Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘You think you can persuade me to be a deserter?’ my brother said, walking away. ‘No chance!’

‘Stay then, if you want,’ I said, pulling him back. ‘But put down that stick. You have no right to drag the rest of us into a violent conflict.’ When I’d argued with him in the past, I only had to kick him in the shins and he’d do as I asked. But he was a young man now, a slightly smaller version of myself, and was no longer willing to take orders from me.

‘Dai Wei, Shi Ye’s looking for you,’ Chen Di said, spotting me as he walked past. ‘She’s with a pretty girl in a white dress.’

‘Really?’ I glanced around and wondered whether the girl might be A-Mei. My mind clouded over. I wanted to see her.

Shan Bo shouted that we should confiscate the machine gun. Hou Dejian and Zi Duo came out of the tent to help.

‘You must stop your hunger strike,’ Zhuzi said to them. ‘The army are coming. Listen to the gunfire. Those are real bullets!’ He turned on his walkie-talkie and pressed the buttons so that they could hear the noises of gunfire and screaming being transmitted from the major intersections around the city.

‘They’re shooting at everyone in sight,’ Chen Di said. ‘Every bulletin we receive brings news of more deaths and injuries.’

‘Yes, we must end the hunger strike,’ Zi Duo said.

‘The army would only shoot people who are brandishing weapons,’ Hou Dejian said. ‘My hands are empty. They wouldn’t attack me.’ He was trying to speak loudly, but he was very weak. None of the four men had eaten anything for almost thirty hours.

‘I’ve just been told that my friend Wu Guofeng has been killed,’ Fan Yuan shouted out to us. ‘He was shot in the stomach with an exploding bullet. His guts are splayed all over the ground! I’m going over there now. Will any of you join me?’

‘There’s no point fighting them, you’ll never win.’ As soon as Zi Duo said this, his girlfriend walked over and put a piece of bread into his mouth.

I could hear Hai Feng nearby, shouting through a megaphone: ‘We will never bow down before the executioners!’

Mimi and Tian Yi began reading out the battle commands Old Fu had handed them. But the amplifiers weren’t working properly, so no one could make out what they were saying.

‘This is a message to all Qinghua University students,’ Zhou Suo shouted through his megaphone. ‘Our university has sent vans to take us back to the campus. If any of you want to leave, go and board them now.’

‘Tell them to let the girls go first,’ Zhuzi said, rushing over to Mimi. Tian Yi was running around frantically behind them. I felt I was watching a video on fast-forward.

‘What’s this talk about leaving?’ Big Chan shouted. ‘We must stay in the Square until dawn. There’s no need to be afraid. I’ve heard that when the citizens at the barricades throw stones at the troops, the young soldiers run away in terror.’

‘Help me extend this cable, Dai Wei,’ Old Fu said. ‘And Bai Ling, stay in the tent and don’t move. The students need to know that you’re here, or they will lose morale.’

‘Why have you stationed marshals up here at a time like this?’ Sister Gao shouted out as she and Shao Jian pushed past a student who was trying to block their way. The brown shirt she was wearing made her face look pale.

‘They’re not marshals,’ I said. ‘They’re just some students from the Politics and Law University who volunteered to protect the hunger strike tent.’

‘Where’ve you been?’ Old Fu asked Shao Jian.

‘The troops are forcing their way down West Changan Avenue, spraying bullets into the crowds,’ Shao Jian said, trudging over to Zi Duo, his face dripping with sweat and a rucksack slung over his shoulder.

‘Tell the students to hand in their weapons,’ Old Fu said to me. ‘We can’t allow them to be armed.’

‘Ask Bai Ling to make the announcement,’ I said. ‘She was the one who told everyone to arm themselves.’

‘Well, it was Wang Fei’s stupid idea, not hers,’ Old Fu said.

‘We must stick to our policy of non-violence,’ Sister Gao said. ‘If we use weapons, we’ll all end up dead.’ There was a look of despair on her face that I hadn’t seen before.

As I helped Chen Di carry more broadcast equipment over to the hunger strike tent, I glanced around, looking for my brother, but couldn’t see him anywhere.

‘Lin Lu has sent the Dare-to-Die Squad to block the convoys in the east,’ Dong Rong said, climbing onto the upper terrace. ‘But there are only twelve of them. What use is that? The troops are opening fire now, shooting randomly into the crowds. They’ve already reached the Jianguomen intersection.’ His designer shirt was torn at the collar. He looked like an extra in a fight scene.

The upper terrace was packed. We were like refugees penned inside a fence. We would babble at each other feverishly, then walk off before anyone had a chance to answer. As soon as someone joined our throng, we surrounded them and launched into a new debate.

I saw Big Chan, with his guitar slung from a strap around his neck, rush back into the Square with Qiu Fa and Wang Fei. All three were pushing bicycles.

As soon as Wang Fei stepped onto the terrace, he switched on his black megaphone and yelled, ‘The troops opened fire! At first they aimed at the ground, then a few soldiers lifted their guns and shot indiscriminately at the crowd…’ I gave him a leg up so that he could stand on the edge of the sculptured frieze, then I put my hand on his thigh to stop him falling off. Everyone could see him now. ‘After that, tanks, armoured vehicles and army trucks crashed over the barricades… Look at this towel!’ He pulled a towel from his trouser pocket. ‘A student called Zhou Jiang got a bullet in his stomach and died right before my eyes. I tried to smother the wound with this towel, but the blood just kept spurting out.’ He pointed to his navel. Without his glasses on, his eyes looked blank. I could feel his thigh begin to shake. He’d slipped into his Sichuan dialect, and not many people understood what he said. I told him to pass his megaphone to Qiu Fa.

I knew the student he mentioned. He’d joined my student marshal team the night we went to Wangfujing Street to protect the shops from looters. He was Zhuzi’s secret intelligence officer. He had a walkie-talkie. Cao Ming had told me that everyone issued with walkie-talkies was bound to get tailed by government agents.

Qiu Fa stared into the night sky and said, ‘Troops armed with live ammunition ran up onto the overpass and shot at the crowd in the street below, yelling at the top of their voices. I took cover behind a telegraph pole… One of the soldiers looked like he was on drugs. Whenever he heard someone cry “Down with Fascism!” he’d point his machine gun at them and unleash a barrage of bullets. Sometimes the soldiers shot at the buildings, killing people who were leaning out of the windows. A teacher from People’s University climbed into an army truck to speak to the troops, but as he got on, a soldier pushed him off and stabbed him in the chest with a bayonet.’

Everyone fell silent. I could hear a walkie-talkie crackling nearby.

I helped Wang Fei down and we went off with Old Fu to join our gang outside the hunger strike tent. Old Fu turned to Bai Ling, Wang Fei and Lin Lu, and said, ‘As commanders of the Square, you must tell all students who are holding sticks, bricks or Molotov cocktails to put them down at once!’

‘And we must persuade all female students to return to the campuses,’ Sister Gao said. ‘They will be safer there, and it will help break up the troops. I’m going to try to sneak through the army lines and fetch reinforcements from the Business and Economics University.’