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

by Xiao-Mei, Zhu

  Desperate, I tried my luck at the bakery in Saxon River. The owner, doubtful, asked me if I was ready to get up at four a.m. every day. I explained to him that I had done that for years, in a labor camp. He stared at me, and then looked at my hands.

  “They’re too small; you’ll never be able to knead the dough.”

  I thought of Professor Pan, who had once said: “Try to draw energy from the keyboard, not just transmit energy to it. Imagine you are kneading dough. You’ll see, this will entirely change your relationship to the instrument.” There was no point in arguing with the baker; he didn’t think I was right for the job.

  Things were not looking good. I had neither work nor any prospects. Thankfully, Mary and Ryan were there to support me. When, at the end of the first month I stayed with them, I tried to give them a hundred dollars to help out, Ryan refused. He was interested in everything, and not a day went by without him asking me about China or the Cultural Revolution. He went all out to keep me busy; on weekends he took me skating and on motorbike outings. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the motorbike excursions, but I reassured him that they were great fun.

  Meanwhile, Mary understood what I needed most—to have quiet time for myself. She was also an artist, and she understood the value of silence. If I was practicing when she returned home from work, she would slip silently into the living room to listen, gesturing for me to keep playing. When her friends came to visit, she told them not to disturb me. When she organized a party, she apologized. She showed me great respect, and I returned it in kind.

  There was only one thing that Mary and Ryan couldn’t understand: why I practiced so much. Mary would say to me gently:

  “You don’t have a job or any upcoming concerts. Where do you find the energy to keep up such discipline? Where does that come from in you?”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  But what I did know was that I had just had the musical encounter of my life. The Goldberg Variations completely took over my existence. This music contained everything: it had all one needed to live. The first variation gave me courage. I smiled when I rehearsed the tenth, which is playful; I sang to the thirteenth, whose musical line soothes me like no other work. The polonaise rhythm of the twenty-fourth had me dancing, and I meditated during the fifteenth and twenty-fifth, two of the three variations in minor keys: they moved me to tears.

  Then there is the thirtieth, the famous Quodlibet that I understand as a sort of hymn to the glory of the world. The more I practiced it, the more it amazed me. By blending two popular songs from the period in the bass line that provides the backbone of the variations, Bach is at the height of his powers; the profane gives birth to the sacred, the most learned counterpoint gives way to the greatest simplicity. One day, I discovered the name of one of the two melodies that he used for this particular variation: “Cabbages and turnips drove me away—had my mother cooked meat I’d have chosen to stay.” What were cabbages doing in this sublime variation? At the same time, how was it not possible to recall the cabbages that we had been forced to harvest in the fields of Zhangjiakou, the same cabbages that turned up each day in my mess tin? It was a sign of fate. Even today, when I reach this final variation, I see the gloomy, arid hills of Zhangjiakou.

  Finally, the initial aria returns, for me the most moving passage of all. Throughout the thirty variations, the tension mounts. Bach has drawn upon every possible human emotion. Then, suddenly, all that remains is a serene, comforting music, the exact opposite of the great crescendos that end so many classical works. Gently, the aria sinks into oblivion: a void that is not an expression of want, or death, but rather of well-being and light. As the music subsides, the spirit ascends.

  I took my new working methods and tried to apply them to the Goldberg Variations, pushing them to the extreme. It was a difficult challenge, and only rarely was I successful.

  First, I emptied my mind before playing. Then came the search for a tempo that simultaneously allowed the piece to breathe, brought out all of the splendors of the score, and also allowed thought to develop as naturally as possible. Incidentally, the search for a proper tempo is not confined to the world of music—one must seek it in life as well. Then I tried to uncover the thrust and the truth of the score. Finally, I disappeared behind the music, as though my study of Laozi and Zhuangzi had finally showed me that the best pianists—like the best rulers—are those of whom one is barely aware, and that this was a worthy goal.

  It was not as though I had found the key or discovered an explanation or a response to a question. I didn’t consciously alter my manner of playing. Instead, each day, through practice, this new approach became more natural.

  The more I worked on the Goldberg Variations, the more it seemed to me that Bach provides a perfect illustration of this horizontal thrust in music, of the line and movement that had become increasingly precious to me. Whether in the Variations or elsewhere, there are very few rests in Bach. The music is more about flow, with lines continually overlapping in the composer’s learned counterpoint, even in the most prominent articulations in the discourse. As I see it, this is what makes Bach’s music so soothing for its listeners. With few exceptions—such as in the two Passions—it is never dramatic or halting, but rather serene and sustained.

  And yet, the Goldberg Variations provides an unsurpassed example of how this horizontal motion needs to be underpinned by the throbbing pulse of the bass—isn’t the theme of the variations made up of the bass notes of the thirty-two measures of the initial theme? In the Goldberg Variations, it is the bass that is the giver of life.

  I was astounded to find the most basic elements of Chinese culture in the Variations, as though Bach had had a premonition or was the reincarnation of a great Chinese sage. In my opinion, Bach surpassed his calling as a Lutheran who placed his art in the service of God. He is universal.

  The intertwining musical lines of Bach’s counterpoint reminds me of calligraphy, a typical Chinese art form that is primarily the art of breathing and meditation. When I practice, I think of the great masters of Chinese calligraphy who withdrew into the silence of the mountains. They watched and contemplated, refraining from any action, until one day they found they were ready. Under the Ming Dynasty, the eighteen-year-old prince Zhu Da was forced to flee the Manchu invasions and become a monk in a mountain monastery. He lived there, poor and unknown, spending most of his life in contemplation. Finally, he painted a few rare masterpieces and achieved fame at an advanced age. Zheng Banqiao, a prodigious painter of bamboo trees, spent forty years of his solitary life contemplating and painting his subject. He wrote:

  When you think you are descending,

  you are climbing, but you do not know it.

  When you think you are climbing,

  in reality you are descending.

  Keep working and one day, without expecting it,

  you will achieve your desire.

  I took heart from the stories of the lives of Zhu Da and Zheng Banqiao. Instead of being destroyed by the poverty, the anonymity, and the scorn that they both suffered—they grew stronger.

  My attempts to withdraw in my thoughts to the mountains, as they had done, helped me to achieve a long-sought goal: to disappear behind the composer. In doing so, I feel as though I no longer exist, and therefore cannot willfully place myself between the composer and the music. All I can do is show the composer’s genius.

  The range of musical climates and moods in the Goldberg Variations reminds me of the concept of the “golden mean,” which Professor Pan first told me about. Through this work, I think I now understand what he meant. The point is not to take a middle path that is a type of compromise resulting from a refusal to choose extremes. Rather, it is about finding a point of equilibrium that allows one to bring out every dimension of the work. What is special about the Goldberg Variations is that it calls on every human emotion, every feeling. This is what makes it one of humanity’s greatest masterpieces, and why it speaks volumes to an audience. In t
his work, Bach has put life itself to music—life in all of its infinite variety.

  Buddhists always depict Buddha smiling. There are always two aspects to everything, to every being. There is no single truth—everything depends on the way in which one wants to see reality. That is life, and that is the Goldberg Variations. Through it, I also now understand why polyphony, Bach’s in particular, affects me more deeply than any other type of music. By means of its various voices, it alone is capable of simultaneously expressing multiple and contradictory emotions, without one necessarily taking precedence over another.

  And then, of course, there is the mystery of the aria that introduces and closes the Variations. Western musical masterpieces that employ such a structure are rare indeed. And none of them are as essentially Taoist as Bach’s composition. It reminds me of what Laozi said about the Tao, that endless, universal movement infused with the breath of life: “Returning is the movement of the Tao.”

  The water of the initial aria gives birth to the river of variations; it flows, evaporates, and returns as a shower of fine rain. Water is present in Bach’s very name—Bach in German means “brook.” The water of the closing aria is that of the opening aria, and yet it is not the same. We are witness not to an eternal return, but to a transformation.

  The end has joined the beginning, but it is different.

  24

  A Haven

  To breathe Paris preserves the soul.

  (Victor Hugo, Les Misérables)

  When I had received my US passport, I was finally able to leave the United States for Paris. I bid farewell to Mary and Ryan.

  Madame Aalam welcomed me like her own daughter.

  “Now we can look after you properly,” she told me.

  And indeed, my second stay in Paris would be characterized by the occurrence of one miracle after another. I met extraordinary friends, I became acquainted with France and the rest of Europe, and I discovered what respect for artists means.

  To begin with, I finally started to explore the city. I love the weather in Paris, the colors of the sky, always a bit over-cast and melancholy. I wandered along the banks of the Seine and through the streets, enchanted by the beauty of places I stumbled upon—the Place Dauphine, the Place de Furstenberg, and the Place des Vosges, where the memory of Victor Hugo still lingers. There are many churches that offer a glimpse of heaven as soon as you enter them: Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Saint-Germain-des-Prés. I discovered a former residence of Marie Curie—a role model for me—as well as places where Chopin, Picasso, and others had once stayed. With every step I felt that my life was becoming linked with humanity’s guiding lights. I went to the Père-Lachaise cemetery to see the Communards’ Wall, imagining the final battles of the Commune. I visited museums and exhibitions—where else in the world do people stand in such long lines waiting to get into shows? I lingered in cafés; I liked watching the people who work in them, the swift, elegant waiters moving like actors on stage. Paris seemed marvelously beautiful to me. The only thing that shocked me was the way Parisians can lock themselves up in loneliness, the indifference they often display, the haughtiness of certain shopkeepers. But take it all around: is it possible to imagine a better place to drop anchor?

  Madam Aalam put me in contact with a couple she knew—Jean-Luc Chalumeau and his wife, Estelle—whom I had met at her place before my departure. They both sensed my secret desire to finally have a place of my own, and it was Jean-Luc who helped me find my first real apartment. It was just a little studio on the second floor, and gave onto a fairly dark courtyard, but it was in a building on the Quai de Conti where he and his wife lived, and the rent was affordable. I moved there in the early fall of 1988. It was my own home. Something I’d never had before.

  However, if I were to settle in, I had one final task: I had to buy a piano. A real one, a grand piano. Not a Steinway, certainly—that was beyond my means—but a solid instrument on which I could practice in a professional manner. Then came the delivery day for the piano. I couldn’t help thinking about that other piano, the one that had been delivered to my parents’ house when I was three years old. What had become of it, the Robinson, my faithful companion at Zhangjiakou? For the first time in my life, I was deliberately unfaithful to it. I had replaced it. Would it be upset with me when I confessed what I had done?

  My neighbors soon became friends. Estelle found me my first students. Josette Devin, a member of the French Resistance in World War Two, was a great source of moral support. I learned from her that it is possible to have “known the smell of fear” and still live happily. The American painter Marion Pike, who painted stupendous portraits of André Malraux, Coco Chanel, and others, gave me several of her paintings—in time, she suggested that I sell them to pay my rent, which of course I refused to do. Laurence Rousselot, my first student, not only suggested that I join her in the south of France but also offered me a train ticket to get there. Thanks to her kindness, I took the first vacation of my life.

  Anna Kamp was drawn to my apartment by the music she heard coming through the thin walls that separated our two flats; she insisted on introducing me to her painter friend Gérard Fromanger, a well-known figure on the French cultural scene. Thanks to him, I met the cellist Alain Meunier. Alain spontaneously suggested that I play with him at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Sienna. One of the works that we interpreted together was Beethoven’s Sonata No. 5 in D Major for Cello and Piano. The score had not been on my music rest since my chamber music sessions at Zhangjiakou with Like. I started to play it: D–F sharp–E–D, D. On my old Robinson, the string for high D was among those that I had replaced with wire; this was the first time I was able to hear the note as it should sound! A few months later, he invited me to perform with him at the Paris Conservatory. Alain’s wife was Annick Goutal, the well-known perfume creator. She was very beautiful, the embodiment of French sophistication. Her elegance was matched only by her generosity: a good example of this was how she invited the street person who lived outside her building to come wash up in her bathroom when he needed. He thanked her with bouquets he put together using flowers salvaged from a nearby florist. Since her death in 1999, I’ve never stopped thinking about her. I often pass by her house. The street person is also no longer there.

  During my first stay in Paris, my intimate circle consisted mainly of foreigners. This time I also had French friends—and what friends they were!

  Each individual filled me with courage, and this allowed me to believe in myself. One day I asked Estelle if she wouldn’t mind helping me organize my first real concert in Paris. I intuitively thought of my two favorite churches, Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. In the end, it would be the latter. My choice of program was already clear to me: the Goldberg Variations. After all the years, I sensed the moment was right: I felt ready.

  Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre is in the center of Paris, but it feels like a country church, with its lingering Romanesque touches, its heavy buttresses, and its small, round chapels. The intimate atmosphere it creates reminds me of Chinese architecture, a contemplative space that perfectly matches Bach’s music.

  Sue Fleisher kept her promise and was there for my first concert in France. Even though she was battling terminal cancer, she wanted to be present with me one last time, in the country of her childhood. She arranged for a program to be printed in which she explained the history of the church and the legend of Julian the Poor as told by Flaubert in his Three Tales. Flaubert—the bourgeois writer whom I had been forced to denounce during my self-criticism at the Conservatory. I thought back to the second of the Three Tales, “The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitalier,” which is another name for Saint Julian the Poor. I remembered the scene in which Julian slaughters an entire herd of deer, and is cursed by a great stag who intones: “Accurst! accurst! accurst! one day, ferocious heart, thou shalt murder thy father and thy mother!” Julian’s two parents wander in search of him, and finally arrive at his castle, “an old man and an old woman, be
nt and dust-covered, wearing coarse linen garments, each leaning on a stick.” I thought of my mother and father, whom I had not seen in nearly a decade, and I wished they could have been present.

  I spent some time visiting the church in order to connect with its spirit; I felt entirely at ease there. Preparing for the concert seemed superfluous. This time I trusted myself.

  The following Wednesday, the weather was a bit brisk as I headed over to Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. The church was full. All the seats in the nave and the aisles were occupied, and the audience was starting to sit on the floor, up against the platform that my building’s caretaker had insisted on putting up himself, out of friendship. My friends had gone to great lengths to help; without either a poster or any kind of advertisement, word of mouth had brought everyone together. Yet another miracle. Estelle informed me that the parish priests had prayed that my concert would be successful.

  It was after nine thirty when I was told that I could begin the concert. I sat down at the piano and began the aria. Everything was so simple, natural, and easy. After everything I had been through, the time had come. The silence that reigned in the church let me know that I was in communion with the audience. I played the final notes of the closing aria as if transported.

  My first real public success. At forty years old.

  Ever since that evening, Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre has remained for me a place of solace, contemplation, and protection. Whenever I feel my spirits flag, or before a concert, I go there to pray or meditate: whatever word one uses, the act is universal. You don’t have to be a Christian to experience the special atmosphere of this little church. I prefer it to its larger neighbor, Notre Dame, which is magnificent, but much less intimate.