Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

Bai Ling had changed into a yellow and white striped T-shirt. She was pacing around distractedly like a patient in a mental asylum. Tian Yi was helping Mimi and Chen Di drag a table over to the tent. The few girls still remaining on the terrace looked tiny compared to the guys standing around them. I wished A-Mei hadn’t chosen to arrive in Beijing now, just as the army was shooting its way into the city.

Chen Di put a chair in front of the table outside the tent, asked Bai Ling to sit down, then handed her the microphone.

Annoyed that no one had responded to her, Sister Gao walked off with two journalists. Soldiers were shooting into the air now. Glowing tracer bullets arced through the night sky then exploded with a brilliant white flash. When I glanced at Sister Gao, I thought I saw a bullet enter her back.

Bai Ling looked up at Wang Fei. The passion and resolve she’d shown during the twenty days we’d been in the Square had gone. She’d led the students to a precipice, and now they were trying to push her over the edge. But somehow she found the strength to open her mouth and say, ‘I am Bai Ling, commander-in-chief. I am asking all of you to put down your weapons, and for the girls to return to the campuses at once… Fellow students, the black day has finally arrived. At this final moment, I would like to read out a poem by Li Qingzhao, a female writer of the Song Dynasty: “In life, we should be heroes among the living. / In death, let us be heroes among the ghosts. / To this day we mourn Xiang Yu, / Who chose to stay and die rather than cross the Yangtse River!” When General Xiang Yu was surrounded by enemy troops, he stood firm and chose not to escape to his family on the other side of the river. Fellow students! We are still young, and perhaps we might lack courage when we come face to face with a ruthless army that has shot its way through the city. But we are honourable and upstanding citizens. Whatever happens, we must stay firm and not let our families down… Let us use our idealism to wake the Chinese people from their slumber!’ By the end of her speech, she was forcing the words out through sobs.

Everyone on the terrace stood still. Tian Yi and Mimi were wiping away tears. I edged over to them and said, ‘If you start crying, everyone will, and the mood could get dangerously volatile.’

‘Nonsense!’ Tian Yi said, pushing me away, her face as white as paper.

Through Wang Fei’s walkie-talkie, a voice crackled, ‘The tanks are coming!…’ then broke off. Wang Fei frantically pressed the buttons but couldn’t regain the connection.

I became anxious. I wanted to find a safe hiding place for Tian Yi before the army came. I could see she had no strength left.

On the slopes of Mount Shamen grows the herb of immortality. A large bird sits on the summit, keeping watch over a black snake that lives in the dark river below.

‘Where is it, where is it?’ my mother screams, banging her head against the wardrobe. She gnashes her teeth and cries in pain. She often has screaming fits, but usually manages to lower her professionally trained voice to a deep howl that’s inaudible to the neighbours.

My mother hasn’t thrown anything out of the flat for years, so she has trouble finding things. I imagine the flat is so crammed now that there isn’t much room to stand.

She goes to the sofa, which is piled with biscuit tins, paper boxes, and the letters, bills and leaflets that get stuffed into her mailbox downstairs. As she kicks some cardboard boxes to the ground, her stomach rumbles. I hear her jangling her keys.

She is continually changing our locks, but forgets to throw away the old keys, so they stay on the same ring with the new ones, together with the keys to her leather suitcase, bicycle, and to the small shed outside in which she stores cabbages and charcoal briquettes. Sometimes she sits down and goes through each key, telling herself which one is for what, but then loses track halfway and has to start over again. She’ll begin by saying, ‘Bathroom, front door, window,’ but will soon make do with, ‘Big, small, copper, aluminium…’

When she can’t find space in the sitting room for something, she’ll toss it into my room. The empty milk cartons, pill bottles and food packaging she’s flung under my bed have attracted colonies of ants. She doesn’t bother to cook any more. She eats instant noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner. She must have got through six big boxes of them in the last few months. She throws the paper packaging onto my bed. I imagine that the only clean objects in the flat are the many calendars hanging on the wall. Her collection continues to grow. The calendar she bought this year has twelve photographs of America’s Grand Canyon.

Finding she couldn’t switch on my bedside lamp because the socket was buried under a pile of rubbish, she went out and bought a new lamp. Unable to locate another socket for it, she let it lie in the corner for a couple of weeks. Yesterday, she placed it on a cardboard box at the end of my bed and plugged its lead into a portable socket she’d pulled over from the sitting room. This means that my door can’t be closed now. The lamp is buzzing. Its light shines on my left cheek. I can smell its plastic shade getting hotter and hotter.

The nurse who visits every week is scolding my mother as if she were one of her patients. She sounds younger than Wen Niao. ‘When did you last check his blood pressure? Pass me his medical notes. These are from last year. Why do you Falun Gong practitioners always seem to be in such a daze?… It’s on the low side — just 50 mmHg. Yes, put it there, where I can see it. Where are the kidney-function test forms I gave you?… I’ll take this urine sample with me and give you the results next week.’

The nurse doesn’t offer to help my mother turn me over or wash me. She performs her duties perfunctorily then leaves, slamming the door shut behind her. As she walks down the stairs, I hear her mutter, ‘A perfectly good flat, and she’s turned it into a rubbish tip!’

Since Master Yao got arrested, my mother often screams in her sleep. If she hears someone walking up the stairs, she grabs her keys and checks that all the bolts are double-locked.

Three hundred li further south is Mount Luminous. There are crystals and snakes on its slopes. A wild beast that looks like a fox lives on the mountain. It cries out its own name. Whenever it appears, a panic will engulf the land.

Wang Fei was sitting inside the tent, his arms wrapped tightly around Bai Ling. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said to her. ‘You have your ideals to hang onto.’ His eyes were red. Now that she was hidden from the crowd, Bai Ling looked like a frightened rabbit. Between sobs, she gulped a breath of air and said, ‘I’m not afraid. Just full of despair. I can’t breathe.’

Lin Lu grabbed Old Fu’s hand and said, ‘If they arrest us, we mustn’t capitulate. One day, victory will be ours.’

Hou Dejian was sitting outside. A few journalists shone their torches on his face, and asked him to comment on the situation. Instead of replying, he picked up his guitar and sang: ‘ All freedom-loving people, throw your shoulders back and stand up straight …’ The song only intensified the feeling of impending doom. Down by the broadcast station below, Ke Xi shouted through his megaphone, ‘I will die in this Square if I have to, but I will never desert it…’

‘That’s the first time I’ve heard Ke Xi argue to stay in the Square,’ Yu Jin said, walking into the tent. Seeing that Wang Fei had his arms around Bai Ling, he turned instead to me and said, ‘The army has encircled us. We must come to a decision.’

Zhuzi returned from Beijing University with fifty new marshals dressed in white T-shirts. Lin Lu told them to stand around the base of the Monument. He said that he would take charge of the east side of the Monument, Zhuzi would look after the west, I would be stationed at the north and Zhang Jie at the south. ‘The strongest guys must stand on the outside and stay there, even if they’re shot at or injured.’ He took a drag from his cigarette. The glowing tip made his face shine red. Bai Ling had just criticised him for having sent hundreds of marshals to the barricades, leaving us vulnerable at this critical moment.