Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

The sky used to have nine suns, but the God of the Sky fired arrows at them and shot eight of them down.

On 1 June, primary school kids flocked to the Square to celebrate Children’s Day. They stood in scattered groups around the base of the Monument like clumps of flowers. When I looked at the sky, it seemed bluer and more transparent. The Goddess of Democracy statue was as white as untouched snow.

‘It’s nice to have these kids here, don’t you think?’ I said to Tian Yi. ‘They give the Square a homely feeling.’

‘I pity them, having to grow up under Communism,’ she said. ‘This country only allows children’s bodies to grow, not their minds.’

Although we’d cleared the Monument’s lower terrace to give the children some space to run around, the rest of the Square looked a mess. We’d removed all the equipment, furniture and documents from the Headquarters’ various offices and dumped them temporarily outside our old broadcast station, but I hadn’t managed to find any marshals to protect the muddled heap. The only volunteers I could have called upon were busy on the north side of the Square, erecting the hundreds of blue nylon tents we’d received that morning from Hong Kong. About twenty of the shiny tents had already sprung up among the red banners and flags. That patch looked like a luxurious holiday camp when compared to the shanty town of makeshift shelters that covered the rest of the Square.

‘It’s strange how these vast crowds lull one into a sense of security,’ said Sister Gao. ‘They make one feel unassailable.’ Her eyes were hidden under the shade of her straw hat. She looked like a friendly nursery school teacher. She and Tian Yi had returned to the campus the previous night to invite some professors to join the Democracy University.

Tian Yi squinted into the sunlight, then looked through the lens of her camera at a kite flying high above us. It was a red goldfish with a long streaming tail.

I asked if she had any food on her. I was famished. I’d spent all morning helping Mou Sen erect a shelter below the Goddess of Democracy and set up a public address system.

She unzipped her rucksack and pulled out an opened pack of instant noodles.

‘I like that brand. You can eat them raw. They’re nice and chewy.’ As I looked down at the pack, I saw her clean toes peeping out of her sandals. I could tell she’d taken a shower the previous night.

‘Hey, Dai Wei,’ said Sister Gao. ‘I’ve heard the student leaders have been given secret phone numbers they can dial if they get into trouble, and someone will turn up and whisk them away to Hong Kong. What are the rest of us supposed to do? Just stay here and wait until we’re flung into jail?’ Sister Gao had a rosy glow on her cheeks. Perhaps it was the light bouncing off her red sleeveless shirt. I’d never bothered to ask her whether she had a boyfriend. I didn’t tend to pay much attention to women who were older than me. But in fact she was only a few years older. We still belonged to the same generation.

‘They’re not secret numbers,’ I said. ‘They’re just business cards that Chen Di collected from some Hong Kong tourists. He gave us two each. I doubt they’ll be of any use.’

‘After Mou Sen’s Democracy University gets going, the Headquarters should disband,’ Sister Gao said. No one answered. When it wasn’t clear to whom she was addressing her comments, we seldom bothered to reply.

A throng of little girls in flowery skirts ran up onto the lower terrace and began hoola-hooping in front of us, while a revolutionary song blared from the loudspeakers on a truck driving through the dense crowds below. ‘ If we fall down and never get up again, if the flag of the Republic is stained with our blood …’

‘I wish I could describe this scene,’ Tian Yi said. ‘It’s like a wedding and a funeral rolled together.’

‘Or a song-and-dance show in a battlefield…’ I said.

‘The Square is so squalid now. In our meetings, I have to stand next to sweaty guys who haven’t washed or brushed their teeth for ten days…’ Sister Gao said.

Chen Di approached holding a newspaper. ‘Look at today’s News Herald. It says the police dragged a Japanese journalist off the Square yesterday and punched him in the face.’ He was wearing a T-shirt on which he’d drawn large question marks in felt-tip pen. He turned to me and said, ‘Liu Gang is planning to give a speech later on. Can you find a team of marshals to help protect him?’

‘You’d better go back to the campus and recruit more volunteers,’ I said. ‘Look, there are no marshals guarding this Monument. If the citizens weren’t blocking the intersections, the army tanks would be able to roll straight in here.’

Tian Yi took the newspaper from Chen Di. There was a poem by Mou Sen on the front page. Its title — ‘The Blue Skies and Rifle Butts of May’ — was printed in large black type.

‘It feels as though we’re on holiday,’ Sister Gao said.

‘Yes, our movement has taken a day off. It’s like when the government stops shelling Taiwan’s Jinmen Island for one day during Spring Festival every year.’

‘Who’s supposed to be in charge of the Square now?’ Sister Gao asked Chen Di. ‘We’ve got 200,000 soldiers surrounding the city ready to launch a crackdown, and here we are sauntering about as though we didn’t have a care in the world.’

‘The only leader left here now is deputy commander-in-chief Wang Fei,’ Chen Di said. ‘But no one will follow his orders, apart from Bai Ling.’

‘We need someone to take charge. A bird without a head can’t fly.’ Sister Gao took off her straw hat, scratched her head, then put it on again.

‘What do you mean we need a leader?’ I said, after swallowing a mouthful of dry instant noodles. ‘Our problem is that we’ve got too many. A bird with nine heads can’t fly either.’

‘Look at Mou Sen!’ Chen Di said. ‘He gave me loads of jobs to do, just so that he could come up here with Nuwa and reenact the love scene between Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh in Waterloo Bridge .’ Chen Di never took off his baseball cap, so although his nose was sunburnt, the rest of his face was pale.

‘This is the Monument to the People’s Heroes,’ Sister Gao said disapprovingly. ‘He shouldn’t be canoodling with her like that in the full view of the Square. It’s no way for a student leader to behave.’

Mou Sen was leaning against the marble balustrade on the other side of the terrace, his hand on Nuwa’s waist. They were looking into each other’s eyes and taking gulps from the same bottle of mineral water. Nuwa lowered her head. It looked as though she was waiting for Mou Sen to kiss her. A crowd of kids half their height were skipping around them, wearing brightly coloured clothes and red neck scarves.

Tian Yi told me to call Mou Sen over, then said to Sister Gao, ‘Don’t look so shocked! Didn’t you hear that Wang Fei dumped Nuwa and is going out with Bai Ling now?’

I shouted out to Mou Sen. He and Nuwa glanced round and walked over to us. I felt another pang of hunger.

‘Ah! Young love amid the revolution!’ Chen Di laughed. ‘You’re like those two activists in the 1930s who married each other on the execution ground before the Guomingdang shot them dead.’

‘If I’m going to be a rebel, I might as well go the whole way!’ Mou Sen said. ‘The enemy has surrounded the city. There’s not much hope for us now.’

‘Yes, you look like you’re acting out the tragic love scene from that Beijing opera, King Ba Bids Farewell to his Concubine ,’ Sister Gao said in a disapproving tone.

I remembered A-Mei telling me she disliked boisterous, muscular men. The girls that I liked always seemed to be attracted to frail, bookish guys like Mou Sen.