Do Not Say We Have Nothing

by Madeleine Thien

  Beside her, Ba Lute moaned, “Ai yo! These young pianists have no understanding of contrapuntal anything. Loud and fast, that’s the only thing they know.”

  “But it sounds good, grandfather.”

  “Because you have no ear. You never had one, poor kid.”

  Which was true. Just the other night, when he tried to give her an erhu lesson, he had screamed at her, “How can a budding scientist be incapable of keeping 4/4 time? Even a buffalo can do it!”

  Now Ai-ming took his papery hand. Ba Lute had gotten plump in the belly but not in the legs and he resembled a pear on toothpicks. She feared he would totter over and be crushed.

  “Hey, you! Little Sparrow! Slow down,” he shouted.

  When her father turned, Ai-ming imagined the sparrow he might have been when he was a boy, a burst of song and a rush of feathers. Big Mother had told her that in the early 1960s, Conservatory students had been sent out to the fields to wage war. They played their instruments loudly and dissonantly from morning until night so that no little birds could land in the fields and eat the grain. Day after day, thousands of sparrows, killed by exhaustion, had fallen dead from the sky. “Yet another solicitous idea from Chairman Mao,” Big Mother had said solemnly. “Who said Western music never killed anyone?”

  Something so barbaric would never happen now. To mark the beginning of 1988, Big Mother had given her a New Year’s calendar with the words, “Happiness Arrives,” written in running characters above the plump faces of the Gods of Harmonious Union. Those words lifted her thoughts as she tugged on Ba Lute’s hand. Happiness arrives. Pretty violinists, wearing brightly coloured dresses, parted around them. She would like to be a musician, Ai-ming thought, simply to look like them. But no, she had always preferred to dismantle a record player than to listen to any old sonata.

  “Oh, oh,” Ba Lute said. “This old fart is running out of air.”

  “Don’t rush. We’re not going anywhere.”

  “How true, how true.”

  The Bird of Quiet remained where he was, waiting patiently, as if he existed in a different dimension from the students zipping past. They were electricity, Ai-ming thought excitedly, sizzling electrons, and her father was the electron gate. Or they were time and he was space. Ai-ming remembered how, when Chairman Mao still breathed, she had regularly written criticisms of her father. (“I cry bitter tears knowing that I am the daughter of a bad element, capitalist-roader….” “In this war, there are no civilians!”) She’d been only a kid at the time, so her father had to help her write the tricky characters. When Chairman Deng came to power, criticisms like these were no longer so common. She and her father had never talked about them. Now, it seemed almost funny to remember that she had called him a snake or a demon, and even a snake-demon, that she had denounced him so naturally. He had taught her how to protect herself by hiding inside the noise.

  “Why did we come anyway?” Ai-ming asked. “The Shanghai Conservatory only makes him feel bad.”

  “Eh, it’s not my fault. Your father wanted to come. He has old friends here, you know.”

  But there were no old friends, or none that came out to see him. He went into one building and out another, searching for someone, and she and Ba Lute waited under various flowering trees. Before they left, her father went into one of the practice rooms. Ai-ming sat on a chair in the corner as her father played the piano, she had never heard him do so before, had not quite realized he was even capable. His entire body, the way he moved, changed. Most of the pieces she recognized from the records (Bach’s Partita No. 6, Couperin, Shostakovich) but there was another piece, a complex figure that seemed to disassemble as she listened, a rope of music, a spool of wire. It seemed to rise even as it was falling, to lift in volume even as it diminished, a polyphony so unfathomably beautiful it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. When it stopped, tears came abruptly to her eyes.

  After a moment, her father pushed the bench back. He closed the lid without a sound.

  “What music is that?” she asked.

  He turned to her and smiled. Ai-ming grinned, too, unsure. She felt an inexpressible sorrow welling up in the room.

  “It’s nothing,” Sparrow said.

  “Nothing?”

  He stood up and went to the wall. “It’s mine,” he said. The lights were off so when he hit the switch they turned on, and he stared up at them, confused, and flicked the switch once more. The number 103 was stencilled in neat black ink on the wall.

  “What do you mean it’s yours?”

  “It’s me,” he said, more to the light switch than to her. “Music I wrote a long time ago, part of a symphony I never finished.” He went out. In the courtyard, the sun’s glare faded all the colours. “I hadn’t expected to remember, I was sure that after all this time it had completely disappeared.”

  She followed him out, the music circling in her mind.

  She wondered how many things a person knew that were better forgotten. Her father had looked at the piano as if it were the only solid thing in the room, as if everything and everyone else, including himself, were no more than an illusion, a dream.

  —

  From the moment she had first looked into the belly of a radio, Ai-ming had known her vocation: to study computer science at Beijing University and to be part of the technological vanguard. Wasn’t it obvious to everyone? Computers would one day hold up half the sky.

  When she made this grand announcement to her family, Ai-ming had been six years old. Her father had continued eating but Big Mother had applauded, saying, “So not everyone in this house is half-dead after all.” That year, 1977, the competition had been epic: more than five million people wrote the university entrance examinations, competing for 200,000 precious places. Chairman Deng Xiaoping had reopened general admissions, and this was the first time since 1966 that university entrants would not be selected by the Party. In town, during the student parades, Ai-ming had even waved a banner (“The People love the students!”). How entrancing they were! Exhausted from studying yet defiantly awake. On the day of the exam, the first bells signalling the start of test-taking had brought everything to a stop, no traffic, no noise, no bickering, even Big Mother stopped shouting at passersby. Many weeks later, when the results were announced, the university entrants became the new heroes, young men and women who sweated over books instead of ploughs, who held up not one Little Red Book, but a giant stack of possibilities that teetered towards the skies. Their minds were ever-expanding factories crunching through raw material and spitting out answers. To get an education, Ai-ming thought, is glorious. To go to Beijing University one day would mean freedom.

  In 1988, after studying sixteen hours a day for a full year, it was finally Ai-ming’s turn to endure three days of testing on nine subjects. Happiness arrives, she told herself. The first essay question was: “Light and shadow–‘All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.’–Leo Tolstoy. Discuss.’ ” The second was: “Take inspiration from the philosophy expressed by Ruan Yuan’s ‘Poem on Wuxing.’ ” She wrote more than nine hundred characters on each and, by the end of the first day, was giddy from nervous exhaustion. The overhead lights were distractingly bright, they made warning signals in her eyes. The exam was followed by an interminable wait, by tears and sleeplessness and tantrums. Her impressive scores got her hopes up but in the end, although she made the cut-off for South China Institute of Technology, her scores were not good enough for Beijing University or Tsinghua, or her third choice, Fudan. She would not be able to leave the province. All that week, comrade neighbours fell over themselves to congratulate her father and grandparents because Ai-ming was the only one from Cold Water Ditch going on to university. The neighbours couldn’t understand why Ai-ming was inconsolable, curled up in her room, crying her eyes out.

  —

  The Bird of Quiet gave her two pieces of advice. Study hard. And: It is good to be cautious.

  They were eating dinner
and Ai-ming, still weeping, said. “Oh, Ba! What’s the point in being timid?”

  Sparrow chewed his barbarian eggplant and refrained from giving her Big Mother’s answer (“Oh, you new generation! You think you’re so worldly-wise. You have no idea the rice is already cooked!”) or any answer at all. There had been a time in Ai-ming’s life when her father’s quiet had seemed like another person in their midst. Quiet was alive, like a toy you could just keep hitting. Once, when she was twelve, she had asked him, “The music you used to write, Ba, was it criminal music?” He could only say, “I don’t know.” That same night, he wrote a new banner for the front door which read, May the Red Sun keep rising for ten thousand years, in calligraphy that was accomplished but empty, a fixed smile. He might as well have written Joy! on a plastic bucket.

  Big Mother shouted, “Good question!”

  Ba Lute whispered, “Symphony No. 7 in F Minor, ‘Timid,’ ” and giggled at his elderly joke. He leaned across the cluttered table, wanting to wipe her tears, and instead smeared them all over her cheek.

  In retirement, Ba Lute was the most content of all. He was forever banging on something or other and making old-time music, and he made Sparrow play music, too, even though Sparrow said his hands were useless. Ba Lute was such a funny-looking old man, too big for his skinny legs. Big Mother would curse him tenderly, “I like you more now that I can see you less.” On sunny mornings, they sat outside like a dragon and a phoenix guarding the gate, or like two flowery portraits of Marx and Engels, Big Mother with her pants rolled up to catch the sun on her knees, and Ba Lute with his vest rolled up to catch the sun on his belly.

  Ai-ming got up to clear the plates. Until the arrival of the university results, 1988 had been a year of prosperity, there had been meat on the table twice each week and they had a sewing machine, a sofa, the latest Red Lamp upright radio, and quality bicycles for every member of the family. Ma had her own television. She’d just been promoted to news editor at Radio Beijing, and had moved to the capital. When the university results arrived in Cold Water Ditch, Ai-ming realized that fortune had indeed arrived, but had found her wanting.

  By the time she finished washing up, her left eye was swollen shut from crying.

  She rejoined Sparrow in the courtyard where he was waiting with the record player. A few of the neighbour kids were there too, playing cards, their mouths smeared ridiculous, with some kind of barbecue sauce. They were squabbling and she wanted to kick dirt in their faces. It was Sunday evening, the only night she was allowed to listen to Western music though, in reality, all these years, she had only been keeping her father company. Did her father honestly believe she wanted to spend hours listening to the agonized rumblings of Shostakovich? His Tenth Symphony made it clear life was hopeless.

  “You choose, Ba.” She only hoped he wouldn’t choose Bach, whose uptight fugues made her feel like she was trapped in a barrel rolling down a hillside.

  “Mmm,” Sparrow said, rolling his cigarettes. His special Xinjiang tobacco had a damp earth smell. “Prokofiev?” he suggested.

  “I’ll get it.”

  She found his favourite, Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1, inside the cardboard sleeve that had a picture of big-jowled, lantern-faced David Oistrakh. She put the record on. Music seeped into the air and Sparrow listened with one elbow on his knee, his entire body curved like a trigger.

  Prokofiev composed his pretty music, as if he had not a care in the world.

  As a result of yearly gifts from Ling and Big Mother Knife, her father had accumulated one of the largest record collections in Guangxi Province, but he still insisted on hiding them. The first thing they did when they got home each Spring Festival was dig out another part of the floor and bury another stack of music. Her father was paranoid.

  What kind of life was this? A record was a kind of storage in which music lay waiting, love letters from Canada stored words that kept Sparrow awake at night. She knew because she had opened the letters and sneakily read them all. But for anything to be alive, it required motion: the current must run, the record must turn, a person must leave or find another path. Without movement or change, the world became nothing more than a stale copy, and this was the trouble with Ba’s elegant calligraphy, his patient life, it was frozen in time. His tomorrow would always be, somehow, yesterday. Ai-ming knew she was by nature more impulsive, less patient.

  In the courtyard now, Sparrow lifted the record player’s thin arm and set another album down. Ai-ming had to fight with all her strength not to push the record player over and smash it on the ground. This was Smetana’s From My Homeland, and it made Ai-ming so irretrievably unhappy her tears started up again. The Bird of Quiet paid no attention. She pulled hard on the skin between her thumb and index finger to extinguish the pain in her heart.

  “Ai-ming,” he said.

  She lifted her head. The music had finished without her noticing.

  “If Beijing University is where you wish to go, then study for another year and write the exam again.”

  As if she would ever be accepted into Beida! She felt such bitterness she almost laughed.

  “I requested a transfer to Beijing Wire Factory No. 3 and it’s been approved. You know the factory, they make radios and also the new mini-computers. We’ll both move to the capital and have Beijing papers. Your mother used all her connections….anyway, it’s done now. She’s supposed to telephone tonight, that’s why I hadn’t said anything…When your mother calls, try and act surprised.”

  She stared.

  Sparrow explained, “The university cut-off scores are lower for those with Beijing residency.”

  Ai-ming knew that, of course. The cut-off was a full hundred points lower, and she would have passed easily this year, if only she’d had Beijing papers. Worse, their province had only been allocated fifty spots at Beida. The deep injustice of the world flared up inside her all over again and made her want to scream.

  “We can move to your mother’s apartment in Beijing or stay here. It’s up to you.”

  Ai-ming could barely nod her head. She felt shame crawling through her body like an old self-criticism. “I want to go, Ba.”

  Sparrow smiled, delighted.

  She began to cry again, she felt a debilitating mix of joy and panic.

  “I haven’t been to Beijing since I was a teenager,” he said. “Don’t be upset, Ai-ming. Nothing is ever complete, it’s only a matter of turning one’s head, of focusing on a new place…and I wouldn’t mind the chance to hear something new. The Central Philharmonic is in Beijing….”

  She didn’t know what he was talking about. Her father had turned his attention back to the record player. One record after another was lifted up in his hands and then set down again. She intervened. She chose Shostakovich’s Jazz Suites, and the album opened with Waltz No. 2, which was glorious and lopsided and entirely unapologetic. Sparrow returned to his chair, he gazed up at the clouded night. He closed his eyes.

  —

  When Sparrow said, “It is good to be cautious,” in the same sure way he might quote Chairman Deng, “To get rich is glorious,” he had swayed a little bit because, these days, he was drinking too much. His hands bothered him, a phantom pain he couldn’t relieve. One evening, a few days before they were due to move to Beijing, Big Mother asked him, “What are you waiting for? What do you need, my son?”

  “I’m content.”

  “Ba Lute says the conservatory in Guangzhou offered you a position but you said no. Is it true? You’re so stubborn. I don’t know who gave birth to you.”

  He smiled. After a moment he said, “What could I teach? I haven’t written in twenty years. There’s a new generation of composers now, better suited than me.” He changed the subject. “You should come to Beijing with us.”

  “Beijing! Surrounded by cadres and bureaucrats. Eating dust. I’d rather live in Mao Zedong’s coffin.”

  “I fear that would wake him.”

  Big Mother burped. Carefully, she placed her c
opy of the Book of Records, still in its shoebox, on the chair beside Sparrow. She nudged it towards him. “Don’t wait anymore,” she said at last, standing up. “Swirl and Wen aren’t coming home. I don’t even know what’s happened to Projectionist Bang. And your two brothers. They could be Americans by now for all I know.” She sighed slowly into the house. “Long, long, long,” she said. “So long is the Revolution.”

  Sparrow remained outside. At last, he opened the shoebox.

  He lifted out Chapter 42 from the stack of notebooks, its pages were almost pristine, as if it had never been read before. In the chapter, Da-wei has come back to Northwest China. He and his wife are searching for their daughter who has been missing for many years. One day, they come to a mountainous village where all the peasants, cadres and educated youth are too busy to speak, they are engaged in a monumental task: they have been ordered to construct a great dam, and to do so, they must demolish their local mountain piece by piece. Da-wei and his wife can only stand and watch in amazement. The air is choked with the dust of the ground and the dust of the heavens. The peasants are singing a hymn to Chairman Mao, and when Da-wei’s wife asks them if they have seen this girl, the peasants refuse to even look at the photograph.

  “My daughter would be grown now, a young woman,” she volunteers, but the peasants shake their heads and continue to haul their baskets.

  Someone answers, “Everything comes to rest at the bottom of the river,” but Da-wei and his wife are certain she is not there.

  They travel on but year by year the Taklamakan Desert wears them down, their clothes, their shoes, their faith, until the photograph, too, disintegrates. Even their tears refuse to last. The hot sun immediately dries them, leaving behind only flakes of salt. Da-wei tells his wife that the time has come to return home and she answers, “Tell me where our home is, and I’ll go.” They want to make a spirit offering to their lost child, but they have nothing, no money and no goods. It is 1988 and on the former Silk Road, there are no longer any merchants or trains of camels, and countless villages have been abandoned.