Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

The squeak of Sparrow’s plastic slippers interrupted her thoughts. Ai-ming gave him the peeled orange and he smiled as if she had given him the sun. He went to the record player and Ai-ming flicked off the radio, silencing Hu Yaobang in mid-sentence.

She crawled into bed even though it was still early. The fugue of Bach’s Musical Offering circled in the darkness like a dog chasing its tail. Ai-ming heard her mother come home, and the routine words her parents exchanged. Same bed, different dreams . The old saying described Sparrow and Ling perfectly. How could it be that her mother was such an independent, modern creature? Why did her father love someone so far away from his present reality? How could Ai-ming live a better life than theirs? To her, the only essay question that mattered was, How was it possible for a person to write her own future?

—

On Monday, Ai-ming ran into the neighbour Yiwen at the water spigot. “You’re going to Tiananmen Square this morning, aren’t you?” the older girl asked.

Taken aback, Ai-ming could only say, “Why?”

The girl laughed. She lifted her full water bucket, staggering backwards. “Yes, why?” Yiwen said, still laughing. “I almost believed you! Ai-ming, you really tricked me. What a straight face! If I ever need someone to give an alibi for me, I’m coming to you first.”

Ai-ming smiled. She watched Yiwen’s pink dress float down the alley.

Back in her room, she stood for a moment looking at the stack of books on the desk. The university examinations were still three months away. She drew the curtain across the window, changed her dress and left the apartment.

She pedalled slowly, in love with the wind against her face. Long before Jianguomen changed into Chang’an Avenue, she saw bits of flowers, paper and ribbon all over the road, accumulating like clouds until, at the Square, she arrived at an unreal scene. Thousands of funeral wreaths, with their paper ribbons, were pulsating in the breeze. Just off the Avenue, factory workers were having a public meeting, some girls were reciting poetry, and a group of university students huddled on the ground with ink, brushes and paper, writing essay-length posters. She walked deeper into the Square, searching ludicrously for Yiwen. The concrete seemed to expand from her own feet like an endless grey footprint.

At the Monument to the People’s Heroes, three grandmothers were muttering subversively. “Heart attack.” “Just like that! Right in the middle of a Politburo meeting.” “Those foxes humiliated him, they bullied him until his heart gave out….” A colossal black-and-white Hu Yaobang towered above them, the photo blown up so big that Comrade Hu’s nose was the height of a man. Posters were everywhere, on the ground, affixed to the Monument, on makeshift boards. The ones who should drop dead still live. The one who should live has died . Just reading the poster made Ai-ming feel as if she had cursed the government or ratted out her father.

She actually lifted a hand to cover her eyes. Still the words on the posters slipped between her fingers. Why is it that we can’t choose our own jobs? What right does the government have to keep a private file on me?

She turned around only to find herself facing another wall of paper.

Is it not time to live like human beings?

Do you remember?

I am lonely .

She stepped closer, squinting at the characters. Do you remember ?

What illegal thoughts. The ones who should die…But actually, why should anyone’s thoughts be illegal? In the distance, the concrete was shifting, it metamorphosed into a small crowd. The small crowd seemed to replicate itself, more and more demonstrators appeared with banners elongated like ships above their heads. “ Arise, slaves, arise! We shall take back the fruits of our labour …” A Tsinghua University flag dipped and slid sideways, and there were others, too, flags announcing the Institute of Aeronautics and People’s University. The students met a line of police. From far away, it looked like a grey wave gulping up a string of fish. The police disappeared and the crowd grew fatter. A banner floated, delicate as a finger, towards her, “Long live education!”

She couldn’t help but wonder how the first-years among them had answered the examination question, “Leo Tolstoy. Discuss.” Turning awkwardly, she tripped over a schoolbag. The owner apologized and kicked the bag carelessly away from them, she thought she heard something snap. When he smiled the shadows under his eyes widened. The boy asked what department she was in and, when Ai-ming stared, he pointed to a pendant above his head (“Education Department”) and then, answering a question she hadn’t asked, he said, “An official re-evaluation of Hu Yaobang’s life and career. An end to the spiritual pollution campaign. That’s number one and two. And also…we’re asking the government to free those arrested in 1977 for speaking the truth. The heroes of Democracy Wall, you know. Twelve years later, and they’re still in prison!” It turned out he was speaking to someone behind her. Humiliated, she stepped sideways and out of his line of vision. His glasses had no nose rests and the frames were sliding down. She wanted, tenderly, to push them up. The students started shouting, “Yaobang forever!”

The sweetness of a piece of cake she had eaten earlier in the day persisted in her mouth. Bits of paper carnations were stuck to her shoes and Ai-ming tried to scrub them off against the grey concrete, not wanting to trail them, like evidence, back home. She found her bicycle and pedalled slowly back, against the constant stream of Beijingers moving towards the Square.

—

That evening, she crouched with Yiwen in the courtyard and they washed dishes together. “Okay, tell me,” Yiwen whispered, “what exactly is revolution?” Ai-ming coughed softly and said, “What?”

“Okay, okay,” Yiwen said, “just joking. I thought I would help you study! But, seriously, don’t you think citizens should own themselves, be their own people? Isn’t a self only a body combined with a system of thought?”

“A self?”

A plastic dish slid out of Yiwen’s soapy fingers and spluttered back into the water. She was wearing sneakers, a white T-shirt that served as a dress, and a pink bandana. She’d recently gotten a violently short haircut. Ai-ming had noticed that she carried a spray bottle and every now and then would squirt a big cloud of homemade insect repellent at her bare legs. When she got bitten, she roughly slapped her calves and thighs as if they belonged to someone else.

“My Beida boyfriend,” Yiwen said, as if she had other boyfriends at other universities, “says that thousands of wall posters calling for reform have gone up in the last twenty-four hours. His best friend carried a banner to the Square last night. You know what it said? It said, ‘The Soul of China.’ ” She sighed and scrubbed her family’s rice pot. “The job assignments are pitiful these days…Who knows where they’ll unload us once we graduate? I have a cousin who works alone in a closed-down factory in Shaanxi Province. Completely alone! She’s supposed to be an accountant. What kind of job is that?”

“If you study at a Beijing university you end up with a good job. Don’t you?”

“Beijing!” Yiwen made a face. “We should all go to the West. America owns the past and they own the future, too. What do we own?” She slapped the water. “Hey, what kind of rock music do you like?” Her T-shirt dress had soaked over her thighs and soap bubbles slid down her knee.

“Are there different kinds?”

Yiwen giggled. “Like Northwest Wind style. Do you like that? Let’s sing something. You know anything by White Angel? Or Mayday?”