The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations (6 page)

One Saturday night, a few days before the concert, it was very hot, and the dormitory was even more stifling than usual. I suddenly needed to get some air, to walk around the Conservatory. Three classmates went with me. We wandered around outside and along the corridors for a while, and then we decided for fun to secretly climb onto the roof of one of the buildings. It was pitch black. We neared the edge of the roof and, jokingly, I said:

“And what if I jumped?”

A few moments later, overcome by fatigue, we returned to get some sleep, unaware of the storm that was about to break.

Our little outing had been observed. The watchman had heard our voices on the roof. The next day, he investigated and uncovered the guilty party:

“It was Zhu Xiao-Mei. She wants to commit suicide.”

I had been denounced by a classmate. Typical.

But I could never have imagined how far the affair would go. I didn’t yet know that, in a totalitarian regime, suicide is the worse of sins, an act of rebellion that says:
No, I am not happy in your system; it is so harmful that I would prefer to die
. For the Conservatory hierarchy and that of the Party, the danger was clear: I might pollute the minds of my classmates. An example had to be made of me; every shred of individualism had to be rooted out of my small person.

In the hours that followed, the director summoned me, my three classmates, and the main professor for our class.

“What is their background?” she asked.

Two of my classmates were
Chushen hao
, “those of good family backgrounds.” The third—whose father in 1957 had been viewed as an opponent to the government—and I were in the category of
Chushen bu hao
, those of “bad family backgrounds.”

“This explains everything,” the director concluded.

Her daughter stood at her side. She had brought her in to show her the meaning of class struggle.

I attempted to defend myself: it was just idle talk, I had absolutely no desire to kill myself, I was very happy at the Conservatory and proud to be studying there. Nothing worked. Finally, it was discovered that I had written about
Anna Karenina
in my diary. About her suicide, the little red bag, the first carriage, and then the second…One evening, I had written, “This woman is magnificent. She is so different from the others in her way of being, and so courageous. If playing the piano doesn’t work out, if my recital is not a success, I, too, will kill myself!” My case was a serious one.

It was decided that I should be isolated from the other students. I was led to a small office furnished with only a table and a chair, and I was locked in. From now on, this was where I would take my meals to avoid all contact with my classmates while my case was being decided. During this time, the students were asked to comment on my attitude. What did it mean? How should they understand it?

As the hours passed, my future began to look bleak. Not only was I a
Chushen bu hao
, I was also guilty of harboring bad thoughts. Professor Pan would refuse to work with me, I would be expelled, I would never play the piano again, I would be a political outcast, I would be exiled to the countryside, and my family and parents would be criticized. Hadn’t I proved myself unworthy of the trust Chairman Mao had placed in us?

Finally, I was summoned by the Conservatory’s administration, and the verdict was pronounced:

“You must write and present your self-criticism. You will remain locked in until it is completed.”

Dear professors and students,

I am very sad because I have betrayed your trust and disappointed you. I have also betrayed Mao Zedong, our great leader, and the Communist Party, which has given me the chance to study in one of the best schools in China.

On the evening of May 27, I committed an error. I did not abide by Conservatory regulations. After lights out, at 10:30 p.m., I left the dormitory with three students. We climbed onto the roof of the Conservatory without permission. Worse, once I was up there, I said to them, “And what if I jumped?”

With your help, professors and students, I understand that what I did was a very serious error. For me, it is now clear that the wish to commit suicide is a wish to protest against the government, to oppose it, to not place one’s trust in it. I am ashamed that I had this thought.

Everyone in China—soldiers, workers, and peasants—works hard for the victory of Communism. The soldiers protect us from capitalism. The workers and peasants work for us and feed us. As for me, I think only of myself and my piano. I am egotistical and individualistic.

Thanks to you, however, professors and students, I understand why.

It is the fault of my bourgeois and capitalist family, which has always exploited the people. As Marx said, existence determines consciousness. The proletariat has a proletarian vision of the world. The bourgeoisie has a bourgeois vision. If we wish to change the bourgeoisie’s consciousness, we must change its existence.

It was also the fault of my reading.

For a long time, I have read bourgeois literature uncritically: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Romain Rolland, Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola. I was corrupted by the individualist example of Marie Curie.

In particular, I want to tell you that two novels, Tolstoy’s
Anna Karenina
and Romain Rolland’s
Jean-Christophe,
have had a bad influence on me. With insufficient reflection, I committed the error of taking two individualist and petit-bourgeois heroes as role models. Capitalists seek to ensure their long-term survival, to shape the minds of their successors, by turning out such works of petit-bourgeois literature. Communists do not need to read them: it is enough for them to imitate soldiers, peasants, and workers.

It was also the fault of Western music.

I lost contact with the proletariat and its struggles. I placed art and literature above the revolutionary ideal. I profoundly regret my mistake.

But today, I have decided to distance myself from my family and to fight these bad influences in order to profoundly change myself. I want to follow Mao Zedong, I want to follow the Communist Party and become a true musician of the proletariat. I ask forgiveness from Mao Zedong and the Communist Party. I ask for your forgiveness. I am also counting on you to continue to criticize me and to help me change.

Zhu Xiao-Mei

I had just put the finishing touches on my self-criticism. The director of the Conservatory came into the small office where I was confined. Over the past three days, she had come to see me several times. “You should speak more about your family.” “List the books that you have read.” She read my text over one last time.

“That’s fine. Now, we must all talk about it in a meeting, and you’ll have to make your self-criticism in front of the others. The meeting will be held tomorrow at four in the auditorium. Because of you, all classes are canceled.”

The auditorium! A few days earlier, I was preparing to give my first recital there: Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin. Now I was being asked to give a very different performance.

That evening, I was given permission to leave my little office for the first time. It was the Conservatory’s annual party. The students sang and danced around a big bonfire that they had lit in the middle of the sports field. Since I had been forbidden to take part in the festivities, I watched them from afar, alone in the dark. I didn’t know what to do. I went back inside and tried to play the piano. But my mind was elsewhere, and my hands had been drained of their strength.

The next day, my heart in my throat, I walked to the auditorium. I wanted to get started right away, but at the same time I was terrified. I saw a hundred students coming from the Conservatory annex: they marched in step, in tight rows, singing a hymn to the glory of Mao. Everyone was there. On their faces I read incredulity, mistrust, and fear as well.
She seemed so wise, Zhu Xiao-Mei, with whom Pan Yiming had rehearsed Mozart’s Concerto No. 23. How had this happened to her?
Their looks were as sharp as daggers. I felt ill.

The session began.

“Zhu Xiao-Mei, we are listening. What do you have to say to us?”

Standing alone on stage, I stammered a few sentences right out of the self-criticism I had written. In front of me, sitting in the first row, I saw Professor Pan with a vacant look on his face. What was he thinking?

The Conservatory administration questioned me. Yes, I understood the seriousness of my error. Yes, existence determines consciousness. Yes, Anna Karenina is a dangerous bourgeois figure.

After an hour of this, the director joined me on stage and asked those present:

“Who would like to speak?”

There was total silence in the hall. No one uttered a word, as if none of my classmates had understood what I had just said. The director spoke again:

“Professors, workers, and students, Zhu Xiao-Mei now understands that she has committed a very serious error. But she wishes to change, and we will help her.”

The worst was yet to come. As the hall was emptying, Professor Pan came up to me.

“You cannot play the piano well if, deep inside, you are hostile to the regime,” he said. “I do not want to teach you anymore. Self-criticism will be more useful to you than piano lessons.”

What could I say? I broke down in tears and left the auditorium, defiled and crushed by the enormity of my shame. I had only one thought: to go and hide. In one week, everything had been destroyed. I had fallen from first place to last.

I wandered alone through the corridors, thinking of what would become of me. I had committed a serious error, that much I knew. How could I redeem myself? How could I renew my connection with Professor Pan, with my professors, and with my classmates? I was lost, alone in the face of a situation that was beyond me.

A group of students were joking in the courtyard; as I approached them, they stopped laughing. I wanted to join their conversation, but they scattered. According to a popular expression at the time, the regime “kills the chicken to frighten the monkeys.” Unfortunately, this time the chicken was me.

As I didn’t want to see anyone, I didn’t go to the dining hall. I grew weaker and weaker. It had been two days, and I had eaten almost nothing. I watched the door of the dining hall from afar, waiting for everyone to leave. Then I would slip in, looking for a few scraps of food: there was nothing left. I began to feel faint.

I forced myself to return to the general education classes, avoiding people’s gazes. It was then that I found a bit of food on my desk. Who had put it there? I didn’t touch it; it wasn’t for me, there must be some mistake. But my neighbor to the right leaned towards me:

“You should eat,” she whispered.

I looked. It was Aizhen, the girl who had caught lice in the hospital.

I asked her why she had taken such a serious risk.

“I don’t understand why they did that to you,” she answered.

Deep inside, I felt a rush of warm emotion. At least I had a friend.

The roof affair was not over, however. It would start up all over again. During sessions of self-criticism and denunciation, I endlessly went over my error. I had to listen to my classmates discuss it, comment on it, analyze it, and say how much they had learned from my bad example.

And that wasn’t the end of it.

A particularly zealous student decided to write to Chairman Mao. She was from a family of government dignitaries, and wanted to explain to him what was happening at the Conservatory. She told him about the students who had made disparaging remarks about workers and peasants; how they judged them to be incapable of appreciating Western classical music. She informed him that there was a boy who styled his hair like Beethoven. That another listened to classical music on a stereo system. That yet another prostrated himself listening to Tchaikovsky’s
Pathétique
Symphony. Finally, and worst of all, she revealed that a student had been on the verge of killing herself because of Western music.

The letter could have been lost among the many letters that Mao received every day. But it was returned, annotated in his handwriting:

The author was going to be received by Madame Mao herself, Jiang Qing. What we didn’t know was that Jiang Qing was just then entering the political scene: it was the beginning of a career that would be remembered with fear.

As for me, I only knew one thing: Chairman Mao had judged my actions and my words—me, barely fourteen years old. How was this possible? How, amidst seven hundred million Chinese, could he have taken an interest in me?

In short, my plans collapsed; it was a life sentence. Every door would be closed to me forever. There was no question of attending university, finding a normal job or any sort of future life. Many Chinese in similar situations preferred to die. In my own circle, the guilty owner of the stereo system was the first victim. He left the Conservatory, moved to the country, and joined the army before committing suicide, overwhelmed by the weight of what he considered to be a grave error.

Actually, Mao’s answer was part of a vast movement that, in 1963, heralded the arrival of the Cultural Revolution. The first reports and instructions began to circulate about changes that should be made to art and literature to ensure that they served the Revolution properly. Soon, on the orders of Zhou Enlai, the Conservatory would be divided into two parts, with a department of Chinese music on one hand and a department of Western music on the other.