From the moment she had first looked into the belly of a radio, Ai-ming had known her vocation: to study computer science at Beijing University and to be part of the technological vanguard. Wasn’t it obvious to everyone? Computers would one day hold up half the sky.
When she made this grand announcement to her family, Ai-ming had been six years old. Her father had continued eating but Big Mother had applauded, saying, “So not everyone in this house is half-dead after all.” That year, 1977, the competition had been epic: more than five million people wrote the university entrance examinations, competing for 200,000 precious places. Chairman Deng Xiaoping had reopened general admissions, and this was the first time since 1966 that university entrants would not be selected by the Party. In town, during the student parades, Ai-ming had even waved a banner (“The People love the students!”). How entrancing they were! Exhausted from studying yet defiantly awake. On the day of the exam, the first bells signalling the start of test-taking had brought everything to a stop, no traffic, no noise, no bickering, even Big Mother stopped shouting at passersby. Many weeks later, when the results were announced, the university entrants became the new heroes, young men and women who sweated over books instead of ploughs, who held up not one Little Red Book, but a giant stack of possibilities that teetered towards the skies. Their minds were ever-expanding factories crunching through raw material and spitting out answers. To get an education, Ai-ming thought, is glorious. To go to Beijing University one day would mean freedom.
In 1988, after studying sixteen hours a day for a full year, it was finally Ai-ming’s turn to endure three days of testing on nine subjects. Happiness arrives, she told herself. The first essay question was: “Light and shadow–‘All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.’–Leo Tolstoy. Discuss.’?” The second was: “Take inspiration from the philosophy expressed by Ruan Yuan’s ‘Poem on Wuxing.’?” She wrote more than nine hundred characters on each and, by the end of the first day, was giddy from nervous exhaustion. The overhead lights were distractingly bright, they made warning signals in her eyes. The exam was followed by an interminable wait, by tears and sleeplessness and tantrums. Her impressive scores got her hopes up but in the end, although she made the cut-off for South China Institute of Technology, her scores were not good enough for Beijing University or Tsinghua, or her third choice, Fudan. She would not be able to leave the province. All that week, comrade neighbours fell over themselves to congratulate her father and grandparents because Ai-ming was the only one from Cold Water Ditch going on to university. The neighbours couldn’t understand why Ai-ming was inconsolable, curled up in her room, crying her eyes out.
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The Bird of Quiet gave her two pieces of advice. Study hard. And: It is good to be cautious.
They were eating dinner and Ai-ming, still weeping, said. “Oh, Ba! What’s the point in being timid?”
Sparrow chewed his barbarian eggplant and refrained from giving her Big Mother’s answer (“Oh, you new generation! You think you’re so worldly-wise. You have no idea the rice is already cooked!”) or any answer at all. There had been a time in Ai-ming’s life when her father’s quiet had seemed like another person in their midst. Quiet was alive, like a toy you could just keep hitting. Once, when she was twelve, she had asked him, “The music you used to write, Ba, was it criminal music?” He could only say, “I don’t know.” That same night, he wrote a new banner for the front door which read, May the Red Sun keep rising for ten thousand years, in calligraphy that was accomplished but empty, a fixed smile. He might as well have written Joy! on a plastic bucket.
Big Mother shouted, “Good question!”
Ba Lute whispered, “Symphony No. 7 in F Minor, ‘Timid,’?” and giggled at his elderly joke. He leaned across the cluttered table, wanting to wipe her tears, and instead smeared them all over her cheek.
In retirement, Ba Lute was the most content of all. He was forever banging on something or other and making old-time music, and he made Sparrow play music, too, even though Sparrow said his hands were useless. Ba Lute was such a funny-looking old man, too big for his skinny legs. Big Mother would curse him tenderly, “I like you more now that I can see you less.” On sunny mornings, they sat outside like a dragon and a phoenix guarding the gate, or like two flowery portraits of Marx and Engels, Big Mother with her pants rolled up to catch the sun on her knees, and Ba Lute with his vest rolled up to catch the sun on his belly.
Ai-ming got up to clear the plates. Until the arrival of the university results, 1988 had been a year of prosperity, there had been meat on the table twice each week and they had a sewing machine, a sofa, the latest Red Lamp upright radio, and quality bicycles for every member of the family. Ma had her own television. She’d just been promoted to news editor at Radio Beijing, and had moved to the capital. When the university results arrived in Cold Water Ditch, Ai-ming realized that fortune had indeed arrived, but had found her wanting.
By the time she finished washing up, her left eye was swollen shut from crying.
She rejoined Sparrow in the courtyard where he was waiting with the record player. A few of the neighbour kids were there too, playing cards, their mouths smeared ridiculous, with some kind of barbecue sauce. They were squabbling and she wanted to kick dirt in their faces. It was Sunday evening, the only night she was allowed to listen to Western music though, in reality, all these years, she had only been keeping her father company. Did her father honestly believe she wanted to spend hours listening to the agonized rumblings of Shostakovich? His Tenth Symphony made it clear life was hopeless.
“You choose, Ba.” She only hoped he wouldn’t choose Bach, whose uptight fugues made her feel like she was trapped in a barrel rolling down a hillside.
“Mmm,” Sparrow said, rolling his cigarettes. His special Xinjiang tobacco had a damp earth smell. “Prokofiev?” he suggested.
“I’ll get it.”
She found his favourite, Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1, inside the cardboard sleeve that had a picture of big-jowled, lantern-faced David Oistrakh. She put the record on. Music seeped into the air and Sparrow listened with one elbow on his knee, his entire body curved like a trigger.
Prokofiev composed his pretty music, as if he had not a care in the world.
As a result of yearly gifts from Ling and Big Mother Knife, her father had accumulated one of the largest record collections in Guangxi Province, but he still insisted on hiding them. The first thing they did when they got home each Spring Festival was dig out another part of the floor and bury another stack of music. Her father was paranoid.
What kind of life was this? A record was a kind of storage in which music lay waiting, love letters from Canada stored words that kept Sparrow awake at night. She knew because she had opened the letters and sneakily read them all. But for anything to be alive, it required motion: the current must run, the record must turn, a person must leave or find another path. Without movement or change, the world became nothing more than a stale copy, and this was the trouble with Ba’s elegant calligraphy, his patient life, it was frozen in time. His tomorrow would always be, somehow, yesterday. Ai-ming knew she was by nature more impulsive, less patient.
In the courtyard now, Sparrow lifted the record player’s thin arm and set another album down. Ai-ming had to fight with all her strength not to push the record player over and smash it on the ground. This was Smetana’s From My Homeland, and it made Ai-ming so irretrievably unhappy her tears started up again. The Bird of Quiet paid no attention. She pulled hard on the skin between her thumb and index finger to extinguish the pain in her heart.
“Ai-ming,” he said.
She lifted her head. The music had finished without her noticing.