Beijing Coma (53 page)

I too felt uncomfortable. I wanted to get back to the Square. ‘It’s going to rain soon,’ I said. ‘We must move the hunger strikers into the buses.’

‘What for? Where are you driving them to?’ Wu Bin said, looking confused.

‘I told you, the buses have parked in the Square to shelter the hunger strikers from the rain.’ It occurred to me that Tian Yi might have returned to the Square by now and rejoined the hunger strike, which made me even more eager to get back.

‘Apparently lots of the students have refused to board them,’ Wang Fei said.

‘We’ll have to talk them round, then!’ Tang Guoxian said imperiously, having eaten his fill. ‘When the rainstorm hits this afternoon, the Square will be flooded. Let’s go back and get some representatives from the provincial universities to join our association. Come on!’

‘The police called me into the station this morning,’ my mother says. ‘They said that, if I promise not to speak to any foreign journalists or tell anyone about my son’s injury, I can apply for a hardship allowance.’

She has three visitors today: Zhu Mei, who came round last week, An Qi, and another woman whose voice I don’t recognise. All three of them have joined the ‘Tiananmen Mothers’, an underground group founded by a professor called Ding Zilin whose seventeen-year-old son was killed in the crackdown.

Zhu Mei has brought a box of hairtail fish. My mother is very pleased to have some fish. She seldom gets a chance to go to the market.

‘How much will they give you?’ asks An Qi.

‘About ninety yuan a month,’ my mother shouts from the kitchen as she drops the hairtail fish into a wok of hot oil. ‘It will only cover two days’ worth of his intravenous solution.’

‘They gave me a one-off payment of two hundred yuan after my husband was shot,’ Zhu Mei squeaks in her high-pitched voice. ‘They said that now he’s dead, I shouldn’t speak about him again.’

A man and a woman are walking up the stairwell. I listen to the click of the woman’s heels and the dull thump of the man’s rubber soles as they hit the concrete steps. I’m terrified the police might turn up and discover my mother talking to these women.

‘We’ve now found seventeen people who are prepared to state they lost relatives during the crackdown. Professor Ding said that we should submit a joint letter to the government demanding a public account of the killings.’ This woman has never visited before. She sounds as though she’s in her early thirties, and speaks in the breathy, monotone drone typical of bereaved women.

‘Our local police aren’t too bad,’ An Qi says. ‘They said that the government should have better things to do than pick on people like us. They advised us to move to a different town, somewhere no one will recognise us.’

‘Don’t be duped,’ my mother says, coming in from the kitchen. ‘Your personal files will follow you wherever you go.’ The charred smell of the noodles she burned last night still wafts from her hair.

‘Professor Ding wasn’t allowed to attend the United Nations conference on human rights,’ An Qi says. ‘But the written statement she submitted at least exposed the suffering that relatives of the dead have endured.’

‘My son’s still alive,’ my mother reminds them.

‘So is my husband,’ says An Qi. ‘But that’s no reason not to get involved.’

‘Professor Ding sounds like a very brave woman,’ my mother says. ‘I should pay her a visit. Is that the list you’ve drawn up of people killed during the crackdown? How many names have you got?’

‘One hundred and fifty-two,’ the young woman says. ‘The eldest victim was fifty-six, the youngest was only nine.’

‘I can’t see a thing without my glasses,’ my mother mutters. ‘Look how dry my hands are! I must rub some more Vaseline on them. Spring Festival’s coming up soon. I wanted to repaint the walls and tidy the flat up a little.’

‘Have we got a photocopy of the list?’

‘I don’t need one,’ An Qi says. ‘I’ve memorised every name, so even if the police confiscate the list from me, I’ll still have a copy of it in my mind.’

‘Huh, we’re just a few middle-aged women. What can we hope to achieve?’

‘Well, China lost its Olympic bid because of its human rights record. That shows our appeals haven’t gone unheard . . .’

Memories spiral around me, sometimes crossing paths, sometimes colliding. I picture the dusty string of garlic hanging from a peg on the kitchen door; my father squatting down beside a washbowl, rubbing his bare legs with a wet cloth; a swathe of fallen bicycles sparkling in the sun like a field of wheat. The images float off into the air that is filling with greasy fumes and the smell of fried fish. Perhaps today is the day that my brain will stop thinking and my life will at last come to an end.

Our broadcast station tent looked like an earthquake shelter. In the early afternoon, the sun beat down from overhead, and it became so hot and stuffy inside that everyone’s faces turned scarlet. A heavy stench of diesel from the generator hung in the humid air, together with a faint scent of seaweed wafting from the box of sushi a Japanese woman had given us. The sushi was delicious. Although I was still full from lunch at the Beijing duck restaurant, I managed to gobble down five or six pieces. The rule about not eating in the Square seemed to have been abandoned.

Everyone was busy sorting out pamphlets and writing news scripts. I spotted Old Fu lying asleep on the ground with a cardboard sign around his neck that said
COMMANDER
-
IN
-
CHIEF OF THE HUNGER STRIKE HEADQUARTERS
.

‘So you’re back in charge, are you?’ I laughed, leaning down and waking him up.

‘Bai Ling’s been rushed to hospital again. I had to take over the reins.’

‘Lin Lu is Bai Ling’s deputy, so surely he should have taken over,’ I said, lighting a cigarette. ‘And by the way, why didn’t you and Mou Sen go to that televised meeting with Li Peng?’

‘Neither of us were around when the officials came to collect the student leaders,’ he said.

‘There are rumours flying about that lots of the cash that’s been donated has gone missing,’ I said.

‘Yes, it’s a big problem. I’m only going to hand out money for food from now on. We must wait until we have a proper accounting system set up before we give money for anything else.’ Old Fu sat up and stared at his feet.

Chen Di, who was sitting next to him, said, ‘We’ll need to buy some more broadcast equipment.’ He’d given up his hunger strike, so he had more energy now to look through the scripts.

‘There are donation boxes all over the Square, but the ones outside the two broadcast stations get most of the money,’ I said. ‘This place and the Beijing Students’ Federation must have collected a million yuan by now.’

Mou Sen walked into the tent. ‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘The militants are taking over. Lin Lu is reorganising the Square without bothering to consult the Beijing Students’ Federation.’ He’d been given a transfusion in the emergency tent. His left arm was red and swollen.

‘I’ve just had lunch with our Southern University gang,’ I told him. ‘Wang Fei wants to set up a national student association.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ Mou Sen said. ‘We can’t allow Lin Lu to monopolise things. He’s behaving like a tyrant.’

‘Wang Fei is a despot as well,’ Chen Di said, filing away a script that had just been broadcast.

Nuwa walked out from behind the amplifiers. ‘I wish you’d give up the hunger strike now,’ she said, glancing at Mou Sen. ‘There’s no need to starve yourselves to death. The Beijing Medical Rescue Centre has told us that another five hundred hunger strikers have passed out. Most of them are suffering from diarrhoea and dehydration. I really think it’s gone far enough now.’ I was surprised she hadn’t come to Wang Fei’s defence after Chen Di had called him a despot.

‘Broadcast that information at once,’ Mou Sen said. ‘If we don’t, the Voice of Qinghua will, or the Voice of the Student Movement as they now call themselves.’ Mou Sen was a very conscientious editor. He’d become much more cautious about what material he chose to air since he’d broadcast the false rumour about Deng Xiaoping’s resignation.

‘On the radio this morning it was reported that Zhao Ziyang and Li Peng visited some hunger strikers recovering in Xiehe Hospital,’ I said. ‘It appears the reformist wing and the hardliners are still engaged in a battle of strength.’

‘Hey, Old Fu, there’s a minibus parked over there,’ Chen Di said, returning to the tent after popping outside briefly. ‘I think it’s been donated to the students. Shall I have it brought over here? It might be useful to us.’

‘If we attach a loudspeaker to the roof, we could drive it around the Square and make broadcasts from it,’ said Mao Da.

‘Are you sure it’s not one of the buses Lin Lu brought into the Square?’ I asked. Lin Lu and Cheng Bing were still overseeing the arrival of the fifty public buses and getting them to park in neat rows along the north side of the Square.

‘No, it’s definitely a minibus,’ Chen Di said.

‘I’ll go and take a look at it in a minute.’ Old Fu stood up and straightened the cardboard sign hanging from his neck.

‘We broadcast the intellectuals’ 16 May Declaration, and now they’ve given us a 17 May Declaration,’ Mou Sen moaned, glancing down at the document Nuwa had just passed him. ‘We can’t keep broadcasting this stuff, Old Fu.’

‘Shut up!’ Nuwa shouted at the noisy diesel generator that was banging away in the corner. ‘No one can understand your peasant dialect. You make as much racket as that damn electric generator!’

‘You don’t seem to have any problem understanding Wang Fei’s peasant accent!’ Mou Sen said, smiling insolently.

‘At least it’s more intelligible than Yanyan’s,’ Nuwa said, having a dig at Mou Sen’s girlfriend. Nuwa was wearing a short skirt. I could see the maze of fine capillaries under the skin of her thighs. As she walked through the tent, I watched her smooth knees wobble like the breasts concealed inside her bra, and glanced at her elegant calves that tapered softly towards her fine ankles and red leather shoes.

‘This says “Down with Dictatorship!”’ Old Fu said, reading the page that Mou Sen had just given him. ‘I can’t let that be broadcast.’

‘It’s too much!’ Mou Sen cried, lighting another cigarette. ‘We’ve had false rumours about Deng Xiaoping resigning, the government stepping down. We must vet the scripts carefully. Who knows what kind of rubbish will turn up next?’ Then he looked at Nuwa and said, ‘Have you noticed that whenever we broadcast a poem, the Voice of the Student Movement plays the Internationale? It’s as though they’re deliberately trying to drown us out.’ Mou Sen had just been appointed the Beijing Students’ Federation’s deputy head of finance. All the expenses that Old Fu sanctioned now had to be approved by him and Sister Gao.

‘You shouldn’t smoke while you’re on hunger strike,’ said Nuwa, snatching the cigarette from Mou Sen’s fingers. The short goatee he’d grown gave him the air of a scholar.

‘I’ve never seen you try to stop Wang Fei smoking,’ he laughed. Nuwa took something from her pocket and stuffed it into his mouth. I guessed it was a sweet or chocolate drop. Girls always carry little snacks around with them, and enjoy giving them to boys they like. I wondered whether she was having an affair with Mou Sen behind Wang Fei’s back.

‘Our tape of the national anthem is much more stirring than their Internationale,’ Chen Di said. ‘They can’t defeat us. Hey, Mao Da’s shouting to us. Let’s go.’ He pulled Old Fu to his feet and dragged him out of the tent.

I felt a wave of exhaustion sweep over me and went outside for some fresh air. As I stared at the two wooden school desks of the makeshift reception centre at the Square’s north-east entrance, a Beijing resident walked up to me and said that her neighbour’s daughter, who’d come to the Square to support the students, had been run over by a car on her way home. She wanted to appeal for donations to help pay for the girl’s medical care. I wasn’t sure whether she was telling the truth or not, so I didn’t allow her into the broadcast station.

I lay down on the ground, had a quick doze then returned to the tent.

‘Look at all those buses parked out there,’ Zhang Jie said as I walked in. ‘That’s Bai Ling’s hard work.’ He handed me the pile of paper he was holding. ‘I’ve only been in this tent for ten minutes, and look how many reports and statements I’ve been given.’ There was a tall girl standing next to him. I asked her what university she was from. She said she was a geology student, and had drawn a large map of the Square.

I told her I hadn’t met many geology students before. She was holding the rolled-up map in her hand. She looked like an Overseas Chinese tourist in her baseball cap, brown sunglasses and clean, freshly ironed clothes. She’d just had a shower. We all looked dirty and dishevelled in comparison. Everyone crowded round her to look at the map she’d drawn.

‘My name is Chuchu,’ she said, taking off her grey windcheater, revealing a low-necked cotton blouse underneath. When she leaned down, the gold cross of her necklace dangled over the map. ‘I thought that since this is a broadcast station, it must be the Square’s command centre too. I’m leaving the country in a couple of days, and I wanted to give you the map before I left. I spent two days drawing it. Look, this is the Beijing University camp, and this is the lifeline for the ambulances.’ She was taller than most of the boys in the tent.

‘You’ve put in so much detail!’ Mao Da said. ‘It will be very useful to us when we need to reorganise the Square. We must make sure it doesn’t fall into enemy hands.’