Beijing Coma (71 page)

‘By the time I was your age, I’d toured the Soviet Union and sung the lead role in
Carmen
. If your father hadn’t been labelled a rightist, I would have become a famous soloist . . .’ My mother turns to another page of the magazine. ‘Look, there she is again. Singing to foreign dignitaries. I don’t know how she got to be such a big star. She never applied herself to her art when she was at the opera company. Too busy flirting with the baritones . . .’ She flicks to the next page and sighs, ‘Huh, if only I hadn’t married your father . . .’

Rubbing off scraps of dried food stuck to her trousers, she continues, ‘I was one of the prettiest girls in the opera company. When your father joined the orchestra, he used to knock on my door every day and give me an apple. They were very expensive back then. But I didn’t allow him into my room. Then, a few months later, our opera company travelled to the countryside. The village was very poor. We stayed in an army barracks and were only given half a bowl of rice for supper. When we returned to the barracks after the performance, everyone was starving. Your father sneaked off to the kitchen and stole a bread roll for me. The police arrested him and made him write a self-criticism. If he hadn’t stolen that roll, I might never have married him . . .’ When my mother rambles on like this, she can talk herself to sleep.

Unfamiliar towns often smell strange and disconcerting. But new environments can stimulate the brain. Fish that swim to new waters every day are more alert and agile than those that remain in the same pond all their lives. Since the director gave me the qigong treatment on my second day at this hospital, I have become aware of the many unusual smells of this town. When the evening wind blows into the room, I feel them stimulating my nerve cells.

‘Huh, I’m wasting my time talking to you. I might as well be playing the lute to a cow . . . If I don’t get these medical fees reimbursed, you really will have to die. I can’t afford to keep you alive any longer . . .’

My mother’s words enter the ampullae of my inner ear. The body is a room with a locked door and an open window. Although you can peep in through the window, you can never enter the room or control what’s going on inside. Your organs behave as they wish. They can knock you down at any moment and leave you paralysed for the rest of your life.

‘Look at the prices they’re charging! Ninety per cent glucose solution is nine yuan a bottle, and the atropine is double the usual price as well.’ My mother is skimming through the hospital’s cost sheet. ‘Nursing only costs eight yuan a day, though, which is less than Beijing hospitals charge. If I can find another patient to share with you tomorrow, at least the room rate will be halved . . .’

The smell of dank earth blowing down from the mountain sticks to the walls of my trachea. It reminds me of the smell of death I detect on my breath after I’ve spent a week or more in hospital. I know the smell is just bad breath and that death itself is odourless, but I also know that a healthy person who falls sick is already in death’s waiting room. After patients lie in hospital wards for more than a week they begin to reek of helplessness.

Sickness is worse than death, though. When the body begins to rot, you lose your dignity and self-respect. You have to lie down, exposing your weaknesses and failings to the world, and allow doctors to probe and inspect all your previously well-guarded orifices.

I was looking forward to the director’s thought-waves entering my head again tomorrow, but the nurse has just informed my mother that he’s fallen ill and has had to cancel the session.

I imagine the wind chasing after me. I am dry and hard. My shrivelled skin yearns to suck the moisture from my marrow, like deer in summer that yearn to drink from a lake . . . My cheeks must have caved in by now. I looked cadaverous even before my brother moved abroad. My mother took a photograph of him and me together, and gave him a copy to take to England. When he saw it, he said, ‘I can’t take this with me. It’s bad luck to be photographed next to a corpse.’

I ran over to the telephone and waited for my brother to call back. There was a lot of noise around me. A group of students nearby sat huddled around a cassette player, singing along to a tape: ‘
Walk on, little sister. Don’t look back . . .
’

As soon as the phone rang, I clamped the receiver to one ear and stuck my finger in the other.

‘I just wanted to let you know that we’ll be coming up to Beijing soon,’ my brother said in a voice that sounded as mature as mine.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ I answered in a quiet monotone, hoping to dampen his enthusiasm. ‘Everyone’s fed up with the provincial students. They beg for handouts, then blow the cash on presents and fripperies . . .’

‘We won’t need your money. We’ve collected 100,000 yuan in donations.’

‘Really? That’s impressive. Most of the provincial students arrive with nothing. It’s chaos here.’

‘I know! What the hell’s been going on? Three days ago, you lot told us the hunger strike had been called off and the students were going to leave the Square. So we ended our occupation of Chengdu’s public square and returned to our campuses. But as soon as we got back, you sent us a message telling us to continue the struggle. So we returned to the square the next day. Then yesterday we heard you were planning to withdraw again, and we went back to our campuses. And now today we’ve been told to mobilise the workers and organise a mass industrial strike. Why do you keep changing your minds? Whose orders are we supposed to be following?’

‘I’m not even sure myself. The Beijing Students’ Federation, I suppose. Anyway, just stay where you are for the time being. Don’t come to Beijing . . .’

After I’d hung up, I regretted dissuading him from coming. My mother had told me that my cousin Kenneth had recently got married and was planning to bring his wife to China for their honeymoon. He was hoping I could show them around Beijing. I realised that if my brother were in town, he could show them around instead, which would save me a lot of trouble. I decided that I’d leave the Square in the morning and go home to rest for a couple of days. I was so weak with exhaustion, I couldn’t think straight.

I returned to the Monument’s lower terrace and saw a banner that said
RECONVENE THE NATIONAL PEOPLE
’S
CONGRESS
,
PROMOTE DEMOCRACY
,
SACK LI PENG
,
END MILITARY RULE
hanging on the obelisk like a pair of old knickers. Four guys with long hair and steel-toed boots who’d formed a rock band called May Flower sat on the Monument’s northern steps and performed one of their songs. A crowd of thousands gathered round them, clapping and cheering. I suddenly remembered it was Tian Yi’s birthday on the 28th, and reminded myself to buy her a present.

On the lower terrace, students were lying asleep, or sitting up talking, flicking away the swarms of mosquitoes and moths flying through the air. Guys on the southern steps were having a smoke and trying to chat up girls. It was just like any other night in the Square.

When I walked inside the broadcast tent, a long-haired student from the Central Academy of Art was waving his hands animatedly. ‘. . . We’re going to build a huge statue called the Goddess of Democracy,’ he said. ‘It’ll be amazing.’

‘To put up in the Square? How big will it be?’ Bai Ling was having a phone conversation, so couldn’t give her full attention to him and his friend. The phone she was using was a private line we’d set up for her. It was connected to a circuit we’d found in a metal box below one of the lamps in the Square.

‘It will be a replica of the Statue of Liberty. Not as tall of course, but it will still look very impressive.’

‘What do you think of the idea, Mou Sen?’ Bai Ling asked. ‘I think it could work.’ Her eyes looked red and sore. She’d been up two nights in a row, speaking on the phone to student leaders, intellectuals and academics across the country.

‘I love it!’ Mou Sen exclaimed, searching his pockets for a cigarette. ‘Artists always come up with the best ideas.’

‘Yes, it will be brilliant! You can put it right in the middle of the Square, directly opposite Mao’s portrait.’ Nuwa’s eyes sparkled as she clapped her hands with delight.

The other art student had a shaven head and was wearing a torn T-shirt. ‘Millions of people will flood to the Square to look at it,’ he said, ‘which will make a mockery of the government’s martial law edict!’

‘You were horrified when those guys from Hunan threw ink at Mao’s portrait,’ Tian Yi said to Mou Sen, ‘but you’re happy for these students to erect a Goddess of Democracy. What’s the difference?’

I couldn’t stay awake any longer, so I stamped on a couple of cardboard boxes and lay down on top of them. My clothes reeked of sweat. I didn’t dare remove my shoes because I knew my socks smelt worse. I hadn’t brushed my teeth for ten days. I hoped A-Mei wouldn’t turn up suddenly and catch me in this state. She was very particular about cleanliness. She could get through a whole roll of toilet paper in a day, using it to wipe dust from the furniture, windowpanes and cups. After she took a shower, she’d remove the water from her tummy button with a cotton bud.

Bai Ling sat down for a moment deep in thought. ‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘Let’s put up a statue then! Broadcast an announcement telling the students about the plan, then get Wang Fei and Old Fu back here to convene a meeting.’ When she stood up, her toes splayed out, making her bare feet look much wider.

If you travel a further
5, 490
li, you will see the god of Mount Zhu, who has the face of a human but the body of a snake. If you want to win his favour, bury a live cockerel and pig in the ground.

I can feel the grime of the hospital on my skin. This south-facing, first-floor room smells very different from the clean examination room downstairs. When people use the latrines next door, a sour scent of urine wafts into the room. In fact, I smelt urine the moment I was brought in here. The odour has permeated the wallpaper, together with the smells of fermented sunlight, herbal medicine, disinfectant and rotting fruit.

The lung cancer patient who’s moved into the bed next to mine is moaning in pain. His breath smells of the Sichuan-spiced noodles he ate an hour ago. He eats about six bowls of noodles a day. After each one, he lights a cigarette and spits onto the ground.

During the hour after lunch everything quietens down, but the rest of the time the corridor and stairwell are filled with the noise of shuffling feet. I hear people walking up the stairs now. It sounds as if there are three of them. The footsteps are hurried and confused. This cheap concrete building is an echo chamber. Every noise is amplified.

Someone taps a glass on my bedside table and suddenly my hand seems to want to touch it. It’s a tall, cylindrical glass, I think, half filled with tea that is probably lukewarm by now. I see my hand moving towards the glass through shards of light bouncing off the blue plastic tablecloth. When I touch it, the sensory receptors on the tips of my fingers inform my brain that it’s cold and hard. But perhaps the sensation I’m experiencing is a remembered one, and my fingertips haven’t touched the glass at all.

A nurse is cleaning my body with alcohol solution and sticking acupuncture needles into my pressure points. The director is sitting on a chair talking to my mother. ‘He has no awareness of the world around him,’ he says. ‘His brain has stopped processing new information. It’s like a piece of dead wood. I can’t bring it back to life. I had a terrible headache after the session I gave him the other day. The best hope for him now would be to put him on this 20,000-yuan treatment plan. It includes a weekly session of UV light therapy and a course of drugs imported from England. The 10,000-yuan treatment would still give him the UV therapy, but the drugs are from a Sino-Japanese joint-venture company, and aren’t so effective. This 6,000-yuan plan he’s on now gives him just five of my qigong sessions, an acupuncture session and a course of Chinese herbal medicine. It only lasts twenty-four days. There’s no way he will have come out of his coma by then.’

‘I like the sound of that 10,000-yuan plan, but he had a month of UV therapy in Beijing last year, and it didn’t seem to have any effect. Could you make up a plan for him that has the foreign drugs but no UV?’

‘If you want to alter his plan, we’ll have to get approval from each department then print out new documents, and all that will cost money.’

‘It won’t involve too much work, surely? How about we agree on an 8,000-yuan plan?’ My mother’s voice falters as she remembers how little money she has left.

Another doctor turns on the heartbeat monitor. ‘It’s a bit faster today,’ the nurse says. ‘Eighteen beats per minute.’

‘Insert a two-centimetre needle into his Mute’s Gate point. I can see that it’s not only his upper head that’s blocked. Both the Spirit Path and the Wind Pool points at the back and base of his skull are clouded too. That’s why the qi isn’t flowing smoothly through his body.’

‘The test you performed yesterday proved he is sensitive to sounds,’ my mother says.

The director stands up. ‘He probably only has very basic hearing abilities. Many of his bodily functions are in a vegetative state. Strictly speaking, he isn’t human any longer. He can’t process thoughts and his nervous system is very weak. If you want to see any real improvement, you’d better go for the 20,000-yuan plan.’

‘All right. But I brought him here for qigong. I didn’t bring enough cash to pay for all these extra treatments . . .’

I can hear the water in the electric cup begin to bubble. The relatives of the lung cancer patient lying next to me put it on to boil.

An announcement hisses from the radio in the room upstairs: ‘In December, a fire at the Friendship Theatre in Kelamayi, Xinjiang Province, took the lives of 323 people . . .’ The dial is turned to another station. ‘In this Year of the Dog, our canine friends have become a hot topic of conversation, especially since the Beijing government announced a strict ban on keeping them as pets . . . During a visit to a television factory in Shenzhen yesterday, Premier Li Peng said . . .’