Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

Mimi joins her there. I wonder how she’s managed to squeeze herself in. I hear oil bubbling in the wok, but the fumes haven’t reached me yet.

The late autumn days are turning damper now, but my skin is still dry. Each time a draught blows in from the landing, dead skin cells lift from my body, fly into my nostrils then swirl down through my trachea into my lungs.

My skin is as scaly as the pink, blue and gold angelfish that swam in the tanks of Beijing University’s biology lab. From glands beneath their scales, they’d secrete tiny drops of nourishing microbial slime that would fall straight into the mouths of their young.

I hear crackling and spitting as food is plunged into the hot oil. It smells like they’re making deep-fried carrot meatballs. I used to love eating those. I liked deep-fried aubergine as well, stuffed with ground pork and coriander. But my favourite of all was deep-fried sea bass that was crisp on the outside but still soft and moist inside. Even the leftover scraps of batter that were ladled out at the end were delicious. In fact, almost everything tastes good when it’s deep-fried. I feel a faint pang of hunger, but it remains in my brain and doesn’t travel to my mouth or stomach.

In the sitting room, the news presenter prattles on. ‘… China has become infatuated with football. This game is more than just a sport. It can lift the spirit of a nation. But the continual failure of our teams to make any significant mark in the international arena has been a great humiliation to our race…’

‘Many retired people go to parks in the morning to practise traditional Yangge fan dancing,’ Mimi says. ‘You should give it a try, Auntie.’ She still has the same husky, wavering voice she did at university. It sounds like an out-of-tune viola.

‘I’m learning Falun Gong,’ my mother says as they return to my room. ‘I’m taking lessons from a teacher called Master Yao. The meditation exercises can cure any illness. It’s much easier than standard qigong, or the traditional Fragrant Qigong school.’

‘Look at this article, Auntie. It’s about a British man who woke up recently after being in a coma for nine years. That’s his photograph. He said that although he couldn’t speak or open his eyes while he was in the coma, he could hear everything that was going on around him. Perhaps Dai Wei can hear our conversation now. You never know… I’ll read out the article to him in a minute. Shall we rub some more cream on his legs?’

‘I have to admit, I’ve sworn at him a few times these last years. He’s put me through hell…’

‘Not many people could have endured what you’ve been through. I think you’re amazing, looking after him like this for all these years. Have you had any news from his brother?’

‘Yes, he phones me from England quite often. But he doesn’t dare speak for long in case the police have tapped our line.’

‘Do they still come round here?’

‘They take us away now each anniversary of 4 June, but otherwise they usually only visit every two or three months. And they’re less officious than they used to be. They sit down and have a cup of tea, warn me not to speak to foreign journalists, then get up and leave. Look, he’s almost dead now. It’s unlikely he’s going to start a revolution, isn’t it?’

My mother is fifty-eight now. Her voice is warmer and fuzzier than Mimi’s. It sounds like a hammer dulcimer. A-Mei’s voice sounded like a violin, Tian Yi’s like a flute.

‘Are you still going out with that boy, what’s his name — Yu Jin?’

‘Of course! Boyfriends aren’t shirts — I don’t change them every day. The securities company he was working for in Shanghai has just transferred him to Beijing.’

‘Yes — Yu Jin. What a nice boy. The first time he came to see me, he gave me a thousand yuan. You’re lucky to be young now. You can go out dancing, go to nice restaurants…’

‘To be honest, I don’t go out much,’ she says sombrely. ‘I suffer from anxiety. I’m afraid of the dark, I’m afraid of crossing the road. I’ve stopped using a pager because the electronic beeps make me jump.’

I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. The others have arrived. The prospect of noise and chatter excites me.

Mimi goes to open the door. ‘Hey! Chen Di!’

A draught blows the clamour into the flat. Everyone is speaking at once.

‘You look like an Italian gangster in that hat, Yu Jin. Where did you buy it?’

‘I didn’t know you wore glasses, Chen Di!’

‘Hey, Yu Jin and Mimi, when are you going to tie the knot? It’s always the same with you two: all thunder and no rain!’

‘This is for you, Auntie,’ Yu Jin says. ‘It’s Jinhua ham. Dai Wei’s still on hunger strike, I presume, so you’d better eat it yourself.’

‘What a beautiful box,’ my mother says. ‘It looks like a Japanese import.’

‘Don’t talk to me about Japanese imports!’ says Yu Jin. ‘Our office was given some Japanese biscuits the other day. Each one came in a plastic wrapper with a sachet of drying agents. The office maid assumed the sachets contained flavourings, so she opened them and sprinkled the tiny granules over the biscuits before she served them to us. We all ended up with swollen mouths and had to be rushed to hospital!’

‘Auntie, I haven’t introduced you yet,’ Chen Di says. ‘This is my girlfriend, Bingbing.’

‘Hello, Auntie,’ the girl says. She has a southern accent.

‘She’s so pretty,’ my mother says. ‘And even taller than Tian Yi.’

‘I came here straight from work. I couldn’t reach Wang Fei on his pager. I heard he’s gone back to Hainan Island. Look, I’ve brought a cake.’

‘I bumped into Yanyan in the Shangri-la Hotel last night. She was very offhand. She didn’t even bother to give me her card. She acted like some hotshot journalist, but she’s still only working for the Workers’ Daily , for God’s sake.’

‘Yanyan came here for a meal once,’ my mother says. ‘Come on, give me your jackets and sit down. You can watch the television. The food will be ready in a minute.’

They file into my room. Two, four, six — eight eyes stare down at me. If only I could open mine and look up at them.

‘He looks like Chairman Mao lying in the Mausoleum,’ says Yu Jin. ‘He has that same serene look on his face. “Remain unchanging in changing circumstances.” Do you remember saying that to me once, Dai Wei? I’ll never forget it.’

‘He led our student marshal team in the Square, Bingbing,’ Chen Di says. ‘He was great. So big and tough. He could even scare off our university’s boxing team.’

‘Really? But look how skinny he is now.’

There hasn’t been so much noise here since the police came and drove away the urine drinkers from our flat.

I remember waking Chen Di one afternoon when he was having a nap in the tent and saying, ‘It’s time for your broadcast, my friend.’ He’d stripped down to his Y-fronts. I could see his penis hanging out. He stared up at me blankly and said, ‘I’m so bloody knackered. As soon as this movement’s over, I’m going to cuddle up with a girl and sleep for a week.’ Although Bingbing probably is taller than Tian Yi, I doubt she’s pretty. I imagine she looks similar to the tall girl who drew us a map of Tiananmen Square.

‘He seems to have shrunk. He can’t be more than 1.7 metres now. He used to be 1.83. The tallest guy in the Science Department.’

‘I read that your urine sold for ten yuan a cup, Dai Wei. It’s incredible! A man was cured of chronic arthritis after drinking just one cup.’

‘Who drank urine?’ Bingbing asks.

‘Haven’t you heard the story? There was even an article about it in Le Monde . “Urine of Chinese Coma Patient Cures Cancer”. You can look it up on the internet.’