Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

Wang Fei was lying next to her. He propped himself up on his elbow, tugged the strap he was holding and dragged his flattened megaphone away from Bai Ling’s chest. The bones of his legs were splayed open like flattened sticks of bamboo. His blood-soaked trousers and lumps of his crushed leg were stuck to parts of Bai Ling. I glanced at the stationary tank and saw pieces of Wang Fei’s trousers and leg caught in its metal tracks.

Tang Guoxian and I rushed to Wang Fei, lifted him up and shouted, ‘Someone get some help!’

As a few local residents ran over, the tank drove away, taking Wang Fei’s flesh with it and leaving two trails of blood on the road.

Tang Guoxian took off his shirt and tore it in two, then pulled down Wang Fei’s tattered jeans and tied the strips of shirt tightly around the bleeding thighs. Dong Rong flung off his jacket and draped it over Wang Fei’s chest. Wang Fei had lost consciousness by now. We dragged him onto the pavement. His trembling mouth stiffened. A red light flashed from the walkie-talkie he was still gripping. A voice cried out through the speaker, ‘Down with Fascism! Long live…’

Then I spotted Chen Di. He was clutching the metal railings along the side of the road, his left foot crushed to a pulp. The questions marks on his T-shirt seemed to be screaming in anguish. Next to him, Qiu Fa was lying motionless in a pool of blood. When Yu Jin and Old Fu pulled him up, they discovered he’d been hit by one of the bullets discharged by the armoured personnel carrier. Blood was pouring from a wound in his back.

Students hugged each other and wept. Mimi knelt on the road and howled with grief. Old Fu pulled off his red headband and used it to wipe his tears.

Big Chan’s body had been pulverised. It was now little more than a bloody tank-track mark. A few white teeth lay on the ground where his head had been. When Little Chan caught sight of the body, he dropped the guitar he was holding and ran over. As he drew near, he slipped in a puddle of crushed flesh, and fell to the ground. Blood splattered onto his face. He picked up Big Chan’s left hand, which was still intact, pulled off the cotton glove and stared at the digital watch attached to the wrist.

Tang Guoxian yelled, ‘Someone help me lift Wang Fei!’ I realised suddenly that we might be able to save Wang Fei. I helped Tang Guoxian lift him onto a wooden handcart, then I grabbed the handles and we ran as fast as we could.

‘Where’s the nearest hospital?’ we shouted as we ran. Someone yelled back, ‘Go to Fuxing Hospital. Lots of the injured have been taken there already.’

We kept running. I couldn’t make out what the bright or dark objects were that flashed before me. My mind was numb. I felt as though I was wading through knee-deep water.

When we reached the hospital entrance, I walked to the front of the cart to pull Wang Fei onto my back, but there was so much blood on the ground, I slipped and fell.

Tang Guoxian and Wu Bin dragged Wang Fei into the entrance hall and screamed for help.

The doctor who came forward looked as though he’d just crawled out of a river of blood. His gloves and face mask were bright red. ‘Lie him flat on the stretcher and wait here!’ he shouted. ‘There’s no more room in the wards.’

The bulldozer charges into the building like an army tank, making our walls shake and our floor-beams tremble and crack. It moves back, its tracks screeching over shattered glass and planks of wood. Beside it, a digger is shovelling broken tiles and metal frames into an open-back truck. The bulldozer rams again and our walls shudder. Unable to take the strain any longer, our balcony suddenly gives way and crashes to the ground, taking our outer wall and the sparrow’s nest with it. As the bricks and cement hurtle down, I can hear the Bodhisattva figurine shatter into tiny pieces. Petrol fumes from the machines outside pour into the room together with the stench from broken sewer pipes. A heavy-goods vehicle rumbles past in the distance.

My mother roars like an angry tigress. ‘This is my home! You fascists! If you come any nearer, I will jump!’

‘Go on, jump then, old lady! Then the bulldozer can scoop you up from the ground and take you away. It will save us a lot of trouble!’ This labourer’s voice is very familiar. It’s the drifter. I’m sure it’s him. Mao Da mentioned he was working on construction sites now. I wonder why he still hasn’t gone back to Sichuan.

‘Get back to your work. The sun is almost up. Don’t waste your time pestering that madwoman. You two, go and lean that flight of stairs against her front door, so that she’ll be able to climb down if she wants to.’

‘What does “fascist” mean?’

‘Are you stupid? Fa-shi-si : It means “punish-you-with-death”.’ The drifter hasn’t lost any of his Sichuan accent.

A cold, dusty wind sweeps up the pile of receipts and medical records from the chest of drawers, and blows all the calendars off the walls. I hear the pages rustle as they swirl through the air.

‘Be careful, there’s a strong wind,’ a voice shouts up from the ground floor. ‘Don’t stand by your door. There’s no landing left. If you have something to say, climb down tomorrow and speak to the Hong Kong developer.’

‘I won’t jump,’ my mother shouts to a bulldozer’s headlamps. ‘I want to live!’

‘Punish-you-with-death, old lady! If you don’t move out, none of us will get our annual bonuses…’

The covered balcony and most of the outer walls and windows of the rest of the flat have fallen down. All the flats to our left and right have been demolished, as have the stairwell and landing behind us. Our flat is now no more than a windy corridor. It’s like a bird’s nest hanging in a tree. I can feel it shaking in the wind.

The cuckoo wept tears of blood, and the world was stained red.

The hospital corridor stretching before me looked like an abattoir. Everywhere there was dark, clotted blood, freshly splattered red blood, the stench of blood, mud and urine. People were weeping and cursing. Doctors and nurses shouted commands as they darted back and forth. There were ten or so motionless bodies lying on the blood-soaked floor. I couldn’t tell whether they were alive or dead.

Wang Fei was taken to a ward at last. We weren’t allowed inside. Another casualty was brought in. He had to be put down in the entrance hall because there was no more room in the corridor. A nurse went out to him, squatted down and shone a torch at the bullet wound beneath his chin. It was a very small hole, with only a few specks of blood around it, but when she checked his pulse she found it had stopped. She turned his head round. There was a huge hole at the back of his neck.

A local resident went over and had a look. ‘He must have been hit by an exploding bullet. They make a small hole when they enter the body, but explode as they exit, leaving behind large wounds like this. Those bullets have been banned by the international community for decades. The animals!’

‘We’ve run out of blood!’ a nurse yelled. Immediately, the twenty or so people milling about rushed over to her and stretched out their arms, all desperate to give blood.

‘I’m O positive,’ I said.

‘If you know your blood group please stand over there,’ the nurse said.

‘How could they have done this? They’re insane, insane!’ A young doctor ran out of a ward, sat on the ground and sobbed into his sleeve. A woman standing at the door knelt down beside him and cried, ‘Help him, please! He’s my brother! I beg you!’

After Wu Bin and I had finished giving blood, I tapped Tang Guoxian, who was leaning against the wall in a daze, and said, ‘Let’s count the bodies and try to draw up a list of names.’ A soldier was lying on the floor next to him. His eyes were closed. I assumed he was dead.