The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations (28 page)

“I would have loved to see and hear all that,” he answered. “How fortunate you are.”

We then talked about Beethoven’s Opus 111. He asked me if I had played it. When I told him I hadn’t, he urged me to tackle it immediately.

“These days,” he said, “I spend hours with the second movement. I feel so well when I play it. I want time to stop, for it to never end. Do you remember what our dear Romain Rolland said about it? ‘A nearly impassive smile of Buddha.’ That’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Much later, standing at the door, he confided in me:

“This is no doubt the last time that we will see each other in Beijing. I want to live a normal life. Here, we are endlessly wondering what the future will bring.”

And in fact, shortly after my visit, he and his wife left China to join their son in Singapore, where I still go to see him from time to time.

After I left Professor’s Pan’s apartment, I lingered for a moment on the Conservatory grounds. The school was being expanded, and there was a lot of new construction. Night had fallen and all was still. Unbidden, images rose to the surface—of broken lives, victims, the dead.

I found myself in front of the infirmary. Here, too, the bulldozers had done their work. The tree from which Mama Zheng had hung himself was gone. He had no family to honor his memory, and there had been no funeral service after his suicide. Now there was nothing left of him, not even his tree.

It’s time that I paid him tribute.

Mama Zheng, you were a great man. You gave up wealth and honors to take care of us children. I learned later that you were related to Sukarno, the Indonesian president, as well as to Zhang Ji, a minister to Chiang Kai-shek. You could have chosen an easier path.

“Mama Zheng”? No. Huabin Zheng was your name, and it’s high time that it be given back to you.

We return it to you, Huabin Zheng, we, your children. In the name of all of the students of the Conservatory, I want to say thank you. Thank you for everything you did for us. And let me proclaim the truth that no one dared to utter at the time: you were innocent. Your life—and the lives of the other victims of injustice—gives meaning and purpose to this book.

Farewell, Huabin Zheng.

The Chinese believe that life begins at forty. It always amuses me to think about this, because that’s exactly how old I was when my career really started to gain momentum.

After my return from China, I began to receive a number of offers to perform. My network of friends continued to help make things happen. I couldn’t get over it: were there many other people whose professional debuts began so late in life?

At the same time, these projects threw me into turmoil. I wasn’t used to playing so often or so many different programs in such a variety of venues. A feeling of anxiety began to slowly surface in me. This was not my pace, this was not how I wanted to live. But I had no choice—if I turned the offers down, I soon wouldn’t receive any at all. This is the harsh reality of the performing artist’s world.

My friends told me not to worry. Their network was functioning admirably. At the Conservatory, I became acquainted with the musicologist Rémy Stricker, an extremely cultivated man with an in-depth understanding of both music and musicians. He treated his students like his own children. Before every concert, I liked to play for him. I trusted him implicitly. Then, a young impresario joined our circle. He was twenty-three years old at the time and looked like Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince. He was both sensitive and intelligent, and played French music from Rameau to Ravel like no one else. He had everything he needed to succeed, and had already started on the path to a brilliant career. But Alexandre Tharaud—that’s who I am referring to—is also extremely generous, and he began to keep an eye out for me. After hearing my recording of the
Goldberg Variations
, he bought dozens of copies without telling me and handed them out to concert organizers, saying:

“She’s the great pianist, not me. She’s the one you should invite.”

This was not true, of course, but very moving. It was, however, the start of a long musical friendship that would lead us to play piano four hands together often.

The first major Parisian venue to take a chance on me was the Théâtre de la Ville, a concert hall that is still very dear to my heart. This is in large part due to the personality of Georges Gara, its musical advisor. I initially met him through a common acquaintance, Benoît Choquet, who was a supporter from the very beginning. Georges had fled Hungary, and had been a publisher before coming to work at the Théâtre de la Ville. As fellow emigrés, we hit it off immediately. One day, in the course of a conversation, he asked:

“If you could give a concert here, what would you play?”

There was only one possibility. The
Goldberg Variations
.

A few days later, he called me:

“You’re on the program for next season.”

That was in 1994, and the time had come for my official Parisian debut. The hall was completely full. But in spite of how successful the concert was, it made me ill for months, both before and after the actual performance.

I felt incapable of attaining the perfection that I desired. I was, like so many musicians, devastated by my powerlessness. Like Richter who, at the end of his life, stated, “I don’t like myself.” Undoubtedly, a wiser path would have been to admit that perfection did not exist. The Chinese understand this very well—in a piece of embroidery or calligraphy, they will deliberately introduce a fault, believing that the flaw renders their work even more beautiful. The Iranians do the same with their carpets to show that only God is capable of perfection.

Yes, the smarter thing to do would have been to admit this. To model myself after the
Winged Victory of Samothrace
, in all its powerful, mutilated beauty. Instead, I chose to not even walk in front of the Théâtre de la Ville, which was right around the corner from where I lived. I finally managed to quell my anxiety and stood in front of the theater, only to break down in tears at the sound of an organ grinder playing a nostalgic melody of exile. A passerby came up to me:

“Excuse me, madam, was it you who played the
Goldberg Variations
the other night?”

I held back my tears.

“Yes, that was me.”

“It was magnificent. Thanks to you, I’ve started to listen to Bach. But I see that you’re upset, and I won’t bother you any further. Thank you so much.”

That first concert at the Théâtre de la Ville was followed by several others. A year later, I played Scarlatti, Mozart, and Schumann—my beloved
Kinderszenen
, with its
Reverie
. The
Goldberg Variations
had placed me in the category of “serious pianist”—as it does for every pianist who takes it on, heaven knows why—and the audience perceived this new program as strangely light and childlike, as if childhood could not be at the same time an age of great maturity.

Then there was a Haydn and Beethoven concert.

A few days before the performance, I felt so discouraged that I called Georges and told him that I was not going to be able to play. He came to my house that very evening.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not happy with what I’m doing.”

“If you want to cancel the concert, we’ll cancel it. And we won’t call in a substitute. But before we do that, I want you to know one thing. Although neither of us are churchgoers, I can tell you that when you play, a feeling of spirituality fills the hall. People stay on after the concert; they just can’t seem to leave.”

What could I say? Georges had convinced me: the concert took place. He had found a way to describe the connection that links a performer and the audience.

During a recent trip to Beijing, I visited Teng Wenji, and we talked about his latest films. At one point in the discussion, he said:

“When I first walk onto a film set, I say a prayer before filming.”

I asked why, although I already anticipated the answer.

“Because we’re disturbing the spirits. We make noise and cause a commotion. No one asked us to come; we have to apologize for our presence.”

We both smiled. Since then, to tell the truth, I have adopted the same ritual. When I arrive, I pay honor to the place, because it is always sacred. I like to breathe in its atmosphere well before the audience begins to file in. I walk around the entire building, touching the walls, the seats, the boxes. They speak to me, and I absorb their history.

My most successful concerts have always occurred in theaters and churches, venues where I can sense something.

Take the Théâtre de la Ville. It’s been a favorite ever since my first concert when, before going on stage, I rehearsed on a small upright piano on the top floor, beneath a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt. I’m known by everyone there. When I call the switchboard, the operator says to me:

“Hello, Xiao-Mei. I recognized your voice.”

I feel very much at home.

Other places include the little Chapelle Sainte-Cécile near Tours, the church at Lourmarin—one of the main venues of the La Roque-d’Anthéron festival—the Martinu Hall in Prague, and the Teatro Bibiena in Mantua, where Mozart once played and which Richter loved so much. And then there’s the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, a place I especially like, even though I also almost canceled my first concert there.

I had just arrived in Argentina. Roadwork was underway near the hotel where I was staying, and my room was incredibly noisy. Since I didn’t speak a single word of Spanish, I was unable to make the people at the reception desk understand that I needed a quieter room. The concert was fast approaching, and I could neither meditate nor concentrate.

Early in the afternoon, I called the organizer to tell him I was going to cancel. He came over immediately. He was insistent, repeating that everything was planned for the concert and that he couldn’t cancel it. Then he added:

“Visit the theater, and we’ll talk afterwards. Come along, I’ll take you there.”

A few minutes later, I walked into the Teatro Colón.

“Look around; go wherever you like. I’ll wait for you here.”

I entered the hall. It was enormous, but at the same time, it was permeated by a strange feeling of intimacy, of warmth. I visited the boxes, each one unique. I admired the curtains, the ceiling, the chandeliers. Here, the greatest artists had performed, and the audience knew one another, you could feel it. I went downstairs. The gilded silence of the hall gave way to the bustling activity of a veritable small city, where several hundred people were busy with costumes and sets. I watched them working away intensely, as if their lives depended on it. Women smiled at me and stopped what they were doing to speak with me. We didn’t get very far because of my lack of Spanish, but I was extremely moved by them. Of course I would play that evening.

A few hours later, when I walked on stage, I felt very well. Under my feet I imagined the activity of the small city; I recalled the faces of the women I had glimpsed that afternoon. I greeted the audience: many of them had the score of the
Goldberg Variations
on their laps. I hadn’t been mistaken: this was indeed a unique place.

After the concert, a music critic sought me out.

“I must be Chinese,” he told me. “Everything you played has convinced me it’s true.”

He was exaggerating, of course. But what better proof of music’s universality that a Chinese woman was able to win over a South American man while performing a European composer?

Of the many moving places I have visited, for me the most stirring of all is the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where Bach worked from 1723 until his death, in 1750. It was during this period that he composed his greatest works. I had always wanted to visit Leipzig, and a concert in former East Germany finally gave me the chance. The French Cultural Institute had organized a performance in Hoyerswerda, a town where, ten years earlier, a group of skinheads had carried out attacks on Vietnamese street vendors and other foreigners with the tacit approval of the local population. Even today, people still refer to “Hoyerswerda Syndrome.” I decided to play the
Goldberg Variations
in memory of these immigrants, who were victims of racial violence. When I walked onstage, the atmosphere was chilly, so chilly in fact that I—a Chinese woman who dared to play Bach in his native land—could readily identify with the Vietnamese who had been beaten. As the
Variations
unfolded, however, a sense of community began to set in, and by the end, the applause was such that I had to take several curtain calls. The audience didn’t want to leave. I asked for silence, then offered these few words: