Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

The cigarette tasted opulent in his mouth.

“It’s all getting so emotional,” Old Bi said. “All these tears and threats are obscuring the bigger issues. We could help these students steer the ship but who listens to the older generation?”

Smoke clouded from Miss Lu’s mouth. “That’s right. We had our day and look how well we served the country. Oh yes, we Red Guards were very first class, very rational.”

Old Bi pretended he hadn’t heard.

They came to a large tent on the northwest corner of the Square, temporary headquarters of the independent union, where a lineup of uniformed workers stretched along the boulevard. Jokes were passed from person to person like midday snacks. Two hours later, upon reaching the front, Sparrow signed his name below thousands of others. He felt too afraid to be afraid. A giddy volunteer informed him, hands gesticulating, that workers were organizing themselves into various battalions, some were in charge of gathering supplies, some would battle the army at the roadblocks, and others had joined the Iron Mounted Soldiers, a motorcycle reconnaissance network.

Distracted by the sound of helicopters, Sparrow told the volunteer he would do whatever was needed, but he didn’t own a motorcycle.

“Oh-oh,” Fan said, suddenly appearing with her booming voice. “Be practical, Old Sparrow! You’re not a kid anymore! I don’t see you leaping up on barricades, just falling off them!”

“Falling down is also a form of obstruction.”

Fan rumbled a laugh, gave him a stinging slap on the back, and then another.

On a nearby bench, Old Bi and Miss Lu were sharing a cigarette, entranced by the workers’ radio broadcast, read by a young woman with a heart-shaped face and a soprano voice.

Sparrow went outside and onto the Square. Conditions had deteriorated, the students looked bedraggled and destitute. There was garbage everywhere and the camp smelled very bad. One after another, people scrambled up to the microphone, identifying themselves as teachers, intellectuals, or student leaders.

He watched for a long time. Their speeches (“No kneeling!”) grew increasingly vehement until, driven by their passions (“No compromise!”) and by the high tide of emotions, they, too, finished by asking the protesters to stand firm and risk everything (“No retreat!”). The sky opened and heavy rain broke free. Tarps collapsed onto the huddled students, and he heard them cry out, a mix of laughter, groaning and cursing. Banners drooped, flags stuck to their poles, a pair of abandoned shorts and a few wet T-shirts sat like turtlebacks before the portrait of Chairman Mao. Sparrow saw a tall girl standing alone, a pink headband in her hair, and wondered if it was Yiwen, the neighbours’ daughter. The rain blurred her figure, and he felt he was looking into the past, or into a future that would not arrive. He heard footsteps behind him and turned. Fan was running towards him, a graceful hop-skip-jump-jog, holding a bright blue umbrella like a prize in the air.

—

He was assigned to the blockade at Muxidi Bridge, which was so close to home it was like watching over his backyard. Sparrow and a dozen neighbours took up a position on the roof of a city bus, whose tires had been punctured. Songs from the 1920s and 1930s proliferated around them, and neighbours, including Ling, handed out candy nougats, tea and pastries. All night, he followed Ling’s figure in the crowd below. She was distributing copies of an unauthorized supplement to the People’s Daily , printed covertly by the newspaper’s staff. In the last week, Sparrow had hardly seen her. Ling was never home, she had thrown all her energy into the ongoing dispute at Radio Beijing. Journalists and editors, including Ling, had come down firmly on the side of the students and were no longer waiting for official approval before broadcasting their reports. The Ling he had first met in Kai’s room, the sharp-eyed philosophy student, had been biding her time and here she was now, as if she had never been away. In fact, all over Beijing, people who had seemingly resigned themselves to always wearing ten layers of coats were now shedding them all at once. They carried themselves differently, they were proud, even joyful, in bloom.

Battling sleep, Sparrow found himself remembering the swaying of the Wuhan bus, when he and Kai had gone in search of Comrade Glass Eye, when a red-cheeked girl had fallen asleep in Sparrow’s lap as he played “Bird’s Eye View.” He, too, had felt purely happy then. The music had seemed to scour everyone clean. Perhaps the messages of the students had done something similar: simplified ideas had set in motion a train of desires. A slogan on a headband or a T-shirt, “Give me liberty or give me death,” had led to a hunger strike and a political impasse, and both the will and desire to change one’s conditions.

On the second night, Sparrow was told to bring a cotton mask, towels and handkerchiefs, because the army was expected to use tear gas.

And yet, and yet. The next morning, the People’s Liberation Army started up their convoys, and began reversing out of the neighbourhood. The exhausted soldiers waved as they departed, some weeping and others laughing. Bright ropes of flowers flooded the streets they had left behind.

On Saturday, Ai-ming came home breathless, jubilant. She said that the students had entered into discussions with the government, and agreed to a full withdrawal from Tiananmen Square. “Yiwen is coming home.” She turned to Sparrow and said, “You don’t have to sit on that broken bus anymore pretending to be a fighter.”

When he touched his daughter’s cheek, Sparrow felt almost harmed by the softness of it. “Will you eat at home tonight, Ai-ming?”

“I’ll even cook. And you’ll be sorry you asked!”

Ling went out to buy groceries. The news of the students’ decision had not yet been broadcast, but in the alleyways, everyone seemed to know what had occurred. The streets vibrated with a hopefulness she had not witnessed since the first years of the Republic, as if all the years between then and now had only been a hallucination or a detour. Returning home, she ran into Yiwen’s father at the water spigot. Yiwen had not been home since the start of the hunger strike, yet it was her father, Comrade Zhu, who had lost so much weight. Seeing Ling, he said, “These children, ah! You give your life to them and they crush your heart!”

Ling took out the good cut of beef she’d bought and gave it to her neighbour. He lifted both hands, refusing. “Take it,” she said. “The students have called off the demonstrations. Now you can welcome Yiwen home.”

Water overflowed the bucket and Zhu turned the tap off. “You see how it is,” he said, accepting the gift, and beckoning her into his flat. “We sacrificed everything so that Yiwen could get a good education. She’s our only child. When Yiwen was accepted into Beijing Normal, I held the letter in my hands and wept. The first time I had wept in forty years! I thought I might have a heart attack. Yiwen is the first in both our families to go to university. She’s smarter than anyone I’ve ever known. I tried to make her understand how fortunate she was, to be born into this time, to have opportunities we never had.” He shook his head. “But these kids think it’s all up to them. They have no understanding of fate.” He took a container from his ice box and gave it to her. It was a chicken, already marinated. She tried to refuse but he wouldn’t hear of it.

“Perhaps it was us,” Ling said, picking up where they had left off. “We understood fate all too well.”

“Ah,” he said. “You’re right about that. Our children have ‘stood up,’ and now it’s we, their parents, down on our knees and begging forgiveness! But okay, okay, whatever. Look,” and Zhu pulled a small badge from his pocket. “I even joined the Beijing autonomous residents’ federation. You should join, too. There are all sorts of initiatives under discussion.”