Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

When Big Mother next woke, Zhuli was asleep beside her.

They remained in bed while Ba Lute and the boys got up. They listened as schoolbags rustled open and closed, loudspeakers bellowed the national anthem, and bells and clappers rattled through the laneways. When Big Mother opened her eyes again, she was momentarily confused and thought that she and Swirl were lying in their parents’ bed, her sister’s gleaming hair flowing across the pillows. Her sister was the great love of her life. When their husbands had disappeared into the war, she and Swirl had survived together, and Big Mother had never let her sister down. She swiped at her tears, but she could not make them stop falling.

She had a vague sense, a disturbance, of people struggling up, people rushing over one another, and on and on these people climbed and fell and pulled each other down, in a large and sickening silence. But for what crime? In the re-education camps of the Northwest, her sister and Wen the Dreamer would undoubtedly be separated from one another. Surely they would be released soon, any crimes they had committed must certainly be small mistakes. But what was a small counter-revolutionary crime? Big Mother had never yet heard of one. The little girl sat up. As if her aunt’s tears scalded her, Zhuli crawled out from under the covers and walked out of the room.

—

That night, Ba Lute boarded the bus for Bingpai. He drowsed, thinking of gamblers and the smoke at Swirl’s wedding, of birds and music, and of the slow churning of Chairman Mao’s newly formed wartime orchestra, and when he woke, the bus was tilting over a mountain pass, attacking a hairpin curve. He gripped the seat in front of him. It was miserable outside. Within and without, Ba Lute felt an enveloping sense of danger and deception. This foreboding was so strong that, when dawn came, he was taken aback to find the bus rolling across a delicate landscape. The green-gold fragility of the surrounding fields, the silvery bicycles and low lines of birds rising and lifting as one confused him. Banners proclaimed, “Serve the People!” and “Dare to think, dare to act!” The early summer had been unbearable, with bouts of thunder and unrelenting heat. His shirt felt glued permanently to his back.

Arriving in Bingpai, Ba Lute walked to the Party office, a meek little building with a very short door.

Inside, he was surprised to see an electric fan wobbling from the ceiling, funnelling the warm air down. The office had its own generator. Once Ba Lute had made himself known, he was welcomed by the village head with a very large piece of cake. Banishing his anxiety, he stretched himself out so that he was lordly and unassailable, and spoke in a bellowing voice. When Ba Lute mentioned Swirl and Wen the Dreamer’s names, the grinning official in his over-warm jacket turned pink and damp. The fan pushed droplets of sweat across his bald head.

“One moment please, Comrade,” the man said, and fled the room.

More cake appeared. A worker entered, singing, “Good day, Comrade!” He presented a cup of tea, wiped the already clean surface of the table and hobbled out. “Long live our Great Leader!”

“Well?” Ba Lute said, when the village head returned. “Where are they? I’m very eager to see them.”

The dishevelled man looked as if he had been to Moscow and back. “Well, of course,” he began, “they’re registered here—”

“Yes, yes.”

“—but, this morning, or, more accurately, at the present hour—”

“Comrade Wen is a greatly admired lyricist, a book of songs, as the saying goes. We can have no other for our concert. General Chen Yi himself insists!”

The man looked up, startled. “Respects to Chen Yi! A brave general and faithful servant to Chairman Mao himself. A twelve-barrel hero! Long may he—”

Ba Lute took a gulp of tea and slapped the cup on the table. “Comrade Wen and his wife must present themselves immediately. I’m ready to press on.”

“Brother Comrade, life goes in unexpected spirals. That is to say, there are many unexpected places to which a man returns—”

“Your poetry confuses me, Comrade.”

The man blushed. “Let me begin again. Elder brother, the truth of the matter is, they are not here.” The man shifted uncomfortably.

“Speak freely, please.”

The man poured tea and bade him drink.

Ba Lute waited. The fan turned faster now, as if trying to take flight.

“We do our utmost to keep order,” the man said, “but as a leading light such as yourself knows, the People cannot move in half-steps: they would only fall down, wouldn’t they? To traverse so great a divide, they must leap and sometimes overleap. And it could be that, in the case of Comrade Wen, they have, perhaps, overleapt. However, we live in a time in which the revolutionary dream must run its course, don’t you agree?”

Ba Lute said nothing. The cake tasted old in his mouth.

“It appears,” the man said, “that Comrade Wen and his wife had a hidden cellar on his family’s ancestral land.”

Ba Lute drank the remaining tea in his cup and looked thoughtfully at the pot. “That is no crime, Comrade.”

The man waited and let silence stand in for contradiction. “Of course,” he continued, “the contraband always surfaces. We confiscated everything. Books, records, some valuable heirlooms. He had the Book of Songs and the Book of History . He also possessed books from America. I am surprised,” he said, allowing a brief pause, “that you did not know.”

Ba Lute looked at the wall behind the man. There was no mistaking the sudden change in tone, all that confused poetry, that shiny sweat, suddenly vanishing like a mist.

“I did not know,” Ba Lute said evenly.

“Mmmm.”

The man stood up, reached up to a long string and stopped the fan. It slowed to a halt, and left the room confined and utterly still. “As cadres, we, of course, can only serve the People and follow the Party line. We turned him over to the revolutionary committee and they passed judgment. He was found to be a dangerous element.”

Big Lute’s throat was dry, but no more tea was offered.

“Re-education through hard labour,” the man continued, sitting down again. “This was the conclusion and he was duly taken away.”

“And his wife, Comrade Swirl?”

“Convicted rightist and shameless bourgeois element. The same punishment.” The man seemed to thrive in the heat now. He looked pink and golden. “This hidden library may have been built by Comrade Wen’s mother during one war or another, to hide these rare books from invaders. She died last year so how can we know? Perhaps you’ve heard of her father, Old West? A reactionary element, very close to the Imperialist regime in his day. Of course, Old West was once a celebrated scholar sent abroad to serve his country and such hiding places were once common…Well, who am I to judge? We are only a small village. We are still learning the correct line.” The man smiled at Ba Lute. How strange this smile was, part pity, part warning. “The revolutionary committee operates under Chen Yi, does it not?” the man said smoothly. “I imagine that Chen Yi might have informed you of the sentence that was handed out.”

“Tell me,” Ba Lute said, ignoring the man’s insinuation, “how was the library discovered?”

“Comrade Wen and his wife were in the fields as usual. Their daughter climbed down into the opening. It was she who discovered it. The melting ice must have dislodged the entrance.” He poured the last of his tea into a potted plant on the floor, then he replaced the cup soundlessly on the table. “It was warm down there. More comfortable, in fact, than where they were living. One of the villagers was crossing the field, and he saw Comrade Zhuli disappearing, as if swallowed up by the earth.”