They were sitting as near to one another as possible without touching. The music filled the space between them, its motifs turning over as if the composer had no conclusion, only movements that came around in a spiral, rising each time to a new beginning but an old place.
“Is this a novel?” Kai said, returning Chapter 17 to him.
“It’s a story that’s been in my family for many years.” The notebook was so worn, and the weight utterly familiar in Sparrow’s hand.
“Do you think I could read it one day?”
Sparrow nodded.
Kai continued as if speaking to himself. “Not now but one day. That’s what I hope for. I wasn’t trying to flatter you, Sparrow. A talent like yours comes along only once in a generation. You must finish your Symphony No. 3, no matter what happens.”
At some point they fell asleep on the floor. He woke to the heaviness of Kai’s arm over him. It was hot, and sometime in the night, Kai had taken off his shirt and now lay, half undressed, beside him. How thin he had grown. Kai held him tightly, his mouth against Sparrow’s neck, his breathing calm and undisturbed, but he was not asleep. Sparrow lay on his back and let his hand drift down to cover Kai’s. The pianist caressed him, tentatively at first and then with greater confidence. Sparrow’s hand followed Kai’s hand and an unbearable heat settled deep into his body. They lay together, frightened, half wishing sleep would come and take them, and release them from this aching, intolerable yearning. They drifted and woke and held one another, and in the fitfulness of Kai’s touch, he felt as loved as he had ever felt. The first wash of dawn arrived without his noticing.
—
That evening, the study group met in the Old Cat’s apartment, located in a twisting lane on the northwest side of the city. Sparrow had been pleased when, in the afternoon, Kai came to the laneway house to remind him of the meeting. He had been surprised when Kai invited Zhuli as well, though not as surprised as his cousin. Zhuli, blushing, had agreed.
They were the last to arrive. Just as before, the group assessed his clothing (“Did you trip and fall into the Huangpu River?”) and manner (“Nervous. As if he has thorns in his shoes.”) To Zhuli, on the other hand, they were welcoming, even familial. “Welcome, welcome!” the Old Cat shouted. “No need to be so formal. Just call me Old Cat, everyone does.” Kai greeted them both, but his eyes stayed fixed on Zhuli, who seemed oblivious of him. He had removed the armband of the Red Guards.
“I used to own the Perilous Heights bookshop on Suzhou Creek Road,” the Old Cat said, splashing tea into a bowl and slapping it down in front of Zhuli. “But during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the government was banning titles left and right. There was so much overthrowing go on, I couldn’t take it. Hell, I’m fifty years old. A relic! Overthrow me too hard and I won’t get up. So in 1955 I closed the shop and moved everything here.”
“But to keep so many books…” Zhuli said. “Aren’t you worried about busybodies?”
“What can I do? The pages are absorbent. I need them to soundproof my walls.”
A tray of cigarettes was passed around. As smoke floated through the air, conversation stilled. They began to concentrate.
The Professor read aloud from the most battered book Sparrow had ever seen. The book turned out to be a play, Part 1 of Guo Moruo’s translation of Faust. Time dissolved. Sparrow, who knew only Gounod’s opera, at first felt in familiar territory, but then he realized he had never met this Faust at all. The German Faust chafes against his condition. This Faust was seeking a freedom within the mind that would expand his spirit as well as his intellect, so that both could attain their most divine state. But what if the truths of the mind and the soul were not merely different, but incompatible? “In me there are two souls, alas, and their / Division tears my life in two.”
Zhuli leaned towards the Professor’s voice as if towards the sound of a flute.
When the reading ended, Ling stretched her lovely arms up into the air and said, “I prefer The Sorrows of Young Werther.”
“That’s because you’re a hopeless romantic,” said the Old Cat.
“Or because Young Werther is like a German San Li,” said San Li.
“In that case, I take it back.” Ling glared at him and then at Kai who grinned at Sparrow who blushed and looked at the teapot. Out of the corner of his eye, Sparrow saw Zhuli bow her head and smile widely into a tower of books.
The Old Cat tapped a manuscript that lay beside the Professor’s sandalled foot. “When this translation first came out, even Chairman Mao praised it. But the Party has turned on Guo…”
“I wonder if Zhuli is right,” Kai said, addressing the Old Cat. “Maybe it’s time to get rid of these books. They’re saying it’s the Anti-Rightist Campaign all over again—”
“What do you know about ’55? You were just a doorstep then.”
“As of this month,” Ling said, “Khrushchev is a ‘phoney Communist,’ the Soviets are ‘revisionist Big Brothers,’ and all the Russian composers are out. Are you getting rid of all your Fifth Symphonies and your This-and-that-ovskys?”
Kai blushed. “I never keep music. I memorize the scores and get rid of them.”
“Shit,” San Li said, “I can’t even remember how to get home.”
Sparrow laughed and tumbled a stack of books onto Zhuli’s lap. He tried to catch the avalanche and caused another.
The Old Cat peered into the ruins. “Look at that!” she said. “A-Fan’s Weeping over His Daughter by the Sea! I’ve been looking for those poems for thirty years.” Zhuli plucked it from the pile and handed it to her.
“And what about you,” Ling said, eyeing Sparrow. “Don’t tell me you memorize everything, too.”
“I don’t…I prefer, well, I transcribe the incorrect work into jianpu.” He had done this for the disgraced works of Debussy, Schönberg and Bartok. Manuscripts written in jianpu notation, with its easy-to-read numbers, were considered backwards and rudimentary. They aroused no suspicion.
Zhuli interrupted. “But afterwards, he really does destroy them. He burns them and leaves the ashes in a little bucket.”
“This is a skill we perfect from an early age,” the Professor said lightly. “How to grind ideas into a fine cloud of dust.”
San Li interrupted. “For months this study group has been reading Schiller, Goethe and Shen Congwen. I’m not complaining. Really, Professor, I’m grateful because the other entertainment on offer stinks. But maybe it’s time to start reading what’s right in front of us.”
The Old Cat coughed. “Surely not!”
“There’s a new campaign,” he continued. “Or are we so taken with all the Germans who died a hundred years ago that no one notices?” He held up a copy of Beijing Review. “For instance, why don’t we study this slop bucket written by the philosophy students at Beijing University?”
“San Li,” the Professor interrupted, “enough.”
Sparrow saw Zhuli gripping her violin case. She looked as if she wished to leave but was prevented from doing so by the books that had fallen into her lap.
“No, let’s analyze this,” San Li persisted. He read:
All revolutionary intellectuals, now is the time to go into battle! Resolutely, thoroughly, totally and completely wipe out all the ghosts and monsters. The leaders of Beijing University shout about “strengthening the leadership” but this only exposes who they really are: saboteurs of the Cultural Revolution. We must tell you, a spider cannot stop the wheel of a cart! We will carry socialist revolution through to the end!