Beijing Coma (29 page)

All I wanted to do was find a street stall and have a bowl of wonton soup and a meat pie. So I said, ‘I’m starving. Go on your own, and I’ll join you once I’ve had something to eat.’

‘Why are you so morose tonight?’ she asked coldly, then turned round and walked away.

Her sudden change amazed me. After just one day in the Square, she had become a different person. Two days before, she’d told me to be careful what I said in public, because two-thirds of the students were government informers. Now she was fearless and couldn’t care less who overheard our conversations.

After my meal, I went to keep her company. We didn’t return to her dorm block until two in the morning. The caretaker had gone home by then, so it was safe for her to smuggle me inside. Someone had removed the bulb from the overhead light in her dorm, which was a sign that one or more of the other girls had brought their boyfriends back as well. Tian Yi and I had to grope our way to her bunk bed in the dark.

‘Last week, in the early hours of 2 August, Iraqi soldiers invaded the Gulf state of Kuwait . . .’

‘Is this door meant to be open, Auntie?’

‘Tian Yi! How good to see you! Come in, come in! Leave the door open. It’s too hot in here. How did you manage to get time off?’

‘I’ve just finished my exams. We break up in a couple of days. It wasn’t easy getting permission to leave the campus. It’s guarded like a prison now.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard. Hey, your skin’s much darker, and your hair looks thinner too. When I last saw you, you had your hair in two thick bunches.’

Is that really Tian Yi’s voice? I can’t believe it. She’s come: the girl I think about every day. She’s alive, while I’m lying here covered in flies, as motionless as a corpse.

Memories of her face, her smell, even her love letters that I kept in a biscuit tin, come flooding back to me. My brain releases into my bloodstream the mixture of phenylethylamine and seratonin that is known as love.

She’s in the sitting room. My mother has just finished massaging my feet and thighs.

‘How’s Dai Wei?’

‘He’s skin and bone now. I’m still giving him medication. As long as he doesn’t suffer any more fevers or convulsions, his condition won’t get worse. Every few hours I have to move his legs and feet about to stop his joints seizing up. He’s in a very weak state, but somehow he just refuses to die.’

‘I’ve brought some strawberries. Here, you eat them. They’re fresh. I’ll wash them for you.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll wash them. You go in and take a look at him.’

She walks in to my room. As she approaches, I smell the scent of sweat between her toes that used to excite me so much. I can hear leather rubbing against leather. It’s her sandals.

She sighs and says, ‘Dai Wei. I’m here again . . . Auntie, I’m going to put on the electric fan for him.’ She presses a switch and the fan starts turning.

She isn’t sitting on the bed, so I can’t hear the sound of her breathing. I long for her to stretch out her hand and touch my face. I’m naked. Every centimetre of my skin is waiting for her touch.

She goes to open the curtains. She probably wants to get rid of the flies. I hope she’ll take away the radio that’s lying next to my head.

‘Are these his medical records? From the look of this electrogram, it seems that his brain is still active.’

‘Can you understand those notes?’ My mother is breathing very heavily.

‘No, they’re full of medical jargon. This first paragraph says that he was admitted to hospital on 4 June 1989, with a bullet injury to the brain, and was suffering from numbness and paralysis. On 6 June 1989 the bullet was removed from his head under general anaesthetic.’

‘Don’t go on. Even if I understood what the notes meant, it wouldn’t change anything. Tell me, how are things with you?’

‘The police and the university are still investigating my case. The self-criticism I wrote hasn’t been assessed yet.’

‘My advice is to just do as you’re told. The important thing is that you graduate. You don’t want to end up like me, pestered every day by the police then staring at my son’s face all evening. It’s a living hell.’

‘You must be patient. He might wake up one day.’

‘Because of his political background, the hospitals are forbidden to treat him, so I have to pay private doctors to treat him on the sly. At first, the neighbours were sympathetic. They came round and told me not to worry, and said that the government would soon reverse its official verdict on the Tiananmen protests. But as soon as the police began to target me, they stopped coming. When I pass neighbours on the street nowadays, they look away in terror, as though they’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Chen Di told me that the police visit you a lot.’

‘They come two or three times a week. They tell me not to speak to journalists or leave the flat. They demand the names of everyone who comes to see me. But you don’t want to hear all this! Tell me, have you applied to go abroad yet?’

‘There’s no point in applying. They’d never let me go. Dai Wei’s old dorm mate, Xiao Li, committed suicide the other day. He jumped off the top of the dorm block. The university was forcing him to write a self-criticism. One of the crimes he was accused of was singing the national anthem in public. They said he endangered public security. The Chinese people aren’t even allowed to sing the national anthem any more!’

‘Yes, I remember him. He was that boy in Dai Wei’s dorm who came from a peasant family. Perhaps he’s better off dead than living like a convict. The leaders of the opera company wanted me to write a statement saying I supported the government crackdown. It made me so angry. I’ve stopped reading the newspapers. I’ve lost all interest in politics. I don’t even want to hear about this guy Jiang Zemin who’s taken over as General Secretary.’

So Xiao Li killed himself. I can’t take it in. My head throbs. Who is left from my dorm now? I seem to remember Mao Da visiting a few months ago, saying that Wang Fei has been discharged from hospital and has returned to his parents’ home. So at least Wang Fei is alive. But perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me, and Mao Da never visited. Tian Yi’s voice sounds very real, though. It can’t just be my imagination.

The radio is too close to my ear. The female presenter whines: ‘Today’s newspapers are crammed with spurious advertisements that ask: Do you want to gain a place at university? Travel abroad? Grow taller? Have whiter skin? Get your name into the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
? If you do, please send your money to . . .’

Through the noise, I strain to catch Tian Yi’s words, and try to imagine what she’s wearing. ‘Beijing University has become like a military camp,’ I hear her say, ‘or a Communist Party Academy . . .’

‘Dai Wei’s great-uncle died a few weeks ago. His son Kenneth sent us the money that was left for us in the will. At first the police wouldn’t let me collect it, but they relented in the end. Kenneth asked whether you still want to go and do a Master’s in America. Will you write him a letter in English?’

‘Yes, of course. But if he sends a reply to my home or university address, it probably won’t reach me.’

‘I’ll get on with the supper. You just sit here . . .’

‘No, don’t worry, Auntie. I’m going to eat with my parents tonight.’

‘You’ve come all the way here, so stay a little longer, please. It’s nice for me to have someone to talk to . . . No one speaks to me any more. Dai Wei had a seizure a few months ago, and I knew I’d have to take him back to hospital. I called out for help, but my neighbours bolted their doors. Those Marxist-Leninists! They’re terrified of stepping out of line . . .’

‘Their devotion to the Party is an obsessional neurosis. No one living in a dictatorship has a healthy state of mind . . . You go into the kitchen. I’ll read him a passage from
The Book of Mountains and Seas
. It’s his favourite book.’

‘Oh dear, I haven’t seen that book for a long time. I think his brother might have taken it.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll recite him something from memory.’ Tian Yi wants my mother to go away and leave her in peace for a while.

‘Dai Wei, can you hear me? You’re as skinny as that strange creature in
The Book of Mountains and Seas
that has the face of a man and the body of a monkey. But unlike you, that creature could speak, and change shape.’ She turns down the radio and continues, ‘Do you remember how you dreamed of going on a great journey, exploring all the mountains and rivers described in the book? You can’t go anywhere now, so I’ll just recite you a passage and you can travel there in your mind. Hmm. Do you want to head north, south, east or west? I think I’ll take you north . . . If you walk on for another 110 li, you reach Spring Border Mountain, where wild onions, peaches and pears grow. The River Stick springs from its foothills and empties into the Yellow River below. A wild beast with tattoos lives on the mountain. It often roars with laughter, but as soon as it sees a human approach it pretends to be asleep . . . Do you remember what that beast is called?’

In my mind, I answer: it’s wild sunflowers and chives that grow on the mountain, not onions and pears. And the River Stick flows into the Col Marshes, not into the Yellow River. But I can’t remember what that creature is called.

‘You know the jingwei bird I like so much? Do you remember which mountain it lives on?’

Mount Fajiu. The jingwei is the reincarnation of Nuwa, Emperor Yandi’s daughter, who drowned in the East Sea. Every day, to punish the sea that drowned her, she picks up twigs and stones from Mount Fajiu, then drops them into the East Sea, vainly hoping to fill it up.

‘Do you remember the manman bird? It has only one wing and one eye, and has to pair with a mate if it wants to fly. I’m like a manman bird now that has lost its mate. How will I ever fly again?’ She falls silent.

I long for her to touch my hand, then I remember the cadaver that I am.

‘I wish you were around to look after me. At university, it feels like we’re guarded by wolves.’

I miss you, Tian Yi. As that phrase repeats through my mind, I begin to feel myself returning to reality.

‘If I hadn’t written a self-criticism, I’d have been kicked out of university. We’ve been forced to act like slaves again.’

We joined the student movement to break free from our prisons, but we’ve all had to return to them now.

‘The university’s police officers will interrogate me when they discover I’ve visited you. I didn’t feel like talking to your mother just now. I didn’t want to be reminded of what happened. I study psychology but it’s I who need a psychiatrist. What’s the point of life without freedom?’

I wish I could hug you, Tian Yi. I’m inhaling your breath. Until this moment, I wasn’t afraid of dying. But now I know that you’re here and will be leaving any moment, the thought of death terrifies me.

‘Shall I put another pillow under his head, Auntie?’ Tian Yi composes herself as she hears my mother approach. I imagine there are tears in her eyes.

‘No, don’t bother. This room smells horrible, doesn’t it? Sit on this chair. It’s where I sit when I massage his hands and feet. Look how clenched they are. If I didn’t massage them, they’d be as stiff as dried mushrooms.’

Tian Yi stretches out her hand and touches my foot. She squeezes it, then tries to swivel it around at the ankle. Although she can’t turn it very far, the touch of her skin gives me so much joy that I could faint . . . We pulled off our trousers and I lay on top of your soft body. I placed the washbasin over our heads to muffle the noise of our breathing, then I switched on the cassette player. It was the ‘Nine Hundred English Sentences’ tape. A clipped voice droned:
Alan, please take this gentleman to the nearest bus station
 . . . Not so loud, you gasped into my ear. Through the washbasin, it sounded as though the whole dorm room was shaking. There was sweat on your neck. You trembled, then flinched suddenly like a rabbit touched by an electric wire.
Where do you want to go? To the Japanese garden
 . . . Switch it off, I tried to say, but before the words came out you pushed your tongue into my mouth . . .
No, I am not Chinese, I am American
 . . .

Tian Yi helps my mother remove the drip from my arm, squeezes my hand softly then rests it on the edge of the bed. I imagine a rubber band or paper clip hidden in the folded palm of her other hand.

She gets up and leaves. She stayed for less than two hours. Perhaps the smell of the room drove her away. Or my mother’s constant prattle, or the supper she prepared.

I picture my head as it must be: sunk deep in the soft pillow, and beside it a herbal cushion, some fallen hair and my mother’s spectacle case.

I take a deep breath. Tian Yi left no scent in the air.

Irritating sparks of light flash across my closed eyelids. The lamp on the wooden chest at the end of the bed is probably shining onto the glass syringes. I know this room so intimately that when I breathe in I can see everything laid out before me.

My mother switches the light off, and again I become one with the darkness.

It was drizzling outside my dorm window. I could tell there had just been a heavy downpour. The lawns were green and wet. In the distance, I could see girls standing in the grass by the lake. They were blots of red and black in a sea of green, with the pale grey sky behind.

Everyone was moving quietly through the damp air. Ke Xi looked conspicuous, waving his hands about as he delivered his speech on the lawn.