Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘You should change the needle every day, or the insertion hole will become infected,’ someone advises my mother.

‘This is a glass of his morning urine,’ my mother says. ‘I’ve kept it in the fridge for you.’

‘Do I look like a man of sixty?’ This man has come to drink my urine several times. He must have just arrived. I hear him dump his bag on the sofa then I hear the bag drop to the ground.

‘I first started drinking urine after reading a Japanese book called Urine: The Cure for One Hundred Illnesses .’

‘What are you doing reading Japanese books? The Chinese have been using urine therapy for more than a thousand years.’

‘I had shingles. My feet were in so much pain, I couldn’t walk. I drank my urine for a week, but nothing happened. But after just one cup of this guy’s urine, I’m completely cured.’

‘No, you drink this cup. I’ll have the next one. I’ve heard you’ve applied for authorisation to set up a urine drinkers’ association.’

‘His condition is stable now. I give him glucose and vitamin formulas every day. Please, help yourself.’

They continue to chat away as they sip. The telephone rings for a long time, but no one goes to answer it.

‘In the late Qing Dynasty, herbal medicines were infused in the urine of infant boys.’

‘It will take ten years off you, I promise. At ten yuan a cup, it’s a bargain.’

‘My appetite has improved so much since I’ve been drinking it. I had four steamed dumplings for lunch today, and a bowl of hot-sour soup.’

‘It’s very salty. It tastes like sea water.’

I picture a trail of my footprints in the snow outside. What does it feel like to stand upright? I stood for over twenty years, but still have difficulty remembering the sensation. I imagine walking along the snowy path, effortlessly raising my knees. The snow is unmarked now, apart from some paw prints leading to the dustbins. I walk faster and my body becomes as light as a sheet of paper. I start running in time with my panting breath. My feet leave the ground and I fly into a bright light. There are people chasing after me, shooting arrows at my back. Below me, I see a mountain valley and soft white clouds. The arrows are flying as fast as me. As they draw closer, they transform into hypodermic syringes. The needles are infected. My skin tightens and my pores dilate.

A glass falls to the ground. A few people move away while others kick the broken shards into the corner.

‘Hold the tube up for me,’ a man on my left says. He’s pouring milk into my feeding tube, hoping it will sweeten my urine.

‘Has the milk been boiled?’ a woman standing next to him asks.

‘I boiled it this morning,’ my mother says.

‘ I beseech you, Emperor …’ Someone has inadvertently turned up the volume of the television. The actor’s loud cry is followed by the high-pitched screech of a two-stringed lute.

I want to recite to myself another passage from The Book of Mountains and Seas , but my mind has gone blank. All I can see is a shallow river running through a flat yellow expanse… Now I see one of A-Mei’s leather shoes. I washed the yellow mud from the sole for her. The wrinkles in the leather resemble lines on the palm of a hand. The outline of her big toe is visible on the shoe’s scuffed tip. The two straps cross over the front at the same angle that she crosses her arms over her chest. Some of the holes in the straps are more elongated than others. Looking inside, I can see the shiny print her heel has made in the leather insole and the mysterious darkness where her toes rest. I remember holding her foot in my hand and gazing at her toes splaying softly between my fingers.

Where is she now? I see a faint smile spread across her lips. Whenever her image appears in my mind, a stream of pain pours into my heart through the inferior vena cava, then the left ventricle contracts and the pain is pumped into the rest of my body.

‘Look! His face has gone red! Did someone rub oil onto his eyelids, or are those tears I see?’

‘How long has he been like this?’ I haven’t heard this voice before.

‘Since 4 June 1989. He was shot in the head during the crackdown. He was studying for a PhD.’

‘Huh, this pager never stops bleeping. Can I borrow your phone, Auntie?’

‘Look at this article. It says that Mr Desai, the Prime Minister of India, drinks a cup of urine every day.’

A light flits through the darkness. My heart begins to beat faster. I look out of a train window and see yellow mudflats stretching to the horizon and the grey sky reflected in pools of rainwater. A-Mei pulls down the window, wipes the dust from her fingers and says, ‘I love the smell of the air after a rainstorm.’ As the wind hits my face, I catch whiffs of her lipstick, hair lotion, hand cream and the chicken in soy-bean sauce she ate in the dining car. The train is heading for Guangxi Province. A sheet of rain and mist flashes past in the distance.

The milk that was poured into me has coated the walls of my stomach and blended with my gastric juices. As the stomach walls contract, drops of the semi-digested liquid flow into my duodenum. The urine discharged by my kidneys collects in my bladder and flows through the prostate gland.

‘Does he never open his eyes?’ rasps a woman who has just come in.

‘If you poured some of his own urine down his tube, perhaps it might bring him out of his coma,’ another woman says, placing her clammy hand on my face.

My urine trickles down the urethra then drips into the glass cup. The mouse under my bed has been frightened by our visitors’ footsteps, and has hidden itself in the box my mother bought for my ashes.

‘He never fills more than seven glasses a day, I’m afraid,’ my mother says to the last woman to arrive. ‘Come again tomorrow. I’ll keep his morning urine in the fridge for you.’

I remember the dream I had last night. A doctor brought me a syringe and said, ‘Give yourself the injection. If you do it correctly, you’ll wake up from your coma.’ But when I took the syringe it turned into a bicycle chain which dragged me off into a glass corridor. I tried to scream for help, but no sound came out of my mouth. Outside the corridor lay a scorching desert. I flung myself against the glass walls like a trapped bird then slowly suffocated to death.

Trapped like a frog inside a glass jar, you wish your scream could light up the night sky.

The Square was bustling again. Residents stood chatting with their friends, enjoying the cool of the evening. Children ran around playing hide-and-seek. Street hawkers pushed their carts along shouting ‘Ice lollies for sale!’ Further away, a column of marchers arrived waving red banners.

Mou Sen walked up. ‘So I hear you went out for supper in Qianmen,’ he said, fixing his intense gaze on me.

‘It’s Tian Yi’s birthday. I invited Wang Fei along too. You weren’t around.’

‘Bai Ling was there as well, wasn’t she? You know, Nuwa has guessed that Wang Fei’s having an affair with her. He seems serious this time. I don’t think it will last, though. Bai Ling has such a fierce temper. She’s a Shandong girl, after all. I might as well tell you. Nuwa and I are in love. It was she who chased after me, I promise you. Don’t tell anyone. At least, don’t tell Yanyan.’ His nose twitched awkwardly.

‘I see. “The lazy toad dares taste the meat of the swan”, as the saying goes!’ I looked down at Mou Sen and felt peeved that someone so much shorter than me could seduce a beautiful girl like Nuwa.

‘ You’re the bloody toad, Dai Wei!’ he said, punching me in the chest.

‘All right, your secret’s safe. Hey, how are things progressing with your Democracy University?’ I didn’t want to discuss Nuwa with him. In my mind’s eye, I saw her tight denim skirt swaying from side to side, her bottom jutting out a little each time she shifted her weight from one leg to the other.