—
At home that afternoon, Sparrow fell into a deep sleep that went undisturbed by the loudspeakers, whose broadcast repeated stubbornly: Beginning immediately, all Beijing citizens must be on high alert! Please stay off the streets and away from Tiananmen Square! All workers should remain at their posts and all citizens should stay at home to safeguard their lives. What did he dream? Later on, Ai-ming often wondered because, when Sparrow came out of his room around dinner time, he was calm, even elated. He was carrying a small bundle of papers that were taped together and folded, accordion style. He sat down on the sofa beside Ling, oblivious to the broadcaster’s repeated warnings. Perhaps Sparrow, like Ai-ming, did not believe that the army would re-enter the city. Sparrow was humming a piece of music, an enlargement of the pattern of notes he had been humming for weeks. Directly above him, the Spring Festival calendar showed two plump goldfish: good fortune gliding over his head like clouds.
Ai-ming listened to his humming. The music was not a lament, and yet it had a lifting, altering sadness impossible to pin down.
Ling was reading yesterday’s paper. She stared, as if hypnotized, at the same page. Side by side, Ai-ming’s parents appeared joined at the hip, although Ling leaned slightly away, as if to make space for another person. Ai-ming studied her father closely. His bad haircut had grown out a little, making the Bird of Quiet look like someone who had once been very handsome.
She stretched out her hands. After three hours of copying Chapter 23, when May Fourth arrives in Hohhot and begins her journey into the desert, all the little bones in her fingers hurt.
The noise of the helicopters was maddening, as if their only purpose was to agitate everyone’s nerves. A sharp sound cracked against the windows and then the door. She and Ling jumped but Sparrow simply turned, as if he’d been expecting an intruder all along. A woman’s raspy voice cried out, “Comrade Sparrow! Comrade Sparrow!”
When no one else moved, Ai-ming went to the door and pulled it open.
The woman had a narrow nose, surprisingly large eyes and a small, pointy chin. What was the stain on her dress? Mud. Dried red mud. And she had a new bruise, very swollen, just below her left eye.
“Fan,” her father said.
“Sparrow, help us…please.” Fan was shuddering as if from cold. “Old Bi, Dao-ren, we have to bring them here….”
Ai-ming stepped away from the door.
“They were hit at Gongzhufen. We have to hurry. The army is coming in!” She stared at Ai-ming with an unreal placidity, blank terror.
“Gongzhufen…” Sparrow said.
Ling was looking at Sparrow’s sheaf of papers, she had picked them up off the sofa and was staring at them as if no one and no sound had entered the room. Sparrow went and spoke into her ear. Ling stood up.
“Ai-ming,” her father said, turning. “Stay with your mother. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You promise to stay here?”
She nodded.
“Ai-ming, promise me that you won’t leave the house. I have to go now.”
Why was he shouting? Or perhaps he wasn’t shouting. He was speaking quietly yet his voice seemed to be pounding in her ears.
“Yes, Ba.”
He paced the room in a confused way, looking for something. His coat? His ID? The bundle of papers? A letter? Whatever it was he had wanted to bring with him, he abandoned it. He gave Ling one last look, a smile to reassure her, before hurrying after Fan.
Ai-ming followed them to the door.
“She’s a co-worker,” Ling said. “She works at the wire factory.”
Ai-ming saw her father’s bicycle wobbling down the alleyway into the shadows. A vanishing colour caught her eye, a pink dress, a flash of orange light. The stuttering vibration of helicopters made it impossible to think.
“Shut the door, Ai-ming.”
She turned to find her mother beside her.
“Shut the door,” Ling repeated, doing it herself.
Her mother was holding that sheaf of papers and Ai-ming saw line after line of musical notation, a language she had never learned to read. At the top, three words were visible, For Jiang Kai. “He’ll be home soon,” Ai-ming said. Her own voice sounded silly to her, flattened.
“What do you know about it? What have you ever known about your father?”
Dazed, Ai-ming said nothing.
“Do you know he could have composed for the Central Philharmonic, he could have studied abroad, he could have had a different life, if only he was a completely different kind of person….” Ling shook the papers slightly. “But he wouldn’t be with us, he wouldn’t have chosen us, would he? If he’d been given the choice.” The papers in her hands seemed to proliferate. “Your father has always been a good man but kindness can be a downfall. It can make you lose perspective. It can make you foolish.”
Ling sat down on the sofa.
“Ma?”
“Why did he go with her?” Ling said. “Doesn’t he know what’s happening out there? Does he think that this life doesn’t matter? Does he really believe that he can carry on as if he is invisible?”
—
At first, the gunfire had been intermittent, shocking, but now it came steadily, a drilling in the night. When Ai-ming could stand it no longer, she hid in the study, surrounded by her books, The Collected Letters of Tchaikovsky, The Analects, The Rain on Mount Ba. In the courtyard outside, the scramble of voices grew increasingly frantic.
Two hands rapped softly on the glass. The pink headband in Yiwen’s hair was as startling as daylight. Ai-ming pushed open the window.
“Come out,” Yiwen whispered. Her eyes were wide, she’d been crying.
Ai-ming looked around the room. A pair of plastic sandals, her mother’s, were turned over beside the book trunk. Ai-ming slipped them on. She climbed onto the desk and dangled first one leg and then the other out the window. She felt Yiwen’s warm hands gripping her ankles, pulling her insistently down. She jumped.
Halfway out of the courtyard, Ai-ming realized she’d forgotten to close the window. “Wait, wait, Yiwen,” she whispered, turning to go back. As she reached the window, she saw a figure hovering in the doorway, moving towards her. She told herself that the shadow was only in her mind. Ai-ming pushed the glass closed.
“Ai-ming!” she heard. “Ai-ming, where are you going?”
She kept running.
“Ai-ming, come back.”
—
These streets, covered with smoke, could not be hers. Ai-ming’s bicycle swerved around the debris: overturned chairs, bricks that seemed to have come from nowhere, tree branches, abandoned cars, a wagon in which two children were sitting, staring mutely out. Behind them, at the Muxidi intersection, she saw overturned buses and smoke billowing from at least a dozen fires.
“Yiwen, where are we going?”
But the other girl kept pedalling. “How could they,” Yiwen said. She was somehow both calm and distraught. “How could they?” She pedalled furiously as if someone was chasing them.
Small clusters of bicycles moved in every direction. A truck filled with boys, heading towards Muxidi, swerved past. The boys shouted that they were on their way to the barricades. To her relief, Chang’an Avenue grew less chaotic as they approached Tiananmen Square. On and on the boulevard went, the sounds of fighting diminishing. The Square rose before them, she saw the tent city, grey and sturdy against the concrete, and the Goddess of Democracy, shining like a trick of light.
“We can’t go back,” Yiwen said. “They’re killing people at Fengtai. They’re killing people at Gongzhufen. Right in the street, at the intersection. I saw it, Ai-ming. I saw it. At first it was only tear gas but then there were real bullets, there was real blood, they’re following people through the alleyways–”
“Gongzhufen?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Ai-ming’s legs kept moving, the bicycle rushing forward, but she felt as if she were falling. �
�I have to go back. My father’s at Gongzhufen.”
“Are you crazy?” Yiwen was crying so hard she could not possibly see in front of her. “They’re shooting. The People’s Liberation Army is shooting. I saw three or four people hit right in front of me. The bullets, it’s as if they explode inside the person–”
“No, the army wouldn’t dare. They must be rubber bullets.”
“They wouldn’t!” Yiwen shouted, hysterical. “People were crying, Why are they shooting us? Why are they shooting? And then they couldn’t run away because of the roadblocks. Our roadblocks. All the roadblocks we set up. They couldn’t climb over them.”
In the Square, an immense crowd of students was still gathered at the base of the Monument to the People’s Heroes. Yiwen’s bicycle rolled to a stop.
“But what now?” Ai-ming whispered.
Yiwen was looking directly at her, but Ai-ming had the disturbing sensation that she, Ai-ming, was not really there. She saw stains on Yiwen’s dress, the muddy darkness of blood. Someone else’s? she thought, her heart pounding, surely someone else’s.
“What have we done?” Yiwen said. “What have we done?”
—
Sometimes the army trucks burst forward without warning, heedless of who stood in the road. Every moment there were yet more soldiers and yet more people, as the ones trying to escape collided with those who had only been onlookers, or who had been standing outside their buildings, or had been on their way to or from work. Sparrow and Fan had run almost all the way back to Muxidi and they were both gasping for breath. In the alleyways, soldiers materialized as if they were born from the ground. The crowd was not running away, but only back and forth, back and forth, like toys on a string. Electric buses, which had once formed a barricade, were now wrecks of charred metal.
“Don’t let them pass,” Fan was saying. “They’re murderers. Don’t let them get through to the Square.”
Teenagers stumbled by, carrying an injured girl in their arms.
A voice on a loudspeaker said, “Go home, go home.” Someone was crying for help.
The tanks came forward again. He heard the dull knocking of bricks against metal.
“Fascists, fascists…” Sparrow turned. Was it Fan? He couldn’t see her. How neatly and quietly the soldiers had appeared behind him, shoulder to shoulder, their guns raised. But they walked past Sparrow as if he was not there. Behind them, a woman lay injured on the road. Two men ran and began to pull her backwards. The soldiers shot repeatedly at a single person he couldn’t see.
Fan was shouting, “Animals! Inhuman animals!” Smoke fell as if from the trees.
The loudspeaker broke though the noise, “Go home go home go home.”
“Little Guo, where are you? Little Guo!”
“He’s hit, he’s hit! Someone help us!”
Fan was supporting a man who leaned heavily on her shoulder, he was tall, heavy-set, and wearing a navy blue worker’s uniform, and his full weight came down like a falling pole as Sparrow rushed to help. Stumbling forward, Sparrow feared he would bring them all down. He caught hold of something, a piece of metal. He pulled away as it began to singe his hand.
“Careful, careful,” Fan mumbled, as if she were in a dream, as if she were guiding a line of small children across the road. “Don’t let them reach the students.”
His hand felt as if it were melting. The man leaning against him said, “Please don’t leave me. Promise me, please. You can’t leave me.”
“I won’t leave you. Tell me your name.” The steadiness of Sparrow’s voice felt unreal and far away. “Where did you get hit?” The blood had covered up the original wound.
“It’s inside me,” the man said, crying now. “They did this to me.”
Another person rushed over with a flatbed tricycle, everyone was shouting, the wood of the cart was slick with blood and a thick grime. The big, injured man was jostled in, alongside the woman Sparrow had seen earlier. Her eyes were open, they looked at him with a question. The driver began to pedal, they tried to help him by pushing the cart on both sides. “Which way?” the driver shouted. “Which way?”
“Go west, get to Fuxing Hospital.”
“No, no, get him over to the centre on Zhushikou–”
“Wait, wait, there are more people here…”
Two more bodies were hurried into the cart.
“Save yourselves!” the injured man moaned, feverish. “Can’t you see they’re shooting?”
Sparrow thought of his bicycle, he would need it but where had he put it? A man was pouring gasoline on a hulk of metal, crying, “Animals! Butchers! Down with the Communist Party!” Smoke rushed into Sparrow’s chest, it filled his throat and vision. He felt an anger that had seemed long gone, or had never existed in him before. Through the jostling crowd, he thought he saw Fan and went towards her.
—
At the Muxidi intersection, Sparrow found himself on streets that he knew, and he recognized familiar buildings and the houses of his neighbours, things that made him feel irrationally safe. The noise was overpowering, exploding canisters of tear gas, people shouting, petrol bombs flaring along the road, crawling up over the army tanks. A long vibration suddenly exploded somewhere near. If he closed his eyes for too long, rows of buildings might be erased, just as lines of people, too, were vanishing. The soldiers had been singing the words of Chairman Mao: If no one attacks me, I attack no one. But if people attack me, I must attack them. Sparrow walked towards the armoured trucks where soldiers moved in glacial, melting shapes: Kneeling. Shooting. Standing. Creeping forward. Their olive green uniforms, the hard shell of their helmets, seemed out of keeping with their young faces. Too young, they looked the same age as Kai and Zhuli had been long ago. They walked impossibly slowly, as if the soldiers’ bodies were balloons and their guns were made of lead. He heard the flat crack of a concrete block hitting an armoured tank. Sound accelerated. One tank rushed towards the place he had been standing only a moment before. He thought he was still there, watching the tank grow larger. The people running appeared to be suddenly unmoving. All of the shapes he saw became sound, the cracking of trees, the swinging of a rifle, the edges of a bayonet. He felt the whistle of bullets passing near, but the crack of the rifles was delayed, the noise coming a second, two, three, later.
Sparrow did not know where Fan was. He recognized the closed storefront of a train ticket office, and saw a couple huddled there. Loudspeakers above continued urging them to Go home, Go home….but PLA soldiers were coming out of their trucks and infiltrating the small streets and alleyways. The man was dressed smartly and had wavy hair and a thin face, the woman was carrying a small child in her arms. “We have to go,” the man was saying. “No, no,” she whispered. “We’re trapped, they’re shooting back there.” The surreal sound of a pop song was tinkling down from above, someone had left a radio or a television on. Gunfire punctured the alleyway, making sparks of light. Sparrow wanted to protect them, but did not know how to give them the same terrifying invisibility that he seemingly possessed. The woman’s dark hair gleamed wetly, and he saw now that a long stain of blood was moving from her hair, down her clothes, over the child in her arms, and dripping onto the sidewalk. The man was sweating. His dress shirt had the softness of an old newspaper. “Give her to me,” the man begged. The woman refused, hugging the child closer. “Why are they shooting?” the man said brokenly. “How can they?” More armoured trucks were rushing along Chang’an, as if they were late for an appointment further ahead. “Don’t be scared,” the woman said to the motionless child. “We’re almost there, stop crying. We’re almost there.” Now the trucks stopped and more soldiers poured out. “Fascists, fascists!” an old man shouted. He was wearing shorts and a white undershirt. He was instantly surrounded by three soldiers. Sparrow saw a teenager with a camera, the camera hovering in front of his face. The soldiers turned and shot him. Sparrow began to run towards the teenager, shouting. The soldiers kept firing. One came forward in a vicious mot
ion and bayoneted the boy in the stomach. The teenager gripped the bayonet with both hands, screaming, trying to pull it out. By the time Sparrow reached them, the soldier was gone and the student was curled up on the ground, blood and internal organs coming out of his body. The strap of the camera, twisted around his wrist, was moving in a hallucinatory way. Bricks rained down on the soldiers and one fell, the crowd suddenly doubled, tripled, surrounding the vulnerable soldier. A burning mattress flew in slow motion onto an army truck. Someone had thrown it from an apartment above, and the mattress was exploding as it fell. “Why have you come here?” a woman wept. “You’re not wanted here. Don’t you understand? They’ve tricked you. It’s all lies!” If no one attacks me, I attack no one! “How can you turn your guns on us?” “We won’t kneel down anymore!” But if people attack me, I must attack them. “Murderers, murderers…” “Shame, shame on you!”
Sparrow crouched beside the teenager, who stared up at him as if towards a face he knew, the only visible person. “Tell me your name,” Sparrow said. He was shouting, he worked anxiously, trying to stop the flow of blood with his hands and then with his shirt. The boy said his name was Guoting and that he was a student at People’s University. “What did they do to me?” the boy asked curiously. Sparrow did not have the words. It seemed only yesterday that he was walking his baby daughter around and around the courtyard of their home in the South, whispering lullabies, Ai-ming, turn your eyes to the sky, don’t look at the ground. Look elsewhere, Ai-ming…But this year, he had turned forty-nine years old and time, which for so long had seemed to stretch unbearably, was now contracting. He held the boy’s hand and saw blood expanding towards him. “Guoting,” he said firmly to the boy. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t leave you. Look up at the sky. See how it belongs to us…” The soldiers were not leaving any room for people to turn back or retreat. The noise of the crowd shattered his thoughts. A soldier who had fallen into the hands of the crowd was crying out for mercy. The boy on the ground was dying. Could the middle of his life have come now, delayed, twisting around again, retrieving him? Minutes later, Sparrow stood up and the boy’s lifeless body was carried away on a cart. The streets seemed simultaneously empty and full.
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