Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

This was a special Beijing curse and it made Sparrow smile.

Fan raised her eyebrows, which made her ears wiggle slightly. She leaned mischievously towards him, so close their noses nearly touched. “What would you like to do, Comrade Sparrow, if you were free to choose a vocation?”

He didn’t hesitate. “I’d like to play the piano.”

Fan let out a honking laugh. Someone coming up the stairs dropped their lunch tin in surprise and let out a sad, soft, Waaaaa ! “It’s never too late to learn!” Fan shouted.

Sparrow smiled. “I suppose.”

“But the piano kind of thing, Comrade,” she said, turning serious, “is a hobby and can be done in addition to a steady job and what I meant with my question is the kind of vocation that requires a lifetime’s commitment. I wanted to be a doctor, I think I told you once, I wanted to open a clinic in my sister’s town but you know how it was back then. It wasn’t up to me.”

Rain battered dully on the umbrella. I want to see my daughter grow up, Sparrow thought. The premonition scared him so much he reached out his hand, intending to grasp the wall, and caught only air.

Fan didn’t notice. Her fingers were idly tapping the handle of the umbrella, playing an imaginary instrument. “Speaking of pianos,” she said. “Remember that musician in 1968, the composer from Shanghai, the tall one with the long face, what was his name? They locked us in a room and made us watch his struggle session. Old guy was being kicked around on live television and we still had to call him names.”

“He Luting.”

“That’s it! Right on television, they were going to make a big example out of him. I haven’t thought of him in years. Do you remember it?”

“I remember.”

“Oh, boy. Everyone had to watch, it didn’t matter whether you worked upstairs or in the basement. So we all heard it when he shouted, ‘How dare you, how dare you…. Shame on you for lying.’ That’s what he said, he kept yelling out, ‘Shame! Shame!’ Those Red Guards couldn’t believe it. I can still see their faces, big eyes and dumb-dumb mouths. Nobody could believe it, the nerve of this guy. I wonder if he’s still alive.”

“I think so,” Sparrow said.

“ Shame on you ! I’ll never forget.” She disappeared for a moment into her own searching. “We all knew that, once the cameras were switched off, pow, that would be the end of him. They wouldn’t let him get away with it.”

“But afterwards, were you yourself different?”

Fan looked at him, startled. “Comrade Sparrow, what kind of question is that?…how could anyone be different?” She gave an irritated sigh. “Sure this He Luting proved that it was possible to fight back, to stand up…but I still didn’t know how it was done. The Red Guards back then, the youth, you know how vicious they were…” She reached into her pocket and took out a handful of candies. “You like these, don’t you? White Rabbits. Have a few of these and don’t ask me any more questions. All right, I’m a coward! But damn your questions, they make me feel like I belong in a factory and will never deserve better.”

“Don’t be upset,” Sparrow said, accepting the candy. “I’m the same as you. I had the desire, but never the will.”

“And now?” Fan asked.

He shook his head, but it occurred to him that now, finally, when he had the will, desire itself might have disappeared. For twenty years, Sparrow had convinced himself that he had safeguarded the most crucial part of his inner life from the Party, the self that composed and understood the world through music. But how could it be? Time remade a person. Time had rewritten him. How could a person counter time itself?

—

That night, when Ai-ming came home in tears, Sparrow helplessly gave her the candy. He knew that Ai-ming stayed in the Square each day and passed herself off as a student. His daughter said that hundreds of students had lost consciousness, they were on IV drips. She had spent the day trying to keep a path clear for the stream of ambulances. How could he yell at her? More than three thousand had joined the hunger strike and some were threatening to set themselves on fire. But he saw, when he passed the neighbourhood television, that this confrontation with the government could not go on indefinitely. He watched clips of Gorbachev’s arrival in Beijing, all the members of the Politburo standing stiffly on the tarmac, their faces as grey as their colourless coats. General-Secretary Zhao Ziyang had met with Gorbachev, they had sat on chairs too large for their bodies. Comrade Zhao said that some young people had doubts about socialism, that their concerns were sincere, and for this reason reform was crucial. The anchor read without looking up. The grand celebration that had been planned for Tiananmen Square, intended to celebrate the first visit by a Soviet head of state since 1959, had been cancelled.

—

The following morning, Wednesday, Sparrow met his workmates at the Muxidi Bridge. Everyone was neatly turned out in their dark blue uniforms, while around them Chang’an Avenue swelled in a kind of euphoria and sadness. People from factories across the city arrived continuously in trucks and re-purposed buses. Fan was busy giving orders, she had a voice sharp enough to crack glass. Old Bi was there, too, with Dao-ren, who carried one side of a banner that read, “We can no longer stay silent.” Even the floor supervisors, managers and superiors were walking with them. He had heard that some, including Baby Corn, had children who had joined the hunger strike, and it was true, Baby Corn did not look well. An enlivening breeze made all the banners crease and ripple, and an expression of Big Mother’s caught in his mind, Those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind . At last they set out, behind the banner of Beijing Wire Factory No. 3. The sky was like a yellow curtain they could never quite pass through.

The air was tumultuous as Tiananmen Square came into sight. He saw banners announcing the Beijing Bus Company, Xidan Department Store and, shockingly, the Beijing Police Academy. Ling was here, too, walking alongside her co-workers at Radio Beijing. Men from Capital Iron and Steel waved orange flags that caught the sun. They were sturdy and mountainous, and had taken it upon themselves to direct traffic. Life was in flux, orchestral and completely unrecognizable. Through the loudspeakers a student was saying, “Mother China, witness now the actions of your sons and daughters,” while foreign journalists, having come to report on the Sino-Soviet summit, were so numerous they seemed to be replicating themselves from moment to moment. Journalists and editors from the People’s Daily walked under a red-and-gold banner, the colours of sunset. Everywhere, students, almost drunk with exhaustion, collected donations, and their plastic buckets and biscuit tins overflowed. The workers around Sparrow started buying up all the water, nourishing biscuits, popsicles and sticks of frozen fruit, and carting them to the hunger strikers. Sparrow felt as if all his past lives, all his selves, were walking beside him.

“Comrade Sparrow,” Fan said, taking hold of his arm, “are you okay? We should find some ice for your back injury—”

“I’m fine,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “I never imagined so many people…”

Fan’s smile was so wide he was surprised to realize she was weeping.

On the loudspeakers, a scholar was addressing the crowds, “There are things that I can’t accept from the government, and there are extreme elements within the student movement. But history is this kind of process, it’s all mixed up….”

In two weeks, he would fly to Hong Kong to see Kai, yet he had neglected to tell Ling or his daughter this important detail, and the fact that he was hiding so many crucial things could no longer be brushed away. Chanting reverberated off all the bodies and all the buildings: Can lies go on forever ? When he reached the Square, he thought, So this is what Tiananmen Square looks like when it is truly full. Even Chairman Mao never lived to see it like this. Mao’s portrait on the gate, so familiar it might as well be the moon in the sky, appeared smug and overdressed for the spring humidity. Despite the million demonstrators, the only visible police were the ones marching in support of the students. The student loudspeakers were exhorting the hunger strikers to be orderly, to “sleep neatly,” and to refrain from playing cards, because such behaviour would compromise the purity of their goals. The fasting students had no mats or tarps to lie on, only sheets of grubby newspaper. A sign read, “The Party maintains its power by accusing the People of fabricated political crimes.”