“Tomorrow,” Miss Lu said.
“Never,” said Fan.
Meanwhile, in the Square, Hong Kong entrepreneurs had donated hundreds of brand new tents and the students had erected a statue, the Goddess of Democracy. A new open-air forum, the Tiananmen University of Democracy, had been inaugurated the previous night.
On Wednesday, Fan did not arrive for her shift.
By Thursday, the temperatures were reaching forty degrees and the wires in Sparrow’s hands felt alive. On Radio Beijing, a powerful member of the standing committee said that the youth were “good, pure and kind-hearted,” and were not the problem. It was the workers, in particular the leaders of the autonomous union, who had created a cancer cell made up of the “dregs of society.”
But where was Fan?
On Friday, Old Bi came in late. His normally neat and clean hair was damp with sweat, and he had to smoke three of his Big Front Gate cigarettes in quick succession before he could tell them what had happened. Old Bi described the crowds in front of the public security office on Qianmen Avenue. “They’ve been arresting people all week,” he said. “So I went up there to find out what happened to Fan. These bastards asked me why I was looking for a counter-revolutionary. A political criminal! They said, ‘Run along home before we arrest you, too.’ ‘Oh, really?’ I said. ‘For what crime?’ ‘Comrade, you’re in violation of martial law.’ ‘Fuck me,’ I said. ‘You’re in violation of the Constitution!’ ” Old Bi took out another cigarette. “Idiot that I am, I was wearing my ID card on my shirt. They wrote everything down.”
Miss Lu yanked the cigarette out of Old Bi’s mouth. “You shouldn’t have gone by yourself! You have no self-control.”
Sparrow poured him a cup of tea.
“I’m going back tomorrow,” Old Bi said, grabbing back the cigarette. “They can’t arrest us all.”
That night, Sparrow called Cold Water Ditch. Big Mother Knife was out of breath from being summoned to the neighbourhood phone. After she had huffed for some minutes, she told him that the student demonstrations had spread to Shenzhen and Guangzhou. When he asked if she had joined the protests, she shouted, “Deng Xiaoping and those old farm tools in Beijing should retire! All those old men, it’s like they breathe through the same nostril!”
Beside Sparrow, the caretaker of the phone, Mrs. Sun, was smoking and pretending to read the People’s Daily. Her children clambered around her like sparks going off.
On the other end of the line, Big Mother had grown quiet and Sparrow thought she was done speaking.
He was in the middle of saying goodbye when Big Mother interrupted to tell him she had news. Last week, she had received a letter from Aunt Swirl and Wen the Dreamer.
“Ma,” he said.
“Don’t interrupt!” she shouted. And then, sighing, “I’m getting old. I keep losing my train of thought.”
Now Big Mother filled in the years, speaking rapidly as if she were running across a narrow beam. Back in 1977, Wen had nearly been rearrested. If it weren’t for his friend, Projectionist Bang, they could never have gotten away. They had retreated deeper into Kyrgyzstan. Last year, word finally reached them that Big Mother’s petitioning had been successfuclass="underline" during the reforms initiated by Hu Yaobang, the convictions against Wen the Dreamer had been overturned and his criminal label had been removed. “It only took ten years,” Big Mother said bitterly. Swirl and Wend were coming home. In the letter, Swirl said they’d already crossed Inner Mongolia and reached Lanzhou. After nearly twenty years in the desert regions, they wanted to visit the sea. They planned to stop in Beijing before continuing on to Shanghai and Cold Water Ditch. Big Mother had already given them Sparrow’s address, even though it would be another few months before the official paperwork reached them. He should expect them in the winter.
“Will you recognize Swirl?” his mother asked.
“Always,” he said. Sparrow shifted the phone to his other ear. “Do they know everything that’s happened?”
He feared he had inadvertently pushed his mother off the balance beam and that she had toppled over and fallen into the quiet. But Big Mother’s voice, when it came back, was steady. “She knows. They both know.”
Over the line, the faint echoes of other conversations broke through and fell back.
“My son, have you been writing music?”
Sparrow, surprised by her question, answered truthfully, “Yes.”
“Well, what is it?”
“A sonata for piano and violin.” He wanted to tell his mother about an entirely different recording, Bach’s six sonatas for the same two instruments. Throughout his life, Bach had returned to these six pieces, polishing and revising them, rewriting them as he grew older. They were almost unbearably beautiful, as if the composer wanted to find out how much this most of basic of sonata forms-exposition, development, recapitulation-could hold, and in what ways containment could hold a freedom, a life.
His mother sounded illogically near. “What did you name it? I hope you didn’t just give it a number.”
Sparrow smiled into the phone. He was aware of Mrs. Sun staring up at the ceiling, at a particularly large spider. “I called it The Sun Shines on the People’s Square.”
“Did you?” She gave a big, round pop of a laugh.
He couldn’t help but laugh as well. “Yes, I did.”
“You’ll find a way to play it for Swirl and Wen the Dreamer?”
“Of course.”
“It’s a joyful title, isn’t it?” his mother said.
He nodded, surprised by the grief that overtook him. He remembered something Zhuli had once said. Luckily, joy seeps into all your compositions. Some part of him had always existed separately, it had continued even after he had ceased to listen. “Yes.”
—
The next day, Saturday, Ai-ming slept until noon. It was so hot, even the bed felt as if it were melting. Last night, she and Yiwen had stayed late at Tiananmen Square, where the rock star Hou Dejian had given a concert, his voice reverberating up to Chairman Mao’s portrait like a dream they were all letting go.
Now Ai-ming sat up, sweaty, nauseous, the whine of electric guitars pulsating in her head. She felt as if she had not slept at all. The racket of the helicopters continued, they were circling Beijing again, dropping pamphlets. She sat up. The calendar said June 3, the month of May had vanished, dissolved by history. Today, Ai-ming would copy Chapter 23 of the Book of Records as a birthday present for Yiwen. This evening, she would go to Tiananmen, but she would come home early, she would have a good rest.
—
At home that afternoon, Sparrow fell into a deep sleep that went undisturbed by the loudspeakers, whose broadcast repeated stubbornly: Beginning immediately, all Beijing citizens must be on high alert! Please stay off the streets and away from Tiananmen Square! All workers should remain at their posts and all citizens should stay at home to safeguard their lives. What did he dream? Later on, Ai-ming often wondered because, when Sparrow came out of his room around dinner time, he was calm, even elated. He was carrying a small bundle of papers that were taped together and folded, accordion style. He sat down on the sofa beside Ling, oblivious to the broadcaster’s repeated warnings. Perhaps Sparrow, like Ai-ming, did not believe that the army would re-enter the city. Sparrow was humming a piece of music, an enlargement of the pattern of notes he had been humming for weeks. Directly above him, the Spring Festival calendar showed two plump goldfish: good fortune gliding over his head like clouds.