What to read: the saga "Don't say we have nothing", covering the entire second half of the twentieth century

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

An excerpt from the novel by the Canadian writer Madeleine Thien - a large-scale work about three generations of one family, which had hard trials.

A few months later, in March 1990, my mother showed me the Notebook. That evening she sat in her usual place at the dinner table and read. The notebook she held in her hands was long and narrow, with the proportions of a miniature door, not tightly stitched with walnut-colored cotton thread.

It was long past time for me to sleep, when suddenly my mother finally noticed me.

- What's wrong with you! - she said.

And then, as if embarrassed by her own question:

- Have you done your homework yet? What time is it now?

I did my homework a long time ago, and all this time I watched a horror movie without sound. I still remember: some guy was just beaten there with an ice pick.

“Midnight,” I said.

The uncle turned out to be soft as dough, and I felt uneasy.

Mother held out her hand and I went over. She hugged me tightly around the waist.

- Would you like to see what I'm reading?

I bent over the notebook, staring at the flock of words. Chinese letters curled across the page like animal footprints in the snow.

“It's a book,” Mom said.

- Oh … And about what?

- In my opinion, this is a novel. There is about an adventurer named Da Wei who sailed to America on a ship, and about a heroine named May Fourth who crosses the Gobi Desert …

I looked even closer, but still couldn't read a word.

“There was a time when people copied whole books by hand,” my mother said. - The Russians called it "samizdat", the Chinese … okay, let's say, we don't really call it in any way. Look how dirty this notebook is, even the grass is stuck on it. Who knows how many people carried it with them … Lilin, she's many decades older than you.

"What's not older than me?" - I thought. And she asked if Daddy had copied it.

Mom shook her head. She said that the handwriting was marvelous, that it was the work of a trained calligrapher, and dad wrote so-so.

“This notebook contains a single chapter from some long book. It says here: "Number seventeen." Who is the author is not said, but look, the title: "The Book of Records."

Mom put down her notebook. Dad's papers on the dining table looked like snow-capped mountain peaks, hovering over the edge, about to crash and avalanche on the carpet. All our mail was also there. Since the New Year, my mother received letters from Beijing - condolences from the musicians of the Central Philharmonic, who had only recently learned about my father's death. Mom read these dictionary letters because they were written in simplified Chinese, which she did not know. My mother studied in Hong Kong and learned traditional Chinese writing there. But in the fifties on the mainland, in communist China, a new, simplified letter was legalized. Thousands of words have changed; for example, “to write” (tsjo) has changed from 寫 to 写, and “to recognize” (si) has changed from 識 to 识. Even the "Communist Party" (gong chan dan) from 共 產 黨 became 共产党. Sometimes mom was able to discern the past essence of the word, in other cases she wondered. She said it was like reading a letter from the future - or talking to someone who betrayed you. The fact that she rarely read Chinese anymore and expressed her thoughts mostly in English made matters even more complicated. As I speak Cantonese, she didn't like it because, in her words, "your pronunciation is at random."

“It's cold here,” I whispered. - Let's change into pajamas and go to bed.

Mom looked at the notebook, not even pretending to hear.

“Mother will get tired in the morning,” I insisted.- Mother will press "postpone signal" twenty times.

She smiled - but the eyes behind the glasses began to peer into something even more intently.

“Go to bed,” she said. “Don't wait for mother. I kissed her soft cheek.

- What did the Buddhist say in the pizzeria? she asked.

- What?

- "Everything is one for me."

I laughed, groaned and laughed again, then winced at the thought of the teleicide victim and his pasty skin. Mom with a smile, but firmly pushed me to the door.

Lying in bed, I thought about some facts.

Firstly, that in my fifth grade I turned into a completely different person. I was so kind there, so easygoing, so diligent that sometimes I even thought that my brain and soul existed separately.

Secondly, that in poorer countries, people like my mother and I would not be so lonely. There are always crowds on TV in poor countries, and crowded elevators rise straight to heaven. People sleep six in one bed, a dozen in one room. There you can always speak out loud and know that someone will hear you, even if they didn't want to. In fact, you can punish people like this: pull them out of the circle of relatives and friends, isolate them in some cold country and flatten them with loneliness.

Thirdly - and it was not so much a fact as a question: why did our love mean so little to dad?

I must have fallen asleep because I suddenly woke up and saw my mother bending over me and stroking my face with her fingertips. During the day I never cried - only at night.

“Don't, Lilin,” she said. She mumbled a lot.

“If you are locked in a room and no one comes to rescue you,” she asked, “what will you do? You have to bang on the walls and beat the windows. You have to get out and save yourself.

It is clear, Lilin, that tears do not help to survive.

“My name is Marie,” I yelled. - Marie!

- Who are you? she smiled.

- I'm Lilin!

“You are a Girl,” my mother used an affectionate nickname that my father used to call me, because the word 女 meant both “girl” and “daughter”. Dad liked to joke that in his homeland it was not customary for the poor to give their daughters names. Mom then patted him on the shoulder and said in Cantonese: "Stop stuffing her head with garbage."

Protected by my mother's embrace, I curled up into a ball and fell asleep again.

Later I woke up because my mother was quietly thinking aloud and giggling. The mornings that winter were pitch-black, but my mother's unexpected laugh echoed through the room like the hum of a heater. Her skin retained the scent of clean pillows and the sweet scent of her osmanthus cream.

When I called her name in a whisper, she muttered:

- Hee …

And then:

- Hee-hee …

- Are you in the next world or this one? I asked.

Then she said very clearly:

- He's here.

- Who? - I tried to peer into the darkness of the room.

I really believed he was here.

- Foster. This hmmm. This … Professor.

I gripped her fingers tightly. On the other side of the curtains, the sky changed color. I wanted to follow my mother into my father's past - and yet I did not trust him.

People can go for glamor; can see something so mesmerizing that they don't even think to turn around. I was afraid that my mother, like her father before, would forget why she had to return home.

Outside life - a new school year, regular tests, the joys of the camp of young mathematicians - continued, as if there would be no end to it, and the circular change of seasons drove her forward. Daddy's summer and winter coats were still waiting outside the door, between his hat and shoes.

In early December, a thick envelope arrived from Shanghai, and my mother sat down again at the dictionary. The Dictionary is a small, unusually thick book with a hard white and green cover. The pages shine through as I scroll through them, and they don't seem to weigh anything. Here and there I come across a speck of dirt or a coffee ring - a trace from my mother's or, perhaps, from my own cup. All words are distributed by roots or, as they are also called, by keys. For example, 門 means "gate", but it is also a key - that is, a building material for other words and concepts. If light or sun falls through the gate 日, then “space” 間 is obtained. If there is a horse at the gate 馬, then this is an "attack" 闖, and if there is a mouth at the gate 口, then it is a "question" 问. If there is an eye 目 and a dog 犬 inside, then we get “silence” 闃.

The letter from Shanghai turned out to be thirty pages long and was written in a very ornate handwriting; a few minutes later I was tired of watching my mother beating over him. I went into the living room and began to look at the neighboring houses. In the courtyard opposite, there was a pitiful-looking Christmas tree. The impression was as if they tried to strangle her with tinsel.

The rain whipped and the wind howled. I brought my mother a glass of eggnog.

- A letter about a good one?

Mom put down the sheets of paper covered with writing. Her eyelids were bulging.

- I did not expect this.

I ran my finger over the envelope and began to decipher the sender's name. It surprised me.

- Female? - I clarified, seized by sudden fear.

The mother nodded.

“She has a request for us,” my mother said, taking the envelope from me and stuffing it under some papers.

I came closer, as if it were a vase that was about to fly off the table, but an unexpected feeling was read in my mother's puffy eyes. Comfort? Or perhaps - and to my amazement - joy.

“She asks for help,” Mom continued.

- Will you read the letter to me?

Mom pinched the bridge of her nose.

“It’s altogether too long. She writes that she hasn't seen your father for many years. But once they were like one family - she pronounced the word "family" somewhat uncertainly. “She writes that her husband taught your father composition at the Shanghai Conservatory. But they lost touch. In … difficult years.

- What are these years?

I suspected that the request, whatever it was, would certainly involve dollars or, for example, a new refrigerator, and that my mother would simply be used.

- Before you were born. Sixties. When your father was still studying at the conservatory, - my mother lowered her eyes with an expressionless look. “She writes that he contacted them last year. Dad wrote to her from Hong Kong a few days before his death.

A whirlwind of questions, clinging to each other, arose in me. I understood that I shouldn't pester my mother about trifles, but since I just wanted to understand what was happening, I finally said:

- Who is she? What is her name?

- Her last name is Dan.

- And the name?

Mom opened her mouth but said nothing. Finally she looked me straight in the eye and said:

- And the name is Lilin.

Same as mine - only it was written in simplified Chinese. I reached out my hand for the letter, and my mother firmly covered it with hers. Anticipating the next question, she leaned forward:

“These thirty pages are all about the present, not about the past. Dan Lilin's daughter flew to Toronto, but cannot use her passport. She has nowhere to go, and we must help her. Her daughter … - her mother deftly put the letter in an envelope, - … her daughter will come and live here with us for a while. Understand? This is about the present.

I felt as if I had rolled to the side and turned upside down. Why would a stranger live with us?

“Her daughter’s name is Ai Min,” my mother said, trying to bring me back to reality. - I'll call now and invite her to come.

- Are we the same age?

Mom seems embarrassed.

- No, she must be at least nineteen, she goes to university. Deng Liling writes that her daughter … she writes that Ai Ming got into trouble in Beijing during the Tiananmen demonstrations. She ran.

- What kind of trouble?

“Enough,” said the mother. “You don’t need to know more.

- No! I need to know more. - Mom angrily slammed the dictionary.

- And anyway, who allowed you to get up? Mala still be so curious!

- But…

- Enough.

Mari Jiang's family immigrated to Canada from China, settling in Vancouver. After the suicide of her father, a talented pianist, the girl sits down to sort out his papers and gradually learns what trials the deceased has suffered.

The events of the past and the present overlap each other, intertwining and turning into a large-scale saga covering three generations and a huge layer of the country's history: from the civil war and the Cultural Revolution to the events in Tiananmen Square. And Marie tries to piece together the shattered pieces of the puzzle to recreate her family's history. Translated from English by Mary Morris.

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