Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

Nearby, we could hear Nuwa’s voice coming over the PA system: ‘Some hunger strikers who passed out are being treated in the emergency care tent. They will only drink plain water. The nurses have tried to give them glucose solution, but as soon as they taste it, they spit it out and refuse to drink any more…’ When she finished reading the statement, she repeated it in English. Her voice sounded beautiful. Mou Sen’s gaze shifted to the loudspeaker she was standing behind.

‘I heard that when the intellectuals came here last night, you grabbed the microphone from them, then shouted for everyone to leave the Square,’ Mou Sen said angrily to Wang Fei. ‘What were you thinking of, trying to steal the limelight like that?’

‘We Beijing University students started this movement,’ Wang Fei growled. ‘We formulated all the demands. If you think you’re so clever, go and start your own movement and see how far you get.’ Wang Fei was convinced that he was the prime instigator of the student movement.

‘We can’t expect a corrupt government like ours to agree to our demands,’ said Sister Gao. ‘But if the leaders were to just come out and meet with us, we’d withdraw from the Square at once.’

‘We’re trapped between irrational politicians and irrational students,’ Shu Tong said.

‘Everyone’s focused on the hunger strike now,’ Old Fu said. ‘We have no choice but to go along with it and lend it our full support.’ He took a couple of liver tablets from his pocket and swallowed them without water.

‘This is supposed to be a democracy movement, not a revolution,’ said Shu Tong. ‘If you take things too far, you’ll be crushed in the end.’

‘Our problem now is that no one person or group is capable of taking control of the Square,’ Old Fu said.

Sister Gao wiped the sweat from her face with a paper handkerchief, then fanned her neck with her straw hat. ‘Ke Xi has fainted again and been rushed to hospital,’ she said. ‘Even if he comes back, he won’t stand much chance of regaining power. Han Dan has been sidelined. Your only option now is to negotiate with Bai Ling and Lin Lu.’

Old Fu shrugged. ‘I’m only the Hunger Strike Headquarters’ logistics officer, so don’t look at me. You go and negotiate with them.’ He leaned down and picked up a briefcase. ‘I want to set up a proper broadcast station, Dai Wei,’ he said, turning to me. ‘The PA system is too primitive. Come and help me buy some equipment. This briefcase is full of cash. We put out four donation boxes on the Square and they were all filled within a few hours.’

I didn’t feel like going shopping for electrical equipment, but I was desperate to find something to eat, so I picked up my bag and followed Old Fu out of the Square.

You are the earth dried by the hot sun, a tree abandoned by its soil.

There is a river between the mountains, but no grass or trees. The cliffs are too steep to climb. A wild animal that looks like a fox but has human hair lives in the valley. It has both male and female genitals, and can reproduce by itself. If you eat its meat, you will be cured of jealousy… This passage is probably from the chapter entitled ‘Great Wilderness: West’. I’d hoped to explore those lands one day, but instead I’ve been forced to wander through the interior landscape of my blood vessels and organs.

My mother must have removed the empty bottle from my drip stand. I can hear her stick the tube into a new bottle of glucose solution. A few seconds later, a stream of antibiotics and vitamins flows through my veins and is absorbed into the hepatic lobules. The colon bacteria left on the needle by my mother’s dirty hands also enters my bloodstream. The red blood cells it kills upon impact are pushed deeper into the hepatic sinus…

By sunset, Old Fu and I, with some help from Big Chan and Little Chan, had set up a broadcast station on the north side of the Monument. We installed the new batteries, amplifiers and microphones, and attached eight loudspeakers to the Monument’s granite obelisk. When we broadcast the tape of the Internationale, everyone turned towards us, and the Monument became the focal point of the Square. Hai Feng brought over some plastic sheeting and constructed a shelter to protect our equipment from the rain.

Ke Xi hobbled over to us, a drip still attached to his arm, and said, ‘I’ve appointed myself temporary commander-in-chief of the Hunger Strike Headquarters. Lin Lu and Bai Ling weren’t elected to their posts. They have no legitimate authority.’

‘You’re all starving to death,’ Old Fu whispered, trying not to disturb the discussion Mao Da was chairing. ‘Where do you find the energy to engage in these power struggles?’

‘The Headquarters is in charge of the movement now,’ Ke Xi said. ‘The Organising Committee and the Beijing Students’ Federation must play subsidiary roles.’ His pale face was covered in sweat. Two nurses were standing behind him, holding his bottle of IV fluid.

I wasn’t in a mood to listen to them argue, so I went to test the new equipment.

A large crowd gathered round our new broadcast station and handed us ice lollies, bread rolls, telegrams, letters of support and pamphlets. In less than an hour, I received ten donations of cash. Some people pressed the notes into my hands then walked away without saying a word.

We taped up an empty cardboard box to make a new donation box. As soon as we put it down on our table, a middle-aged man who’d travelled up from the provinces took 10,000 yuan from his bag and said he’d give it to us if we let him broadcast a few words to the students.

We were dumbstruck. None of us had seen 10,000 yuan in cash before. We immediately put a microphone in his hands, then, since there were no chairs around, placed a sheet of paper over a large brick and invited him to sit down.

He spoke for almost five minutes, with tears streaming down his face, but his Fujian accent was too strong for most people to understand. In the end Old Fu whispered to me, ‘We’d better cut him off. Everyone’s wondering what’s going on.’

I unplugged the microphone and politely asked him to leave.

A middle-school student from Guangdong Province walked up saying he’d come to Beijing to deliver seventy yuan his classmates had raised for us, but had lost his bag, and all the money, on the train. I gave him a hundred yuan and told him to catch the next train home.

Within the space of three hours, we were given a hundred telegrams from around the country. Nuwa, Mao Da and Chen Di almost lost their voices as they took turns to read them out to the Square.

I handed Nuwa a carton of orange juice. She wiped the sweat from her face and sucked the straw until it made a whistling noise.

‘How do you think this will all end?’ I said. ‘Are you prepared for what might happen?’ I’d wanted to ask her how things were going between her and Wang Fei, but felt that we weren’t close enough.

The previous week, Tian Yi and I had gone out for a meal with her and Wang Fei at Kentucky Fried Chicken. She’d put her arm around Wang Fei during the meal, carried away perhaps by the restaurant’s modern and relaxed atmosphere, but over the past few days, I’d detected a growing coldness between them.

She answered cheerfully, ‘I don’t think the government can ignore us for much longer. If we carry on with the hunger strike, and continue to be filmed by the foreign television crews, they’ll start to worry about their image abroad. And besides, they have no real reason not to agree to our demands.’

Although Nuwa was sitting in a dark corner, I could see the dip between her breasts and the thin gold chain around her neck. She looked like one of the girls you see on foreign wall calendars. I suspected that this was why Tian Yi was always so frosty towards her.