—
It was dawn by the time Sparrow cycled home from the factory. The 1981 recording of the Goldberg Variations rippled through his headphones, and the music felt both long and momentary. For this new recording, Glenn Gould had instilled a continuous tempo, a pulse, so that all thirty variations more clearly belonged to a unified piece. A few weeks after the 1981 recording was released, Glenn Gould had died suddenly at the age of fifty. Sparrow had not learned of Gould’s death until years later, and convinced himself the radio announcer was mistaken. So much so that, a few months ago, when a letter from Kai mentioned the death of Glenn Gould, Sparrow had been upset by it all over again. What kind of man had the celebrated pianist been? he wondered. If Gould had been prevented from playing the piano for twenty years, what other form might his music have taken?
It must have rained not long ago. The air felt renewed, the dawn light was the colour of pearls, unreal against the pavement.
Turning onto Guang’an Road, he almost fell off his bicycle when he saw the army trucks. They were surrounded by a restless crowd, people in their nightclothes and others on their way to work. Hastily, he swung his bicycle around and detoured south. The Goldberg Variations continued in his ears. But when he tried to reach the centre, he met checkpoint after checkpoint. Beijing, with its grid of ring roads and bridges, had been solidly designed to protect its heart, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Smaller roads were manned by students, but along all the major thoroughfares, Beijing residents had set up human barricades, crowds so dense no army truck could hope to cross without meeting violent resistance.
He pressed on through ever more congested streets.
Sparrow smelled bonfires even though nothing burned. The smell brought back an image of Wu Bei, struggling to stand on his tiny chair as the Red Guards humiliated him. The monster is waking, Teacher! You have stepped on its head countless times, and now the monster is crawling out of the mud. At the barricades, as if in uneasy counterpoint, people chanted, “We must turn over and awaken! We must sacrifice and serve the Revolution!” Yet Gould continued, unrolling one variation and tipping in slow motion towards the next. By the time Sparrow reached home, it was nearly ten in the morning. The rooms were empty. He sat at the table and drank a cup of tea. Noise from the ongoing demonstrations filled the room. Radio Beijing didn’t broadcast music anymore, instead the loudspeakers kept repeating the fact of martial law. He regretted all the radios he had ever built. He wanted to find some way to cut all the wires, to hush all the voices, to broadcast stillness, quiet, on this city that was coming unmoored.
—
Late in the afternoon, he woke suddenly. Here was his daughter’s face hovering above him, slowly sharpening. “Ba,” she said. “Ba!” She kept repeating that representatives from Wire Factory No. 3 were in the living room. He got up. Ai-ming brought him a basin of cold water. Sparrow dunked his face, thinking he had been reprioritized out of his job. Instead, he came out to find Miss Lu and Old Bi, in their factory uniforms, sitting on the sofa, eating peanuts. They smiled nervously when Sparrow said, “Have you just come off your shift?”
Miss Lu recovered a peanut that had fallen between two cushions. When she had it firmly between her fingers, she pointed it at him and said, “Old Bi and I have finally decided to join the independent union. They’ve been canvassing in Tiananmen Square, you know? The Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation.” She cracked the shell and threw the peanuts into her mouth.
Old Bi leaned forward. “Let’s just say we’re tired of sitting on the hilltop and watching the tigers fight. Maybe you are, too, Comrade Sparrow, and if so we should stick together.”
Ai-ming had followed him out, he could hear the flat squeak of her slippers behind him.
“Yes, okay.”
Old Bi and Miss Lu kept looking at him, as if they were still waiting for an answer.
How could he learn to see around corners? What mistake was about to lunge towards him?
Miss Lu said, “You need to show your work unit ID and register your real name. We understand if you’d rather not. After all, you’ve got a family to think of…”
“Wait. I’ll get it.”
Sparrow went to the bedroom, found his ID card and put it into his pocket. A new letter from Kai was sitting on the dresser, in plain sight. Ai-ming must have placed it there. She had followed him in the bedroom, but before she could say anything, he told her he was going to the Square. “I want you to stay inside.” He said it sharply, as if she had already disobeyed him. He picked up the letter and placed it, too, in his pocket.
“But, Ba…”
“For once, Ai-ming, do as I ask.”
Outside, he watched, lightheaded, as Old Bi unlocked his bicycle. As they left the alleyway, Sparrow pedalled behind them. Miss Lu was balanced on the back of Old Bi’s bike, and her old-fashioned cloth shoes sat daintily in the air. She stretched a hand out, handing him a cigarette. It was a good brand, Big Front Gate.
“Baby Corn was on the barricades last night,” Miss Lu said. “He told us two million Beijingers are on the streets. He said he ripped up his Party membership card.”
The cigarette tasted opulent in his mouth.
“It’s all getting so emotional,” Old Bi said. “All these tears and threats are obscuring the bigger issues. We could help these students steer the ship but who listens to the older generation?”
Smoke clouded from Miss Lu’s mouth. “That’s right. We had our day and look how well we served the country. Oh yes, we Red Guards were very first class, very rational.”
Old Bi pretended he hadn’t heard.
They came to a large tent on the northwest corner of the Square, temporary headquarters of the independent union, where a lineup of uniformed workers stretched along the boulevard. Jokes were passed from person to person like midday snacks. Two hours later, upon reaching the front, Sparrow signed his name below thousands of others. He felt too afraid to be afraid. A giddy volunteer informed him, hands gesticulating, that workers were organizing themselves into various battalions, some were in charge of gathering supplies, some would battle the army at the roadblocks, and others had joined the Iron Mounted Soldiers, a motorcycle reconnaissance network.
Distracted by the sound of helicopters, Sparrow told the volunteer he would do whatever was needed, but he didn’t own a motorcycle.
“Oh-oh,” Fan said, suddenly appearing with her booming voice. “Be practical, Old Sparrow! You’re not a kid anymore! I don’t see you leaping up on barricades, just falling off them!”
“Falling down is also a form of obstruction.”
Fan rumbled a laugh, gave him a stinging slap on the back, and then another.
On a nearby bench, Old Bi and Miss Lu were sharing a cigarette, entranced by the workers’ radio broadcast, read by a young woman with a heart-shaped face and a soprano voice.