Ai-ming was the link between us, my father and hers, my mother and me. Until we knew she was safe, how could we possibly let her go? At that time, I thought I never would.
“In the fall of 1965,” I told the windows, the room, the photograph of my father on the desk, “on the night before Sparrow’s twenty-fourth birthday, a young man, wearing an overcoat far too big for his skinny body, arrived in the night.”
THE HOUSEHOLD — BA LUTE, Big Mother and the two boys, Zhuli and Swirl (newly released, within days of her friend, the Translator) — was fast asleep, but Sparrow was still writing. Outside, a shadow appeared in the laneway. As Sparrow worked on his Symphony No. 3, he could hear the scratching of their steps, back and forth, around and back. The noise crept into his music: a low bassoon interfering with the bass line, now here, now gone.
Irritated, Sparrow set down his pencil. He picked up the lamp, descended the stairs and exited into the courtyard, listening: no sound at all. He flung open the back gate.
The stranger cried out, making them both fall sideways.
Embarrassed, Sparrow shook the lamp. “Speak, Comrade!” he said, as gruffly as he could. “How can I assist you!”
At first, only the wind replied. And then the stranger said, his voice no louder than a sigh, “I’m looking for Young Sparrow.”
He was very slight, very short and surely no one to be afraid of, but still the lamp in Sparrow’s hand trembled. “Young Sparrow? What do you want with him?”
In the stranger’s hand, a crumpled envelope appeared. Even in the low light, Sparrow knew the handwriting immediately. It was the very same calligraphy he had gazed at ever since he was a teenager: square yet full of ardour, telling the story of Da-wei and May Fourth. The stranger shivered miserably and yanked his hand back. He was nervous, but not in the smug, twitchy way of a spy or a jailer. Rather, the young man seemed horrified by the width of the alleyway.
“I am he. That is, I’m Sparrow. What do you need, Comrade?”
The stranger shook his head.
“Is that a letter for me?”
“I have what you would call…news.”
“Quickly, come inside.” The stranger shook his head. Sparrow had to prevent himself from dragging him bodily into the house. “Have you eaten yet? Come. No one will harm you.”
The young man glanced past him. The shadows were not kind to him; everything about him was meagre and crushed. “I will not come in,” he said softly, as if counselling himself. “No, no. I will not! Absolutely, definitely not.”
Sparrow reached into his pocket. Last night, an official in the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection had paid him twenty yuan for private lessons — the official wanted to learn Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata — and the large bills were still on him. “Comrade, if you cannot stay and join me for a meal, please accept this small, inconsequential gift.” He had intended to pull out just one bill, but all four came out.
The young man blinked, stunned.
Sparrow hesitated. Then, firmly, as a father might, he took the letter from the stranger’s hands and put the money there instead. Now that it was leaving him, Sparrow felt a pang of confusion and remorse; he did not have another fen in his pocket. Still, he held the young man’s gaze. “Accept the money or come inside.”
The stranger opened his hand and stared at the miraculous bills. “I would not take anything from the family of Brother Wen,” he whispered. “But my circumstances…well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” He looked at Sparrow directly, and it was clear that the stranger was no more than eleven or twelve years old. A child.
And then the boy, his destitution and Sparrow’s money vanished down the laneway. Except for the envelope in Sparrow’s hands, it was as if the child had never been.
He shut the door and retraced his steps through the inner courtyard. Upstairs, from the balcony, he looked out in the direction the boy had run. Dawn had begun to crease the sky, and already the ration line on Beijing Road was forming, growing longer by the moment, but the child was long gone.
The envelope was addressed, not to his parents, not to Aunt Swirl or Zhuli, but to “Young Sparrow.” He crouched down with the lamp, opened the envelope, slid out the single sheet of paper and began to read.
—
At dawn, Zhuli came out onto the balcony. She called down to Mrs. Ma who was waiting her turn at the water spigot, wished her good morning, grinned at Sparrow, took his empty teacup away and returned with it full and steaming. She sat on a broken chair and said, “Love letter?”
He grunted.
“Dear cousin,” she whispered, “Happy birthday! May this be the year your thrilling Symphony no. 3 is performed in the concert hall before Chairman Mao himself and our devoted Premier Zhou Enlai! Before President He Luting and all the grand musicians of the Shanghai Conservatory! May the bouquets at your feet be fragrant and plentiful, and may the soloist of your next piano concerto be a certain elegant boy from Changsha—”
“Zhuli, if you don’t hurry, that boy from Changsha will have reserved the best practice room. You’ll have to play your violin in the street.”
“You’re right! Jiang Kai practises more than anyone in the Conservatory. Except me. But you know,” she said, her voice dropping even lower, “the piano in Room 103 is ancient and all the pianists avoid it. For a violinist, there’s so much space it’s practically a villa.” She shoved him on the knee. “But, really, who is the letter from?”
He had turned the envelope over before she recognized her father’s handwriting. “Premier Zhou Enlai, inviting me to perform at his grand reception where—”
“The envelope is too plain.”
“Herr Bach, asking me to—”
“The envelope is too new.”
“The neighbourhood grandma, asking why I compose for the degenerate piano rather than the glorious guqin.”
She nodded. “I see. Cousin,” she said, after a moment, “this morning I found the bag of dried peas that went missing. They were in the sleeve of my mother’s coat.”
“What did you do?”
“I left them there! She thinks she’s such a skilful thief!”
“She’s an excellent thief, only there’s nowhere to hide anything.”
“The other day,” Zhuli continued, “I tried to throw out a sock that had eight holes in it but Ma fished it out of the garbage, washed it, mended it and put it back in my drawer. It’s like wearing a fishing net. I’ve been mending it for the last three years! She goes through the trash looking for things, she actually…Last night, she wrapped the quilt twice around herself, even though it was boiling hot. And then she asked me to sleep very close and keep the draft away. I tried to do what she wanted, but there was no draft! Still she shook and shivered!”
His cousin was a joyful and free creature, she seemed to have no relation to any of them. “Aunt Swirl went to the end of the world and came back. Give her time.”
“Speaking of time!” She leaped up, grabbing her violin case. “I’ll come to your office at noon! Let me treat you to a birthday lunch.”
Sparrow slipped the envelope away so that he was nearly sitting on it. “Cousin, about the Ravel. Your technique is excellent of course, but yesterday the phrasing sounded pinched to me, especially the pizzicato. It’s a matter of finding the simple in the complex, rather than the complex in the complex, do you understand what I mean? Work on the bowing today, won’t you?”
“My serious Sparrow, what would I do without you? Come to Room 103 at lunchtime, and I’ll make Ravel himself proud.”