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She herself shouted, “Leave!” and beside her, Yiwen countered, “Stay!”
This is the first and only time, Ai-ming thought, that I will belong to Beijing University. The achievements she had once wanted for herself seemed a lifetime away, they were the aspirations of a completely different person.
the Internationale.
Do not say that we have nothing.
This music, she thought, was the record of something her father had never heard with his own ears, he’d had no access to a violin let alone a piano.
On the back, he had copied out a quote, “Beauty leaves its imprints on the mind. Throughout history, there have been many moments that can never be recovered, but you and I know that they existed.”
“My father isn’t here. I’m sorry, who’s calling?”
He said his name was Jiang Kai, that he was calling from Hong Kong and that he was a pianist.
live in Canada and I can help, please let me help.”
“I’m sorry, I’m very sorry that I can’t help you. I’m sorry you can’t help him.”
“Comrade Sparrow hasn’t come home since the night of June 3. Don’t upset his daughter. She really doesn’t know, poor girl. She’s only a kid…”
He began to tear up the piece of music that had been sitting on the table, her father’s composition.
She wanted it all to disappear.
Yiwen salvaged what she could. But in the end, she and Ai-ming were only able to piece nine pages back together. The rest of Sparrow’s composition was gone.
Three days had passed since officers from Public Security had entered the apartment.
Life had gone on; it had slipped backwards. It was only a matter of time, Ling knew, before she, too, gave in.
If someone believed differently, dreamed differently, society could make sure there were no longer jobs, or space, for them.
She thought of Kai, the Professor, Zhuli, the Old Cat.
Afterwards, when she lifted the record and replaced it in its cardboard sleeve, Ling found letters. All the letters written from Canada and Hong Kong.
He informed Ling that her husband’s body had been recovered on the morning of June 4, and that he had already been cremated.
“How did my husband die?” she asked. He stared at the papers in front of him. “A stroke.”
“But where did he suffer this stroke?” The director slid the sheet towards her. “At home.”
“Actually, since you’re here,” he continued, “we’re having difficulty with another matter. Your daughter is registered to write the university entrance examinations next month. Unfortunately, since she’s a relatively new Beijing resident, we’ve run into some obstacles. Political background checks,
you understand…of course, I’ll do all I can to secure a place for her.”
What shook Ling most was that she wasn’t even angry.
“What more do you want from him? I gave my life to the Party. I gave my life. What more do you want from me? I have nothing more to say.”
lifetime of carefulness and sacrifice meant she had no one in whom to confide.
She had seen too much. Yes, things could still change, not for her, not for Sparrow, but for Ai-ming.
She could not stop her own heart from breaking. But for her daughter
N MY MIND, AI-MING’S story has a hundred possible endings.
recent years, this last possibility consumed me, for there were stories of Chinese migrants lost in the maze of detention centres; many had arrived in the United States in the years following the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations and had never obtained proper papers.
However, they were eligible only if they had arrived in America between June 5 1989, and April 11, 1990. Ai-ming had crossed the border in May 1991.
Years ago, Ai-ming told me that her mother used to stand in the intersection of Muxidi, waiting for Sparrow, remembering, long after his life had ended.
June 20, 2016.
In the first row, Yiwen was hugging her daughter to her side. To her left was Ai-ming’s great-aunt, the Old
Cat.
In this room, there was only the act of listening, there was only Sparrow, Kai and Zhuli.
It was 1990. Ai-ming sat across the table from them, watching the slight movement of their three grey heads.
“But the painters’ idea of paradise was only a copy of life on earth,” he said. “Dancing, wine, books, meat and music. Paradise offers all the things we’ve never learned to properly distribute, despite the excellence of our residents’ committees and our people’s communes.”
She had once fancied herself a scholar, but she didn’t even know that a camel’s hump emptied and grew soft like a deflated balloon.
Ai-ming, Swirl and Wen the Dreamer had been travelling together for five weeks, 2,500 kilometres, by train, bus, cart, moped and foot. Her great-uncle and great-aunt, already in their seventies, had the tenacity of llamas.
Now, Swirl was sorting through the pages of another set of the Book of Records because they had fallen on the ground and
The word he had just written was 宇 (yǔ) which meant both room and universe.
She remembered walking with her father to Tiananmen Square and how she had said to him: Canada. Now she said, “I don’t know. I just want to leave everything behind.”
Zhuli was holding her violin as if it was the instrument, the wood and strings–and not her thoughts, not her future–that needed protecting.
“How to continue,” Wen said. “Your father wondered this too.
They agreed on the problems but never the solutions.
Everyone tells me how much you resemble Zhuli. Don’t ever try to be only a single thing, an unbroken human being. If so many people love you, can you honestly be one thing?”
His brush came to the end of a line. Chapter 42, when May Fourth reaches the end of the desert. She’s aged so much, and her friend Da-wei has long since passed on from this 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.’
