Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘Their devotion to the Party is an obsessional neurosis. No one living in a dictatorship has a healthy state of mind… You go into the kitchen. I’ll read him a passage from The Book of Mountains and Seas . It’s his favourite book.’

‘Oh dear, I haven’t seen that book for a long time. I think his brother might have taken it.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll recite him something from memory.’ Tian Yi wants my mother to go away and leave her in peace for a while.

Her lilting voice stirs up agitated thoughts. Perhaps today a chink will open in the walls that enclose you.

‘Dai Wei, can you hear me? You’re as skinny as that strange creature in The Book of Mountains and Seas that has the face of a man and the body of a monkey. But unlike you, that creature could speak, and change shape.’ She turns down the radio and continues, ‘Do you remember how you dreamed of going on a great journey, exploring all the mountains and rivers described in the book? You can’t go anywhere now, so I’ll just recite you a passage and you can travel there in your mind. Hmm. Do you want to head north, south, east or west? I think I’ll take you north… If you walk on for another 110 li, you reach Spring Border Mountain, where wild onions, peaches and pears grow. The River Stick springs from its foothills and empties into the Yellow River below. A wild beast with tattoos lives on the mountain. It often roars with laughter, but as soon as it sees a human approach it pretends to be asleep… Do you remember what that beast is called?’

In my mind, I answer: it’s wild sunflowers and chives that grow on the mountain, not onions and pears. And the River Stick flows into the Col Marshes, not into the Yellow River. But I can’t remember what that creature is called.

‘You know the jingwei bird I like so much? Do you remember which mountain it lives on?’

Mount Fajiu. The jingwei is the reincarnation of Nuwa, Emperor Yandi’s daughter, who drowned in the East Sea. Every day, to punish the sea that drowned her, she picks up twigs and stones from Mount Fajiu, then drops them into the East Sea, vainly hoping to fill it up.

‘Do you remember the manman bird? It has only one wing and one eye, and has to pair with a mate if it wants to fly. I’m like a manman bird now that has lost its mate. How will I ever fly again?’ She falls silent.

I long for her to touch my hand, then I remember the cadaver that I am.

‘I wish you were around to look after me. At university, it feels like we’re guarded by wolves.’

I miss you, Tian Yi. As that phrase repeats through my mind, I begin to feel myself returning to reality.

‘If I hadn’t written a self-criticism, I’d have been kicked out of university. We’ve been forced to act like slaves again.’

We joined the student movement to break free from our prisons, but we’ve all had to return to them now.

‘The university’s police officers will interrogate me when they discover I’ve visited you. I didn’t feel like talking to your mother just now. I didn’t want to be reminded of what happened. I study psychology but it’s I who need a psychiatrist. What’s the point of life without freedom?’

I wish I could hug you, Tian Yi. I’m inhaling your breath. Until this moment, I wasn’t afraid of dying. But now I know that you’re here and will be leaving any moment, the thought of death terrifies me.

‘Shall I put another pillow under his head, Auntie?’ Tian Yi composes herself as she hears my mother approach. I imagine there are tears in her eyes.

‘No, don’t bother. This room smells horrible, doesn’t it? Sit on this chair. It’s where I sit when I massage his hands and feet. Look how clenched they are. If I didn’t massage them, they’d be as stiff as dried mushrooms.’

Tian Yi stretches out her hand and touches my foot. She squeezes it, then tries to swivel it around at the ankle. Although she can’t turn it very far, the touch of her skin gives me so much joy that I could faint… We pulled off our trousers and I lay on top of your soft body. I placed the washbasin over our heads to muffle the noise of our breathing, then I switched on the cassette player. It was the ‘Nine Hundred English Sentences’ tape. A clipped voice droned: Alan, please take this gentleman to the nearest bus station … Not so loud, you gasped into my ear. Through the washbasin, it sounded as though the whole dorm room was shaking. There was sweat on your neck. You trembled, then flinched suddenly like a rabbit touched by an electric wire. Where do you want to go? To the Japanese garden … Switch it off, I tried to say, but before the words came out you pushed your tongue into my mouth… No, I am not Chinese, I am American …

The blood rushes through your veins. The reproductive mechanisms expel sour fragrances through your pores.

Tian Yi helps my mother remove the drip from my arm, squeezes my hand softly then rests it on the edge of the bed. I imagine a rubber band or paper clip hidden in the folded palm of her other hand.

She gets up and leaves. She stayed for less than two hours. Perhaps the smell of the room drove her away. Or my mother’s constant prattle, or the supper she prepared.

I picture my head as it must be: sunk deep in the soft pillow, and beside it a herbal cushion, some fallen hair and my mother’s spectacle case.

I take a deep breath. Tian Yi left no scent in the air.

Irritating sparks of light flash across my closed eyelids. The lamp on the wooden chest at the end of the bed is probably shining onto the glass syringes. I know this room so intimately that when I breathe in I can see everything laid out before me.

My mother switches the light off, and again I become one with the darkness.

Your lungs inhale the world outside. Memories move through your liver.

It was drizzling outside my dorm window. I could tell there had just been a heavy downpour. The lawns were green and wet. In the distance, I could see girls standing in the grass by the lake. They were blots of red and black in a sea of green, with the pale grey sky behind.

Everyone was moving quietly through the damp air. Ke Xi looked conspicuous, waving his hands about as he delivered his speech on the lawn.

Big Chan and Little Chan stopped to listen as they walked back to the dorm with their lunch boxes, and were nearly knocked to the ground by a student who cycled up behind them.

A couple walking hand in hand wandered slowly towards Ke Xi. As the rain petered out, a few more students gathered round him.

Chen Di opened our window and cried out, ‘Beijing University has lost its balls!’

‘Stop shouting!’ Qiu Fa said, lying on his peony-printed cotton sheet. ‘And you’d better pay me back for those empty bottles.’ Before we’d set off for the march, Chen Di had gone to the window and thrown out all the bottles Qiu Fa had been keeping under his bed.

‘I didn’t touch your bottles,’ Chen Di said, snatching his binoculars out of my hands.

‘Why couldn’t you have thrown your tumbler out instead?’ Qiu Fa moaned, removing a folded shirt from under his pillow. ‘The shopkeeper gives me two jiao for each returned bottle, and I had seven of them.’

‘You’re such a liar! They were Erguotou bottles, not beer bottles — no one gives money for those.’

‘I stick Yanjing Beer labels on them, and no one can tell the difference. So cut the bullshit and hand over the money. At least give me a couple of jiao…’

I went next door to wake up Wang Fei. A few minutes later we all went outside. There was to be a meeting to discuss the formation of an organising committee. We’d pasted up notices and were hoping that many students would attend.