf of the Young Pioneers was knotted firmly around his neck and ink had roughened his hands.
If you want to be an architect, you should go to Tiananmen Square
, Sparrow thought.
You should see the head, the hands, the feet, the heart, the lungs. You should stand in the middle of the Square and listen
. Zhuli’s shadow seemed to twist in the stairwell as if her spirit was tied to his thoughts, and unable to be free.

Da Shan waited for Sparrow to say something. Coming home, he had hoped only that his older brother would help him, that Sparrow would not allow him be sent back to Zhejiang where, to make up for the impure elements within their family, Da Shan had to take the lead in attacking teachers and other classmates. He had to break them down. Flying Bear had said that Zhuli must be guilty because only a criminal would kill herself. Flying Bear had vowed never to go home again.

“Only traitors commit suicide,” Da Shan said now, staring up at his brother.

Smoke lifted away from Sparrow’s fingers.

“Only the guilty kill themselves. Is that true?”

Silence.

“Is it true?” Da Shan said again. He was infuriated by the softness and the weeping in his voice. “Is it right that she killed herself? If Zhuli was really a traitor, she deserved everything that happened.”

Sparrow came down the steps and Da Shan waited for him to act, to strike him down at last. It was this terrible quiet, Da Shan thought, that had come between them and which he had no idea how to undo.

When they were face to face, Sparrow touched his shoulder. There was no weight to his brother’s hand. “In Zhejiang, make sure you’re worthy of the Red Guards. That’s your only family now, isn’t it?”

Da Shan burst into tears. Infuriated, his words came out as blows. “You’re worse than a traitor. Who’s protecting you? You did nothing to save Zhuli, all you cared about was your own career!”

Sparrow dropped his hand. He looked at Da Shan and thought, You used to be so small that I could throw you over my shoulder as if you were a sack of beans.

Their father came out of the kitchen. “Enough,” Ba Lute whispered. He was flicking his lighter on and off. “I don’t want to hear your cousin’s name. Are you listening to me? It’s finished now. Finished.”

Da Shan ignored his father. “You’re a true coward, Sparrow. Maybe Zhuli was a traitor but at least she knew who she was. Do you really think you’re invisible? Do you think no one can see what you are?” The louder he shouted the angrier he became. “You were always the most talented one, everyone said so, but what good is talent if you have nothing inside? They’ll come for you next, I promise. No one can save you. I’ll make sure of it.”

In a daze, Sparrow turned towards the poster Da Shan had written. He himself had taught his brother to write his first words and now he took comfort in the fact that the characters were
flimsy, crooked and nearly unreadable. He turned and walked out of the room, through the front gate and into the laneway.

“My brother, the degenerate!” Da Shan had followed him to the laneway and was shouting after him. Watchful faces floated in the windows above, assessing, judging. “Have you no shame?” Sparrow went in the direction of Beijing Road. He had neglected to take his coat and the wind cut through him. It was a chill wind, out of keeping with the season. Loudspeakers blared, speaking faster and faster. Terrified, his thoughts took on a dreamlike quality so that every face that he passed looked familiar: a friend, a student he had taught, a child he had known. The loudspeaker repeated its slogans, Long
live Chairman
Mao!

“Ten thousand years,” Sparrow said. In truth, he wanted to believe. He would not feel so utterly alone if only he could give in and place his trust in a person or just an idea.

Long live our glorious Revolution! Long live the People!

Ten thousand years.

Our generation will achieve immortality!

At the Shaanxi Road intersection, children were throwing bricks at a store that sold women’s clothing. Sparrow leaned down and impulsively took up a brick. In his hand, it seemed entirely pure, the weight of a newborn infant. The children were singing a familiar nursery rhyme. “
The grass in the meadow looks fresh and green! But wait ten days, not a blade will be seen!”

The loudspeakers rattled on, “
There is no middle road.”

Paint on the walls denounced the occupant as a dissolute and immoral young woman. Lust and desire, which placed private interest over the public good, was a bourgeois luxury and a political crime. A boy swung his arm back. The brick shattered a window on the second floor. Inside the building, a girl was crying. He did not know what room the weeping was coming from.
The degeneracy of your head, your heart, your hands, feet, lungs
. Everything was finished. He thought the voice cried out, “I would have loved you for ten thousand years.”

He stood with the brick in his hands until the boy took it
from him. Forcefully, the boy launched it into the air, he sent it crashing through the target’s door.

—

Shanghai Wooden Products Factory No. 1 smelled of the earth. Each morning on waking, Sparrow shook wood dust from his pillow and his hair. In the public bath house, dust from his body turned the water orange. He hardly recognized himself, his arms and chest had thickened, reshaped by hours of stacking, lifting and hammering. Yet for the first time Sparrow could remember, his hands were immune to pain; callused, they had grown a thickened coat, a brand new shell. After his shifts, the factory fell away like an extended dream, but when he slept he still heard the factory’s disjointed percussion–thumping, crashing and syncopated drumming, dotted with sirens, buzzers and bells–not so different from the musique concrète of Varèse’s
Amériques
. He couldn’t stop hearing this music of the everyday, and its continuity threaded together his former life and his present.