Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Novel (14 page)

“You must have the wrong house, Little Miss.”

“Aunt?” she said.

“This is not your aunt’s house,” Sparrow told her kindly.

“Please tell my Aunt Mother Knife that I’m here.”

He knelt down to reach her height, and then he noticed that one of the albums was a foreign record. He looked into the little girl’s face which seemed, somehow, obscured by dust. He knew the words on the album were in German, and he recognized the ones that mattered, J.S. Bach. Sparrow looked at her again, unwilling to believe he could recognize this grieving, destitute child.

“Tell my aunt,” she said firmly.

But it was unnecessary because his mother had come out into the courtyard, a quilt thrown over her shoulders, and was now standing behind him. His mother cried out and pulled the child into her arms. “Zhuli!” she said. “Where’s your Ma?” Panicking, she pushed past Sparrow into the laneway, staring all around.

“Swirl,” Big Mother shouted, and kept shouting. The alley was empty, not a single person, nothing but rubbish and wind.

Sparrow flew down the lane, all the way to Beijing Road. But his Aunt Swirl and Wen the Dreamer were not there, not under the welcoming archway, and not on the street. Finally he used the few coins in his pocket to buy a half-dozen roasted sweet potatoes and a paper bag of steamed bread, then he stormed back across the intersection, dodging bicycles, leaping between pedestrians. Back home, he found Zhuli seated across the table from his mother. The child was wearing Flying Bear’s clothes and the small, familiar shirt (it had once belonged to Sparrow) draped over her like a tent. When Sparrow set the food in front of her, she ate without looking up, breathing through her nose as she tried to shove as much as possible into her mouth. Big Mother watched in silence.

When Zhuli finished eating, she went, of her own accord, to the bedroom that Sparrow shared with his brothers. She found another shirt and pulled it on over the one she was already wearing. Then she climbed into the bed and asked Sparrow to lie down, too. Confused, he did as the child asked. Zhuli, who seemed to be growing smaller every moment, crept into his arms, closed her eyes and fell asleep.

—

Late that night, a sealed envelope was slipped through the front gate. It was addressed to “Mrs. Song of the People” and Mr. and Mrs. Ma had accidentally trampled it as they passed to the east wing. Mr. Ma gave it to Big Mother Knife who tore it open but, unable to make out the words with her good eye, thrust it at Ba Lute. The letter said that Swirl and Wen the Dreamer were guilty of counter-revolutionary crimes and sentenced to eight years of hard labour. They had already been transported to separate re-education camps in the Northwest. No matter how many times Big Mother heard the words, the letter made no sense. The letter continued: “The mother of Comrade Wen has died of illness. As there is no one in Bingpai with whom to entrust the child, I have taken the liberty of bringing her here. You will find the necessary paperwork and residence permits enclosed. Long live our motherland! Long live Chairman Mao!” There was a crushed, melted White Rabbit candy in the envelope.

“You know how it is,” Ba Lute said at last. “Sometimes the local revolutionary committee gets carried away. I’ll take care of it. A sentence like this won’t get carried out immediately. Swirl and Wen must still be in Bingpai.” But he wouldn’t look her in the face, examining instead the empty cigarette pack in his hand.

All night, Ba Lute tossed and turned. The more Big Mother tried to see the room’s outlines, the more the walls seemed to fold around her. Her husband cried out in his sleep, and she whacked his arm until he quieted. In Big Mother’s own fevered dreams, her sister appeared, but Swirl was a small child again. They were fleeing Shanghai, trying to outrun the Japanese army.

When Big Mother next woke, Zhuli was asleep beside her.

They remained in bed while Ba Lute and the boys got up. They listened as schoolbags rustled open and closed, loudspeakers bellowed the national anthem, and bells and clappers rattled through the laneways. When Big Mother opened her eyes again, she was momentarily confused and thought that she and Swirl were lying in their parents’ bed, her sister’s gleaming hair
flowing across the pillows. Her sister was the great love of her life. When their husbands had disappeared into the war, she and Swirl had survived together, and Big Mother had never let her sister down. She swiped at her tears, but she could not make them stop falling.

She had a vague sense, a disturbance, of people struggling up, people rushing over one another, and on and on these people climbed and fell and pulled each other down, in a large and sickening silence. But for what crime? In the re-education camps of the Northwest, her sister and Wen the Dreamer would undoubtedly be separated from one another. Surely they would be released soon, any crimes they had committed must certainly be small mistakes. But what was a small counter-revolutionary crime? Big Mother had never yet heard of one. The little girl sat up. As if her aunt’s tears scalded her, Zhuli crawled out from under the covers and walked out of the room.

—

That night, Ba Lute boarded the bus for Bingpai. He drowsed, thinking of gamblers and the smoke at Swirl’s wedding, of birds and music, and of the slow churning of Chairman Mao’s newly formed wartime orchestra, and when he woke, the bus was tilting over a mountain pass, attacking a hairpin curve. He gripped the seat in front of him. It was miserable outside. Within and without, Ba Lute felt an enveloping sense of danger and deception. This foreboding was so strong that, when dawn came, he was taken aback to find the bus rolling across a delicate landscape. The green-gold fragility of the surrounding fields, the silvery bicycles and low lines of birds rising and lifting as one confused him. Banners proclaimed, “Serve the People!” and “Dare to think, dare to act!” The early summer had been unbearable, with bouts of thunder and unrelenting heat. His shirt felt glued permanently to his back.

Arriving in Bingpai, Ba Lute walked to the Party office, a meek little building with a very short door.

Inside, he was surprised to see an electric fan wobbling from the ceiling, funnelling the warm air down. The office had its own generator. Once Ba Lute had made himself known, he was welcomed by the village head with a very large piece of cake. Banishing his anxiety, he stretched himself out so that he was lordly and unassailable, and spoke in a bellowing voice. When Ba Lute mentioned Swirl and Wen the Dreamer’s names, the grinning official in his over-warm jacket turned pink and damp. The fan pushed droplets of sweat across his bald head.

“One moment please, Comrade,” the man said, and fled the room.

More cake appeared. A worker entered, singing, “Good day, Comrade!” He presented a cup of tea, wiped the already clean surface of the table and hobbled out. “Long live our Great Leader!”

“Well?” Ba Lute said, when the village head returned. “Where are they? I’m very eager to see them.”

The dishevelled man looked as if he had been to Moscow and back. “Well, of course,” he began, “they’re registered here–”

“Yes, yes.”

“–but, this morning, or, more accurately, at the present hour–”

“Comrade Wen is a greatly admired lyricist, a book of songs, as the saying goes. We can have no other for our concert. General Chen Yi himself insists!”

The man looked up, startled. “Respects to Chen Yi! A brave general and faithful servant to Chairman Mao himself. A twelve-barrel hero! Long may he–”

Ba Lute took a gulp of tea and slapped the cup on the table. “Comrade Wen and his wife must present themselves immediately. I’m ready to press on.”

“Brother Comrade, life goes in unexpected spirals. That is to say, there are many unexpected places to which a man returns–”

“Your poetry confuses me, Comrade.”

The man blushed. “Let me begin again. Elder brother, the truth of the matter is, they are not here.” The man shifted uncomfortably.

“Speak freely, please.”

The man poured tea and bade him drink.

Ba Lute waited. The fan turned faster now, as if trying to take flight.

“We do our utmost to keep order,” the man said, “but as a leading light such as yourself knows, the People cannot move in half-steps: they would only fall down, wouldn’t they? To traverse so great a divide, they must leap and sometimes overleap. And it could be that, in the case of Comrade Wen, they have, perhaps, overleapt. However, we live in a time in which the revolutionary dream must run its course, don’t you agree?”

Ba Lute said nothing. The cake tasted old in his mouth.

“It appears,” the man said, “that Comrade Wen and his wife had a hidden cellar on his family’s ancestral land.”

Ba Lute drank the remaining tea in his cup and looked thoughtfully at the pot. “That is no crime, Comrade.”

The man waited and let silence stand in for contradiction. “Of course,” he continued, “the contraband always surfaces. We confiscated everything. Books, records, some valuable heirlooms. He had the
Book of Songs
and the
Book of History
. He also possessed books from America. I am surprised,” he said, allowing a brief pause, “that you did not know.”

Ba Lute looked at the wall behind the man. There was no mistaking the sudden change in tone, all that confused poetry, that shiny sweat, suddenly vanishing like a mist.

“I did not know,” Ba Lute said evenly.

“Mmmm.”

The man stood up, reached up to a long string and stopped the fan. It slowed to a halt, and left the room confined and utterly still. “As cadres, we, of course, can only serve the People and follow the Party line. We turned him over to the revolutionary committee and they passed judgment. He was found to be a dangerous element.”

Big Lute’s throat was dry, but no more tea was offered.

“Re-education through hard labour,” the man continued, sitting down again. “This was the conclusion and he was duly taken away.”

“And his wife, Comrade Swirl?”

“Convicted rightist and shameless bourgeois element. The same punishment.” The man seemed to thrive in the heat now. He looked pink and golden. “This hidden library may have been built by Comrade Wen’s mother during one war or another, to hide these rare books from invaders. She died last year so how can we know? Perhaps you’ve heard of her father, Old West? A reactionary element, very close to the Imperialist regime in his day. Of course, Old West was once a celebrated scholar sent abroad to serve his country and such hiding places were once common…Well, who am I to judge? We are only a small village. We are still learning the correct line.” The man smiled at Ba Lute. How strange this smile was, part pity, part warning. “The revolutionary committee operates under Chen Yi, does it not?” the man said smoothly. “I imagine that Chen Yi might have informed you of the sentence that was handed out.”

“Tell me,” Ba Lute said, ignoring the man’s insinuation, “how was the library discovered?”

“Comrade Wen and his wife were in the fields as usual. Their daughter climbed down into the opening. It was she who discovered it. The melting ice must have dislodged the entrance.” He poured the last of his tea into a potted plant on the floor, then he replaced the cup soundlessly on the table. “It was warm down there. More comfortable, in fact, than where they were living. One of the villagers was crossing the field, and he saw Comrade Zhuli disappearing, as if swallowed up by the earth.”

The village head studied him openly. Ba Lute stared back, unrepentant. Behind the laboured elegance, the cloaked eyes, and the man’s soft, sweating nose, his unwavering expression was familiar. The silence between them grew thoughtful. Ba Lute closed his eyes and then looked at the village head again. He felt
as if he had exited the office and then re-entered through a different door. “I knew you at Headquarters. Back in ’46. Didn’t I?”

The man’s face lit up with pleasure.

Ba Lute continued. “You were recruited for the orchestra. Maybe it was ’44, could it be?” He could see these eyes now, that shiny bald head, behind an oboe. The orchestra leader had gone to the villages to recruit youngsters, and his friend, Li Delun, had taught them how to play. “
These kids have never even seen an instrument in their dreams!” Delun had said. Even the way the new recruits held their oboes and trumpets was humorous, walking with them as if with a brand new girlfriend. “Ah, ah, ah, ah,” Ba Lute said, trying to clear his thoughts.

“Wasn’t it a memorable time?” the man said. “Learning to play the oboe in the middle of the Japanese invasion, reforming our thoughts and holding ballroom dances every Saturday night. The great leaders like to waltz. This surprised me.”

“There is no music ensemble here,” Ba Lute said.

“No, not here.”

“Do you still have your oboe?”

Silence. The man hesitated, unsure if a joke was being made at his expense. “Yes,” he admitted.

“Old One-two,” Ba Lute said, suddenly remembering the man’s name. They had all taken part in the same self-criticism sessions, which in reality were open attacks on one another. This man had been strict but he had not been a sadist like some of the others. “We nicknamed you One-two, because you could never count inside your head.”

The man laughed. The sound was so unexpected, Ba Lute started and knocked over his empty cup. The man quickly righted it. “You’re right. The trombonist gave me that name,” he said. “It stuck.”

Ba Lute was so thirsty even his eyes felt dry. An image came to him of this room and all the past rooms he had known, he tried to see how all the doorways and entrances fit together, but none
of the corners would hold still. “Tell me your requirements,” he said finally.

“My friend, you misunderstand me.”

“I would like permission to visit them. Are they being detained nearby?”

“Comrade,” the man said, “that is not possible.” He blinked rapidly as if his feelings had been injured. “They were sentenced to labour in the Northwest. In the meantime, the revolutionary committee had no choice but to demolish their hut.”

So the letter had not exaggerated, Ba Lute thought. They were gone.

One-two stood up from the desk. “You must know how things are. You are justly celebrated! A champion of the land reform campaign, a triumphant musical foot soldier. We hardened ourselves at Headquarters, didn’t we? We were the first to be reformed through struggle. As Chairman Mao says, true rebellion is not organized or beautiful. Heroes like you built the road. I’m only following the path.”