Her heart, which earlier had been thumping, quieted. When she reached the elegant house, Big Mother did not hesitate. She lifted her stick, strode confidently through the gateless entrance and climbed the first staircase.
Bit by bit, her good eye adjusted to the pall. Here and there she could make out clumps of rubble but not a whiff of furniture.
This morning, she had asked Swirl, innocuously, if the item she wished to retrieve was difficult to reach. “Yes and no,” Swirl had said. “Do you remember the steps in the east wing that go up to the alcove?” Instead of ascending all the way, her sister told her, the stairs served as a ladder to reach a high shelf, a very long, narrow ledge. “On the far side, there’s a little opening below the roof. It’s a headache to get to it, a person could slip and break their neck. The peasants’ association will surely look in easier places first.” Big Mother continued through the rooms. Now she found herself at the foot of the alcove steps. Putting aside her walking stick, she paused to offer a poem to the God of Literature because, after all, these mysterious notebooks belonged to his domain. She recited:
When the mind is exalted,
the body is lightened
and feels as if it could float in the wind.
This city is famed as a centre of letters;
and all you writers coming here
prove that the name of a great land
is made by better things than wealth.
She ascended.
The ledge, when she reached it, was indeed narrow, barely half a foot across and stretching far along the wall. The wraiths, however, had done her a favour because the shelf, stripped clean, was clear of obstacles.
Unwieldy as a pigeon, cursing the thick coat she wore, she stepped out onto the shelf. “I refuse,” she told herself, “to end up a bag of bones on the floor for my sister to carry away.” Big Mother inched along the ledge. She could feel her feet sweating inside her shoes. She cursed the God of Literature for not telling her to bring along Flying Bear. Her smallest son could be counted on to do stupid things like this. At last, the shelf ended. She groped blindly for the hiding place but could not find it. As she reached out once more, she lost her footing. Her hip jutted out, she flailed wildly for a handhold but grasped only air. One foot kicked out. Big Mother flung herself desperately to the right. She collided with the wall, her right hand shot wide and then, just as her thoughts slowed and she knew she was done for, her fingers caught on an opening. Big Mother held on for dear life, her fingers squeezing so hard she could feel the small bones scraping together. The room straightened. She was still standing, one leg up in the air.
She started to laugh, but thinking better of it, grew serious. In this opening, she found, just as Swirl had said, a cardboard box. Still, she wanted to be sure and so, with one hand, she undid the string, pushed off the lid, and slipped her hand into the opening. She had never held the notebooks before but their surfaces seemed utterly familiar to her, as if the Book of Records had touched her fingers a thousand times before.
“Old God,” she said gleefully. “I shouldn’t have cursed you. Look what I’ve found!”
With one arm cupped around the box, she waddled back along the beam, alighted on the platform, descended the stairs and took hold of her weapon once more.
Air swelled her lungs as she retraced her steps. The walking stick served her well, reminding her of the sighted child leading the blind musicians through the rubble of war and away from the obliterated town. It was a lifetime ago, and the child must be grown now. Big Mother hurried through a passage that led to the inner courtyard until she arrived, finally, gulping clean air, under the night sky. In their clarity, the stars seemed to exist within arm’s reach. Was it this box in her arm that was pushing open so many doors in her memory? What kind of creature was this book? She thought of Swirl’s little boy, the one who had died in 1942. He had been only a few years older than Sparrow but, unlike Sparrow, had never seemed afraid of gunshots, explosions, screams or fire. She remembered lifting his small body from her sister’s arms, and how the tears Swirl wept had seemed to burn Big Mother’s skin.
This house, she perceived, would one day decay to rubble. It would disappear from the face of the earth and leave no imprint, and all the books and pages that Wen the Dreamer and his mother, uncles and Old West had so carefully, or fearfully, preserved would be relegated to ash and dust. Except, perhaps, for this book, which would go on to another hiding place, to live a further existence.
—
That night, Sparrow woke in the darkness. Music was seeping from the walls, entering the room where he and his two younger brothers slept. Music was mixing with his brothers’ uneven snoring, as if both children performed in unison from the same corner of the orchestra. The five-year-old, Flying Bear, was small, pretty and he snored like a tank. He must have been kicking at his brother because Da Shan was squeezed up against the wall, having relinquished both blanket and pillow. Already, at the age of seven, Da Shan was an ascetic, preferring hot water and steamed bread to all else; the boy was determined to join the People’s Liberation Army at the earliest opportunity.
Sparrow had been dreaming. In the dream, he had been walking along the first floor of the Shanghai Conservatory, past a room where violinists were lined up like figurines in a shop window, past a stately chamber with a guzheng, pipa and dulcimer, arriving at last in a hall where seven grand pianos stood like mighty oaks. Through the shimmering windows, the nighttime sky was exhaling into morning. Old Bach himself had come to Shanghai, he was seated at the furthermost piano. The seventh canon of Bach’s Goldberg Variations rolled towards Sparrow like a tide of sadness. Sparrow wanted to step out of the way but he was too slow and the notes collided into him. They ran up and down his spine, and seemed to dismantle him into a thousand pieces of the whole, where each part was more complete and more alive than his entire self had ever been.
As he lay in bed, Sparrow wondered if Herr Bach had ever dreamed of Shanghai. He pushed the covers aside and sat up. Seeing Flying Bear’s annexation of the whole bed, Sparrow pulled him backwards; the boy bleated angrily. Da Shan, sensing open space around him, rolled back from the edge. Sparrow left the room.
There was music trickling through the house. He’d forgotten his slippers and the floor bit him with its coldness, but still he kept walking until he reached his father’s study. The door was ajar, music escaped through the opening. Knowing that his father would be angry if he saw him, Sparrow made not a whisper of noise. So when Ba Lute called out to him, at first he could think of no response.
His father spoke again. “It’s warm in here, Sparrow. Come in.”
Sparrow entered the room.
Ba Lute was sitting on a low chair before the record player. He was hunched over, almost wilted, and hardly looked himself. The apartment was hollow without Big Mother Knife, Sparrow concluded. Her discontent and foul mouth were as fundamental to their lives as the beams of the house, the food they ate, and his father’s Communist Party membership.
“I’ve heard this piece of music a hundred times before,” Ba Lute said. “But to hear it alone, in the night, is really something.”
Thick smoke from his father’s Flying Horse cigarettes made Sparrow’s eyes water, but still he ventured further into the room, sitting down at his father’s desk. Ba Lute did not object. The music went on, merging with the smoke, now quick and light, quarter notes blurring like a flash of wings, a tapering branch. Ba Lute had bowed his head. His eyes were half closed as if he was looking at something inside himself. When the second side ended, he turned the record over and set it playing again. The ninth variation caused Sparrow to rest his head upon the desk. All he wanted was to live inside these Goldberg Variations, to have them expand infinitely within him. He wanted to know them as well as he knew his own thoughts.