Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Novel (12 page)

“My son has heard nothing,” Ba Lute said. “He is deaf.”

“I’m listening, Ba.”

“To me,” his father said, staring at the album cover. “I want you to listen to me.” But he spoke as if his words were directed to Glenn Gould or to Bach himself. “Be practical, my son. Think of the future. Try to understand. There are many degrees and many roads of happiness.”

—

When Big Mother Knife returned to the mud hut, Swirl and the little devil lay exactly as she had left them, joined together on the kang in exhausted sleep. Wen was cocooned in a blanket on the floor. Her sister’s face in the moonlight was pale and lined, and Zhuli seemed to pull on her as children do, resilient and single-minded in her needs. Sitting in the corner, using her coat as a blanket, Big Mother watched moonlight creep beneath the door. It entered the room so piercingly that, when she looked down at her own fingers, she hardly recognized herself. She thought she saw the hands of Swirl. She thought her shoes were the very shoes of Wen the Dreamer, her knees were Ba Lute’s, her arms belonged to Da Shan, her stomach to Flying Bear, her heart to Sparrow. She had a terrible premonition that, one by one, they would be broken off and taken away from her. Or was it she who would be the first to leave?

Big Mother’s escapade with the God of Literature seemed ages ago and miles away.

The previous day, Big Mother had gone to town and purchased the plainest of practical items, heavy blankets, a thermos, padded coats, as well as rice, barley, cooking oil, salt and cigarettes. In a few months’ time, Big Mother told herself, she would get permission to come and see her sister again. By then the spring planting would have begun, and she could assess their needs once more. Swirl had told her that the Party Secretary had promised her a position teaching in the primary school. Perhaps conditions were not so dire. But even as she considered this, a thick sadness filled her.
She looked up and saw that Zhuli had woken and was winking at her, one small hand covering her right eye.

“Good morning, little devil,” Big Mother said.

The girl switched hands and covered her left eye.

Big Mother sucked her teeth. “Impudent monkey!”

“Father used to call me that,” Swirl said. “I remember now.” Her sister’s hair tumbled over her shoulders as she sat up. “Why don’t you come up here where it’s warm?”

Big Mother slowly climbed to her feet. Everything ached. Her body was growing old and useless, the result, surely, of endless political meetings and study sessions. The Party propaganda was muffling her thoughts, wrapping her in a thick dough of imbecility.

“What is it?” Swirl asked. “Why are you crying?”

“For joy,” Big Mother lied.

Her sister laughed. The girl tittered, too.

Winking at the girl, Big Mother picked up the cardboard box and set it on the kang beside her sister.

Swirl looked intently at it, as if the box reminded her of a person she had not seen in many years. Her fingers reached out, pulled the loop and the string curled down. Swirl lifted the lid and slid it aside. She stared down at the thirty-one notebooks, the only chapters Wen had been able to find, of the Book of Records.

“But–” She touched the corner of the box. “I know it isn’t possible.”

“Let us just say, the God of Literature summoned it home.”

—

The following morning, in the bus on the way back to Shanghai, fate placed Big Mother beside a hardy young woman whose husband was deputy village head. “Far from home, hmm?” the young woman said, unfolding a red handkerchief, spreading it over her knees like a tablecloth, and depositing a great quantity of sunflower seeds on top of it.

“In this vast and glorious country,” Big Mother said gently, “everywhere is home.”

“Isn’t it so!” the woman said, drawing her fingers through the seeds as if in search of a silver coin. The countryside flew past the windows, woken by the first light of morning. All around them, people were asleep in their seats or pretending to be. Patiently, the young woman attempted to extract the reason for Big Mother’s visit to Bingpai (“Your sister is who, did you say? That young lady who used to sing in the teahouses?”), working like a needle beneath Big Mother’s skin. Big Mother, contemplating the sunflower husks accumulating on the floor, and thinking, in general, of the greed that propelled wars and occupations, and of the bloody excesses of civil war, opened her thermos and poured a generous cup of tea for her companion. As often happened, Big Mother Knife decided, impulsively, to adjust her strategy.

“I was pleased,” she began, “to witness the glories of land reform here in the countryside.”

“Genius!” the young woman said weightily. “Devised–no, composed!–by the Chairman himself. A program of thought that has no equal in the history of all mankind, past, present, or futuristic.”

“Indeed,” Big Mother said. They sat in thoughtful silence for a moment and then she continued, “I, myself, welcome any sacrifice to emancipate our beloved countrymen from these heinous–”

“Oh, very heinous!” the young woman whispered.

“–feudal chains. No doubt your husband, the deputy village head, has done his duty with distinction.” Big Mother reached into her coat pocket and withdrew a handful of White Rabbit candies.

“Wa!” the young woman said in astonishment.

“Please, try one. Try several. These delicacies were sent to us from the Shanghai propaganda chief himself. The flavour is delicate yet robust. Did I mention that my husband is a composer and a musician? They say his revolutionary operas have found favour with Chairman Mao himself.”

“Ah, ah,” the woman said softly.

Big Mother dropped her voice. The words seemed to come to her as if seeping out from the thirty-one notebooks in her bag,
which Swirl had insisted she take to Shanghai; her sister would dispose of the love letters herself, or so Big Mother hoped. “But our Great Helmsman has always directed our affairs, in both grand and humble ways. Of course, my husband’s more modest than the most bashful ox, but he journeyed alongside our nation’s heroes all the way to Yan’an, ten thousand li! My husband played with such revolutionary fervour that his fingers were more calloused than his shoeless feet. Yes, every step he played the guqin. He had to re-string the bow with horsehairs.”

“No hairs were more joyously volunteered!”

Big Mother allowed herself a smile. “I’m sure it is so.”

The young woman accepted another handful of sweets. She slipped all the pieces except one into her shirt pocket. “Your husband is from where?”

“From Hunan Province, the very cradle of the Revolution,” Big Mother said. The woman was nervously unwrapping her candy and Big Mother waited patiently for the crackling of the paper to subside. “His revolutionary name is Song of the People. He is, if you allow me, a big brute of a man. A true, modern spirit.”

“I have heard his name,” the woman said chewing daintily, the candy sticking her words together.

“The last time he came to your village was for my sister’s wedding. Actually, Wen the Dreamer and my husband are as close as brothers.”

Did she sense consternation? Had even the sunflower seeds suddenly turned cold?

“Our village would give your husband a great welcome,” the hardy young woman said. “If you could just let us know in advance so that all the necessary preparations can be made–”

“Oh no,” Big Mother said kindly. “He dislikes having a fuss made over him. As Chairman Mao so honourably says, ‘We cadres in particular must advocate diligence and frugality!’ But I’m certain he will visit, he has such great feeling for the people here, in particular, as I say, Comrade Wen the Dreamer. Please, have another candy.”

As the bus heaved on, the two women took turns pouring each other tea, sharing their dried fruit, and paying poetic tribute to their husbands, fathers and great leaders. Fourteen hours later, when the bus arrived in Shanghai, Big Mother Knife had consumed so many sunflower seeds she felt as if she could beat her wings and fly away. The young woman clasped her hands and wished her longevity, prosperity and revolutionary glory, and they stood calling to one another like traffic directors, long after the bus had emptied and filled once more. Big Mother walked home from the bus station, through the rowdy twilit streets, and the novel in her bag gave her a pleasant, illusory calm, as if she were leaving a secret meeting and the documents she carried could bring down systems, countries, lies and corruption.

Perhaps it was not the papers themselves, their secrets, that were were so explosive, but the names of the readers that must be protected. Courageous cliques, resistance fighters, spies and dreamers! She did not know why these thoughts came to her, but it was as if the very air shrouded the buildings in paranoia. How small yet heavy the notebooks felt. She began to wonder if Wen the Dreamer, during his hours of copying the Book of Records, had merged with the author or even the characters themselves, or perhaps he had transformed into something more expansive and intangible? When he finished copying, did he go back to being himself or were the very structures of his thoughts, their hue and rhythm, subtly changed? Past Beijing Road, she came to familiar streets, narrow laneways and finally the back door of their courtyard. Already she could hear a voice singing, a female colleague rehearsing with Ba Lute or perhaps just the radio, turned up wastefully high. When Big Mother entered the side wing of the house, her husband was hovering guiltily just inside the door, his shirt crookedly buttoned. He scratched his shiny head and looked at her in confused panic, blocking her entrance.

“Let me in, for heaven’s sake!” she cried.

Deflating, he folded sideways. She saw that the room was dark, that the only residual light came from the lamps outside. She set her bag down. “Did you run out of kerosene?” she asked. And then she heard it: a low trickle of sound beneath the blaring radio. She looked to Ba Lute for an explanation but he only shrugged and smiled sheepishly.

Her heart fell to her knees. A tart. A singer so operatic she needed ten radios at maximum volume to cover her cries. Grabbing the broom, Big Mother followed the sound towards the bedrooms. At the first door, she peered inside and saw her two youngest sons asleep, almost on top of each other, as if fleeing from dreams on the northern side of the bed. She pressed on to Ba Lute’s study. How did he dare? She would smash his nose, she would rip out his remaining hairs, she would…The door was closed but still the sound slid out, like water brimming from a glass. She turned the handle and pushed.

Two lamps glowed dimly on the far side of the room. She gazed in the direction of the light. Sparrow was sitting at his father’s desk, his pen poised over a long sheet of paper. There was paper, in fact, everywhere, in the armchair, on the carpet, cascading across the desk, balled-up sheets and ink-stained pages. On the record player, a disc turned.

“Have the men in this house lost their minds?” she said finally, lowering the broom.

Her son looked down and stared expectantly at the strewn pages as if they might answer on his behalf.

“Shall I leave this madhouse and return to the sane, oh yes, the marvellously sane, countryside?”

“Oh,” Sparrow said, when no one else answered. “No.”

“We have a minor, which is to say, a small and unimportant, school project,” Ba Lute said. That brute, that Song of the People, had come up behind her.

“A project! To exist in darkness like cavemen?” Big Mother asked. “To see how long it takes before state radio makes you deaf?”

Ba Lute pushed her gently into the room and shut the door behind them. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “It’s just that, some of our interests–a few musical interests–do not need to be broadcast.”

She picked up a sheet of paper from the floor and held it up to her good eye. She studied the numbers that climbed up and down the page, the numbers one through seven, the lines and dots, the chords lifting like ladders. They were transcribing music into jianpu notation.

“A school project?” she said, doubtfully.

“Extracurricular,” Sparrow said. There was ink on his face.

“But why?”

The music from the record player swirled faintly around them, adding its own thoughts to the conversation. The baroque constructions her son loved so much, Bach’s
Goldberg Variations
. Sparrow, grown so tall, was standing beside her now. When had the child grown? Only yesterday he had been running beneath the tables of the teahouses, wearing the rough green hat she had knitted for him, the little flaps cupping his ears.

“For pleasure,” her son said quietly.

“Yes,” Ba Lute said, as if the word had dropped from the sky. “For pleasure!”

“But what use is this? If it’s sheet music you want, why don’t you just take your son to Old Zhang? Jianpu is for little children and teahouse singers, not Conservatory students.” The record ran on, parsing its phrases into the air, and she saw that her husband and son were not listening to her, they were listening to it. “I’m tired,” she said abruptly. “I’m going to bed. Don’t bother me.” She turned and left the room, just as the music trumpeted into a bouquet of sound, raining down on her like false applause. She closed the door behind her.

All night, beneath the blare of the radio, music trickled through the house. She heard it, faintly, when she lay on her left side and then on her right, when she lay face down, face up, or
diagonally across the bed. Finally, she crept out of her room and into bed with her boys. Flying Bear slept heavily, his paws curled and toes pointing up, but her dear Da Shan crossed the bed to be with her. This one, too, had grown too quickly. He rolled awkwardly into her arms. “I’m glad you are home, Mama,” he said, his voice drowsy with sleep. He clutched at her hand and held her, reminding Big Mother of Swirl and her little daughter, and that rough kang, and the quiet smoke from the cigarettes of Wen the Dreamer.

—

In the spring, Big Mother returned to Bingpai, and then twice more in the winter and following spring. Life had quieted in the village and although Swirl’s family still lived in the mud hut, the family had slowly begun to thrive again. Wen had begun farming half an acre of irrigated land and Swirl was teaching in the schoolhouse.