Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

“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.”