Do Not Say We Have Nothing

by Madeleine Thien

I kissed her soft cheek. She said, “What did the Buddhist say to the pizza maker?” “What?” “Make me one with everything.”

One night, I remember, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 came on the radio. Partway through the third movement, Ai-ming sat down and gazed into the speakers as if into the face of a person she knew. Even I, as young as I was, felt disturbed by the music and the emotions it communicated. Or perhaps this is all hindsight, because later, through the Book of Records, I learned that Shostakovich had written this symphony in 1937, at the height of Stalin’s Terror when more than half a million people were executed, including some of Shostakovich’s closest friends. Under terrible pressure, he composed the symphony’s third movement, a largo that moved its audience to tears by restating and dismantling the theme of the first movement: what initially had seemed simple and familiar, even artless, was turned inside out and refolded into another dimension. The first movement had been deceptive. Inside, concealed and waiting to be heard, were ideas and selves that had never been erased.

He remembered Bertolt Brecht: I would also like to be wise. In the old books it says what wisdom is: To shun the strife of the world and to live out Your brief time without fear All this I cannot do.

the placid softness of Chairman Mao’s face in the grey portrait framed on the wall. She thought he looked doughy, not at all like the handsome, intrepid fighter he had once been.

The seventh canon of Bach’s Goldberg Variations rolled towards Sparrow like a tide of sadness.

He’d been thinking about the quality of sunshine, that is, how daylight wipes away the stars and the planets, making them invisible to human eyes. If one needed the darkness in order to see the heavens, might daylight be a form of blindness? Could it be that sound was also be a form of deafness? If so, what was silence?

David Copperfield. Again and again, I returned to the opening lines: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

Ai-ming, I have a new joke: What did the Buddhist birthday card say?” She was already giggling. “It said, ‘Not thinking of you.’ ”

“Q: How do you tell an extroverted mathematician from an introverted one? A: An extroverted mathematician stares at your shoes when talking to you.”

The old world shall be destroyed. Arise, slaves, arise! Do not say that we have nothing.

She wondered how many things a person knew that were better forgotten.

The world he once believed in has changed its shape once more.

April could not let go of winter.

Sparrow shook his head, but not in a way that said no.

Where did the line between parent and child exist?

When had they last had an honest conversation, she wondered. Could it be months, or even years, since they last confided in one another?

At the front, the student leaders began to sing the Internationale. Arise, slaves, arise! Do not say that we have nothing. We shall be the masters of the world!

“Uncle Wen, how many chapters do you think there are?” “Once I asked my wife the very same question. She told me, Wen the Dreamer, it’s foolhardy to think that a story ends. There are as many possible endings as beginnings.’ ”