Liu was already walking backwards, his violin case smashing against his right knee. He turned and his green clothes faded into the sunshine. Zhuli watched him go and felt a painful hammering in her heart. Why did he trust her? Whom should she trust? Her hands had no sensation, as if they were made of wood. But the notes filled her thoughts as if she were still in Room 103, as if her mind had not noticed that her hands no longer moved.
—
Up until the instant he entered Kai’s room, Sparrow had convinced himself he was not going. The meeting, or as Kai called it, the study group, was not meant for someone like him. Yet, for nearly forty minutes, Sparrow pedalled his bicycle east, turning left at Henan Middle Road, right at Haining and finally into a kaleidoscope of smaller streets. He dismounted and walked in circles until he discovered the alleyway and a staircase into the concrete block building.
On the third floor, he knocked at number 32. Kai appeared, windy-haired even though he probably hadn’t left his room. Pleasure flooded his face the moment he saw Sparrow. “I was afraid you wouldn’t find it.” Sparrow smiled as if he, himself, had never doubted.
How small it was, and dark. A radio was placed up against the door, the volume deafening. There were shapes that could be people or could be objects, but no fan and the room was stifling. A young woman, despite moving aside to make room for Sparrow, was still so close that he was submerged in the almond scent of her hair. Someone demanded Sparrow’s ID card, others laughed, and a young man said, “Too puny to stand up to the wind. Definitely not public security.” “Were you followed?” And then a grandmother’s prickly voice: “He probably followed you, San Li.” Laughter. Sparrow was trembling, he could smell his own sweat. “Just relax,” the almond-scented girl said impatiently. “Are you really the great composer that Kai goes on and on about?” Before he could answer, they began talking about a book he hadn’t read: he hadn’t even heard of it. They mentioned a book he did know, Kang Youwei’s Book of the Great Community, but the moment he silently congratulated himself, the conversation rumbled on.
In the corner, Kai had not spoken. He was at least a decade younger than the men and women in this room.
“Old Cat, what did you bring? Where are you?” “In your lap.” This was the grandmother speaking now. “San Li, pay attention to what’s in your lap for once!”
The grandmother reached into a cloth bag and pulled out a small stack of books. “A few odds and ends. Essays in Skepticism—”
“Delightful,” the almond-scented girl, whom they called Ling, purred.
“And Xi Li, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Shen Congwen, and what else…”
Another candle was lit. Ling picked up Xi Li, or Friedrich Schiller, searching for the place they had left off the previous week. Sparrow knew Schiller only as the German writer beloved by Verdi, whose poem Brahms had used in a funeral song:
Even the beautiful must die!
See! The gods weep, all the goddesses weep
Because the beautiful perishes, because perfection dies
Even to be a song of lament on a loved ones’ lips is glorious…
San Li said, “Hurry up, the spy is dozing off!”
“A birch tree, a spruce, a poplar is beautiful,” Ling began, “when it climbs slenderly aloft; an oak, when it grows crooked; the reason is, because the latter, left to itself, loves the crooked, the former, on the contrary, loves the direct course….Which tree will the painter like most to seek out, in order to use it in a landscape? Certainly that one, which makes use of the freedom, that even, with some boldness, ventures something, steps out of order, even if it must here cause a breach, and there disarrange something through its stormy interference.”
She read for thirty, forty minutes, and every word was distinct. When she closed the book, the grandmother asked if she would be willing to take it away and mimeograph a new copy.
“I’m already copying My Education and the department is suspicious. Give it to San Li.”
General merriment followed. “Last time, he stuck all the pages together with syrup—” “Ling found a fishbone, didn’t she?” “Chicken bone.” “I like to leave a little something for you lot.” “It’s the Permanent Revolution of San Li’s dinner.”
When the laughter faded and the Schiller remained unspoken for, Sparrow raised his voice. “I will do it.”
“Well, well,” Ling said. “A bookish spy! Kai was right to be intrigued.”
“Have it ready by next week,” the Old Cat told him over the scattered giggling. “And don’t eat with it.”
“Take this one, too,” San Li said. “Dmitri Shostakovich. Translated from Russian. It’s too technical for us.”
Sparrow accepted.
In the darkness, the radio announcer was repeating familiar words, Those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army, and various spheres of culture are a group of counter-revolutionary revisionists…
—
Bowls of peanuts and a jug of rice wine were passed from hand to hand. The older gentleman proposed a toast to “Lakes of wine and forests of meat!” and when everyone raised their cups, the lone candle went out. Ling started humming a song he couldn’t place.
“My boy,” the older man said, turning to Kai, “it’s been weeks since I saw you. The piano in my house grows dusty, and Ling says you never visit anymore.”
“Why, I saw her yesterday,” Kai said laughing, “but I’ll come tomorrow, Professor.”
The wine had permeated all of Sparrow’s limbs, and the Professor appeared round as a floating balloon as he scooted over. Some of them we have already seen through, the radio shouted, others we have not! Some are still trusted by us and are being trained as our successors…
Tipsily, the Professor turned to Sparrow. “I’ve heard so much about you, Comrade. If I may say so, your String Octet is one of my favourite pieces of music. Such an honour to finally make your acquaintance.” Around them, conversation was breaking into smaller pieces. The Professor hummed a song, “Jasmine,” that took Sparrow back to the teahouses of his youth. Sparrow confided that he had travelled the length of the country singing that very song.
“In my youth,” the Professor said, “I, too, travelled. I was conscripted by the Kuomintang. Fortunately, I managed to slip away and cross over to the Communist army. It was horror. The fighting, I mean. But we made this country.” He paused, thumped his knee twice softly and said, “Afterwards, I arrived at the victory celebration in my hometown, only to be told…when the Japanese entered the town, my wife disappeared. I said to myself, many people were displaced during the aggression. If the gods are watching, I’ll surely find her again.” The Professor had gone to Shanghai to teach history and Western philosophy at Jiaotong University. “Our books are full of stories of mistaken identity, star-crossed love, years of separation. Do you know the classic song, ‘The Faraway Place,’ well, you must, of course. I can’t hear it without thinking that my beloved has finally returned. It’s been twenty years since I last saw her, but in my mind she’s the same.”
“Tell him how I came to live with you,” Kai said. His voice was soft. In the darkness, it was unexpectedly near.
“Ah,” the Professor said. “Well, in 1960, I learned that my wife’s nephew had a gift for music. I arranged admission for him to the preparatory school of the Shanghai Conservatory—”
“You moved heaven and earth,” Kai said.
“Well. I had fought bravely in the war. As I said, people bent their ears to me back then. In any case, that is how Jiang Kai arrived in Shanghai. He was eleven years old, it was just after the Three Years of Catastrophe…I tell you, this was my first indication of the disaster that was happening there. We had shortages in Shanghai, of course, but nothing like the countryside…” The Professor motioned towards the window. “Kai came to live with me and, in my home, there was suddenly music. I was tutoring Ling at the time, and he used to follow her everywhere she went. They were inseparable.”