Beijing Coma (92 page)

I’ve never heard her so enraged before. She certainly didn’t react so angrily the last two times the police came to take us away for 4 June. Six weeks ago, she stood outside the Zhongnanhai government compound with 10,000 fellow practitioners for six hours, and returned a different person. She probably feels just like we did at the beginning of the student movement. When people become part of a group, they find a courage they never knew they possessed before.

‘In fact, the clampdown on Falun Gong has already begun,’ the female officer says, following my mother into the bedroom. ‘The police have begun scouring the city’s hotels, rounding up Falun Gong members who’ve travelled up from the provinces. We’ll be turning on the Beijing practitioners soon. We’ve placed you under surveillance all these years because of your son’s involvement in the student movement. But this time it’s your membership of the cult that worries us . . . We’ve heard that Falun Gong members are planning to stage a mass suicide in the Fragrant Hills on the birthday of your leader, Li Hongzhi. You can’t expect the government to sit back and do nothing.’

‘A mass suicide? That’s absurd! All we Falun Gong practitioners want is to cultivate our energies so that one day we’ll achieve immortality and fly into the sky. None of us wants to kill ourselves.’ My mother moves closer to the woman and asks, ‘Who are those two male officers? I haven’t seen them before.’

‘They’ve been sent by the municipal public security bureau. They’re dealing with your files now . . .’

‘A nurse comes twice a week to look after my son. I’ve already paid her fees upfront. You can’t expect us to leave like this at the drop of a hat . . .’

While I listen to the commotion, I see Nuwa standing at the foot of the national flagpole on Tiananmen Square, commanding us all to sing along with her: ‘
Don’t be sad! The flag of the Republic will be stained with our blood
 . . .’ She was wearing a thin white T-shirt. You could see her red bra underneath. It was dawn, and a crowd had gathered round the pole to watch the daily flag-raising ceremony. We didn’t feel the cold of the morning air. During those last few days in the Square, we always seemed to be singing ‘The Bloodstained Spirit’. There was a large vat of egg soup on the back of a tricycle cart beside me. A woman was ladling out bowls to a long queue of students. She’d come to the Square with the motorcyclists of the Flying Tigers brigade. At first glance, I thought she was Lulu. She had the same short, permed hair and flowery nylon shirt. Perhaps that’s why the smell of her egg soup remains so vivid in my mind.

The sparrow suddenly plops onto my chest, digs its claws into my skin and lets out a shrill cry.

‘. . . The army’s about to roll in and you’re still worrying about your stupid opening ceremony. It’s too late for that now.’ This was Big Chan speaking. His feminine mouth was rosy and his eyes were sparkling. He was wearing a cotton glove on his left hand to protect his long nails. He would only remove the glove when he went into his tent to strum a few tunes on his guitar. He was very popular. Even when he was asleep, there was always a cluster of friends around him. He and I were walking towards the Goddess of Democracy. If we’d known the dawn that was breaking was the last one we’d ever see, perhaps we would have looked a little longer at the beautiful grey glow in the distance.

The officers have carried me downstairs and put me in the back of their van. My mother jumps up and says, ‘Wait a minute. His bedpan! I forgot it last time, and had to put him in nappies every day.’

‘Follow her up, Xiao Hu. Make sure she doesn’t fling herself from the top of the building. That old bag’s very devious . . .’

‘We’re going to be stuck with them for five days! I hope we get a bloody big bonus.’

They light their cigarettes. The van stinks of petrol. The engine begins to rumble.

Damn. Who’s going to look after my sparrow?

The police took us to a small guest house near the Great Wall. Every day, the female officer read out articles to my mother on the evils of Falun Gong. In the month since we’ve returned, the police have visited twice a week. My mother was told to stay in the flat, but today she went out, leaving me to listen to callers talk into the answer machine.

‘It’s terrible!’ shouts the voice on the other end of the line. ‘The police are knocking on every door in the city, rounding up Falun Gong members. Two officers came to our flat last night, dragged my father out by his hair and forced him into a police van. They arrested about thirty people from our compound . . .’

My mother set off with Granny Pang this morning to meet Master Yao outside the Central Appeals Office. He wanted to submit a petition. It’s evening now, and she still hasn’t returned. I presume she’s been arrested. The government appears to have launched a large-scale manhunt.

There is a sinister atmosphere in the air. Two police officers suddenly break into the flat and begin searching through my mother’s belongings. One of them comes over and slaps me on both cheeks. ‘My God, look what I’ve found. Is he dead or alive?’

‘He’s the vegetable. Everyone round here knows about him. He’s been like this for ten years. We thought he was putting on an act at first, so we planted a nurse here for a few days, but she confirmed that his coma was genuine. If he’d been faking, we would have flung him in jail. He was one of the student leaders of the Tiananmen movement.’

‘So mother and son are both counter-revolutionaries, then.’

‘Let’s hurry up and see if we can find any incriminating letters or Falun Gong tapes.’

They pull the quilt, sheets and pillowcases off my mother’s bed and empty her drawers onto the floor. A third officer pulls out the sofa in the sitting room and rips off the fake leather cover. Then they unhook the mirror from the wall and smash it to check whether there’s anything hidden inside the frame. The television set has been wheeled into the middle of the room and is also being smashed open.

‘Hey, look at this book:
The Great Law of Falun
. I found it hidden in her kitchen drawer.’

‘Well done, Inspector Holmes!’

‘It wasn’t difficult. She lined a filthy drawer with a clean sheet of newspaper. Any fool could have guessed there was something hidden underneath.’

I feared something like this might happen. Master Yao has been put under house arrest. He phoned my mother several times this week. He told her there are two armed police officers guarding his front door and a police van parked outside his block. At night its headlights shine straight into his flat. He said everyone who petitioned outside Zhongnanhai in April is going to be arrested. 10,000 armed police officers have been mobilised to carry out the job.

At the end of the phone conversation he had with her this morning, he said, ‘The government feels we made them lose face in April, and they want to punish us. But they shouldn’t slander Master Li Hongzhi. He has never tried to stop any members from seeking medical treatment, and he has no intention of usurping the Communist Party. Falun Gong isn’t a political organisation or a religion. It’s a cultivation practice that promotes well-being through meditation exercises and good morals. There’s no foreign force manipulating us behind the scenes. The government’s accusations are unjust. When the guards have their lunch today, I’m going to sneak out of the flat and go to Zhongnanhai to submit a petition to the Central Appeals Office.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ my mother said. ‘And I’ll get Granny Pang downstairs to come too. I don’t care if they arrest me. The police came round last night and told me not to leave the flat. What are they afraid of, for God’s sake? I’m not likely to go very far, am I, as long as Dai Wei is still alive. They’re forcing us to renounce our movement, just as they forced the students to renounce theirs after the 4 June crackdown.’

But after she put the phone down, my mother squatted on the floor and sighed, ‘Huh, I’ve had to live through so many political campaigns. Is this the one that’s finally going to break me?’

She removed the photograph of Li Hongzhi from the wall, gathered all her books and instruction tapes together and began concealing them around the flat. She switched on the radio and tuned into each station, searching for the latest updates. Every station was broadcasting the same pre-recorded reading of the
People’s Daily
article entitled ‘The Truth about Li Hongzhi’. ‘Are we going to have to be subjected to another Cultural Revolution?’ she muttered to herself. ‘Has President Jiang Zemin lost his mind?’

I’m afraid that my mother will be physically punished for her thoughts and actions, just as I was. In this police state, I’ve managed to gain freedom of thought by pretending to be dead. My muteness is a protective cloak.

‘Mum? Are you there? Please pick up the phone. It’s me! I remember you mentioning that you’ve taken up Falun Gong. I heard on the BBC today that 10,000 practitioners have been arrested. The Chinese government has jammed the internet. None of the emails I’ve been sending my old classmates have been getting through. Are you there, Mum? Please pick up . . .’

The sparrow flies around the room all day. Sometimes it goes to the kitchen to drink some water or peck at the bag of millet. In the last few days, it’s taken to shitting on my bed. I remember dissecting a sparrow when I was at Southern University. Its feathers had been plucked off. Through the thin, purplish-red skin, I could see its translucent stomach, suspended inside its abdomen like a small sausage.

Before I slowly die of starvation, I must try to take stock of my predicament.

My pulse is stable, my organs are functioning well. If someone were to pour milk or vegetable soup down my feeding tube, I would be able to produce some urine.

Although my motor cortex has atrophied, my synapses have been strengthened through continual use. My cognitive ability has improved and my memories have been consolidated. The plain-clothes officer who shot me destroyed my body, but he didn’t destroy my mind. I’m probably the only citizen still alive in this country who hasn’t yet signed a statement supporting the government crackdown.

If I were to wake from this hibernation, perhaps I’d become the manager of a computer company or a nightclub security guard. Or maybe I’d take up Falun Gong and end up dying in jail. Do I really want to wake from this deep sleep and rejoin the comatose crowds outside? I withdrew from society and retreated into my bedroom, then from my bedroom I retreated into my body. Eventually, I will leave my body behind and retreat into the earth. When seen from this perspective, death looks like an easy escape route. But although I’m tempted to take it, something pulls me back. I still want to read the
Illustrated Edition of The Book of Mountains and Seas
one more time, then travel through the landscapes it describes, and write a scientific treatise elucidating every geographical, botanical, zoological . . .

A stone smashes through the window of the covered balcony. A kid in the yard probably threw it in an attempt to kill the sparrow. A gust of hot, dry air rushes into the room.

As well as the sparrow, there is now a mouse in the room. A couple of nights ago, when everything was quiet, I heard it nibbling a bag of flour in the kitchen. Now, it skips and leaps around the flat all day. When the sparrow leaves my room, the mouse climbs onto my bed and nibbles at my cheek.

I haven’t had any food poured into me for four days. If my mother doesn’t return soon, I’ll rot to death. If I was buried under rubble after an earthquake, I could command my body to dig me out. But since I’m buried inside my flesh, all I can do is wait patiently until the bacteria consume me from within.

A light so bright that it’s almost black hovers above my bed. I’ve been lying here for ten years. I have retrieved every detail of my life. There is nothing left for me to remember. If I’m to die now, I won’t feel many regrets, only grief and guilt about the students who died before me.

I don’t want to see Tian Yi again. She is now no more than a bundle of memories I will take with me to my grave. At this moment, she’s probably lying next to her fiancé, about to crawl out of bed.

What torments me is that I have no way of finding out what happened to A-Mei, even though her bloodstained letter is lying under my bed, inside the box my mother bought for my ashes. I’ve never heard any mention of a foreign student being injured or killed during the crackdown. I remember standing at the window of our room at Southern University, watching her walk down a paved path. She kept stopping in her tracks. I didn’t know why at the time, but now I understand. She could never do two things at once. When a thought came to her mind, her feet would forget to move. I watched her walk under the large banyan tree. Her beautiful image flitted in and out of view behind the branches and green leaves. When she emerged from the other side I had a clear view of her again. I watched her bare knees move like two shiny pebbles under her smooth skin, then looked at her thighs and thought about the warm, damp space hidden between them . . .

Only now do I understand that, while I watched A-Mei being embraced by the arms of the banyan tree, I felt an irrational jealousy, and worried about who else or what else might want to wrap their arms around her. So when she walked through the door, I shot her an angry frown. ‘You walk as slowly as a cow.’

‘It’s such a lovely day,’ she said breezily. ‘I was just taking my time. It’s not as if I had a lecture to run to.’

‘Well, I’ve been waiting here for twenty minutes,’ I barked.