“When you practically live in the Conservatory,” his father was saying, “when you shut the door to that practice room, do you think no one hears you? Do you believe, truly, that no one notices that you have played Bach for seventy-nine consecutive days, and before that Busoni for thirty-one days! You refuse to trouble yourself with the erhu, pipa or sanxian. And I have done so much for the land reform campaign! I have been a model father, no one can say otherwise . . .” Ba Lute drank morosely and fell silent. “Why do you love this Bach and this Busoni? What does it have to do with you?”
