was only a ground floor), a space that couldn’t be used in any way, because it was so low that the two skinny lads we were at the time could barely crawl in on all fours, guided by the beam of a pocket torch, and even in the middle, under the rooftop, a boy of ten wouldn’t have been able to stand up. There was a suffocating smell in there: a smell of mouldering wood, damp and bat droppings, peculiarly reminiscent of an old cellar. Even without moving, I could feel the plywood ceiling—barely thicker than the layer of droppings covering it—shifting and creaking beneath our weight. Here and there a bright ray of light filtered between the sheets of plywood, warning us of possible collapse.
“The only route we could crawl along was a wooden beam five centimetres wide, rotting in places and eaten away by termites. We couldn’t see the bats, but could hear their squeaks and their wings flapping as they launched into the air like projectiles in response to our intrusion; the tips of their furless wings skimmed past our ears and noses, sending shivers down our spines.
“A few metres further on, like something looming out of the depths of Hell, the torch picked out a nest built in a corner between the tiles and the ceiling: a small pile of straw and twigs which looked like back-combed hair. Ma took out two eggs and handed them to me. They were almost spherical, slippery and dotted with wet clay. Were they swift’s eggs, or another bird’s? While we discussed it, I made an arc of light through the dark with my torch, only to reveal a shapeless heap about ten metres further on. I was holding the eggs, so Ma summoned his courage and crawled softly over to it with the torch clamped between his teeth; the beam of light zig-zagged through the darkness, wandering haphazardly over panicking bats and crazed insects.
“Eventually he was close enough to touch the lump; he lifted a cover and was instantly surrounded by a cloud of dust, which seemed to hang in the air around him. He picked something up and its shadow was projected onto the sloping roof, something curved, like an upside-down tortoiseshell with two dragons’ heads: a musical instrument with a resonance chamber and pegs for strings. My friend plucked one of the strings and it gave a long, melodious note, a strange, deep sound like the moan of an injured crane. Then he strummed the strings and the crane took flight in the half-light of that attic, its wings beating against the tiles. The sound was so opaque, its echo filling the roof space, that it made me shudder. It vibrated for several seconds. My friend announced that it was a pipa, and I said my mother had never known how to play one.
“With hardly any light to go by, I wriggled over to him. With the eggs in my hand, my progress was more difficult. I could hear the old wooden beam and the whole roof structure creaking. When I still had about three metres to go to reach him, the torch flickered several times, then its intermittent beam shrank, before going out altogether. The only reaction I could hear from my friend was lengthy muttering, a sort of monologue, during which he mentioned my father, a French scholar (according to his uncle) who, while crossing Manchuria on foot, passed a camp for former political exiles where my mother, E, the granddaughter of a deposed prince nicknamed Seventy-one, excelled in the art of pipa-playing. At the camp there was an annual festival for pipa players which drew thousands of young girls, and my mother was usually the winner, but that year she was knocked off her throne by the Frenchman dressed as a girl, a man who played the instrument even more beautifully than she did. That was the beginning of a devastating passion (to use the words of my friends uncle) which led to my mothers marriage …
“All of a sudden part of the plywood ceiling gave way beneath my weight and there was an avalanche. A deafening collapse. A searing pain shot through my groin, making me scream. It felt as if my testicles had exploded. A light sprang up at my feet, white, harsh, blinding, like a powerful spotlight theatrically picking out the scene revealed by the gaping hole in the plywood: an aerial view of my kitchen. I was about to fall