Beijing Coma (22 page)

I walked over and stood behind her, and stared at her back, her hair and her arms until she sensed my presence and glanced round. She quickly turned away again and, without speaking, walked with me towards the library.

She often retreated into her own world like that, cutting me out completely. I found it unnerving.

We reached a campus restaurant that had a small stall outside selling wonton soup. At night, they’d bring out an electric light. Students who got bored of wandering through the campus often congregated there to chat. Tian Yi walked through the light in front of the stall then vanished into the darkness again.

A moment later, she stopped and leaned against a brick wall. Her eyes were black. Her hair was a mess.

She broke into tears and said, ‘Don’t do it to me again.’

It began to snow. The flakes hovered in the air.

‘Are you afraid of getting pregnant?’ I was three years older than her. I felt protective towards her.

She stayed silent and pushed me away. After we’d made love the night before, we’d clung to each for hours, our legs tightly entwined.

‘Look, the wind is altering the structure of the snow crystals,’ I said, noticing her staring at the flakes on the ground. In the two months that we’d been going out together, I’d found that the only times she didn’t contradict me were when I talked about things she didn’t understand. I knew very little about art. She often criticised me for being unable to discuss Schubert, Picasso or Shakespeare. ‘Is there anything you
do
know?’ she would say, staring at me blankly.

Whenever I sensed she was considering breaking up with me, I’d rush off to the library and leaf through the books she’d mentioned during our conversations. I had, in fact, read one of the books she’d talked about –
The Man Who Laughs
, by Victor Hugo – but had forgotten the name of the author. I also read the blurbs on the backs of Mou Sen’s novels, to help fill the gaps in my knowledge.

‘I don’t want to take things any further,’ she said slowly.

‘You’re worried the university authorities will punish us. They won’t, I promise you. I’m not worried. Everyone on campus is having relationships. It’s not as if we’re renting a private room together.’

‘It’s nothing to do with the university. I just don’t like this situation any more. And my grades are suffering.’

‘I love you, Tian Yi, I want us to stay together,’ I said, clasping her hand. ‘It’s raining now. Let’s go to the library. We can talk about it there.’ Again there was something in the palm of her hand. It felt like a piece of bark or bamboo.

‘I just want to be quiet. I’ve felt so unsettled these last two months. I haven’t been able to finish one book.’ Her voice sounded cold. I saw tears glinting in her eyes.

‘What do psychologists call this emotional state?’ I asked. I wanted to tell her that this is how you feel when you’re in love, but I thought it might annoy her.

‘Why are you so normal?’ she said, looking at me straight in the face. I knew that if she dared look into my eyes, there was a good chance that we’d make up.

‘I could be a brother to you, rather than a boyfriend. Would you prefer that?’

‘You really are too conventional,’ she said, the corner of her mouth curling upwards slightly. She grudgingly allowed me to take her hand, and as we walked on again, she moved a little closer to me.

I once asked Mou Sen what Tian Yi meant when she said I was ‘too conventional’. He said she meant I was too rational, and not dramatic or artistic enough. He said women like men to be witty and passionate. I knew I wasn’t particularly romantic, but I was 1.8 metres tall, honest and reliable – the kind of young man that many women might consider attractive.

On the bulletin board outside the library entrance, someone had stuck a note with a line from a pop song: I’M
STILL STANDING IN THE RAIN, WAITING FOR YOU TO COME
 . . . The lopsided characters of the official notice next to it resembled rows of toppled cabbages. We walked into the warm hall and headed for the reading room.

‘Let’s keep quiet and read our own books,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to see you tomorrow.’

‘Can’t we have lunch together in the canteen?’

‘If you don’t do as I ask, I won’t go to Yunnan with you in January.’

‘All right. But I told Mou Sen and Yanyan that I’d go to a party tomorrow night at Beijing Normal. I thought you might like to come too.’

‘Who’s Yanyan?’

‘A reporter for the
Workers’ Daily
. She was at Southern University with us, but we only really got to know her when we moved up here.’

‘Oh I know, she’s Mou Sen’s girlfriend, isn’t she?’ Tian Yi thought very highly of Mou Sen. She said he was like a walking library.

‘Yes, but she likes to keep that quiet. She’s from the south, so she’s quite old-fashioned about relationships.’

‘Are you implying that I’m too liberated?’ Tian Yi asked, frowning.

I didn’t answer. I was always afraid of saying something that might upset her.

‘All right, I won’t see you tomorrow,’ I agreed reluctantly, then said goodbye and walked off to the science reading room on the third floor.

I was deeply in love with her by then, and felt very attached to her. She’d healed the wounds that my break-up with A-Mei had inflicted on me.

I see myself standing on the sunny mountain top, my mouth wide open, and Tian Yi dancing beside me, her hair floating in the wind. It was the first week of our two-week holiday in January 1989.

I pointed to the dense rainforest, and told her that it was the Land of Black Teeth described in
The Book of Mountains and Seas
.

‘How did people back then make it all the way down here to Yunnan? It took us three days by train to get from Beijing to Kunming, and then another three days on a bus to get here.’ Her face was covered with sweat. She was wearing heavy leather shoes, a pale green shirt and blue dungarees.

As soon as we’d arrived in Xishuangbanna, the tropical tip of southern Yunnan Province, we’d booked ourselves into a hotel and set off straight away into the mountain rainforests.

‘It would have taken them at least three years to ride down here from the ancient capital,’ I said. ‘They would have been lucky to make it alive.’ I looked like an American soldier in my camouflage combat trousers. I was also wearing a Lee denim cap. Tian Yi had forgotten to bring a hat, so she kept trying to take it from me.

All around us were huge trees. We couldn’t see the summit of the mountain we were climbing. We were walking in semi-darkness. I’d never been in a rainforest before. It didn’t look real. I felt as though we were floating through an eerie landscape from the fables.

The narrow path was covered with human footprints and the hoof marks of cattle. Damp grasses growing along the sides arched over, almost meeting in the middle. Our trousers and shoes were soon wet through.

She slowed down. ‘It’s too beautiful,’ she said. ‘Are those lovebirds up there?’ She pointed to a flock of birds that had just taken off from the branches of a tree.

‘No, they’re cuckoos. Look at the long tails.’

‘Do you know why cuckoos have red breasts?’ she said. ‘There was a princess in ancient China who died of a broken heart, and was reincarnated as a cuckoo. She sang a mournful song for days on end until blood dripped from her eyes and stained her white breast red.’

‘Did you know that, after two lovebirds pair up, they stay with each other for the rest of their lives? They never fly out alone.’

‘Look at those huge beans hanging down there!’ She walked over and tried to pull one down.

‘They’re croton beans. Don’t try to eat them, they’re poisonous.’ I lifted her up and she pulled off a curved one that was as large as an ox’s tusk.

‘It would look great hanging up in my dorm. Go on, take a picture!’ She let the bean hang from her neck, and excitedly handed me her camera. ‘Quick, take a photo! The air is so fresh. Ah! That grass smells wonderful.’ She was smiling and laughing.

‘The oxygen levels here must be very high.’

‘I didn’t ask you about oxygen levels, you egghead.’ She was always telling me off for sounding like a textbook.

‘The Bulang tribe live in these mountains,’ I said, knowing this would interest her more. ‘They dye their teeth black. They think it makes them look more beautiful. Perhaps we’ll come across one of their villages today. I saw photographs of them in an exhibition in Guangzhou on the minority cultures of south-west China. In the Bulang tribe, when a boy and girl fall in love, they sit together under a tree and dye each other’s teeth black.’

‘Did you go to that exhibition with your Hong Kong girlfriend?’ Ever since I’d told her of my relationship with A-Mei, she’d often get me to talk about her so she could make some sarcastic comment.

I didn’t want to answer her question because, as it happened, I had been thinking about A-Mei at that very moment. Instead, I took a deep breath and raced further up the slope. Soon, I had a view of the rainforest engulfing the hill in front, and stretching into the far distance. I spotted a path winding off into the mountains and wondered where it led.

I turned round and saw Tian Yi climbing up towards me, puffing and panting.

There was no sun or breeze on this side of the mountain. I noticed small red berries on the bushes at the feet of the dark-green trees. Nearer the ground, there were shrubs with blue, yellow and white flowers. I remembered that A-Mei always liked to have fresh flowers in her room. In the north, no one kept plants in their homes. My mother once said that keeping plants and flowers was petit-bourgeois and a sign of an unhealthy mind. So there were never any flowers in our flat.

Tian Yi staggered towards me, her face flushed. ‘I can’t go any further,’ she moaned. ‘What’s the point of going to the top? We’ll have to walk all the way back down again afterwards.’

Why are girls so feeble? I asked myself, stretching out my hand and pulling her up. ‘This mountain really isn’t that high,’ I said. ‘Let’s keep going for a bit. Perhaps we’ll come across an elephant.’

‘Elephants in a rainforest?’ she said, her eyes sparkling.

‘Yes, there are several herds here, apparently. Look at those giant ferns over there. They’re living fossils. They probably haven’t changed for a hundred million years.’ The ferns loomed over the undergrowth like open parasols. I walked over to one and pinched a curled frond. Although I’d seen this species in the botanical garden of Southern University, they were much smaller than these.

‘I’ve seen photographs of them in a geographical magazine,’ she said proudly. ‘Stand there. Don’t move. I’m taking a picture.’

I led her further up the mountain. Her small hand was wet with perspiration.

On the path ahead, beautiful yellow butterflies were sitting on a cowpat. As we approached, they flew away. Tian Yi tore off a clump of wild grasses that were yellow, green and grey. Each one was exquisite, but none as beautiful as her hand.

She was exhausted. Her breath smelt of the rice flour we’d eaten the day before. She was like A-Mei – they both hated physical exertion.

She was about to lean against a tree trunk and take a rest, but jumped back when she saw the ants crawling up the bark, so she leaned against me instead. She closed her eyes, put her hand on her forehead and said, ‘I suffer from low blood sugar, and I probably have a weak heart as well. Pass me the water bottle.’

I grabbed her wrist and checked her pulse. It didn’t seem too fast. I took off my cap and fanned her face with it.

‘I love climbing mountains,’ I said. ‘When you reach the summit and look down on the peaks below, you get a wonderful sense of achievement.’

Without opening her eyes she answered, ‘Mountain climbing is a form of megalomania. Men think they can conquer a mountain by climbing it. They climb for days, all the way to the top, but when they come down again, they’re still no better than a miserable beetle.’

As she leaned against me, I glanced down at the pale breasts hidden inside her green shirt and said, ‘Women’s lives are controlled by their bodies. They have weaker muscles, so it’s not surprising they don’t like climbing mountains.’

‘You have no right to talk about women’s bodies!’ she snapped, opening her eyes again. ‘Men may have stronger muscles, but that only drives them to chase each other across a sports field all day to work off their energy. It’s so tedious!’

I squatted down and lit a cigarette, and wondered whether Tian Yi’s aversion to group activities was a symptom of mild depression.

When she seemed strong enough to continue, I stubbed out my cigarette and said, ‘This forest is beautiful. It would be a shame if we didn’t make it to the summit.’

‘I need more time to rest. You always walk too fast. I like to stop and look at the flowers and trees.’ She sniffed the wild flowers in her hand. One of them had four dark-blue petals circling a soft ring of yellow stamens.

I sat down next to her, and we leaned back against the tree and gazed at the grasses and branches around us. A few rays of sunlight filtered down through the leaves. Then a breeze stirred the dense foliage. It came from a valley to the north and smelt of warm grass.

‘What have you seen now?’ she asked, looking into the forest and ruffling her hair.

‘There’s a wild boar behind that tree.’

‘I don’t believe you!’ she laughed. ‘You’re trying to frighten me!’

We rose to our feet again and continued up the path hand in hand.

Further on, near the summit, the trees thinned out a little, revealing patches of bare mountain rock. Through the gaps in the branches, we could glimpse blue sky.

I took Tian Yi in my arms and held her tight. We were alone together on this mountain. There was no one else around.