‘This Square is a madhouse,’ I said. ‘If Tian Yi hadn’t been so determined to stay, I would have left days ago.’ I’d taken Tian Yi home to rest for a while, but after a brief nap, she’d insisted on returning to the Square, and I’d felt it was my duty to stay with her.
‘You’re afraid she’ll run off with another guy!’ scoffed Zhuzi. After each drag of his cigarette, he’d lift his chin and exhale a large puff of smoke.
‘Fuck off!’ I muttered. Through the ribbons of cigarette smoke, the crowd looked like a sea of foaming blood.
‘All the students have been sleeping around. There’s a lot of shagging going on in those tents at night…’
It occurred to me that Tian Yi and I hadn’t made love for weeks.
‘You should come and take control of the Square’s security, Zhuzi. The Hong Kong Student Association are going to send us some walkie-talkies soon. We’ll be like real policemen.’
‘That’ll be great. Once we’ve got a proper communication system set up, we’ll be able to control the whole of Beijing.’
‘I think I’ll lie down now and try to get some sleep.’ I always found it easy to talk to Zhuzi, perhaps because he was a similar height to me.
Just as I was closing my eyes, Shu Tong walked over and handed me a telegram from my brother.
I sat up again and read it out loud. ‘“. . Students from fifteen Chengdu universities marched through the rain today, protesting against the military crackdown in Beijing. We carried eleven coffins on our shoulders to commemorate the eleven students who set fire to themselves in Tiananmen Square…” Who told them there was a military crackdown?’ I skimmed through the rest of the text and laughed. ‘Ha! They even think that Han Dan was killed!’
Shu Tong didn’t smile, though. ‘We were the chess players at the beginning, but now we’re pawns, and we’ve no idea who’s going to take us in the next move.’ He perched wearily on a large battered samovar. He was usually asleep by this time.
In the tent area below, most of the students were still awake, listening to Simon and Garfunkel tapes, playing the harmonica or having games of poker. People wandered in and out of each other’s shelters. It looked as bustling as a night market. I could hear someone snoring nearby. The noise made me want to crawl into a soft bed.
Wang Fei joined us. He crouched down and took deep, nervous drags of his cigarette.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘Have you had a row with Nuwa? She was furious you ran away without telling her.’
‘No, no, I’ve just tallied the results of Sister Gao’s poll,’ he whispered. ‘The majority of the students want to leave the Square. If this information leaked out, we’d have to withdraw.’
‘Well, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ he said, rolling up the sheets of paper in his hand. ‘No one must find out about this.’
‘Look at this newspaper the Hong Kong Student Association gave us,’ said Xiao Li walking up excitedly. ‘It’s amazing! A million people marched through the streets of Hong Kong in solidarity with us.’
I grabbed the newspaper from him, eager to see the photographs. After A-Mei broke up with me, I gave my photographs of her to Shi Ye and asked her to post them to her. But A-Mei’s image was still carved in my mind. I knew I’d be able pick her out at once in a crowd, even if she had her back turned to me.
‘Are you looking for your lost love?’ Wang Fei said. He could be unexpectedly perceptive sometimes.
‘Shut up!’ I said, punching his arm. ‘She’s not living in Hong Kong now, anyway.’ I glanced at the photographs then handed the newspaper back to Xiao Li, my pulse racing.
A girl called Miss Li from the Hong Kong Student Association had told me her friend was studying at the same Canadian university as A-Mei. She’d smiled at me and said, ‘You’re the chief of security here. That’s very impressive. I’ll get my friend to tell A-Mei. I’m sure she’ll be proud of you.’
‘The provisions stall the Hong Kong Association set up over there is great,’ Xiao Li said, having supervised the stall’s security for the last hour. ‘They’re giving out food, drink, clothes, umbrellas. You should go and grab some of the stuff before it all runs out.’
‘You’re such a peasant!’ I said tetchily. Zhuzi was lying down now, about to drift off to sleep.
My thoughts turned to A-Mei. Although I was in love with Tian Yi, the wounds from my break-up with A-Mei still hadn’t fully healed. Now that the eyes of the world were focused on the Square, it was possible she might see my face on television or in the newspapers, and then try to get in touch. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the prominent leaders, so I knew the chances of her spotting me were remote.
‘Where’s Bai Ling?’ Mimi asked. ‘She was here just a minute ago, and now she’s vanished.’ Mimi and Tian Yi couldn’t sleep, so they were strolling around the terrace arm in arm to pass the time.
‘No one knows where she sleeps at night,’ Zhuzi chuckled. ‘That information is top secret!’
‘You must be exhausted,’ I said to Tian Yi, as she walked away. ‘If you want to go back to the campus to sleep, I could find a car for you.’ When she walked with her back straight, her loose hair would bounce around her shoulders.
‘Look at these mosquito bites,’ she said, turning round briefly to show me her arms. Then she walked off again, her hips swinging beneath her skirt.
The eardrum and ossicles vibrate, striking the oval window of your inner ear, allowing the familiar tones of her voice to be carried up the cochlear nerve into your brain stem.
Tian Yi’s voice sounds gravelly on the other end of the phone. ‘New York is much colder than Beijing. It must be the huge windows. The apartments are as cavernous as churches… I know you’ll wake up one day, Dai Wei. You mustn’t give up hope… You were always so wooden and remote. It used to drive me mad. We could never have a proper conversation… It’s noisy outside. I’ll close the window… Did you hear me? I said that fate brought us together but then tore us apart. We weren’t meant for each other… Do you remember the Land of the Black Thigh in The Book of Mountains and Seas? Its inhabitants wear fish-skin clothes and eat seagulls, and are accompanied by two birds that wait on them night and day. You used to say you wanted to go and live there one day… I must go now. Take care of yourself…’
Tian Yi can probably tell that my mother keeps taking the receiver away from my ear to listen to what she’s saying. Her voice sounds a little strained. It’s strange to think she’s been in America for almost a year now.
Like an invisible thread, her fragile breath travels across the oceans and enters my brain’s auditory cortex. Images assemble in my parietal lobes. I see rain streaming down the panes of a huge window…
Your mind dredges up memories which you snatch hold of then scatter into the air.
‘There aren’t many of us instigators left in the Square,’ Old Fu said to me the next morning as we returned from the lavatories of the Museum of Chinese History. ‘We must keep strong. It’s very simple: all we have to do is stay here patiently until the army arrives.’
‘The government sent the police to arrest us in the 1987 demonstration, but this time they’re sending the army,’ I said. ‘It’s war.’ I glanced around the Square. There were now far fewer of the impassioned speeches and heated debates that had characterised the early days of our movement. Some students were sitting up, singing along to tapes of Taiwanese pop music, but most of the others were lying down chatting to each other.