Do Not Say We Have Nothing

by Madeleine Thien

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.