Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

The case in her lap was as cool as stone on an autumn night. Zhuli nodded.

“A bit strange, don’t you think?” Ling said.

The Old Cat sniffed. “As strange as you carrying paper and pen in your pocket! You’re a student after all, and she’s a violinist.”

“Then San Li might as well carry a sabre. It seems he majors in provocation.”

“If you told him to stop carrying on, he might listen,” the Old Cat said.

“Please! San Li would never perform for an audience of one.”

Zhuli wanted to ask them about Kai. Instead she opened the Hu Shih essay and began to read the first lines. She flipped forward, read further. The text had been copied out by hand, in a square yet beautifully bold script. She turned more pages. This was the same hand that had copied the Book of Records. This was her own father’s handwriting and she would know it anywhere.

The Old Cat peered at her. “Quite a clever essay, isn’t it?” she said.

Was it Zhuli’s imagination, or was there a question folded attentively inside this question? “I’m sure it must be, but I find myself interested in the calligrapher.” To throw the Old Cat off the scent, she said, “Did you make this copy yourself?”

“Ai!” The Old Cat slapped her round knees with her round hands. “I’ve an enviable gift but not so divine as that. No, the calligrapher is a scholar from Shanghai, a poet in fact. But alas, he is not a poet anymore. He fell under the wheels of the Party and they sent him for re-education. I haven’t seen him for years, he disappeared. For a musician, you have a good eye for calligraphy.”

“It’s because my own handwriting is so poor,” Zhuli said. When my mother comes home, she thought, the first thing I’ll do is bring her here. That is the proper way to do things.

“On that note, I have something for you to decipher.” The Old Cat creaked herself upright, swayed past Ling and stopped at a desk. Zhuli had not even realized the desk was there, so camouflaged was it by papers. The Old Cat shuffled through a stack of folders before plucking out a single sheet. She handed it to Zhuli.

“Well, grandmother!” Zhuli said, after a moment. In her hand was the aria of the Goldberg Variations , transcribed into the numbers, dots and lines of jianpu notation. “You’ve gone and dropped a bag of books on me! I had no idea you studied Western classical music.”

“I don’t. Someone left this at my door, when, a month ago?” She looked to Ling, who nodded in confirmation. “Sure I can read jianpu but I have no clue what this music is.”

Zhuli told her it was Bach.

“Oh, him.” The Old Cat sounded disappointed. “I was hoping it might be that handsome firecracker, Old Bei. My niece and I have been inserting this piece of music into traditional song books.” Ling smiled mischievously. Aunt and niece, Zhuli thought, so this is why I felt so comfortable with them. “We throw it in at random just to cause a little frisson. I added the words of Chairman Mao as a libretto: ‘On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.’ ”

“But who is the mysterious sender?” Zhuli asked.

“Who knows? There was a note which said that even banned music should be assessed on its own merits, that songs as well as novels could serve as samizdat, passed from person to person. Some foolish idealist. One of your kind, I’m sure.”

“Someone from the Conservatory?” Zhuli said.

“At first we thought it was the Professor or Kai,” Ling said. “But they both swore it wasn’t them. In fact, Kai told us turn it in to the authorities. I swear, the boy is afraid of his own feet.”

“But isn’t Kai right to be cautious?” Zhuli asked. She thought Ling and her aunt were perversely unaware, as if they had never attended a political study session or encountered a blackboard newspaper.

“Ha, I know what you’re thinking,” the Old Cat said. “But, child, when you’ve seen as much as I have, you realize the die is cast. The so-called ‘enemies of the People’ are the ones whose luck has run out, nothing more. One day the traitor is Shen Congwen, the next Guo Moruo. If they want to come for you, they will come, and it doesn’t matter what you read or what you failed to read. The books on your shelves, the music you cherish, the past lives you’ve lived, all these details are just an excuse. In the old days, spite and jealousy drove the eunuchs in all their power struggles. Perhaps we live in a new age, but people don’t change overnight.”

“But why give the authorities an excuse?” Zhuli asked. “If the neighbourhood can turn in one family of counter-revolutionaries, the whole block might be saved. People are just trying to get by.” A voice in her head scolded her: Why do you persist in playing music that is outrageously formalist? Why did you react disdainfully when Kai brought you the correct music? Are you too idiotic to realize that the very existence of a violin soloist is counter to the times?

“Because, Zhuli,” the Old Cat said, “these books were bequeathed to me by my beloved father. At some point, a person must decide whether they belong to the people who loved them, or whether they belong to the emperors. The truth is, my ancestry is long and my past is complex because this country is old. Ah, our country is old! How can the Party convince me otherwise? I know who I am and I know what old means. If the Party knows it too, well, good for them. I must meet the destiny that was written out by my lineage. If they want to hurry me into the next life, okay. I’m old, I’ll go. I would only miss my little Ling.

“The things you experience,” she continued, “are written on your cells as memories and patterns, which are reprinted again on the next generation. And even if you never lift a shovel or plant a cabbage, every day of your life something is written upon you. And when you die, the entirety of that written record returns to the earth. All we have on this earth, all we are, is a record. Maybe the only things that persist are not the evildoers and demons (though, admittedly, they do have a certain longevity) but copies of things. The original has long since passed away from this universe, but on and on we copy. I have devoted my minuscule life to the act of copying.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Ling said. “When the authorities come, she’s soft as porridge. She knows how to ply them with old-woman words.”

The Old Cat grunted. “Sure. That, too.”

“Still,” Zhuli said, “in these times, we should take precautions.”

“Ah, child. Sometimes an old woman simply gets set in her ways. She’s like a pain you can’t dislodge.”

Ling, San Li, Kai, the Old Cat, they must all come from exemplary class backgrounds, Zhuli realized. They had never been targeted and so, deep in their bones, did not believe they could be. They were free because, in their minds, they persisted in believing they were. Maybe they were right but Zhuli felt as if she were watching an oil drum that was about to explode.

She began to shift the books off her lap so that she could get to her feet.

Still seated, Ling reached out to gather the empty cups. The Old Cat was humming to herself, and the resemblance between the Old Cat and Ling made Zhuli feel as if she were standing between two arias. Maybe these volumes of books acted as a kind of sponge, shielding the Old Cat from the muck of the city outside her door.

The violin case knocked against Zhuli’s knee. She was glad they had not asked her to play for them. Each time she lifted her bow to perform, she felt as if parts of herself were being peeled away.

“It was fate that you found us,” the Old Cat said. “Or, to put it another way, fate that I found you again.”