Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘Why are you so morose tonight?’ she asked coldly, then turned round and walked away.

Her sudden change amazed me. After just one day in the Square, she had become a different person. Two days before, she’d told me to be careful what I said in public, because two-thirds of the students were government informers. Now she was fearless and couldn’t care less who overheard our conversations.

After my meal, I went to keep her company. We didn’t return to her dorm block until two in the morning. The caretaker had gone home by then, so it was safe for her to smuggle me inside. Someone had removed the bulb from the overhead light in her dorm, which was a sign that one or more of the other girls had brought their boyfriends back as well. Tian Yi and I had to grope our way to her bunk bed in the dark.

As you drift through your body, you see living cells charge through the darkness, crashing into each other, dividing and dying.

‘Last week, in the early hours of 2 August, Iraqi soldiers invaded the Gulf state of Kuwait…’

‘Is this door meant to be open, Auntie?’

‘Tian Yi! How good to see you! Come in, come in! Leave the door open. It’s too hot in here. How did you manage to get time off?’

‘I’ve just finished my exams. We break up in a couple of days. It wasn’t easy getting permission to leave the campus. It’s guarded like a prison now.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard. Hey, your skin’s much darker, and your hair looks thinner too. When I last saw you, you had your hair in two thick bunches.’

Is that really Tian Yi’s voice? I can’t believe it. She’s come: the girl I think about every day. She’s alive, while I’m lying here covered in flies, as motionless as a corpse.

Memories of her face, her smell, even her love letters that I kept in a biscuit tin, come flooding back to me. My brain releases into my bloodstream the mixture of phenylethylamine and seratonin that is known as love.

She’s in the sitting room. My mother has just finished massaging my feet and thighs.

‘How’s Dai Wei?’

‘He’s skin and bone now. I’m still giving him medication. As long as he doesn’t suffer any more fevers or convulsions, his condition won’t get worse. Every few hours I have to move his legs and feet about to stop his joints seizing up. He’s in a very weak state, but somehow he just refuses to die.’

‘I’ve brought some strawberries. Here, you eat them. They’re fresh. I’ll wash them for you.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll wash them. You go in and take a look at him.’

She walks in to my room. As she approaches, I smell the scent of sweat between her toes that used to excite me so much. I can hear leather rubbing against leather. It’s her sandals.

She sighs and says, ‘Dai Wei. I’m here again… Auntie, I’m going to put on the electric fan for him.’ She presses a switch and the fan starts turning.

She isn’t sitting on the bed, so I can’t hear the sound of her breathing. I long for her to stretch out her hand and touch my face. I’m naked. Every centimetre of my skin is waiting for her touch.

She goes to open the curtains. She probably wants to get rid of the flies. I hope she’ll take away the radio that’s lying next to my head.

‘Are these his medical records? From the look of this electrogram, it seems that his brain is still active.’

‘Can you understand those notes?’ My mother is breathing very heavily.

‘No, they’re full of medical jargon. This first paragraph says that he was admitted to hospital on 4 June 1989, with a bullet injury to the brain, and was suffering from numbness and paralysis. On 6 June 1989 the bullet was removed from his head under general anaesthetic.’

‘Don’t go on. Even if I understood what the notes meant, it wouldn’t change anything. Tell me, how are things with you?’

‘The police and the university are still investigating my case. The self-criticism I wrote hasn’t been assessed yet.’

‘My advice is to just do as you’re told. The important thing is that you graduate. You don’t want to end up like me, pestered every day by the police then staring at my son’s face all evening. It’s a living hell.’

‘You must be patient. He might wake up one day.’

‘Because of his political background, the hospitals are forbidden to treat him, so I have to pay private doctors to treat him on the sly. At first, the neighbours were sympathetic. They came round and told me not to worry, and said that the government would soon reverse its official verdict on the Tiananmen protests. But as soon as the police began to target me, they stopped coming. When I pass neighbours on the street nowadays, they look away in terror, as though they’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Chen Di told me that the police visit you a lot.’

‘They come two or three times a week. They tell me not to speak to journalists or leave the flat. They demand the names of everyone who comes to see me. But you don’t want to hear all this! Tell me, have you applied to go abroad yet?’

‘There’s no point in applying. They’d never let me go. Dai Wei’s old dorm mate, Xiao Li, committed suicide the other day. He jumped off the top of the dorm block. The university was forcing him to write a self-criticism. One of the crimes he was accused of was singing the national anthem in public. They said he endangered public security. The Chinese people aren’t even allowed to sing the national anthem any more!’

‘Yes, I remember him. He was that boy in Dai Wei’s dorm who came from a peasant family. Perhaps he’s better off dead than living like a convict. The leaders of the opera company wanted me to write a statement saying I supported the government crackdown. It made me so angry. I’ve stopped reading the newspapers. I’ve lost all interest in politics. I don’t even want to hear about this guy Jiang Zemin who’s taken over as General Secretary.’

So Xiao Li killed himself. I can’t take it in. My head throbs. Who is left from my dorm now? I seem to remember Mao Da visiting a few months ago, saying that Wang Fei has been discharged from hospital and has returned to his parents’ home. So at least Wang Fei is alive. But perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me, and Mao Da never visited. Tian Yi’s voice sounds very real, though. It can’t just be my imagination.

The radio is too close to my ear. The female presenter whines: ‘Today’s newspapers are crammed with spurious advertisements that ask: Do you want to gain a place at university? Travel abroad? Grow taller? Have whiter skin? Get your name into the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ? If you do, please send your money to…’

Through the noise, I strain to catch Tian Yi’s words, and try to imagine what she’s wearing. ‘Beijing University has become like a military camp,’ I hear her say, ‘or a Communist Party Academy…’

‘Dai Wei’s great-uncle died a few weeks ago. His son Kenneth sent us the money that was left for us in the will. At first the police wouldn’t let me collect it, but they relented in the end. Kenneth asked whether you still want to go and do a Master’s in America. Will you write him a letter in English?’

‘Yes, of course. But if he sends a reply to my home or university address, it probably won’t reach me.’

‘I’ll get on with the supper. You just sit here…’

‘No, don’t worry, Auntie. I’m going to eat with my parents tonight.’

‘You’ve come all the way here, so stay a little longer, please. It’s nice for me to have someone to talk to… No one speaks to me any more. Dai Wei had a seizure a few months ago, and I knew I’d have to take him back to hospital. I called out for help, but my neighbours bolted their doors. Those Marxist-Leninists! They’re terrified of stepping out of line…’