Beijing Coma (99 page)

‘If they turf us out of the Square, we’ll go back to the campus,’ the girl said, looking up. ‘What’s the big deal?’

‘Look, this is a bullet cartridge,’ Tian Yi said. ‘The army are shooting to kill. I need you to help me. Go and tell the Headquarters that there’s a huge battalion of troops standing on the steps of the Museum of Chinese History. Give the message to Bai Ling. Say it’s from Tian Yi.’

The girl got up reluctantly and stared at the cartridge in Tian Yi’s hand.

Tian Yi then came back to my side and shouted, ‘Fellow students, let’s sing the PLA song, “Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points of Attention”.’

Just at that moment, a signal flare shot through the sky. Its pale glow looked like the ghostly light that illuminates the dead souls’ path to hell.

A sound of gunfire rang out from the north-east corner of the Square. The bangs echoed against the northern walls of the Museum of Chinese History. The thousands of soldiers outside the Museum could hear it too, but they remained completely still, standing packed on the steps like a swarm of green bats.

‘We’re done for, we’re done for,’ I muttered to myself, my body clenching with fear. I thought of taking Tian Yi down into the underpass below Changan Avenue, but before I had time to move, a frantic crowd came running down from the north-east corner and raced to the ambulance parked outside the Square’s emergency tent. A wounded man, covered in blood from head to toe, was being wheeled along on a bicycle. A younger man with blood pouring from his thigh walked beside him. As he was carried onto the ambulance, he shook his head from side to side and shouted, ‘Did you see that? Did you see that?’ then closed his eyes and fell silent.

Someone shouted madly, ‘You butchers! How could you turn your guns on the people! The gods will punish you!’ Others ran over to the Museum to hurl stones and beer bottles at the soldiers sitting on the steps. The soldiers jumped to their feet and looked as though they were about to strike back, but the colonel standing in front waved his hand, and they all stood still. Then three soldiers in Changan Avenue ran towards us, pursued by an enraged crowd. One of them was knocked to the ground, the other two sprinted over to the Museum’s steps. The troops were furious, and seemed ready to attack. Four students went to help the fallen soldier. As they lifted him to his feet, some angry civilians leaned down, punched the soldier’s face and pulled off his helmet.

A boy who looked about ten years old ran past us. Tian Yi tried to grab hold of him, but he slipped through her fingers and ran off towards the Museum. ‘My brother has been killed!’ he shouted, then raced towards the troops on the steps. A small crowd wielding branches and metal rods followed behind him. Tian Yi caught up with him and managed to hold him back. A few female students surrounded the colonel and pleaded with him to tell the soldiers not to shoot. A short student from Hong Kong fell to her knees and sobbed, ‘You can’t fire your guns at the students!’

I got everyone to cry out to the troops, ‘The People’s Army loves the people! The Chinese people don’t shoot their fellow countrymen!’

Tian Yi went over to the colonel, pointed to her university badge and said, ‘I’m a Beijing University student. We follow a policy of non-resistance. You saw how we went to the aid of that soldier just now.’

‘If you shoot us, history will never forgive you!’ I butted in. The colonel lowered his head and remained silent. The boy saw a tricycle cart pass by and chased after it.

‘That kid has gone mad . . .’

‘Perhaps that was his brother’s cart,’ I said. ‘Tian Yi, we must go back and tell Bai Ling what’s happening.’ Wang Fei had got hold of an army machine gun and had hidden it in one of the tents. He had set up his own secret suicide squad. I knew that if he got out the gun and deployed the squad, it would provoke a massacre.

Tian Yi and I ran towards the Monument. Students holding wooden sticks ran past us, heading for an armoured vehicle that had caught fire. An old man was shouting out to some members of the Workers’ Federation’s Dare-to-Die Squad, ‘Do as the students have asked and put down your weapons . . .’ Then he knelt on the ground and wept.

Another prolonged burst of machine-gun fire erupted in Changan Avenue. The noise numbed my ears. Tian Yi and I stood still. The gunfire stopped. I heard a crowd yelling angry slogans, then saw someone carrying the limp body of the young boy we’d just seen. There was blood dripping from him. It looked like he’d been shot dead.

I broke into a cold sweat. ‘It’s too dangerous out here!’ I said, pulling Tian Yi towards the underpass. I thought we’d be safer in there. But as we approached the entrance, another round of gunfire rang out, and in a panic we threw ourselves to the ground.

I looked up to see what was going on. The troops and tanks had sealed Changan Avenue at the north-east corner of the Square. A small crowd of people were crouching behind the low cement wall of the underpass’s entrance. I couldn’t tell whether they were civilians or students. I guessed they were within range of the machine guns’ bullets, and were too afraid to move.

Two workers holding metal rods crept over to us and said, ‘You’ll be killed if you lie here any longer. Those bastards are shooting everyone in sight! If you don’t have weapons, get out of here!’

‘Is there anyone in the underpass?’ I asked.

‘If you go inside, you’ll never get out again. There are thousands of people down there already. Run south to Qianmen Road. The army hasn’t sealed it off yet.’

I couldn’t believe it. This was one of the thugs who’d swindled us in the woods of the Old Summer Palace. I recognised his voice instantly, but fortunately Tian Yi didn’t. I stared at his back as he walked away.

More tanks approached the Square from the east, followed by line after line of soldiers advancing like rows of moving walls.

I saw a girl who looked like Nuwa walk towards the martial law troops, her red skirt fluttering behind her as she went. The people squatting behind the cement wall of the underpass entrance stood up and followed her, shouting, ‘The People’s Army loves the people!’ There were now twenty or thirty people standing in front of the troops in the north-east corner of the Square. Among the crowd, I spotted a gangly Provincial Students’ Federation marshal who’d attempted to depose Tang Guoxian the day before. His fist was raised high in the air.

The gunfire resumed again. Several people were hit. Some of them staggered backwards, some fell and rolled about in agony. Others dropped flat on their stomachs and lay still. But the girl in the red skirt was unscathed. She continued to walk towards the guns that were pointing straight at her. Then, when she was just two or three metres away from them, a shot was fired . . . Her left foot stepped backwards, her arms and body tilted forward, then she lost balance and crumpled onto the ground.

‘Fucking hell! They’re executing people in cold blood!’ I looked away. I couldn’t bear to watch. My heart was thumping. I turned to look at Tian Yi. She was sitting down, her eyes tightly closed and her teeth clamped over her lower lip. She looked as though she was about to faint. I knelt down and put my arm around her.

‘I’ll take you over to the Red Cross tent. It’s just over there.’ I wanted to find a doctor and ask him to give her a tranquilliser.

‘The monsters! They’re killing people!’ she said, her body trembling all over.

Nurses in white coats ran past us to tend to the students lying on Changan Avenue. I pulled Tian Yi up and tried to drag her towards the Red Cross tent, but she couldn’t move her legs, so I heaved her onto my back and carried her. A wailing ambulance was parked outside the tent. The blue-andwhite light of its rotating beacon dazzled my eyes. When we got there, two nurses and a student arrived carrying the girl in the red skirt by her arms and legs. I looked down. It was Nuwa. She’d been shot in the thigh. Blood was gushing from the wound. Her blood-drenched toes were as clenched as bird claws. One of her red sandals was dangling from her foot by a thin leather strap.

A nurse squatted on the ground and shouted, ‘Quick, bandage her leg! We must get her into the ambulance as soon as possible! Put her down. She needs to lie flat on her back.’

Tian Yi pushed me away, untied the towel from her arm, leaned down and put it over Nuwa’s thigh. The nurse pressed the towel deep into the bullet wound and wrapped a long strip of gauze around it to hold it in place. Then Tian Yi and I took Nuwa’s feet, the nurse took her arms and we carefully lifted her up. Steam rose from the drops of blood that dripped onto the concrete paving stones.

‘Don’t let her die!’ Tian Yi cried out suddenly.

‘She wanted to tell the soldiers to stop shooting,’ the nurse said. ‘The guns were pointing straight at her, but she kept walking towards them. She was helping me drag away the wounded just a few minutes before.’

When the nurse looked up, I realised it was Wen Niao. The cap above her thick eyebrows was smeared with blood. She wiped the blood from her hands onto her white coat. ‘Quickly, let’s put her into the ambulance. You’re the security chief, aren’t you? Tell your student marshals to move away from the troops. There’s a massacre taking place!’

‘We know this girl. She’s a Beijing University student.’ I could hardly breathe. My vision blurred. We carried Nuwa into the ambulance and tied her to a stretcher. ‘What about him?’ I said, spotting another body lying outside the rescue tent.

‘He’s dead already,’ Wen Niao said, breathing heavily. ‘He got hit by two bullets.’

I knelt down and took a closer look. A jolt of horror ran through me. He looked like Mou Sen, but I didn’t dare believe it was him. One of his eyes had been blown out and his face was covered in hair and blood. I slipped my hand into his pocket and found my packet of cigarettes.

‘Mou Sen! Mou Sen! It’s too much!’ I howled at the top of my voice. My legs shook as though struck by bullets.

I heard Wen Niao shouting, ‘Hurry up, we’re leaving!’ I turned round and saw her pushing Tian Yi into the ambulance. She banged twice on the door and shouted, ‘Go, go!’

‘Take care, Dai Wei . . .’ Tian Yi said, stretching her hand towards me. As she unfurled her fingers, the shiny bullet cartridge she’d been clasping flew into the night sky. I watched the ambulance speed off, its siren wailing loudly again, and felt my chest tighten.

‘That’s probably the last trip it will make tonight,’ Wen Niao said. ‘It might get to the hospital, but I doubt it will be allowed back again.’

‘This guy here was my best friend. The girl who got shot is his girlfriend – no, his wife.’ My mouth was so dry, I could hardly speak. I stared at the blood on Mou Sen’s hair, which I’d cut myself, and thought about how, a few moments before, he’d been alive and in love. I couldn’t understand how he could be dead so suddenly.

‘That wound in her thigh was deep. It was haemorrhaging badly. She won’t survive.’ After Wen Niao said this, she turned and pushed her way into the Red Cross tent.

Blood rushed to my head. Everything went dark. I looked down again at Mou Sen. His red eyeball gleamed with reflected light. I crouched down and rubbed his chest, trying to shake him awake. ‘Are you really dead? It’s too much, Mou Sen. I won’t let you die like this.’ I opened the cigarette pack. There were still two cigarettes inside.

I sat down beside him. The glint in his eye was strange and unfamiliar. He looked nothing like my father did when he died. His face, teeth, hair, neck and goatee were covered in blood. I had his blood and Nuwa’s blood all over my hands.

My mind went blank. I didn’t know what to think any more or where to look.

Inside the emergency tent, the nurses were packing away the medical supplies into cardboard boxes and getting ready to carry out the wounded. They pushed everyone with minor injuries out of the tent and said, ‘Hurry up and leave the Square!’

A student who’d just had his arm bandaged ran towards the troops shouting, ‘You’ll pay for this, you murderers!’ I grabbed him and said, ‘Go back to the Monument, my friend, and tell everyone what’s happened. Hurry!’

The government loudspeakers overhead were still droning the same announcements. ‘A serious counter-revolutionary riot has broken out in Beijing. Thugs have stolen the army’s ammunition and set fire to army trucks. Their aim is to destroy the People’s Republic of China. We must launch a resolute counter-attack . . .’ An armoured personnel carrier careered past the Great Hall of the People, knocking over a man pushing a bicycle. I left Mou Sen’s corpse, ran over to where the man had fallen and helped the crowd rebuild the roadblock that the armoured carrier had rammed through. A few workers tossed petrol bombs onto the vehicle’s roof.

It came to a large blockade further down the road that it was unable to breach. Its engine roared as it struggled in vain to push through it. A mob raced over and attacked it with more Molotov cocktails. I spotted a quilt lying on the ground, so I picked it up, ran over to the vehicle and tossed it onto the bottles burning on the roof. The quilt immediately caught fire. A few moments later, the armoured carrier finally managed to break through the roadblock and escape west down Changan Avenue, the quilt on its roof still blazing. Marshals from the Workers’ Federation chased after it, shouting, ‘What the fuck are you doing driving into people like that?’ Others ran over with metal rods which they stuck into the tracks, bringing the vehicle to a halt once more. Soon hundreds of people surrounded it and attacked it with metal rods and wooden sticks. Some people even punched the metal sides with their fists. I too went over and kicked it a few times, but the thick smoke pouring from its exhaust pipe made my eyes water, so I ran back to the middle of the Square. Bullets were still arcing through the night sky, accompanied by a continuous sound of gunfire.