Ling was weeping.
“I want to go home,” Ai-ming said. She was still so young but why did she already look so empty? “I want to go home.”
Now it was Sparrow who led them, silently, as if they were thieves, through the dark night, past speakers where Zhao Ziyang’s address was being replayed, “Students, we came too late, I am sorry…” past groups of people listening for the first time, past blossoming trees and a row of magnolias whose flowers he couldn’t see, but whose fragrance remained in the air, unrelenting, intoxicating.
Late the next morning, when he woke, disoriented, he heard Yiwen telling everyone that General-Secretary Zhao Ziyang had been removed from office. Someone inside the Party had leaked this information. Demonstrations had broken out in 151 cities and the government intended to declare martial law. The army had already arrived at the perimeter of the city.
—
The national examinations still had to be written. To Ai-ming, the entire process was plainly ludicrous. Theory and practice, practice and theory, if she analyzed another poem by Du Fu she might go into exile herself. She was curled up on the sofa, eating a cucumber, when Sparrow appeared, groggy, all the hair on his head mashed to one side. After wishing him good morning, she asked him, “Were you fighting someone in your sleep?”
Sparrow smiled confusedly. He took the cucumber from her hand and started to eat it.
Radios blared in the alleyway, families were shouting at each other about matters big and small, but she and Sparrow both pretended they heard nothing. Ai-ming told him that, early this morning, she had been determined to study. She’d opened the exam catalogue and found herself at the 1977 questions. That year, the national essay had been: “Is it true that the more knowledge, the more counter-revolutionary? Write at least 800 characters.” What if a similar question appeared on this year’s test? For over an hour, she’d struggled to compose an opening line. The page was still blank. She could no longer make sense of the word counter-revolutionary.
Sparrow crunched the cucumber and listened.
“How can I write the examinations?” she said. “How should I…”
“Don’t worry so much about the essay question.” Her father’s voice sounded thick, like a full sponge. “Why don’t you go back to studying literature or mathematics?”
She nodded but this wasn’t what she meant. It was the whole idea of answering, the fear that every word had multiple meanings, that she was not in control of what they said.
Sparrow said that he was going to the factory to see what was happening.
Had he forgotten what year this was? And why did he look like he was in pain? It was only now that she realized he was wearing his factory uniform. “But Ba!” she said. “Everyone says the army will come in from that side, from Fengtai.”
He nodded without hearing. “Ai-ming, don’t go to the Square today. Promise me.” He looked at the door then back again. “Where’s your mother?”
“Radio station.”
“Oh.” He nodded but his eyes were glassy. “Ai-ming, I have a friend in Canada who might sponsor you. I’m willing to do everything I can. I’m going to meet with him in Hong Kong in June–”
“What friend? You’re going to Hong Kong?”
“–but first you must write the examinations and you must do well. Without a high score, even sponsorship won’t help you…” He was talking in a kind of perturbed state. Was it a trick, she wondered. So that she would stay where she was, live inside books, ignore what was happening to her thoughts? And who was this friend?
“I’ll excel in the examinations.”
When she said this, the Bird of Quiet looked incredibly glad, like a child. She tried to steel herself against her father’s innocent smile.
“You’re a good child, Ai-ming. A good daughter. I’m a lucky father.”
Sparrow left for the factory. Ai-ming changed her clothes, pulling on a dress of Yiwen’s. In the courtyard, she took Yiwen’s clothes down from the laundry line, stuffed them into a bag along with a toothbrush and washcloth, books, and a few coins her mother had given her. She hopped onto her bicycle and hurried out.
—
The city seemed loosened by the heat. She pedalled hurriedly to Tiananmen Square but found it unexpectedly quiet. One of the student marshals, a physics student who called himself Kelvin, told her that Yiwen had gone out with a “battalion” to the western suburbs in an effort to blockade the roads and prevent the army from reaching the Square. Ai-ming turned around and cycled back the way she had come.
At the Muxidi Bridge, nobody could pass: bicycles, buses with punctured tires, burned-out sofas, shouting people, and stockpiles of wood overflowed the intersection. When Ai-ming finally made it across, she glimpsed broken glass, swerved hard and nearly collided with a scooter. The driver’s “Sorry, sorry!” fluttered backwards. Her front tire made a sad, sucking noise before going flat. She got down and began pushing the bicycle on. The scraping of the rim against concrete made her teeth ache. Unable to see through her tears, Ai-ming locked the stupid, useless, unforgivable bicycle to a tree, took the bag of clothes and kept walking. Her whole body was coated in sweat. A bus came and she jumped on, but almost immediately the bus stopped. She tumbled out with the other passengers: here was the army now.
Army trucks, stretching as far as she could see.
Ai-ming walked towards them. Tears, confusion, hysteria. The military trucks were surrounded by people. “Brother soldiers!” an old man was shouting. He lurched in front of Ai-ming. His blue factory uniform sagged around him like a riverbed. “Do not become the shame of our nation! You are the sons of China. You, who should be defending these students with your lives! How can you enter our city with guns and bullets? Where is your conscience?”
A few officers tried to make themselves heard above the commotion, they said their only mission was to keep the peace. Everyone was hysterical and calling out.
An ancient grandmother had taken it upon herself to lie down in the road, in front of the trucks. “Who are you retaking the streets from, eh?” she said hoarsely. “I’m no rebel! I was living here when your great-grandfather still wore short pants!”
A man in a factory uniform, carrying dozens of individually wrapped cakes, began dropping them, indiscriminately, over the railings of the trucks. “My daughter is in the Square,” he said. “My only child. I appeal to your courage! I appeal, I appeal…”
Ai-ming could not see Yiwen anywhere, it was a thousand times more crowded here than it had been at Tiananmen Square. She hugged the bag of clothes to her chest and stood in the mayhem, hungry, thirsty, shivering with fear, ashamed at having disobeyed her father. A soldier her age stared at her with palpable longing. How did I end up here? Ai-ming thought. This is my country, this is the capital, but I don’t belong in Beijing. Where is Yiwen? If I only I could find Yiwen, I would know what to do.
The afternoon was disappearing but the crowds only grew larger. Some soldiers climbed out of their vehicles and stood in the road, humiliated. Some were in shock, some looked angry, some wept.
—
On the fifth floor of the factory, all the seats were empty. Sparrow sat at his work station, basking in the absolute stillness. This was the first peace he had known in days, and the quiet inside him now felt freed, it sat on the table, uncaged, like a house bird. Despite the emptiness, he felt as if his co-workers had left an afterimage: every work station belonged unassailably to someone. Perhaps, in a moment, Dao-ren, Old Bi and Fan would reappear, and it would be Sparrow himself who would dissolve, as if he had always been the illusion. The freedom of departure comforted him, and he put his head down on his arms and fell into a sound, peaceful sleep.