Beijing Coma (89 page)

I wish my mother would open a window. This flat is so stuffy. My mother’s room is barely larger than her double bed. There’s hardly any room to stand. My room is a little bigger, but it feels cramped and airless when the window of the adjacent balcony room is shut. The sitting room is a windowless passageway. But if you open the windows in the toilet and kitchen and keep the front door ajar, a small breeze can pass through it.

The rat poison Master Yao laid out a couple of weeks ago has killed all the mice in the flat. But my mother still hasn’t found the dead mouse that’s lying inside my father’s box of ashes. The smell of its decomposing corpse is disgusting. It makes me think of the frog I buried alive in the glass jar. Why does flesh take so long to disintegrate into dust?

‘There was a programme on Beijing TV attacking Falun Gong the other night,’ Master Yao says. ‘It’s a sign that the government has decided to suppress us. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re tapping my phone.’

‘You must be careful,’ my mother sighs.

‘It’s too hot in here. Let’s open the door. Everyone’s having their afternoon nap now. No one will disturb us.’

My mother rams her shoulder against the heavy metal front door a couple of times, and finally manages to shove it open. A Taiwanese song floats up from a flat downstairs. ‘
I’m a tiny, tiny, tiny little bird. I try to fly, but I never get very high-igh-igh
 . . .’

‘The steel security doors they’re making now have little windows at the top that let air flow in and out,’ Master Yao says. ‘If you want to buy one, I can arrange to have it installed for you.’

‘I don’t want to make any changes to this flat right now. I’ll wait until Dai Wei’s situation is resolved.’ What she means is that she’ll wait until I’ve died.

My mother usually keeps the door shut, because whenever she opens it, the neighbours complain about the stench that pours out from our flat. They tell her it brings down the value of their property. Everyone in this building, apart from us, has taken advantage of the new policy allowing urban residents to buy their state-owned flats from the government. So our neighbours are homeowners now, with official property ownership certificates. But because my mother resigned from her job, she’s not eligible to buy the flat, and has to continue renting it from the National Opera Company. When the authorities demolish this compound, she will only get 10,000 yuan compensation, which isn’t nearly enough to buy her a flat in the new estate that most of our neighbours are moving to.

‘So you were here all the time! I knocked on your door earlier, but there was no answer. You’re sensible to stay indoors on a hot day like this. As soon as I step outside, my clothes become drenched in sweat. Then I have to take a shower when I get home, which wastes so much water . . .’

As usual, opening the front door has brought trouble. The woman from the flat upstairs, who is a sales agent for a fitness equipment company, wants to come in for a chat.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ my mother says reluctantly.

‘This tall gentleman here looks like a company director. Am I right?’

‘No. I used to be an accountant. I got laid off.’

‘I was laid off too. But I’ve turned my misfortune into good fortune. I work in direct sales now. I can make at least a thousand yuan a month, which is five times the subsistence salary my former work unit pays me. You look in good shape. I could recommend you to my boss, if you like. We sell exercise bikes. You get a 200-yuan commission for each one you sell. By the end of the year you could make enough money to buy yourself a house, or a car. It’s a fantastic scheme . . .’

This new neighbour has tried to persuade my mother to join her pyramid sales group three or four times already. Although my mother has never agreed, she’s picked out numbers from the telephone directory and phoned up strangers to test whether she could do the job.

‘The bikes are very expensive,’ my mother says. ‘And they take up a lot of room. You could only sell them to those rich people who live in the big new apartment blocks.’

‘But if people have some money to spend, they’d buy themselves a computer, not sports equipment,’ Master Yao says.

‘No, when people get rich, they start eating too much, and then they start wanting to lose weight,’ the woman says. ‘Fitness clubs make more money than computer training centres these days. You should look at our website and check out our products. This company has got a great future.’

‘I can’t afford to use the internet,’ Master Yao says. ‘It costs twenty yuan an hour. It would be cheaper for me to take a taxi to your warehouse and see the products in person.’

‘I like this movie star wall calendar you’ve got here. Look, this is the actress who did those TV adverts for diet pills.’

From a radio upstairs, a newsreader drones, ‘In advance of President Clinton’s historic visit to China later this month, President Jiang Zemin expressed his hope that the United States will conduct an honest and purposeful dialogue with China, and will take full advantage of the trading opportunities afforded by our nation’s growth . . .’

The world I used to live in has been transformed, like flour that has been baked into bread. I have to chew on it very slowly before I can recapture any sense of what it once was.

‘The martial law troops have begun to force their way through the barricades!’ Wang Fei shouted into his walkie-talkie as he headed off with some students to the Liubukou intersection just west of the Zhongnanhai compound. I’d been there an hour before, constructing a roadblock of cement bollards and empty buses. The Beijing Students’ Federation had been urging students who’d returned to the campuses to come out onto the streets and help the citizens man the barricades.

Lin Lu ran into the broadcast station and shouted into the microphone: ‘This is an emergency! We need more students to go to the intersections immediately and help block the army’s advance!’ He then turned to Yu Jin and told him to take the few marshals remaining in the Square to the Jianguomen intersection in the east. He’d just received a report that an army truck there had been overturned and set on fire.

All the telephones lines we’d been using had been cut off, and most of the journalists and television crews had left the Square. The festive, carefree atmosphere of the previous few days had gone.

The announcements broadcast from the Beijing Workers’ Federation’s tent on the other side of Changan Avenue were usually drowned out by louder noises, but now I could hear their leaders calling out for Beijing citizens to join their Dare-to-Die Squad. ‘The situation has taken a grave turn for the worse. The military are tightening their circle around Beijing . . .’

‘Dai Wei, muster your marshals and set up a security line,’ Old Fu said. ‘The four intellectuals want to enter the Square and start their hunger strike. I’ve just found out that one of them is the Taiwanese rock star Hou Dejian. He’s a university graduate, so I suppose that makes him an intellectual. The crowds will go mad when they see him.’

‘You sort it out,’ I said. ‘I’m looking after the broadcast station. And anyway, all my marshals have gone to the intersections.’

‘Ke Xi mentioned they were coming yesterday, but I forgot all about it,’ said Lin Lu. ‘We should erect a hunger strike tent for them up on the Monument.’ He then began gabbling into his walkie-talkie, trying to muster more reinforcements.

‘You’re supposed to be in charge of crowd control, Dai Wei,’ Old Fu said, popping a stomach pill into his mouth. ‘I can’t set up the security line. I’m in the middle of moving my finance office into another tent. This couldn’t be worse timing.’

‘The only marshals still here are a small group from Lanzhou University. I’ll see if Tang Guoxian will let us borrow them. He’s asked them to man the security cordons during the Democracy University’s opening ceremony.’

The four intellectuals walked into the Square. Lin Lu shook hands with one of them and said, ‘Welcome! We’re just getting someone to put up a tent for you. Come and wait inside our broadcast station.’ It was Shan Bo, the Beijing Normal teacher and literary critic who’d been active in the Capital Joint Liaison Group. Behind him was Gao Xin, another lecturer from Beijing Normal, the economist Zi Duo and the rock star Hou Dejian, who was dressed in faded jeans and a white T-shirt.

All the students in the Square were desperate to catch a glimpse of Hou Dejian, so after the four men entered our tent, I quickly blocked the entrance. The only marshals guarding us now were twelve social science students Hai Feng had sent from the campus. Five of them were girls.

A huge crowd surrounded the broadcast station. A pack of journalists appeared from nowhere, waving their reporters’ cards and requesting to interview Hou Dejian.

When we received word that the hunger strike tent had been erected, Shao Jian, a student marshal and I linked hands around the four men and pushed them through the excited crowds to the Monument’s upper terrace. Lin Lu hurried them into the tent then told the student officials to sit in a protective circle around it.

‘My ribs feel as though they’ve been crushed to pieces,’ Shao Jian moaned as we leaned against the balustrades, trying to catch our breath. My shirt was soaking wet. It was a designer one that I’d borrowed from Dong Rong. I noticed that the top button had been ripped off in the scrum.

The arrival of the hunger strikers had sent a wave of excitement through the Square. The students below stood about expectantly, like a crowd outside a cinema the night a new film is released. Books, T-shirts and hats were passed up continually for the men to sign. The crowd was now larger than it had been the day the Beijing rock star Cui Jian came to sing in the Square. Hundreds of people tried to squeeze their way onto the Monument shouting, ‘Come out of your tent, Hou Dejian! Sing us a song!’

The terrace below was now packed. A student in a T-shirt that said
I LOVE TIANANMEN
! climbed up and swung himself over the balustrades, almost kicking me in the face. A stream of people followed behind him. The student officials around the tent jumped up and were immediately shoved back by the invading hordes. The tent wobbled. Fearing it was about to collapse, I squeezed through and said to the intellectuals, ‘I think you’d better come out. We can’t hold the crowds back any longer.’

Zi Duo sat up, readjusted his glasses and said, ‘It’s you they want to see, Hou Dejian, not us. You go outside. We’ll stay here.’

Shan Bo took an anxious drag from his cigarette and stuttered, ‘Wh-what’s the point of coming here if we’re just going to s-s-stay in the tent?’

‘Well, come out too, if you want,’ I said. Then I stepped outside and shouted through the megaphone: ‘Fellow students, please stop pushing. Step back a few metres. Our guests are coming out to greet you.’ The crowd fell silent.

As soon as Hou Dejian stepped out, everyone applauded. Someone shouted, ‘Hou Dejian! You’re great! Sing us a song!’

I looked down at the crowds that were scrambling towards the Monument, knocking down banners and flags on their way. Hou Dejian held hands with Shan Bo and Gao Xin and began singing his most famous anthem, ‘Children of the Dragon’.

I passed my megaphone to Shao Jian, and seized my chance to sneak off to the toilets. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to the song.

The song seemed to bring the Square back to life. The banners, flags and students swayed in time to the music.

As I was pushing my way across the Square, I bumped into Mou Sen and Nuwa. ‘Look what a reaction your two lecturers up there are getting!’ I said grumpily. ‘When twenty Beijing University professors joined our hunger strike, no one paid them any attention. They forgot to bring a rock star with them, that’s why!’

‘
Hurry up, my darling!
’ Nuwa said to Mou Sen in English. ‘I want to see Hou Dejian!’ Mou Sen was hoping to push Nuwa to the front so that she could get a better view, but I knew he wouldn’t be strong enough to propel her through that crowd.

As I moved away, I could hear Shan Bo in the distance, shouting through my megaphone: ‘We’ll get you in the end, Li Peng! You bastard! We’ll get you! . . .’

I continued north towards Tiananmen Gate. The dirty paper and fruit-peel trampled onto the paving stones smelt only of dust. All odours of rot and decay had dissipated in the hot air. Chairman Mao was smiling wryly at the Goddess of Democracy, whose eyes were at the same level and were staring straight back at him.

The sparrow’s arrival has given me a clearer sense of where I am. Perhaps the bird is A-Mei’s soul come to visit me. It reminds me of the sacred bird in
The Book of Mountains and Seas
which lays square eggs and resembles a flame of fire when it flies through the sky. Ever since it first landed on my head, I have felt the warmth of its glow.

For days, it has hopped up and down my body. Sometimes it flies around the room. I’ve dreamed about flying all my life, but with just a flap of its wings and a jump, this creature can make the dream a reality. I can tell from its chirp that it’s a sparrow. I imagine that it has tawny grey feathers and yellow claws. It’s waiting for me to wake up, so that we can fly away together. A-Mei once said that she wanted to come back as a bird in the next life.

The slightest noise – even the sound of a mung bean rolling onto the floor – will cause its claws to tremble.

My mother has tried many times to flick it out of the room with a feather duster, but it always manages to flap its wings just in time and fly through the duster’s feathers. After every narrow escape, I catch a whiff of fresh bird shit.

‘All right, stay in the flat if you want!’ my mother grumbles. ‘This building’s going to be pulled down soon, so enjoy it while you can.’ A few moments ago, she pinched some of the acupuncture points on my feet that Master Yao told her about, but I didn’t feel a thing.