Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

All revolutionary intellectuals, now is the time to go into battle! Let us unite, holding high the great red banner of Mao Zedong Thought, unite around the Party’s Central Committee ….But no, those words, that editorial, had come from a different era, a different movement. It was only a memory.

Hidden in the record sleeve of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, conducted by Leopold Stokowski with Glenn Gould as soloist, along with the letters from Kai, was a photo of the three of them together: Sparrow, Zhuli and Kai. His cousin was in the middle, fourteen years old, the only one who looked straight into the camera, the only one with nothing to hide. She had been learning Prokofiev, it had been around the time of Spring Festival, and he remembered how much she had fallen for that composer. “Sparrow, do you think it’s possible to love something too much?” She had grasped his hand, the way a child does. She had still been a child in that summer of 1966. “But each phrase is so full, if I tried to hear all its overtones and undertones, nothing would ever get played!” Yet she had learned to hear a great deal, he thought. She’d heard too many voices and given credit to them all. They had been taught, through the lessons of Chairman Mao and the ecstasy of revolution, that death could preserve a truth. But death preserved nothing, he thought. It removed the wholeness of those left behind, and the truth they once knew vanished, unrecorded, unreal, like sound dissipating. He had lived only half a life. Without intending to, he had silenced Zhuli. He remembered how much of himself he had poured into that Symphony No. 3. He could have left the papers in the trusses of the roof, he could have hidden them with the Book of Records. Why had he not done so? Why had he destroyed them with his own hands?

A line from Big Mother’s most recent letter from Cold Water Ditch came back to him: There is no way across the river but to feel for the stones .

YIHEN HAD TOLD AI-MING that students from every Beijing university would be demonstrating the following day, in defiance of the April 26th editorial. “I’m going,” Yiwen had said. She had been in the middle of braiding Ai-ming’s hair and unconsciously gave the braid an angry tug. “I don’t care what my parents say. We went to a funeral and the government called us criminals! Do they expect us to just shut our mouths? We’re not the same as they are….”

In her study, Ai-ming closed her eyes. She missed the companionship of Big Mother’s snoring hulk. In her memory, she was back in Cold Water Ditch, she was the same nosy child snooping into Big Mother’s book trunk. Here were the forty-two notebooks of the Book of Records, a girl’s blue dress, as well as a pamphlet with a yellow cover, and on the cover the words, “Gods and Emperors.”

The pages had fascinated her. Later, she understood it was a political tract and an answer to Deng Xiaoping’s celebrated Four Modernizations. “We want no more gods and emperors,” the writer had proclaimed. “No more saviours of any kind. We want to be masters of our own country. Democracy, freedom and happiness are the only goals of modernization. Without this fifth modernization, the other four are nothing more than a new-fangled lie.”

When she opened her eyes, she looked out and saw Yiwen’s mother sitting in the courtyard, washing clothes. The pink dress rose briefly from the water before it was pushed under again, reemerging tangled up in the arms of a shirt.

As soon as her parents left for work, Ai-ming shut her books. She went outside, walked calmly to the north gate of the alleyway and retrieved her bicycle. She hopped on. As she pedalled away from the books, she felt suddenly free, airborne. At the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she swerved across the intersection, dodged a cart loaded with water drums, and continued on under the big trees of Yuyuantan Park.

Sidestreet and delivery lanes opened up before her, and she flew north until she reached the Third Ring Road. Here, noise pummelled the buildings. At first all she could see were hundreds of green-hatted police. But behind them, just visible on the other side, were the edges of innumerable banners, mostly red and gold, like a wedding. The loudspeakers, out of sync, blurted out garbled warnings, “Demonstrations without official approval are illegal and will be banned! Demonstrations without official approval…”

On Ai-ming’s side of the police lines, two old men in white vests were holding a neatly written banner: “The way ahead is long and far, yet I will search far and wide,” but the two, who reminded her of Ba Lute, already seemed tottery on their skinny, grandfather legs.

Ai-ming locked her bicycle to a grate and squeezed onto the overpass. Looking down, she saw the students pressed right up against the police line, where the officers had hitched themselves together, arm in arm. The students were using the sheer mass of their numbers to slowly, tectonically, exert pressure. It was fierce and sweaty work.

I was a silly egg to think I would be able to find Yiwen , she told herself, blushing at the unexpected thought. The mass of young people disappeared into the horizon, as if the crowd stretched all the way to Beijing University itself.

A boy who had climbed up a lamppost called out that comrades from the University of Politics and Law had banded together and broken through a blockade at the Second Ring Road. Noise rioted up, vibrating the overpass. She watched as ladies coming to or from work, in factory blues, pink aprons, and green smocks, tried to sweet-talk the officers into letting the students through. Old people sat on their balconies as if watching opera, shouting at everyone to get on with it. Even as it grew increasingly tense, it was clear to Ai-ming that the police had no intention of pulling out their weapons. They were simply placing their bodies in the way.

Minutes passed, another half-hour, and still the agonizing pushing went on.

The students, all neatly dressed, attractive with their earnest glasses, began chanting the words of Comrade Deng himself: “A revolutionary government should listen to the voice of the People! Nothing should frighten it more than silence!”

On this side, the residents joined in, so that the police were pinioned between two tidal waves of sound. This went on for half an hour before everyone stopped to rest. Meanwhile up on the overpass, it was shoulder against shoulder, chest against back, with still more people arriving. Ai-ming was so sweaty she feared she might be squeezed, like a slippery fish, off the bridge.

The students were reorganizing. All the young women had been sent up to the head of the line. A few men around Ai-ming laughed dirtily. A soothing female chorus rose up:

“Raise the incomes of the police!”

“Brothers!” a young woman called. “You have been working hard all morning! Citizens of Beijing! Bring water to the People’s police!”

Amidst laughter and cheering, water materialized. Ai-ming scanned continuously for Yiwen. A few police lifted off their peaked caps, withdrew colourful handkerchiefs, and mopped the sweat from their faces. They smiled shyly at the girls, who giggled. Everyone exhaled, like a rest between sets.

The students managed to reformulate themselves so that boys and girls were mixed together once more. Meanwhile, the overpass took up the chant, “What’s so hard? It’s like cutting cabbages and melons!”

By now, Ai-ming had been on the overpass for almost three hours and she, too, felt the moment had arrived. She couldn’t stand to be further compressed. From the boulevard of protesters, more cries came, rolling forward with piercing intensity.

“Reject the verdict of the People’s Daily !”