At last, the rain ebbed. The road was silver with water. People came into the road anyway, their legs disappearing, sometimes up to their knees.
He climbed back onto his bicycle. Almost immediately he sank down as the front tire gave out. He must have hit a nail or a shard of glass. Sparrow was aware, suddenly, of the cold weight of his wet clothes and the water that dripped down from his hair, down his neck and back. He began pushing the bicycle beside him. Already the clean rainwater smelled of mud, he saw a dead chicken floating towards him beside a head of cabbage. An eddy came, sucked the chicken down and pushed it back up again. A little girl came running towards it, her long hair pasted alarmingly to her face.
As he walked, the water slowly drained away. Sparrow saw the cuffs of his trousers, then his ankles and his shoes. He had the numbing fear that the Shanghai that existed only moments ago was gone, it had been washed away and replaced.
Sparrow kept pushing his bicycle. Up ahead, at the intersection, people had gathered around a haze of lights. Sparrow barely noticed them, the air was humid once more. A musical idea had appeared in his thoughts, a wedge of notes. He must hurry home to write the phrases down. Chords opened, they made a bright uneasiness in his ears. He was suddenly engulfed by the crowd at the intersection and tried, stubbornly, to hear only the unfolding music. People became a series of figurations: girls wearing red scarves, a taunting voice, dissonant bursts of light. The very loudness of the crowd seemed to make it silent. Was it rage, he slowly realized, that was spilling back and forth, from one cluster of people to another? There was a fire, Sparrow now realized, his vision sharpening. He tried to pass through the mass but his bicycle made it impossible.
In the centre, an old man was standing on a chair. The crowd swayed around him, pressing closer. Sparrow saw a young woman, Zhuli’s age, holding a broom by its handle, waving it before the old man. Sparrow thought the man on the chair would take the handle and begin a speech to the crowd, but then he realized the old man, soaked from the rain, was shaking with cold, he was weeping and trying to avert his eyes from the young woman and her taunting gestures. “Down with Wu Bei!” The ferocity of the chanting finally broke through Sparrow’s thoughts. The old man was begging for mercy but none of his words were audible. For a fleeting moment, Sparrow thought he should step forward and push these children back, some of them were no more than nine or ten years old, but there were many bystanders, people of all ages, pressing in with a growing euphoria. He tried to go backwards but it was impossible, the crowd was surging forward once more. Scattered words were flung up, reactionary, counter-revolutionary, traitor, demon, until the chant started up again, “Down with Wu Bei!” The girl with the broom handle was accusing him of teaching literary works that mocked the reality of every man and woman standing before him. “You thought you could trample those beneath you,” she said. She had a disconcertingly melodic voice. “You thought your high standing should make us small, but we are the ones with open hearts and clear minds. The monster is waking, Teacher! You have stepped on its head countless times but now the monster is crawling out of the mud. It is ugly and unmannered, free from your disdain and superiority. Yes, the monster is the seed of truth that you tried to lock away. We are free, even though you tried to warp our minds! Even though you corrupted our desires.” She began to beat him, slow hits with the length of the broom, against his back, his thighs and chest, as if he were an animal she was punishing. The old man tottered and fell. He was picked up and forced roughly back on the chair, even though he could barely stand. “Fall down and we will only slap you harder,” the young woman said sweetly. “What a small punishment this is for your crimes, but don’t fear! Every weakness will be attended to. This is only the beginning.”
Someone came and pulled up another chair, and a boy pushed a long, white, pointed, paper hat onto the old man’s head. The crowd erupted in derisive laughter, pointing and shouting. The old man had turned so pale, it looked as if he would pass out. Scrawled on the dunce cap were the words, “I am an enemy of the People, a spreader of lies! I am a demon!”
Arms were lifted, the feverish chanting began again, drowning out the young woman who was still speaking. Sparrow could not move. Each chant seemed to hit the man’s body like a physical blow. Another person came and affixed a long sheet of paper to the man’s chest. The words read, “I teach shit, I eat shit, I am shit.” Howls of laughter rang out, and the young man who had affixed the poster was overcome by hilarity. “Wu Bei,” he cried, “we can smell your shit across Shanghai! You silly boy! Why don’t you clean yourself up?” The old man, who once had stood before a lectern and tried to unravel the codes of literature, just as he, Sparrow, tried to understand the shape of music, wept in fear and humiliation. He would suffer less, Sparrow thought, if they tied him up and beat him unconscious. But the crowd only continued to taunt him.
“I am an enemy of the People,” he was saying now.
They forced him to repeat line after line.
“I have corrupted the thoughts of the students entrusted to me.”
“I have fed foreign shit into their bright and beautiful minds.”
“I am a traitor to my country.”
“I deserve death.”
And then his own whimpering, “Have mercy, have mercy.”
A gap opened up beside Sparrow and he slipped through it, the knot of the crowd quickly closing behind him. Gap by gap, he pushed his way forward. “In a hurry?” someone asked him. He was shoved but did not shove back. “What’s your name and work unit?” the same voice asked. “I’m only trying to get closer,” Sparrow said, terrified. The person laughed, disbelieving. “Look at the monster, the monster!” someone else said. “Soon we shall be at every window, inside every home!” The fire had grown and the laughter grew louder and louder. The man’s personal papers were being displayed like trophies of war. Someone was reading the titles of books and each one was greeted with guffaws and insults. Words were hurled at him, bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist, wolf, and the young woman continued her rhythmic alternation between hitting him viciously and berating him. When it seemed as if she might tire, a young man took her place, and the chants escalated again. “There are no kings,” the young man said, “no aristocrats, no landowners, no teachers, no natural ruling class. There are only locusts like you, thieves and pestilence!” “Set him on fire,” the crowd begged. “Feed poison to the snake!” They threw ever more books and papers onto the fire, and even furniture and clothing. A child’s silk dress was found and paraded through the crowd. The young woman came back with a large bottle of ink. She climbed up onto the chair beside the old man, pulled off the paper hat, and emptied the bottle onto his hair. The man tried to pull away but the ink poured into his eyes, ran down his nose and mouth and slid in hideous shapes down his body. As the old man tried desperately to wipe the thick liquid from his eyes and mouth, the crowd screamed in hysterical laughter. “Write something!” they shouted. “Wu Bei, enlighten us with your sophisticated thoughts! Compose a profound essay!” “Please, we beg you! Tell us what to think!” The young woman said, “Wu Bei, you’ve made a mess again!” “Stupid, dirty child,” the young man said, raising the stick menacingly. The old man cowered and wept. “Don’t move, don’t move!” the young woman said. “You’re ruining my elegant calligraphy!”
Sparrow moved backwards, step by tiny step, the metal frame of the front wheel scratching against the ground. Wu Bei’s humiliation was a game that kept intensifying. Each person wanted to think up the next salvo. The crowd was giddy, even the moon above and the ragged summer trees seemed to shudder with elation. Wu Bei was completely alone, balanced clownishly on his wooden chair. Another young man had stepped forward with a razor in his hand and was proposing that he shave the old man’s head. “He thinks his white hair makes him respectable,” the young man said. “Shall we clip the butterfly’s wings?” “Melt the autumn frost,” another voice shouted. “Rip off his wings! Cut off his hair!” A wave of nausea overcame S
parrow. There was no more oxygen to breathe. “Why stop at his hair?” the man with the dull razor said. “Why should we allow His Excellency to belittle us?”
Sparrow forced himself to turn casually away from the crowd, bending forward as if to check the bicycle’s tire. He glanced towards the edge of the road where a dozen plane trees stood aligned. There, under the nearest one, he saw Zhuli, standing by herself, lost in thought. She stood out because she was the only motionless person in this crowd. Zhuli held her violin tightly in her arms and was listening to the chanting as if to an excessively complicated piece of music. They had taken the razor to Wu Bei. “Can’t you even find a decent barber, Wu Bei?” “You’re ready for the dance now! Put on your three-piece suit and wait for the orchestra!” “Come and waltz with me, Wu Bei! Don’t be shy…” Broken, the old man let out a howl of grief and the crowd erupted in jeering victory.
Sparrow walked calmly towards his cousin. Wu Bei slipped from his mind. Zhuli should not be here with her violin. He must get her home.
He walked towards her, lengthening his gait to appear confident and tall. “Cousin,” he said when he reached her. She turned and looked at him with keen eyes. For a moment, he faltered and then he repeated, more sternly, “Cousin.” She hardly seemed to breathe. He began walking Zhuli away, his bicycle beside them. More people were coming to join the frenzy. They carried bottles of ink and rolls of paper, and they wore red armbands that, in the dim light, glowed against their arms.
“No,” Zhuli said, turning back towards the noise. “Not this way. I’m going to the Conservatory.”
“Ling was supposed to see you home,” he said. He had to fight to keep his voice calm. “I never would have left you otherwise.”
“She did take me home, but I came out again, after the rain. I reserved the practice room, you see,” she said. “I must go. Room 103. It’s the best room, you know. Because the piano is very old, nobody plays it. But I told you that once, didn’t I? And I have my concert coming so soon, it’s less than three months away. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t seem to memorize the Ravel.”
“Come, Zhuli,” he said. “Let’s go home together. I’ll help you, I promise.”
She was looking at him now. She sighed and followed behind him. “Where are we going, cousin?”
He did not answer.
After a moment, she said again, “But where are we going?”
“Home. Give me your violin.”
She would not. They walked in the shadows.
Red Guards careening recklessly along the path barely noticed them. When one or two stared, Sparrow called out to them, “They’re bringing down that traitor Wu Bei! The coward has already pissed himself.” The Red Guards collapsed in laughter. They shouted, “Long live the Revolution!” and hurried on, afraid they had missed the show.
Behind them, the crowd had reached the crescendo of a poem by Chairman Mao, their voices ringing: “We wash away insects, and are strong.”
Sparrow and Zhuli arrived home, in the laneway. His brothers were in bed but Ba Lute was sitting at the window, in the darkness. He started when they entered.
“Ba,” Sparrow said.
“Door by door,” Ba Lute said softly. “They are going to every house.”
Zhuli had moved halfway into the cold room. “But, uncle, you’re a Party member…”
Sparrow almost said, “So is Wu Bei,” but when he saw his father’s face he said nothing.
“If it comes to unending revolution,” Ba Lute said, “even Party members and heroes must take their turn.” He smiled and seemed to laugh and Sparrow felt a trickle of fear running down his spine.
“Father, why don’t you go to bed? I’ll stay awake.”
“In bed or here or in the road, I won’t be able to sleep.”
“You must,” Sparrow said firmly.
“And where is your mother!” Ba Lute said in despair. “Off endangering herself and all of us. Pretending she can rescue poor Wen! Who does she think she is? Does she have the ear of our Great Leader? Is she so invulnerable?”
“I’m sure she’s written to us. Only the post has been so chaotic these past few weeks.”
“No, no,” Ba Lute said, speaking to himself. “It was not supposed to be like this. I criticized all the others at Headquarters. ‘Give up your feudal allegiances,’ I told them. ‘Give up everything for the Party! Lenient treatment for those who confess, severe punishment for those who refuse! But a reward, yes, a reward, for those willing to surrender others.’ They believed me and I believed myself. It is so much easier to believe than to disbelieve.”
“Father,” Sparrow said, but Ba Lute wasn’t listening to him.
“After all, what good can come from disbelief? What grows, what changes, what improves? Isn’t it always better for your country, your family, for yourself, to believe in something? Doubt can only lead to confusion and complications. And, in any case, our lives were better. We didn’t mean to grow complacent, surely we weren’t complacent, the struggle isn’t finished, and yet…”
Ba Lute got up. His great hulk seemed absurdly small. He walked slowly from the room, shaking his head and saying, “In everything, I trust the Party. I trust Chairman Mao. But no, no. I never wanted this.”
—
After Ba Lute had left the room, Sparrow sat with Zhuli in uneasy quiet. The curtains were closed but they could hear the vibration in the streets, waves of chanting and jubilation.
“This campaign is beginning very fiercely,” Zhuli said. She said it lightly as if she were discussing a new piece of music. “Actually, someone denounced you, Sparrow. I saw it myself.”
“The entire faculty was denounced. They can’t shoot us all.”
When she didn’t answer, he joked that he would welcome the change. Time in the desert, away from his ambitious students, would be a reprieve. Finally some time to focus on his own work.
Zhuli wasn’t listening. “I’ve hardly seen you in the last few days. Where have you been, what have you been doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Have you finished the new symphony?”
“Ah,” Sparrow said. “It’s barely a symphony.”
Zhuli smiled, but her face in the darkness looked very pale and thin. In another couple of months, she would turn fifteen but she did not look it; she appeared frail, as if her childhood sturdiness had abandoned her and left her with nothing to replace it. “If you’re looking for compliments, I won’t oblige. I know how much you hate them. But Sparrow, this symphony of yours, it helps me remember what music is. This symphony is the most honest thing you’ve ever written and it makes me afraid for you.”
“Cousin, you must be exhausted. Why don’t you rest?”
She smiled. “I’m not exhausted. In fact, I feel as if all my life I’ve been sleeping but now…finally, I’m coming awake.”
“In what way have you been asleep?”
“I see now,” she said, “that all the hours of practising, all the commitment, the ambition and the fantasizing, it’s all coming to a climax.” She was silent for a moment. “I’m moving too slowly. What was it that Professor Tan taught me? About Tzigane. The one who plays too slowly will be swallowed by time.”
“Nonsense.”
“Yesterday,” she continued, “when I left the Conservatory, I walked into the courtyard and, out of nowhere, I was surrounded by my classmates. They said that I must now come down to their level. They tried to grab my violin. I kept saying, ‘I’m a patriot, I want to serve my country,’ but they just laughed and said, ‘The butterfly belongs to no country.’ ‘The rightist bitch needs a lesson.’ ” She paused, folding her hands together with an earnestness that seemed to take over her entire body. “A few others came running from inside and there was an argument. It turned into a fight but Tofu Liu and I managed to get away. If Tofu hadn’t been there, I might have been in real trouble.” She was laughing. “We ran away! And I thought, how strange it is that I am the one running, because they are th
e ones afraid of a world they can’t control. Last night they went to Tofu Liu’s house. You know him, don’t you? So gentle he can hardly turn a page. They went through his house, beat his parents, smashed the furniture. All the musical instruments…his father is a rightist. Accused in 1958, the same year as my father.”
Do Not Say We Have Nothing Page 25