Sparrow smiled, despite himself. “No, Ai-ming. This is Beethoven and it comes from another century.” This is a fragment, he thought, of something that once existed but that no longer grows here, like a field cut down.
He went inside. The Sixth Symphony, Beethoven’s Pastoral, trotted gaily through the rooms. Even Big Mother was lost in thought. He thought the walls were creeping nearer to him, they brushed his arms and scraped the back of his neck. You could close a book and forget about it, knowing it would not lose its contents when you stopped reading, but music wasn’t the same, not for him, it was most alive when it was heard. Year after year, he had wanted to play and replay it, to take it apart into its component pieces and build it once more. And then, finally, after six years, after seven, and then a decade, his memory had gone quiet. Without trying, he had stopped remembering. But this broadcast, what was it? Were they hearing the future or was it only the final outburst of the past? Long ago, He Luting had shouted, “Shame, shame. You should be ashamed,” and Zhuli said, “I will make Prokofiev himself proud.” If the concert truly took place in Beijing, Kai must have attended. A sound inside a sound. But what if all of this was only in his mind?
The applause that came was so fierce, he feared the radio might topple over. Violent catapults of applause, rhythmic, sustained.
From the opposite side of the room, Big Mother said, “What bloody change is coming now?”
The music was nothing more than a broadcast, a simple program, but he turned and saw exultation on his daughter’s face. Little Ai-ming had pressed her forehead up against the radio, his daughter was overjoyed, she had been transported, she looked as if all her nerves were alight. She looked like Zhuli. For a moment he had no idea where he was. He wanted to pull her back, to take the machine away and bury it noiselessly in the ground. Trembling with cold, he walked across the room and switched the radio off.
—
Because her father was so quiet, Ai-ming had, from an early age, turned to Big Mother Knife; her grandmother was her confidante, her teacher and also her pillow. No one in this life cared about her as Big Mother did, and so she took great pleasure in climbing over her, sleeping on her and fluffing Big Mother’s curls. Ling, her actual mother, had been reassigned to Shanghai nearly five years ago, and only visited once each year, during Spring Festival. Her father, Sparrow, was the Bird of Quiet.
“Don’t be fooled,” Big Mother once told her. “He’s not moving, as usual, and he’s not thinking either, sadly. Your father is empty as a walnut shell.” She had leaned close and whispered in Ai-ming’s ear: “The world is like a banana, easily bruised. Now is the time to watch and observe, not to judge. Ai-ming, believing everything in books is worse than having no books at all.”
For weeks after, Ai-ming wondered about these words. On the August night when the Philadelphia Orchestra performance was broadcast, she had spied on her father as he listened to this Beethoven, and she observed how, for at least a year afterwards, the radio returned to its usual music, playing only Shajiabang and Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. Once, though, there had been a broadcast of Albanian music, and it had made Sparrow stop what he was doing and turn towards the radio, as if it were an intruder. In school, as the daughter of a class enemy she was forbidden to join the Young Pioneers, among other injustices. This was a new word for her, injustice, and she liked to roll it on her tongue for the shock of it. In school, they recited essays about what made a good revolutionary. She began to wonder what made a good father, a good grandmother, a good enemy, a good person. Are you a good person, she thought, looking at her teacher, or are you a good revolutionary? Are you a good revolutionary, she thought, looking at Big Mother Knife, or are you a good grandmother? Was it even possible to be both?
The game intrigued her. How pleasurable it was to bury words inside the soil of her thoughts. She imitated her father’s expression, a studied emptiness. But sometimes his expression failed him. Sometimes Sparrow looked at her with so much anxiety, she felt her hair stand on end. Ba, she thought, are you a good person or a good worker? Is Chairman Mao a good person or a good leader?
One morning, Big Mother unlocked the battered suitcase that was used primarily as their dining table. Inside the trunk was a single straw shoe, a pretty blue dress, a sheaf of music in jianpu notation, and a cardboard box full of notebooks. Her first observation was that the books were grubby.
“Your mouth is hanging open,” Big Mother said.
Her grandmother fanned the notebooks out, removed three and told Ai-ming to close the suitcase. When it was latched and locked, Big Mother set the notebooks down and opened the first one: the pages looked even older than her grandmother. Big Mother’s face swooped down as if to taste the paper. From this position, she turned her head and looked at Ai-ming. “This,” she whispered gruffly, “is what excellent calligraphy looks like.”
Ai-ming went in for a closer look. The characters seemed to hover just above the paper, like ink over water. They had the pristine cleanliness of winter flowers.
“Waaa! Isn’t it strong?” Big Mother said.
Delight squeezed Ai-ming’s heart. “Waaa!” she whispered.
Big Mother straightened, grunting her approval. “Of course, the calligraphy is not as robust as Chairman Mao’s but still, it’s pretty good. Refined yet with a depth of movement. Maybe…you want to read some to me. Chapter 1, but no more. You’re still far too young.”
It was early morning. Her father was at the factory which, last year had been reborn. Now it was Huizhou Semiconductor Factory No. 1, and he had gone from building wooden crates to making radios. The Bird of Quiet could assemble the new Red Lamp 711 shortwave radio in the shake of a feather.
Outside, loudspeakers were chiding the world. Rain fell in continuous sheets, beating the tin roof like a regiment of horses, so they hid under the blankets. The many wrinkles on Big Mother’s face reminded Ai-ming of the dry, patient earth in February, thirsty for spring.
How can you ignore this sharp awl that pierces your heart? If you yearn for things outside yourself, you will never obtain what you are seeking.
And so the novel of Da-wei and May Fourth began once more.
—