Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘That’s a great plan, Bai Ling,’ Wang Fei exclaimed. ‘We won’t leave this Square until we achieve victory!’ He and Bai Ling seemed to have struck up a close bond since they’d absconded together.

‘You must persuade the Provincial Students’ Federation to calm down and stop stirring up trouble,’ Bai Ling said to him. Her large sunglasses had slipped halfway down her nose.

‘I give you my word of honour!’ Wang Fei said, saluting her theatrically. ‘I can handle that upstart Tang Guoxian. No problem! He always took orders from me back at Southern University.’

‘How did that university manage to produce such a cocky band of graduates?’ Bai Ling said with a flirtatious smile, swiping Wang Fei’s glasses off him.

‘It really is time we left this Square,’ I groaned.

‘Stop being such a grump, Dai Wei!’ Tian Yi snapped. She’d agreed to go home with me earlier, saying she’d get her films developed on the way, but after Bai Ling returned, she changed her mind and decided to stay.

Shrouded in the smells of herbal medicine and sour leftovers, your body moves closer to the earth.

‘We’re leaving tomorrow!’ my mother says, walking back into the room.

The police, who’ve been monitoring our flat for the last week to ensure no one visits us during the fourth anniversary of the 4 June crackdown, have left now, and my mother has been telephoning friends and relatives trying to arrange our trip to Sichuan Province. Master Yao, the qigong teacher, has advised her to take me to Qingcheng Mountain to see a qigong healer who specialises in treating the varied and complex ailments of bedridden patients.

The doors and windows of the flat are open. The new plastic tiles my mother has stuck to the floor have been baking in the sun, filling the room with a pungent smell of glue.

‘If only you’d hurry up and die! Can’t you make a little more effort to control yourself and show your poor mother some respect? It’s so humiliating having to clear up your mess.’ My urine has overflowed again and dripped onto the floor. My mother pulls my catheter out of the full bottle of urine then inserts it into an empty one. The catheter attached to my bladder is emitting a warm, rubbery smell. ‘What crime did I commit in my past life to deserve a fate like this?’ my mother grumbles as she shuffles off to the toilet.

She forgot to switch on the radio today or to pull down the blinds. The blistering sun has been beating down on me all morning. I feel like the stinking rubbish bins baking on the street corner outside. A collage of shapes drifts through my head. At first, they look like slices of hard-boiled egg stuck to the steep walls of my brain. Then the central yellow cores expand and the intricate structure of the cells is revealed… I see A-Mei walk into my room in the Guangzhou hospital I was admitted to after our break-up. She emerges from the dark corridor, stands still for a moment in the bright light, then moves towards my bed. Her black dress hugs the gentle curve of her stomach then creases between her thighs. She leans over, her hair and hand touching my feverish face. ‘I’ve been here for weeks,’ I mumble, my eyes moistening. ‘What took you so long?’

Although this episode never occured, it’s stored in my long-term memory together with events that really did happen. Every time my temperature rises above thirty-nine degrees, it reappears before my eyes.

When I was lying in that hospital bed with a raging fever, the other patient in the room assured me that no girl in a black dress had come to visit me. He was suffering from a blocked intestine. The pain kept him awake all night, so he would have known if anyone had visited. I can still remember how he’d scrutinise my expression, like a dog gazing at his master, trying to determine what emotion he should be feeling. He had a thick chin and honest eyes, and teeth that glinted each time his mouth twitched. Every organ of his body seemed to be waiting to be told what to feel. I’ll never forget the guilty glance he gave me after he screamed in pain so loudly that he frightened even himself.

My relationship with A-Mei is like a piece of uncut cloth. I’ll never get a chance to make anything out of it. Perhaps she has already vanished into dust by now.

Inside my parietal lobes, I often rewind to those last moments before I was shot, trying to work out what I saw. But a few seconds before the bullet hits my head, there is a loud gunshot and the image of a girl, in what looks like A-Mei’s white skirt, falling to her knees. Then the scene breaks off. Perhaps it wasn’t A-Mei at all, just someone who resembled her. I haven’t heard any news of her since. No one has mentioned her name. But as far as I know, no foreigner or Hong Kong citizen was killed during the massacre. If she had been shot, I would have found out by now.

The piece of my skull that flew off when the bullet struck is now lying in a hospital refrigerator. Although skin has grown over the gap, the medulla and nerve cells along the edges of the wound have died. Scavenger cells have eaten away at them, leaving behind tiny granules that lie scattered among the living cells like grains of sand in a bowl of rice, strengthening the wound tissue.

My mother’s always forgetting to turn on the radio. The silence is a torment because it forces me to recognise that I am lying motionless on an iron bed. Whenever I contemplate this truth, I hurriedly return to the streets I used to walk down and try to hide myself in the crowds. After a while, my mind clears, and death shows its face to me. In fact, death has been lurking inside me for years, waiting to strike me down when a disease sends the signal. Most of the time, I pretend not to know it’s there.

I’m on an aeroplane, soaring into the heavens. There’s nothing in front of me, not even an angel with a broken wing… By the time a female foetus has grown to the size of a banana, it already possesses all the egg cells it will use in its lifetime. And inside each one of its egg cells lies another tiny angel…

‘If this trip doesn’t cure you, I won’t bother bringing you back,’ my mother mutters as she hurriedly packs our bags.

Those mythical lakes and hills are the flesh and blood of your body. You set off once more from the Western Mountains, that vast range of seventy-seven peaks, then travel 17,510 li to the…

Wang Fei walked into the propaganda office with Zheng He, the bald writer enrolled in the Creative Writing Programme. They were both wearing square, brown-framed glasses. Wang Fei waved a sheet of paper and said loudly, ‘Here’s a list of the members of the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters’ standing committee. Hurry up and type out a copy of it for us.’

I took the list from him and read, ‘Commander-in-chief: Bai Ling. Deputy commanders: Wang Fei, Old Fu and Lin Lu. General secretary: Hai Feng. Chief adviser: Liu Gang. Head of security: Zhuzi…’ Sister Gao, representing the Beijing Students’ Federation, also gained a place on the committee.

After Mou Sen looked through the list, he said, ‘That’s too much! What about Shu Tong and Han Dan? And why hasn’t Ke Xi got a post either? They were the instigators of this movement too, after all.’

‘Han Dan is the convenor of the Capital Joint Liaison Group,’ Zheng He said. ‘It’s an important role. Type up the list then print out some copies — two hundred should be enough. Add a note at the bottom saying that our first task will be to unify the Square’s security passes and student marshal teams.’ His goldfish eyes sparkled behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

I was disappointed not to see my name on the list. When I’d returned to the Square that morning after spending the night at home, Miss Li from the Hong Kong Student Association told me she’d phoned A-Mei in Canada, and that A-Mei had been very pleased to hear I was the Square’s security chief. She said that the Association of Chinese Students in Canada was sending a delegation to Beijing to support our movement, and that A-Mei might join them.