Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Sparrow took his magazines and scores and stationed himself in his parents’ bedroom, bringing his mother tea, peeling oranges for her, shifting the curtains according to the passage of the sun and his mother’s whims, and waiting, always waiting, until she was lucid enough to ask him to come to her bedside, to bring the stack of notebooks she called the Book of Records and continue the story.

The desert setting of the early chapters became Sparrow’s second home, until even the skin on his own hands felt patchy and rough. Sometimes he forgot that he was reading aloud. Instead, the words became his own; he was Da-wei himself, trapped in a radio station in the Gobi Desert, as war came like a tornado and tore the ground apart, until he feared he was the last person left in this overturned world. To comfort himself, Da-wei imagined listeners he couldn’t see and never heard from, he made up letters and, day by day, embroidered their lives:

“Isn’t it true, Mister Da-wei, that some are fated to disappear just as certain lakes evaporate in the driest season? Meanwhile, others must cross the ceiling of the world. Long live those fighting for our independence! May we spare one another and find peace, may we one day forgive our brothers because this war is both our illness and our hope. Mister Da-wei, I ask you to dedicate the third movement of Old Bei’s Symphony No. 3 to my son, Harvest Wang. I wish to say: Big Harvest, stand tall and serve your country bravely. Happy birthday, my son.”

Listeners followed Da-wei’s voice through the twilight of their small rooms, into the chill of night and along the first seam of morning. People waited, crowded together or all alone, for the fighting to pass by, for the calm that came before the next storm, for the storm that would follow this small reprieve. This next piece of music came to me by way of my grandfather , Da-wei said. His voice was so intimate, it was as if he sat across from you in your warmest room. He was taught to play it by a German musician in Qingdao , who played an instrument as tall as he was and twice as round, called a chai-lou. Have a listen . And then, when the music was finished, Wasn’t it beautiful! Let’s listen again. Once more, Old Bach and his suites for chai-lou .

“Do I know this person,” Big Mother said, turning a plum contemplatively in her hand. “Who is this devil writer?”

I’ve been alone in this radio station so long that I can recognize every record by its marks, as if each one is a face I know .

The story ran on and the afternoons disappeared. As spring of 1958 gave way to summer, Sparrow went back and reread earlier chapters, he crowded the open spaces of the novel with landscapes and wishes of his own so that he, too, could become an inseparable part of this new world where desires he had never acknowledged were, in these characters, given form and substance and freedom.

“Sparrow,” his mother would call, after waking and turning her face towards the afternoon light. And he would rise, walk calmly to the chair beside her bed, and pick up the chapter that waited on the bedside table, as if going to meet his future.

—

Sparrow was caught up in Da-wei’s desperate flight to the port of Shanghai when the rat-a-tat on the back gate sounded, and kept sounding as if the mechanism had jammed and the door was now destined to clap forever. His hands did not wish to release the notebook. Only his mother’s cursing forced him to tuck it under his arm, leap up and run out to the courtyard. Da Shan had gotten into another fight, he thought, or Flying Bear was being bullied by the intimidating neighbour he had nicknamed Wind Factory. But when Sparrow opened the back gate, he saw no one. There was a beggar child, not more than six years old. He would have closed the door again except that she didn’t say anything. She only stood there with a plastic bag in her hand. In the plastic bag he glimpsed clothes, a towel and, strangely, two records.

“You must have the wrong house, Little Miss.”

“Aunt?” she said.

“This is not your aunt’s house,” Sparrow told her kindly.

“Please tell my Aunt Mother Knife that I’m here.”

He knelt down to reach her height, and then he noticed that one of the albums was a foreign record. He looked into the little girl’s face which seemed, somehow, obscured by dust. He knew the words on the album were in German, and he recognized the ones that mattered, J.S. Bach. Sparrow looked at her again, unwilling to believe he could recognize this grieving, destitute child.

“Tell my aunt,” she said firmly.

But it was unnecessary because his mother had come out into the courtyard, a quilt thrown over her shoulders, and was now standing behind him. His mother cried out and pulled the child into her arms. “Zhuli!” she said. “Where’s your Ma?” Panicking, she pushed past Sparrow into the laneway, staring all around.

“Swirl,” Big Mother shouted, and kept shouting. The alley was empty, not a single person, nothing but rubbish and wind.

Sparrow flew down the lane, all the way to Beijing Road. But his Aunt Swirl and Wen the Dreamer were not there, not under the welcoming archway, and not on the street. Finally he used the few coins in his pocket to buy a half-dozen roasted sweet potatoes and a paper bag of steamed bread, then he stormed back across the intersection, dodging bicycles, leaping between pedestrians. Back home, he found Zhuli seated across the table from his mother. The child was wearing Flying Bear’s clothes and the small, familiar shirt (it had once belonged to Sparrow) draped over her like a tent. When Sparrow set the food in front of her, she ate without looking up, breathing through her nose as she tried to shove as much as possible into her mouth. Big Mother watched in silence.

When Zhuli finished eating, she went, of her own accord, to the bedroom that Sparrow shared with his brothers. She found another shirt and pulled it on over the one she was already wearing. Then she climbed into the bed and asked Sparrow to lie down, too. Confused, he did as the child asked. Zhuli, who seemed to be growing smaller every moment, crept into his arms, closed her eyes and fell asleep.

—

Late that night, a sealed envelope was slipped through the front gate. It was addressed to “Mrs. Song of the People” and Mr. and Mrs. Ma had accidentally trampled it as they passed to the east wing. Mr. Ma gave it to Big Mother Knife who tore it open but, unable to make out the words with her good eye, thrust it at Ba Lute. The letter said that Swirl and Wen the Dreamer were guilty of counter-revolutionary crimes and sentenced to eight years of hard labour. They had already been transported to separate re-education camps in the Northwest. No matter how many times Big Mother heard the words, the letter made no sense. The letter continued: “The mother of Comrade Wen has died of illness. As there is no one in Bingpai with whom to entrust the child, I have taken the liberty of bringing her here. You will find the necessary paperwork and residence permits enclosed. Long live our motherland! Long live Chairman Mao!” There was a crushed, melted White Rabbit candy in the envelope.

“You know how it is,” Ba Lute said at last. “Sometimes the local revolutionary committee gets carried away. I’ll take care of it. A sentence like this won’t get carried out immediately. Swirl and Wen must still be in Bingpai.” But he wouldn’t look her in the face, examining instead the empty cigarette pack in his hand.

All night, Ba Lute tossed and turned. The more Big Mother tried to see the room’s outlines, the more the walls seemed to fold around her. Her husband cried out in his sleep, and she whacked his arm until he quieted. In Big Mother’s own fevered dreams, her sister appeared, but Swirl was a small child again. They were fleeing Shanghai, trying to outrun the Japanese army.