Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

“What do you mean?” Zhuli asked. She was holding her father’s book in her hands.

“Oh,” the Old Cat said. The smile on her lips tried to hide a lasting pain. “Ignore my rambling. My thoughts wander from time to time. I get lost in the things that were.”

—

Sparrow pedalled his bicycle behind Kai. There was no moon, only haphazard lighting, a low wattage bulb in a window, the glow from the oil lamp in an outdoor kitchen. At last the pianist coasted to a stop. “Forgive me, Sparrow,” he said, turning. He was shivering as if he were ill. “I had to do it, I have to draw a clear line. Please, let me go. I have to…There’s no choice. Can you understand? I have to do it for my parents, my sisters. I am the only one left. I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry…” They were sheltered by a willow so heavy with leaves its branches swept the ground. Kai looked at him with a beseeching air. “Let me go. There’s nothing else to do. We must trust the Party in everything. Everything.” He turned and began pedalling away. After a moment, Sparrow, too, began pedalling again, but slower now. Other travellers drifted between them and up ahead, Kai merged into the darkness and slowly disappeared. Sparrow rode for what seemed a long time, but the boulevard continued, endless. The wind picked up and he heard a hollow banging on the air. Everyone began pedalling faster, hoping to get home before the downpour, but it was already too late. Lightning broke the sky apart. Rain smacked the concrete so hard it ricocheted up, hard as pellets. He was instantly drenched. In a single moment, the rain had swept everyone off the road, towards shelter, and only a single car pushed on, oblivious. Sparrow turned into a laneway and dismounted. All he could think about was his desire to be with Kai, to pass another night with him, the desire was sharp and undeniable. I care for him, yes, and what difference does it make, how and to what degree? To whom does it matter? He stood gripping the handlebars, bewildered by his own self-delusion. To love as he did was, if not a counter-revolutionary crime, foolhardy and dangerous. Such love could only lead to ruin. Behind him voices called out, but the words were only gusts of air. A child reached out and firmly pulled him sideways, under the shelter of a tree. All Sparrow saw was the sudden disappearance of a city full of people.

At last, the rain ebbed. The road was silver with water. People came into the road anyway, their legs disappearing, sometimes up to their knees.

He climbed back onto his bicycle. Almost immediately he sank down as the front tire gave out. He must have hit a nail or a shard of glass. Sparrow was aware, suddenly, of the cold weight of his wet clothes and the water that dripped down from his hair, down his neck and back. He began pushing the bicycle beside him. Already the clean rainwater smelled of mud, he saw a dead chicken floating towards him beside a head of cabbage. An eddy came, sucked the chicken down and pushed it back up again. A little girl came running towards it, her long hair pasted alarmingly to her face.

As he walked, the water slowly drained away. Sparrow saw the cuffs of his trousers, then his ankles and his shoes. He had the numbing fear that the Shanghai that existed only moments ago was gone, it had been washed away and replaced.

Sparrow kept pushing his bicycle. Up ahead, at the intersection, people had gathered around a haze of lights. Sparrow barely noticed them, the air was humid once more. A musical idea had appeared in his thoughts, a wedge of notes. He must hurry home to write the phrases down. Chords opened, they made a bright uneasiness in his ears. He was suddenly engulfed by the crowd at the intersection and tried, stubbornly, to hear only the unfolding music. People became a series of figurations: girls wearing red scarves, a taunting voice, dissonant bursts of light. The very loudness of the crowd seemed to make it silent. Was it rage, he slowly realized, that was spilling back and forth, from one cluster of people to another? There was a fire, Sparrow now realized, his vision sharpening. He tried to pass through the mass but his bicycle made it impossible.

In the centre, an old man was standing on a chair. The crowd swayed around him, pressing closer. Sparrow saw a young woman, Zhuli’s age, holding a broom by its handle, waving it before the old man. Sparrow thought the man on the chair would take the handle and begin a speech to the crowd, but then he realized the old man, soaked from the rain, was shaking with cold, he was weeping and trying to avert his eyes from the young woman and her taunting gestures. “Down with Wu Bei!” The ferocity of the chanting finally broke through Sparrow’s thoughts. The old man was begging for mercy but none of his words were audible. For a fleeting moment, Sparrow thought he should step forward and push these children back, some of them were no more than nine or ten years old, but there were many bystanders, people of all ages, pressing in with a growing euphoria. He tried to go backwards but it was impossible, the crowd was surging forward once more. Scattered words were flung up, reactionary, counter-revolutionary, traitor, demon , until the chant started up again, “Down with Wu Bei!” The girl with the broom handle was accusing him of teaching literary works that mocked the reality of every man and woman standing before him. “You thought you could trample those beneath you,” she said. She had a disconcertingly melodic voice. “You thought your high standing should make us small, but we are the ones with open hearts and clear minds. The monster is waking, Teacher! You have stepped on its head countless times but now the monster is crawling out of the mud. It is ugly and unmannered, free from your disdain and superiority. Yes, the monster is the seed of truth that you tried to lock away. We are free, even though you tried to warp our minds! Even though you corrupted our desires.” She began to beat him, slow hits with the length of the broom, against his back, his thighs and chest, as if he were an animal she was punishing. The old man tottered and fell. He was picked up and forced roughly back on the chair, even though he could barely stand. “Fall down and we will only slap you harder,” the young woman said sweetly. “What a small punishment this is for your crimes, but don’t fear! Every weakness will be attended to. This is only the beginning.”

Someone came and pulled up another chair, and a boy pushed a long, white, pointed, paper hat onto the old man’s head. The crowd erupted in derisive laughter, pointing and shouting. The old man had turned so pale, it looked as if he would pass out. Scrawled on the dunce cap were the words, “I am an enemy of the People, a spreader of lies! I am a demon!”

Arms were lifted, the feverish chanting began again, drowning out the young woman who was still speaking. Sparrow could not move. Each chant seemed to hit the man’s body like a physical blow. Another person came and affixed a long sheet of paper to the man’s chest. The words read, “I teach shit, I eat shit, I am shit.” Howls of laughter rang out, and the young man who had affixed the poster was overcome by hilarity. “Wu Bei,” he cried, “we can smell your shit across Shanghai! You silly boy! Why don’t you clean yourself up?” The old man, who once had stood before a lectern and tried to unravel the codes of literature, just as he, Sparrow, tried to understand the shape of music, wept in fear and humiliation. He would suffer less, Sparrow thought, if they tied him up and beat him unconscious. But the crowd only continued to taunt him.

“I am an enemy of the People,” he was saying now.

They forced him to repeat line after line.

“I have corrupted the thoughts of the students entrusted to me.”

“I have fed foreign shit into their bright and beautiful minds.”