The Phoenix Song

by John Sinclair

  ‘Yes, my darling. I kiss you for your kind advice,’ Sasha said.

  ‘It is the sign of a life well-lived, is it not,’ Mitrofan’s voice rose above the others. ‘Is it not a sign? To be at peace in one’s dacha, children at one’s feet, a plump and intelligent wife – forgive me, ladies – migraines and such troubles receding into the undergrowth at the smell of vodka, and with all of one’s metaphors, every single damn one of the little bastards, neatly shot through the heart, ping!, stuffed and mounted on the walls, all in a line and completely unmixed.’

  ‘Well spoken, Mitrofan,’ Pavel said. ‘We will miss you dearly, my friend. Don’t leave us. Stay another month!’

  ‘So, Fyodor, Fyodor!’ Raya said, ‘tell us more about your student! Are you initiating her into the Russian School of playing, Fyodor? Are you turning her into China’s Jascha Heifetz?’

  ‘Let her become what she will become,’ said Fyodor. ‘They have one prize from her, and they will have more, I am sure of it.’

  The conversation turned to other matters, and then to ‘our friend Kirill’ whom Ksenia had heard was divorcing his wife, having lived apart from her for several years. ‘It is not good,’ she said, and there was silence in the room, as if to mark the occasion. ‘I hear he will be back in Shanghai in April,’ she added finally. ‘We must be kind to him, since we know nothing of the circumstances.’

  After the guests left, I listened to the clinking of plates being washed in the tiny kitchen. I was about to shuffle backwards from my listening post onto the fire escape when I heard another noise, a soft and rhythmic scraping sound, and my skin crawled – a wave of prickly coldness – as I realised that Pavel was sitting at the table quietly sobbing. Raya moved about the room tidying things, but ignored her husband. He was still sobbing when she announced that she was going to bed. I carefully manoeuvred my way onto the fire escape and up onto the roof. It was a clear night – a rarity for Shanghai – and the stars were laid out like cheap shiny trinkets on a street hawker’s cloak. When I got back to my room I realised that my eyes were wet with tears too, and that my hands were shaking.

  The following week Madame Huang told me that Pavel Gachev would be leaving the Conservatory for health reasons, and would return to Kiev for treatment. Raya Vishinsky would stay on and continue her musicological research.

  In the months that followed, my lonely vigils were fruitless. For an hour each night I bore silent witness to Raya’s new evening ritual: cooking for herself in a single pot, setting out a plate and a fork and glass of vodka, putting a record on the gramophone and smoking one cigarette – leaning back in her chair to exhale its smoke towards the ceiling – and then settling into the corner of the couch to read.

  Raya left the city in July and was not due to return until September. Madame Huang told me she had given as her summer address a hotel in Sevastopol on the Black Sea, rather than her sister’s home in Kiev as in previous summers. And it seemed that Kirill had been reassigned to Beijing to assist Ambassador Yudin. ‘We are trying hard to bring him back to Shanghai,’ she said. ‘We are trying to convince the generals to hold some negotiations here, to which he will inevitably come. We just need to find something that needs to be negotiated.’

  ‘So if I am not needed here may I return home to Harbin to visit my parents?’ I said.

  Madame Huang stared into the space between us, blinking and breathing softly. ‘Let me be frank,’ she said, seeking out my eyes with hers. ‘I would advise strongly against it. You will be aware that your parents have had some . . . some difficulties.’

  ‘You mean the Anti-Rightist Campaign?’

  ‘It is hard to control local elements,’ she said. ‘Here in Shanghai we like to think we are genteel about our self-criticisms; but up in Heilongjiang . . . well, you know what it’s like up there. For you to visit would complicate matters. I think it is better that you stay away from Harbin, at least until things have . . .’

  ‘Have what?’

  Madame Huang smiled at me with her mouth, but there was a flicker of desperation in her eyes.

  ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ I said. ‘I understand what you are saying.’

  ‘We have a plan,’ she said, and put her hand on mine. ‘Be assured that Director Ho, Professor Yu and I, we have a plan.’

  *

  Madame Huang’s plan saw me travel alone to Moscow in August, by plane, and then to Paris by train, accompanied by an embassy courier called Gao – Old Gao, he insisted I call him, although he looked no more than thirty. He was a squat man with a round, saggy face, unruly hair and watery, bovine eyes. His movements too were slow and ox-like, and after the slightest exertion – beginning with lifting my small suitcase onto the train – he released a long and deliberate breath and noisily cleared his throat as if he were about to speak. He rarely did. We had a compartment to ourselves, and it was no surprise to me that Old Gao positioned himself by the door, set his own cardboard case on the floor, raised his feet onto it one by one, and waited for the motion of the train to lull him to sleep. He stayed in that position for as much of the next three days as he could, raising himself only to accompany me to the dining car for meals, to show our papers to a succession of border guards, and, in Berlin, to gather all of our luggage except my violin and negotiate the series of dusty passages and passport checks necessary to transfer us onto a different train for our journey through to Paris.

  I spent the hours conversing with my ghosts, studying my scores, and looking out of the window at landscapes veiled for the most part by rain or fog. During daylight there were glimpses of a real world: purple forests, grey-green farmland, fields full of wheat stalks sagging with ripe grain, rivers, villages and towns. And everywhere there were children playing in piles of rubble and calling out to our train in a succession of languages as we passed.

  On one occasion the train came to a halt for several minutes and I watched a group of three railway children at play. Two boys connived together in the doorway of a shed, while a girl dressed in a thin cotton dress and a dun-brown cardigan rode about awkwardly on a bicycle that was too large for her. The boys seemed to have found some treasure; a wounded animal, perhaps, or some artefact of war. The girl would stop her bicycle and try to join in, but the boys closed ranks and pushed her away, laughing amongst themselves. The girl rode on, marking figure eights in the muddy yard and calling out to the boys. Our train jolted into motion once more. As the scene began to move out of my view, I saw one of the boys come running out of the doorway, yelling and carrying a brick above his head. The girl turned sharply away and rose on the pedals to make her escape; but the boy took aim and hurled the brick at her with both hands, hitting her square on the back. Although I could hear nothing I swear I felt the impact of brick against ribcage, and at that moment, with the girl throwing her head back in surprise and pain, our train entered a tunnel and the scene was lost from view.

  We arrived in Paris at night, at the Gare de l’Est, where we were met by a slender man dressed in a belted coat and an astrakhan hat. He greeted Old Gao and handed him a small briefcase and another train ticket. ‘I’m afraid you’re on the 11.15,’ he said to Gao. ‘No time for a rest. It leaves from Platform Eight. I’m sorry; they want you back in Moscow by Monday.’ Gao sighed, and took the ticket and briefcase. ‘Here,’ said the man, ‘get some food in the café over there.’ He nodded towards a dimly lit salon where two men dressed in whites lounged amongst empty tables, their chefs’ aprons slung untidily over a chair back. ‘And the briefcase never leaves your side, remember.’ He patted Gao on the elbow, and without a word of farewell to me Gao walked briskly away. The slender man shrugged his shoulders and introduced himself to me as Ruan, a second secretary from the embassy. He explained that he was assigned to look after me during my stay. I guessed he was from somewhere in the West, from Sichuan Province perhaps, since he spoke a toneless Mandarin which was difficult to follow. He led me to the street where a car waited for us and, having installed me and my luggage in the back
seat, climbed into the front and told the driver to move on.

  ‘You will stay at the embassy tonight,’ Ruan said, twisting around in his seat. ‘But from tomorrow we have a delegation from Beijing arriving for a conference, so you will have to move out. Happily we have found a place for you at the Paris Conservatoire guest house. You will live there for the remainder of your stay.’

  When we arrived at the embassy, Ruan excused himself, saying he still had many things to do to prepare for the delegation’s arrival, and arranging to meet me the following morning to take me to the Conservatoire. The driver showed me to a small room in the basement and pointed the way to the communal kitchen where, he suggested, I might negotiate some food.

  In the morning I met Ruan as agreed in the embassy courtyard, and we waited together for the car to take us to the Conservatoire. In the daylight I was able to study him more closely. He had a small slightly ovoid head, slick black hair with a low parting ruled unerringly straight, and a slightly upturned face which meant he always looked at you down his nose like a maitre d’hôtel greeting a party of guests. Nevertheless, he had a disarming, mirthful voice, and even as he spelled out the precise instructions I was to obey, his upper lip quivered and I felt he was inviting me to join him a quiet conspiracy against all things serious.

  Ruan had a small suitcase with him, and it became clear to me as we spoke that he would be occupying an adjacent room at the Conservatoire, and that we would have an umbilical relationship for the duration of my stay. ‘So long as I am with you, China is here,’ he said, drawing a circle around us in the gravel with his umbrella. ‘Here is the Middle Kingdom; out there beyond the circle it is France. When we move, the circle moves with us.’

  ‘So it’s like Blaise Pascal,’ I said. ‘The universe is an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.’ Ruan looked puzzled, but then pleased. ‘What happens when I shake hands with the orchestra leader or the conductor?’ I asked. ‘Do I leave China, or do they enter China?’

  Ruan thought for a moment, and then said, ‘Diplomacy occurs when two spheres of interest intersect.’ He seemed pleasantly surprised by the profundity of his words.

  ‘And when the sound of my violin carries beyond this circle?’ I said. ‘What is that called?’

  ‘Cultural exchange,’ Ruan said, smiling.

  ‘And when the audience throws roses at my feet?’

  ‘Historical necessity,’ he said, with a nervous laugh. ‘When the socialist artist is honoured, socialism is advanced.’

  The car arrived, and as if to reinforce Ruan’s point it swung around us in a circle before it stopped and the driver got out to get our luggage.

  The Paris Conservatoire was in the Faubourg Poissonnière, on the far side of the city from the embassy. During the drive through the streets I rolled down the car window and leaned out, letting the air caress my face and hair. It was a Sunday morning, and only a few people dotted the boulevards, standing dreamily in patches of sunlight, walking with hands clasped behind their backs, idly perusing the shop windows or watching falling leaves. They seemed to me like the figures in Chinese landscape paintings, going inscrutably about their lives, dimly aware that in doing so they were giving scale to all the grandeur that overshadowed them.

  We first drove north to the Arc de Triomphe, and circled it before heading east along one of its axes. Some things were oddly familiar. I recognised from Harbin the tree-lined boulevards, the fan-shaped patterns of the cobblestones and the octagonal newspaper kiosks, and from the Shanghai Bund the mansard roofs and elegant stone façades of the buildings. But here those façades and cobblestones seemed to go on forever, street after street of them, palisades of reflected light and hard, carved shadows. It seemed to me we were indeed passing over the surface of a perfect sphere, a landscape of Euclidean lines and curves, every street or boulevard we crossed offering a long, receding perspective which drew my eye towards some distant monument – a church, a tower, an arch, or simply the bright and empty morning sky, infinite and unattainable. The city seemed me to be a piece of music set in stone – stately, fugal, decorated with trills and fanfares in the form of colonnades, gargoyles and wrought iron doorways.

  We entered the Paris Conservatoire through a high portico like the prow of a ship, guarded on both sides by robed marble figures with hands raised in a disinterested wave. My eye was drawn upwards to the arrangement of wreaths and columns and carved flowers they balanced on their heads, which in turn held up a sturdy triangular pediment with a central porthole, through which poked another head, with a large square forehead, bent nose, blank eyes, an imposing coif of hair, and an expression of languid amusement. It reminded me most of all of a woodcut I had seen in a book about the French Revolution, and I thought all it lacked was the addition of a beefy stone forearm above holding the head up by the hair. Beneath this a wide panel announced, in stone, the ‘Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique’. All in all it was the most ridiculous piece of artwork I had ever seen.

  Our car came to a halt beneath the portico and a little man with slick black hair and a moustache roused himself from a table where he was playing cards and struggled into a blue jacket as he approached us. He straightened his collar, smoothed his moustache with a flick of thumb and forefinger, and leant forward to exchange a few words with Ruan before waving us on into the courtyard.

  We stopped by a fountain shaped like an oversized flower, from whose central stamen water trickled softly at various points onto fleshy stone petals. I stumbled from the car and immediately found myself face to face with a young woman who had emerged from behind this flower, licking her lips as if she had been sucking its nectar. She was dressed in a tulip-shaped skirt of dove-grey broadcloth, a silver-buckled belt, and an open-necked blouse with a wide collar. A string of diminutive pearls lay along the ridge of her clavicle, and matching earrings peered out from beneath her light brown hair, which was tied neatly behind her head with a coloured scarf, leaving a fringe that hung lightly over her brows. Her jaw was long and tapered, and she seemed to be simultaneously sucking in her cheeks and pushing forward her lips, which were thickly painted a rich burgundy. She stood perfectly still, of a piece with the marble figures by the gate, cool and inwardly amused. She fixed me with an inquisitive stare, tilting her head and raising one eyebrow.

  I felt a surge of terror before this beautiful and strange creature. ‘Bonjour,’ she said, her lips lunging forward to make the sound, and then settling into a half-smile as she awaited my response. On her chin was a perfectly rounded spot, the same red as her lips.

  ‘Bonjour,’ I replied, extending my hand to her. It delighted me to reproduce the one word of French Ruan had taught me over breakfast, and to hear it echo around the courtyard. The woman took my hand and studied me with eyes like discs of metal, her irises flashing blue, then grey, then blue again, performing a little autopsy on my face, my figure and my clothing.

  Before either of us spoke again, Ruan appeared at my side and began to talk rapidly to the woman in French. Indeed, as we walked to the main doors and climbed the staircase to the third floor, he poured forth a kind of verbal nose-bleed, an uninterrupted stream of words, as if he had started something he could barely stop. The woman listened intently, but several times stopped short on the stairs, narrowed her eyes, and asked him to repeat himself, sometimes two or three times until she nodded her head, said, ‘Exactement,’ and walked on.

  We were soon installed in adjacent rooms and told to wait until we were summoned to meet my violin tutor. I stowed my suitcase and violin at the bottom of a wardrobe and stood for a while in the centre of my room. The furniture consisted of a bed with an iron frame and a mattress tightly wrapped in sheets and coverlet, a matching wicker chair and table, a wardrobe and a heavy polished wooden music stand. Above the bed and table were small framed pictures, dreary watercolours of rain-fogged street scenes. There was a tall window, with a wide sill and thick damask curtains which were tied back with ta
sselled rope. The window was ajar and I leaned across the sill and looked out into a small courtyard, whose walls were covered in climbing plants. From below came the sound of crockery being stacked and of muffled laughter. Cool air rose, as from a damp well, carrying with it the earthy, sweet aroma of pleasant things gently rotting away.

  Below and to my left was an iron-barred gate beneath a low arch, which gave onto a narrow alley and the untidy back end of an apartment building. It was not unlike something I might have seen in Shanghai – a jumble of slanting roofs like a pile of fallen books, a tiny elevated garden of ornamental shrubs perched on a wide ledge that seemed inaccessible except via the roof itself, and damp distempered walls with rectangular window cavities, dissected at this time of the morning by the slanting sunlight. That light, still golden in colour, illuminated random slices of the domestic scenes within: a bottle on the edge of a table, clothes being aired on a wooden frame, and in one window a girl, perhaps ten years old, her arms folded on the sill, gazing down into the empty alleyway and jerking her head forward repeatedly in an irregular rhythm. I realised after a moment that a woman was standing in the shadows behind her, drawing out the girl’s long black hair with two silver combs which glinted occasionally like knives when the sunlight struck them. It brought to my mind something I had all but forgotten from the months before my father’s stroke. After reuniting with my father, my mother had begun to wear her hair down, and in the early evenings, before he came home to eat, she and I would sit by the window and comb each other’s hair, counting out one hundred strokes. This was the only time she ever spoke to me in Russian.

  Lost in contemplation, I barely registered the knock on the door, and did not realise that someone had entered the room until a hand was placed on my arm. ‘Mademoiselle.’ A voice that was gentle but firm, placing the stress on the moi and lingering over the elle. I turned to find a man standing close beside me. He had the whitest skin of anyone I had ever seen, his arm barely darker than the white of his rolled shirtsleeve and covered in fine hairs and a scattering of tiny pink spots, like paint spatters. He had large, green eyes with lashes that were almost transparent, and ginger hair in bristly waves. For a moment I thought he might be my new teacher, but he was barely ten years older than me – too young to have known Zhou Enlai during his stay in France thirty-five years before. He began speaking to me in French, and I must have given him a look of confusion and panic, for he paused and began again, speaking more slowly and in softly descending cadences which seemed so full of tender concern that I could not bring myself to reveal my complete incomprehension.