Above them, the ceiling fan spun, making a sound that was both monotonous and numbing.
An array of Front Gate, Hatamen, and State Express 555 cigarettes, as well foreign brands Sparrow had never seen, were arranged on a celadon platter. He sampled the Davidoff and the Marlboro, and the cigarettes left an unanticipated taste, of sweetness or sharpness, on his lips.
The official motioned Kai to the piano. Kai sat down, thought for a moment and then played, from memory, a piano transcription of Beethoven’s “Eroica.” The segments he played had been re-ordered and soldered together in ways that made Sparrow feel as if the music were being composed in this very moment or, more accurately, being dismantled. The word eroica, Sparrow said, turning to the official, means “heroic.” The man raised his glass. “To Comrade Beethoven, our revolutionary brother!”
“To our glorious Revolution,” Sparrow answered.
During the slow adumbration of the second movement, the funeral march, the official’s eyes ran with tears.
How had he never noticed, Sparrow thought tipsily, just how deeply music could lie? The smoothness of all the facades–not only of the apartment, but of everyone in the room and perhaps Beethoven himself–mesmerized him.
“Conductor Li Delun has asked specifically for you,” the official said. He was speaking to Kai with a calculating look in his eyes. “He says you’re the most gifted pianist at the Shanghai Conservatory. Your class background is exemplary.”
The ceiling fan let off squeaking, high-pitched whistles. The sounds made tiny cuts in the air. “Let the rooms be full of guests,” the official recited drunkenly, “and the cups be full of wine. That is what I desire.”
After dinner, when the official had dismissed them, Sparrow went with Kai to his room, the same room where they had once met with the Professor, the Old Cat, San Li and Ling.
“There are opportunities, Sparrow,” Kai said. They were lying side by side, only the tips of their fingers touching. “The Conservatory is closed but the Central Philharmonic is protected by Madame Mao. Let them protect us. In Beijing, things will be different…Are you writing?” Sparrow shook his head. “We can’t stop living our lives,” Kai said. The words seemed to disintegrate as soon as they touched the air. “We can’t.”
We, Sparrow thought. We. He could not even say the word aloud.
“Remember what I told you?” Kai said. “My parents and sisters had no one to turn to. They came from a village that was considered less than nothing. I won’t go through that again. I won’t disappear. I refuse.”
That night, Sparrow was kept awake by a bright seam of light beneath Kai’s door. Kai’s hand across his stomach was heavy, damp, and he covered it with his own. The things he felt could no longer be disowned. And yet they were not the same. They had come from such different worlds and aspired to different conditions, and the fear that drove Kai did not drive him. Panic welled up in him. He tried to control his breathing, to make it quiet. He and his father had not been able to give Zhuli a proper funeral. Prokofiev, at least, had gotten a recording and fake flowers. The authorities had taken Zhuli’s body while Sparrow and his father stood by. No, they had not stood by. He and his father had praised the Chairman, the Party and the nation. They’d had no choice but, still, they had performed disturbingly well, as if words and music were only ever about repetition, as if one could just as easily play Bach as repeat the words of Chairman Mao. Pride and mastery, victory and sorrow, the orchestral language had given Sparrow a deep repertoire of feeling. But scorn, degradation, disgust, loathing, what about those emotions? What composer had written a language for them? What listener cared to hear it?
Zhuli was sitting on the edge of the mat, so alive it seemed as if he and Kai were the illusion. “Haven’t you understood yet, Sparrow?” she said. He asked her what in this world a mere sound could accomplish. She said, “The only life that matters is in your mind. The only truth is the one that lives invisibly, that waits even after you close the book. Silence, too, is a kind of music. Silence will last.” In the west, in the dry wind of the Gansu Desert, Big Mother and Swirl had finally recovered Wen the Dreamer. He stared at the illusion before him and wept.
The words shàng xī tiān (上西天) mean to “to go to the Western sky” or “to ascend to the Western heavens,” that is, to pass beyond the western border of the Great Wall, to leave this country, to let go of this life, to die and pass away. Zhuli had not been able to wait for him. She had gone ahead to find another beginning. The idea of quiet terrified him. Sparrow wanted to follow her, but even despite the promise of an ending, of freedom, this was the life he couldn’t leave behind.
—
In November, Kai left Shanghai and was appointed soloist at the Central Philharmonic in Beijing. The whereabouts of the Professor remained unknown and Sparrow dared not visit the Old Cat, Ling or San Li. He had heard that in the middle of a struggle session, the Conservatory’s resident conductor, Lu Hongwen, had taken a copy of Quotations of Chairman Mao and ripped the book into pieces. A Red Guard had immediately put a pistol to his face and shot him. Since August, ten faculty and eight students had died.
The year 1967 arrived, and the Conservatory remained closed. Still, Sparrow was summoned to a meeting. The meeting turned out to be solely for him. Yu Hui, the new leader of Sparrow’s work unit, had taken over He Luting’s office and redecorated it with a dozen posters of Mao Zedong and a half dozen of Madame Mao in various costumes. Yu, also a composer, had a long face that reminded Sparrow of asparagus. He seemed to take pleasure in telling Sparrow that he was being reassigned to a factory in the southern suburbs.
“May I ask what kind of factory, Comrade Yu?”
“I believe you will be making wooden crates.”
Yu Hui stood up from his desk. His face seemed to grow even longer.
Sparrow felt the eyes of a dozen Chairman Maos examining him. “When will I be transferred?”
“I am preparing your file as we speak. Be patient, we will inform you in due time.”
“Will I be allowed to compose again?”
Yu Hui smiled, as if embarrassed on Sparrow’s behalf, that he could ask such a naive question. “You know the saying: The time has come to re-string your bow.” He laughed at his own joke. “You’re not the only one who must reform and start again. But tell me, is it really true you turned down a position at the Central Philharmonic?”
“I was not worthy of the offer.”
Yu Hui smiled once more. He fluttered his hand lazily, dismissing him.
Sparrow walked out of the Conservatory and onto Fenyang Road. The intensity of the sun bled the street of colour, so that the bicycles and occasional truck seemed to vanish into the white curtain of the horizon.