Last Kiss in Tiananmen Square (24 page)

Zhang Ping opened the squeaky wooden kitchen door. The door was so old and shaky that it could break away any minute. It was obvious that the door needed new hinges. But the wood was so rotten that it could no longer hold its hinges. Zhang Ping remembered when she and Dagong made this kitchen 10 years ago when they were first married. They built it by laying bricks and tiles one by one. Dagong nailed together a few strips of wood onto the outside of this door for enforcement. Now everything had fallen apart. Even the glass window was broken two years before and was now covered with several layers of newspaper. The wind blew through the paper and made this room very cold in the winter.

Zhang lit a match trying to start the gas stove. Nothing happened.

“Shit.” She realized that the stove had run out of the gas. Under the circumstances, it was impossible for her to hook the gas can onto the back of her bike and ride to the gas station to exchange it. Dagong usually did that.

Not knowing what to do, she sat on the steps in front of her door. Mr. Wang stepped out of his home, yawning after a nap.

“The weather will soon change. The weather will change.” He said mysteriously, somewhat like a prophet.

Zhang Ping looked into the sky. It was clear blue without even a trace of cloud.

“The thunder is coming!” Mr. Wang exclaimed.

Zhang Ping didn’t answer. She knew Mr. Wang was crazy sometimes.

“Hurry! Hurry!” Pumpkin and Marshmallow each carried a hunger striker into the yard. Zhang Ping soon found out that they were Lili and her student boyfriend. She didn’t know that Lili had joined the Hunger Strike. She was shocked.

Little Pea helped to put these two people down, feeding them hot water and wrapping them with warm blankets.

Marshmallow dragged Lili’s father Lao Liu out of the bed, where he had been lying for more than two days. He figured that as a policeman, the best support he could give students was to call in sick.

“My daughter!” Lao Liu rushed toward Lili with only a T-shirt and underwear on. He held Lili in his arms.

“Lili, Lili. This is your father.” Tears rolled out of his small eyes onto his unshaven face.

There was no response from Lili except for occasional moaning.

“We should take her to the hospital. They will take in some of the very sick students,” announced the doctor.

Looking at the chaos and listening to the non-stop sirens, Zhang Ping’s mind drifted away.

It was 20 years ago when she was a high school junior. The situation was worse then. The continuous gunfire was hurting her eardrums, much like the New Year fireworks. She was manning a machine gun in a dormitory window in Beijing University after joining her father’s United Worker’s Union. They tried to occupy the chaotic campus. When they arrived at the University gate, their good intentions to forge a peaceful solution soon disappeared. Two student groups were fighting fiercely to gain the control of the university since they were responding Chairmen Mao’s slogan to send all the “corrupted” top university officials and intellectuals to a detention center. The United Worker’s Union was forced into self-defense. She remembered that students came toward them one by one to prevent them from going in. The students were shooting and they were shooting back. The students were falling down one after another. She could still remember their radiant and sweaty yet naïve faces. After the shooting was finished, the main street in the university campus was full of bodies. For days, the street was soaked with blood. It was the first time that she had seen so many dead bodies. After that day, she had changed. She felt ill and stayed in bed for two weeks without eating anything. She started having nightmares. Everyone she had shot down had come alive again in her dreams. They cursed her, spilled blood on her and promised to do the something to her after she descended into the same world. She had lost all her revolutionary enthusiasm. She became so empathetic that she had to resign as the captain of the Red Guard in her high school. After that, she didn’t go to school very much. She didn’t have to anyway. The school stopped operating because of the Cultural Revolution. She stayed home and learned knitting and sewing. She got her high school certificate soon after she returned to school and found a job at the Beijing Automobile Parts Factory where her father was the president. She worked in the assembly lines, personal department and the food service. Finally she was appointed to be the head of the food service. In three years, she met Dagong. Her father Lao Zhang discovered Dagong in a park where he worked as a janitor. When Lao Zhang took Dagong to a restaurant, he got deadly drunk and told him his life story that people usually avoided telling.

In the bar, Dagong passionately expressed his dream of going to college. Lao Zhang liked his honesty and fought for him for a job in the Beijing Automobile Parts Factory. In 1975, he went to the Beijing Normal University when the universities only accepted students on the basis of their political background instead of their academic achievements. But Dagong appreciated the opportunity and made the most of this opportunity. After he returned to the factory, he became a technician. The same year, Zhang Ping married Dagong, following his father’s wishes. She really fell in love with Dagong when she first met him. He was the most gentle and beautiful human being she had ever met. She liked his six-foot frame, his confident and charismatic manner. She admired his intellect. They had fifteen years of peaceful marriage, at least until now. She had never known what Dagong thought of their marriage. He seemed to sit high above her and she could never quite reach him.

The ambulance finally arrived. About ten students were herded into the van one after another. Looking at their fragile features and listening to their moaning, Zhang Ping felt like crying. In order to conceal her sudden burst of emotion, she ran into her room. Tears poured out of her face after she collapsed on the bed. This was the first time she had ever cried in the last twenty years after she had drained out all her tears during the Cultural Revolution.

The doorknob turned and Zhang Ping could not believe that the person who just stepped in was Dagong. His long hair and the unshaven face had not diminished his features. His face was tan and rough. He looked dirty. His white polyester shirt had turned gray and smelled sour. His blue jeans were shiny with grease. His shoelaces were missing.

With her face still buried in her arms, she pretended not to see him. Then she heard him open the dresser drawer, ransacking through the clothes. She could not stay silent anymore.

“Why… why are you coming back?” She mumbled through her hoarse voice.

“Looking for some warm clothes.” He said and kept looking.

“So you think this is a hotel where you can come and go anytime you want.” She sat up and held herself against the back of the bed.

“Zhang Ping, they need me there!” He finally turned his head around and stared at her directly. “Students are dying there. They are going without food or water in order to do something for our country. Police arrested a few student leaders including a dear friend of mine. The police detent me for a day but released me. They didn’t know what to do with me. Don’t you feel guilty for just sitting and complaining?”

Oh, she loved that face of his. She wanted to hug him, to bury her face in his chest. His swarthy face and messy clothes made him look like a street-smart outlaw. But his mind was elsewhere. She couldn’t warm up to him until he became a nice and easy-going husband again.

“I have used up all my revolution energy in the past.” She sighed and continued, “All I know is that a person needs to eat and has clothes on his body. Do you still remember the Cultural Revolution and all the suffering you have gone through? Without my father’s help, you would be still sweeping the park and cleaning public bathrooms.”

“Yes, of course. I remember. That’s why we need to make changes.” Dagong’s voice sounded much more confident after serving as the president of the Beijing Worker’s Union.

“But you know the change is not up to us.” Zhang Ping was on the verge of crying again.

“I understand what you are talking about. In fact maybe you are even right. But I hope you are wrong. If we all think we are powerless, we are never going to have a good life. It doesn’t matter whether you are right or not. It is too late to pull me out of there. Go to the square and you will understand. The students have moved me. They are brave, bright and fearless. Our generation has been too cynical, like the rocks on the beach, which have been washed thousands of times and have lost all their edges. It’s not a sign of maturity but a sign of death. We should be ashamed of it.” Dagong was so excited that the blood vessels on his neck were bulging. He did not realize he was giving a lecture.

“Ok, it’s not my business to tell you what to do but you have to care about our Little Turnip.” Zhang Ping’s voice turned hoarse and choked with tears. She was now sitting on the edge of the bed with her legs dangling like a child. Her face was red and her hair was messy.

“What, what about our son?” Dagong shifted his attention from dresser to Zhang Ping. His two big eyes with black circles stared at her.

“He is lost in the square.” She fell onto the bed again.

“Where is Little Turnip? Where is Little Turnip?” Dagong grabbed Zhang Ping from the bed and shook her shoulders so violently that Zhang Ping hit her head on his chest. Tears mixed with dirt from Dagong’s shirt soiled her face.

“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I should not have let him go.”

Her face touched his chest, her husband Dagong’s chest. All of the sudden the numbness she had experienced since the movement had started, since Dagong stopped coming home, disappeared. She felt the hurt. Her heart felt hurt.

It was this morning when she and Little Turnip were wandering through the square, squeezing through the packed people and desperately looking for Dagong.

The chaos on the square that morning was all too familiar to her. She suddenly felt like a sleepwalker walking in her dreams. The bodies on the square suddenly became thousands of dead bodies lying there. She saw herself wearing the green uniform and a red armband with yellow letters saying “Red Guards” on it. She carried a gun under her arms. She was forced to fight. She stepped forward reluctantly and then she ran all the way home. At that time she realized that she left Little Turnip at the square.

Dagong stared at the table and at the Little Turnip’s smiley face in the picture frame. He felt like someone had chopped a piece of his heart away. Although Little Turnip was much closer to his mother, Dagong always considered Little Turnip as a precious gift from the God. As a son, Little Turnip would be able to carry on Liang’s family tree.

Dagong carried Zhang Ping on his back and walked out of the room, into the yard and onto the street.

“Da…Dagong, Ge, wa…nt a pop.. Popsicle?” Potatofeet was sitting behind a white wooden Popsicle cart with his crippled legs invisible. Like usual he had a big grin on his face with drool dripping on the edge of his mouth. In his hand there was a piece of baked sweet potato.

Dagong bought a red-bean paste Popsicle. Then he patted Potatofeet’s head and said, “You are doing a great job helping the revolution!”

Potatofeet answered in the same old smile but today with a newly added joy. That was because he was doing something useful.

The Tiananmen Square, after ten days of occupation by the students, had become a huge refugee camp. No buses were running on their regular route. No regular policemen were posted at the traffic intersections directing traffic. People went about by bicycles and scooters. Armed police and soldiers could be seen everywhere. The smell of rotten food, human feces and sweat were lingering in the air. People had to climb onto trees in order to see what was happening. Moving around was the biggest problem. You were surrounded by people and could only be pushed around passively. Only ambulances with their deafening sirens could maneuver freely through the sea of people. There were hundreds of banners on the square. They were not only banners from different universities around the country, but also from factory workers, schoolteachers, high schools students, peasants, journalists, hospitals and surprisingly even the state employees.

Dagong and Zhang Ping were washed into the sea of the people before they realized it. Then it was too late to get out. Just being in the square made them feel better. They felt closer to Little Turnip. From the distance, Dagong could spot Beijing University’s flag. He imagined Baiyun sitting there, shivering with the rest of the hunger strikers beneath the wind, with her porcelain white face turning into a dark oval sunflower seed.

Through the loudspeakers, they heard that the student leaders were waiting in the People’s Congress Meeting Hall to talk to the government. It said that the meeting would be broadcast live when it started. The meeting was the result of the students’ hunger strike and impending visit from the Russia president Gorbachev.

The square suddenly became quieter. Two hundred thousand people were waiting anxiously for this last thread of hope.

“Why don’t you move forward and talk to the man with the microphone about our Little Turnip?” Zhang Ping suggested.

Dagong tried to push through the crowd, but failed.

“Why don’t you shout? He might hear you.”

Dagong’s lips trembled. He shook his head. Tears were lingering around his eyes. Although the loss of Little Turnip was still stirring in his heart, he was like everyone else on the square, waiting quietly for the news that would end this chaos.