Beijing Coma (63 page)

‘No, I think you’ve read enough,’ Old Fu said. ‘It’s nearly half past three . . . We should pack up and get out of here.’

‘The Beijing Students’ Federation can take over the management of the Square,’ Bai Ling suggested.

‘We should have a meeting with them first to let them know what we’re doing,’ Mou Sen said.

‘The army won’t come now,’ Pu Wenhua said in his high-pitched voice. ‘It’s far too late.’ He had a pair of what looked like toy binoculars hanging around his neck. He was sitting squashed up next to Wang Fei.

‘All right then, I propose we leave the Square straight away,’ said Bai Ling. ‘Commander-in-chief Han Dan, and acting commander-in-chief Lin Lu can stay and hold the fort. The rest of us should go.’ Bai Ling was in low spirits. The previous night she’d confessed to Tian Yi that she felt ready to quit.

‘We could set up a new base in the Fragrant Hills, and ask messengers to keep us up-to-date with developments,’ Wu Bin said. ‘If the government can’t locate our command centre, they won’t bother sending the army in.’

‘There are still some Federation members up on the Monument. They’ve got a liaison office up there.’ Lin Lu’s mouth didn’t seem to move when he talked.

‘I don’t think we can skulk off without telling anyone,’ Shao Jian said. ‘The students would never forgive us.’

‘Are you going to stay here and wait until the police fling us in jail?’ Old Fu said. He was shaken by a rumour he’d heard that the army was going to butcher its way into the city. An hour before, he’d said he wanted to go and hide in his parents’ flat.

‘The hunger strike is over now,’ Bai Ling said hoarsely. ‘If we want to keep the flame of the movement alive, we must leave the Square and go underground.’

‘The students haven’t left yet, so neither should we,’ Shao Jian protested.

‘I still have 200,000 yuan of donations in here,’ Old Fu said, patting his leather briefcase. ‘I’ve given the rest to the Beijing University Organising Committee. The Federation’s cash is controlled by five treasurers. I’ve had nothing to do with it. I’ll share out what’s left here between us and we can use it as living expenses.’

‘You have no authority to do that,’ Cheng Bing said. ‘That money belongs to the movement.’

‘I heard the Federation sent its cash off to the Politics and Law University,’ Pu Wenhua said.

‘I’ve never handed out any money before, apart for a few small expenditures,’ Old Fu said, frowning. I could tell he hated having to deal with money. The only reason he suggested sharing it out was that he didn’t want to be caught red-handed with a bag full of cash if the army came to arrest him.

‘I’m not a member of the core leadership,’ I said. ‘But in my opinion, all the students should leave the Square now, not just us.’

‘Everyone in this minibus is a member of the leadership,’ Old Fu said anxiously. ‘When the army arrives, they’ll have photographs of us all. They’ll know exactly who to look for.’

‘Let’s hurry up and share out the cash,’ Bai Ling said, desperate to get going. ‘You can write out receipts, Old Fu. Call it a survival grant, or an escape grant. We must leave now before it’s too late.’ She closed her eyes. She looked as though she was about to pass out.

‘You go if you want to, but I’m staying here,’ Cheng Bing said. ‘I’d feel guilty sneaking away like this. So don’t give me any of that money.’

‘Bai Ling has made the right decision,’ Wang Fei said. ‘The army have been ordered to drive the students from the Square and arrest the core leadership. If we escape now, we’ll be able to keep our political struggle alive.’ He put his arm around Bai Ling to stop her falling over.

‘It’s too much!’ Mou Sen said. ‘We can’t creep away without telling anyone. We must make an announcement and explain our actions.’

‘We’re going underground and taking the movement out into the city,’ Wu Bin said. ‘Deng Xiaoping has mobilised a third of China’s regular army forces. More than 300,000 soldiers have encircled Beijing. That’s a larger military force than was sent to attack Vietnam.’ Ever since Wu Bin had been appointed head of the intelligence office, he’d become Bai Ling’s one-man think-tank.

‘Do you hear that?’ Old Fu said. ‘They’ll crush us if we stay here. I’ll distribute the money now. We can call it an emergency grant. Who’s got a torch?’ He pulled the cash out of his briefcase and glanced at his watch, but it was probably too dark for him to see what it said.

‘Look at all that money!’ Shao Jian exclaimed, staring at the wads of cash. Mimi and Chen Di switched off the loudspeakers and came over to take a look.

‘Let’s give everyone a thousand yuan,’ Old Fu said, starting to count the money. ‘That should be enough.’

‘If we’re going underground, we must have a plan,’ Mou Sen grumbled. ‘We can’t leave without agreeing on a strategy.’

‘All we need to do is keep the flame burning,’ Wang Fei said. ‘If we escape arrest today, we can set to work on launching a national campaign for democracy.’

‘So, tell us, Wang Fei,’ I said. ‘Are you staying or leaving?’

‘I think I’ll go into hiding for a while,’ Wang Fei said, glancing at Bai Ling.

I wanted to do the same, and take Tian Yi back to my mother’s flat to recuperate properly, so I said, ‘Let’s all go into hiding, then.’

‘Well, I’m staying here,’ Cheng Bing said.

‘Me too,’ Pu Wenhua squeaked.

‘All right, but the rest of us will leave,’ Bai Ling said, standing up. ‘When it’s time to make the next decision, we can liaise with Lin Lu.’

‘We should disguise ourselves a bit before we leave,’ Wu Bin suggested, narrowing his eyes conspiratorially.

‘I’ll be staying in Beijing,’ I said, taking the wad of cash that Old Fu handed me, ‘so I can check on the situation back at the campus before I go underground.’

By the time Old Fu got to Pu Wenhua, there was only two hundred yuan left, which made Pu Wenhua very cross. Wu Bin reminded him that he wasn’t a member of the standing committee, so he was lucky to get any money at all.

‘We should leave the minibus one by one, and go in separate directions,’ Wang Fei said in a hushed tone.

‘What about Nuwa?’ I asked, peering out of the window. ‘I haven’t seen her for ages.’

‘Neither have I,’ Wang Fei said, looking away. ‘Maybe she’s popped back to the campus.’

‘All right everyone,’ Old Fu said. ‘Remember, this is top secret. None of you must tell anyone what we’re doing. I’ll go first. Goodbye!’ He grabbed his empty briefcase, opened the door and jumped out.

Mimi switched on her torch and said, ‘I don’t know where to go.’

‘Why not come with me?’ Bai Ling said to her.

Wu Bin said he’d stay in a hotel for a couple of days to see how events unfolded, and that once the army had cleared the Square, he’d return to Wuhan.

We stuffed our cash into our bags and began filing out of the minibus.

‘Wang Fei, you – you – deserter!’ Pu Wenhua spluttered, waving his plastic binoculars in the air as Wang Fei and Bai Ling stepped off the minibus.

I followed them out, but as I walked away, something felt wrong. I knew it would have been impossible to get all the students to evacuate the Square, but it didn’t seem right that the leaders were skulking away like this, especially since they’d been urging everyone else to stay.

Tian Yi was asleep in a tent with three other girls. I woke her up, led her outside and asked her to come home with me. I didn’t dare tell her that the leaders had absconded. She said she wouldn’t leave the Square until the army came and dragged her away. I told her the government was going to launch a crackdown, and the soldiers would shoot to kill, and that if she died, she’d only have herself to blame. ‘Why not come home with me and wait to see what happens?’ I pleaded. ‘You can always come back here later if you want.’

‘You go home,’ she said. ‘If the army takes us away, you must return and continue the struggle.’ Then she crawled back under the sheet printed with a double happiness emblem that served as the tent’s entrance curtain.

‘There are too many mosquitoes in here,’ she said. I could tell from her voice that she was lying down again. ‘Can you find me some insect repellent? Or tiger balm would do too.’

I knew it would be impossible to change her mind. I saw a few lights glimmering inside the Great Hall of the People, and wondered whether there were indeed 10,000 soldiers waiting inside, ready to strike. I left the tent and climbed up onto the Monument’s upper terrace. Fan Yuan and Hai Feng were there with hundreds of foreign and Chinese reporters.

I wondered how the army would be able to clear the sleeping students from the Square while the world was watching their every move. Two students stuffed a leaflet in my hand. I read it under the lamplight. It was a copy of a petition signed by over three hundred Beijing intellectuals and academics calling for the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress to impeach Li Peng. It said, ‘In the current situation, only the sacking of Premier Li Peng will be sufficient to assuage the anger of the people . . .’

What a waste of time! I muttered to myself. Do they really think that the delegates of the so-called ‘People’s’ Congress give a damn about the people’s anger? They’re all Party members, for God’s sake.

I decided to stay in the Square. I knew I’d have to get rid of the money, though. I didn’t want to be caught with it. I wandered off to the Science Department’s shelter, hoping to get some sleep.

Xiao Li and Mao Da had put up a sign outside that said
BEIJING UNIVERSITY SCIENCE STUDENTS
and had hung a sheet over the entrance. A few of the bamboo poles holding up the canvas roof had split and been tied together again with chiffon scarves. There was a sheet of plastic on the ground. My quilt was still damp from the previous night’s rain. I didn’t want to lie down on it.

Liu Gang and Dong Rong were at the back of the shelter fast asleep. Yu Jin and Zhang Jie were sitting up drinking beer.

‘You looking for volunteers again, Dai Wei?’ Zhang Jie said, staring at his bottle of beer. ‘I warn you, I’m so drunk I can’t stand upright. When’s the army coming to clear the Square?’ He swallowed another gulp of beer. The shelter was pitch black and stank of dirty trainers.

‘Stop drinking!’ I said. ‘You must sober up. When the soldiers charge in here with electric batons, you’ll have to be fast on your feet.’ There wasn’t enough room for me in the shelter, so I rested my head on a satchel in the corner and lay down with my legs outside the entrance. I thought about the thousand yuan stuffed inside my pocket. If the army found it on me, they’d assume I was a ringleader. I pulled it out, wrapped it inside a sheet of paper that was lying about and slipped it under my back. Then I closed my eyes and started counting. One, two, three, four . . . Just as I’d begun to doze off, I heard Ke Xi’s voice screaming out from the Voice of the Student Movement’s loudspeakers: ‘Fellow students on the Square, don’t panic. This is Ke Xi speaking! Ke Xi! Stay calm. We are in an extremely dangerous situation. I’m therefore asking all of you to vacate the Square immediately and move to the embassy district.’

‘What’s he shouting about now?’ Xiao Li said, waking up. ‘We’re trying to get some sleep here.’

‘He sounds delirious,’ said Mao Da, sitting up.

‘When the army arrives, we’ll just sit here in silence,’ Dong Rong said. ‘Why’s he getting so worked up?’

‘Is the army here?’ a student behind me asked. ‘Quickly, play that army song, “Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points of Attention”. It might stop the soldiers resorting to violence.’

I sat up too, my mind numb with tiredness.

The students sleeping outside began to stir like blades of grass in a wind. They stood up, beat the dust off their clothes and stamped their feet. Flagpoles fell to the ground. I could hear the reassuring sound of girls chatting and laughing.

Everyone inside the shelter was sitting up now, asking anxious questions. A few students went outside to fetch face masks and towels.

‘Why does he want us to move to the embassy district?’ Xiao Li said. ‘Where’s Chen Di?’

‘Let’s go to the Voice of the Student Movement broadcast tent,’ I said, glancing down at my watch, not wanting to divulge that Chen Di had run away. It was already 5 a.m. I quickly slipped the wad of cash back into my pocket and got up.

Xiao Li and I weren’t allowed inside the Voice of the Student Movement broadcast tent. I didn’t recognise any of the student marshals guarding it.

‘Must we really move to the embassy district?’ the students cried. A huge crowd had surrounded the broadcast tent to ask for more information. A student pulled down a parasol from a police watchtower and detached the wooden pole to use as a weapon when the army arrived.

A new voice crackled over the student loudspeakers: ‘Ke Xi has just fainted again. He’s been taken to hospital. Please ignore the order he issued just now. It didn’t have the backing of the student leadership. I am Lin Lu, the acting commander-in-chief.’

Then Han Dan took the microphone and said, ‘This is commander-in-chief Han Dan speaking. No one has decided to leave the Square yet – not the Headquarters, nor the Beijing Students’ Federation, nor the Provincial Students’ Federation. So everyone must stay where they are . . .’

Someone shouted through a megaphone: ‘It’s six o’clock! The army hasn’t come! Fellow students, we have triumphed! The people have triumphed! Quickly, play the national anthem!’ It was Chen Di. He hadn’t run away after all.

His announcement brought a smile to everyone’s faces. A feeling of relief and celebration swept through the Square. I glanced into the distance and saw pale rays of light peeping above the horizon.

My mother is jabbering into her new telephone.

‘I got it installed two weeks ago, but I still jump every time it rings. In the past, only top government leaders had telephones in their homes . . . Americans? I know they’ve all got phones . . . What, they even have them out in the streets? Aren’t they afraid someone might steal them? If only you could come back to China, Tian Yi, we could sit down and have a proper chat. My wooden son here might not think about you, but I do . . . It’s your birthday next week, isn’t it? He wrote the date down in his journal . . . I’m sorry, I know his journal is private, but the doctor told me I should read it out to him. He said it might help him recover some memories . . .’