Beijing Coma (59 page)

‘Many of the hunger strikers are refusing to stop their fast,’ said Wang Fei, standing behind the television. ‘What should we tell them?’

No one paid him any attention, apart from Bai Ling who was now lying on the camp bed. ‘I’m not in favour of ending the strike either, Wang Fei,’ she said. ‘But we have to go along with the majority decision.’

‘There are hundreds of thousands of people in the Square, so it’s vital we stay united,’ Mou Sen said to Wang Fei. ‘You and Old Fu have been in this movement from the start. How could you behave so badly at such a crucial moment?’

‘I didn’t go as far as Old Fu,’ Wang Fei said. ‘Still, I did act stupidly. I’m sorry, Bai Ling.’ He’d calmed down a lot since Nuwa had shouted at him.

‘All the university hunger strike groups have given up the fast,’ Bai Ling said. ‘The students who are carrying on are acting independently. We can ignore them. But we must take control of the next stage of the movement. You’re head of propaganda, Wang Fei. Print up some copies of the Hunger Strike Termination Statement, so that we can hand them out at the press conference.’

‘I’ve told the suicide squad to form a protective chain around the students, and have issued a first-degree combat order,’ Wang Fei said, clasping his clenched fist.

‘Just make sure we’ve got enough towels and face masks,’ Bai Ling said. ‘We’ll need at least 50,000 of each.’

Chen Di walked in with Hai Feng and said, ‘Old Fu’s gone to the Voice of the Student Movement and announced that the hunger strike hasn’t achieved its goals yet. He’s using the strikers as hostages. He won’t let them give up until the government has agreed to our demands.’ Then seeing the look of fear on everyone’s faces, he sneered, ‘What’s the matter? The moment you hear the words “martial law” you’re reduced to shivering wrecks!’

Mou Sen stood up. ‘I’ll chair the press conference today. Dai Wei, can you help me set up the microphone?’

‘I don’t see the point of holding a press conference now,’ I mumbled. But Mou Sen ignored me. He asked some of his Beijing Normal classmates to set up tables and chairs outside, and hang up a large poster behind that said
WE WANT DENG XIAOPING
’
S FOUR MODERNISATIONS TO BE IMPLEMENTED WITHIN OUR LIFETIME
.

I told Yu Jin and Xiao Li to fill in for me, then went to look for Tian Yi. I wanted to take her back to my mother’s flat and make her some rice congee, or some other easily digestible food.

I was relieved to find her sitting on a quilt, eating a piece of a chocolate cake that a foreign student had brought for the hunger strikers who’d given up their fast. I told her that as soon as the press conference was over, I’d take her to my mother’s flat and look after her. She wouldn’t be able to rest back at the campus. The dorms were packed with students who’d travelled up from the provinces.

‘Let’s go to my home,’ she said. ‘I can have a shower there. All I want is a warm shower.’

‘Hasn’t your sister just had a baby?’ I said. ‘There won’t be enough room for us all.’ I lay down beside her, stretched my arms back and closed my eyes. ‘I’d like to sleep for twenty-four hours. Old Fu and Bai Ling had a big argument just now in the broadcast station, and they forgot to turn the microphone off.’

‘Yes, I heard it.’

‘Deng Xiaoping has secretly ordered the army to surround Beijing,’ I said, my eyes still closed.

‘You all look so frightened now. In the beginning, you were ready to cut off your heads for this movement.’ She took a swig from a bottle. It was too dark for me to see what was inside.

‘Berkeley has sent me a letter of admission,’ I said.

‘You have an escape route, then.’

‘I still have to apply for a passport and a US visa, so there’s a long way to go yet.’

‘Don’t try to fool me. You already have one foot in America now.’

The official loudspeakers attached to the hundreds of lamp posts dotted around the Square suddenly crackled into life. A recording of Li Peng’s latest speech, given at a meeting of government and army cadres, echoed through the night sky: ‘. . . It is now clear that if we don’t take firm measures to turn the situation around, our great nation, which was founded on the blood of revolutionary martyrs, will be in great jeopardy . . .’

Then the fiery voice of President Yang Shangkun declared, ‘Beijing has been placed under martial law. The army has surrounded the capital. We have imposed new restrictions on the media, forbidding foreign journalists from conducting interviews within the municipality . . .’

‘Shall we go back to the flat now, or do you want to stay for the press conference?’ I asked Tian Yi, suddenly feeling breathless and trapped.

‘Let’s go to the press conference.’ Tian Yi stood up. I held her arm, and slowly walked back with her to the Monument.

Soon we heard Bai Ling’s voice cry out into the night. ‘Fellow students, the hardline clique headed by Deng Xiaoping, Li Peng and Yang Shangkun has staged a coup, and General Secretary Zhao Ziyang has been sacked from his job. I implore all the hunger strikers to stop their fast, and for everyone to gather round the Monument so that we can prepare ourselves for martial law . . .’ As she repeated the announcement, I could hear Wang Fei whispering in the background, asking her to read out the statement he’d just written.

Tian Yi’s hand started trembling. Trying to calm her nerves, I said, ‘Don’t worry. If they really have imposed martial law, we’ll return to the campuses. It’s no big deal.’

‘Zhao Ziyang was such a fine, upstanding politician,’ Tian Yi said, clearly distressed. ‘How could they just get rid of him like that?’

The crowds of students and residents in the Square were in uproar. Everyone was rushing about, crying and shouting.

‘So much for the bloody “People’s Premier”! What a tyrant!’

‘Those hardline despots have no idea how to run this country!’

‘Call every citizen of Beijing to the Square! We’ll build a human Great Wall to keep out the enemy hordes!’

‘Down with Li Peng’s puppet government! Down with the corrupt military regime! Down with Yang Shangkun . . .’

Everyone was distressed and angry. People who didn’t know each other became embroiled in loud debates. Girls hugged one another and wept. Nurses in white coats shouted, ‘Calm down everyone!’ then groaned, ‘What kind of government treats its people like this?’

‘It makes me sick to think we nearly starved ourselves to death for this rotten regime!’ Tian Yi muttered, then walked off hand in hand with Mimi. I went to find some more student marshals to guard the broadcast station. I knew that if the martial law troops turned up, their first goal would be to destroy our tent.

The area we’d cordoned off for the press conference was already packed. I spotted a few fair-haired foreign journalists speaking into cameras. Their reports were being transmitted live via satellite to television sets around the world. Old Fu and Han Dan hadn’t arrived yet. Mou Sen looked very cool with his shoulder-length hair, denim jeans and leather money belt. He held the Hunger Strike Termination Statement in his trembling hands and read it out on Bai Ling’s behalf. By the time he reached the closing paragraph, tears were pouring down his face. Nuwa then read out the English translation, but her voice didn’t sound loud enough. I regretted we hadn’t used the Voice of the Student Movement’s speakers.

Mou Sen took the microphone back and said, ‘I now urge every one of the hundred thousand of us students here in the Square to begin a mass hunger strike.’

I couldn’t believe my ears. A mass hunger strike? Had he lost his mind? There was a sudden blaze of light as thousands of camera flashes went off.

The crowd burst into applause and echoed Mou Sen’s call for a mass hunger strike. Lin Lu prodded Mou Sen in the back and whispered something in his ear. A look of horror appeared on Mou Sen’s face. He quickly raised the microphone again and said, ‘I’m sorry, that was a slip of the tongue! I meant to say a mass sit-in, not a mass hunger strike!’ The crowd jeered. Flustered and confused, Mou Sen groped his pockets for a cigarette, his face clammy with sweat.

Then Han Dan walked over. He had a damp towel tied around his arm, ready for a gas attack, but had removed his hunger strike headband. He took the microphone from Mou Sen and reminded the male students that it was their duty to protect the girls, and asked any middle-school students who’d come to the Square to go home immediately.

Bai Ling, who’d officially stopped her hunger strike, stood next to him with her back bent and a towel tied around her waist. As soon as she took the microphone, the journalists ran up to her with their cameras. Blinded by their flash bulbs, she closed her eyes and said, ‘If the army drives us from the Square, we will seek refuge in the homes of local residents. Then when it’s safe for us to go out onto the streets again, we will return to our campuses.’

Fearing the soldiers were about to turn up at any minute, the students panicked and ran about asking for wet towels and face masks to protect them in the event of a gas attack. The group of professors from Beijing University’s Law Department who’d joined the hunger strike the previous day shuffled away despondently.

As soon as the press conference was brought to a close, Wang Fei grabbed some cash from Old Fu’s bag and went off with Yu Jin to buy more towels and face masks.

My brother is in the sitting room chatting to an old school friend about people they used to know.

‘Yes, do you remember him?’ he says. ‘He used to sneak in here to watch television. He’s a pop star now. Can you believe it? He’s probably a millionaire.’

‘Jiang Tie gave up his job at the research institute and went into business. He moved to Hainan Island last year and opened a software company. He’s asked me to go into partnership with him, but I haven’t got enough cash to invest.’

‘I bumped into Hong Zhi the other day. You know, the girl whose hard-boiled egg you nicked on that Spring Festival school trip. She’s running a clothes stall in Silk Alley now.’

‘I thought she got into Qinghua University. I remember when our teacher asked us to swat flies, she killed enough to fill a whole bloody jam jar.’

My brother gets up and puts on the tape that Tian Yi gave me. I continue to listen to the conversation, but am soon lifted skyward by the choirboys’ angelic voices. A violin plays softly, turning the sky a deep blue. Then a flute overlaps the melody and my numb mind begins to tremble. The orchestra returns and a contralto voice cuts through the strings. As a single, clear note hovers in the air, I feel a deep sadness which slowly subsides and merges into a sense of bliss . . .

Noises from my past return to me, bathed in gold . . . ‘Look at my arm,’ Lulu says, rolling up her sleeve. I’m standing in her room, my face warmed by a slanting beam of sunlight. ‘I can’t see any red spots, I promise you,’ I say. She examines the skin closely. ‘Well you’ll have to check it again tomorrow.’ She saw Momoe Yamaguchi in the Japanese television drama
Blood
, and has convinced herself that, like the heroine of the story, she too has contracted leukaemia . . . Now I see myself waiting for my brother outside the school gates. The girls skipping across the lane in the afternoon sunshine are singing ‘
Not as fragrant as a flower, nor as tall as a tree
 . . .’

My brother switches the tape off and I slowly retreat back into my body.

I remember A-Mei saying that music could carry you to the heavens. At the time, I didn’t understand what she meant. I don’t want to listen to that tape again. If that music can affect me so powerfully, next time I hear it, I will be drawn through the gates of death.

‘Do you want to go to that disco tonight?’ my brother’s old school friend asks, lighting a cigarette.

‘Yes. I’m sick of spending my holiday staring at this bloody vegetable. If I stay in this stinking flat another hour, I’ll fling myself out of the window.’

‘He’s your own brother, you bastard! He’ll kick your head in when he wakes up.’

‘He’ll never wake up. Look at him!’

My brother sounds fed up. But I’m not angry. If I were going to attack anyone after I woke up, it wouldn’t be him, it would be those lousy government leaders in the Zhongnanhai compound. But if I do wake up, I doubt if I would attack anyone. I’d probably want to forget about politics and concentrate on living a happy life.

My brother and his friend pour themselves some more beer. They have to wait for my mother to come back before they can go to the disco.

‘I’d better turn him over. Come and help me lift him.’ My brother walks into my room and takes my arm.

‘I don’t want to touch him . . . Look at those tubes attached to his mouth and dick. He looks like a fish tank.’

My brother crosses my legs, grabs my shoulders and waist, then pushes hard, flipping me onto my stomach. A light shoots through my brain as I turn. Then he stuffs the pillow back between my legs.

‘Hey, you could get a job as a professional nurse . . .’

‘Who would have guessed he’d end up like this? That day in the Square, he said to me, “Don’t assume you’re invincible. Remember: bullets have no eyes . . .”’

The broadcast minibus drove round the perimeter of the Square, blasting out the national anthem and the Hunger Strike Termination Statement. It was very late, and the sky was pitch black, but the Square was still as noisy as ever.

Inside the broadcast station, a few students were writing articles by torchlight. Others were printing out pamphlets. Big Chan, Little Chan and I were distributing the new security passes that were stamped with a picture of the Monument. Our hands were covered in red ink.

The calm tones of Nuwa and Chen Di echoed continually through the Square. ‘Everyone must have their face masks and damp towels to hand, in case the army let off tear gas,’ Nuwa announced. ‘You can use a strip of cloth, if you want, as long as it’s wet . . . We’ve just received news that 450 army trucks, which were trying to enter the city, have been blocked by residents on the third ring road under Liuli Bridge. The citizens of Beijing are using their own bodies to halt the advance of the troops. Please can anyone with bicycles ride over there at once and offer them assistance . . .’