The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations

by Xiao-Mei, Zhu

  Xiaoqin took very good care of me. She spent days on the telephone telling my story to her friends and asking them for help. As a writer, she knew many of the Chinese intellectuals and artists who had immigrated to France. Despite their willingness to help, however, they were perplexed about my situation. Was I American or Chinese? Was I a pianist, a house cleaner, a baby-sitter, a cook—what exactly did I want? Zhao Wuji, the renowned Chinese painter who had come to France in the aftermath of the Second World War, was looking for a caretaker for his house. Xiaoqin suggested me to his son, but Zhao Wuji couldn’t imagine that a pianist would want to work as a caretaker, and nothing came of it. It was only much later that I met him. He came to my first concert, and generously invited me to choose one of his works to use for the cover of my first CD.

  After a few days, it became plain as day—my diploma from the New England Conservatory didn’t mean anything to anyone in France. If my goal was to play and give concerts, I would have to make myself known to some influential musicians, and to do that, the best thing would be to go and study with them. Before leaving Brattleboro, I’d finally gotten up the courage to write Rudolf Serkin, who personally responded—like the gentleman that he was—inviting me to come see him. I told myself that I had missed the opportunity of a lifetime, that it had been a crazy idea to move to France, but it was too late to turn back.

  Xiaoqin made some inquiries. I had already passed the age limit for the Conservatory, but the École Normale de Musique didn’t have the same restrictions; I could go there and study. She advised me to contact Marian Rybicki. He spoke English and I would be able to explain my situation to him.

  The very next morning I telephoned him.

  “I am a Chinese pianist, and I have just arrived in France from the US, where I was studying. Would it be possible to play something for you?”

  “Of course!”

  He was so welcoming that I immediately followed up with:

  “When might I come?”

  I heard him page through his datebook.

  “The earliest I can manage is the day after tomorrow. Would that suit you?”

  That meant I only had a single day to prepare! Xiaoqin didn’t have a piano at her house, and I hadn’t played in a good two weeks. We hurried over to Daudé, the well-known piano showroom on Avenue de Wagram, where there are magnificent Steinway pianos. They were out of my price range: I just had enough to rent the least expensive, smallest upright piano, which was berthed at the back of the store. But that was good enough for me to work on my beloved Davidsbündlertänze. I didn’t have much time.

  When the day came, I went to see Marian Rybicki. I asked about his rates: four hundred francs an hour. Since this represented a large part of my savings, I gave myself one hour, and no more, to convince him.

  Marian Rybicki was as warm in person as he had been on the telephone. I described my personal and professional history to him in a few sentences, all the while keeping an eye on my watch. He was incredibly kind and asked me question after question. Meanwhile, I was preoccupied with my savings, dwindling as we spoke. I was impatient but did my very best not to let it show. When was he going to ask me to sit down at the piano? Finally, after a half hour had passed, he said:

  “Wonderful. Now I’m very anxious to listen to you. What are you going to play for me?”

  “Schumann. The Davidsbündlertänze.”

  I placed my watch on the piano, and not merely because I was following Gabriel Chodos’s example. The Davidsbündlertänze take approximately thirty-seven minutes to play. Even if I sped up the tempo, I wouldn’t be able to play them in the remaining half hour: I was going to have to stop before the end. My watch would let me know when.

  Even today, Marian Rybicki loves to tell the story of what happened next. I was in the process of playing the penultimate Davidsbündlertänze piece, one of the most beautiful in the series. At that moment, the alarm on my watch went off; the time was up. I didn’t have the means to pay for anything more. I abruptly stopped playing.

  Marian Rybicki leaped out of his seat.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I only have four hundred francs. I have just enough for an hour with you.”

  “You’re out of your mind! I’ve never heard Schumann played like that before, and you stopped right in the middle! Obviously, I am not going to ask you to pay. Instead, let me know how I can assist you.”

  It wasn’t difficult to know how to respond: he could help with so many things. I quickly explained my situation: I dreamed of settling in Paris; this meant obtaining a long-term visa as well as a scholarship. He listened to me very seriously, not saying a word, and then promised he would get back to me.

  In less than two days, he had made good on his promise. During this time he had found a scholarship, a maid’s room on the seventh floor of a building on Avenue de Suffren, and he had seven students standing by, ready to let me play their pianos, one for each day of the week. It was nothing short of a miracle. What I had heard was true: France really was a land of welcome!

  I left Xiaoqin’s apartment for my new home. The room was empty; furnishing it would have to wait for better days. But it didn’t matter—I’d sleep on the floor. What was important now was not settling in, but getting down to work. Working to get myself known, once again, at thirty-six years old, an age when most concert pianists already have a long career behind them. I never ceased to pay for those long years of education-less “re-education.”

  Happily, the students Marian Rybicki introduced me to were a great support, and many of them became close friends. Like me, most of them had also left their native counties; together, we formed a bulwark against adversity. Despite my miraculous encounter with Marian Rybicki, I learned how hard Paris can be for foreigners. We stuck together and accompanied each other though the inevitable administrative obstacles, without which France would not be France.

  The most flamboyant of my friends was called Braz. He was from Brazil, and he turned out to be an unbelievably sensitive pianist. Born into an upper-class family from Rio de Janeiro, he lived the high life in Paris—at least for the first two weeks of the month. The rest of the time, having gone through the monthly allowance he received from his parents, he didn’t even have enough money to eat. I met him during one of these periods. For some time now, I had been a master of making delicious Chinese food with just a little rice, a few eggs, a bit of carrot, and some peas. This was how he made it through to the end of the month.

  Braz’s working method was the exact opposite of mine: he got down to work in his own good time.

  “You practice too much,” he would always say.

  One day, I told him about the shock I had experienced coming up out of the Pont Neuf metro station: before then, I was completely unaware that Paris was so beautiful. I admitted that, since my arrival, all I had seen of the city was the inside of the metro. Braz shot me a dismayed look:

  “Clearly, I’m going to have to step in, or you’ll never stop working.”

  And thanks to him, I came up from underground. He became my first Paris tour guide.

  Later, after Braz had gotten acquainted with my maid’s room—which didn’t take long—he suggested that when I practiced the piano at his place, I might also take advantage of his more comfortable bathroom facilities. I readily agreed. One Sunday morning, however, I couldn’t open the door of his apartment with the key he had given me. I repeatedly tried the lock, but nothing helped. I was still at it when suddenly the door opened and Braz stood on the threshold, grumpy and half-asleep.

  “Xiao-Mei, what’s going on?”

  “I came to practice the piano—I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Not only am I here, but I’m not alone. And it’s Sunday morning! Don’t you know anything about life?”

  Nasi also became my friend. She was an Iranian princess—beautiful, elegant, and discreet in a quintessentially Middle Eastern way. She was also my first French teacher. With her, Braz, and a few
other friends, including Lin, a Chinese woman married to a reverend, we often did things together. Even if we didn’t have a cent, we attended concerts, visited Paris, read books out loud, and led a wonderful bohemian life, always busy, always laughing.

  Another of Marian Rybicki’s students would also come to play an important role in my life: Madame Aalam. She was over eighty but looked twenty years younger, and her life was like something out of a novel. She was the daughter of one of the Shah’s physicians. At twenty, a bit like my mother, she had left her family to run off with a Russian violinist with whom she had fallen head over heels in love. Later, in Iran, she opened one of the first institutions dedicated to the education of young girls, before fleeing the country when the Pahlavi dynasty fell.

  The first time we met, she told me the story of how, one day, when she was in charge of the Iran House at the Cité Universitaire in Paris, a group of young Maoists had heatedly criticized her for her past. She invited them to her house to talk it over. By the end of the evening, they had all become friends. I quickly saw that she had a quality that I will never possess: she was fearless!

  When she found out about the modest nature of my accommodations, she invited me to stay in her magnificent Paris apartment and take advantage of her Steinway. The morning after I moved in, I made the same offer that I had made to my other hosts: to do a little housework in exchange for a place to live. Her black eyes fixed on me:

  “Absolutely not! Do you hear me? Never! On the contrary, my cleaning woman will take care of you. I want you to practice the piano without a thought of anything else.”

  It was the first time anyone had ever spoken to me like that.

  She took me to the Louvre. In the Denon wing, she pointed out a statue to me, which stood at the top of a wide staircase.

  “You see, when you go on stage, I would like you to be like her: victorious and masterful, but light and graceful at the same time.”

  I admired the masterpiece that rose in front of me: the Winged Victory of Samothrace.

  “I understand what you have been through,” she told me another time. “What you need now is to have confidence in yourself.”

  She had a very oriental way of affirming and promoting me. When we took the bus, she would announce to the conductor that he had the good fortune to be chauffeuring a great pianist. When we went to buy medicine, she would inform the pharmacist that he was waiting on an important artist. In those moments, I didn’t know which way to look, but what could you say to someone who one day declared, in all seriousness:

  “If I knew that it would allow me to play Kinderszenen the way you do, I’d be ready to leave immediately for ten years in camp at Zhangjiakou!”

  A few months had gone by when Marian Rybicki announced that he had organized a series of concerts in Poland for me. My first tour! Six concerts!

  The first event was held in the house where Chopin was born, in elazowa Wola. At the end of the concert, I was congratulated. The audience had enjoyed how I had played the Mazurkas, which I had worked on with Marian Rybicki. I was reminded that my fellow countryman, Fu Cong, had received the Mazurka Prize for his interpretation of the same pieces at the 1955 Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Then, seeking an answer to a question that intrigued them, they asked: “Is there a particular Chinese aesthetic for the interpretation of these short works?”

  I love Poland and its audiences, which are so sensitive to music. I felt a particular sympathy for this people, who, like the Chinese, were not yet free. I understood them, and shared their frustration.

  I received a princely sum for the six concerts—the equivalent of two years’ salary for a Polish worker. Unfortunately, the złoty was not convertible at that time, and I wouldn’t be able to take the money out of Poland. I then had the idea of contacting the Chinese ambassador to Poland. I explained to him who I was and the nature of my call. I wanted to entrust him with my concert wages so that he could purchase scores of Chopin’s music for the Beijing Conservatory. The ambassador was at first suspicious, then aggressive, and then subjected me to a veritable interrogation before hanging up on me. Another tie with my country was broken. When I think that Teng Wenji advised me not to leave China! Instead, I donated the money to Solidarity, which at that time was a symbol of hope for so many Polish people.

  Back in Paris, I was faced with a new and quite difficult challenge: my student visa was about to expire, and I had to go and plead my case at the immigration office at the Prefecture of Police. On my first visit, I waited eight hours, and I finally reached the window just as the office was closing. The next day, I got up at five a.m. in order to be first in line. I didn’t fare any better; after four hours, I was rudely turned away without being able to offer a word in my defense. I went back again—and again. I got a glimpse of a very different side of France: bureaucratic, indifferent, hostile. The only clear information I was able to obtain was that it would be easier for me to apply for French nationality with an American passport than a Chinese one. I would have to return to the States and wait a year and a half for my official papers to come through.

  Everything had been going so well. In Paris I was happy, I had made wonderful friends, and I was starting to have a concert career. And now, due to the visa predicament, I had to turn around and go back. I felt bitter and discouraged. Would I ever find a permanent home?

  I didn’t have much choice. I made some calls to friends in America, hoping to find a place to land. Janet, a musicologist living in Boston, agreed to take me in.

  I filled my bags with my few items of clothing and all my scores and flew to Boston. Janet owned two beautiful Blüthner pianos. I consoled myself with the fact that, at least, I’d be able to practice.

  Unfortunately, it can sometimes happen that professional musicians have difficulty listening to the repertoire of others. Except for one musical work…

  23

  The Goldberg Variations

  Returning is the movement of the Tao.

  (Laozi)

  There was simply nothing to be done about it. Following my arrival in Boston, I had to face facts: I couldn’t impose my playing on Janet. I understood her reasons all too well—between working on her thesis in musicology and giving piano lessons, she was up to her ears in music. There was only one solution: I’d have to practice when she wasn’t at home.

  One day, when I was glancing through her extensive music library looking for a piece to sight-read, I fell upon a thick score by Bach, the Goldberg Variations. The work was composed late in Bach’s life, and the story of how it came to be written is a curious one. Count Hermann Carl von Keyserlingk, the Russian ambassador to Dresden, suffered from insomnia. He commissioned Bach to write a work that his young harpsichordist, Goldberg, could play for him at night while he was waiting to fall asleep. It is one of the rare works that Bach—who never imagined a posthumous legacy—had printed.

  I had never before attempted the Goldberg Variations, and I thought to myself that there was enough material to keep me occupied for a while.

  I placed the score on the music rest.

  The opening aria—what a gentle beginning! Here was music that took its time, that welcomed the listener. I went on to the first variation, and then the second. An hour and a half later, I was back to the initial aria, which concludes the work’s thirty variations.

  While I was practicing, I was unaware that Janet had returned home. This time, however, she didn’t interrupt me. It wasn’t until I had finished the last note that she came up to me.

  “You can play the Goldberg Variations as often as you like,” she said. “You have no idea how much good that did me. I could listen to them forever.”

  I was only too willing to oblige. For several weeks, I worked on the Goldberg Variations, sometimes up to eight hours a day, and Janet never complained. I became Goldberg to her Countess Keyserlingk. As soon as the opening notes of the aria sounded, she felt well again. As a sign of encouragement, she even presented me with a copy of Frederick Neumann’s
Ornamentation in Baroque and Post-Baroque Music. I, however, curiously enough, was not yet entirely won over by the piece: to be truthful, its overriding virtue was that it allowed me to play.

  When Janet was just about to defend her thesis, I decided—in spite of the restorative virtues of the Goldberg Variations—to find another place to live, so that she could work in peace. The first friend I asked to take me in replied, in all seriousness:

  “It’s out of the question. My husband isn’t working. He is at home all day, and I can’t leave the two of you alone together.”

  I couldn’t get over it. First, that she could have had such a thought, and second, that she would dare to express it to me. Remember, I told myself, you’re not in China anymore—a response like hers would have been considered a serious offense there.

  Things went better with the second call: Mary and Ryan agreed to put me up. Mary taught ceramics at an art school, and Ryan was an insurance salesman. They lived outside of Brattleboro, where I had met them, in Saxon River, a village that had only a supermarket, a bakery, a post office, and a church.

  At the same time, I applied for a job at the music school where I had previously taught. The answer was unequivocal:

  “I’m sorry, but you left. That’s it. This is not a hotel.”

  Next, I tried my luck at Smith College, one of the area’s most prestigious institutions. I will never forget the compliments the Dean paid me following my interpretation of a mazurka by Chopin. I had played it for her to demonstrate my abilities. She promised to do her best to create a position for me, but there was nothing she could offer me at the present time.

  I sent out fifty resumes; no responses. My friends suggested that I look for a position in Washington. I put all I had into a plane ticket, but to no avail.