Beijing Coma (32 page)

It was Mao Da who woke me up the morning after the aborted march. His face was drawn and pale.

‘That meeting you held last night – was it in this dorm?’ he asked.

‘No, Shu Tong’s.’

‘You reshuffled the Organising Committee, didn’t you? Shu Tong resigned, Old Fu was sacked and Ke Xi was promoted.’

‘Yes. Who told you?’ I sat up and pulled on a T-shirt. I could smell Dong Rong’s smelly trainers. His socks stank as well. Tian Yi always complained about the stench when she visited our dorm. Qiu Fa walked off to the washroom carrying his enamel basin. Xiao Li was still asleep.

Mao Da glanced around the dorm to check no one else was listening, then whispered, ‘You are the only person I will tell this to. Listen, because I’m only going to say it once: the university’s Party branch filmed your meeting last night with an infrared camera. I’m a Party member. They called me over and asked me to identify who you were. Your friend Mou Sen is in deep trouble. They’ve had people following him for days. They suspect him of being a Black Hand – an undercover conspirator working for a secret organisation. They’ve sent the tape to the Ministry of State Security. Let me remind you that the Party considers student demonstrations to be a form of “contradiction among the people”, but views the establishment of independent organisations as a “contradiction between the people and the enemy”, which is a much more serious affair. I strongly advise you to dissolve your committee immediately.’

‘I would never have guessed that you were a spy, Mao Da,’ I said, astounded by this revelation.

‘I’ve chosen to tell you because I know you won’t blow my cover. I don’t want any of you to get into trouble. I didn’t sleep all night. If you dissolve the committee at once, you’ll be fine.’ He folded his quilt, placed it neatly on the end of his bed, picked up his bag and left the room.

I was dumbstruck. My legs were shaking. The face of the executed convict we’d dissected at Southern University flashed through my mind. I remembered the dirty graze above his one remaining eye. He’d been condemned to death for setting up a group called The Young Marxists. In the past, we hadn’t dared form an organisation. This time, we had gone too far.

I lit a cigarette. My throat felt tight. The bicycle that Dong Rong had bought two months before lay propped against the wall. He couldn’t sleep at night unless he brought it into the room. He was worried that if he locked it up outside someone might steal it.

I stuck my head out of the window and looked down. I could smell the mud on the trucks driving into town from the countryside, and the sour scent of the discarded eggshells behind the street stall. Everything looked the same as it had the previous day. The only difference was that there were now two vans I’d never seen before parked outside our block.

Xiao Li woke up. I told him that the police were going to arrest us. He said, ‘They won’t do that. The most they’ll do is monitor us to make sure we’re not meeting with foreign journalists or dissidents.’

I passed him a cigarette.

After a couple of drags I felt a little calmer. I reminded myself that the authorities had reacted leniently to our New Year’s Day demonstration in 1987 and the 1988 protests that followed the murder of the graduate student. And we were less vulnerable this time, because so many more students had got involved.

‘Just make sure you don’t go anywhere alone,’ Xiao Li said, glancing out of the window. ‘They can’t arrest you if you’re in a group.’ I worried for him. His peasant background hadn’t equipped him for a situation like this.

I wanted to warn Mou Sen at once that he was being followed, so I went down to the ground floor and gave him a call.

Fortunately, he was in his dorm. I told him go and stay at his girlfriend Yanyan’s flat and lie low for a few days.

I could tell from his voice that he was scared.

‘Yanyan’s away at a conference. Where else can I go?’ Although Yanyan was fond of Mou Sen, she was very ambitious and her job always came first. She was now an assistant social affairs reporter at the
Workers’ Daily
.

‘Move to our campus, then. You can be our resident writer. We science students are no good at writing petitions and speeches.’ I pictured him rubbing his nose. He always did that when he was nervous.

‘Oh God! I wrote a poster yesterday calling for workers, peasants, intellectuals and private entrepreneurs to support our class boycott. The government could accuse me of counterrevolutionary subversion and send me to the execution ground.’

Both our fathers had been condemned as rightists. When we talked about their lives, it always left us with a sense of powerlessness.

I tried to reassure him. ‘The government won’t do anything until after Hu Yaobang’s state funeral tomorrow. And who knows, the protests might have cooled down by then.’ I saw Yu Jin approach, and quickly put down the phone.

I bought a couple of steamed rolls from the canteen then went to find Shu Tong. He was in the library, reading up on the American constitution.

‘It’s a bit late for that now, isn’t it?’ I said, sitting down and biting into a roll. The library was usually packed, but today half the seats were empty. I lowered my voice. ‘The university’s Party committee filmed our meeting yesterday. The tape’s been sent to the Ministry of State Security. Don’t ask me who told me.’ I didn’t want to betray Mao Da.

‘I don’t have to ask! That bloody informer. He’s such a fraud. As soon as he’s screwed his girlfriend, he shows her to the door then lies down and pretends to read Buddhist scriptures. Who does he think he’s fooling? It’s obvious he’s monitoring our conversations.’ He clearly assumed that the spy was Zhang Jie.

I changed the subject. ‘Wang Fei told me that the Pantheon Society is going to set up a broadcast centre and publish an independent student paper called the
News Herald
.’

‘Yes, we talked about it this morning,’ he said, sticking his chin up. ‘You’re not really afraid, are you? My brother’s an officer in the Beijing Garrison Command. He said there’s no real cause for concern. Anyway, if you worry too much, you’ll never achieve anything.’

‘They’re watching our every move. Your resignation has allowed Ke Xi to take control of the Organising Committee. If he creates trouble and forces the government to clamp down, every member of the committee will end up in prison.’

‘Leaders emerge in times of chaos, and it’s always the radical ones who gain the support of the people. We should encourage Wang Fei to step forward. He’s the most militant science student. We should get him to take over the leadership of the committee, then keep him under our control.’

‘Wang Fei isn’t a good public speaker, and even when he’s following your orders, he’s not very competent. The question now is, should we strengthen the Organising Committee, or take the movement underground?’

‘We can’t go underground. After the graduate was murdered last year, some friends roped me into joining a secret organisation. Although I was trying to persuade them to go public, the university’s security office drew up a file on me and interrogated my mother. Whatever we do, we must do it openly.’ Shu Tong’s mother was a Party official at the Beijing Commodities Bureau.

‘Are you going to Tiananmen Square tonight?’ I asked, calming down a little. ‘The authorities have said they will cordon it off tomorrow for Hu Yaobang’s state funeral. But the students who want to pay their last respects to him are going to attempt to get round the curfew by camping on the Square tonight.’

‘Well,
you’d
better go, or you’ll be out of a job, Mr Security Chief!’

‘About 100,000 students are expected to turn up. All the flags and pennants in the fabric shops have sold out.’

‘As long as you get to the Square before the curfew comes into force, you should be fine,’ he said, tapping the copy of
The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China
that he was holding. ‘There’s a notice outside the Great Hall of the People saying that the 38th Army has been called into the city, but Cao Ming’s father, who’s a top general, says they refused to obey the order. It seems that factional rifts are emerging within the army.’

When I had finished the steamed rolls, I left Shu Tong and went back to the dorm. Soon after, I received a long-distance call from my brother. He said that his fellow students at the Sichuan University of Science and Technology had made three memorial wreaths for Hu Yaobang, but the authorities had confiscated them and burned them in a lane outside his campus. The students were furious, and wanted to come up to Beijing to join our memorial activities.

‘Stay in Sichuan,’ I told him. ‘Mum keeps telling me not to get involved. If you came to Beijing, she’d never let you out of the flat.’ I didn’t want him to join our student movement. He had no experience in politics.

‘The student union members are leading our protests, so I’m sure we won’t get into trouble.’

‘Don’t take them at face value. One of the guys in our dorm is the chancellor of our student union. We all thought he was on our side, but today he confessed to me that he’s been spying on us for the government.’ As soon as I said this, the line went dead. I waited for a minute in case it got reconnected, then handed the phone to the person waiting behind me.

Wang Fei panicked when I told him we were being spied on. He said he’d stay in the dorm from now on. He was terrified of being arrested.

‘You have the heart of a wolf but the balls of a rabbit!’ I laughed. ‘You strode out into the streets yesterday and set fire to a copy of the
People’s Daily,
but now suddenly you’re quaking with fear.’

‘Let’s wait and see what happens after Hu Yaobang’s funeral tomorrow,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘Let’s sing it faster this time, and with more spirit:
The little white house with the pointed roof – that’s my home
 . . .’

My mother is giving a singing lesson. She took early retirement from the National Opera Company after the Spring Festival holiday, and since then has been preparing three students for the Central Academy of Music’s entrance exam. It’s Saturday today, and as usual she’s locked the door to my room to make sure her pupils don’t catch sight of me.

‘Slow down a bit here:
I open my window and gaze into the sky . . .
Now, much more emotion:
The sun shines onto my house, and the first sweet kiss of spring is mine . . .
’

The three students repeat each line after her, so loudly that the whole flat shudders. Even my intravenous-drip stand is shaking.

‘Put more passion into the words when you hit the higher notes. Come on, one more time . . .’

‘. . . 
and the first sweet kiss of spring is mine
!’

One of the three girls has a deep voice that reminds me of A-Mei’s. A-Mei always promised she’d sing to me one day, but she never did.

‘I hear your father is a doctor,’ my mother says.

‘Yes, he works at the Friendship Hospital.’

‘There’s an imported drug I’ve heard about that’s very effective in treating stroke victims. Apparently, you need the consent of a hospital director in order to get hold of it.’

‘Write the name down for me, and I’ll ask my father about it when I get home,’ the girl says. I can tell from her voice that she’s taller than my mother.

As soon as the three students leave, An Qi, who came round yesterday, turns up.

She lives just a few bus stops away from us. Her husband was shot by the army in the Xidan District just west of Tiananmen Square, leaving him with a shattered pelvis. He’s had countless operations, changing hospitals each time to avoid being tracked down by the police. He recently contracted a virus following a blood transfusion, and no hospital will treat him now.

‘Be careful he doesn’t get conjunctivitis,’ An Qi says, observing my mother clean my eyes with alcohol solution. ‘You should wash them with medicated eye lotion, and apply tetracycline ointment every other day. Never use alcohol.’

‘Really?’ my mother says, continuing to wipe the alcohol over my eyes. ‘I’ve always cleaned them this way.’

‘If you carry on doing that, he’ll be blind by the time he opens his eyes. You’d be better off sewing the lids together with a needle and thread. If he wakes from his coma, you can just cut open the stitches.’

‘You’ve picked up a lot of medical knowledge. You sound like a qualified nurse!’

‘If I hadn’t read up on these things, my husband would be dead by now . . . How many drip bottles does he get through a day?’

‘The glucose solution he’s on now has added vitamins, so it’s more expensive than the others. I’ve had to cut the dose down from six bottles a day to four.’

‘My husband’s needle wounds have blistered like that too. They look like lepers, don’t they?’

My mother turns down the radio and joins An Qi on the sofa.

The young woman sounds as though she doesn’t move her lips when she speaks. Who else do I know who speaks like that . . . ?

‘I feel like I’m back in the Cultural Revolution,’ she says. ‘My neighbours stare at me when I leave my flat. When I come here, that old granny downstairs asks me who I’ve come to see, and what about.’

‘Everyone’s suspicious of us. Before I retired, the opera company forced me to write a statement expressing my support of the crackdown. They said that if I didn’t, they’d turn me out of this flat. I had to write it three times. They kept complaining that it didn’t sound sincere enough. It was just like those letters you have to write when you apply to join the Party.’

My predicament has caused my mother to question her political beliefs.

The two women sit on the sofa, talking away until nightfall.

‘What kind of country is it that punishes the victims of a massacre, rather than the people who fired the shots?’ my mother says again.