Beijing Coma (31 page)

Only seven of the nine members of the Organising Committee were present. We took a vote. Liu Gang sided with Old Fu, but Shu Tong, Han Dan, Wang Fei, Zhuzi and I voted to carry on with the march. Although I secretly agreed with Old Fu and Liu Gang, I didn’t want the banners and pennants we’d made to go to waste.

‘All we want is a bit of democracy,’ Old Fu said. ‘There’s no need to stir up a popular movement.’

‘If you want democracy, you must fight for it, not waste time spewing empty rhetoric!’ Wang Fei tossed his cigarette stub onto the cement floor and stamped it out, then picked up the banner he’d made from a torn bed sheet.

‘The Chinese people have been on their knees since 1949,’ Han Dan said. ‘It’s time they stood up and stretched their legs.’

‘You shouldn’t dismiss my views,’ Old Fu countered. ‘Lenin said that truth often lies in the hands of the minority.’

‘We’ve put up hundreds of notices about the march,’ Zhuzi said disgruntledly. ‘The students are waiting to set off. We can’t back out now. You don’t have to join us if you don’t want to, Old Fu.’

‘All right, then, I hereby resign from the Organising Committee,’ Old Fu said, removing his glasses as sweat trickled down his forehead.

‘You haven’t slept much these last few days, Old Fu,’ I said, pulling him out into the corridor. ‘Your eyes are swollen. You should get some rest, give your liver time to recover, then reconsider all this when your mind’s a little clearer.’

He moved closer to me and said quietly, ‘I’ve written my suggestions on this piece of paper. Here, put it in your pocket. If you get a big enough crowd, go ahead with your march. But if the numbers dwindle, cancel it. As head of security, that’s your prerogative.’

I told him to go and have a nap on my bed, and said we could talk about this later.

Wang Fei had returned from Xinhua Gate unharmed, so I suspected he’d sneaked away from the sit-in to avoid getting caught up in any violence. ‘Hey, Wang Fei, I bet you fled as soon as the armed police turned up!’ I smiled.

He wiped the thick lenses of his glasses and said, ‘As I was leaving, a policeman stopped me. I told him I was a magazine editor and just passing by. But the bastard searched my pockets and found a bread roll, so he knew I’d been there all night. Before I had a chance to come up with an excuse, he kicked me in the bum and told me to get lost.’

‘Bet you were shitting yourself!’ I laughed.

‘He was a big brute of a man. He could have broken me in half with just one hand.’

‘Did Nuwa go with you?’ I imagined that if Nuwa had been there, she would have been shocked by his cowardice.

‘She went to a party at Jianguo Hotel,’ Wang Fei said sullenly. ‘It was some French guy’s birthday.’

‘Don’t waste your time being jealous,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing you can do. She’s surrounded by admirers.’ There was a sudden clap of thunder. The sky outside the window darkened.

Having heard that Old Fu had resigned from the Organising Committee, Ke Xi walked in and said, ‘I’ll take over as convenor during this march. When we get back, we’ll hold a meeting and have a proper election.’

Shu Tong didn’t look happy. I knew he wouldn’t approve of Ke Xi taking over the leadership.

As I’d expected, he said, ‘Given the current state of affairs, I’d like to hand in my resignation as well. I think you’ll do a better job without me. And besides, I was never elected to this post.’

The meeting quickly broke up. I was surprised that Wang Fei hadn’t objected to Ke Xi’s plan.

Sister Gao, Bai Ling and Mimi arrived with curtain poles and the banners we planned to attach to them.

Bai Ling told me that Tian Yi had a stomach ache and wouldn’t be joining the march, but that she wanted me to take great care.

The bright-red banners filled us with revolutionary fervour. Everyone grabbed an armband and slipped it over their sleeve. The ink characters on two of the long banners were still wet, so Bai Ling and I took them to the Triangle and hung them out to dry.

The waiting crowd drifted towards us. Some departments had prepared even larger banners than ours. Students everywhere waved their home-made pennants in the air. Ke Xi and Han Dan were both holding megaphones. Although I was head of security, it hadn’t occurred to me to buy myself one.

Han Dan got up and explained the rules of the march. He told everyone to stick to the official slogans. He said a girl at Xinhua Gate had shouted ‘Down with the Communist Party!’ as she was flung into a van, which gave the police an excuse to attack the crowd. He asked the students who’d turned up with bicycles to put them away and join the march on foot.

Then he handed me his megaphone and told me to say a few words.

‘You must walk in rows of ten,’ I said. ‘The stronger students should stand at the sides and hold up the banner-poles. Everyone else should hold hands so that no outsiders can infiltrate our ranks. Only students with ID cards can join us today. If you want to go to the toilet during the march, take a friend with you. There will be police everywhere.’ As soon as I paused for breath, Ke Xi raised his megaphone and shouted, ‘Fellow students! If the police try to block our path or cut us up, just stand firm!’

Then everyone sang the Internationale and set off for Qinghua University.

Mou Sen caught up with us on his bike, and told us that thousands of Beijing Normal students were waiting to join us when we reached their gates.

Local residents standing on the pavements applauded as we passed, and drivers who’d stopped at the intersections hooted their horns in support. Wang Fei and Yu Jin held up a bed sheet. Bystanders gazed at it in bewilderment, unable to understand the slogan GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH! written in English across it.

The weather was not on our side. When we reached Qinghua University, it began to pour with rain. A voice blared from four loudspeakers attached to the roof of a jeep parked outside the main gate: ‘Beijing University students, if you want to demonstrate, go back to your campus! The Qinghua students are attending lectures and don’t want to be disturbed.’

A few people inside the dorm blocks opened their windows and looked out through the driving rain to see what was going on.

Ke Xi said, ‘All the Qinghua activists have gone to the Square. The students who’ve stayed behind are conformists. They wouldn’t dream of coming out onto the streets with us.’

‘Shall we storm their campus gates?’ Chen Di said, walking up to us. He was pleased to be wearing his binoculars around his neck again, and to be leading the slogan-chanting.

Turning his back on Ke Xi, Shu Tong said to Han Dan, ‘No, let’s see if the Politics and Law University will join us. Mou Sen, cycle over to your campus and tell your classmates we’re going to be a bit late.’

So we headed for the Politics and Law University, and sent Shao Jian ahead to warn them we were coming.

When we reached the main gates, the rain became torrential. Many of our marchers ran off to seek cover in the shops lining the road. But the Politics and Law University students remained stoically at their gates waiting to welcome us. It was like the military forces of Zhu De and Mao Zedong uniting on Jinggang Mountain to form the Red Army. They told us to go and warm up in the canteen, where there was food waiting for us.

The leader of the Politics and Law University’s Organising Committee was a good friend of Liu Gang’s. He advised us not to march in the rain.

I was wet and cold, and wanted to go back and see Tian Yi. Yu Jin and Chen Di also said they’d like to return to the campus. Now that we were sitting comfortably inside the canteen, the idea of marching through the rain again wasn’t appealing.

‘The government will laugh at us,’ Zhuzi said gloomily.

‘We can’t turn back halfway!’ Ke Xi said, knitting his brows. ‘There are thousands of students waiting for us at Xinhua Gate and Tiananmen Square.’

Shu Tong didn’t want to give up either. ‘If we stay here any longer, the marchers will lose motivation. Let’s push on while our spirits are still high. As head of security, Dai Wei, and a member of the Organising Committee, you must comply with the will of the majority.’

Han Dan came over and said that he was going to head off alone to the Square to read out an open letter, and that he’d wait for us there.

I pulled out the note from my pocket, and told Shu Tong that Old Fu had advised me to abort the march if our numbers dwindled.

I decided that, whatever anyone else said, I wasn’t going to march in the rain, so I put on my wet jacket again and went back to the campus with Chen Di.

A cold snowflake falls onto my face. My mother has left the door open. Two chickens have scuttled in, and are pecking at the ground near my bed. Last night, when everyone in the building was asleep, my old dorm mates Mao Da and Zhang Jie carried me out of the flat on a stretcher, put me in the back of a taxi and brought my mother and me to this shack in the outskirts of Beijing. I never paid them much attention in the dorm, so it’s surprising that now, of all my friends, it is they who have come to help me.

I hear Mao Da walking towards the door, saying to my mother, ‘It’s all arranged. You can take him in tomorrow morning . . .’

He and Zhang Jie shoo the chickens away, shut the door, then lift up my camp bed and move it next to the window. I can smell the wood shavings and rotting cabbage leaves lying in the corner of the shack.

‘Did you speak to that Dr Liang again?’ my mother says.

‘Yes. He asked whether Dai Wei has had oxygen treatment before. I had to say he had, otherwise they would have needed a signature from the hospital’s director. Things are very tightly controlled now. Any doctors found guilty of treating victims of the crackdown are immediately sacked from their jobs.’

‘We’ve paid for a two-week course for Dai Wei,’ Zhang Jie says. ‘It only cost three hundred yuan. It’s called high-pressure oxygen treatment. It uses the latest technology. They’ll push him inside a big oven-like machine then use shock waves and electromagnetic waves to stimulate his brain cells and improve his body’s immune system.’ These are almost the first words Zhang Jie has uttered since he and Mao Da picked us up last night. I remember how, in the beginning, his quiet and reserved demeanour led everyone in the dorm to suspect him of being a spy.

‘I’ve heard that, after just one week of this treatment, paraplegics have been able to walk again,’ Mao Da says. He still speaks in the wooden tones of a government cadre.

My mother’s voice sounds full of gratitude. ‘Here, have a cigarette, you two. Go on! I really can’t thank you both enough!’ She always keeps cigarettes in her pocket now, to hand out to anyone who offers help.

‘We rented this shack for you from a peasant,’ Zhang Jie says. ‘If someone comes and asks questions, tell them you’re from Fangshan County. Here’s the document stating that you supported the government crackdown. No hospital will treat you without it.’

‘We left some lights on in your flat when we locked up for you last night, so that your neighbours won’t get suspicious,’ Mao Da says, then takes a puff of his cigarette.

‘The police haven’t visited us for almost a month,’ my mother says. ‘It’s probably the winter weather that’s kept them away.’

‘You’re only a kilometre from the hospital’s north entrance here,’ Mao Da says. ‘We paid the peasant who owns this shack an extra three yuan so that you can use his handcart. You should be able to wheel Dai Wei to the hospital without being seen by too many people.’

‘Have you got enough money and grain coupons, Auntie?’ Zhang Jie asks.

‘Last month, the wholesale markets were selling grain at knockdown prices,’ Mao Da says. ‘We probably won’t be using grain coupons much longer.’

‘The last bus back to Beijing will be leaving soon,’ my mother says. ‘You’d better hurry. I wouldn’t want you to miss your classes tomorrow.’

‘Our grades don’t matter any more,’ Mao Da says. ‘We’ll be given jobs out in the sticks whatever marks we get. I don’t care. I’ve decided to go to Shenzhen next year, and look for a job in a private company. Here’s Dai Wei’s hospital card. Go to the brick building we took you to this morning and ask for the neurosurgery department. Your appointments are at five o’clock every afternoon. I registered him under my surname, so he’ll be known as Mao Daiwei. Right, we’d better get going. I’ll visit you again in a couple of days. Dai Wei, hurry up and wake up, will you? Show those bastards that we won’t be defeated!’ He pats the blanket draped over my stomach. I’m freezing. All I’m wearing is a vest and thin cotton trousers.

Only when I’m wheeled inside the hospital’s high-pressure oxygen room a few hours later do my limbs begin to thaw out. A male voice says, ‘First we must check whether he has any metal objects on him.’

‘I’ve removed them all,’ my mother says. ‘It’s very hot in here! Please, have a cigarette.’

‘No thanks, I don’t smoke.’ The man turns on some switches, taps the metal oxygen canisters, shuffles around the room for a moment, then pushes me into the chamber. ‘As the pressure starts to increase, his ears might hurt and he’ll feel a rise in temperature.’

‘I’ve been told that already. Don’t worry about the pain. He’s a vegetable, after all.’

I know about these chambers. They help boost oxygen levels in the brain and control the spread of bacteria. When I read about them in the papers, I had no idea that one day I’d be pushed into one. If the pressure or heat become unbearable, I have no means of letting anyone know. What if my eardrums burst?

The door to the chamber is sealed shut. A pain develops in my ears that soon becomes excruciating. The wound in my head seems to catch fire. As the temperature shoots up, I feel myself lapsing into unconsciousness.