Ai-ming listened to his humming. The music was not a lament, and yet it had a lifting, altering sadness impossible to pin down.
Ling was reading yesterday’s paper. She stared, as if hypnotized, at the same page. Side by side, Ai-ming’s parents appeared joined at the hip, although Ling leaned slightly away, as if to make space for another person. Ai-ming studied her father closely. His bad haircut had grown out a little, making the Bird of Quiet look like someone who had once been very handsome.
She stretched out her hands. After three hours of copying Chapter 23, when May Fourth arrives in Hohhot and begins her journey into the desert, all the little bones in her fingers hurt.
The noise of the helicopters was maddening, as if their only purpose was to agitate everyone’s nerves. A sharp sound cracked against the windows and then the door. She and Ling jumped but Sparrow simply turned, as if he’d been expecting an intruder all along. A woman’s raspy voice cried out, “Comrade Sparrow! Comrade Sparrow!”
When no one else moved, Ai-ming went to the door and pulled it open.
The woman had a narrow nose, surprisingly large eyes and a small, pointy chin. What was the stain on her dress? Mud. Dried red mud. And she had a new bruise, very swollen, just below her left eye.
“Fan,” her father said.
“Sparrow, help us…please.” Fan was shuddering as if from cold. “Old Bi, Dao-ren, we have to bring them here….”
Ai-ming stepped away from the door.
“They were hit at Gongzhufen. We have to hurry. The army is coming in!” She stared at Ai-ming with an unreal placidity, blank terror.
“Gongzhufen…” Sparrow said.
Ling was looking at Sparrow’s sheaf of papers, she had picked them up off the sofa and was staring at them as if no one and no sound had entered the room. Sparrow went and spoke into her ear. Ling stood up.
“Ai-ming,” her father said, turning. “Stay with your mother. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You promise to stay here?”
She nodded.
“Ai-ming, promise me that you won’t leave the house. I have to go now.”
Why was he shouting? Or perhaps he wasn’t shouting. He was speaking quietly yet his voice seemed to be pounding in her ears.
“Yes, Ba.”
He paced the room in a confused way, looking for something. His coat? His ID? The bundle of papers? A letter? Whatever it was he had wanted to bring with him, he abandoned it. He gave Ling one last look, a smile to reassure her, before hurrying after Fan.
Ai-ming followed them to the door.
“She’s a co-worker,” Ling said. “She works at the wire factory.”
Ai-ming saw her father’s bicycle wobbling down the alleyway into the shadows. A vanishing colour caught her eye, a pink dress, a flash of orange light. The stuttering vibration of helicopters made it impossible to think.
“Shut the door, Ai-ming.”
She turned to find her mother beside her.
“Shut the door,” Ling repeated, doing it herself.
Her mother was holding that sheaf of papers and Ai-ming saw line after line of musical notation, a language she had never learned to read. At the top, three words were visible, For Jiang Kai. “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?”
—
At first, the gunfire had been intermittent, shocking, but now it came steadily, a drilling in the night. When Ai-ming could stand it no longer, she hid in the study, surrounded by her books, The Collected Letters of Tchaikovsky, The Analects, The Rain on Mount Ba. In the courtyard outside, the scramble of voices grew increasingly frantic.
Two hands rapped softly on the glass. The pink headband in Yiwen’s hair was as startling as daylight. Ai-ming pushed open the window.
“Come out,” Yiwen whispered. Her eyes were wide, she’d been crying.
Ai-ming looked around the room. A pair of plastic sandals, her mother’s, were turned over beside the book trunk. Ai-ming slipped them on. She climbed onto the desk and dangled first one leg and then the other out the window. She felt Yiwen’s warm hands gripping her ankles, pulling her insistently down. She jumped.
Halfway out of the courtyard, Ai-ming realized she’d forgotten to close the window. “Wait, wait, Yiwen,” she whispered, turning to go back. As she reached the window, she saw a figure hovering in the doorway, moving towards her. She told herself that the shadow was only in her mind. Ai-ming pushed the glass closed.
“Ai-ming!” she heard. “Ai-ming, where are you going?”
She kept running.
“Ai-ming, come back.”
—
These streets, covered with smoke, could not be hers. Ai-ming’s bicycle swerved around the debris: overturned chairs, bricks that seemed to have come from nowhere, tree branches, abandoned cars, a wagon in which two children were sitting, staring mutely out. Behind them, at the Muxidi intersection, she saw overturned buses and smoke billowing from at least a dozen fires.
“Yiwen, where are we going?”
But the other girl kept pedalling. “How could they,” Yiwen said. She was somehow both calm and distraught. “How could they?” She pedalled furiously as if someone was chasing them.
Small clusters of bicycles moved in every direction. A truck filled with boys, heading towards Muxidi, swerved past. The boys shouted that they were on their way to the barricades. To her relief, Chang’an Avenue grew less chaotic as they approached Tiananmen Square. On and on the boulevard went, the sounds of fighting diminishing. The Square rose before them, she saw the tent city, grey and sturdy against the concrete, and the Goddess of Democracy, shining like a trick of light.
“We can’t go back,” Yiwen said. “They’re killing people at Fengtai. They’re killing people at Gongzhufen. Right in the street, at the intersection. I saw it, Ai-ming. I saw it. At first it was only tear gas but then there were real bullets, there was real blood, they’re following people through the alleyways—”
“Gongzhufen?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Ai-ming’s legs kept moving, the bicycle rushing forward, but she felt as if she were falling. “I have to go back. My father’s at Gongzhufen.”
“Are you crazy?” Yiwen was crying so hard she could not possibly see in front of her. “They’re shooting. The People’s Liberation Army is shooting. I saw three or four people hit right in front of me. The bullets, it’s as if they explode inside the person—”
“No, the army wouldn’t dare. They must be rubber bullets.”
“They wouldn’t!” Yiwen shouted, hysterical. “People were crying, Why are they shooting us? Why are they shooting? And then they couldn’t run away because of the roadblocks. Our roadblocks. All the roadblocks we set up. They couldn’t climb over them.”