Do Not Say We Have Nothing

by Madeleine Thien

“The things you experience,” she continued, “are written on your cells as memories and patterns, which are reprinted again on the next generation. And even if you never lift a shovel or plant a cabbage, every day of your life something is written upon you. And when you die, the entirety of that written record returns to the earth. All we have on this earth, all we are, is a record.

We can learn what we did not know. We are not only good at destroying the old world, we are also good at building the new. “What if the new is nothing but a virus of the same sickness? And what about devotion, what about duty and filial love? Must everything that is old be contemptible? Weren’t we also something before?”

This noise was splitting inside her now. She heard Sparrow’s Symphony No. 3, as if from the air itself. Her own voice wept, “There is always tomorrow and the day after. It must not be too late.” The line nudged forward.

Is it a crime to be myself? Is it a crime to disbelieve? She wanted to weep at her own slowness, her own naïveté.

At the bottom of all these tangled impressions she glimpsed a changed idea, another way of loving someone that she had not experienced before, an attachment like that to a brother, to a friend, to a lover who could never be her lover, of a musical soulmate, a companion who might have been a lifelong collaborator.

When she spoke again, her voice was very calm. “I’m glad,” she said. She touched her hair again and then let it go. “It’s like morning when the stars are painted over by daylight, Sparrow. You think it’s very far away, all this light, and anyway there’s a great universe of stars and other things and so you never believe they’ll disappear . . . Sparrow, of all the things they say I am, they are right that I am proud. I was proud to be myself. I really did believe that one day I would play before the Chairman himself, that I would go to London and Moscow and Berlin!”

“There’s a joke inside of it,” Zhuli said, “that’s why everyone laughs at me. Do you understand? All these things that we don’t have are nothing compared to the things we did have. A life can be long or short but inside it, if we’re lucky, is this one opening . . . I looked through this window and made my own idea of the universe and maybe it was wrong, I don’t know anymore, I never stopped loving my country but I wanted to be loyal to something else, too. I saw things . . . I don’t want the other kind of life.”

“I have this idea that . . . maybe, a long time ago, the Book of Records was set in a future that hadn’t yet arrived. That’s why it seems so familiar to us now. The future is arriving. We’ve come all this way to meet it.” “Or maybe,” he said, “it’s we who keep returning to the same moment.” “Next time, we’ll meet in another place, won’t we, Sparrow?” “Yes, Zhuli.”

Music began with the act of composition but she herself was only an instrument, a glass to hold the water. If she answered the accusations or defended herself, she would no longer be able to hear the world that was finally seeping into her.

“Don’t let them hurt your hands. Your gifted hands.” She wanted to tell Sparrow, “No matter what happens, you must finish your symphony. Please don’t let it disappear.” Did it matter more to love or to have been loved? If anyone answered her question, she didn’t catch the words. I am so far away now, Zhuli thought, that words dissolve before they reach me.

LONG AGO, AI-MING LAY beside me on my bed, holding Chapter 17 from the Book of Records in her hands. The story continued even though she had long stopped reading from its pages. In the quiet, Zhuli existed between us, older than me, younger than Ai-ming, as real as we were ourselves. Each time we set the notebook down, I had the sensation that she remained. It was we, Ai-ming and I, listening, who vanished.

If you want to be an architect, you should go to Tiananmen Square, Sparrow thought. You should see the head, the hands, the feet, the heart, the lungs. You should stand in the middle of the Square and listen. Zhuli’s shadow seemed to twist in the stairwell as if her spirit was tied to his thoughts, and unable to be free.

San Li had died, jumped from a window or was pushed. And then, more to himself than to her, “But since no one is responsible, there is no one to forgive.” She spoke directly in his ear. “There is no point in forgiveness. We need to prosper.” He could not imagine what she could possibly mean by the word prosper.

How can you ignore this sharp awl that pierces your heart? If you yearn for things outside yourself, you will never obtain what you are seeking.

Yes, how simple a thing it was to weep, she thought, gazing out at the frenzy of grief and uncertainty around her. She tried not to think of Da Shan and Flying Bear, of Zhuli, of all the names that would disappear completely, relegated to history so as not to disturb the living. White paper flowers, the traditional symbol of mourning, inundated every tree. She wept with rage and helplessness at all the crimes for which the death of an old, treacherous man could never answer.

Sparrow saw the young woman staring straight ahead and he recognized in her an ambition, a desire, that he was certain he no longer possessed. Would he ever contain that hunger, that wholeness, again?

“I went to Tiananmen Square, I read the posters and the letters people had left behind. I memorized them. Let me tell you, world / I do not believe. Everyone read them and I wondered: what happens when a hundred thousand people memorize the same poem? Does anything change? Around Tiananmen Square, there were so many mourners . . . hundreds of thousands of workers. Crying openly because for a day or two, they could grieve in public. The police came and gathered up all the funeral wreaths. People were outraged. They gathered in the Square shouting, ‘Give us back our flowers! Give them back!’ They shouted, ‘Long live Premier Zhou Enlai!’”

The possibilities before Sparrow, which should have given him joy, instead broke his heart. He was no longer the same person.

Kai said, “What you said is true. I loved her. I loved you both.” “There was no shame in that.” “No,” he said quietly. “But I was ashamed.” “We were young.” “It was a kind of love, only I didn’t comprehend.”

Da-wei thinks of the duties of a father: there should be gifts of money to see his daughter through the underworld, oranges for sweetness, silk to cover her. His pockets are empty and he is ashamed that he has nothing to give her, in this life or for the next. This music, and the great distance it has come, confounds him. He wants to tell his daughter to return home, but the roads have changed and nothing in this country is familiar, if she turns back towards the cities of the coast, she might lose her way. How can he help her? Why has he been so powerless?

Yiwen had a portable cassette player and she was always listening to music as she walked. It was very modern and deeply Western to listen to music that no one else could hear. Private music led to private thoughts. Private thoughts led to private desires, to private fulfillments or private hungers, to a whole private universe away from parents, family and society.

“Good for you students,” a woman said. Her voice was scratchy, she was rubbing her knee. “You’re braver than we were. Much braver. When my generation gathered in Tiananmen Square, it was a different world.”

“Ai-ming, what are you thinking?” What had the Square looked like this morning when the sun rose on a hundred thousand youth curled together on the concrete? She felt embarrassed because, in response to her father’s question, she, a young scholar, could only think of Yiwen’s favourite song, It’s not that I don’t understand. It’s that things are changing so fast.

“But why? Why can’t we choose for ourselves?” Across from them, in the emptiness of the Square, there were posters asking this very same question. She was not alone in her thinking, she had nothing to fear. Ba doesn’t even know how afraid he is, she thought. His generation has gotten so used to it, they don’t even know that fear is the primary emotion they feel.

“I want to know what it’s like in a young country with lots of space,” she said. “If you say something out loud, you hear your own voice differently.” Sparrow nodded. She said, “Canada.”

He wanted to take Ai-ming’s hand. Sometimes, when Ai-ming bruised her knee on the table or suffered some psychological melancholy, it seemed to lodge inside him as well. Where did the line between parent and child exist? He’d always tried to refrain from pushing her in one direction or the other, ever fearful he might drive her towards the Party, but what if his silence had let her down or failed her in some crucial way? But maybe, he thought, a parent should always have failings, some place into which a child can sink her teeth, because only then can a child come to know herself. He thought about those young students kneeling with their petition. Eventually, they would be arrested. It was inevitable.

Zhuli, he thought. I’m sorry that I came too late. Of course he knew that she had forgiven him long ago, so why did he hold on to this guilt? What was the thing he was most afraid of?

And then, last month, Kai had written to him. Long ago, you told me not to turn back but I know now that you were mistaken, I knew it then, Sparrow, but I was too afraid to see it. I was too selfish. And what right did I have to ask you for anything? But Sparrow, the future depends on knowing what we loved and who we have become . . . Please, if you can, please come to Hong Kong. There are too many things between us. There is a lifetime. I recently learned that the Professor was imprisoned and survived the turmoil. He passed away in 1981. We never reconciled. How could I not know of his death until now? Even when he tried to remember, it came to him like another life. Love was his devotion to his parents, to Ling, to Ai-ming, to this life. But if this was love, what was the other?

A line from Big Mother’s most recent letter from Cold Water Ditch came back to him: There is no way across the river but to feel for the stones.

They weren’t asking for anything impossible, Ai-ming thought. Just room to move, to grow up and be free, and for the Party to criticize itself. A red banner from Beijing University read in proud, golden characters, “Without the Communist Party, there would be no New China.”

When he said there was unrest in Beijing, she said, “Good! Nobody should be at rest.”

On a nearby pillar, someone had pasted up a letter, “I’ve been searching for myself, but I didn’t expect to find so many selves of mine.”

“Hey, you’re not a plain coat are you? Someone told me there are thousands of plain coats snooping around.” “A spy?” Sparrow smiled. “No, but other people have thought the same.” “Because you’re so unthreatening,” the man said. “Don’t take offence. It’s just that you’ve got such a listening face.”

“Don’t be upset,” Sparrow said, accepting the candy. “I’m the same as you. I had the desire, but never the will.” “And now?” Fan asked. He shook his head, but it occurred to him that now, finally, when he had the will, desire itself might have disappeared. For twenty years, Sparrow had convinced himself that he had safeguarded the most crucial part of his inner life from the Party, the self that composed and understood the world through music. But how could it be? Time remade a person. Time had rewritten him. How could a person counter time itself?

An enlivening breeze made all the banners crease and ripple, and an expression of Big Mother’s caught in his mind, Those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind.

The fasting students had no mats or tarps to lie on, only sheets of grubby newspaper. A sign read, “The Party maintains its power by accusing the People of fabricated political crimes.”

Sparrow could not imagine what this scene would like through Zhuli’s eyes, at the age she would be now. How many deceits had the Red Guards accused her of? How many crimes had the government fabricated? How could a lie continue so long, and work its way into everything they touched? But maybe Ai-ming would be allowed to come of age in a different world, a new China. Perhaps it was naive to think so, but he found it difficult not to give in, not to hope, and not to desire.

“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.

“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!”

“So, what do you study?” the vendor asked. Ai-ming looked into the woman’s puckered, hopeful face. “Um, Chinese history.” The woman pulled her head back like a bird. “What’s the use of that? Well, at least you know that my generation was tossed around by Chairman Mao’s campaigns. Our lives were completely wasted . . . We’ve pinned all our hopes on you.”

What if one had to create a whole new language in order to learn to be oneself? She said to Yiwen, “I think we keep repeating the same mistakes. Maybe we should mistrust every idea we think is original and ours alone.”

“These children, ah! You give your life to them and they crush your heart!”

“It was just the way life was back then,” she said finally. “People lost one another. You could be sent five thousand kilometres away, with no hope of coming back. Everyone had so many people like this in their lives, people who had been sent away. This was the bitterness of life but also the freedom. You couldn’t live against the reality of the time but it was still possible to keep your private dreams, only they had to stay that way, intensely, powerfully private. You had to keep something for yourself, and to do that, you had to turn away from reality. It’s hard to explain if you didn’t grow up here. People simply didn’t have the right to live where they wanted, to love who they wanted, to do the work they wanted.

When the demonstrations began, the students were asking for something simple. In the beginning it wasn’t about changing the system, or bringing down the government, let alone the Party. It was about having the freedom to live where you chose, to pursue the work you loved. All those years, our parents had to pretend. To see the future in a different light takes time. But we thought everything could begin with this first movement.”

Many lives and many selves might exist, but that doesn’t render each variation false. I don’t believe so. If he were still alive, that is what I would tell him.

“He’ll be home soon,” Ai-ming said. Her own voice sounded silly to her, flattened. “What do you know about it? What have you ever known about your father?” Dazed, Ai-ming said nothing. “Do you know he could have composed for the Central Philharmonic, he could have studied abroad, he could have had a different life, if only he was a completely different kind of person. . . .” Ling shook the papers slightly. “But he wouldn’t be with us, he wouldn’t have chosen us, would he? If he’d been given the choice.” The papers in her hands seemed to proliferate. “Your father has always been a good man but kindness can be a downfall. It can make you lose perspective. It can make you foolish.” Ling sat down on the sofa. “Ma?” “Why did he go with her?” Ling said. “Doesn’t he know what’s happening out there? Does he think that this life doesn’t matter? Does he really believe that he can carry on as if he is invisible?”

“Why have you come here?” a woman wept. “You’re not wanted here. Don’t you understand? They’ve tricked you. It’s all lies!” If no one attacks me, I attack no one! “How can you turn your guns on us?” “We won’t kneel down anymore!” But if people attack me, I must attack them. “Murderers, murderers . . .” “Shame, shame on you!”

He stopped running, his hands up for them to see. His daughter, his wife. What had any of them done that was criminal? Hadn’t they done their best to listen and to believe? There was nothing in his hands and never had been. The crack of the gun was delayed and came to him too late, but the sound gave him the sensation of closing a thousand doors behind him. Light from the tanks found him, as if they could collect all the irreconcilable parts of his life. No matter how many lights they shone, they could never take away the darkness. Daylight was blinding, but in the dark he still existed. What did they see, he wondered, his hands still open. Of all the people he had loved and who had loved him, of all the things that he had witnessed, lived and hoped for, of all the music he had created, how much was it possible to see?

Yiwen stumbled to her feet. “Other people died for us!” she cried. “Now we’re going to collaborate with their murderers? Have we no shame?” Others called out similar words, but the shouting mutated into exhausted crying. They had been in the Square more than five hours, and only now did Ai-ming find herself breaking down, thinking of the promise she had made to her father, unable to comprehend how Yiwen was ready to give up her life and the lives of others. For what? To hold Tiananmen Square, which had never belonged to them.

Ai-ming could say nothing. Everyone said that the foreign newspapers were reporting a massacre in Tiananmen Square, but she had been in the Square. She had seen the students walk away. Didn’t they know the tanks had come from the outside? Didn’t they know about the parents, the workers, the children who had died?