Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

The crowd burst into applause and echoed Mou Sen’s call for a mass hunger strike. Lin Lu prodded Mou Sen in the back and whispered something in his ear. A look of horror appeared on Mou Sen’s face. He quickly raised the microphone again and said, ‘I’m sorry, that was a slip of the tongue! I meant to say a mass sit-in, not a mass hunger strike!’ The crowd jeered. Flustered and confused, Mou Sen groped his pockets for a cigarette, his face clammy with sweat.

Then Han Dan walked over. He had a damp towel tied around his arm, ready for a gas attack, but had removed his hunger strike headband. He took the microphone from Mou Sen and reminded the male students that it was their duty to protect the girls, and asked any middle-school students who’d come to the Square to go home immediately.

Bai Ling, who’d officially stopped her hunger strike, stood next to him with her back bent and a towel tied around her waist. As soon as she took the microphone, the journalists ran up to her with their cameras. Blinded by their flash bulbs, she closed her eyes and said, ‘If the army drives us from the Square, we will seek refuge in the homes of local residents. Then when it’s safe for us to go out onto the streets again, we will return to our campuses.’

Fearing the soldiers were about to turn up at any minute, the students panicked and ran about asking for wet towels and face masks to protect them in the event of a gas attack. The group of professors from Beijing University’s Law Department who’d joined the hunger strike the previous day shuffled away despondently.

As soon as the press conference was brought to a close, Wang Fei grabbed some cash from Old Fu’s bag and went off with Yu Jin to buy more towels and face masks.

While the air outside glimmers in the sunlight, your heart sleeps in the darkness and your lungs wait to inhale.

My brother is in the sitting room chatting to an old school friend about people they used to know.

‘Yes, do you remember him?’ he says. ‘He used to sneak in here to watch television. He’s a pop star now. Can you believe it? He’s probably a millionaire.’

‘Jiang Tie gave up his job at the research institute and went into business. He moved to Hainan Island last year and opened a software company. He’s asked me to go into partnership with him, but I haven’t got enough cash to invest.’

‘I bumped into Hong Zhi the other day. You know, the girl whose hard-boiled egg you nicked on that Spring Festival school trip. She’s running a clothes stall in Silk Alley now.’

‘I thought she got into Qinghua University. I remember when our teacher asked us to swat flies, she killed enough to fill a whole bloody jam jar.’

My brother gets up and puts on the tape that Tian Yi gave me. I continue to listen to the conversation, but am soon lifted skyward by the choirboys’ angelic voices. A violin plays softly, turning the sky a deep blue. Then a flute overlaps the melody and my numb mind begins to tremble. The orchestra returns and a contralto voice cuts through the strings. As a single, clear note hovers in the air, I feel a deep sadness which slowly subsides and merges into a sense of bliss…

Noises from my past return to me, bathed in gold… ‘Look at my arm,’ Lulu says, rolling up her sleeve. I’m standing in her room, my face warmed by a slanting beam of sunlight. ‘I can’t see any red spots, I promise you,’ I say. She examines the skin closely. ‘Well you’ll have to check it again tomorrow.’ She saw Momoe Yamaguchi in the Japanese television drama Blood , and has convinced herself that, like the heroine of the story, she too has contracted leukaemia… Now I see myself waiting for my brother outside the school gates. The girls skipping across the lane in the afternoon sunshine are singing ‘ Not as fragrant as a flower, nor as tall as a tree …’

My brother switches the tape off and I slowly retreat back into my body.

I remember A-Mei saying that music could carry you to the heavens. At the time, I didn’t understand what she meant. I don’t want to listen to that tape again. If that music can affect me so powerfully, next time I hear it, I will be drawn through the gates of death.

‘Do you want to go to that disco tonight?’ my brother’s old school friend asks, lighting a cigarette.

‘Yes. I’m sick of spending my holiday staring at this bloody vegetable. If I stay in this stinking flat another hour, I’ll fling myself out of the window.’

‘He’s your own brother, you bastard! He’ll kick your head in when he wakes up.’

‘He’ll never wake up. Look at him!’

My brother sounds fed up. But I’m not angry. If I were going to attack anyone after I woke up, it wouldn’t be him, it would be those lousy government leaders in the Zhongnanhai compound. But if I do wake up, I doubt if I would attack anyone. I’d probably want to forget about politics and concentrate on living a happy life.

My brother and his friend pour themselves some more beer. They have to wait for my mother to come back before they can go to the disco.

‘I’d better turn him over. Come and help me lift him.’ My brother walks into my room and takes my arm.

‘I don’t want to touch him… Look at those tubes attached to his mouth and dick. He looks like a fish tank.’

My brother crosses my legs, grabs my shoulders and waist, then pushes hard, flipping me onto my stomach. A light shoots through my brain as I turn. Then he stuffs the pillow back between my legs.

‘Hey, you could get a job as a professional nurse…’

‘Who would have guessed he’d end up like this? That day in the Square, he said to me, “Don’t assume you’re invincible. Remember: bullets have no eyes…”’

You long to cast off your body and escape this fake death.

The broadcast minibus drove round the perimeter of the Square, blasting out the national anthem and the Hunger Strike Termination Statement. It was very late, and the sky was pitch black, but the Square was still as noisy as ever.

Inside the broadcast station, a few students were writing articles by torchlight. Others were printing out pamphlets. Big Chan, Little Chan and I were distributing the new security passes that were stamped with a picture of the Monument. Our hands were covered in red ink.

The calm tones of Nuwa and Chen Di echoed continually through the Square. ‘Everyone must have their face masks and damp towels to hand, in case the army let off tear gas,’ Nuwa announced. ‘You can use a strip of cloth, if you want, as long as it’s wet… We’ve just received news that 450 army trucks, which were trying to enter the city, have been blocked by residents on the third ring road under Liuli Bridge. The citizens of Beijing are using their own bodies to halt the advance of the troops. Please can anyone with bicycles ride over there at once and offer them assistance…’

‘This is an urgent announcement,’ Chen Di said. ‘Citizens in the western suburbs need our help. Can a hundred student marshals go there as soon as possible… The army has reached the Hongmiao intersection already, but has been halted by a wall of protestors. An old woman lay down in front of the trucks and shouted, “If you want to go any further, you’ll have to drive over my dead body.”’

I rushed back and forth, trying to ensure the broadcast station and the northern side of the Monument were well protected. Student marshals from Qinghua University and the Central Institute of National Minorities were guarding the south side. Dong Rong and Mao Da assembled a large band of students and went off to help man the barricades in the western suburbs.

Most of the students and hunger strikers had left the buses and shelters by now and had gathered round the Monument. Although no longer divided into distinct university groups, the crowd was well-organised, with the student marshals and male students on the outside, and the girls safely protected within.