Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Novel (54 page)

“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.”

Sparrow could not imagine what this scene would like through Zhuli’s eyes, at the age she would be now. How many deceits had the Red Guards accused her of? How many crimes had the government fabricated? How could a lie continue so long, and work its way into everything they touched? But maybe Ai-ming would be allowed to come of age in a different world, a new China. Perhaps it was naive to think so, but he found it difficult not to give in, not to hope, and not to desire.

—

Everyday there were more demonstrations: a million people on Wednesday, and another million on Thursday despite rainstorms. By now the hunger strike was in its sixth day and even the official
People’s Daily
was reporting that more than seven hundred strikers had collapsed. When Sparrow went out, no matter the hour, he could hear ambulances racing to and from the Square. His
factory, perhaps every factory in the city, had all but closed. His new composition was almost done. Reading it over, he heard a counterpoint to Gabriel Fauré’s Op. 24, a similar descending sweep, and the three twisting voices of Bach’s organ prelude, “Ich ruf zu dir,” which he had always loved. But perhaps, rather than a counterpoint, the other works were sounds overheard, lives within lives. He no longer knew. The structure of his sonata felt unbalanced, even monstrous, and even though he knew it was nearly finished, he had no idea how it would end.

He called it, tentatively,
The Sun Shines on the People’s Square
, a title that echoed Ding Ling’s novel of revolutionary China,
The Sun Shines over Sanggam River
. But the Square in Sparrow’s mind was not the Tiananmen Square of 1989. Instead it was multiple places from throughout his life: the Tiananmen Square he had walked on in 1950 with Big Mother Knife. The People’s Square of Shanghai. The square courtyards of the laneway house, the sheets of Zhuli’s music, the portraits of Chairman Mao, the bed he shared with Ling, the square record jackets he had burned, the frames of the radios that he built every day. The ancient philosophers believed in a square earth and a round (or egg-shaped) sky. The head is round and the feet are square. The burial tomb is square. What might cause something to change shape, to expand or be transformed? Weren’t the works of Bach, the folded mirrors, the fugues and canons, both square and circular? But what if the piece of music in his mind could not be written? What if it must not be finished? The questions confused him, he knew they came from that other life inside him.

Ai-ming appeared in the doorway. “Are you writing, Ba?”

He put down his pencil. She was wearing clothes he didn’t recognize, a dress that must have come from the neighbour, and it made Ai-ming look more grown up, more like a northern city girl.

“Yiwen asked me to bring some blankets to Tiananmen Square,” she said. “These are donations from the neighbours, but she couldn’t carry them all. Ma is going to help me. Do you want
to come, too?” Ai-ming appeared thin, exhilarated. In the last few weeks, she had said nothing of Canada.

It was almost midnight. Sparrow said yes. Yes, he would go with them. Perhaps tonight he would tell them both that he was leaving for Hong Kong. He would be gone briefly; before they knew it, he would be home again. He would not abandon his life, but find a new beginning that included them.

Outside, Ling was stacking the blankets onto their bicycles, securing them with twine. Every movement she made was precise, intentional. He had always loved this quality of hers.

“You’ve been composing,” she said.

“A new sonata. It’s nearly finished.”

“I’m glad, Sparrow.” Her face was guarded yet, in its curiosity, open to him.

He wanted to tell her that attachment, to another person, to the past, was shifting from moment to moment. Set in motion again, his own life was finally becoming clear. But Ling knew, he thought, of course she already knew this. So many people, sent to labour camps like Ba Lute, taken away like Swirl or Wen, reassigned to distant provinces like Ling and Big Mother, had been denied a basic freedom, the right to raise their own children.

They set off, Ai-ming leading, turning through the maze of alleyways that bypassed Chang’an Avenue. Ahead of Sparrow, Ling’s hair twisted in the breeze. Her movements were strong and graceful, and the almond scent of her skin seemed to float back and hold him, once more, in thrall, following her, he had the sensation of rising up a flight of stairs.

Even now, so late at night, there were people everywhere. Banner after banner read, “Chairman Deng Xiaoping, step down!” He pedalled faster. He was side by side with his wife and daughter now, and they were folded into the tens of thousands who occupied the perimeter of Tiananmen Square day and night.

They got down and began pushing their bicycles, Ai-ming leading the way. Inside the Square, a student marshal with
startlingly long arms recognized her and came to assist. When they reached the hunger strikers, Sparrow unknotted the twine and was about to carry the blankets inside when the long-armed student stopped him. “Only students,” he said sharply. “No outsiders.” Ai-ming had run ahead. In the lamplight, he could see the faint glow of her shape. She was speaking to a tall, pale girl with very short hair, the neighbour’s daughter, Yiwen. The girl looked desperately thin. Some of the hunger strikers were fast asleep, a few boys were singing quietly, the camp smelled of urine and garbage. Doctors and nurses in smocks and blue jeans hurried past. One nurse was slumped over a table. “Quiet, quiet,” another whispered loudly, “can’t you see they’re trying to rest!”

A wiry old man in a blue uniform ran up. Excitedly, joyfully, he announced that the new independent workers’ union had officially called for a city-wide general strike. Sparrow was stunned, but no one else seemed to react. Ling, too, was speechless. She whispered to him, “How do they dare? How do we dare?” Minutes later, a girl ran in and said that General-Secretary Zhao Ziyang and Premier Li Peng were on their way to the hunger strike command headquarters. The tent hustled into activity, and then nothing, as if news continuously arrived, burst, rained down, evaporated and was no more. Ai-ming had wrapped her arms around the neighbour girl, they stayed that way for a few moments, their eyes closed, the girl rocking back and forth, weeping. An old woman came by the entrance, she was delivering water donations and at the same time eating a fried dough stick, and the guard hissed at her, “No food here! No food!” and the old woman, pale with shame, turned and fled.

Ling tried to intervene. “She’s a citizen only trying to help.”

“No food here!” the student shouted.

“Be quiet,” the slumping nurse cried. “Just be quiet, please!”

Ai-ming emerged, crying freely, and together they pushed their bicycles around the scattering of people. It was late and they were hungry, so Ling led them to Comrade Barbarian. The kitchen was still open, though the menu was limited, the waitress said
that the owner was making regular deliveries to the Square to support the student marshals and volunteers. They ate in silence and Sparrow finally said, “Ai-ming, you have to look after your health.” His daughter stared at her plate. Streaks of dried tears had left white patches on her skin. “But what about you, Ba?” she said. “In a week, you’ve aged a decade.” Ling sighed. “Come on. Everyone eat.” When they went back out, speakers were being dragged around even though it was almost three in the morning. People had come out all over again because the student broadcast centre was repeating the news that General-Secretary Zhao Ziyang had indeed arrived, along with Premier Li Peng, and they were meeting with representatives of the hunger strike. After Deng Xiaoping, they were the highest-ranked leaders in the country. Sparrow was so exhausted, he felt as if his shoes were glued to the concrete. He did not know how many minutes passed before a staticky broadcast finally dribbled out of the speakers. It was now four in the morning. The sound was not good, words were lost. General-Secretary Zhao kept clearing his throat and starting over.

The first clear words that filtered through were, “Students, we came too late.”

The Square itself seemed to widen, like something pulling apart.

“Students, I am sorry. Whatever you say and criticize about us is deserved. My purpose here now is to ask your forgiveness.”

He saw a look of pain pass over Ling’s face. Only it wasn’t pain, he realized, but fear. The General-Secretary’s voice was reedy, he seemed to be struggling against overwhelming emotion. “You cannot continue to…after seven days of hunger strike…to insist on continuing only until you have a satisfactory answer. You are still young and have much time ahead of you.”

People from the restaurant had all come out now, Sparrow saw the waitress and two cooks, and a few old diners in their undershirts. A jumble of teenagers. “It’s the same as always,” one of them
shouted. “They want us to be obedient and go home!” Murmuring all around, approval or disapproval, Sparrow could not tell.

“You are not like us,” Comrade Zhao continued. “We are already old and do not matter. It was not easy for the country and your parents to nurture you to reach university. Now in your late teens and early twenties you are sacrificing your lives. Students, can you think rationally for a moment? Now the situation is very dire, as you all know. The party and the nation are very anxious, the whole society is worried, and each day the situation is worsening. This cannot go on. You mean well and have the interests of our country at heart. But if this goes on it will go out of control and will have various adverse effects. All in all, this is what I have in my mind. If you stop the hunger strike, the government will not close the door on dialogue, definitely not! What you have proposed, we can continue to discuss. It is slow, some issues are being broached. I just wanted to visit you today and at the same time…tell you how we feel, and hope that you will calmly think about this. Under irrational circumstances, it is hard to think clearly. All the vigour that you have as young people, we understand because we, too, were young once, we, too, protested and we, too, laid our bodies on the railway tracks without considering the consequences. Finally, I ask again sincerely that you calmly think about what happens from now on. A lot of things can be resolved. I hope that you will end the hunger strike soon and I thank you.”

The broadcast devolved into static.

Sparrow looked up at the sky, it was too bright in the city to see any stars, everywhere he looked was a deep blue, a never-quite-black.

“What does it mean?” Ai-ming said.

Ling was weeping.

“I want to go home,” Ai-ming said. She was still so young but why did she already look so empty? “I want to go home.”

Now it was Sparrow who led them, silently, as if they were thieves, through the dark night, past speakers where
Zhao Ziyang’s
address was being replayed, “Students, we came too late, I am sorry…” past groups of people listening for the first time, past blossoming trees and a row of magnolias whose flowers he couldn’t see, but whose fragrance remained in the air, unrelenting, intoxicating.

Late the next morning, when he woke, disoriented, he heard Yiwen telling everyone that General-Secretary Zhao Ziyang had been removed from office. Someone inside the Party had leaked this information. Demonstrations had broken out in 151 cities and the government intended to declare martial law. The army had already arrived at the perimeter of the city.

—

The national examinations still had to be written. To Ai-ming, the entire process was plainly ludicrous. Theory and practice, practice and theory, if she analyzed another poem by Du Fu she might go into exile herself. She was curled up on the sofa, eating a cucumber, when Sparrow appeared, groggy, all the hair on his head mashed to one side. After wishing him good morning, she asked him, “Were you fighting someone in your sleep?”

Sparrow smiled confusedly. He took the cucumber from her hand and started to eat it.

Radios blared in the alleyway, families were shouting at each other about matters big and small, but she and Sparrow both pretended they heard nothing. Ai-ming told him that, early this morning, she had been determined to study. She’d opened the exam catalogue and found herself at the 1977 questions. That year, the national essay had been: “Is it true that the more knowledge, the more counter-revolutionary? Write at least 800 characters.” What if a similar question appeared on this year’s test? For over an hour, she’d struggled to compose an opening line. The page was still blank. She could no longer make sense of the word counter-revolutionary.