‘Let me take a look at Dai Wei first,’ Mimi says, getting up and heading for my room.
There’s no sheet covering my naked body. My penis is resting on my thigh. She walks in and yelps.
‘Oh, I bet that frightened you!’ my mother says, rushing in and flinging a sheet over me. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot to cover him. I’ve just turned him over. He’s as thin as a rake, but he still weighs a ton. He needs to be turned over every day, like a leg of ham drying in the sun. Hold his arm, will you, and I’ll push him onto his stomach again.’
Mimi grasps my arm. I can feel her breath on my cheek. Her fingers are small and warm.
‘I turn him three times a day. Turn around, turn around… After Liberation, we were always singing: “The poor of the world have had their lives turned around!” But my life hasn’t turned round yet. See that bedsore on his shoulder. It was raw and infected for a year. It only healed over last winter.’
‘The lives of the government officials have turned around, though. They’ve made fortunes from all their corrupt profiteering. Do you want to give him a wash?’
‘I cleaned him this morning,’ my mother lies. ‘Does it smell in here? I’ve got used to it over the years.’
‘It smells like a… hospital,’ Mimi says tactfully.
They roll me onto my back again then shake my quilt and place it over me as they would a sheet over a corpse.
A news presenter’s voice drones from the television in the sitting room. ‘The family planning authorities’ policy of compelling all women who apply for birth permits to swallow an iodised oil capsule has been a great success. In the four years since the scheme was introduced, 17.7 million married women of childbearing age have taken the capsules…’
I suddenly remember how my cousin Dai Dongsheng pinned a Red Flag Watch Factory badge onto his lapel when he came to Beijing, hoping he could pass himself off as a city resident. I presume his mad wife is still pacing around their shack, threatening to take her case to the emperor.
‘He’s so thin now, he barely looks human,’ my mother says.
‘Go on, try some fruit, Auntie.’ Mimi doesn’t seem to be too disturbed by my condition.
The telephone rings. My mother picks up the receiver. ‘… Yes, all your old classmates will be here. No problem. Bring her along too. It would be nice to see you.’ She hangs up, cracks her knuckles and goes into the kitchen.
~ ~ ~
Mimi joins her there. I wonder how she’s managed to squeeze herself in. I hear oil bubbling in the wok, but the fumes haven’t reached me yet.
The late autumn days are turning damper now, but my skin is still dry. Each time a draught blows in from the landing, dead skin cells lift from my body, fly into my nostrils then swirl down through my trachea into my lungs.
My skin is as scaly as the pink, blue and gold angelfish that swam in the tanks of Beijing University’s biology lab. From glands beneath their scales, they’d secrete tiny drops of nourishing microbial slime that would fall straight into the mouths of their young.
I hear crackling and spitting as food is plunged into the hot oil. It smells like they’re making deep-fried carrot meatballs. I used to love eating those. I liked deep-fried aubergine as well, stuffed with ground pork and coriander. But my favourite of all was deep-fried sea bass that was crisp on the outside but still soft and moist inside. Even the leftover scraps of batter that were ladled out at the end were delicious. In fact, almost everything tastes good when it’s deep-fried. I feel a faint pang of hunger, but it remains in my brain and doesn’t travel to my mouth or stomach.
In the sitting room, the news presenter prattles on. ‘… China has become infatuated with football. This game is more than just a sport. It can lift the spirit of a nation. But the continual failure of our teams to make any significant mark in the international arena has been a great humiliation to our race…’
‘Many retired people go to parks in the morning to practise traditional Yangge fan dancing,’ Mimi says. ‘You should give it a try, Auntie.’ She still has the same husky, wavering voice she did at university. It sounds like an out-of-tune viola.
‘I’m learning Falun Gong,’ my mother says as they return to my room. ‘I’m taking lessons from a teacher called Master Yao. The meditation exercises can cure any illness. It’s much easier than standard qigong, or the traditional Fragrant Qigong school.’
‘Look at this article, Auntie. It’s about a British man who woke up recently after being in a coma for nine years. That’s his photograph. He said that although he couldn’t speak or open his eyes while he was in the coma, he could hear everything that was going on around him. Perhaps Dai Wei can hear our conversation now. You never know… I’ll read out the article to him in a minute. Shall we rub some more cream on his legs?’
‘I have to admit, I’ve sworn at him a few times these last years. He’s put me through hell…’
‘Not many people could have endured what you’ve been through. I think you’re amazing, looking after him like this for all these years. Have you had any news from his brother?’
‘Yes, he phones me from England quite often. But he doesn’t dare speak for long in case the police have tapped our line.’
‘Do they still come round here?’
‘They take us away now each anniversary of 4 June, but otherwise they usually only visit every two or three months. And they’re less officious than they used to be. They sit down and have a cup of tea, warn me not to speak to foreign journalists, then get up and leave. Look, he’s almost dead now. It’s unlikely he’s going to start a revolution, isn’t it?’
My mother is fifty-eight now. Her voice is warmer and fuzzier than Mimi’s. It sounds like a hammer dulcimer. A-Mei’s voice sounded like a violin, Tian Yi’s like a flute.
‘Are you still going out with that boy, what’s his name — Yu Jin?’
‘Of course! Boyfriends aren’t shirts — I don’t change them every day. The securities company he was working for in Shanghai has just transferred him to Beijing.’
‘Yes — Yu Jin. What a nice boy. The first time he came to see me, he gave me a thousand yuan. You’re lucky to be young now. You can go out dancing, go to nice restaurants…’
‘To be honest, I don’t go out much,’ she says sombrely. ‘I suffer from anxiety. I’m afraid of the dark, I’m afraid of crossing the road. I’ve stopped using a pager because the electronic beeps make me jump.’
I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. The others have arrived. The prospect of noise and chatter excites me.
Mimi goes to open the door. ‘Hey! Chen Di!’
A draught blows the clamour into the flat. Everyone is speaking at once.
‘You look like an Italian gangster in that hat, Yu Jin. Where did you buy it?’
‘I didn’t know you wore glasses, Chen Di!’
‘Hey, Yu Jin and Mimi, when are you going to tie the knot? It’s always the same with you two: all thunder and no rain!’
‘This is for you, Auntie,’ Yu Jin says. ‘It’s Jinhua ham. Dai Wei’s still on hunger strike, I presume, so you’d better eat it yourself.’
‘What a beautiful box,’ my mother says. ‘It looks like a Japanese import.’
‘Don’t talk to me about Japanese imports!’ says Yu Jin. ‘Our office was given some Japanese biscuits the other day. Each one came in a plastic wrapper with a sachet of drying agents. The office maid assumed the sachets contained flavourings, so she opened them and sprinkled the tiny granules over the biscuits before she served them to us. We all ended up with swollen mouths and had to be rushed to hospital!’