It pleased Big Mother Knife that Ai-ming did not appear to notice the transition from the original Book of Records to the new chapters written by Wen the Dreamer. Unable to recover the rest of the book, he had simply continued on from Chapter 31. He, like the character of May Fourth, would spend the greater part of his life in the deserts of Gansu, Xinjiang and Kyrgyzstan, where, they said, more than three hundred ancient settlements lay beneath the sand. Their traces–documents on wood and paper, silks and household objects–had endured, preserved by the dry air. In the new chapters, Wen continued the old code, hiding their whereabouts inside the names of characters. Sometimes the code was descriptive: wěi 暐 (the bright shining of the sun), wēi 微 (a fine rain), or wěi 渨 (a cove, or a bend in the hills). Sometimes heartbreaking: wèi 未 (not) or wéi 偉 (to flow backwards).
Throughout her childhood, little Ai-ming asked for Chapter 23 to be reread so many times, the words must have shown up in her dreams. What the child pictured, or how she made sense of it, Big Mother could not say. “This literary resurrection of yours,” she wrote to Wen the Dreamer, “has won another admirer.” She meant Ai-ming but Wen the Dreamer imagined Zhuli, now grown. It was 1976, and Zhuli would have been twenty-five years old. Big Mother had begun letter after letter, telling Swirl that her daughter was gone, but she did not have the courage to send a single one. In September of that year, she wrote that Zhuli had received permission to study at the Paris Conservatory: their beloved child had crossed over into the West. Big Mother half believed her own letters. It was the first time since the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that such a lie was even remotely credible. My beloved Swirl, she thought, I fear you will never forgive me. She sealed the letter and entrusted it to their messenger, Projectionist Bang, who travelled the hinterlands showing movies in the villages, and was a trusted confidant of Wen the Dreamer.
That same September, the end of the beginning came.
In the morning, loudspeakers cried out the same turbulent song: “The Esteemed and Great Leader of our Party, our army and the People, Comrade Mao Zedong, leader of the international proletariat, has died….” Big Mother walked the shrouded streets. She stood before the newspaper boards and squinted at the text. Squinting made no difference; these were yesterday’s papers. She thought of her sister and Wen, of her lost boys and Ba Lute, the unwritten music, the desperate lives, the bitter untruths they had told themselves and passed on to their children. How every day of Sparrow’s factory life was filled with humiliations. Party cadres withheld his rations, demanded self-criticisms, scorned the way he held his head, his pencil, his hands, his silence. And her son had no choice but to accept it all. He let them pour all their words into him as if the life inside him had burned away, as if his own two hands had knotted the rope around Zhuli. Yet Big Mother thought she understood. In this country, rage had no place to exist except deep inside, turned against oneself. This is what had become of her son, he had used his anger to tear himself apart.
Yes, how simple a thing it was to weep, she thought, gazing out at the frenzy of grief and uncertainty around her. She tried not to think of Da Shan and Flying Bear, of Zhuli, of all the names that would disappear completely, relegated to history so as not to disturb the living. White paper flowers, the traditional symbol of mourning, inundated every tree. She wept with rage and helplessness at all the crimes for which the death of an old, treacherous man could never answer.
—
Ai-ming was six years old and had never seen a foreigner before, but she thought the tall Chinese man with the shiny shoes and the pristine shirt with buttons must be from another province, if not from another age, perhaps the future. He had wavy hair, immaculate eyebrows, round eyes, a clean-shaven face and in his pocket, bright as sunlight, a golden pen. She had not known, initially, that there was a stranger in the house. When the music began to play, she had turned, as if in a dream, and rushed towards it. Looking through the open door was like peering into a cave. They were facing her, New Shirt and her father, but they were so busy looking at something, that she snuck inside and melted against the wall. If her father didn’t know she was there, how could he make her go away?
As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, the two men sharpened. New Shirt was clearly listening to the music, but Ba looked all chewed up. His elbows and knees contorted, he was folded up as if to protect his hands. Music held them within its downpour. Ai-ming squeezed her eyes shut and popped them open again. No, they were still there. Her father stared at nothing. The music, a joyful dance, made her think of the poem “Famous pieces and grand words,” and of the carcasses of dead radios Sparrow sometimes carried home, tinkering with them in his spare time. Now the music coiled into another feeling, it seemed to start all over again but suddenly it ended. New Shirt reached out to a square box that had a big whisker. He lifted a circle from the square, so shiny black it was almost blue, and he turned the circle upside down. He flicked a switch and pushed the whisker down. Her father said, “No, it’s enough. Don’t play the second side.”
Another switch was turned. Ai-ming felt as if the remains of the music were treading silently from the room. Through the doorway, the light sagged in, pinkish grey.
“Kai, your performance tomorrow…what time will it be?” Even Ba’s words sounded smaller.
“You must come.” Kai reached into the pocket that held his golden pen. He retrieved a square of paper and gave it to her father. “It’s in the factory buildings. We’re doing Beethoven’s ‘Emperor,’ Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 and an American composer.” He said so many foreign words, Ai-ming wanted to cry out at the strangeness of it. “Li Delun is conducting.”
Her father held the paper and stared at it as if he could not read.
“All through the Cultural Revolution, we were able to perform,” Kai said. “Seiji Ozawa visited the Central Philharmonic last year. Did you know he was born in Manchuria? Not everything disappeared, it was only put aside.”
“What happened to He Luting? The last time I saw him was on television….Years ago now, 1968.”
“I heard it was Chairman Mao himself who ordered He Luting released from prison.” The man’s voice was smooth, like unmarked paper. “A few years ago, the charges were dropped and his name cleared.”
Kai picked up a square of cardboard and looked into its image. “These recordings are so rare now, Sparrow. Last October, people in Beijing began to unearth the records they had hidden. After Madame Mao was arested, we thought everything would go back to the way it was but…People know the Cultural Revolution is finally over, it was all the work of Madame Mao, the Gang of Four, and so on, that’s what the government says, but they can’t help being cautious. Not many records have resurfaced. I did meet a professor at Beijing University who has a small treasure of scores, but that’s all. Isaac Stern will visit Beijing and Shanghai, have you heard? Next year.” Sparrow said nothing, Kai adjusted his long legs and continued. “When Ozawa came, he said our ability to interpret the music had fundamentally changed….” He extended his hands as if he were carrying two eggs. “As if an entire emotional range was lost to us, but we ourselves couldn’t hear it. Every musician in the orchestra knew they’d been cheated. But until that moment, we never had to face it so directly.”
“Maybe some people always knew,” Sparrow said. “Maybe they never stopped knowing what was counterfeit.”
Kai brushed his fingers against his own mouth, as if to rid himself of dust.
Now Sparrow addressed the other man as if he were a student, or a younger brother. “Now that things are changing, what will you do, Comrade? Do you still hope to study in the West?”
“Sparrow, please don’t misunderstand.”
Her father shifted his cotton pants, pulling them up slightly as if he was sitting outside and the sun warming his ankles.
“We’ve started auditions at the Shanghai Conservatory,” Kai said. “There are over a thousand applicants for a handful of spots. He Luting will be reinstated as President. The old faculty will be invited back. Your father, too. And you. He Luting specifically asked me to visit you.”
“My father is in Anhui Province. I’ll write down the name of the labour camp for you.”