The Phoenix Song

by John Sinclair

  I felt a hand grasp my elbow and turned to find Madame Huang beside me. ‘You must come now,’ she said, her eyes distant and suspicious behind that automatic smile. ‘The Director wants to speak to you.’ I left Ling Ling, and followed Madame Huang through the corridors and up one flight of stairs to a large office dominated by a desk, a piano and a padded leather couch.

  Madame Huang sat on the couch and indicated to me to sit beside her. A young girl appeared in the doorway and was dispatched to get some tea. We sat in silence as the girl arranged three cups on the table and poured tea from a metal flask. The door burst open and Director Ho entered. He had a flat moonish face, round glasses and silver-grey hair interspersed with black locks that, from a distance, bore some resemblance to a piano keyboard. He shook my hand enthusiastically while losing his grip on a pile of books and papers in his other arm. ‘Welcome, welcome,’ he said, and spilled his burden onto the desk before drawing up a chair opposite the couch and taking a sip of tea. ‘We are very pleased to have you at the Conservatory,’ he started, removing his glasses, blinking at me cross-eyed several times, and then putting his glasses back on. ‘The syllabus includes vocal theory, musical history, composition, piano, conducting and the study of symphonic style. The study of Chinese folk and classical music is compulsory, as is political instruction and a general education in the humanities and sciences. Your specialisation will be violin performance, of course. Comrade Meretrenko will be your teacher. Madame Huang here is the Party Secretary and all matters not relating to your studies can be referred to her at any time.’

  Madame Huang leaned forward impatiently, her mouth opening to reveal a crumbling parapet of tiny irregular teeth. ‘Now for another matter,’ she said, and the Director relaxed back into his chair. ‘You have been housed in the Foreign Teachers’ Building. There is a reason for this.’ Madame Huang drew a file from a stack of papers on the table. It had my name on it.

  ‘We are aware that you are fluent in Russian, and that your parents are loyal Party members,’ she went on, ending each phrase with a rising inflection. ‘However, it is very important that you do not converse in Russian with the teachers in your building, and you are not to let anyone know that you understand their language. You are to make whatever efforts you can to overhear their conversation, so long as you act discreetly and do not make them suspicious.’ Here Madame Huang softened her voice to a breathy whisper and her eyes widened as if she were speaking of ghosts. ‘Our friends, the Soviet people’s government, have told us that amongst these advisors there may be some revisionist sentiment. Of course, we are happy to assist our big brother the Soviet Union to root out bad elements, just as we would expect them to do for us. So we are asking you to report on their topics of conversation, and particularly on anything you hear concerning the Party and their views on China.’

  ‘Do you understand what Comrade Huang is saying?’ the Director asked. I nodded. ‘She has a list of names for you, and I advise you to get to know them all as best you can. You are to report to her every day for the first week, and then as she instructs you. Do not say anything about this to your roommate. It is none of her business. She is living in the building merely for appearances.’ Director Ho turned to look at the pile of papers on his desk. ‘Now I have work to do,’ he said. ‘I am sure your time here will be very successful, and that you will bring honour to China and to the Party and your parents.’ He shook my hand once more and Madame Huang ushered me out of the room. She gave me a sheet of paper with a column of Russian names and apartment numbers, telling me to commit it to memory and then destroy the paper.

  Ling Ling was waiting for me in the hall, having been summoned to collect me. She linked her arm with mine and took me back to the refectory where, with a squeal of delight, she spied Tian Mei Yun at a table in the far corner. She gave a little jump, did her circular wave again and led me to the table where she introduced us, before going off to the counter to collect some food.

  Tian was a striking man, like a small lion in his powerful shoulders and the flow of his movements, and in the protruding cheekbones that pulled his eyes into a look of feline intrigue. His lips were large and girlish, and shiny black hair swirled like water in a whirlpool around his crown, which he always presented to you, looking away with a boyish grin as if you were applauding him. He was dressed in pleated grey trousers, black leather shoes and a shirt with a slight billow in the sleeves and a hint of silk in the weave. I would soon learn that he was the son of a wealthy and somewhat dissolute family, indeed he made no secret of his bourgeois background and told me he had grown up in a street where every house had a grand piano, so that music wafted from every window to greet evening strollers. Looking back now it seems a miracle that his family had survived the revolution and that he had been admitted to the Conservatory under the Communist administration. It must have been his talent (he had been performing since the age of five) and his supreme confidence in it that made him both irresistible and, for the moment at least, untouchable.

  Ling Ling returned with some bowls of rice and a plate of greasy vegetables topped with some thin scraps of pork fat, and immediately she was competing with Tian to tell me about their childhood. Their mothers were second cousins, she said, and they had performed duets together from a young age. They had been in demand at party functions, Tian said, had entertained visiting dignitaries sitting beside each other at the piano, Tian in a miniature tuxedo, Ling Ling in a lace gown, feet not quite touching the ground, playing Chopin with four tiny hands. Tian appeared to accept Ling Ling’s constant presence and attention with the casual grace of a demi-god.

  I mentioned that I had been practicing a piece by Alexander Glazunov and asked if anyone knew whether his music was good or bad according to socialist principles. The others looked at me flatly and remained silent, holding their breath, until finally Tian said, ‘On matters of socialist principle, we must always defer to a senior member of the Party.’ I nodded as if I had understood, and the conversation resumed as before.

  During the afternoon session I manoeuvred myself closer to the Russians in order to get a better look at my subjects. The speeches resumed, repeating criticisms that had been made during the morning. Not a breath of wind stirred outside the building and the room soon became a furnace, the audience squirming inside their damp clothing. There was snoring from a far corner of the room, and the sound of someone being shaken, then a ripple of suppressed laughter through the crowd. One of the Russians muttered under his breath, ‘This is absurd,’ and the woman at his side squeezed his leg with her hand, digging her thumb hard into his knee.

  When I thought no one could possibly have anything new to say on the topic, Director Ho bustled his way to the front and took the stand. He looked up and beamed at the assembly, but then, suddenly remembering himself, assumed an angry scowl. In one so talented as Debussy, he began, such errors were tragic. How could a man born into the age of science and in the land of Curie and Laplace have failed to understand what science makes clear: that music, like all the other arts, is political? ‘We at the Shanghai Conservatory resist error in music, as in politics,’ he said. ‘Our music is science for the ears and science for the heart. Ours is the generation of composers and musicians who will create the music of socialist realism.’

  We applauded enthusiastically. Even the Russians clapped with some energy, in an effort, I thought, to speed the session to its end. Professor Yu stood and approached the platform, but Director Ho stopped him with an outstretched palm. ‘And now it is time to return to our teaching and study.’ Yu turned back towards his seat, his face impassive, but his eyes black with anger.

  That evening Ling Ling and I practiced together in one of five adjacent practice rooms. They were like long closets, with a piano and room for one or two standing musicians. A booking sheet was pasted to each door, and a queue of students milled around clutching sheet music and instruments to their chests and glowering at the clock, willing it to tick faster towards their allotted pra
ctice times.

  Back in our room, I was relieved when, after the lights went out, Ling Ling fell asleep quickly. I lay on my back for a while, staring at the bulge she made in the mattress above me, then levered myself out of bed and padded softly into the stairwell, edging my way down the clammy walls to the sixth floor where I put my ear to the door. I tried to recall from my list whose apartment this was: Mitrofan Tretyakov, I thought, or perhaps Nikolai Golden. I could hear nothing, so I continued to the fifth and the fourth floors, where the result was the same, except for some snoring. On the third floor, however, there was an open door and a shaft of yellow light from a lamp, and voices in Russian speaking over the clinking of glasses. I glanced inside the door, but there was a thin curtain separating a small vestibule from the rest of the apartment. I leaned my back against the wall and listened.

  There were three voices, a woman and two men. The conversation concerned the struggles that a son was having with his studies at a university in Kiev. ‘Was it laziness at the heart of the matter?’ one of the men said – a high voice, but smooth like a steady trickle of warm fluid. ‘Take my own son, for example: I gave him Tolstoy and Nekrasov and Pushkin to carry with him on his military service, and he brought them back with the pages uncut, and now he makes a show of studying engineering, but in reality he spends his time at coffee houses. This is sad. This should not be.’

  ‘In our son’s case I suspect it is poor breeding,’ the woman suggested, drawing a protest from the first man and slow, mirthless laughter from the second. Her voice was deep and breathy, but it had above it a faint, high-registered echo, like a tiny shriek.

  At that moment I heard someone approach from below, and soon the stairwell was lit by a blush of yellow light. I retreated to the floor above and watched as a large man arrived holding a leather suitcase in one hand and two large boxes under the other arm. The concierge followed at his heels holding a Tilley lamp. The man dropped his parcels at the open door, muttered thanks to the concierge and knocked loudly on the open door. As the concierge retreated down the stairs her lamp threw an elongated shadow of the man, a tree shape, thick and bulky, onto the wall opposite.

  ‘Raduysya lyud!’ the man boomed tunefully, and then he sang in a deep bass, ‘Raduysya veselisya lyud!’ before picking up the smaller box and entering the apartment.

  ‘Ah, Mitrofan!’ a voice shouted from within, and there were the sounds of chairs scraping and backslapping as the newcomer was welcomed and provided with vodka and water. ‘You have them, then? You have retrieved your suitcases?’

  ‘I have only the larger one, alas,’ the newcomer said, ‘the other is still missing, and that is the one with the vodka in it, so I am afraid this bottle must last us for a while. But look . . . look what I have instead.’

  ‘My God,’ said the woman, ‘See this, Pavel! Wherever did you get that, Mitrofan?’

  ‘What is it? What is it?’ The second man’s voice. ‘A beef tongue! Look, Kolya. Can it be? Do the cows here still have tongues?’

  ‘Some vodka, Mitrofan.’ The first man’s voice, Kolya, I thought. ‘And I will light another candle for you, and you will tell us how you smuggled a beef tongue across the continent.’

  ‘Across the continent indeed! Across the river – that’s where I found it,’ Mitrofan said. ‘Believe it or not, in a Jewish butcher’s shop down a side alley. A White Russian and his niece living quietly amongst the good people of Shanghai. He tells me there are several hundred of them, Russians, some of them Jews, but not all.’

  ‘They never told us that at the briefing,’ the woman said.

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t know.’ The second man, Pavel, I deduced. ‘But how did you find this shop, Mitrofan?’

  ‘Let the man drink, Pavel,’ the woman said. ‘And he will want some of our soup. Look, Mitrofan, they have given us a pot of cabbage soup that could almost pass for cold red borsch.’

  ‘In the dark, perhaps; and if you eat it hot, and if you hold your nose as you eat,’ Pavel said.

  ‘You have had three helpings, you hypocrite!’

  ‘I jest, my sweet darling. It is fine soup we are drinking, Mitrofan, and Raya will give you some, although the bread here lacks something; what does it lack, Kolya?’

  ‘Yeast. Wheat.’

  ‘So eat up, and tell us how you found these contraband cow parts.’

  ‘I was at the station,’ Mitrofan began, ‘and they said my suitcases had gone to the wrong address and that a boy had been sent for them, but that he would be an hour at least. This soup is quite passable, Pavel. So I asked my guide – that young wind-player, you know, who looks like a hare – I asked him to show me around, and we crossed a stream into the oldest part of the city and he showed me the neighbourhood where he had grown up, and as I bent in a doorway to tie my boot lace I found myself looking at a very fine pair of ankles in worsted stockings, and, to cut a long story short . . .’

  ‘You fell in love with a pair of ankles!’ Kolya said.

  ‘In worsted stockings!’ added Raya.

  ‘I suspect you fell in love more with what was inside the stockings,’ Pavel said.

  ‘I am a married man, and happily so! I was crouching in a doorway of a house tying my boot lace as the Jewish girl was leaving it.’

  ‘What was she doing at the house?’ Kolya said.

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Did you ask?’ Kolya again.

  ‘Why should I? It was a house like any other.’

  ‘But not her house.’

  ‘Obviously not, as she led me to her uncle’s shop and the family seemed to live in rooms above it.’

  ‘Unlike the three of you,’ Kolya continued, ‘I was briefed about the White Russians who still live here, and about how they make their living.’

  ‘Selling beef tongue to errant musicologists.’

  ‘What could be more satisfying?’

  ‘So, Kolya, what were you told about the White Russians?’

  ‘That they are tolerated here. That they put up a memorial to Pushkin somewhere in the city to commemorate his death.’

  ‘To Pushkin?!’

  ‘Yes, to Pushkin. And I am told that after the war the Jews among them were offered passage to Palestine, but have refused.’

  ‘And no doubt that they should all be avoided,’ Pavel added.

  ‘But not their beef tongue,’ Mitrofan said, ‘And the old man tells me he can get much more; not just offal of various kinds, but as many pigeons as we want, and vodka, and kvass and nalivka made of something that could pass for ashberries, and Troika cigarettes, and decent coffee . . .’

  ‘Decent coffee! Indeed!’

  ‘. . . and, if we wish, his niece . . .’

  ‘Is she made of ashberries too?’

  ‘. . . she can make us pelmeni and cod liver salad.’

  ‘You’re salivating on the tablecloth, Mitrofan. Here, wipe your mouth on this.’

  ‘They are to be avoided. The Whites.’

  ‘Don’t be such a mudak, Pavel,’ Raya said.

  ‘Don’t call me a mudak!’ Pavel snarled. ‘But we have responsibilities, do we not, Comrade Nikolai Sergeyevich?’

  ‘We do indeed, Comrade Pavel Mudakovich, and I . . .’

  ‘See what you have started, Raya. Now everyone will call me Mudakovich! I am marked for life!’

  ‘. . . and I . . . be quiet! I must make sure those responsibilities are met.’

  ‘Very sober, Kolya. You do us proud.’

  ‘And our first responsibility . . . listen!’ Kolya’s voice rose in pitch and gathered strength and unexpected volume. ‘Our first responsibility is to our host, not to cause trouble or embarrassment. So you, dear Mitrofan, you must take care over any excursions into White Russian territory.’

  ‘You see, he does not exactly forbid me.’

  ‘I do not forbid you. These people are living in this city, and the authorities know about them. They are as much guests as we are. But you must tread carefully.’

  ‘But n
ot as carefully as Pavel insists,’ Mitrofan said. ‘They are not to be shunned, as he says.’

  ‘Which is where I come to our second responsibility. More vodka, please. Our second responsibility is to this tongue.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean how shall we cook it? I hate raw tongue. As a matter of socialist principle I refuse to eat it raw!’

  ‘Kolya, you devil!’

  ‘I have the very thing,’ Mitrofan said. After more scraping of chairs, the apartment fell silent for a moment and Mitrofan appeared at the door and seized the larger box. ‘Look here! I have . . .’

  ‘What? Why . . . a samovar!’

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘The ankles, of course, those worsted stockings! Who knows that song . . . and she boiled her stockings in a silver samovar. It gets rude after that.’

  ‘Thank you for sparing us that, Pavel,’ said Raya.

  ‘What did she charge you for that?’

  ‘It was the uncle, and it is a gift.’

  ‘A gift? From a Jew? Surely not!’

  ‘Pavel! You’re overstepping the mark, Pavel. I have cousins . . .’

  ‘Yes, you do, and I withdraw and apologise unreservedly. But this is not a gift, surely. It is an investment.’

  ‘That is entirely a matter for me to decide,’ protested Mitrofan. ‘I was there.’

  ‘You are wrong, my dear Mitrofan. It is for me to decide if it is a gift. It is part of the burden of my authority.’

  ‘So, my dear Kolya, our great bearer of burdens,’ Pavel said, ‘what do you decide? Should he return it whence it came?’

  ‘Let me think about it for a day or two.’

  ‘Hah! See!’

  ‘Take as long as you like to think about it,’ Raya said, ‘and while you do, find me a match . . .’

  ‘Can one really cook a beef tongue in a samovar?’ Pavel asked. ‘My mother would turn in her grave at the thought. What will the tea taste like afterwards?’