Beijing Coma (20 page)

Before we reached the next stop, the bus jolted to a halt. I clutched the handle above me to stop myself from falling. Now that the bus was a little emptier, I could see the wooden slats of the floor, as well as her feet and her white strappy sandals. Her legs were bare, and she was wearing a white cotton skirt just like the one A-Mei used to have.

I looked away and stared at the hot, dusty street outside the window. From the corner of my eye, I felt her gaze moving towards me. It was intense, luminous, alive. I continued to stare out at the shifting buildings and trees, and the colourful crowds wavering in the dappled sunlight.

I silently counted how many stops were left: one, two, three, four . . . Reflected on the window I saw the two black buttons of her white shirt. When the bus shook, her breasts moved but her stomach remained still. Her hand became translucent in the sunlight. It was clutching the handrail, right next to mine.

Very soon this unknown girl would brush past me, and I’d never see her again. In my sadness and frustration, I could tell that for the rest of my life her silent image would move through my mind, like the memories of A-Mei’s toes and transparent eyes.

It was a hot day. I watched the humid heat spill through the hazy streets.

A fidgety child suddenly stuck his hand-held electric fan out of the window and switched it on. The green-and-red paper blades shimmered irritatingly as they whizzed in the sunlight. ‘Do you want to lose your hand?’ shouted the father. The boy turned and knocked into her. ‘I’m sorry,’ the father said. ‘My son’s got no manners.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said.

I looked away, trying to erase the image of her.

We both got off the bus at Xidan market. As she stepped onto the pavement, she glanced back at me. I looked up and met her gaze.

She said she was going to buy some notebooks, and that three of her psychology classmates were celebrating their birthdays on the 20th. The party was going to start at eight. ‘If you want, you can come along,’ she said. Then she turned round noiselessly and walked away.

I watched her hips, wrapped in the cotton skirt, swing from side to side then disappear through a dark door.

I made up my mind to go to that party. I had to see her again.

When I opened the door of the classroom in the Psychology block, I was hit by loud music blasting from a cassette player. It was too dark to see any of the faces clearly. All I could make out were patches of pale clothes and gold plastic flitting through the candlelight. Students in the middle of the room were swaying to the music. A few girls holding candles were chatting in the corners. Their illuminated faces looked beautiful. Two girls in long dresses danced with their arms wrapped tightly around each other.

I glanced around the room. I could sense that someone’s eyes had focused on me, but I hadn’t spotted them yet. I wondered if I’d ever find her. In the dark, everyone looked the same. The dissolving of differences made people feel safe, and gave them the courage to move closer to one another.

My eyes slowly grew accustomed to the dark. Beginning to feel a little awkward, I tried to boost my morale, telling myself, ‘She’ll know that I’ll be looking for her, she invited me, she wanted me to come,’ while all the time trying to remember what she looked like.

The students in the middle of the room were now hopping and whirling to a Taiwanese pop song. Their shaking limbs, mannered gestures and youthful energy seemed both exciting and tedious. There was a smell of dust in the air.

A girl glanced up. Our eyes met for a second and I knew at once that it was her. She was twirling around, always slightly behind the beat, her fingers splayed out in front of her or resting on her hips. Her hair bounced around her shoulders. There was perspiration on her forehead.

My heart beat in time with the music. I walked back towards the door and stood in the corner.

Most of the tables and chairs had been stacked neatly against the walls. On the one table that had been left out was a birthday cake made of cardboard, surrounded by candles and a small paper model of a log cabin which had a torch inside that emitted a dull yellow light. Four pairs of women’s eyes, cut out from a wall calendar, had been glued to the ceiling. They looked like the organs of a dissected animal. I put my hand in my pocket and stroked the three glass pandas that I’d brought as birthday presents.

With her vacant eyes and half-opened mouth, her face seemed lifeless. I wondered whether she’d recognised me. I almost hoped she hadn’t. But when the music changed, she squeezed past two or three people and walked towards me.

She said something. But her mind was still distracted, so the first sentence was merely a garbled echo at the back of her throat.

I guessed what she’d said was: So, you’ve come, then.

We stepped closer to each other. Her expression becoming more animated, she asked, ‘Are you here to see me?’

‘I just wanted to drop by. So, is it your birthday today?’

‘No. What’s your name?’

‘Jin Mu,’ I said, breaking into a smile. ‘What’s yours?’

She cupped her hand to her ear. ‘Jin Mu? Meaning “gold wood”? Sounds like the name of a feng shui expert. Who are you trying to fool?’ She laughed. And I laughed too. It felt good. We were having a conversation.

‘It’s my pen name. My real name is Dai Wei. My parents are originally from Shandong.’ I put out my hand. She shook it, pulled her hand away briefly to slip into her pocket a small object she was clutching, then shook it again.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Tian Yi.’

‘Meaning “heaven-one”, as in “first under heaven”?’

‘No.’

‘As in “heaven and man unite as one”, then?’

‘No! It’s not “heaven-one”, it’s “heaven-cloth”. You know – “cloth of heaven”, as in “seamless like the cloth of heaven”.’ She was a head shorter than me, and had to raise her eyebrows when she looked up into my eyes.

‘That’s very original.’

‘Not as original as your “gold wood” pen name! So, Mr PhD Student, do you like to dance?’

‘I prefer to watch. It’s less exhausting.’

‘Do you regard people as books that you can look at as you please?’

‘I only came here to look at you,’ I blurted out without thinking. The music had stopped suddenly, so my voice sounded very loud.

Searching for something to say, she asked, ‘Do you like to read? What is your favourite book?’

‘
The Book of Mountains and Seas
,’ I said quietly.

‘Really? That’s mine, too. Recite a few lines for me.’

I took a breath. ‘“There’s a tree whose sap looks like lacquer and tastes like syrup. If you eat it, it will banish hunger from your stomach and worries from your mind. Its name is . . .”’

‘Comrade Dai Wei, that’s the modern translation, not the original classical Chinese text. Do you find that your scientific knowledge gives you a deeper insight into the book?’

‘As it happens, I’m planning to go on a journey, following the routes described in the book, studying everything I find on the way: the flora, fauna, geographical features, astronomical events. I love maps. When I was child I dreamed that when I grew up, I’d wander around the country like that Ming Dynasty geographer, Xu Xiake.’

‘You should be studying geography then, not science. There’s a professor in the History Department who’s an expert on
The Book of Mountains and Seas.
’

‘I don’t want to get bogged down in dry, academic study. It’s the travel that interests me most . . . You’re a psychology student. Where does your interest in classical literature come from?’

‘I like stories about ghosts and mythical animals. Like the snake with nine heads, the ox with one foot, and the bird that tries to fill the sea with sticks and stones. I read
The Book of Mountains and Seas
for its literary qualities. After I graduate, I want to do a Master’s in Chinese literature.’

‘We could go travelling together in the holidays. I have an ancient map of China that we could use to plan our route.’

She looked at me for a moment, her chest rising and falling. Then she glanced at the group standing beside her and said, ‘These are my dorm mates. Let me introduce you.’

She grabbed hold of the girl standing next to her. It was the tiny girl with the cropped hair who’d come to Professor Fang Li’s lecture at the Pantheon Society.

‘I already know Bai Ling,’ I said. ‘We’ve been at some of the same talks.’

‘Yes,’ Bai Ling smiled. ‘You science students organised lots of interesting lectures last year.’

‘And this is Mimi.’ Mimi stepped forward and waved her hand at me. ‘I don’t think you know her, do you?’ When Tian Yi laughed she looked like a different person. ‘You don’t have a fear of crowds, do you, Dai Wei? Come on, let’s dance!’ She walked off into the middle of the room, and as her hair swirled round I stepped forward and followed behind her.

The rain had just stopped. Tian Yi and I were standing in the middle of the campus, watching the sun sinking into Weiming Lake. She turned to me and said, ‘A friend borrowed my electric hob. I’ll have to go and fetch it.’

‘I’ll get some pickles and popcorn,’ I said.

It was 27 November. My twenty-second birthday. Tian Yi had taken me to see a foreign film at a cinema near her parents’ flat. She told me that she seldom went home. She didn’t like her elder sister or her brother-in-law. They’d taken over the second bedroom of the flat, so whenever Tian Yi stayed the night, she had to sleep on a camp bed in the narrow corridor.

We met up half an hour later in her dorm. I gave her a quick haircut, then I plugged her two-ring electric hob into a socket, filled an aluminium lunch box with water and put it on to boil. We were going to cook some prawns and birthday noodles. When the water began to bubble, I dropped the prawns in and the room instantly smelt of the sea.

She washed her hair in a basin of warm water. I scooped some water into an enamel teacup and rinsed the soap from her right ear. When I saw the curved hairline behind it, each strand of hair growing neatly from her scalp, I couldn’t help leaning down and kissing her earlobe. She twisted round and looked up at me. Her face was bright red, but her eyes were as blank as those of a dead sheep.

I went to the sink at the end of the corridor to empty the dirty water, and noticed some strands of her hair caught between my fingers. ‘Look how long these are,’ I said, returning to her dorm and holding the strands up to the light. She was squeezing the water from her hair. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I stared at her broad, somewhat masculine forehead, her motionless mouth, the delicate curve of her narrow nostrils. She was wearing a sleeveless black T-shirt. When I saw her bare arms, I felt the blood rush faster through my veins.

‘Keep your hands off me! There are people about.’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said. ‘It’s just that, I mean . . . I’ve never seen you wear black before.’

‘I always wear black.’

‘The first time I saw you, you were wearing a white skirt.’

‘You must have been dreaming of your little white angel. I’m a black witch, didn’t you know?’

Before I’d got round to putting the noodles in, the water boiled over onto the metal ring, the fuse snapped, and suddenly all the lights on our floor went out. We were plunged into darkness. Girls in the other dorms walked out into the corridor shouting, ‘Which bloody idiot did that? Come on! Own up!’ Some banged bed frames, tables, chairs; others slowly clapped their hands or stamped their feet. I couldn’t tell exactly where the noises were coming from. In the dark, it’s difficult to gauge distances between yourself and others. The shouting and banging resonated through the block.

I tried to remove the aluminium box from the hob, but it was too hot to pick up.

‘Quick, hide it under my bed,’ Tian Yi said, yelping as the tips of her fingers touched the box.

‘Let’s find a lighter first, so we can see what we’re doing,’ I said. She tutted impatiently, grabbed the lunch box and put it on the ground. Then she kicked it under the bed and there was a horrible metallic noise as it grated across the concrete floor.

People outside were shining torches onto the building. By now, Tian Yi had managed to hide both the lunch box and the hob under her bed. ‘Get a match,’ she whispered to me, blowing on her scorched fingers. I groped for some matches on the table behind and knocked over a lamp.

‘I can’t find any,’ I said, afraid to continue my search.

She pressed a hand on my shoulder and got up. I heard a fumbling noise, the flick of a match, then saw a flame of light.

She was standing in front of me. She lit a candle, pushed it into the mouth of an empty bottle then sat back down on the edge of her bed.

I touched her hand, but she pulled it away saying, ‘My fingers are burnt!’

‘I’ll put some soy sauce on them for you.’

‘Does that work?’

A girl in the corridor was singing, ‘
Don’t be sad, it’s not that bad
 . . .’

Another girl walked by with a radio that crackled and hissed.

‘Don’t worry. The fuses go out all the time here. And I’m not the only one who has an electric hob. Four girls in the dorm next door have one.’ She dangled her index finger above the candle flame and said, ‘Look, a souvenir of your birthday!’ The big red blister on the tip of the finger didn’t seem real.

I grabbed her other hand, rubbed her warm palm and found a strand of bamboo she must have torn from her sleeping mat. Tian Yi was always clutching something in her fist. Maybe it made her feel more secure.

I squeezed each finger, each knuckle, and pressed the pressure points on her palm. She sighed anxiously. When I pulled her close to me and put my hand on her breast, she trembled and sighed again. I reached into her skirt and touched her soft stomach. She pushed my hand up towards her hip. The skin felt colder there. I ran my hand down over the mounds of her buttocks, then slowly slipped my fingers into the cleft in between. As I moved my fingers in deeper, I felt the warm dampness that I’d been longing to touch . . .