Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

We lay down and kissed, and I slipped inside her as easily as a foot inside a soft shoe. I moved back and forth on top of her. She shook in time with me, and the rainforest seemed to shake too. Whenever I glanced up, I’d see the bright, white rock of the mountain’s summit shining above me. We kept our mouths pressed together, until her legs quivered and she let out a soft cry.

It wasn’t until dusk that we slowly began to make our way back down the mountain. This was perhaps the first time in my life that I had the experience of utter privacy. She let me put my arm around her. When we reached the rocky bank of a river, she asked me, ‘Will you stay with me for ever?’

‘Yes. For the rest of my life.’ Although I was worn out, I felt a sudden desire to make love to her again.

‘I don’t know why,’ she said, ‘but when I’m with you, my mind is always somewhere else. You seem so heavy, like this big rock here.’ She was staring at a white rock that was glimmering in the fading light. A grey seam ran through its centre. The silent river was slowly darkening. A bird hovered in the air, landed on the water for a moment, and flew off. ‘Whatever happens to this country, we must stay together. You must promise me.’ Her eyes were red.

‘Tell me you love me.’

‘I told you in my letter,’ she said, tilting her head up. Her eyes became crescent slits. As she turned her head, I could see the marks my kisses had left on the nape of her long pale neck.

‘I love you…’ Her voice cracked and she blushed. I pulled her down onto the ground again and held her in my arms. The sinking sun cast a glow over our entwined bodies. Everything slowed down. Just as we were about to doze off, mosquitoes began swarming around us. We leapt up, pulled our clothes on and fled.

You move like a submarine through the sea of red-brown cells, and watch your pain spreading like a white net.

I see myself entering my dorm. Everyone was sitting on the lower bunks, drinking beer and eating chicken.

The room was brighter than usual. Chen Di must have put in a stronger light bulb. Whenever he did that, we usually had a couple of days of bright light before the caretaker found out and replaced it with a lower wattage bulb.

There was no room for me to sit down, so I decided to return to Tian Yi’s dorm, but as I went to the door Chen Di dragged me back in.

‘You know it’s our turn to feed him this week,’ he said, pointing to the drifter who was sprawled over Qiu Fa’s bed. Qiu Fa was on the opposite bunk. He was very fastidious, and usually couldn’t bear anyone sitting on his peony-printed cotton sheet. In the mornings, he’d spend ten minutes brushing his curly hair into place, then he’d fill a glass jar with hot water and use it to flatten the creases in his clothes.

‘Yes, you can’t just sneak off like that!’ Mao Da added. ‘Go and buy us some beer!’ Mao Da was the chancellor of the student union and a Party member too. He spoke like a government cadre.

‘Be careful of the food-coupon thief,’ said Yu Jin from his bunk. ‘He’s been coming onto the campus again. I’ve seen him with my own eyes.’ Yu Jin was always claiming to have seen things ‘with his own eyes’. He was a short, sprightly guy. He liked to roll up his sleeves to expose his muscled forearms and digital watch.

The truth is, he hadn’t seen any thief at all. A few days before, it had been my turn to go to the canteen to fetch food for everyone. I forgot to take my coupons with me and returned to the dorm empty-handed. To save me making a second trip, I pretended that a thief had stolen the coupons from my pocket.

The drifter liked to stride up and down the corridor with his hands behind his back and a cigarette in his mouth, in the manner of a local Party secretary. When tired of that, he’d slump onto someone’s bed and fall asleep, snoring loudly. The caretaker tried to get rid of him several times, kicking him out onto the streets or even taking him to the police station. But somehow or other the drifter always managed to worm his way back to us. His reputation increased with each new assault, and he soon was the star of our dorm block.

The drifter had no name. We called him ‘the drifter’ not in a pejorative way, but as a mark of respect. Giving shelter to a destitute peasant appealed to our rebellious spirits. It was always an honour when he chose to eat in our dorm, and he agreed. ‘You little scamps should consider yourselves privileged,’ he’d declare in his broad Sichuan accent.

He spoke very little in the beginning, but after a student in the dorm opposite arranged for him to sleep with a female poet, he livened up. He told us that women with thick lips have thick labia, just as men with big noses have big cocks, and explained that when women take off their clothes, their breasts hang down to their waists.

We took turns escorting him to the shower block. When he wanted to go into town and see a film, we’d help him over the campus wall. I was the best haircutter on our floor, and charged two jiao a go. But I always did the drifter’s hair for free.

He propped his head up on Qiu Fa’s pillow and chewed at a drumstick. His hands looked dark and grimy as they gripped the pale meat and bone.

I sat down by his feet. Everyone was tucking into the food and chatting loudly.

The drifter turned to me and said, ‘Come on, boy, down it in one!’

I reluctantly took the glass he offered me. ‘I’ve just had a beer,’ I said. ‘This is Erguotou spirit. I can’t drink that much.’

The drifter shot me a disparaging look. ‘You city people are useless. Beer’s as weak as piss. Real men drink this .’

‘Yes, come on Dai Wei!’ said Dong Rong. ‘Friend or foe, down in one go!’ I hated playing drinking games with Dong Rong. He’d always win. He was a terrible poser. He wore designer sunglasses all through the year, and liked to brag about the cost of his American trainers. But although he was always smartly turned out, he had the smelliest feet in the dorm.

The spirit made my stomach and face burn and my head spin. I’d just had supper with Tian Yi. All her dorm mates were there, so I’d decided to come back to my dorm and read the copy of The Catcher in the Rye she’d lent me. Mou Sen had already read it, of course.

The drifter was wearing Dong Rong’s designer shirt. It made him look like the Party secretary of a rural commune. Embroidered on the chest was a logo of a horse-rider waving a polo stick. Apparently, this brand was even more expensive than the one with the crocodile logo. Dong Rong had worn the shirt during the campus protests that followed the murder of the graduate student and hadn’t dared wear it again in case it incriminated him.

Xiao Li asked the drifter to tell us a story about women or ghosts. Xiao Li came from a poor peasant family. His living expenses were paid for by his elder brother. I never saw him buy any food. In the evening, he’d go out to gather vegetables that had been discarded on the street. The previous year, he’d bought a tube of toothpaste but couldn’t afford a toothbrush, so used his fingers instead. This year he’d managed to buy a toothbrush, but his toothpaste had run out, so he’d take some from my tube when he thought I wasn’t looking. I always pretended not to notice. And I gave him free haircuts too.

The drifter mumbled drunkenly, ‘No, no, I’ve got no stories to tell you.’ But it was clear there was something he wanted to say. Having drunk and eaten his fill, he sucked on his cigarette and smacked his lips contentedly, like a peasant in a market who’s just sold his harvest for a good price.

Xiao Li lay on his bed and tuned his radio to a news broadcast: ‘… Following three days of severe disturbances, Premier Li Peng signed an order today imposing martial law on Lhasa. A handful of rebellious Tibetan monks have been…’