Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

“Father,” Sparrow said, but Ba Lute wasn’t listening to him.

“After all, what good can come from disbelief? What grows, what changes, what improves? Isn’t it always better for your country, your family, for yourself, to believe in something? Doubt can only lead to confusion and complications. And, in any case, our lives were better. We didn’t mean to grow complacent, surely we weren’t complacent, the struggle isn’t finished, and yet…”

Ba Lute got up. His great hulk seemed absurdly small. He walked slowly from the room, shaking his head and saying, “In everything, I trust the Party. I trust Chairman Mao. But no, no. I never wanted this.”

—

After Ba Lute had left the room, Sparrow sat with Zhuli in uneasy quiet. The curtains were closed but they could hear the vibration in the streets, waves of chanting and jubilation.

“This campaign is beginning very fiercely,” Zhuli said. She said it lightly as if she were discussing a new piece of music. “Actually, someone denounced you, Sparrow. I saw it myself.”

“The entire faculty was denounced. They can’t shoot us all.”

When she didn’t answer, he joked that he would welcome the change. Time in the desert, away from his ambitious students, would be a reprieve. Finally some time to focus on his own work.

Zhuli wasn’t listening. “I’ve hardly seen you in the last few days. Where have you been, what have you been doing?”

“Thinking.”

“Have you finished the new symphony?”

“Ah,” Sparrow said. “It’s barely a symphony.”

Zhuli smiled, but her face in the darkness looked very pale and thin. In another couple of months, she would turn fifteen but she did not look it; she appeared frail, as if her childhood sturdiness had abandoned her and left her with nothing to replace it. “If you’re looking for compliments, I won’t oblige. I know how much you hate them. But Sparrow, this symphony of yours, it helps me remember what music is. This symphony is the most honest thing you’ve ever written and it makes me afraid for you.”

“Cousin, you must be exhausted. Why don’t you rest?”

She smiled. “I’m not exhausted. In fact, I feel as if all my life I’ve been sleeping but now…finally, I’m coming awake.”

“In what way have you been asleep?”

“I see now,” she said, “that all the hours of practising, all the commitment, the ambition and the fantasizing, it’s all coming to a climax.” She was silent for a moment. “I’m moving too slowly. What was it that Professor Tan taught me? About Tzigane . The one who plays too slowly will be swallowed by time.”

“Nonsense.”

“Yesterday,” she continued, “when I left the Conservatory, I walked into the courtyard and, out of nowhere, I was surrounded by my classmates. They said that I must now come down to their level. They tried to grab my violin. I kept saying, ‘I’m a patriot, I want to serve my country,’ but they just laughed and said, ‘The butterfly belongs to no country.’ ‘The rightist bitch needs a lesson.’ ” She paused, folding her hands together with an earnestness that seemed to take over her entire body. “A few others came running from inside and there was an argument. It turned into a fight but Tofu Liu and I managed to get away. If Tofu hadn’t been there, I might have been in real trouble.” She was laughing. “We ran away! And I thought, how strange it is that I am the one running, because they are the ones afraid of a world they can’t control. Last night they went to Tofu Liu’s house. You know him, don’t you? So gentle he can hardly turn a page. They went through his house, beat his parents, smashed the furniture. All the musical instruments…his father is a rightist. Accused in 1958, the same year as my father.”

“Why did you agree to go the study group?” Sparrow heard the change in his voice, as if he was accusing her, and was appalled by himself. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because when Kai came this morning, I saw that you were happy. I was glad to see you joyful. And Kai is our friend, isn’t he? Because I know , of course I see things too. I think…there is nothing to say.”

“You are not to practise in the Conservatory. I’m sure everything will return to normal but…you mustn’t do anything to attract their attention.”

“Do?” she said. “What should I do? Sparrow, do you know that Kai is a Red Guard now? I heard…he led the attack on Tofu Liu’s parents—”

“You imagined it.”

She stared at him, stunned. “How could I imagine something like that?”

“Kai was with me last night,” Sparrow said.

“Was he with you all evening?”

He lied to her, he did it without thinking. “Yes.”

She shook her head. “Tofu Liu saw him. And Kai was there at the Conservatory, when my classmates surrounded me.”

“No, it’s impossible.”

“Well,” she said. Disappointment surfaced in her eyes and then was pushed away. “If it’s impossible, then I must be mistaken.”

Did Sparrow believe that she would make things up? Had she ever done such a thing before? Zhuli’s thoughts twisted uselessly. Yesterday afternoon, her classmates had stared at her with contempt, as if she were a traitor. The change had seemed to happen in a moment. Or maybe, she thought, the feeling had been inside them all along, but she had not understood it until she saw it in Kai’s expression.

Beside her, Sparrow said nothing.

The children of class enemies are the enemies of the People! This daughter of a rightist is a dirty whore ! Two months ago she knew she might have been swayed to denounce her own mother, she might have done anything to protect her place at the Conservatory. If they took music away from her, she would die. Yes, that was how perfidious the children of class enemies were! Her parents, meanwhile, the convicted traitors, had never implicated or denounced anyone. What did it mean? The People should come first, above family and self, above petty concerns like attachment and music and love. No more Prokofiev, no more Ravel, no more of the world instilled in her by Bach, no more Western music meant to be passively received. What were the words that Prokofiev had set to music? “Believe, comrades, and it will come to pass.” We must struggle, Chairman Mao had said. We are heirs to a better world. Equality will protect us. Equality will make us powerful.

She broke the silence. “I am not well, Sparrow. Something is wrong in my head. I must have imagined everything.”

“Dear Zhuli, go and rest. I’ll wake you if something happens.”

Dear, she thought. How brave he was, to use such nostalgic language. If she truly wanted to protect her family, shouldn’t she turn herself in? But for what crime? Her thoughts frightened her, they made no sense.

The shouting had decreased in volume. The students had turned towards another street.

“These are professors’ lodgings,” Zhuli said. “Even if they don’t come here tonight, we’re like eggs in a nest.”

Sparrow could not help but notice how Zhuli clutched her violin. He had an image of Wen the Dreamer, holding the battered suitcase, names sliding out like bits of clothing. He tried to clear his thoughts. Zhuli was only a child and children would not be harmed. Children, the Chairman said, carried the seeds of revolution.

—

In the pre-dawn darkness, Zhuli went to the Conservatory to return the score of Beethoven’s “Emperor.” The library was locked and she found herself inside Room 103, a room she had never entered before without her violin. There was no one around. She closed the door, sat down on the floor and rested for a long time. She had a desire to stop time moving so quickly. The previous night, Zhuli had stayed awake rereading Chairman Mao’s talk on art and literature, but each time she felt a truth might be appearing, it muddied and broke away. The Chairman’s words were elegant, perfectly sharp, but when they touched her thoughts, they became crooked. Unable to sleep, she had written a long self-criticism, but it was not the kind that the Party demanded. Instead, the same reactionary words kept rising to the surface and dirtying the page.