The Phoenix Song

by John Sinclair

  Eight million hectares of previously arid land had sprouted crops, and the flooding of the great rivers would soon be a thing of the past. Grain production doubled, then quadrupled and then increased tenfold. One million backyard steel furnaces were set to catapult China ahead of Britain in steel production within the course of the year. Peasants arose from their villages and set off to the deserts of Xinjiang and Gansu to prospect for oil and uranium. Was there any miracle that the peasants could not conjure from the good earth?

  At the Conservatory, we felt keenly our duty to join in the Da Yue Jin, the Great Leap Forward. Director Ho was eager to apply socialist construction to composition and performance, as long as the quality of the work was not lessened. ‘Our music must be one hundred percent music,’ he said, ‘just as steel must be one hundred percent steel and grain one hundred percent grain.’ His first move was to revive the project to stage the first performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with all Chinese performers. Immediately I was back in the orchestra, practicing in the grand salon on Bubbling Well Road; but this time I was sitting closer to the leader, because several of the players had unmasked themselves as Rightists during the Hundred Flowers Movement and were being re-educated.

  One Monday we were summoned to hear Director Ho (flanked by Yu Huiyong, and Ding Shangde) address the Conservatory on the matter of production quotas. This was the first time he had been seen in public for weeks. Madame Huang, I noticed, now perched behind Yu’s shoulder, whispering into his ear as she had once whispered into Ho’s. ‘Like every other work unit,’ He began, ‘the Conservatory must increase its production. We must strive for goals we have so far thought unattainable. For this reason, we are announcing today that the Conservatory will produce 600 new works during the next year, including symphonies, operas, instrumental pieces and songs. I invite all faculty and students to consider how they will contribute to this goal, and to notify Professor Yu of their personal production plans. I myself, in addition to my six days a week of administration work, will compose one symphony, one opera or oratorio, and ten instrumental works.’

  Director Ho’s announcement was met with enthusiastic applause. ‘And now,’ he continued, ‘my comrades Professor Yu and Professor Ding will announce their personal plans for socialist musical construction.’ He took his seat and there was a pause as the two Deputy Directors swapped glances. Ding moved first, clasping and unclasping his hands as he stood and took the podium, and in his squeaky voice committed himself to a personal production quota of ten learned articles on the class origins of the erhu and similar subjects, and five performances of socialist operas. He received polite applause. Professor Yu followed immediately, announcing that, in spite of his onerous administrative burden he would compose twenty art songs, thirty songs for the masses, and thirty pieces for instructing children in the principles of Marxism. One by one the faculty, the senior composition students and then many junior students stood to make pledges to compose so many new works, or give so many performances in factories, or teach so many peasants to sing revolutionary songs.

  Tian Mei Yun rose and told the story of the success of the ‘electrification suite’, and committed ‘the Hainan Group’ to composing ten more such works. At the end of the session, Madame Huang, who had been keeping a tally of the pledges, announced that the goal of 600 had been reached. ‘Let the work of socialist musical construction begin!’ Director Ho said, and dismissed us to begin our work. Professor Yu left the room quickly with Ding and Madame Huang, while Director Ho remained for several minutes, listening attentively as two students expounded the storyline of their new opera, a mischievous grin fixed to his face.

  That evening I met with Ling Ling and Tian Mei Yun, and instead of practising we discussed our contribution to the Conservatory’s quota. Tian produced his scores of the ‘electrification suite’ and its companions and dropped them on the table. ‘Here are six works of socialist construction,’ he said, settling himself onto the windowsill. ‘Ten more should be easy.’

  ‘I suggest we take a mathematical approach to the multiplication of music,’ I said, picking up a piece of Brahms. I put it on the piano, and directed Ling Ling to play the first four bars. When she had finished I took the score and turned it upside down, and scrawled new treble and bass clefs on alternate lines. ‘This is a technique pioneered by Johann Sebastian Bach,’ I explained, as I drew in the flats to ensure that the inverted piece was still in B-minor. Ling Ling attempted the new piece, stumbling once or twice, but making it to the end. I was pleasantly surprised at the results. A few phrases sounded odd, and we had to change some notes to repair these. ‘One journey up the mountain; a different journey down,’ Tian commented from his perch on the windowsill. I got Ling Ling to play the next four bars back to front, rather than upside down. This was also a tolerable success. We gave the same treatment to the violin and cello lines and soon had several pages of a trio. Tian descended from the windowsill and we gave the piece a first run through.

  A bell rang to announce that our practice time was over. There was a gentle rap on the door, and the handle turned. A bespectacled student stood in the doorway holding a handwritten score rolled up one hand and cradling a cornet in the other elbow. ‘That sounded okay,’ he said. ‘A bit like Beethoven with Chinese characteristics.’

  My scientific compositional technique – with its ability to multiply one great piece of music into an infinite number of passable derivative pieces – proved a very timely invention, for on Tuesday the newspaper announced the Conservatory’s plans to contribute 600 new works, but also published the pledge by the Shanghai Musicians’ Association to an initial goal of 1,000 songs to be composed during the next year. And on Wednesday, the Shanghai Writers’ Association announced that they would produce 150 texts per week. On Thursday the Conservatory was reconvened and Director Ho informed us that, after consultation with the masses, he had concluded that we needed to set our sights higher. Another round of pledges followed and we increased our production goal to 1,734 new works. The news was carried in the paper on Friday; but the following Monday the Musicians’ Association and the Writers’ Association announced that they too had discussed their quotas with the masses, and agreed to raise them to 1,500 new works and 250 texts per week. For several more days the parties lobbed numerical grenades at each other, until there was a meeting somewhere over a meal and they agreed to an all-Shanghai music quota: exactly 5,873 new compositions for the year.

  ‘The universe of music is vast,’ Director Ho told us. ‘That much should be obvious simply from the mathematics: so many notes, so many combinations of those notes, so many instruments, so many tempi, so many ways of arranging point and counterpoint. The number of possible compositions can barely be imagined, but it is not infinite. Over several hundred years the composers of capitalism have claimed vast territories. So too the classical composers of China. But these are still only a fraction of what is yet to be claimed by a diligent cadre of Chinese socialist composers. Music is a resource, like coal or oil. There may be twenty million compositions yet to be written, or a hundred million or a billion, but we have the capacity to train a million composers, to train ten million. We have the capacity, within a generation, if we meet and exceed our quotas, to claim for China a lion’s share of all of the music that remains to be discovered.’

  *

  So during the spring and summer of 1958 the Shanghai Conservatory rang to the sound of hastily composed music. In corners of the refectory, on doorsteps of classrooms, in dormitories and corridors, alone or in small conclaves, students worried over rice-paper scores, arguing over half-tones, scratching in key-changes, humming to themselves in class, or grabbing whatever instrument was at hand to try out a new phrase. They uncovered music as my father uncovered mathematics, hidden in the clang of machinery or the ping of pebbles on bicycle spokes, in the laughter of old people or the scraping of a tin spoon along the bottom of an iron rice bowl. Throughout the night, from the windows of the practice rooms and dor
mitories, lights shone, voices contended, flowers of notes bloomed and faded and fell. The faculty tried to continue normal classes, but many students – encouraged, some said, by Professor Yu – openly defied their teachers, insisting that they knew enough already to devote themselves to composing and performing. Posters appeared encouraging ‘barefoot composers’ to go out and listen to the natural music of the masses, to the chaotic sounds of lathe and loom and furnace, of threshing and grinding, and give voice to their aspirations for the speedy arrival of communism. Some classes – in music history, piano and performance technique – were abandoned in favour of premiere performances of the Pig Iron Sonata, the Rice Bowl Cantata, and Three Variations on a Donkey Cart.

  At this time also I received several letters from my mother, telling me that my father’s condition had worsened further. He was confined to a wheelchair, said the first letter. And in the second letter, which followed two weeks later, she admitted that he had caught a serious infection, spent several days in hospital and almost died. He is better now, she wrote, and hopes to get back into his wheelchair and move around again. He spends a lot of time by the fishpond, and is visited every day by Zhu Shaozen, who brings him gifts of food. Zhu’s nephew comes as well, and brings fresh live fish from the river and puts records on the gramophone for your father. Your father speaks of you often, and is very proud that you are serving your country with your talent. The letter ended with an admonition to study hard, and a promise that, if my father’s condition became very serious, she would send money for my train fare to Harbin.

  I lay awake the night after her letter arrived, overcome by waves of cramp and nausea. What sleep I could find was no more than slipping into a shallow dream, which I found I could enter and leave at will: I was lying motionless in my parents’ bed in our house in Harbin, feeling a ribbon of air slide around my face and my body, like a doctor’s cold hand, and sensing that somewhere in the half-light a door or a window had been left open to whatever lay in the dark world outside.

  The next morning I sent a telegram to my mother telling her that I would be back in Harbin as soon as I could. Tian Mei Yun happily supplied me with the money for my fare, but when I approached Madame Huang to seek permission to return to Harbin she told me that she had received a telegram from my mother telling her that under no circumstances was she to allow me to leave Shanghai. I should take my mother’s advice, Madame Huang said, and wait until she summoned me home. ‘You have work to do here,’ she said, paying no attention to my tears. She hardened her tone as she explained that Pavel had been invited to Beijing to give a series of lectures. ‘We have guaranteed him an enthusiastic audience,’ she said. ‘We will make him the toast of the North China lecture circuit. He will have standing ovations wherever he goes. He will be away for two weeks this time, and we have plans to have him invited to Shenyang too, and Tianjin.’ She gave me a wink. ‘My mother was a matchmaker back in our home village,’ she said, and giggled to herself.

  Sure enough, the night of Pavel’s departure Kirill returned and was pulled urgently into Raya’s apartment, and I lay on my back a few metres from their lovemaking clutching a pencil stub and paper and waiting to record their conversation. The results were disappointing: whispers, a scattering of details about life at the consulate and events back in Moscow which Madame Huang told me afterwards had already been reported in Pravda. For the most part they lay on their backs and smoked quietly and then dozed until Kirill reached for his clothes, bestowed some final kisses on Raya’s face and hair and breasts, and then slipped into the stairwell.

  Meanwhile I made my contribution to the production quota, but I quickly lost my enthusiasm for surpassing Western music by mathematical means, and for travelling to the outskirts of the city, as we did almost daily, to give recitals of our new works of socialist construction to politely mystified workers. The one constant in my studies was my lessons with Comrade Meretrenko. He talked frequently about pieces I could play at international competitions. One night, however, he seemed unusually cool towards me, abrupt and cantankerous. At the end of the lesson, he placed his hand on my violin case as I began to put away my violin. ‘I have received an interesting letter,’ he said in Chinese, ‘from a friend of mine who plays in the symphony orchestra in Odessa. She says she has heard of you, or at least, has heard of a young girl from Harbin who received a lesson from our great David Oistrakh some years ago. Oistrakh mentioned this girl to her. He was impressed by her playing.’ Comrade Meretrenko looked me in the face, tilting his head like an inquisitive dog, watching for some sign of recognition.

  ‘Apparently this girl was unusually tall for her age,’ he went on. His eyebrows quivered, ready to pounce. ‘And she spoke flawless Russian, because she had been taught by a couple of Russian Jews who, many years before, had been music teachers to the children of the last Tsar.’ I looked away, seeking respite from his stare. He fell silent and I sensed he would remain so until our eyes met once more. When I turned back to him he said, ‘You are that girl, aren’t you?’

  I was not inclined to lie to him. ‘It was the Grand Duke’s children they taught, and not the Tsar’s,’ I said. ‘As for my Russian, he overpraises it. I am far short of being fluent, and that is why I don’t try to speak it with you. And he overpraises my playing, too.’

  ‘I suspect he does neither,’ Comrade Meretrenko said, switching to Russian, ‘but I accept your explanation. I am merely disappointed that you have required me to bumble along in a language whose subtleties I cannot grasp, when in fact your musical education has been in my mother tongue. This has been a lost opportunity, has it not? What is more, I have plans for you to compete in several competitions in Russia and to receive instruction from our finest teachers, and it would be very useful for you to be able to discuss music in Russian on these occasions; would it not?’ I nodded my agreement. ‘So from now on,’ he said, ‘we will speak in Russian.’

  When I related this conversation to Madame Huang she seemed unperturbed. ‘It does not matter,’ she said. ‘Now that you have your little compartment, we are not requiring you to lurk in the stairwell any more. I suggest you let it be known that you speak bad Russian. And make sure it is bad Russian.’

  Two nights later Comrade Meretrenko and Ksenia ate with Pavel and Raya, and Sasha, the french horn teacher, in their apartment. ‘Fyodor tells me our girl on the top floor, Comrade Xiao, the prize-winning violinist, understands Russian, and had a master-class from Oistrakh some years ago,’ Pavel announced, as the meal commenced.

  ‘She is a quiet, gawky thing,’ Sasha said, ‘and so physically awkward, like a large bat turned upright. I have met her a couple of times at the entrance hall. I am surprised she understands Russian, since I greeted her in Mandarin and she didn’t seem even to understand that. I assumed she was a country girl speaking only one of those impossible dialects.’

  ‘You probably insulted her mother without realising it,’ Fyodor said, ‘or invited her to share your meal, and she was too shocked or too polite to reply. Your Armenian and your Turkish are excellent, Sasha, but your Chinese pronunciation? Well, let us say it leaves something to be desired.’

  Pavel said, ‘There should be a medal for foreigners who can master these four tones. Did you know, I discovered the other day that with a minor error on one syllable – one solitary syllable – the question, “Do you have a religion?” can mean, “Would you like to have sex?”’

  ‘So that is why religion is illegal in this country,’ Sasha said, ‘It distracts the masses from their procreative work!’

  ‘And may I ask you, Pavel,’ said Raya, ‘exactly how you found out this fascinating piece of information?’

  ‘In a church, perhaps?’ Comrade Meretrenko said.

  ‘From a book, of course,’ said Pavel. ‘Books provide me with all my most fascinating insights into life. Surely it is the same for you, my dear.’

  ‘But she does play well, does she not?’ Sasha said. ‘Our lanky Russophile upstairs?’

  ‘I
ndeed, she does,’ said Fyodor. ‘I grant that she does not look like a violinist; more like a basketball player, or – if you wish – like a large bat. Sometimes I think she will snap the poor thing in her hands without meaning to. But when she plays she has astounding tone and control, and her timing is like a Swiss watch. I swear she has swallowed a metronome at some time in her life, and it is still lodged in there, ticking away. She can draw emotion out of a piece too – Brahms, in particular, and Schubert too. I notice this in the slow movements especially. While my other students seem to think that the term adagio means to apply more vibrato and think of dinner, this girl’s playing is like thick smoke from a smouldering fire. It is all unfolding muscles and sinews.’

  ‘Smoke and muscles, Fyodor?’ Ksenia said. ‘You should not mix your metaphors, my dear. It is bad for you – it leads to unorthodox thinking.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Mitrofan said. ‘One should keep one’s metaphors in line, keep them marching in step like soldiers, goose-stepping like . . . well, like geese, rather than flying free and shitting on us like seagulls . . .’

  ‘Do geese in fact do the goose-step?’ Raya said.

  ‘Or frogs frog-march?’ Pavel said. ‘But we digress!’

  ‘Do we?’ Sasha said, as she waggled the last fingers of vodka in the bottle, offering it around the table. ‘Isn’t that the point? Digressing, I mean?’

  ‘You enter into the spirit of things very well, Sasha,’ said Raya. ‘The migraine has responded well to vodka, I see, just like I said it would.’