Beijing Coma (94 page)

‘That’s good news,’ I said. ‘Mou Sen will need more money for his Democracy University.’

She forced a smile then walked away and disappeared down the pedestrian underpass. I wondered if Mou Sen had spoken to her about Nuwa yet. She’d probably seen the photograph of their Tiananmen Square wedding. It had been printed in all the newspapers.

The broadcast station played a tape of the Internationale. The sound was louder and cracklier than usual. Everyone in the Square sang along. The announcements blaring from the government speakers on the lamp posts had become louder too, and the echoes added to the din.

‘Where can I get my batteries recharged?’ Wang Fei asked, walking into the tent. ‘My walkie-talkie isn’t working.’

‘Don’t use it, then!’ I said. ‘And keep it in your pocket. If the soldiers see you carrying it, they’ll shoot you!’

‘They can shoot me if they like. I don’t care! My body is made of steel.’ The black paint of his megaphone was badly chipped.

Bai Ling sat down and spoke into the microphone. ‘This is commander-in-chief Bai Ling speaking. On behalf of the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters, I would like to ask everyone who is committed to defending the Square to stand up now.’

Everyone fell silent. The students sitting in the plastic shelters stepped outside to see what was going on. The atmosphere was very tense.

‘. . . Please raise your right hands, face the Monument to the People’s Heroes and say after me: “They may cut off our heads and make us bleed to death, but we will never give up our fight for democracy!” ’ Although surrounded by residents, tourists and even plain-clothes policemen, the students who raised their right hands ignored all distractions and focused on the solemn oath.

In the last glow before dark, I watched the crowds rush frantically back and forth between Chairman Mao’s portrait and the white Goddess of Democracy. They looked like swarms of nervous ants sensing the impending approach of a tidal wave.

When dusk falls, the noises outside drift towards my iron bed, then everything goes dark.

My mother drags herself like an old cloth bag from the sitting room into the bedroom and slumps onto her bed. There’s a lot of phlegm in her throat. I can hear it move when she breathes. She’s fallen asleep now. Apart from an occasional crinkling of a plastic bag in the kitchen, the flat is deathly silent.

It’s the same kind of silence that pervaded the flat when we returned home from the cemetery after my father was cremated. Dusk had fallen, just like now. I hadn’t heard any noise from my mother for a long time, so I quietly opened her door and peeped inside. She was sitting on the chair, fast asleep, her hands hanging limply on either side. A slanting beam of light from the lamp beside her illuminated the wrinkles around her eyes. Her brightly patterned shirt didn’t match the look of despair on her face. She was perfectly still. For a moment I thought she’d followed my father into the netherworld.

The room is pitch black now. The last gleams of light have left the windows.

Nights without birdsong feel empty . . . Tian Yi often talked about the red-breasted cuckoo we saw flitting through the rainforest in Yunnan. ‘Why didn’t I take a photo of it,’ she would say to me. ‘I had my camera in my hand . . .’

Today is 1 October 1999 – the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. So as to ensure the celebrations are clean and orderly, the police have arrested thousands of illegal migrant workers and scruffy-looking peasants who’ve travelled to the capital to lodge complaints, and have locked them in detention centres in the suburbs. The restaurants in this street were raided, and they have now lost half their staff. Every flat in the compound has been inundated with leaflets from the National Day Organising Committee telling the occupants not to accommodate guests from other provinces during the week of the celebrations.

When the parade passed through the city today, no one in the flats, restaurants or shops lining the route was allowed to look out of their windows. If anyone was spotted even standing by a window, they were arrested immediately. So that the government leaders can view tonight’s Tiananmen Square pageant in safety, all residents have been asked to stay at home and watch the event on television.

This morning, the municipal government sent a team of workers to spray green paint over any bare patches in the grassed areas along the route. The only people in the yard outside now are the policemen guarding the entrances to the apartment buildings. Our phone was cut off three days ago. My mother visited the caretaker countless times asking for it be reconnected, but he told her there was nothing he could do. I presume it won’t get reconnected until after midnight, when the fireworks have been let off and the celebrations have come to an end.

‘His armpits are completely rotten,’ my mother mutters in her sleep. ‘I’ve run out of alcohol swabs.’

In the two months since my mother was released from the detention centre, her voice seems to have aged a lot. Instead of offering her a path to salvation, Falun Gong has sucked her life force away. She hardly says a word to me any more. Occasionally I’m able to glean some information from her telephone conversations. I know that, in order to be allowed to return home to look after me, she wrote a statement renouncing Falun Gong and gave the police the names of her Falun Gong friends. I also know that while she was in detention, she was unable to sleep, and that her left arm broke when the police attacked her with electric batons. She’s still unable to lift it up.

When she turned on the radio yesterday and heard the sentences that have been issued to a group of key Falun Gong practitioners following a trial at the Beijing Intermediate People’s Court, my mother’s opera-trained voice howled with despair. Among the names listed was Master Yao. He’s been sentenced to a fixed term of eighteen years’ imprisonment, with deprivation of political rights for a subsequent ten years.

She often paces nervously around the flat, especially late at night. Sometimes she stands at the window and gazes out, listening to the distant roar of machinery as buildings are demolished or constructed, and mumbles, ‘They’ll be here any minute. They’re coming to arrest us. It won’t be long now . . .’ Then she turns off the dripping tap in the kitchen and sneaks outside into the corridor to see if there’s anyone coming.

When my brother phoned the other day, she kept repeating that Falun Gong is evil and dangerous and that she will never practise it again, and that all she wants now is to be a good mother and upstanding citizen.

My brother didn’t detect the change in my mother’s voice. He just told her to take care of herself, and promised to send another £500 at the end of the month. He doesn’t know that in two months’ time, this flat will no longer be here.

She often shouts at the sparrow, scolding it for eating too much millet or for dropping its shit on her bed. Sometimes she tells it that, when its feathers regrow in spring, it should fly away to America. Occasionally, she proclaims that the sparrow is a reincarnated Bodhisattva endowed with the roots of goodness, then she lights a stick of incense and prostrates herself at its feet.

My mother and I listen to the commotion outside while we hide in our flat like snails in their shells.

The Handover of Macao is just two days away now, but the neighbourhood committee hasn’t invited my mother’s fan-dance troupe to perform in the street party. Six Falun Gong practitioners in the neighbourhood have been sent to re-education-through-labour camps. Granny Pang was released from the detention centre at the same time as my mother. Her family have kept her locked inside her flat ever since.

My mother doesn’t bother to speak to me. She’s come to the conclusion that I’m incapable of reacting to outside stimuli. I’m not sure if I’m able to react to internal stimuli any more either. My body chemistry no longer seems to respond to my emotional moods. If plants were capable of having thoughts, I wonder if they’d be able to sense the sadness of their roots and branches.

My mother has shut herself in the flat, and is secretly going through a Falun Gong exercise routine. Before she comes to the end of it, she chants quietly: ‘Sentient beings have been destroyed by their corrupt ways. Only the Great Law can save them from the chaos. They confuse good and evil as they slander heaven. The autumn winds will sweep them away . . .’

Granny Pang has finally found a chance to slip out of her flat. Since she took up Falun Gong, she’s been able to climb the stairs much more quickly.

‘Let me in, Huizhen . . .’ she whispers. ‘Thank you. I can’t take it any more. My family watches me the whole time. If I so much as lift my hand, my son thinks I’m about to start a Falun Gong exercise and beats it down again. What can I do? You’re so lucky to live alone. You can meditate whenever you want . . .’

‘They’ve confiscated all my instruction tapes and books, so I can only repeat the routines I remember.’

‘My son’s wife has stuck the Ministry of State Security’s “Six Rules” notice above my bed. It says that no one’s allowed to display Falun Gong symbols, perform the exercises in public, gather in groups or petition the authorities. She’s told me to learn it off by heart. My family is worse than the police. Still, when I close my eyes, I can practise the routines in my mind, and they have no idea what I’m up to.’ Granny Pang spent her life reporting people to the police, but she’s become a much kinder person since she’s taken up Falun Gong.

She moves closer to my mother and whispers, ‘I think my Third Eye has opened. Yesterday, this spot between my eyebrows became like a chimney. I looked through it and saw Master Li Hongzhi sitting on a lotus flower, then rising into the sky. Then I saw the construction workers walking around the room on the other side of my wall.’

‘Yes, that’s definitely your Third Eye. You can see the future through it as well. Quickly, tell me what my son’s future is.’

‘He – he seems to be sitting up with his eyes closed.’

‘He’s not flying into the sky on the back of a sparrow, is he?’

‘The future is hard to see . . . That Bodhisattva figurine is shaking. I think you should put it away. Master Li Hongzhi said that Falun Gong practitioners shouldn’t worship the Buddha. I can’t look at that figurine any longer. It’s giving me a headache . . .’

‘It’s the noise of the construction work that’s giving you the headache, not the figurine. Old Yao gave it to me. I can’t move it . . . Someone’s just given me a video called
Five Falun Gong Routines
. Do you want to watch it with me? I haven’t felt my Falun wheel turn for some time.’

‘No, I must go. My daughter-in-law will be returning from the shops soon. She thought I was having a nap. If she finds out I’ve come up here, she’ll be furious.’

‘Huh! We never get to see each other any more. When I do phone someone from our group, all I hear about is who’s been arrested, or who’s just died in prison. There’s never any good news. It’s not the same doing the routines on my own. But if I don’t do them every day, my body doesn’t feel right.’

‘The weather’s turning cold. I made these padded trousers for myself, but since my family won’t let me out of the flat, they’re no use to me now, so I thought you might like them. If you get a chance to go to the park to practise some routines, they might come in handy. Has Officer Liu come up today?’

‘No. What questions has he been asking you?’

‘All the usual ones: who have I been in contact with, who do I know who took part in the 25 April Zhongnanhai siege and the 20 July protests, am I hiding any Falun Gong banners . . . Before he left, he mentioned that lots of people from out of town have been demonstrating in Tiananmen Square these past few days, and that I shouldn’t leave my flat or accommodate any practitioners who’ve travelled up from the provinces . . .’ Granny Pang is still a little out of breath. ‘Stay on your guard tonight. I’ve heard there’s going to be another spate of arrests.’

‘It’s worse than the Cultural Revolution. If more than five Falun Gong practitioners of a province travel to Beijing to complain to the central authorities, the provincial governor is sacked. So the provincial authorities send police to the train stations to stop anyone suspected of being a Falun Gong member from boarding the trains. If the practitioners resist, the police beat them to death. My son Dai Ru phoned me the other day and told me many such stories he’d read in the British press . . . Huh, there’s nothing we can do. We just have to be careful.’

‘I’ve been careful all my life. How is it that, just by practising a few meditation exercises, I’ve got myself into so much trouble with the government?’

‘My life has been dogged by one political campaign after another, so I’m used to it. Old Yao’s in prison now. He’ll probably stay there until the day he dies . . .’ My mother starts sobbing quietly then breaks into floods of tears. ‘We really have reached the “End Time”!’ she cries. ‘There’s no Pure Land on this earth. We must strive for spiritual perfection so that we can leave this world behind and fly into the sky . . .’ She goes to the kitchen to wash her face, then returns to the sofa and changes the subject. ‘Your son’s bar in the Sanlitun embassy area must be doing very well. Foreigners like to spend a lot of money.’

‘No, that street is crammed with bars now, so there’s a lot of competition,’ Granny Pang says. ‘He’s poured all 30,000 yuan of his redundancy money into his bar, but it still isn’t making a profit . . . They’re pulling down this building next month. Have you found a cheap place to move into yet?’

‘I haven’t bothered to look for one. Dai Wei and I won’t be alive for much longer. What difference does it make where we live?’