Beijing Coma (103 page)

I looked back again. About three hundred students were still sitting on the south side of the Monument, refusing to move. The soldiers and policemen surrounding them were kicking and clubbing them. I spotted Zhang Jie among the crowd. He stood up and waved a flag but was quickly struck down by a rifle butt.

Xiao Li appeared in front of me. He looked smaller. His eyes were red. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, and the skin underneath was ripped open. He was covered in dirt and blood.

Qiu Fa grabbed his arm and said, ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘They killed Mou Sen,’ he replied blankly. ‘I was right next to him when it happened. We were in the north-east corner . . .’

‘Did you see whether there were any students left in the underpass?’ I was relieved I hadn’t hidden Tian Yi down there.

‘We walked towards the troops shouting “The People’s Army love the people!” They opened fire, and Mou Sen was struck by two bullets . . . Hai Feng and I jumped onto a bus with some other students and drove it down Changan Avenue to block the troops. But as the bus swivelled round, the soldiers showered us with bullets. The guy who was driving got hit. The bus was a wreck. Hai Feng and I jumped off. A soldier grabbed Hai Feng by the hair and flung him to the ground. I went down on my knees and held up my hands. The troops marched straight past me.’ His eyes glazed over.

‘One day we’ll get our revenge for this. I fucking swear it!’ Qiu Fa was usually immaculately groomed, but now the only clean part of him was his left ear. Both his shoes had been dragged off in the rushed evacuation. His feet were bleeding.

Xiao Li squatted down on the ground and stared blankly at the road ahead.

Wang Fei pressed the buttons of his walkie-talkie even though he knew the batteries were dead.

Hou Dejian staggered towards us, a student supporting him on either side. He looked shell-shocked. We stood scattered like detritus across the wide empty road on the south of the Square.

‘Down with Fascism! Down with Li Peng!’ someone shouted through a megaphone.

A Beijing resident walked up with a large basket of trainers and handed them out to students who’d lost their shoes. I checked the sizes. They were all too small for me. I went back into the bushes that some of the students had escaped through, picked up a plimsoll and a flip-flop that were nearer my size, and made do with those.

Bai Ling’s eyes were so swollen, they were now just two narrow slits. Wang Fei walked beside her, gripping her shoulders.

We began to rearrange ourselves into university groups. Flags and banners were brought out again and held aloft. Many of the girls were sobbing. The boys took their hands and led them on. Mimi was crying uncontrollably. Yu Jin heaved her onto his back and carried her. Old Fu shouted into his megaphone, ‘We will be back. Tiananmen Square belongs to the people!’

We walked west past Qianmen Gate, skirting the southern edge of the Square. Wu Bin’s eyes were blood red. He tied a bullet belt he’d stolen from a soldier to the end of a wooden stick and marched in the middle of our procession, waving it above his head. Big Chan was limping in front of me. His feet were badly cut too. Little Chan was holding his guitar for him, as the shoulder strap had broken. Mimi went over to walk beside Bai Ling. Her pale-blue dress was filthy.

‘They make us buy state bonds, and then spend the funds on ammunition to kill us with!’ Big Chan shouted. It looked as though he’d had to crawl through the bushes during the evacuation. His short-sleeved shirt had large green stains. The words
HEIR OF THE DRAGON
, which Hou Dejian had calligraphed across the back, were smeared with soil.

‘Fucking bastards!’ Little Chan shouted, lifting Big Chan’s guitar into the air. ‘I’ll go to the mountains of Yunnan and return with an army of peasants who will rid us of these bloody tyrants.’

‘Be careful,’ Dong Rong said, rushing up to us. ‘The army fired a round of shots at the public toilets back there a moment ago, after they saw someone take a flash photograph from the roof.’ He swept his hair back. He’d lost his sunglasses.

‘Butchers! Butchers!’ everyone shouted in unison as an army truck approached.

We walked slowly, in scattered ranks, occupying only one side of the road. Soon, we came to a stop to inspect a pool of blood on the ground. A pair of trainers lay in the sticky fluid that was bisected by a thick red wheel mark. Local residents told us that tanks had driven down this road shooting randomly into the crowd and that a young man was hit. His blood was spurting everywhere, but the army wouldn’t let anyone go to his rescue. If his wife hadn’t got on her knees and begged them to let her go to him, he would have died there on the street . . .

The floodlight shining outside makes the night as bright as day. The labourers are trying to demolish the balcony of the flat next door. There’s a deafening noise of drilling and hammering. The whole building shakes, then seconds later, I hear the balcony crash to the ground. The steel bars that run through to our balcony are bent so badly that the metal window frames twist, shattering the glass panes. Clouds of dust shoot into my room. ‘That’s my balcony!’ my mother yells. ‘You’ve no right to touch it!’ She coughs into her sleeve, grabs a torch and opens the front door. When she steps outside, the labourers shout, ‘Get back in! The roof’s about to come down. Get back into your flat now!’

‘How dare you take that roof down! My son is still lying in bed . . .’

‘We’re leaving the section of roof that covers your flat,’ the head labourer says. ‘Now go back inside. It’s not safe to stand there. Look, the landing’s been removed . . .’

Now my mother won’t be able to fetch any more of the flattened boxes she hangs outside the front door and uses to fuel the stove.

They start drilling into the water and sewer pipes. The noise is unbearable. The building judders so much that my body is tossed up and down. The iron bed slowly slides across the floor. I feel my eardrums are about to explode . . . Ten years ago, I promised my mother I’d take her to America and fulfil my father’s wish to be buried in free soil. She should be spending her days in the sunlight, chatting with her retired or laid-off friends, performing fan dances with her neighbours in the park . . . When the sun shines, even the dust is transparent. I want ultraviolet waves to fall on my face, on the palms and backs of my hands, on my clothes, my hair, my shoes. I don’t care if I’m inside a cage or outside, as long as the sunlight can reach me. When the sun comes out, there will be a warm breeze. A few leaves will fall from the trees. It will be the beginning of a new day . . .

‘Do you dare violate the rights of a Chinese citizen when the national flag is flying?’ I imagine she’s brought out the national flag I took on a march ten years ago and is waving it at them. She must have put it on a pole some time ago, waiting for this moment to arrive.

‘Put that flag down and get back inside! You’re illegally occupying state property. And you have no right to fly the national flag . . .’

‘The people will be victorious!’ my mother yells. ‘Down with Fascism!’

As dawn approached, the air filled with a smell of scorched tyres and khaki uniforms.

A huge convoy of army trucks drove past, packed with soldiers. A crowd of about thirty men in white underwear passed us on the opposite side of the street and gave us the victory sign. Tang Guoxian said they were armed police who had thrown away their uniforms and refused to follow government orders.

Big Chan and Little Chan attached our university banner to some twigs and held it aloft, which made our group seem a little less bedraggled. But I was so exhausted by now I could hardly walk, let alone find the energy to cry out slogans. One restaurant we passed had already hung up a banner that said
RESOLUTELY PROTECT THE GREAT LEADERS OF THE PARTY’S CENTRAL COMMITTEE
. When Wu Bin saw it, he snatched his cigarette lighter from Tang Guoxian’s pocket, rushed over and set it alight.

About two thousand of us had left the Square, but our crowd seemed to dwindle the further we went, like a stream of water flowing into dry land. Yu Jin was carrying Mimi’s backpack. Mimi and Bai Ling were walking hand in hand. Xiao Li was traipsing barefoot behind Chen Di. The flags we’d brought with us from the Square were tattered and torn.

Heading north, we reached the Liubukou intersection. We were back on Changan Avenue again, having looped round from the west. We stood still and stared at the red walls of Zhongnanhai, knowing that behind them, the leaders who’d ordered this massacre were relaxing in their luxurious villas. Thousands of soldiers stood triumphantly outside the walls, rifles at the ready. A long line of tanks and armoured carriers had formed a solid blockade, screening off the view to the Square. Behind them, a green sun hovered at the horizon.

Wang Fei switched on his black megaphone and shouted, ‘The people will be victorious! Down with Fascism!’

Tang Guoxian waved our university flag in the air, and everyone shouted Wang Fei’s slogans, repeating them faster and faster. But as soon as the girls began shouting, they burst into tears.

Bai Ling borrowed Wang Fei’s megaphone and cried, ‘Don’t look at the soldiers. They’re trying to intimidate us. Ignore them.’ Her voice was hoarse. She was straining so hard to produce a noise, the tendons on her neck were bulging.

One of the tanks suddenly left the blockade, roared towards us and shot a canister of tear gas which exploded with a great bang in the middle of our crowd. A cloud of yellow smoke engulfed us. My throat burned and my eyes stung. I felt dizzy and couldn’t stand straight. Mimi fainted. As I tried to drag her over to the side of the road, I stumbled and fell.

While we were still trying to crawl our way out of the acrid smoke, I heard another tank roar towards us. It paused for a moment in the middle of the road, then rumbled forward again and circled us. As it swerved round, its large central gun swung over my head and knocked down a few students standing beside me. I got up and ran onto the pavement. An armoured personnel carrier drove forward too, and discharged a round of bullets. Everyone searched for cover. I heard Wang Fei scream. I looked back, but the yellow smoke was still too thick to see anything clearly. I waited. I knew the tank must have driven over some people. As the smoke cleared, a scene appeared before me that singed the retinas of my eyes. On the strip of road which the tank had just rolled over, between a few crushed bicycles, lay a mass of silent, flattened bodies. I could see Bai Ling’s yellow and white striped T-shirt and red banner drenched in blood. Her face was completely flat. A mess of black hair obscured her elongated mouth. An eyeball was floating in the pool of blood beside her. Wang Fei’s flattened black megaphone lay on her chest, next to a coil of steaming intestine. Her right arm and hand were intact. Slowly two of the fingers clenched, testifying that a few moments before, she’d been alive.

Wang Fei was lying next to her. He propped himself up on his elbow, tugged the strap he was holding and dragged his flattened megaphone away from Bai Ling’s chest. The bones of his legs were splayed open like flattened sticks of bamboo. His blood-soaked trousers and lumps of his crushed leg were stuck to parts of Bai Ling. I glanced at the stationary tank and saw pieces of Wang Fei’s trousers and leg caught in its metal tracks.

Tang Guoxian and I rushed to Wang Fei, lifted him up and shouted, ‘Someone get some help!’

As a few local residents ran over, the tank drove away, taking Wang Fei’s flesh with it and leaving two trails of blood on the road.

Tang Guoxian took off his shirt and tore it in two, then pulled down Wang Fei’s tattered jeans and tied the strips of shirt tightly around the bleeding thighs. Dong Rong flung off his jacket and draped it over Wang Fei’s chest. Wang Fei had lost consciousness by now. We dragged him onto the pavement. His trembling mouth stiffened. A red light flashed from the walkie-talkie he was still gripping. A voice cried out through the speaker, ‘Down with Fascism! Long live . . .’

Then I spotted Chen Di. He was clutching the metal railings along the side of the road, his left foot crushed to a pulp. The questions marks on his T-shirt seemed to be screaming in anguish. Next to him, Qiu Fa was lying motionless in a pool of blood. When Yu Jin and Old Fu pulled him up, they discovered he’d been hit by one of the bullets discharged by the armoured personnel carrier. Blood was pouring from a wound in his back.

Students hugged each other and wept. Mimi knelt on the road and howled with grief. Old Fu pulled off his red headband and used it to wipe his tears.

Big Chan’s body had been pulverised. It was now little more than a bloody tank-track mark. A few white teeth lay on the ground where his head had been. When Little Chan caught sight of the body, he dropped the guitar he was holding and ran over. As he drew near, he slipped in a puddle of crushed flesh, and fell to the ground. Blood splattered onto his face. He picked up Big Chan’s left hand, which was still intact, pulled off the cotton glove and stared at the digital watch attached to the wrist.

Tang Guoxian yelled, ‘Someone help me lift Wang Fei!’ I realised suddenly that we might be able to save Wang Fei. I helped Tang Guoxian lift him onto a wooden handcart, then I grabbed the handles and we ran as fast as we could.

‘Where’s the nearest hospital?’ we shouted as we ran. Someone yelled back, ‘Go to Fuxing Hospital. Lots of the injured have been taken there already.’

We kept running. I couldn’t make out what the bright or dark objects were that flashed before me. My mind was numb. I felt as though I was wading through knee-deep water.

When we reached the hospital entrance, I walked to the front of the cart to pull Wang Fei onto my back, but there was so much blood on the ground, I slipped and fell.

Tang Guoxian and Wu Bin dragged Wang Fei into the entrance hall and screamed for help.