Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Outside the world was dark and the young wutong tree in the courtyard seemed to hold the weight of the winter night upon its thin crown. Sparrow wished that he could turn the hands of the clock forward, wind it another year, and then another, to when his symphonies would be played in the Conservatory’s auditorium. He imagined an immense orchestra of Mahlerian proportions, large enough to make the music inside him rattle the ceilings, vibrate the floor and realign the walls.

“My son has heard nothing,” Ba Lute said. “He is deaf.”

“I’m listening, Ba.”

“To me,” his father said, staring at the album cover. “I want you to listen to me.” But he spoke as if his words were directed to Glenn Gould or to Bach himself. “Be practical, my son. Think of the future. Try to understand. There are many degrees and many roads of happiness.”

—

When Big Mother Knife returned to the mud hut, Swirl and the little devil lay exactly as she had left them, joined together on the kang in exhausted sleep. Wen was cocooned in a blanket on the floor. Her sister’s face in the moonlight was pale and lined, and Zhuli seemed to pull on her as children do, resilient and single-minded in her needs. Sitting in the corner, using her coat as a blanket, Big Mother watched moonlight creep beneath the door. It entered the room so piercingly that, when she looked down at her own fingers, she hardly recognized herself. She thought she saw the hands of Swirl. She thought her shoes were the very shoes of Wen the Dreamer, her knees were Ba Lute’s, her arms belonged to Da Shan, her stomach to Flying Bear, her heart to Sparrow. She had a terrible premonition that, one by one, they would be broken off and taken away from her. Or was it she who would be the first to leave?

Big Mother’s escapade with the God of Literature seemed ages ago and miles away.

The previous day, Big Mother had gone to town and purchased the plainest of practical items, heavy blankets, a thermos, padded coats, as well as rice, barley, cooking oil, salt and cigarettes. In a few months’ time, Big Mother told herself, she would get permission to come and see her sister again. By then the spring planting would have begun, and she could assess their needs once more. Swirl had told her that the Party Secretary had promised her a position teaching in the primary school. Perhaps conditions were not so dire. But even as she considered this, a thick sadness filled her. She looked up and saw that Zhuli had woken and was winking at her, one small hand covering her right eye.

“Good morning, little devil,” Big Mother said.

The girl switched hands and covered her left eye.

Big Mother sucked her teeth. “Impudent monkey!”

“Father used to call me that,” Swirl said. “I remember now.” Her sister’s hair tumbled over her shoulders as she sat up. “Why don’t you come up here where it’s warm?”

Big Mother slowly climbed to her feet. Everything ached. Her body was growing old and useless, the result, surely, of endless political meetings and study sessions. The Party propaganda was muffling her thoughts, wrapping her in a thick dough of imbecility.

“What is it?” Swirl asked. “Why are you crying?”

“For joy,” Big Mother lied.

Her sister laughed. The girl tittered, too.

Winking at the girl, Big Mother picked up the cardboard box and set it on the kang beside her sister.

Swirl looked intently at it, as if the box reminded her of a person she had not seen in many years. Her fingers reached out, pulled the loop and the string curled down. Swirl lifted the lid and slid it aside. She stared down at the thirty-one notebooks, the only chapters Wen had been able to find, of the Book of Records.

“But—” She touched the corner of the box. “I know it isn’t possible.”

“Let us just say, the God of Literature summoned it home.”

—

The following morning, in the bus on the way back to Shanghai, fate placed Big Mother beside a hardy young woman whose husband was deputy village head. “Far from home, hmm?” the young woman said, unfolding a red handkerchief, spreading it over her knees like a tablecloth, and depositing a great quantity of sunflower seeds on top of it.

“In this vast and glorious country,” Big Mother said gently, “everywhere is home.”

“Isn’t it so!” the woman said, drawing her fingers through the seeds as if in search of a silver coin. The countryside flew past the windows, woken by the first light of morning. All around them, people were asleep in their seats or pretending to be. Patiently, the young woman attempted to extract the reason for Big Mother’s visit to Bingpai (“Your sister is who, did you say? That young lady who used to sing in the teahouses?”), working like a needle beneath Big Mother’s skin. Big Mother, contemplating the sunflower husks accumulating on the floor, and thinking, in general, of the greed that propelled wars and occupations, and of the bloody excesses of civil war, opened her thermos and poured a generous cup of tea for her companion. As often happened, Big Mother Knife decided, impulsively, to adjust her strategy.

“I was pleased,” she began, “to witness the glories of land reform here in the countryside.”

“Genius!” the young woman said weightily. “Devised — no, composed! — by the Chairman himself. A program of thought that has no equal in the history of all mankind, past, present, or futuristic.”

“Indeed,” Big Mother said. They sat in thoughtful silence for a moment and then she continued, “I, myself, welcome any sacrifice to emancipate our beloved countrymen from these heinous—”

“Oh, very heinous!” the young woman whispered.

“—feudal chains. No doubt your husband, the deputy village head, has done his duty with distinction.” Big Mother reached into her coat pocket and withdrew a handful of White Rabbit candies.

“Wa!” the young woman said in astonishment.

“Please, try one. Try several. These delicacies were sent to us from the Shanghai propaganda chief himself. The flavour is delicate yet robust. Did I mention that my husband is a composer and a musician? They say his revolutionary operas have found favour with Chairman Mao himself.”

“Ah, ah,” the woman said softly.

Big Mother dropped her voice. The words seemed to come to her as if seeping out from the thirty-one notebooks in her bag, which Swirl had insisted she take to Shanghai; her sister would dispose of the love letters herself, or so Big Mother hoped. “But our Great Helmsman has always directed our affairs, in both grand and humble ways. Of course, my husband’s more modest than the most bashful ox, but he journeyed alongside our nation’s heroes all the way to Yan’an, ten thousand li! My husband played with such revolutionary fervour that his fingers were more calloused than his shoeless feet. Yes, every step he played the guqin. He had to re-string the bow with horsehairs.”

“No hairs were more joyously volunteered!”

Big Mother allowed herself a smile. “I’m sure it is so.”

The young woman accepted another handful of sweets. She slipped all the pieces except one into her shirt pocket. “Your husband is from where?”

“From Hunan Province, the very cradle of the Revolution,” Big Mother said. The woman was nervously unwrapping her candy and Big Mother waited patiently for the crackling of the paper to subside. “His revolutionary name is Song of the People. He is, if you allow me, a big brute of a man. A true, modern spirit.”

“I have heard his name,” the woman said chewing daintily, the candy sticking her words together.

“The last time he came to your village was for my sister’s wedding. Actually, Wen the Dreamer and my husband are as close as brothers.”