Dai
Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a wonderful
novel about cultures that do not match, but must somehow be
stitched together. It is a tale of impossible conflicts, told
sometimes with bold, vivid descriptions and sometimes with extreme
minimalism.
When the
narrator and his schoolmate Luo, both members of the bourgeois
class by virtue of the accomplishments of their fathers, are
sent to a tiny mountain village for re-education, the two “young
intellectuals” feel acutely the absurdity and the precariousness
of their situation. While their social status should have entitled
them to the sort of education the Communist Party now wishes
to reverse, the social upheaval has already prevented them from
receiving this education.
Still,
their only hope of being returned to their families is to show
progress toward having unlearned these lessons, both cultural
and academic, that they are ignorant of having learned. Their
background has made them scornful of the restrictions imposed
by Communism but unaware of the liberty and the limitations
of their own upbringing. With the help of an amusing lie told
by Luo, the narrator manages to keep his violin when his belongings
are inspected by the village headmaster. The violin provides
solace and in so doing, keeps him from ever fully integrating
into this working community, where few have such individual
talents or leisure activities. Luo’s comfort comes from
his ability to remember stories almost word for word and to
retell them with extraordinary expressiveness. This, too, would
soon cease to be a refuge for him in a world where the only
stories permitted are those that promote the Communist Party;
but through a series of events the young men gain access first
to the cinema and then to a precious stash of forbidden literature.
Once Luo has heard, seen, and read these stories, they become
part of him and sustain him, like the narrator’s violin,
through the process of re-education.
Yet the
distraction also prevents their re-education. As part of their
learning process, the young men engage in activities that, while
contributing to the needs of this small Communist village, also
remind them constantly what is at stake in the re-education.
They work in the anthracite mines, forced to burrow deep into
dark, airless tunnels and crawl back out, with extreme difficulty,
traumatized and, on occasion, sobbing. This repeated rebirth
as members of the new regime is painful, disorienting, and absolutely
terrifying, but it makes them appreciate being alive, at any
cost. They trek up and down the mountain with huge, open buckets
on their backs, struggling to maneuver a stinking cargo of human
waste along a dangerous path. They must learn to navigate this
path steadily and without a single misstep; the consequences
of thinking for too long about the danger, or straying from
the path, are an obvious deterrent.
The Little
Seamstress, daughter of a prominent local tailor, is fascinating
to the narrator and particularly to Luo not only because she
is beautiful but also because they feel she is “uncivilized.”
In their opinion, she is not able to understand things as well
as they do. Having received little formal education, she cannot
express herself in sophisticated ways. She is, however, an extraordinary
artisan, able to create anything with her needle and her machine.
The Little
Seamstress is deeply valued by her father for her productivity,
but he, in contrast to the young men, believes she is perfectly
civilized, and thus dutiful and obedient. Despite his confidence
in her education, she is not well-enough indoctrinated to be
left to her own devices while he travels around the region with
his entourage, his old sense of values and his old but reliable
sewing machine. Her father prudently does not bring her on his
visits to customers who might have young sons who would court
her; he leaves her home, thinking she is anchored to work, tradition,
and new family values by her new Chinese sewing machine. While
he stays away for days at a time with those families who can
afford his services, she drifts away from her anchor.
The two
young men do not seem to be envious of or surprised by her comparative
freedom, although they no longer enjoy such privileges. When
they introduce her to the forbidden stories of Balzac, they
are proud to think they have played a small role in her re-education
as a modern, worldly woman. They do not anticipate that she
will come to understand mobility and society much more quickly
and more clearly than they do, nor are they analytical in their
thinking about the role she has played in their own re-education.
With great
subtlety, the author has offered the reader a realistic, yet
optimistic, perspective on a series of historical events that
offer almost nothing to encourage a positive outlook. With a
small number of characters and a restricted frame of space and
time, he demonstrates that, in a time when freedom is in short
supply, lessons about liberty from another time or tradition—Balzac’s
novels, Mozart played on a violin, Chinese folk songs—can
be an inspiration to those who wish to escape. Strengthened
by these external resources, each character learns to summon
from within a means of surmounting the bleakness and hopelessness
of his or her plight.
Only one
complaint about Dai Sijie’s engrossing story, told with
such skill and clarity: It ends before the reader gets tired
of hearing about these characters. If we look to the tradition
of Balzac and his contemporaries, we are left with some hope
that these young men and the Little Seamstress will reappear
in some future novel, perhaps not in the same story, perhaps
coming together only by chance, with new conflicts and new resolve.
Even if they come back by some other name, as Balzac’s
characters sometimes do, we will recognize them by their simplicity
and strength, and by their harmonious complexity, formed by
detailed layering and exquisite craftsmanship, like a beautifully
tailored garment.
