‘I’ve developed a bad case of war fatigue!’ Bai Ling rubbed the tears from her eyes and lifted her glass. ‘Tell us what your birthday wish is,’ she said, not daring to lift her gaze from Tian Yi’s hands.
‘My wish is to have freedom of thought and to see an end to this political dictatorship,’ Tian Yi said. ‘I don’t want to have to live in fear.’
‘That’s easy. All you need to do is go abroad with Dai Wei.’ Wang Fei stuffed a paper napkin under his armpit to mop up the sweat then tossed it onto the ground.
‘I’m a Chinese citizen,’ she replied. ‘I don’t want to devote my youth to a foreign country.’ She turned to Wang Fei and Bai Ling. ‘Come on, you two. I’d like to toast to your happiness as well. May all your wishes come true!’
Tian Yi put down her sandalwood fan and poured some more Coke into Bai Ling’s glass. I was struck by how self-assured and resolute she’d become over the last few weeks. My mother had sent me a message saying my cousin Kenneth and his wife had arrived in Beijing. I wanted to ask Tian Yi to accompany us on a trip to the Great Wall the next day, but was afraid she’d accuse me of deserting my duties.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Bai Ling said, smiling. ‘In fact, my only wish is to have an ordinary life. I’d like to have children and watch them grow up. Come on, cheers!’ She glanced at Wang Fei and clinked her glass against his. He put his arm around her and downed the beer in one gulp.
The restaurant manager walked over with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and said, ‘There’s a rumour going round that those new canvas tents you’ve put up in the Square are part of an empty-fort strategy, a ploy to scare off the government, giving you time to make a quick retreat.’
‘We won’t retreat,’ Wang Fei said. ‘We’ll stay in the Square until the bitter end. Look, the commander-in-chief is sitting right here.’ He patted Bai Ling’s shoulder proudly.
‘Oh, it’s Bai Ling! I’ve seen your photograph in the newspapers!’ The manager was taken aback.
As Bai Ling gave a reluctant smile, the insect bites on her forehead turned redder. ‘Well, you can call the police now, if you want, and tell them to come and arrest us,’ she said.
‘No, no, I’d never do that. I wouldn’t want any plain-clothes cops coming round here again. A couple of days ago, two foreigners came in for a meal. As soon as they left, a secret-police officer walked in and asked me what they’d said. There are only four tables in this restaurant, so I can hear everything. But the foreigners were speaking English. How was I to know what they were saying? So I’m not cut out to be a government spy, you see. Come on, have a cigarette!’
You want to stop the glucose solution entering your vein and slowly die of starvation.
My ears are like air vents. I can’t choose which noises enter them. What is more frustrating is that my urine has now become a focus of media interest. For the last five days, reporters have been streaming into our flat to interview my mother and take photographs of me.
Yesterday, a man with a squawking voice said, ‘Look how translucent his skin is! It’s a sign that his years of fasting have transported him to a higher plane.’
‘You can tell from his facial features that he’s destined to live a long life,’ his colleague said.
‘He looks just like that qigong master, Kong Hai, who has the most miraculous urine of all the Taoist masters.’
‘Master Kong Hai hasn’t eaten or slept for thirteen years,’ someone else concurred.
‘Yes, Kong Hai’s urine has been declared a national treasure. Only the Premier’s wife is allowed to drink it.’
How could these strange men imagine that my urine has magical properties? What sort of tonic could a corpse like mine produce?
My mother is playing Mahjong with four other women. When they shuffle the plastic pieces it sounds as though they’re scattering pebbles onto the table.
‘We’ve uncovered another two fatalities,’ Fan Jing says quietly. ‘That brings the number of dead to 155.’
The women are skimming through the latest list of casualties of the crackdown and their relatives.
‘I know this woman Zhang Li. Her husband was beaten to death on Fuxingmen Street on 6 June. She was sacked from her government job afterwards. She’s destitute. All she owns is a bed and a chair. Her mental state is very unstable. She doesn’t like staying in her flat when it gets dark, so she spends all night wandering through the lanes.’
‘There were still people being killed on 6 June?’ my mother asks.
‘Yes, the massacre that took place in Fuxingmen has been dubbed a “mini 4 June”. Tanks rolled through the street and fired at the crowd indiscriminately. Look, Professor Ding has got details of three people who were killed there. See here – “a boy, just thirteen years old, lay on the street, his guts splayed over his stomach, and the soldiers refused to let anyone go to his rescue.”’
‘Look at this. I was the one who found out about this guy,’ Fan Jing says. ‘His wife lives in a tiny shack in the suburbs. She farms twenty mu of land all by herself. No one ever visits her, except the police, who come every anniversary of the crackdown to warn her not to speak to journalists.’
‘We should invite her over one day,’ my mother says. ‘She must get tired of being alone all the time.’
‘She wouldn’t be able to afford the bus trip. She doesn’t even have money to buy herself clothes. She wears a man’s army uniform she picked up on the street.’
‘See these photographs,’ Gui Lan says. ‘This girl was called Zhang Chu. She was only nineteen. She’s the one in the red shirt leaning against the foreigner. Such a pretty smile. When the bullet struck her head, blood spurted from her ears . . . Someone gave me her parents’ address. I went to the flat, but discovered they’d moved out ages ago.’
‘Where did she die?’
‘In Qianmen, on the main road, in her boyfriend’s arms . . .’
These women sound like a band of underground activists as they chat away, playing Mahjong.
‘It’s amazing to think your son’s piss can be used as medicine,’ An Qi says, grabbing the copy of the
Beijing Evening Star
that Fan Jing brought with her. ‘Look at this headline: “Urine of comatose man cures terminal cancer patient”.’
‘So it really can cure people?’ Gui Lan says, clacking her Mahjong pieces together. ‘You should open a urine bank, Huizhen. You could make a fortune.’
‘Your husband was shot in the kidneys, wasn’t he, An Qi?’ my mother says. ‘Perhaps his urine has special qualities too.’
‘He’s got type 4 diabetes now, so I don’t think his urine would do anyone much good,’ An Qi says.
I still don’t understand how urine can be used medicinally. It contains urea, sodium and chromium, which are toxic in high doses. My mother bottles all my piss now and keeps it in the fridge, ready to sell to the urine drinkers who visit us.
‘One reporter said she’ll get in touch with the producers of
Real Life Contest
, and see if they’d be interested in featuring Dai Wei in one of their shows,’ my mother says proudly.
‘I’ve seen that show. Last week, they had a paralysed old man competing against a young girl with liver cancer. After they’d both had a chance to describe their ailments, the audience decided the old man was the sickest and awarded him the 7,000-yuan prize.’
‘It’s inhuman, making sick people compete for money like that. And the prize money isn’t nearly enough to save their lives.’
‘They wouldn’t dare feature Dai Wei in their show, though,’ An Qi says. ‘Not after they find out he was shot during the crackdown.’
‘My qigong friend, Master Yao, is learning Falun Gong now,’ my mother says. ‘He told me that if you do the exercises daily, all your diseases will disappear. I’m thinking of giving it a go.’ This is surprising, because when Master Yao urged her to try out the routines the other day, she flatly refused.
Strands of rain smelling of dusty roof-tiles splatter against the windowpane. A few drops of water trickle through the cracks in the wooden frame, then fall onto the stack of newspapers on the ground underneath.
‘Most of the old courtyard houses in our district have been pulled down,’ Gui Lan says. ‘Our lane is due to be demolished in a couple of weeks. No one’s bothering to collect money for the electricity and water any more.’
‘If you can’t afford a newly built flat, buy one in an old block. It will save you from having to pay the expensive concierge fees that are levied in the new developments.’
‘I think you should wait until the government builds the affordable housing they keep talking about,’ my mother says, walking into my room and closing the door to the covered balcony. ‘I’ve heard there’s a block going up near here soon.’
‘How come the other side of the street has been torn down but this side has been left untouched?’ An Qi asks, spitting out a sunflower-seed husk.
‘I asked the neighbourhood committee. Apparently, this side belongs to several different work units, and they’ve had trouble sorting out the property rights.’
I can still hear the rain pattering against the window. Although the sound is much fainter now that the door to the balcony has been shut, it still conjures up memories of walking through the rain in wet shoes.
Drops of urine slowly accumulate in your kidneys’ collecting ducts, whose forest of tubules spreads deep into the medulla like fungus sprouting in the rain.
At around six o’clock, someone knocks on the door.
Old Huang, the urine connoisseur, has brought some fellow enthusiasts with him. ‘I’ve invited Director Zhou from the public health bureau,’ he says to my mother. ‘If he puts in a word for you, you won’t need to worry about getting your former work unit to reimburse Dai Wei’s medical expenses.’
My mother shows the guests into my room and turns the bedside lamp on. There are four or five people speaking. I recognise one of them as the ill woman who visited us last week. After she’d drunk a glass of my urine, she said, ‘It’s very sweet. It tastes a little like lemonade that’s past its sell-by date.’ My mother forgot to give me my antibiotics that day, so the urine the woman drank would have been pure glucose oxidase.
I can feel eyes and noses gather around my penis, inspecting the urine flowing from the tip.
The urine I passed this afternoon, and which is now in a cup on top of the wardrobe, smells of vitamin K. But perhaps the strong scent of rubber from the feeding pipe in my nose is affecting my judgement.
More visitors come and go, bringing smells of dust from the landing into the room. One man’s footsteps are so heavy, they make the floor shake. He must be very fat. And there are two women. One of them hobbles about like my mother, the other is wearing high-heeled shoes and always walks close to the wall.
‘It’s coming out faster than it did yesterday.’
‘It’s dark red today. The colour of black tea. Even when I eat red chillies, my piss never gets as red as that.’
‘I always stick to plain food. I have a cup of milk and an apple every night before I go to bed. The urine I pass in the morning is the sweetest of the day. After I drink my first cup of it, I feel my whole body is cleansed.’
‘Look, it’s going hard. I didn’t know coma patients could get erections.’
I can feel my penis rising. My mother quickly pushes it down again with a cold wet towel, and says, ‘Don’t worry, if I cool it down like this it will shrivel up again in no time.’
‘That shows there’s still a chance he might wake up,’ Old Huang says. ‘It’s a good sign.’
My mother presses down on the wet towel and gives my penis a hard pinch. I’ve made her lose face again.
My brain feels as clogged and muddled as a mud pit being stirred with a wooden stick.
‘It tastes like beer,’ the fat man says. ‘It’s strange. For the last couple of days my urine has tasted of aubergine. I’ll fill a glass for you in a minute and you can smell for yourself.’
‘If you eat white gourd for lunch, your afternoon urine will be much clearer,’ Old Huang says. ‘But don’t drink the first drops or the last drops. Mid-flow urine always tastes the best.’
‘Those look like strands of blood,’ someone standing on my right says, tapping the side of the cup.
‘It’s dripping out very slowly,’ a woman says to my mother. ‘How many glasses does he fill a day?’ My mother used to give me two bottles of glucose solution every day, but she’s now stepped up the dose to four.
‘That glass will give you the same benefits as a month’s prescription of herbal medicine,’ Old Huang says authoritatively.
The communal central heating is switched off, and a smell of warm urine drifts through the air. The world outside slips away from me as the sky darkens.
I long to leave this urine-producing machine that I’ve become, and run outside and feel the cold wind brush across my face. Although it’s the end of spring now, the wind is still dry and cold enough to raise goosebumps on one’s skin . . . 110 li further north lies Mount Spring. There is a beast there that resembles an ape, but its fur is spotted with markings. When it sees a man approach, it pretends to be dead . . .
‘This glass is full!’ Old Huang shouts. ‘Bring me another one.’
The group gathers round me again. I’m lying with my legs splayed open, like a woman about to give birth. I wish I could sit up and kick this band of urine enthusiasts out of the flat.
Someone lifts my penis out of the full glass, lets it rest on my left testicle then places it inside an empty cup. I feel the cold ceramic against my skin.
‘Where do you work?’
‘At the Number Two Pharmaceutical Factory.’
‘I developed paralysis of the left side of my body six months ago, but look, after just three doses of his urine, I’m almost cured. The first time I came here, I had to be carried in. I couldn’t move my left leg or arm. Now, see, I can wriggle all my fingers . . .’
‘You should change the needle every day, or the insertion hole will become infected,’ someone advises my mother.