Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

Tang Guoxian and Wu Bin paced up and down waving their megaphones and torches in the air. I was weak with exhaustion and could feel my eyes drooping. I went to find Tian Yi, hoping I could sit down with her for a while.

She’d just written a bulletin for the propaganda office, and was now lying down in a breezy corner of the Monument’s upper terrace. Her face was as grey as a sheet of newspaper. Her camera was still hanging around her neck.

I opened her lunch box to check whether she’d eaten the strawberries I’d given her. They were untouched and covered in mould.

Nevertheless, she leaned over and said, ‘Mmm, they smell delicious. I don’t have to eat them. The smell is enough!’

‘I’ve got some instant noodles for you, but there’s no hot water.’ The dirty pamphlets on the ground flew into the air as people walked by. I lay down beside her on the cold paving stones.

‘Look, my hair’s falling out,’ she said, rubbing her head. ‘Have you seen my bottle of conditioner?’

‘Why don’t you go back to the campus to have a shower?’ I said, still struggling to stay awake.

‘I’d be accused of desertion. Anyway, it’s too late now. I wouldn’t find a taxi at this time of night.’

‘I can’t help out any more. I’m exhausted. Ke Xi wants to be commander-in-chief again. I don’t know where he gets his energy from!’ I turned onto my side and glanced at my watch. ‘My God! It’s midnight. The government said the army would be here by now.’ As I dozed off, the crowd’s chants rang through my ears. ‘You can cut off our heads or shoot us, but we’ll never leave Tiananmen Square!’ Nuwa then spoke over the loudspeakers, sounding as confident and carefree as a Voice of America presenter. ‘The government wants to destroy our broadcast station. Everyone must protect it and make sure their evil plan doesn’t succeed…’

Its cry sounds like a baby howling. It eats humans. If you consume its flesh you will be protected from evil spirits.

The wind slams the rain against the windows of the covered balcony.

I feel the damp enter the room and seep into the biscuits on the table, my father’s ashes, and the old shoes lying in the corner. I’d love to slip my feet into a pair of damp trainers. But shoes are made only for upright bodies. Prone bodies must remain barefoot in bed.

The damp air from the landing also moves into the flat and absorbs the smell of the turnips rotting in the kitchen.

My mother begins the first day of April by breaking into song. She sings again and again, ‘ I say farewell to life, to life! ’ struggling to hit the top note. In the past, she had no problem reaching that high C. Then she stops singing, and in her most theatrical voice begins to recite the telephone directory to me, reading out the numbers of everything from hairdressers to universities.

Has her yearning for a telephone driven her mad? She only submitted her application two months ago. Many people have to wait a year before they get connected.

My brother is moving to England. He has already booked his plane ticket. He’s going to start a four-year degree course at the University of Nottingham.

‘If this rain doesn’t stop soon, our visitors won’t be able to make it here. It’s two o’clock already.’ My mother closes the telephone directory at last and touches my forehead. Yesterday she cut my hair with a freezing pair of clippers. I can still smell the kerosene she lubricated them with.

I hear a soft knock on the door. It’s someone with tact, not a rude policeman or an elderly busybody.

‘Come in, Master Yao. Isn’t this rain terrible? It hasn’t stopped since last night!’

Master Yao tells my mother that he not only knows An Qi, but also an old friend of hers from the National Opera Company. It’s hard to tell his age from his voice. His speech is clipped and precise.

They walk into my room and perch on the end of my bed.

‘I can tell your son possesses the root of wisdom,’ Master Yao says.

Last night my mother kept mentioning that she’d invited a qigong master of national repute to come and see me.

‘This son of mine, he’s so tall, so clever. He can turn his hand to anything, just like his father could.’ I’m surprised to hear my mother speak well of my father, for once.

‘It must be difficult, looking after him all on your own.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you can imagine! A mother looking after a grown-up son — it turns the philosophy of The Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars on its head. I can never leave the flat for more than half an hour. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for three years…’

I often can’t tell whether I’m awake or asleep. My internal body clock doesn’t function properly any more. When I sense light beyond my eyelids, more thoughts tend to come to my head. Occasionally, I have a gut feeling that it’s morning or evening.

‘Sometimes his hands go stone cold. I have to keep massaging him to stop his joints seizing up. Look at his left foot. It’s been clenched for so long, the bones have bent.’

‘There are associations for the handicapped. Haven’t you got in touch with any?’

‘Yes, and charities too: national ones, local ones. I’ve contacted them all, but none of them will help. I phone them up and they say they’ll write to me, but they never do. If you don’t have back-door connections, you don’t stand a chance. There are so many handicapped people begging them for help, why should they choose to help us?’

‘I don’t know how you cope. You should get a live-in maid.’

‘Of course I’d like to, but I couldn’t afford it. I have to ask my relatives to help pay for his medicine. I’ve spent over 100,000 yuan on him in the last three years. My neighbours used to be very nosy, always coming up and asking questions. But after I asked to borrow some money from them, they suddenly stopped visiting. When I knock on their doors now, they don’t answer. They’ve even stopped reporting my activities to the local police.’

I was never close to my mother. I can’t remember even touching her hand. When I cut her hair, the smell of sweat on her thick neck repulsed me. Now I have to endure the humiliation of her washing my naked body every day and removing my soiled incontinence pads.

‘Where’s the wound? Let me see.’

‘Here. Feel it. It’s soft. The piece of missing skull is still in the hospital’s refrigerator.’

Master Yao rubs his cold finger over the wound above my ear. When he presses down, I feel brain tissue being pushed aside and a few nerves quiver a little. No matter how warm the rest of my head is, the wound always feels like the cold mouth of a cave.

I know I was shot in the head, and that the bullet didn’t explode. And I know the shot was fired from a handgun by someone standing at eye-level to me on the pavement to my side. He must have been a plain-clothes policeman. A soldier wouldn’t use a handgun.

‘An Qi told me what happened to him. I don’t care about politics. We qigong practitioners are only interested in performing good deeds. I can tell your son is a survivor. I’ll do my best to help bring him out of his coma.’

‘How lucky I am to have found someone as kind as you! I must admit, I still don’t understand how the government could have killed all those students in cold blood. After the crackdown, I spent three days searching for his body. I went to one hospital after another. Each one was like an abattoir, with corpses everywhere. I feel sick just thinking about it.’

‘I was still working at the Beijing Hotel at the time, in their accounts office. On the night of 3 June, plain-clothes policemen came and told all the hotel’s shops and boutiques to close early, and asked the reception to give them the room numbers of every foreign journalist who was staying there. I knew something serious was about to happen… I’ll start with some pressure-point massage. Once his channels are unblocked, it will be easier for me to transmit my qi to him. Look at these red spots on his nails. They’re a sign of obstructions to the blood-flow in his brain. The darker the spots, the graver the problem. When they turn black, he won’t have long to live.’