Do Not Say We Have Nothing

by Madeleine Thien

  They were the last to arrive. Just as before, the group assessed his clothing (“Did you trip and fall into the Huangpu River?”) and manner (“Nervous. As if he has thorns in his shoes.”) To Zhuli, on the other hand, they were welcoming, even familial. “Welcome, welcome!” the Old Cat shouted. “No need to be so formal. Just call me Old Cat, everyone does.” Kai greeted them both, but his eyes stayed fixed on Zhuli, who seemed oblivious of him. He had removed the armband of the Red Guards.

  “I used to own the Perilous Heights bookshop on Suzhou Creek Road,” the Old Cat said, splashing tea into a bowl and slapping it down in front of Zhuli. “But during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the government was banning titles left and right. There was so much overthrowing go on, I couldn’t take it. Hell, I’m fifty years old. A relic! Overthrow me too hard and I won’t get up. So in 1955 I closed the shop and moved everything here.”

  “But to keep so many books…” Zhuli said. “Aren’t you worried about busybodies?”

  “What can I do? The pages are absorbent. I need them to soundproof my walls.”

  A tray of cigarettes was passed around. As smoke floated through the air, conversation stilled. They began to concentrate.

  The Professor read aloud from the most battered book Sparrow had ever seen. The book turned out to be a play, Part 1 of Guo Moruo’s translation of Faust. Time dissolved. Sparrow, who knew only Gounod’s opera, at first felt in familiar territory, but then he realized he had never met this Faust at all. The German Faust chafes against his condition. This Faust was seeking a freedom within the mind that would expand his spirit as well as his intellect, so that both could attain their most divine state. But what if the truths of the mind and the soul were not merely different, but incompatible? “In me there are two souls, alas, and their / Division tears my life in two.”

  Zhuli leaned towards the Professor’s voice as if towards the sound of a flute.

  When the reading ended, Ling stretched her lovely arms up into the air and said, “I prefer The Sorrows of Young Werther.”

  “That’s because you’re a hopeless romantic,” said the Old Cat.

  “Or because Young Werther is like a German San Li,” said San Li.

  “In that case, I take it back.” Ling glared at him and then at Kai who grinned at Sparrow who blushed and looked at the teapot. Out of the corner of his eye, Sparrow saw Zhuli bow her head and smile widely into a tower of books.

  The Old Cat tapped a manuscript that lay beside the Professor’s sandalled foot. “When this translation first came out, even Chairman Mao praised it. But the Party has turned on Guo…”

  “I wonder if Zhuli is right,” Kai said, addressing the Old Cat. “Maybe it’s time to get rid of these books. They’re saying it’s the Anti-Rightist Campaign all over again–”

  “What do you know about ’55? You were just a doorstep then.”

  “As of this month,” Ling said, “Khrushchev is a ‘phoney Communist,’ the Soviets are ‘revisionist Big Brothers,’ and all the Russian composers are out. Are you getting rid of all your Fifth Symphonies and your This-and-that-ovskys?”

  Kai blushed. “I never keep music. I memorize the scores and get rid of them.”

  “Shit,” San Li said, “I can’t even remember how to get home.”

  Sparrow laughed and tumbled a stack of books onto Zhuli’s lap. He tried to catch the avalanche and caused another.

  The Old Cat peered into the ruins. “Look at that!” she said. “A-Fan’s Weeping over His Daughter by the Sea! I’ve been looking for those poems for thirty years.” Zhuli plucked it from the pile and handed it to her.

  “And what about you,” Ling said, eyeing Sparrow. “Don’t tell me you memorize everything, too.”

  “I don’t…I prefer, well, I transcribe the incorrect work into jianpu.” He had done this for the disgraced works of Debussy, Schönberg and Bartok. Manuscripts written in jianpu notation, with its easy-to-read numbers, were considered backwards and rudimentary. They aroused no suspicion.

  Zhuli interrupted. “But afterwards, he really does destroy them. He burns them and leaves the ashes in a little bucket.”

  “This is a skill we perfect from an early age,” the Professor said lightly. “How to grind ideas into a fine cloud of dust.”

  San Li interrupted. “For months this study group has been reading Schiller, Goethe and Shen Congwen. I’m not complaining. Really, Professor, I’m grateful because the other entertainment on offer stinks. But maybe it’s time to start reading what’s right in front of us.”

  The Old Cat coughed. “Surely not!”

  “There’s a new campaign,” he continued. “Or are we so taken with all the Germans who died a hundred years ago that no one notices?” He held up a copy of Beijing Review. “For instance, why don’t we study this slop bucket written by the philosophy students at Beijing University?”

  “San Li,” the Professor interrupted, “enough.”

  Sparrow saw Zhuli gripping her violin case. She looked as if she wished to leave but was prevented from doing so by the books that had fallen into her lap.

  “No, let’s analyze this,” San Li persisted. He read:

  All revolutionary intellectuals, now is the time to go into battle! Resolutely, thoroughly, totally and completely wipe out all the ghosts and monsters. The leaders of Beijing University shout about “strengthening the leadership” but this only exposes who they really are: saboteurs of the Cultural Revolution. We must tell you, a spider cannot stop the wheel of a cart! We will carry socialist revolution through to the end!

  “I would fail this kid. Resolutely, thoroughly, totally? Is she writing a thesaurus? But instead of this student being sent to remedial composition, the President of the University gets beaten up. I mean, he’s an old guy and these kids really wipe the floor with him. Now the whole university is under the boot of the Red Guards, and this manifesto is the Voice of the Revolution.”

  “No need to read it aloud,” the Old Cat said. “We can hear it anytime we wish on the loudspeakers.”

  “And now the Conservatory students are going around smashing violins.” San Li laughed. “What kind of person breaks a violin?”

  “The young aren’t wrong,” Kai said. There was an aggressive and unfamiliar despair in his eyes. “They say we need to change, remove obstacles and purge ourselves. Land reform brought equality but ten years later, it’s already slipping away. It’s obvious things aren’t well in society.”

  “Purge ourselves of what?” the Professor asked.

  “Individualism, privilege. The greed that is corrupting our Revolution.”

  “The Politburo leaders haven’t managed to become socialists,” San Li said. “Why should we?”

  There was a murmur of nervous laughter which seemed, to Sparrow, to rise from the books themselves.

  Kai blushed and stood up. “Comrade,” he said to the Old Cat, “thank you for your hospitality. I can no longer listen to this conversation. Please excuse me.”

  The Old Cat and Ling had been talking to one another, and now paused, confused. The Professor stared, amazed. “Kai, my boy! Sit down, sit down. What’s got into you? San Li, didn’t I tell you to hold your tongue?”

  “I say what’s on my mind.”

  Kai’s voice was calm. “You’ve never fought for anything, San Li. You have no idea what life is like outside Shanghai, and yet you dare to lecture us.”

  “In the Conservatory, you know better?”

  Ling interrupted. “Be quiet, San Li. Kai, Sit down. There’s no need to take all this to heart. After all, we only come together to think differently, don’t we? You’re a brother to me, I know you’re upset but come–”

  But Kai had already turned on the Professor. “You’ve already ruined me, and now you’re endangering everyone in this room. For you, political struggle is just a game. It’s taken me years to see you clearly.”

  The room was silent.

  The Professor finally spoke. “Since when did the desire to know onesel
f, to better oneself, become a traitorous act in this country? Should this not frighten you, Kai? My son, you forget that I, too, lost my entire family in the Revolution.”

  Kai flushed. He swung his bag over shoulder and walked out of the room.

  “Sparrow,” the Professor said. “Go with him. He’s very disappointed. He doesn’t mean what he says….”

  Sparrow didn’t move.

  “I’ll take Zhuli home,” Ling said. “You live near Beijing Road, don’t you? So do I.”

  How calm Zhuli appeared, Sparrow thought, as if it were she who had brought him here. Had she? What had they done?

  “Can’t you hurry up?” Ling said. There was a tremor of fear in her voice.

  Sparrow got up, wished everyone well and left.

  —

  The Professor and San Li exited together, mumbling apologies, and so it was only Zhuli, the Old Cat and Ling who remained. Nobody mentioned Kai or what had happened; it was as if the argument had dissolved, having never been. So the educated class is not so different after all, Zhuli thought. In these times, we all rely on silence.

  Ling told Zhuli that she was a student at Jiaotong University. “In fact,” she said, “I study utilitarianism, Mencius and the art of couplets, so I qualify as one of San Li’s ‘slop bucket’ philosophy students.”

  The Old Cat was reorganizing the books around her. “Maybe you need a copy of this,” she said, tossing a thin book to Zhuli. “Fou Lei’s translation of Jean-Christophe. You know it of course?”

  “I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t read it yet.”

  “Ha, why apologize?” The Old Cat lifted her soft shoulders and then, from this great height, let them fall like a landslide. “I only suggest it because they say Rolland modelled his Jean-Christophe on Beethoven. A Beethoven for the times we live in. However, not every page is exciting. There you go. And this, Hu Shih’s essay on Wu Dao-zi. A book outlawed, reviled by the government and, consequently, very popular.” When the Old Cat sat beside her, Zhuli could smell crumbling paper, ink stone and a whiff of sugarcane.

  “Miss Zhuli,” Ling said, “do you carry your violin with you everywhere you go?”

  The case in her lap was as cool as stone on an autumn night. Zhuli nodded.

  “A bit strange, don’t you think?” Ling said.

  The Old Cat sniffed. “As strange as you carrying paper and pen in your pocket! You’re a student after all, and she’s a violinist.”

  “Then San Li might as well carry a sabre. It seems he majors in provocation.”

  “If you told him to stop carrying on, he might listen,” the Old Cat said.

  “Please! San Li would never perform for an audience of one.”

  Zhuli wanted to ask them about Kai. Instead she opened the Hu Shih essay and began to read the first lines. She flipped forward, read further. The text had been copied out by hand, in a square yet beautifully bold script. She turned more pages. This was the same hand that had copied the Book of Records. This was her own father’s handwriting and she would know it anywhere.

  The Old Cat peered at her. “Quite a clever essay, isn’t it?” she said.

  Was it Zhuli’s imagination, or was there a question folded attentively inside this question? “I’m sure it must be, but I find myself interested in the calligrapher.” To throw the Old Cat off the scent, she said, “Did you make this copy yourself?”

  “Ai!” The Old Cat slapped her round knees with her round hands. “I’ve an enviable gift but not so divine as that. No, the calligrapher is a scholar from Shanghai, a poet in fact. But alas, he is not a poet anymore. He fell under the wheels of the Party and they sent him for re-education. I haven’t seen him for years, he disappeared. For a musician, you have a good eye for calligraphy.”

  “It’s because my own handwriting is so poor,” Zhuli said. When my mother comes home, she thought, the first thing I’ll do is bring her here. That is the proper way to do things.

  “On that note, I have something for you to decipher.” The Old Cat creaked herself upright, swayed past Ling and stopped at a desk. Zhuli had not even realized the desk was there, so camouflaged was it by papers. The Old Cat shuffled through a stack of folders before plucking out a single sheet. She handed it to Zhuli.

  “Well, grandmother!” Zhuli said, after a moment. In her hand was the aria of the Goldberg Variations, transcribed into the numbers, dots and lines of jianpu notation. “You’ve gone and dropped a bag of books on me! I had no idea you studied Western classical music.”

  “I don’t. Someone left this at my door, when, a month ago?” She looked to Ling, who nodded in confirmation. “Sure I can read jianpu but I have no clue what this music is.”

  Zhuli told her it was Bach.

  “Oh, him.” The Old Cat sounded disappointed. “I was hoping it might be that handsome firecracker, Old Bei. My niece and I have been inserting this piece of music into traditional song books.” Ling smiled mischievously. Aunt and niece, Zhuli thought, so this is why I felt so comfortable with them. “We throw it in at random just to cause a little frisson. I added the words of Chairman Mao as a libretto: ‘On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.’ ”

  “But who is the mysterious sender?” Zhuli asked.

  “Who knows? There was a note which said that even banned music should be assessed on its own merits, that songs as well as novels could serve as samizdat, passed from person to person. Some foolish idealist. One of your kind, I’m sure.”

  “Someone from the Conservatory?” Zhuli said.

  “At first we thought it was the Professor or Kai,” Ling said. “But they both swore it wasn’t them. In fact, Kai told us turn it in to the authorities. I swear, the boy is afraid of his own feet.”

  “But isn’t Kai right to be cautious?” Zhuli asked. She thought Ling and her aunt were perversely unaware, as if they had never attended a political study session or encountered a blackboard newspaper.

  “Ha, I know what you’re thinking,” the Old Cat said. “But, child, when you’ve seen as much as I have, you realize the die is cast. The so-called ‘enemies of the People’ are the ones whose luck has run out, nothing more. One day the traitor is Shen Congwen, the next Guo Moruo. If they want to come for you, they will come, and it doesn’t matter what you read or what you failed to read. The books on your shelves, the music you cherish, the past lives you’ve lived, all these details are just an excuse. In the old days, spite and jealousy drove the eunuchs in all their power struggles. Perhaps we live in a new age, but people don’t change overnight.”

  “But why give the authorities an excuse?” Zhuli asked. “If the neighbourhood can turn in one family of counter-revolutionaries, the whole block might be saved. People are just trying to get by.” A voice in her head scolded her: Why do you persist in playing music that is outrageously formalist? Why did you react disdainfully when Kai brought you the correct music? Are you too idiotic to realize that the very existence of a violin soloist is counter to the times?

  “Because, Zhuli,” the Old Cat said, “these books were bequeathed to me by my beloved father. At some point, a person must decide whether they belong to the people who loved them, or whether they belong to the emperors. The truth is, my ancestry is long and my past is complex because this country is old. Ah, our country is old! How can the Party convince me otherwise? I know who I am and I know what old means. If the Party knows it too, well, good for them. I must meet the destiny that was written out by my lineage. If they want to hurry me into the next life, okay. I’m old, I’ll go. I would only miss my little Ling.

  “The things you experience,” she continued, “are written on your cells as memories and patterns, which are reprinted again on the next generation. And even if you never lift a shovel or plant a cabbage, every day of your life something is written upon you. And when you die, the entirety of that written record returns to the earth. All we have on this earth, all we are, is a record. Maybe the only things that p
ersist are not the evildoers and demons (though, admittedly, they do have a certain longevity) but copies of things. The original has long since passed away from this universe, but on and on we copy. I have devoted my minuscule life to the act of copying.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Ling said. “When the authorities come, she’s soft as porridge. She knows how to ply them with old-woman words.”

  The Old Cat grunted. “Sure. That, too.”

  “Still,” Zhuli said, “in these times, we should take precautions.”

  “Ah, child. Sometimes an old woman simply gets set in her ways. She’s like a pain you can’t dislodge.”

  Ling, San Li, Kai, the Old Cat, they must all come from exemplary class backgrounds, Zhuli realized. They had never been targeted and so, deep in their bones, did not believe they could be. They were free because, in their minds, they persisted in believing they were. Maybe they were right but Zhuli felt as if she were watching an oil drum that was about to explode.

  She began to shift the books off her lap so that she could get to her feet.

  Still seated, Ling reached out to gather the empty cups. The Old Cat was humming to herself, and the resemblance between the Old Cat and Ling made Zhuli feel as if she were standing between two arias. Maybe these volumes of books acted as a kind of sponge, shielding the Old Cat from the muck of the city outside her door.

  The violin case knocked against Zhuli’s knee. She was glad they had not asked her to play for them. Each time she lifted her bow to perform, she felt as if parts of herself were being peeled away.

  “It was fate that you found us,” the Old Cat said. “Or, to put it another way, fate that I found you again.”

  “What do you mean?” Zhuli asked. She was holding her father’s book in her hands.

  “Oh,” the Old Cat said. The smile on her lips tried to hide a lasting pain. “Ignore my rambling. My thoughts wander from time to time. I get lost in the things that were.”

  —

  Sparrow pedalled his bicycle behind Kai. There was no moon, only haphazard lighting, a low wattage bulb in a window, the glow from the oil lamp in an outdoor kitchen. At last the pianist coasted to a stop. “Forgive me, Sparrow,” he said, turning. He was shivering as if he were ill. “I had to do it, I have to draw a clear line. Please, let me go. I have to…There’s no choice. Can you understand? I have to do it for my parents, my sisters. I am the only one left. I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry…” They were sheltered by a willow so heavy with leaves its branches swept the ground. Kai looked at him with a beseeching air. “Let me go. There’s nothing else to do. We must trust the Party in everything. Everything.” He turned and began pedalling away. After a moment, Sparrow, too, began pedalling again, but slower now. Other travellers drifted between them and up ahead, Kai merged into the darkness and slowly disappeared. Sparrow rode for what seemed a long time, but the boulevard continued, endless. The wind picked up and he heard a hollow banging on the air. Everyone began pedalling faster, hoping to get home before the downpour, but it was already too late. Lightning broke the sky apart. Rain smacked the concrete so hard it ricocheted up, hard as pellets. He was instantly drenched. In a single moment, the rain had swept everyone off the road, towards shelter, and only a single car pushed on, oblivious. Sparrow turned into a laneway and dismounted. All he could think about was his desire to be with Kai, to pass another night with him, the desire was sharp and undeniable. I care for him, yes, and what difference does it make, how and to what degree? To whom does it matter? He stood gripping the handlebars, bewildered by his own self-delusion. To love as he did was, if not a counter-revolutionary crime, foolhardy and dangerous. Such love could only lead to ruin. Behind him voices called out, but the words were only gusts of air. A child reached out and firmly pulled him sideways, under the shelter of a tree. All Sparrow saw was the sudden disappearance of a city full of people.