The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations (31 page)

As for me, I am more at home with Chinese philosophy—I prefer to be alone, face-to-face with myself, rather than in the company of others. Religion is too private a world to be shared. On the other hand, my life has been intimately bound up with a stalwart of the Christian faith—Bach. My days and my nights have been devoted to his music. And Bach did not live like a sage in retreat from the world; he was always surrounded, always in demand, and he worked hard to make his music something through which one might glimpse the meaning of life. This idea of service is an important part of the Christian faith. Each person possesses a part of the truth, for those who can glimpse it.

As I left the last church, I once again thought about the project that had never been far from my thoughts: to create a school in China. Even though I left my country twenty years ago, I realized that I’d never given up the idea that I might someday return—despite my protestations to the contrary.

Before then, the idea of giving concerts in China didn’t make a lot of sense to me. My generation—the lost generation—was mostly concerned with earning a comfortable living, which I can understand. For so long, they had been denied any sort of artistic education. But what about the new generation? Shouldn’t we try to pass on to them some of our knowledge?

I began to have a dream.

I saw all of us together, myself, my former classmates, and a few others, in a school that we had founded, a school in which all the different arts were paramount. We would live with the students, talking and discussing things together. Classes would be free of charge. The money that each teacher had earned—in whatever varying degree—would be used to provide scholarships for the students. In today’s China, only very rich parents can afford to send their children to the Conservatories in Beijing and Shanghai.

The dream unfolds…I would do my best to share with my few students some of the truths I have glimpsed in my life as a pianist. I would try to convince them to serve only music, to turn a blind eye to materialism, to cultivate a spirit that is at once humble and passionate.

My friends and I would not only be able to pass on some of our experience but also rectify what was most painful for our generation. Even worse than our loss of freedom and the misery of our living conditions was that we were denied an education. The absence of books, scores, and even dictionaries—this was a torture far worse than the physical deprivation we endured: it creates a void capable of extinguishing the future and rendering death preferable to life. What good is an existence without the hope of growth—an existence that can only imagine before it the darkness of ignorance—and submission, which is ignorance’s hand-maiden? Yes, my friends and I are in agreement. The world needs to reflect on this lesson of the Cultural Revolution: to ensure peace and the future of the world, the absolute first priority is education.

In my dream, our school would be founded in Dayu, our former prison.

Alone, I walk through the streets of Zhangjiakou.

Often in my life I have chosen to return to the past to find the energy to go forward. I believe Zhangjiakou will give me this courage. It’s true, life has brought me many things. But it has also broken me, left me unable to accept myself, forced me to subject myself to constant, unhealthy doubt.

The longer I live, the more I feel the presence of Bach and Laozi beside me. They have helped me to overcome past trials, and they will help me to face those to come, because the hardest trial lies ahead: to finally find inner freedom. I have the impression that I have not yet done anything with my life, and that I no longer have the strength to give it a sense of meaning.

The wind sweeps the streets of Zhangjiakou. The afternoon comes to an end. I look up at the sky. There are none of the red tonalities that led my grandmother to predict that my life would be a “resplendent tapestry,” and yet, it is still the same sky. A somber sky of blues and grays, that of a cloudy spring day. But it is also a sky full of the subtleties and nuances that my painter friend, Fu, once shared with me here, in Zhangjiakou. Yes, now I can identify them all: shifting colors and mixed emotions. At night I question myself, I am afraid of others, of myself. I have an acute awareness of my impotence, my inability to achieve perfection. But in the morning, I know that it is still there, in the next room, waiting for me. It always keeps its promise of fulfillment. My piano.

I contemplate the sky over Zhangjiakou. I hear the voice of my grandmother:

“The evening you were born, I looked out at the sky over Shanghai…”

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Zhu Xiao-Mei was born in Shanghai. She began studying piano in early childhood with her mother and by the age of eight had already played for Peking radio and television stations.

At the age of eleven she entered the Beijing Conservatory, where her studies were interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. She spent five years in a labor camp in Inner Mongolia. Despite the difficult conditions, she managed to continue to study the piano in secret. When she finally made it back to Beijing, she completed her studies at the Conservatory and left China, first for the United States and then for Paris, where she has lived since 1984.

Since then, Zhu Xiao-Mei’s career, although late and without any media support, has been expanding rapidly. She has given concerts throughout France, Europe, North Africa, Russia, South America, Asia, and Australia, in search of the public in venues that speak to her and where she enjoys playing, performing demanding works that she’s nurtured for years, such as Bach’s
Goldberg Variations
.

The Secret Piano
was originally published by Editions Robert Laffont in October 2007 and received the Grand Prix des Muses in March 2008. This is its first publication in English.

Zhu Xiao also teaches at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris.

Ellen Hinsey was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1960 and has lived and traveled widely in Europe for two decades, working on projects related to democracy.

She has been the recipient of a number of literary awards and prizes including a Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin and a Lannan Foundation Award. She is the author of
Update on the Descent
(2009),
The White Fire of Time
(2002), and
Cities of Memory
(1995), which received the Yale University Series Award. She has also edited and co-translated from Lithuanian
The Junction: Selected Poems of Tomas Venclova
(2008). Her recent translations of contemporary French fiction include
Someone I Loved
by Anna Gavalda and Hélène Grimaud’s memoir,
Wild Variations
. Her poetry, essays, nonfiction, and translations have appeared widely in publications such as the
New York Times
, the
New Yorker
, and the
Irish Times
. She currently teaches at Skidmore College’s Paris program.