Despite the nutrition I receive from the IV drips and the liquid formulas poured into my feeding tube, my weight never rises above seventy kilograms. I’m very weak. The nurse was right. If I contracted a bacterial infection, I wouldn’t have the strength to fight it.
Master Yao tells my mother to switch off the fan, then starts massaging my feet. He rotates them slowly then presses his hands into the arches. I feel a shot of electricity run up my legs. My body tingles and becomes warm. This is the second time this month that I’ve felt a connection to my body. His ten fingers send hot electrical waves to the motor cortex of my brain. Even my hair seems to be quivering in the current.
‘The problem isn’t only in his brain,’ Master Yao says, pausing for a break. ‘His blood isn’t circulating smoothly and he has excessive levels of negative qi.’
My mother lowers a fresh cup of tea onto the cabinet, trying not to make any noise, but the lid still clinks. Master Yao places his hands above my head then moves them down my body all the way to my feet. It feels as though a hot thermos flask is rolling over me.
‘Yesterday you performed the Grab of the Immortal Hand. What qigong set are you doing today?’
‘This is called the Rejuvenating Hand of Buddha. I’m trying to push his negative qi downwards. Just now I performed the Devil’s Palm exercise to locate the root of his sickness.’
A ball of heat trapped somewhere close to my navel is dispersing through my body. The nerves between my lumbar vertebrae and coccyx begin to shudder. I suddenly feel as though I’ve been plunged into a wok of hot oil, and that I will soon twist and contract like a deep-fried dough stick. But just as I sense I’m about to stretch out my legs, Master Yao pulls his hands away.
A fly buzzes through the room and lands on my sweaty forehead. I hear someone outside drag a gas canister off the back of a flatbed truck. My body seems to rise from the bed. I hear a bang, then someone shouting, ‘Let us through! Let us through! A student’s been shot! Those fucking bastards, how could they do this? Check if there’s an ID card in his pocket. Take off your shirt and wrap it around his head.’ There’s a stream of muffled yells. All I can see before me is a faint light and a floating ribbon of cloth. The image is so transfixing, I forget to breathe.
‘Open the door too,’ Master Yao says.
I take a deep breath and feel the summer heat stream down my trachea.
‘Have a rest, Master Yao. You’ve been healing him for three hours now. Why not wipe away your sweat?’ I’ve never heard my mother speak so gently before.
Master Yao removes his hands from my Greater Yang point.
My mother taps the drip bottle, picks up the electric fan and goes to join Master Yao in the sitting room. Cool intravenous fluid flows into my warm vein. It’s a pleasant feeling. My mother comes back to fetch her cup of tea then returns to the sofa.
‘Your son’s qi has been too severely damaged,’ Master Yao says. ‘I don’t think I can help him.’
‘What am I going to do? I’m getting frail. I won’t be able to look after him much longer. He’s been having problems passing urine. If they put him on a urine drainage bag, how will I cope? I have a life too, you know. I’ve been looking after him every day for the last five years. If only he could just open his eyes…’
I gradually revert to the state I was in before the qigong session. Since Master Yao thinks he’s failed, I doubt he’ll bother treating me again.
If only he’d persevered a little longer, something might have happened. I felt the capillaries in my brain wriggle with anticipation and my eyeballs rotate in a semicircle. But just as my eyelids were about to part, he pulled his hands away.
On Buzhou Mountain grows the jia tree. It has oval leaves, and flowers with yellow petals and red sepals. If you eat its fruit, you will forget all your worries.
‘Someone told me that you were once a school teacher, Master Yao,’ my mother says, enunciating her words clearly.
‘I worked in a district education department. But I was in the finance office. I was never a teacher.’
‘You’ve been practising qigong for many years, I assume.’
‘More than ten. I took it up after I was demoted and sent to Henan Province.’
‘You’ve been a victim of the campaigns too, then.’ My mother pauses to take a sip of tea. ‘Is your child working yet?’
‘I’ve got two. A boy and a girl. They’re both married.’
‘And your wife, does she still work?’
‘She passed away two years ago.’
‘Oh.’ My mother doesn’t question him further, showing some discretion at last.
‘She contracted an incurable disease,’ Master Yao says quietly.
My mother is now thinking of him as an unattached widower, rather than a qigong master. She falls silent for a moment, no doubt mulling over this new information.
‘Let me give you something to eat before you go,’ she says.
‘It’s too early for me. I usually don’t have supper until seven o’clock.’
‘But it’s so nice for me to have company. I can never be bothered to cook when I’m on my own.’
‘All right, let’s cook ourselves a meal then. I’m no great chef, but I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed with my stir-fried kidneys and pig’s liver.’
‘That sounds delicious. I’ve got some hairtail fish and prawns in the freezer as well…’
For the first time in years, I hear my mother laughing. The new kettle she bought whistles loudly as it comes to the boil. While I listen to the irritating noise, it occurs to me that if I weren’t lying in this coma, I might be exploring the Tianshan Mountains in the far-western province of Xinjiang. Those mountains are freezing, even in summer. Snow lotuses bloom on the ice-capped peaks. Tian Yi asked me many times to take her to Xinjiang. When I think about her now, I feel I’m staring out at a vast, silent desert.
My muscles have been softened by Master Yao’s qi. The summer heat is stupefying. Usually, when my thoughts turn to The Book of Mountains and Seas, I can wander through the imaginary landscapes for hours, but today’s sweltering heat has blocked all those mountain paths.
Your head is submerged in cold, fetid water, but you’re still breathing.
‘Get out! This is the girls’ dorm!’ Mimi cried as I lifted the curtain she and Tian Yi had hung across a corner of the broadcast station, blocking off a small area for their own private use. It had that sweet, damp smell typical of girls’ bedrooms.
‘We’re preparing for the final battle, but we’re not optimistic about the outcome…’ Bai Ling said into the telephone. It didn’t sound as though she was talking to a journalist.
I tapped her shoulder and said, ‘The journalists outside want to know what you think of the demonstrations taking place around the world today.’ I’d returned to the campus the previous night to get some sleep. The dorm was crammed with boxes and backpacks, and the corridor was littered with leaflets, discarded tea dregs and leftover food.
‘I can’t speak to them now, I need to go and have a word with Lin Lu,’ she said, donning the baseball cap and sunglasses she always wore when she wanted to walk through the Square unnoticed.
‘I don’t know how you put up with Lin Lu,’ Mimi said to Bai Ling. ‘He’s so cold and ambitious.’
‘We need to bring him onto our side,’ Bai Ling answered. She’d smeared tiger balm over her legs. Her skin was very susceptible to mosquito bites.
‘If you were drowning in the sea, and there was only room for two people in the lifeboat, who would you chose to go with you — Wang Fei or Lin Lu?’ Mimi asked.