Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘Be careful he doesn’t get conjunctivitis,’ An Qi says, observing my mother clean my eyes with alcohol solution. ‘You should wash them with medicated eye lotion, and apply tetracycline ointment every other day. Never use alcohol.’

‘Really?’ my mother says, continuing to wipe the alcohol over my eyes. ‘I’ve always cleaned them this way.’

‘If you carry on doing that, he’ll be blind by the time he opens his eyes. You’d be better off sewing the lids together with a needle and thread. If he wakes from his coma, you can just cut open the stitches.’

‘You’ve picked up a lot of medical knowledge. You sound like a qualified nurse!’

‘If I hadn’t read up on these things, my husband would be dead by now… How many drip bottles does he get through a day?’

‘The glucose solution he’s on now has added vitamins, so it’s more expensive than the others. I’ve had to cut the dose down from six bottles a day to four.’

‘My husband’s needle wounds have blistered like that too. They look like lepers, don’t they?’

My mother turns down the radio and joins An Qi on the sofa.

The young woman sounds as though she doesn’t move her lips when she speaks. Who else do I know who speaks like that…?

‘I feel like I’m back in the Cultural Revolution,’ she says. ‘My neighbours stare at me when I leave my flat. When I come here, that old granny downstairs asks me who I’ve come to see, and what about.’

‘Everyone’s suspicious of us. Before I retired, the opera company forced me to write a statement expressing my support of the crackdown. They said that if I didn’t, they’d turn me out of this flat. I had to write it three times. They kept complaining that it didn’t sound sincere enough. It was just like those letters you have to write when you apply to join the Party.’

My predicament has caused my mother to question her political beliefs.

The two women sit on the sofa, talking away until nightfall.

‘What kind of country is it that punishes the victims of a massacre, rather than the people who fired the shots?’ my mother says again.

‘I went to see that primary school teacher whose husband was shot near Muxidi. She told me that crematoriums are now forbidden from keeping the ashes of people killed in the crackdown. She had to collect her husband’s box of ashes and bring it home with her. She’s put it on top of her wardrobe.’

‘Yes, I heard she told her mother-in-law that he’s gone missing. She couldn’t bring herself to tell the old lady he’s dead. Apparently, the old lady isn’t too concerned about her son’s disappearance. During the Sino-Japanese War, she was told that her husband died on a battlefield, but a few years later he turned up at her house, alive and well.’

‘You know that woman in Mahua Lane, well, she got so sick of being harassed by the police and having to care for her injured husband around the clock, she packed her bags and left home. No one knows where she’s gone.’

‘I feel like running away too sometimes. But it’s helpful to be able to chat to you like this…’

‘My husband spent five thousand yuan on health insurance, but the company has refused to pay up. They said they’re not allowed to pay compensation to victims of the crackdown. What kind of world are we living in?’

As I listen to them talk, my mind drifts to The Book of Mountains and Seas … In the northern region, a wild beast called Qiongqi is devouring a man with dishevelled hair. The Qiongqi looks like a tiger, and has two wings on its back. When it eats a human it starts with the head, although some people say it starts with the feet…

You approach the jejunum and the fan-shaped folds of membrane that attach it to the abdominal wall. A web of veins covers its surface. Lymphatic tubes and arterioles hang down like ropes.

‘All university representatives, hurry up, our meeting is about to start!’ Ke Xi yelled, pointing his megaphone at the students camping out in Tiananmen Square. The black scarf he’d wrapped around his sleeve as a sign of mourning made his arm look shorter.

I was dozing on the stone steps leading to the lower terrace of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, but Ke Xi’s shouting woke me before I had a chance to sink into deep sleep. Shu Tong’s face was right next to mine. His eyes were still shut. I turned his wrist around and checked the time on his watch. There was a bitter chill in the air.

I sat up and looked out over the tens of thousands of students and the red-and-white flags and banners surrounding the Monument. Jutting above them was a black banner emblazoned with the words HU YAOBANG, THE STUDENTS OF BEIJING UNIVERSITY MOURN YOUR DEATH! I felt a sudden panic, the fear that grips you when you wake up in a place that feels unsafe. The foreign and Chinese television crews that had filmed us when we’d arrived in the Square the previous night were nowhere to be seen.

The sky slowly brightened. Hu Yaobang’s state funeral was due to start in two hours. The cold of the night, and the smells wafting from the thousands of sleeping bodies, began to dissipate in the morning sun.

A couple of hours previously, Wang Fei and I had succeeded in getting the students crowded in front of the Great Hall of the People on the west side of the Square to stand in neat rows. Wang Fei had marched confidently through the orderly ranks with a megaphone in his hand. At the front of our troops, we’d placed the law students’ three-metre-high wreath of flowers, and a large poster proclaiming the citizens’ constitutional right to protest. By the time we’d finished organising everyone, I was too tired to search for Tian Yi, so went to lie down on the steps.

‘What are we going to do?’ Ke Xi said, shaking Shu Tong awake. ‘The authorities won’t let us attend the state funeral, or even send any representatives.’

‘Don’t ask me! I’ve resigned from the Organising Committee,’ Shu Tong said, opening his eyes and catching sight of Ke Xi’s black armband.

‘The police have promised that as long as we don’t cross their cordon, we won’t come to any harm,’ Ke Xi said. ‘But they won’t let us go in and see the body.’

‘Have you had private discussions with the funeral officials?’ I asked. I was afraid that Ke Xi’s hunger for power would destroy our unity. During the night, we’d held new elections for the Organising Committee and made Han Dan its leader. Ke Xi had then gone off and set up a temporary coordinating group to supervise the rally, but he still felt that, since the Organising Committee had been his idea, he should remain in charge. I’d been worried he would butt in when I was trying to organise the students into lines in front of the Great Hall of the People. Two cadres had walked over and asked me to move the crowd back twenty metres so that the guests attending the funeral could drive to the entrance. I’d talked this over with Zhuzi, and we’d decided to do as they asked. Han Dan walked over holding a cassette player that was blaring out the Internationale and said to the two cadres, ‘We’re here to pay our last respects to Hu Yaobang. All we want is to see his coffin being carried in. After that, we’ll leave the Square.’ The cadres raised their eyebrows and walked away. It appeared that the government had resigned themselves to our presence, but I wasn’t sure their nonchalance would last.

It had taken Zhuzi and me two hours to get the Beijing University students to move twenty metres back. I discovered that it was essential to tell the students where we wanted them to go while they were still standing, because once they’d sat down it was almost impossible to get them to move again.

I’d been given a megaphone with a square-shaped funnel. It was white and made a good noise. It looked great hanging around my neck.