Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

“Long live Chairman Mao,” he said, “and long live our glorious Revolution!”

“Long may it flourish. Long live the great Communist Party of China.”

“Comrade Zhuli,” he said. “I didn’t mean to follow you. Actually, as it happens, I wanted to ask you…it’s nothing really. So.” He remained standing, as if hoping some campaign would sweep him away. When it didn’t, he shifted his violin case to the other hand and continued. “Well, Professor Tan says that Tzigane is one of the most impossible pieces to learn, yet you play it effortlessly.” The smile that touched his lips was swift and sad. “There’s a Prokofiev for two violins I’m eager to learn and Professor Tan had an idea that you…Of course you have your own concert to prepare for. I believe this piece might suit you perfectly. Really, it isn’t boring at all. The Prokofiev for two violins, I mean. Not boring. Say yes only if this would interest you. Or if it might please you…Well, do you want to?”

How would he survive? Zhuli wondered. He was as firm as a beaten egg. “I like Prokofiev.”

Liu smiled. His eyes were too bright, too kind. “I’ll copy the score and bring it for you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she said. To her own surprise, she asked him, “Little Liu, what is happening now? What is happening to us?”

He hadn’t moved but it felt as if he had taken a step closer to her. “It’s what happens to every generation.”

She didn’t understand. The very trees seemed to bend and hold them.

“Don’t you recognize it, Zhuli?” he asked. “I think history is not so different from music, all the different eras, like when the Baroque ended and Classical began, when one kind of understanding transformed into another…Our parents used to blame a person’s suffering on destiny, but when traditional beliefs fell away, we began to understand the deeper reasons for society’s inequalities.” He was speaking nervously, as if unwinding a breathless Tchaikovsky descent. “Chairman Mao says we must defend the Revolution by identifying everyone and everything that is counter-revolutionary. We students have so many fights and arguments because we are still developing our political understanding. We’re teaching ourselves to think in an entirely new way, uncorrupted by the old consciousness. But the youth are capable, aren’t they? Truly, I think we are more selfless than the generation before us. My father was a rightist like yours…Maybe we can become…But it is difficult because we must struggle against ourselves , really question our motivations and ask on whose behalf we’re building a more just society.” He was timid but there was no shame in his eyes. “If some people say what is in their hearts and other people say what glides easily off the tongue, how we can talk to one another? We will never find common purpose. I believe in the Party, of course, and I don’t want to lose faith. I will never lose faith…”

“Yes,” Zhuli said. “I agree with you.” Here it was again, welling up inside her, laughter and fear.

“I’ve always known I can speak openly to you, Zhuli. You’re not like the others. We saw what our fathers went through. So…” He looked at her and nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

Liu was already walking backwards, his violin case smashing against his right knee. He turned and his green clothes faded into the sunshine. Zhuli watched him go and felt a painful hammering in her heart. Why did he trust her? Whom should she trust? Her hands had no sensation, as if they were made of wood. But the notes filled her thoughts as if she were still in Room 103, as if her mind had not noticed that her hands no longer moved.

—

Up until the instant he entered Kai’s room, Sparrow had convinced himself he was not going. The meeting, or as Kai called it, the study group, was not meant for someone like him. Yet, for nearly forty minutes, Sparrow pedalled his bicycle east, turning left at Henan Middle Road, right at Haining and finally into a kaleidoscope of smaller streets. He dismounted and walked in circles until he discovered the alleyway and a staircase into the concrete block building.

On the third floor, he knocked at number 32. Kai appeared, windy-haired even though he probably hadn’t left his room. Pleasure flooded his face the moment he saw Sparrow. “I was afraid you wouldn’t find it.” Sparrow smiled as if he, himself, had never doubted.

How small it was, and dark. A radio was placed up against the door, the volume deafening. There were shapes that could be people or could be objects, but no fan and the room was stifling. A young woman, despite moving aside to make room for Sparrow, was still so close that he was submerged in the almond scent of her hair. Someone demanded Sparrow’s ID card, others laughed, and a young man said, “Too puny to stand up to the wind. Definitely not public security.” “Were you followed?” And then a grandmother’s prickly voice: “He probably followed you , San Li.” Laughter. Sparrow was trembling, he could smell his own sweat. “Just relax,” the almond-scented girl said impatiently. “Are you really the great composer that Kai goes on and on about?” Before he could answer, they began talking about a book he hadn’t read: he hadn’t even heard of it. They mentioned a book he did know, Kang Youwei’s Book of the Great Community , but the moment he silently congratulated himself, the conversation rumbled on.

In the corner, Kai had not spoken. He was at least a decade younger than the men and women in this room.

“Old Cat, what did you bring? Where are you?” “In your lap.” This was the grandmother speaking now. “San Li, pay attention to what’s in your lap for once!”

The grandmother reached into a cloth bag and pulled out a small stack of books. “A few odds and ends. Essays in Skepticism —”

“Delightful,” the almond-scented girl, whom they called Ling, purred.

“And Xi Li, On the Aesthetic Education of Man , Shen Congwen, and what else…”

Another candle was lit. Ling picked up Xi Li, or Friedrich Schiller, searching for the place they had left off the previous week. Sparrow knew Schiller only as the German writer beloved by Verdi, whose poem Brahms had used in a funeral song:

Even the beautiful must die!

See! The gods weep, all the goddesses weep

Because the beautiful perishes, because perfection dies

Even to be a song of lament on a loved ones’ lips is glorious…

San Li said, “Hurry up, the spy is dozing off!”

“A birch tree, a spruce, a poplar is beautiful,” Ling began, “when it climbs slenderly aloft; an oak, when it grows crooked; the reason is, because the latter, left to itself, loves the crooked, the former, on the contrary, loves the direct course….Which tree will the painter like most to seek out, in order to use it in a landscape? Certainly that one, which makes use of the freedom, that even, with some boldness, ventures something, steps out of order, even if it must here cause a breach, and there disarrange something through its stormy interference.”

She read for thirty, forty minutes, and every word was distinct. When she closed the book, the grandmother asked if she would be willing to take it away and mimeograph a new copy.

“I’m already copying My Education and the department is suspicious. Give it to San Li.”

General merriment followed. “Last time, he stuck all the pages together with syrup—” “Ling found a fishbone, didn’t she?” “Chicken bone.” “I like to leave a little something for you lot.” “It’s the Permanent Revolution of San Li’s dinner.”

When the laughter faded and the Schiller remained unspoken for, Sparrow raised his voice. “I will do it.”