Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

My heart beat in time with the music. I walked back towards the door and stood in the corner.

Most of the tables and chairs had been stacked neatly against the walls. On the one table that had been left out was a birthday cake made of cardboard, surrounded by candles and a small paper model of a log cabin which had a torch inside that emitted a dull yellow light. Four pairs of women’s eyes, cut out from a wall calendar, had been glued to the ceiling. They looked like the organs of a dissected animal. I put my hand in my pocket and stroked the three glass pandas that I’d brought as birthday presents.

With her vacant eyes and half-opened mouth, her face seemed lifeless. I wondered whether she’d recognised me. I almost hoped she hadn’t. But when the music changed, she squeezed past two or three people and walked towards me.

She said something. But her mind was still distracted, so the first sentence was merely a garbled echo at the back of her throat.

I guessed what she’d said was: So, you’ve come, then.

We stepped closer to each other. Her expression becoming more animated, she asked, ‘Are you here to see me?’

‘I just wanted to drop by. So, is it your birthday today?’

‘No. What’s your name?’

‘Jin Mu,’ I said, breaking into a smile. ‘What’s yours?’

She cupped her hand to her ear. ‘Jin Mu? Meaning “gold wood”? Sounds like the name of a feng shui expert. Who are you trying to fool?’ She laughed. And I laughed too. It felt good. We were having a conversation.

‘It’s my pen name. My real name is Dai Wei. My parents are originally from Shandong.’ I put out my hand. She shook it, pulled her hand away briefly to slip into her pocket a small object she was clutching, then shook it again.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Tian Yi.’

‘Meaning “heaven-one”, as in “first under heaven”?’

‘No.’

‘As in “heaven and man unite as one”, then?’

‘No! It’s not “heaven-one”, it’s “heaven-cloth”. You know — “cloth of heaven”, as in “seamless like the cloth of heaven”.’ She was a head shorter than me, and had to raise her eyebrows when she looked up into my eyes.

‘That’s very original.’

‘Not as original as your “gold wood” pen name! So, Mr PhD Student, do you like to dance?’

‘I prefer to watch. It’s less exhausting.’

‘Do you regard people as books that you can look at as you please?’

‘I only came here to look at you,’ I blurted out without thinking. The music had stopped suddenly, so my voice sounded very loud.

Searching for something to say, she asked, ‘Do you like to read? What is your favourite book?’

‘ The Book of Mountains and Seas ,’ I said quietly.

‘Really? That’s mine, too. Recite a few lines for me.’

I took a breath. ‘“There’s a tree whose sap looks like lacquer and tastes like syrup. If you eat it, it will banish hunger from your stomach and worries from your mind. Its name is…”’

‘Comrade Dai Wei, that’s the modern translation, not the original classical Chinese text. Do you find that your scientific knowledge gives you a deeper insight into the book?’

‘As it happens, I’m planning to go on a journey, following the routes described in the book, studying everything I find on the way: the flora, fauna, geographical features, astronomical events. I love maps. When I was child I dreamed that when I grew up, I’d wander around the country like that Ming Dynasty geographer, Xu Xiake.’

‘You should be studying geography then, not science. There’s a professor in the History Department who’s an expert on The Book of Mountains and Seas. ’

‘I don’t want to get bogged down in dry, academic study. It’s the travel that interests me most… You’re a psychology student. Where does your interest in classical literature come from?’

‘I like stories about ghosts and mythical animals. Like the snake with nine heads, the ox with one foot, and the bird that tries to fill the sea with sticks and stones. I read The Book of Mountains and Seas for its literary qualities. After I graduate, I want to do a Master’s in Chinese literature.’

‘We could go travelling together in the holidays. I have an ancient map of China that we could use to plan our route.’

She looked at me for a moment, her chest rising and falling. Then she glanced at the group standing beside her and said, ‘These are my dorm mates. Let me introduce you.’

She grabbed hold of the girl standing next to her. It was the tiny girl with the cropped hair who’d come to Professor Fang Li’s lecture at the Pantheon Society.

‘I already know Bai Ling,’ I said. ‘We’ve been at some of the same talks.’

‘Yes,’ Bai Ling smiled. ‘You science students organised lots of interesting lectures last year.’

‘And this is Mimi.’ Mimi stepped forward and waved her hand at me. ‘I don’t think you know her, do you?’ When Tian Yi laughed she looked like a different person. ‘You don’t have a fear of crowds, do you, Dai Wei? Come on, let’s dance!’ She walked off into the middle of the room, and as her hair swirled round I stepped forward and followed behind her.

You pass through a web of capillaries and enter the ascending colon. A tangle of nerve fibres blocks your path back to the thalamus.

The rain had just stopped. Tian Yi and I were standing in the middle of the campus, watching the sun sinking into Weiming Lake. She turned to me and said, ‘A friend borrowed my electric hob. I’ll have to go and fetch it.’

‘I’ll get some pickles and popcorn,’ I said.

It was 27 November. My twenty-second birthday. Tian Yi had taken me to see a foreign film at a cinema near her parents’ flat. She told me that she seldom went home. She didn’t like her elder sister or her brother-in-law. They’d taken over the second bedroom of the flat, so whenever Tian Yi stayed the night, she had to sleep on a camp bed in the narrow corridor.

We met up half an hour later in her dorm. I gave her a quick haircut, then I plugged her two-ring electric hob into a socket, filled an aluminium lunch box with water and put it on to boil. We were going to cook some prawns and birthday noodles. When the water began to bubble, I dropped the prawns in and the room instantly smelt of the sea.

She washed her hair in a basin of warm water. I scooped some water into an enamel teacup and rinsed the soap from her right ear. When I saw the curved hairline behind it, each strand of hair growing neatly from her scalp, I couldn’t help leaning down and kissing her earlobe. She twisted round and looked up at me. Her face was bright red, but her eyes were as blank as those of a dead sheep.

I went to the sink at the end of the corridor to empty the dirty water, and noticed some strands of her hair caught between my fingers. ‘Look how long these are,’ I said, returning to her dorm and holding the strands up to the light. She was squeezing the water from her hair. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I stared at her broad, somewhat masculine forehead, her motionless mouth, the delicate curve of her narrow nostrils. She was wearing a sleeveless black T-shirt. When I saw her bare arms, I felt the blood rush faster through my veins.

‘Keep your hands off me! There are people about.’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said. ‘It’s just that, I mean… I’ve never seen you wear black before.’

‘I always wear black.’

‘The first time I saw you, you were wearing a white skirt.’

‘You must have been dreaming of your little white angel. I’m a black witch, didn’t you know?’

Before I’d got round to putting the noodles in, the water boiled over onto the metal ring, the fuse snapped, and suddenly all the lights on our floor went out. We were plunged into darkness. Girls in the other dorms walked out into the corridor shouting, ‘Which bloody idiot did that? Come on! Own up!’ Some banged bed frames, tables, chairs; others slowly clapped their hands or stamped their feet. I couldn’t tell exactly where the noises were coming from. In the dark, it’s difficult to gauge distances between yourself and others. The shouting and banging resonated through the block.