Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Novel (32 page)

At some point they fell asleep on the floor. He woke to the heaviness of Kai’s arm over him. It was hot, and sometime in the night, Kai had taken off his shirt and now lay, half undressed, beside him. How thin he had grown. Kai held him tightly, his mouth against Sparrow’s neck, his breathing calm and undisturbed, but he was not asleep. Sparrow lay on his back and let his hand drift down to cover Kai’s. The pianist caressed him, tentatively at first and then with greater confidence. Sparrow’s hand followed Kai’s hand and an unbearable heat settled deep into his body. They lay together, frightened, half wishing sleep would come and take them, and release them from this aching, intolerable yearning. They drifted and woke and held one another, and in the fitfulness of Kai’s touch, he felt as loved as he had ever felt. The first wash of dawn arrived without his noticing.

—

That evening, the study group met in the Old Cat’s apartment, located in a twisting lane on the northwest side of the city. Sparrow had been pleased when, in the afternoon, Kai came to the laneway house to remind him of the meeting. He had been
surprised when Kai invited Zhuli as well, though not as surprised as his cousin. Zhuli, blushing, had agreed.

They were the last to arrive. Just as before, the group assessed his clothing (“Did you trip and fall into the Huangpu River?”) and manner (“Nervous. As if he has thorns in his shoes.”) To Zhuli, on the other hand, they were welcoming, even familial. “Welcome, welcome!” the Old Cat shouted. “No need to be so formal. Just call me Old Cat, everyone does.” Kai greeted them both, but his eyes stayed fixed on Zhuli, who seemed oblivious of him. He had removed the armband of the Red Guards.

“I used to own the Perilous Heights bookshop on Suzhou Creek Road,” the Old Cat said, splashing tea into a bowl and slapping it down in front of Zhuli. “But during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the government was banning titles left and right. There was so much overthrowing go on, I couldn’t take it. Hell, I’m fifty years old. A relic! Overthrow me too hard and I won’t get up. So in 1955 I closed the shop and moved everything here.”

“But to keep so many books…” Zhuli said. “Aren’t you worried about busybodies?”

“What can I do? The pages are absorbent. I need them to soundproof my walls.”

A tray of cigarettes was passed around. As smoke floated through the air, conversation stilled. They began to concentrate.

The Professor read aloud from the most battered book Sparrow had ever seen. The book turned out to be a play, Part 1 of Guo Moruo’s translation of Faust. Time dissolved. Sparrow, who knew only Gounod’s opera, at first felt in familiar territory, but then he realized he had never met this Faust at all. The German Faust chafes against his condition. This Faust was seeking a freedom within the mind that would expand his spirit as well as his intellect, so that both could attain their most divine state. But what if the truths of the mind and the soul were not merely different, but incompatible? “In me there are two souls, alas, and their / Division tears my life in two.”

Zhuli leaned towards the Professor’s voice as if towards the sound of a flute.

When the reading ended, Ling stretched her lovely arms up into the air and said, “I prefer The Sorrows of Young Werther.”

“That’s because you’re a hopeless romantic,” said the Old Cat.

“Or because Young Werther is like a German San Li,” said San Li.

“In that case, I take it back.” Ling glared at him and then at Kai who grinned at Sparrow who blushed and looked at the teapot. Out of the corner of his eye, Sparrow saw Zhuli bow her head and smile widely into a tower of books.

The Old Cat tapped a manuscript that lay beside the Professor’s sandalled foot. “When this translation first came out, even Chairman Mao praised it. But the Party has turned on Guo…”

“I wonder if Zhuli is right,” Kai said, addressing the Old Cat. “Maybe it’s time to get rid of these books. They’re saying it’s the Anti-Rightist Campaign all over again–”

“What do you know about ’55? You were just a doorstep then.”

“As of this month,” Ling said, “Khrushchev is a ‘phoney Communist,’ the Soviets are ‘revisionist Big Brothers,’ and all the Russian composers are out. Are you getting rid of all your Fifth Symphonies and your This-and-that-ovskys?”

Kai blushed. “I never keep music. I memorize the scores and get rid of them.”

“Shit,” San Li said, “I can’t even remember how to get home.”

Sparrow laughed and tumbled a stack of books onto Zhuli’s lap. He tried to catch the avalanche and caused another.

The Old Cat peered into the ruins. “Look at that!” she said. “A-Fan’s
Weeping over His Daughter by the Sea!
I’ve been looking for those poems for thirty years.” Zhuli plucked it from the pile and handed it to her.

“And what about you,” Ling said, eyeing Sparrow. “Don’t tell me you memorize everything, too.”

“I don’t…I prefer, well, I transcribe the incorrect work into jianpu.” He had done this for the disgraced works of Debussy,
Schönberg and Bartok. Manuscripts written in jianpu notation, with its easy-to-read numbers, were considered backwards and rudimentary. They aroused no suspicion.

Zhuli interrupted. “But afterwards, he really does destroy them. He burns them and leaves the ashes in a little bucket.”

“This is a skill we perfect from an early age,” the Professor said lightly. “How to grind ideas into a fine cloud of dust.”

San Li interrupted. “For months this study group has been reading Schiller, Goethe and Shen Congwen. I’m not complaining. Really, Professor, I’m grateful because the other entertainment on offer stinks. But maybe it’s time to start reading what’s right in front of us.”

The Old Cat coughed. “Surely not!”

“There’s a new campaign,” he continued. “Or are we so taken with all the Germans who died a hundred years ago that no one notices?” He held up a copy of
Beijing Review
. “For instance, why don’t we study this slop bucket written by the philosophy students at Beijing University?”

“San Li,” the Professor interrupted, “enough.”

Sparrow saw Zhuli gripping her violin case. She looked as if she wished to leave but was prevented from doing so by the books that had fallen into her lap.

“No, let’s analyze this,” San Li persisted. He read:

All revolutionary intellectuals, now is the time to go into battle! Resolutely, thoroughly, totally and completely wipe out all the ghosts and monsters. The leaders of Beijing University shout about “strengthening the leadership” but this only exposes who they really are: saboteurs of the Cultural Revolution. We must tell you, a spider cannot stop the wheel of a cart! We will carry socialist revolution through to the end!

“I would fail this kid.
Resolutely, thoroughly, totally
? Is she writing a thesaurus? But instead of this student being sent to remedial
composition, the President of the University gets beaten up. I mean, he’s an old guy and these kids really wipe the floor with him. Now the whole university is under the boot of the Red Guards, and this manifesto is the Voice of the Revolution.”

“No need to read it aloud,” the Old Cat said. “We can hear it anytime we wish on the loudspeakers.”

“And now the Conservatory students are going around smashing violins.” San Li laughed. “What kind of person breaks a
violin
?”

“The young aren’t wrong,” Kai said. There was an aggressive and unfamiliar despair in his eyes. “They say we need to change, remove obstacles and purge ourselves. Land reform brought equality but ten years later, it’s already slipping away. It’s obvious things aren’t well in society.”

“Purge ourselves of what?” the Professor asked.

“Individualism, privilege. The greed that is corrupting our Revolution.”

“The Politburo leaders haven’t managed to become socialists,” San Li said. “Why should we?”

There was a murmur of nervous laughter which seemed, to Sparrow, to rise from the books themselves.

Kai blushed and stood up. “Comrade,” he said to the Old Cat, “thank you for your hospitality. I can no longer listen to this conversation. Please excuse me.”

The Old Cat and Ling had been talking to one another, and now paused, confused. The Professor stared, amazed. “Kai, my boy! Sit down, sit down. What’s got into you? San Li, didn’t I tell you to hold your tongue?”

“I say what’s on my mind.”

Kai’s voice was calm. “You’ve never fought for anything, San Li. You have no idea what life is like outside Shanghai, and yet you dare to lecture us.”

“In the Conservatory, you know better?”

Ling interrupted. “Be quiet, San Li. Kai, Sit down. There’s no need to take all this to heart. After all, we only come together to
think differently, don’t we? You’re a brother to me, I know you’re upset but come–”

But Kai had already turned on the Professor. “You’ve already ruined me, and now you’re endangering everyone in this room. For you, political struggle is just a game. It’s taken me years to see you clearly.”

The room was silent.

The Professor finally spoke. “Since when did the desire to know oneself, to better oneself, become a traitorous act in this country? Should this not frighten you, Kai? My son, you forget that I, too, lost my entire family in the Revolution.”

Kai flushed. He swung his bag over shoulder and walked out of the room.

“Sparrow,” the Professor said. “Go with him. He’s very disappointed. He doesn’t mean what he says….”

Sparrow didn’t move.

“I’ll take Zhuli home,” Ling said. “You live near Beijing Road, don’t you? So do I.”

How calm Zhuli appeared, Sparrow thought, as if it were she who had brought him here. Had she? What had they done?

“Can’t you hurry up?” Ling said. There was a tremor of fear in her voice.

Sparrow got up, wished everyone well and left.

—

The Professor and San Li exited together, mumbling apologies, and so it was only Zhuli, the Old Cat and Ling who remained. Nobody mentioned Kai or what had happened; it was as if the argument had dissolved, having never been. So the educated class is not so different after all, Zhuli thought. In these times, we all rely on silence.

Ling told Zhuli that she was a student at Jiaotong University. “In fact,” she said, “I study utilitarianism, Mencius and the art of couplets, so I qualify as one of San Li’s ‘slop bucket’ philosophy students.”

The Old Cat was reorganizing the books around her. “Maybe you need a copy of this,” she said, tossing a thin book to Zhuli. “Fou Lei’s translation of Jean-Christophe. You know it of course?”

“I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t read it yet.”

“Ha, why apologize?” The Old Cat lifted her soft shoulders and then, from this great height, let them fall like a landslide. “I only suggest it because they say Rolland modelled his Jean-Christophe on Beethoven. A Beethoven for the times we live in. However, not every page is exciting. There you go. And this, Hu Shih’s essay on Wu Dao-zi. A book outlawed, reviled by the government and, consequently, very popular.” When the Old Cat sat beside her, Zhuli could smell crumbling paper, ink stone and a whiff of sugarcane.

“Miss Zhuli,” Ling said, “do you carry your violin with you everywhere you go?”

The case in her lap was as cool as stone on an autumn night. Zhuli nodded.

“A bit strange, don’t you think?” Ling said.

The Old Cat sniffed. “As strange as you carrying paper and pen in your pocket! You’re a student after all, and she’s a violinist.”

“Then San Li might as well carry a sabre. It seems he majors in provocation.”

“If you told him to stop carrying on, he might listen,” the Old Cat said.

“Please! San Li would never perform for an audience of one.”

Zhuli wanted to ask them about Kai. Instead she opened the Hu Shih essay and began to read the first lines. She flipped forward, read further. The text had been copied out by hand, in a square yet beautifully bold script. She turned more pages. This was the same hand that had copied the Book of Records. This was her own father’s handwriting and she would know it anywhere.

The Old Cat peered at her. “Quite a clever essay, isn’t it?” she said.

Was it Zhuli’s imagination, or was there a question folded attentively inside this question? “I’m sure it must be, but I find
myself interested in the calligrapher.” To throw the Old Cat off the scent, she said, “Did you make this copy yourself?”

“Ai!” The Old Cat slapped her round knees with her round hands. “I’ve an enviable gift but not so divine as that. No, the calligrapher is a scholar from Shanghai, a poet in fact. But alas, he is not a poet anymore. He fell under the wheels of the Party and they sent him for re-education. I haven’t seen him for years, he disappeared. For a musician, you have a good eye for calligraphy.”

“It’s because my own handwriting is so poor,” Zhuli said. When my mother comes home, she thought, the first thing I’ll do is bring her here. That is the proper way to do things.

“On that note, I have something for you to decipher.” The Old Cat creaked herself upright, swayed past Ling and stopped at a desk. Zhuli had not even realized the desk was there, so camouflaged was it by papers. The Old Cat shuffled through a stack of folders before plucking out a single sheet. She handed it to Zhuli.

“Well, grandmother!” Zhuli said, after a moment. In her hand was the aria of the
Goldberg Variations
, transcribed into the numbers, dots and lines of jianpu notation. “You’ve gone and dropped a bag of books on me! I had no idea you studied Western classical music.”

“I don’t. Someone left this at my door, when, a month ago?” She looked to Ling, who nodded in confirmation. “Sure I can read jianpu but I have no clue what this music is.”

Zhuli told her it was Bach.

“Oh, him.” The Old Cat sounded disappointed. “I was hoping it might be that handsome firecracker, Old Bei. My niece and I have been inserting this piece of music into traditional song books.” Ling smiled mischievously. Aunt and niece, Zhuli thought, so this is why I felt so comfortable with them. “We throw it in at random just to cause a little frisson. I added the words of Chairman Mao as a libretto: ‘On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.’ ”