CHAPTER FOUR: Violin That Changed My Destiny
Part one: Falling in Love With Violin at First Sight
No school to go, and too young to participate any revolutionary activities, to me those days were the most boring time in my life. But one day, a miracle happened.
A neighbor lived at the second floor next building to me had a teenage visitor called Li. That handsome young man soon had chemical reaction with my neighbor sister Lan. Every morning when sister Lan visits him he always opens the window and plays the violin by the window. How romantic it was! I was rather dragged by that violin sound than inebriated. Every morning I kept my eyes wide-open anxiously waiting for the window to be opened.
One day, Li’s window opened only for a very short while and then closed without playing the violin. I could not help rushing up, peeked inside through the keyhole. My God, guess what I saw? I saw both brother Li and sister Lan were naked, holding and rolling each other on the bed. Back to my kitchen I described vividly what I saw to Hu MeiMei. And added my wise comment, “If they were cold they should not be naked, if they were hot should not hold so tight to each other, open the window
Hu MeiMei’ s face turned red and ran away into her room before
I finished my blowing.
Later I met Hu GeGe, (Hu MeiMe’s elder brother, a Red Guard) again I repeated the story, also did not forget to add my comment. Hu GeGe too, did not wait until my finishing and walk away.
Next morning, a small group of the Red Guards broke into Li’s home. A moment later brother Li and sister Lan were brought out from the room naked. Li suppressed his bird tightly with his violin, as if the bird would fly away if suppressing not tight enough. Lan too, though two big breasts reveled totally, both front and back of her lower places were covered by Chairman Mao’s portraits. I felt those were two of the most attractive portraits of Mao’s. But if I could choose, I would rather take the violin.
From then on, I never saw brother Li again. Lan couldn’t find a man to marry her until the Cultural Revolution ended ten years later.
By that time in China, sex was considered to be ugly, and for people to sleep together naked before marriage was a shameful crime.
Although brother Li was no longer there, still everyday I kept looking at that window hoping the violin would sound again.
Hu MeiMei saw I was obsessed with the violin, told me Li’s violin was placed together with all other Four Olds trashes in a huge storehouse. Again and again I begged MeiMei to ask her brother for help. MeiMei must be annoyed to death in the end she lied to her brother that she herself would like to see the violin. Hu GeGe took the violin secretly and ordered his sister “only touch it at home and never make any sound out form it.”
Everyday when everyone of our both family were out, MeiMei took to violin to the kitchen and let me play with it. I carefully took it as a frangible treasure. Although that violin had no bow, I still clipped on my neck, playing with sound from my mouth, mostly Li’s favorite tune “Jian Gege, Mo luotuo”.
One day，when MeiMei out to wash vegetables (there was no water supply in most Chinese homes. We all had to do our any wash all washes in public places) I was on my high spirit that for a moment I forgot the promise of staying inside without sound, I took the violin to the back yard and played violin with empty right hand but sound from my mouth under brother Li’s window. That boldness action resulted to violin to be taken away immediately, plus Hu GeGe’s name being deleted from the Red Guard name list.
Though in reality I had no violin at all, yet my head was filled with nothing but violin.
A violin in a glass cabinet
One day I happened to see a violin in a glass cabinet of Changsha May-First Cultural Goods Store. Beside the violin there was a little notice wrote “A propaganda weapon of Mao’ thoughts”. I flattened my nose against the glass cabinet for a long, long time until the heat of my nose melted the glass and I got the violin. Of course that was only what I wished. The reality was I was scorned out of the shop.
Since then I grew a habit of running marathon everyday form home to the shop (about 5 Kilometer one way) just for taking a look of the violin again, in a safe distance.
One day, the two shopkeepers were debating. The short fat man with a red chevron on his arm written “Xiangjiang Wind & Thunder” was one the rebels. While the slim tall lady with a red chevron on her arm written “The Protector of Mao’s thoughts” was one of the loyalists. The debate went so severely that they did not notice at all of my approaching the violin. Again I flattened my nose. This time I even checked up the price, 28 Renminbi. (About 7 USD at that time, and half a monthlyI salary of my daddy or my Mom. I stood there for a long time, in face as long as I could, fantasizing how wonderful it would have been if I had had 28 Renminbi. After some time I started to believe that I really had 28 Renminbi. To avoid their eyesights, I face their direction and requested with all my courage, “Please, that violin, pass to me let me take a close look.”
The lady stood up from her chair and opened the glass cabinet without looking at me. But the man recognized me right away, he roared at me, “Valuable goods, no show to kids.”
My feelings were hurt, but like a civilian facing a Chinese police, there was nothing I could do, except saying something to comfort myself, “Big deal! Waite till my father comes back…”
That rebel did not let me finish my self-comfort-saying, chased up to me with a flyswatter in his hand. I saw no good; put my dash training into good use. Running out from the violin store, I turned around to check if he was still run after me.
When I felt in a safe distance, I shouted toward the violin store again, “Big deal! Big deal! Waite until I grow up, I will run a violin shop one hundred times bigger than yours.”
That dwarf once more chased me up, this time not a flyswatter but a big broom in his hand.
Even after such an unpleasant experience, the habit of running marathon everyday form home to the shop continued. For the temptation of the violin was too strong to stand. The difference between before and after was, I no longer be able to flatten my nose against the glass cabinet, but imagine the shape of the violin outside of the store. And constantly comfort myself by thinking, “wait until my father comes back…”
One more crack between father and me
Father came back at last. He not only came back, but also bumped into my 12-year’s birthday. It was our family ‘s tradition that the birthdayer would be specially treated with a bowl of noodle covered with a poached egg.
When a bowl of warn noodle with steam going up to the air placed in front of me, especially when we saw the yellow coming out from white poached egg, no need to mention how terrible the temptation was. My elder brother Danjin kept swallowing his slobbers and younger brother Danfeng kept his eyes shut. To me that was a great moment, the only short moment looking forward for a year in that particular day I could feel above my brothers and be special among the family. On the contrary that must also be always the moment that turns my folks’ stomachs the most. Usually I would make the moment last as long as possible, one second longer if I could. But on that day, I behaved opposite. Unexpectedly I clipped the poached egg with my chopsticks, placed it in front of Danfeng’s eyes and quickly put it into his bowl before parents stopping me from practical joke making. Followed I clipped a few noodles raising up to the air and then pushed the hole bowl of noodle in front of Danjin.
“That’s wonderful! You have become so much more reasonable. Grow up one year older after all.” Mom praised.
“Is the noodle poisoned or are you sick, which?” Danjin asked me without moving his eyes away from the noodle.
“Neither.” Father answered. “ I think this has to be a new trend of class struggle. If you don’t tell us what kind of drags you want to sell in your bottle in time, the egg will be gone.”
After all father was more experienced. What a deceitful fox!
“If you force me.” I borrowed the birthday courage requested, “What I want is an instrument, a musical instrument, but not an ordinary musical instrument, it is the king of musical instrument. It is the most elegant and the most…” I wanted to go on.
“Blow your gas out quickly. What do you want?” Mom was out of patient.
“OK, to cut it short. The most elegant and the most beautiful thing that I want…”
Meanwhile Danfeng clipped the poached egg with chopsticks and placed it in front of his mouth.
“OK, OK.” I got nervous, “Violin. That’s right, Father and Mother, I want a violin.” I made a violin-playing gesture in the most elegant way I thought it would be.
I brought out my wish in a way not exactly from what I had rehearsed many time.
“What …lin? What was that? For what use?” Mother kept asking questions without giving me a chance to answer.
“How much?” Mother asked the last but not the least question, in fact the most important question of all.
“28 Renminbi. I have decided to buy that a long time ago.” Hence I started to imagine father taking me to the store. We would wait until that dwarf being present, and father would throw 28 Renminbi on his face. Then the man would know how strong my father was in my back. With that imagination I broke into laughter with satisfaction.
“What, you must be out of your mind! 28 Renminbi buy you a hand…lin, hereafter I’ll have to pay 280 Renminbi buy you a piano when you grow even older!” Mother must be very irritated as she raised the pitch of her voice high enough to be a Beijing Opera singer.
“What king of musical instrument?" Father intentionally pronounced “what" as “ Hwat" to show his despise.
“But…”
Mother did not let me go on what I wanted to say. She shouted again as if she was being robbed, “No matter what you say, I have no money to buy you a hand…lin.”
“Violin!” I also raised my voice up, “It is such an elegant violin, came out from your mouth becomes ‘hand…lin’, country folk!”
Mother opened her mouth again, but before her words came out father took the topic over, “Whether it is called violin or hand…lin doesn’t matter. What matters is that our family does not raise (educate) that. This is what we call, ‘prefer proletarian’s grass rather than capitalist seedling’”. By finishing his statement father added, “Hwat (what) violin, GAS!”
“G A S”, those were three letters father gave to me as my 12 years old birthday present.
I was wordless, seeing Danfeng devoured the egg voraciously, I responded quickly to clip his throat in order to force him opening his mouth. At the same time Danjin took the chance quickly filled his mouth with noodle and soap, and pushed to bowl back to me before I did anything to him.
That was my birthday, my poor 12- year old birthday, full of melancholy and sadness.
My birthday party (if I may call it a party) was quickly over, more quickly than ever. I couldn’t sleep until very late at night, kept thinking of the violin, the disaster that happened to brother Li and brother Hu, the dwarf salesman, the loss of my poached egg...quietly I over heard my patents’ conversation next room.
Mother’s voice, “28 Renminbi, almost half of my monthly salary, it is really too, too expansive, if it were 8 Renminbi…”.
Father’s response, “Even if it were 5 Renminbi we shouldn’t buy for him. The question is not ‘how much?’ The question is why he is thinking of playing the violin? Who influenced him? We all know in the present situation, anything to do with west is politically sensitive. That includes violin of course.”
Just like millions of Chinese people at that time, father was such a complete revolutionary, even when in the bed with his wife.
Mom laughed. And she asked, “The reason you dislike Danjiu is because he looks like me more than you?”
“Hey Hey Hey,” father asked a rhetorical question, “Like you what?”
“ For example resembles my nasty temper, stubborn, straight forward…” Mother pointed out all her shortcomings.
Meanwhile I heard father turned over. I imagined then he was facing or backing mother. And then father’s voice turned to be low and heavy, sounded somewhat like self-criticism. Though the whole content I could not remember but the last sentence I can’t forget and wouldn’t forget forever.
The sentence of my father’s was, “I dislike that child by nature.”
That statement aroused storms and waves in my heart. Being afraid of waking the other two brothers up, I did not put out my crying in sound. Perhaps because of that lack of sound crying, in all these years every time when I remind those words I feel like to cry out soundly, and no matter how many times I have done so could not heal the wound in complete.
That night, I had a dream. The dream brought me to a fairy tale world. I walked into a small wooden house, house with violins hanging everywhere. And I myself also turned to be a violin, to pull a bow on me caused beautiful music coming out.
Suddenly, the door fiercely pushed open, father appeared in front of me, yelped at me loudly with heavy breath, “I dislike you by nature.”
I cried out with my broken heart, “Why by nature?"
My motion turned to be a strong wind blowing all the violins up to the sky. I myself became a kite, a huge kite gone with the wind farer and farer away from father. But I was not able to get away from him completely as the line of the kite was held in his hand. After I made my every effort to get loose from him, I as a kite without rope control headed myself straight to the ground.
I woke up from the dream, kept asking myself the same question over and over, “why my old man dislikes me by nature?”
|
