Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘How did someone like him get invited to the funeral?’ Bai Ling said. ‘He’s a very lowly official.’ Her face was flushed, and her short bob was in a mess.

‘Even the vice presidents of the universities don’t get invited into the Great Hall!’ Yu Jin shouted. ‘He must be a secret agent. No wonder he tried to hold us back when we set off from the campus gates the other day.’ Yu Jin was wearing a sports shirt with a small embroidered logo of the Olympic rings. The white collar was squashed to one side.

At last Wang Fei, Mou Sen and Hai Feng rose from their knees. Then, still holding the petition above their heads, they came down the steps, followed by Han Dan and Ke Xi.

Liu Gang and the other members of the Organising Committee rushed over to them. Everyone burst into tears. Ke Xi sobbed, ‘I didn’t kneel, I didn’t kneel!’

Zhuzi was so enraged with them he began hitting himself on the head with his megaphone. He was taller than everyone else, so no one could stop him. I handed my megaphone to Chen Di, then jumped on top of Zhuzi and grabbed hold of his hands.

‘How could you kneel like that?’ he howled, blood streaming down his head. ‘You’re a disgrace to the Chinese race.’

‘They kneeled for forty minutes, and not one member of the National People’s Congress had the courtesy to come out and speak to them!’ Chen Di shouted through his megaphone.

‘A hundred thousand students have gathered here to mourn the death of a leader, and the government has treated them worse than dogs!’ Xiao Li said, tears streaming down his face.

Throngs of distressed students cried out as they squeezed past one another. No one seemed to know where they were going.

Although Shu Tong and Old Fu had resigned from the Organising Committee, they went straight to Liu Gang and Shao Jian and suggested they lead the students back to the campus before the situation in the Square got out of control. They could then inform the Beijing residents of the day’s events and start organising a class boycott.

Dong Rong tore off the sleeve of his white shirt and wrapped it around Zhuzi’s wounded head. Han Dan announced through his megaphone that the Organising Committee had decided that, in order to prevent any untoward occurrences, the Beijing University students should return to their campus.

The students began moving towards the south-west corner of the Square. They were in a volatile mood, and kept cursing, ‘So much for the bloody “People’s Government”!’

‘Phone every university in the country and tell them to organise an immediate class boycott!’ Chen Di cried in his clear, melodious voice.

‘Let’s hold another big rally on 4 May!’ Wang Fei bellowed, breaking out into a sweat. ‘We will march through the streets of Beijing, calling for democracy and change, just as Chinese students did seventy years ago in the May Fourth Movement. We will protest against this corrupt government just as they protested against the corrupt warlords.’

‘We can’t just let it end like this!’ said Mao Da, who was walking beside him with a look of despair in his eyes.

‘So you had the gall to turn up, did you?’ I said, wanting to punch the traitor in the face.

‘If we stage a class boycott, we won’t have to do those exams next week,’ Yu Jin said, waving his hands jubilantly.

Our bedraggled troops left the Square and set off for the two-hour trek back to the campus.

‘Did we do anything wrong?’ Bai Ling shouted from the back.

‘No!’ the students roared.

‘Did we have ulterior motives?’

‘No!’

‘We will lay down our lives 10,000 times for the sake of the Chinese people! When the emperor loses the hearts of the people, he will lose the empire!’

Some of the girls sobbed as they repeated the slogans.

Beijing residents standing on the pavements shouted out to us: ‘We support the students! The government can cut our bonuses, if they want to! We will speak our minds!’

Another man shouted, ‘Let the students be an example to us!’ then lowered his head in embarrassment.

A teacher walked up to us and said, ‘You’re amazing! We would never have had the courage to do what you’re doing now. This country is politically and morally corrupt, and inflation is out of control. The price of meat has shot up from eight mao to five yuan. I can’t afford to buy myself clothes!’ The jacket he was wearing was scruffy and torn.

We marched on for more than an hour, shouting slogans as we went. When I could go no further, I sat down to rest on the pavement with Xiao Li and Yu Jin. It was then that I caught sight of Tian Yi. She was munching an apple, her hair falling over her face. I went over, grabbed the apple from her and took a bite.

‘That’s so rude!’ she said. ‘And anyway, my gums are bleeding.’ I looked down and saw traces of blood on the apple’s white flesh.

‘Where were you?’ I asked her. ‘We agreed we’d meet by the flagpole at sunrise.’

‘I was at the back, with the psychology students.’

‘I saw the Psychology Department’s flag, but I didn’t see you.’

‘I was busy,’ she said, tapping the camera hanging around her neck. ‘Do I have to get your permission before I do anything?’

She liked to take photographs then stick the prints up on her wall. She once cut out a picture of herself and pasted it to the bottom of a photograph of the Statue of Liberty. She kept the photo we’d taken of each other in the rainforest of Yunnan in her private album. I never got a copy.

‘Let’s go to a restaurant,’ I said to her, staring at the long road ahead. ‘I can’t walk any further. I haven’t eaten for twenty-four hours.’

‘The university sent out some vans to take us back to the campus, why didn’t you hop on one?’ she asked, waiting for me to say: how could I go back, when I hadn’t found you?

‘I’m not an invalid,’ I said. ‘I should be able to make it back on my own two feet.’ The few bites of apple I’d eaten had taken the edge off my hunger.

‘All right, let’s go for a meal. It’s not as if you’re needed here any more.’

The purple blossom of the parasol trees lining the road looked like a band of cloud reaching into the sky.

‘There’s a restaurant near here that serves Korean cold noodles,’ I said, taking her hand and glancing down into the dip between her breasts.

‘What are you looking at?’ she said, the skin below her collarbone turning red. ‘You won’t find your Book of Mountains and Seas down there, you know!’

The strong light piercing your eyelids becomes a field of sunflowers. One of the flowers is your father’s eye.

It’s another sweltering summer. My skin has broken out in a heat rash. My mother rolls me over onto my stomach and sprinkles prickly-heat powder over my back.

She mutters that the skin over my shoulder blades is rotting. But I can’t feel a thing.

‘Your friend Chen Di was only detained for three months. His foot was crushed in the crackdown. I suppose the authorities thought that was punishment enough. He’s opened a bookshop outside the university’s rear gates.’ My mother has become used to speaking aloud to me as I lie here as listless as a hibernating fish. ‘He said he’ll come and visit you when he gets a chance. He’s made a lot of money…’

I don’t want my friends to see my rotting bag of bones. I don’t want Tian Yi to come again either.

‘The herbal doctor said that you’re not ill. You’re like a candle that’s been blown out. All we need to do is light you up again. He’s given you some herbs. I’ll have to find a way to get them into your stomach.’

There’s no point pouring herbal tinctures down my throat. They won’t do any good. A switch has been turned off in my brain. You must press it down again if you want the light to return.