—
The morning passed. Sparrow was thinking of the letter from Wen the Dreamer and the mysterious Comrade Glass Eye when the door jumped open and Zhuli appeared, pale as an unlit candle. She was holding a green thermos, her violin case and a paper bag. “Cousin,” she said, “isn’t your stomach rumbling? I waited for you in Room 103, but you never came!”
He had forgotten. She waved his apology away and grinned. In her old blue dress, Zhuli looked tired but also energized, older than her fourteen years. He got up and went to the little table laid with cups and dishes, picked out two that were the least tea-stained, and examined the package of pear syrup candies that Old Wu had received from an admirer, a girl nicknamed Biscuit. Old Wu had sampled one and abandoned the remainder.
He poured tea and scattered a few candies on a plate. Zhuli was looking intently at the pages on his desk. She was humming the melody now. Lost in thought, she unlatched her violin case, lifted her violin and began to experiment with the phrasing.
“Not yet, Zhuli.”
She lowered her arm. “But Sparrow, listen to this. I can already hear how–”
“The second movement isn’t even finished. I’ve barely begun it.”
“Barely begun it? You’ve exhausted yourself on this symphony! Cousin, can’t you see it’s the most sublime thing you’ve ever written? I think you should show it to Conductor Lu right away. You trust him, don’t you?”
There was a boisterous knock and the door opened again. Here was Kai, looking as if he had woken only minutes ago and run from Changsha to reach them. He was wearing a knock-off army cap and a rumpled shirt that was, comically, grass-stained. After greeting them, he immediately crossed the room. “What are you playing, Comrade Zhuli?”
She frowned at him and smoothed her dress.
“It’s nothing,” Sparrow said. “Just a few lazy thoughts of mine.” He gathered the sheets, Kai’s note and an essay he had been consulting, and cleared everything away. “Kai,” he said “if you hurry, you can still make it to Yin Chai’s recital. You won’t even be late.”
“But aren’t we meeting? I left you a note.” His face, even his handsome cap, seemed to fall. Sparrow felt as if he had accidentally closed a piano lid on the young man’s fingers.
“Teacher Sparrow is composing,” Zhuli said solemnly. “Have you eaten, Kai? Take these.”
Sparrow watched the paper bag leap from one hand to the other. He felt old when he said, “Please don’t leave crumbs on Wu Li’s sofa.”
Kai looked hungrily into the paper bag. “Old Wu? He’ll send his mother to clean them. Or maybe his grandmother.”
His cousin let a laugh escape.
They were so lighthearted, these two. Zhuli’s arms were bare but she seemed not to feel the breeze of the open window.
Kai looked at him with a direct, unsettling frankness. “It would be good to go outside, stroll in the park and listen to the music of the People.” The sun warmed Sparrow’s hands. “Come, Teacher. You’ve been at work since dawn. And wasn’t it your birthday?”
“He never celebrates,” Zhuli said. “He starves himself of joy. Luckily, joy seeps into all his compositions.”
“Don’t either of you have lessons?” Sparrow said, trying to maintain his dignity.
“All the pianists are downstairs, writing self-criticisms. I stayed up all night reading the book you lent me, and then I came at two in the morning to work on Mozart’s Concerto No. 9. It was just me and the stray dogs and the wind. Even the most stubborn old grandmas weren’t out lining up for meat.”
“Up since 2 a.m.!” Zhuli said, clearly impressed.
Sparrow tried to think of an escape route. He wanted to be alone with the window, the papers on his desk, and the freedom of his thoughts.
“An hour,” Zhuli said. “Steal an hour from your life and give it to us.”
She smiled at him, a smile as big and openhearted as Aunt Swirl’s when he was a child, and so he did.
—
In the park, Zhuli and the pianist walked on either side of him, as if afraid Sparrow would make a run for it. What do the sparrow and the swallow know, he thought again, of the ways of swans? There was a swan, as it happened, in the shade of the pond, fluffing her grey-white wings, trying to appear larger and more deadly than she was. He heard the softness of her trilling.
“The room I live in,” the pianist was saying, “is the size of one and a half men lying down. I have just enough space to turn over and back again.”
Zhuli’s violin case swung as she walked. “How come you don’t board at the Conservatory? Maybe you prefer sleeping in a cave.”
“I had to pull all sorts of strings to get this terrible room, but it’s near my stepfather. He was ill last year…anyway, the mice are good company.”
Zhuli ducked under a low branch. “Be careful or the mice will multiply and take over the cat’s room.”
When Kai laughed, his hair stood upright in the wind.
Without Sparrow’s noticing the transition, Zhuli was telling the pianist about Ba Lute and the confrontation with the public security officers this morning. The pianist’s walk slowed. “What camp was your father at again?” he said.
“I don’t know. But it’s in Gansu Province, isn’t it, cousin?”
“I’m not sure, Zhuli.”
She tensed. Faint perspiration gleamed on her forehead and her cheeks. She looked as if she could take on any campaign, criticism or family member, and leave them battered on the floor.
“You don’t have to worry about me, cousin,” she said, her voice low. “I know when to keep my mouth shut. If only you could hear me in our political study class. I think I’ve memorized more slogans than the Premier himself.” She lifted her chin defiantly. Her recklessness, her casualness with words, stunned him. His cousin had been this way ever since Swirl’s return.
But perhaps, he thought, this bravado was not for him but for Kai.
The sun touched everything now. They attempted to find refuge on a bench under a flowering pear tree. They sat as if they were alone and self-contained, the joy of only a few minutes ago dissolving. Perhaps it was the heat that made them quiet. Nobody stood nearby yet Sparrow felt the weight of someone, or some attentive presence. There was shouting in the distance, or maybe laughing.
“This morning,” Kai said, his voice barely audible, “the President of the Conservatory was in the newspapers. Did you read it? Liberation Daily has a full page on him. Wen Hui Bao, too. They say He Luting is anti-Party and anti-socialist, and that the most damaging accusations are coming from inside the Conservatory.”
“I thought you were practising all morning,” Zhuli said.
Kai paused. “I think that half my life might be spent running from one position to another until I trip and make a fatal mistake.”
“Have you been to Wuhan?” Sparrow asked, wanting to change the subject. He knew He Luting was under investigation, of course, but Kai’s words still chilled him.
“Forgive me, Teacher. I’m only a student and yet I feel that I can be very free with you. What did you ask me?”
“Would you like to go to Wuhan?”
“With you,” the pianist said.
“Yes. If you have time to spare during the break. The journey and my research would need three or four days, perhaps longer. I’m looking for an assistant, I’ve been commissioned by the Conservatory to gather–”
“Yes,” the pianist said.
“But I haven’t told you why.”