Beijing Coma (61 page)

‘You must be prepared for police violence,’ I said. ‘It’s no joke being attacked with electric batons, I can tell you!’ Earlier that morning, I’d accompanied Zhuzi on a tour of the barricades that residents had put up around the city. I could still feel the sweat of fear on my back.

Mao Da passed round some bread rolls then opened a can of luncheon meat. The cucumbers hadn’t been washed, so I rubbed mine on my trousers before I took a bite. It was a delicious meal. Shu Tong had been in the Square all morning, reorganising Wang Fei’s propaganda office. He’d asked some high school teachers to help write pamphlets and articles.

The Square was filled with people again. Columns of marchers poured in from all directions, followed by open-backed trucks crammed with protestors and placards. There must have been a million people in the Square now, talking and yelling. Loudspeakers wailed in unison: ‘Oppose military control! Defend Beijing!’ The multitude of human cries rose in waves that crashed against the Monument’s central obelisk and rolled back into our ears. In this sea of noise, we had to shout to be heard.

‘It won’t be easy for the army to enter the Square,’ Mao Da said, gazing out at the vast crowd.

‘They didn’t have much problem crushing the demonstrations in Lhasa a few months ago,’ Liu Gang said. ‘God knows how many Tibetans were killed. Did you see the images of Party Secretary Hu Jintao issuing the crackdown order in his army fatigues and helmet? He looked like a little Hitler.’ He was lying on his back chomping on a cucumber, his face shaded by a straw hat. On our way to the Monument he’d told me he hadn’t slept for two days.

‘That massacre happened out in the sticks,’ Mao Da said. ‘This is Beijing. The army wouldn’t dare open fire here.’

‘Liu Gang and I saw about eight hundred riot police officers at Liuli Bridge,’ I told Mao Da. ‘They were beating up every student in sight.’

‘Tear gas is very nasty,’ Mimi said. ‘It can frighten a crowd just as much as rubber bullets.’

‘It’s a miracle no student died during the hunger strike,’ Sister Gao muttered. ‘That night in the dorm when Bai Ling announced she wanted to launch the strike, I told her that if anyone died, she’d get her head cut off.’

Yu Jin walked over. ‘We’ve received many reports. This one’s from Dabeiyao Bridge, this one’s from the Hongmiao intersection. The army has surrounded the city, from Changping District to the western suburbs.’ In his red vest and red cap he looked like a turkey. He grabbed a bread roll from Chen Di, reached for a clove of garlic, then munched a cucumber, spitting the skin onto the ground as he ate.

‘There are a million people in the Square now, and large crowds manning the barricades around the city,’ Sister Gao said anxiously to Shu Tong. ‘How will the Federation manage to keep everyone under control?’

‘The Federation should hold a meeting,’ Shu Tong said. ‘The Hunger Strike Headquarters are having one right now over there. Pass me a clove of garlic.’ He picked up his chopsticks and dug into the polystyrene box of fried pork and mustard shoots he’d brought from the university cafeteria. Near the Museum of Chinese History, student officers were handing out free boxed lunches paid for by the Hong Kong Student Association, but you had to queue for hours to get one.

Zhang Jie and Xiao Li walked over from the Headquarters’ tent, looking for something to eat. They’d spent all morning supervising the student marshal teams.

‘Hundreds of marshals have been guarding this monument for hours, not even taking time off to have lunch, just so that you lot can lie here and sunbathe,’ Zhang Jie said, taking the cucumber Mimi handed him.

‘So what decision have the Headquarters come to?’ Hai Feng asked him.

‘Bai Ling and Lin Lu have only just turned up,’ he replied. ‘They’re discussing whether to call for a nationwide strike.’ He grabbed two rolls, squeezed them together then took a large bite.

‘The Square is swarming with plain-clothes policemen,’ Sister Gao said to Mimi. ‘If someone asks you what your name is, don’t tell them.’

‘Do you mean there are spies out here?’ Mimi’s voice had become much brighter since she’d stopped her hunger strike.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘When you’re standing in the courtroom in a few months’ time, you’ll be shown videotapes of yourself eating cucumbers with Shu Tong.’

Mimi glanced nervously to her left and right. ‘I can’t imagine how it must feel to see men charging towards you with electric batons in their hands,’ she said. She was wearing Tian Yi’s blue plastic visor. The sunlight bouncing off it dazzled my eyes.

I stood up, shook the crumbs from my trousers and looked into the distance. I could see hundreds of students on the roofs of the buses parked along the north edge of the Square. Some were lying down on quilts, others were sitting up waving red flags. It looked like an elevated theatre stage.

‘Ten portable toilets have been put up outside the Museum of Chinese History,’ Hai Feng said.

‘Make an announcement, otherwise no one will know they’re there,’ Tian Yi said, getting up. She and Mimi were planning to head off to Xuanwumen Hotel. The Hong Kong Student Association had established a liaison office in one of the rooms there. It was the turn of the Beijing University students to use the shower in its en suite bathroom.

‘Look at the vast crowd we’ve got here,’ Mao Da said. ‘The martial law order hasn’t been very successful, has it?’

‘Have a look at these,’ said Shu Tong, handing Mimi the pile of reports that Yu Jin had collected. ‘If you find anything interesting, you can put it in your newscasts.’

‘They’re all about the citizens’ blockades,’ Mimi said, leafing through them and sorting them into three separate piles. ‘We can use this one about residents forming a human wall across the street, and this one about soldiers violently forcing their way through a blockade. That should be enough.’

Tian Yi selected some other reports and knelt down to write a quick bulletin. When she’d finished, I picked it up and read it out loud. ‘“Armed police in steel helmets charged out of the Zhongnanhai government compound with electric batons and attacked the students who were staging a peaceful sit-in outside. The Beijing University students Liu Wei, an English major, and Gu Yanting, a post-graduate student in the Department of African and Asian Studies, both suffered head and chest injuries and have been taken to hospital.”’

‘I think it’s best you don’t broadcast any reports about injured students,’ Shu Tong said, sticking his chin up.

‘I don’t want to hear that kind of news either,’ Mimi said.

‘Dai Wei, go and listen in on the Headquarters’ meeting,’ Shu Tong said. ‘Once we know what they’ve decided, we can come up with our own plan.’ He moved his lips about after he spoke, as though he were trying to remove a scrap of food lodged between his teeth.

‘They wouldn’t let me in. I’m not a member of the standing committee.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Hai Feng said. ‘It’s a plenary meeting. You won’t have to vote. Hurry up . . .’

In the Hunger Strike Headquarters’ tent on the other side of the terrace, Ke Xi picked up a pamphlet and said, ‘Look at this! It says it would be a grave mistake for us to leave the Square now!’ The back of his shirt was drenched in sweat. He’d lost a lot of weight during his fast. The Headquarters’ meeting appeared to be drawing to a close.

Wu Bin rushed inside, sweat pouring down his face. He’d been appointed head of the Headquarters’ intelligence office, and was preparing to set up a KGB-style anti-espionage system. He complained that the marshals still didn’t know who he was, and had tried to stop him entering the upper terrace. Whenever he finished speaking, he’d raise his eyebrows – or flex his eye muscles, to be more precise, since he didn’t have any eyebrows to raise.

‘If you walk up to them with a pair of pliers like these and say you’ve come to repair the cables, they let you straight through,’ Shao Jian said, lifting his pliers. ‘That’s what I always do.’

Cheng Bing got up to speak. Her face had become much rosier since she’d given up her fast. Or perhaps the redness was caused by sunburn. The pink leaflet in her hand looked like a slice of raw meat.

Old Fu was having a quiet word with Lin Lu. His face was sickly yellow. He looked as though he was coming down with another illness. Mou Sen was in the corner, smoking a cigarette. His goatee had grown quite long. He looked like a bohemian painter now.

An official announcement blared through the government loudspeakers: ‘While martial law is in force, foreigners are forbidden to participate in any activities which contravene the martial law edict. The military police have the right to use whatever means necessary to deal with any offenders . . .’

The crowds in the Square were still shouting and braying. One side of the Square yelled, ‘Reinstate Zhao Ziyang!’ while the other side shouted, ‘Protect Zhao Ziyang!’

‘If we’re going to defend ourselves against the army, we must buy weapons and start military training!’ Tang Guoxian said, punching the ground with his fist. He’d tied a red cloth around his wrist to protect his watch.

‘It’s against the law for citizens to use weapons,’ Yang Tao said.

‘We will wrest power from the government’s hands, like the French revolutionaries who stormed the Bastille!’ Wang Fei shouted through his megaphone. ‘With our blood we will build a new Paris Commune!’ The previous night, he’d managed to buy tens of thousands of towels and face masks. Bai Ling had been impressed, and had given him an appreciative hug.

The loudspeakers tied to the Monument’s obelisk screeched again, and a voice cried out, ‘This is Sister Gao speaking, deputy chairwoman of the Beijing Students’ Federation. I have an urgent announcement. We want to send a hundred students to the barricades to try and persuade our comrade soldiers to turn back. Both male and female students are welcome to volunteer . . .’ Her voice drowned out Wang Fei’s speech. The members of the standing committee quickly appointed Lin Lu acting commander-in-chief, then brought the meeting to a close.

Two student marshals escorted three soldiers onto the upper terrace. The soldiers said they wanted to tell the students about their refusal to implement the martial law order. The brims of their caps were drenched in sweat.

‘A soldier addressed the Square this morning,’ Lin Lu said. ‘He kept jabbering on about cutting up enemy forces and penetrating the adversary’s camps. I couldn’t make head or tail of it. Go and listen to what this lot are saying, Dai Wei. See if you can understand what they’re going on about.’ Lin Lu then asked Tang Guoxian to take him to the major entry points into the city to check the state of the barricades.

The cold wind blowing outside the ambulance car I’m lying in makes me long for the streets of southern China – the smell of mosquito-repellent incense wafting from street stalls, the fluorescent light falling on plastic buckets and brooms hanging from windows and doors. Sometimes I’d sit on a kerb, drinking a bottle of Coke and slapping the mosquitoes that landed on my legs. When windows began to light up in the early evening but the sky was still bright enough to see the leaves of the distant trees, I’d close my textbook and think about where I was going to take A-Mei that night . . .

Fragments of various conversations I had with A-Mei float around my parietal lobes, but the locations in which they took place have become muddled. ‘You go to the play, if you want,’ she said. ‘I don’t like that actress.’ I remember that we were sitting in a restaurant at the time. There was a window behind her. Through it I could see pedestrians and buses and the large branches of a banyan tree that was trapped between two buildings. But now I hear her saying these same words to me during a telephone conversation, so the memory of the restaurant must have been fabricated. My memories are like old tapes that have been recorded over in so many places that the original track has become incomprehensible.

My clearest memory of A-Mei is of her saying, ‘What is it you love about me?’ She was sitting naked on our bed when she said this, her brown nipples tilting to either side. But that question is all I remember of the conversation. Everything that came before and after it is a void.

‘We agreed that if I gave you eighteen yuan, you’d take us right up to the emergency room!’ my mother whines, sounding both congested and anxious. ‘You can’t just dump him at the hospital gates like this!’

I have a temperature of forty-two degrees. Apparently, my lips have turned blue. But I don’t feel I’m about to pass out. In fact, my thoughts seem unusually clear at the moment.

‘This is a professional ambulance car, Auntie! We should have charged you ten yuan just to carry him downstairs – especially since you live on the third floor – but we only charged you eight. And now you’re trying to beat the price down even more. How do you expect us to make a living?’

‘The Xicheng ambulance cars charge twenty yuan, but the drivers carry the patients to the car, then carry them all the way to the waiting room when they reach the hospital.’ My mother had gone to a public telephone box and called many different ambulance companies before she chose this one.

‘Rubbish. There are only two ambulance companies in Beijing, and we’re the best. The drivers have medical training, and our cars are fitted with first-aid equipment.’

‘Please, doctor comrades!’ my mother cries. ‘At least help me carry him to the hospital’s entrance. It’s only fifty metres away. I’ll give you an extra two yuan. It’s so cold outside. If you leave him on the street, how will I be able to drag him over there all on my own?’

‘. . . You don’t love me,’ A-Mei murmured as she sat on her bed. ‘You just have a longing to return to the womb. Like those fish that go back to their natal streams to spawn and die . . .’ The bedside lamp cast a yellow glow over her bare stomach.