Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

The village head studied him openly. Ba Lute stared back, unrepentant. Behind the laboured elegance, the cloaked eyes, and the man’s soft, sweating nose, his unwavering expression was familiar. The silence between them grew thoughtful. Ba Lute closed his eyes and then looked at the village head again. He felt as if he had exited the office and then re-entered through a different door. “I knew you at Headquarters. Back in ’46. Didn’t I?”

The man’s face lit up with pleasure.

Ba Lute continued. “You were recruited for the orchestra. Maybe it was ’44, could it be?” He could see these eyes now, that shiny bald head, behind an oboe. The orchestra leader had gone to the villages to recruit youngsters, and his friend, Li Delun, had taught them how to play. “These kids have never even seen an instrument in their dreams!” Delun had said. Even the way the new recruits held their oboes and trumpets was humorous, walking with them as if with a brand new girlfriend. “Ah, ah, ah, ah,” Ba Lute said, trying to clear his thoughts.

“Wasn’t it a memorable time?” the man said. “Learning to play the oboe in the middle of the Japanese invasion, reforming our thoughts and holding ballroom dances every Saturday night. The great leaders like to waltz. This surprised me.”

“There is no music ensemble here,” Ba Lute said.

“No, not here.”

“Do you still have your oboe?”

Silence. The man hesitated, unsure if a joke was being made at his expense. “Yes,” he admitted.

“Old One-two,” Ba Lute said, suddenly remembering the man’s name. They had all taken part in the same self-criticism sessions, which in reality were open attacks on one another. This man had been strict but he had not been a sadist like some of the others. “We nicknamed you One-two, because you could never count inside your head.”

The man laughed. The sound was so unexpected, Ba Lute started and knocked over his empty cup. The man quickly righted it. “You’re right. The trombonist gave me that name,” he said. “It stuck.”

Ba Lute was so thirsty even his eyes felt dry. An image came to him of this room and all the past rooms he had known, he tried to see how all the doorways and entrances fit together, but none of the corners would hold still. “Tell me your requirements,” he said finally.

“My friend, you misunderstand me.”

“I would like permission to visit them. Are they being detained nearby?”

“Comrade,” the man said, “that is not possible.” He blinked rapidly as if his feelings had been injured. “They were sentenced to labour in the Northwest. In the meantime, the revolutionary committee had no choice but to demolish their hut.”

So the letter had not exaggerated, Ba Lute thought. They were gone.

One-two stood up from the desk. “You must know how things are. You are justly celebrated! A champion of the land reform campaign, a triumphant musical foot soldier. We hardened ourselves at Headquarters, didn’t we? We were the first to be reformed through struggle. As Chairman Mao says, true rebellion is not organized or beautiful. Heroes like you built the road. I’m only following the path.”

How could such flattering words feel like mockery? The office was terribly clean, terribly bright.

“More tea?” the man asked.

“No. Thank you.”

“Is there something else I might assist you with?”

Ba Lute stood, raising himself up to his full height. The village head shifted uncomfortably. “Thank you, Comrade,” Ba Lute said. “You’ve been very helpful. I’m sure we’ll have the chance to speak again.”

“Now I remember,” the man said, though of course he had never forgotten. “The wife of my deputy met your wife on the bus and, though the journey was only a day, they formed a bond together. Since then, she has kept a watchful eye on Zhuli. Delivering her to safety.”

Ba Lute felt the walls shifting once again.

“One should be careful of the sun,” the man said, as if talking to himself. He reached out, pulled the string, and the fan started up once more. “One should learn to practise in the shade.”

—

The cold forced its way in. Even though Swirl had emptied her suitcase and wore every piece of clothing she owned, there was no way to defeat it. Just now at the tap, she had watched, mesmerized, as her hands submerged in water and she had failed to register any sensation. It was as if the hands belonged to someone else. She had yanked them out, frightened, nonsensically, that the fingers would shatter. Nothing around her was what it seemed. The air, thick blue, appeared like paper.

She shared a single long bed with a district leader, a doctor, an economist, a public security officer, a schoolteacher, a tax lawyer and a translator of Russian literature. She, herself, was known as the wife. The first week, she had identified them by their sleeping habits: how they tossed, shouted and snored, how often they got up at night, how violently they squeezed back in, or if they slept as motionless as death. This morning, the district leader, convinced she had committed no crime, was speculating about her release date. “Perhaps today,” she said. “This month, certainly.”

“Comrade! Don’t you see this very idea makes you a perfect candidate for re-education?” The economist, who had been here the longest, was convinced no one would ever leave.

“I committed myself to the party when I was eleven years old! Without people like me, there would be no Revolution.”

“Hush. You’re the only one who still thinks of yourself as a revolutionary.”

The other women tittered but the district leader was unbothered. “I don’t expect a criminal like you to understand. The Party is my family and I would rather die than betray it.”

After roll call, they filed into the canteen. So many feet made a storm in the dust; it coloured the air, caked the floors and was the salt to everything that touched their lips. Swirl and the translator ate side by side. The translator chewed with her eyes tightly closed, making noises of gratitude as if, in her mind, she was relishing a succulent leg of duck.

Yesterday, Swirl had been handed a notice from the Bingpai revolutionary committee stating that Zhuli was now registered to live in Shanghai. The news had taken such a weight from Swirl that she, who never cried, had surprised everyone by weeping continuously. She had no news of Wen, only rumours that in the men’s camp not far away, no one survived. The corpses were left in the desert, unburied. Swirl would not allow herself to believe it.

Outside, beneath a sky that had turned from blue to paper white, they got in line to rinse their bowls. The colour of purity, Swirl thought. The ancients had imagined white as the colour of funerals, of fulfillment, loss and completion and now the white sky seemed ready to erase the earth. She hoisted up a basket and spade and joined her group. Try as she might, she couldn’t understand how she had walked to the cliff edge and found herself here. At the work site, several kilometres away, they were digging a channel. The soil, dry and easily eroded, fell apart under minimal pressure. She worked without thoughts; by midday, the sand glowed like a coin.

Night after night, stories were passed across the long bed. Months ticked by until at last she knew the intricate histories of all the women she slept beside, and they knew hers. A line of women who, one by one, had fallen through a rip in a dream and woken here. A lifetime ago, Swirl had gone to the ticketing office in Shanghai, ready to buy passage to Hong Kong, but she had been distracted by a novel, the Book of Records. It embarrassed her now, the way she burned candles so unthinkingly, gazing at words that seemed to hide ideas, or ideas inexpressible in words, how the sentences had carried her forward like a river or a piece of music. And yet how close the truth had seemed back then. She had been twenty-four years old and she had fallen in love.