Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

Spotting me in the corner, Wang Fei said, ‘You can be deputy commander of security, Dai Wei. Zhuzi doesn’t come to the Square very often, so you can still look after the Beijing students’ camps, as well as the Monument and broadcast station area.’ I pushed my sunglasses further up my nose and grunted my acceptance. Then he turned to Mou Sen and said, ‘And I’ve appointed you deputy head of my propaganda office.’ The musty odour of sweat wafting from his armpits smelt odd today. I suspected he’d splashed on some cologne.

By noon, I’d called the tallest student marshals to the Monument’s lower terrace, given each one a baseball cap and a red armband, and informed them that the Headquarters had decided to take over the Voice of the Student Movement’s broadcast station.

Mou Sen had set to work reorganising Wang Fei’s propaganda office, which now belonged to the Headquarters. He was a much more competent manager than Wang Fei. He’d recruited a new batch of volunteers, brought back the mimeograph machine, stencil boards and wax paper that had been returned to the campus, and erected a new tent to protect the office from the sun and the rain. When I walked inside, it felt cool and well ventilated.

I told Mou Sen that if we managed to take over the Voice of the Student Movement’s station, he could move his propaganda office into that tent, if he wanted. I glanced over at Nuwa as I spoke. As well as being the newsreader, she was now also the student press officer.

Everyone seemed to be enjoying this fresh burst of activity, especially Tian Yi, who was now editor-in-chief. She was sorting through a pile of documents in the corner of the tent, too preoccupied to talk to me. Hundreds of volunteers were running around the terrace, delivering boxes of stationery to the tent, distributing leaflets and security passes, and clearing away dirty plastic sheets and abandoned bicycles.

‘It looks like we’re heading for another big wave of protests,’ I said glumly, treading on an empty tin of luncheon meat.

‘We’ll keep going for a few more days and see what happens,’ Mou Sen said, looking up from the letter he was drafting. ‘When we had that secret meeting in the minibus a couple of days ago, I was in favour of leaving the Square. But now I feel there’s a possibility this democracy movement might at last take off and spread to the rest of the country. The Communist Party killed your father, and it killed my father too. Our generation has now got a chance to stand up and protest. We should make the most of it. It may never come round again.’

‘We’ve given the government a fright. Isn’t that enough?’

‘No, it’s not enough! We arrived in this Square waving the national flag and singing the national anthem. That shows how petrified we are of the government. You think you’ll be safer back in your dorm room, but the police could easily drag you away from it if they wanted to. There’s nowhere to hide in this country. Every home is as exposed as a public square, watched over by the police day and night. If we want to create a country in which everyone can feel safe, we’ll have to do much more than give the government a fright…’ He got up and went to talk to Nuwa, who was typing up a news script. When I glanced over at her again, I caught a glimpse of her cleavage and a small patch of her white bra.

A voice boomed through a distant loudspeaker: ‘This is Bai Ling speaking. I am now commander-in-chief of the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters… I want to mobilise every Chinese person around the world to resist martial law! If the government can’t succeed in imposing martial law after four days, then it won’t succeed after ten days, a year, or a hundred years!…’ When she came to the end of her speech, the crowds roared their applause.

You lie on your bed like a felled tree decaying on the ground.

The breeze blowing through the window smells of sour dates. The tart, puckery scent always reminds me of Tian Yi. Whenever I think about girls, various smells come to mind, especially those emitted from their feet and leather sandals.

Perhaps if I make it into the twenty-first century, scientists will be able to embed a microchip into my brain that will replace my wounded hippocampus. By then, the government will have created a Ministry of Memory which will produce silicon chips that mimic the pattern of the brain’s nerve cells. Once a chip is inserted into my head, it will connect with my neurons, bypassing damaged tissue. I wonder whether the chip will be able to register the scent of Tian Yi’s body and commit it to my long-term memory.

It’s the rainy season, and I can hear the swollen wood of my mother’s wardrobe crack in the humid air. It makes me think of when my father used to take off his shirt and go into the yard to saw up planks of wood. All the neighbours would wander out to see what he was up to. He’d set up a long workbench under the locust tree. No, it wasn’t here that he did the carpentry — it was outside the dormitory block we used to live in. But there was a locust tree there too, I think. The local Dongfeng Watch Factory would put out their rubbish on Saturday mornings, and if you went there early enough, you could pick up metal coils and scraps of copper, but my brother and I always chose to stay with our father instead. When he shouted ‘Tea!’ I’d run up to our room and brew him a cup, while my brother swept up the wood shavings and handed them out to the other kids in the yard. In just three days my father was able to construct a wardrobe that was taller than him.

Although my father was a violinist, I never saw him perform in public. I prefer to remember him as a carpenter rather than a musician, and recall his strong, chapped hands sliding a wood plane across a plank, creating beautiful mounds of curled shavings…

Within the sea of dead cells, the surviving neurons reconnect, allowing the agitation and excitement of those days to appear once more before your eyes.

‘You have no right to barge in here!’ a skinny Qinghua student called Zhang Rui cried as we stormed into the Voice of the Student Movement broadcast station.

There were only about twenty marshals manning the security cordon outside the tent, whereas there were more than fifty of us, so we were able to push our way through quite easily.

When Wang Fei announced that the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters was going to take over the station, the Qinghua students inside the tent became incensed.

Mou Sen tried to reason with them. ‘The Beijing Students’ Federation, which you and your leader Zhou Suo belong to, has merged with the Headquarters,’ he said. ‘So it’s only natural we should take control of your station.’

‘People come here every day trying to take us over,’ Zhang Rui said. ‘How can we be sure you’ve been given authority to do this?’ The two girls in the tent continued to read through their documents, and didn’t bother to look up.

‘This is a note from Sister Gao,’ Wang Fei said. ‘And here’s a list of instructions from Bai Ling, our commander-in-chief. We’ve come here to carry out the transfer of power. From now on, everything in the Square must be managed in a planned and regularised manner.’ His jacket was draped over his shoulders. He looked like the leader of a rough street gang.

‘Will I be able to stay here and carry on with my job?’ one of the girls asked, looking up at last.

‘There’s no need,’ Wang Fei said. ‘We have enough staff of our own.’

‘We only take orders from the Beijing Students’ Federation,’ the other girl said stubbornly.

‘I’d better write an announcement informing the students of the takeover,’ Zhang Rui said, realising that his situation was hopeless.

‘Wait a minute,’ Wang Fei interjected. ‘I’d like to go through this equipment with you. We’ll give you a receipt for everything.’