Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Novel by Madeleine Thien

numbly, but still Big Mother did not stand up or withdraw.
    —
    A crowd was coming along the road, swaying and heaving in a procession. Big Mother pushed herself onto her frozen feet. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting here, but the women with the shovels had gone home. In the fog, and in their excitement, they had not even seen her as they passed.
    As the parade approached, Big Mother could hear their voices more distinctly. Although there was indeed a gong, bells and the occasional burst of singing, it was not a funeral. Certain words were repeated, “stand up,” “have courage,” “devil,” but the shouting was oddly disjointed, as if opposing leaders were battling for control of the slogans.
    At the head of the procession, Wen the Dreamer walked with his body crookedly bent. A woman walked behind him. Swirl’s hair fell loose and wild. She was completely tipped forward, as if she carried a piece of furniture on her back, but there was none. The distance between them halved and then halved again. Frenzied faces closed in on Big Mother, crying and groaning. She could not make out all the words but she heard:
    “Honour the Chairman!”
    “Kill the demons!”
    “Long live our glorious land reform!”
    I have crossed into death itself, Big Mother thought. Now she saw that her sister’s arms were roped together behind her, in a position that forced her two elbows up into the air. Everyone seemed fuelled by exhaustion, as if they had recently been shaken from sleep. The cavalcade stretched along the road, but they were so absorbed by their own noise that they, too, did not noticeBig Mother. The very last person, a small boy struggling to keep up, glanced in her direction but his eyes did not fix on her. He hurried along.
    Big Mother stood up and, leaving a wide gap, followed them. The procession continued for at least another hour. Finally, just before the tree line, the shouting faded and the people drained away like rivulets of water. By the time Big Mother reached the end point, her sister and Wen had been untied and were standing, incongruously, by themselves. They were cautiously testing their backs, slowly stretching out their arms. They were carrying their own ropes, as if the ropes were only props.
    “Is is really you, my sister?” Big Mother said.
    Swirl turned, peering into the darkness.
    “Little Swirl,” Big Mother said again, afraid to touch the woman. “Is that you?”
    —
    Big Mother did not hear the entire story that night or in the nights that immediately followed. All her sister would say was that these parades, “struggle sessions,” she called them, had been going on for the past three months.
    “Most of the time, it’s harmless,” Swirl said. “They take us to the schoolyard and denounce us as landlords. We have to kneel, but all they want is a thorough self-criticism. Occasionally, like tonight, we’re paraded through the village.”
    Big Mother could not contain her fury. “And the rest of the time?”
    Swirl glanced at Zhuli, who was folded into her father’s lap, and said nothing.
    Everyone spoke in whispers, as if afraid to wake the gods of destiny, or even Chairman Mao himself. The hut, with its mud walls and straw roof, was meant for animals, that much was abundantly clear. Big Mother wondered where the evicted pigs and cows had gone.
    “We’re not suffering,” her sister said.
    “It was inevitable,” Wen the Dreamer told her, his voice barely louder than the steam from his tea. “Justice had to be done eventually.”
    In this way, two days and two nights passed in a silence that cut deeply into Big Mother. She did not need a lengthy explanation, it was clear what had taken place. But in Shanghai, she had not witnessed the land reform campaign. In the cities, people from all corners of life and with every political affiliation had been reassigned to new quarters. People who had lost their homes were given new ones. It had been part of the war recovery.
    On