‘I know what you mean,’ I said, trying to share her mood. ‘I feel like doing something reckless, like setting fire to those boxes over there.’
‘Mabel said that when people march through the streets in America, no one bothers to stop and look. Perhaps living in a country like that would be even worse.’ Then she looked at me and said, ‘My stomach always clenches when I hear the words “military crackdown”. I don’t want to die…’
A large Yellow River truck trundled past us. Hundreds of factory workers were standing on its open back. A few were sitting on top of the driver’s compartment waving red flags. It headed slowly towards the Square. The large paper banners stuck to its side had been shredded by the wind.
You swelter in a bamboo steamer, death crackling through your body like electricity.
The wooden wardrobe begins to creak and moan, just like it did this time last June, as the horizontal strip of wood inside expands in the hot, humid air. I nailed that loose strip back myself. When autumn comes, cool breezes will expel the moisture from the wood, and the strip will contract again. The locust tree outside the window has grown even taller. Its shadow shifts slowly across my face, allowing me to sense I’m still alive.
Every year, at around the time of Tian Yi’s birthday, the police turn up and drag us out of Beijing for a few days. Last year, we went to a guest house in Miyun County. The air was fresh and cool. My mother insisted on going for a walk. She put me on a wheeled stretcher and pushed me around the Miyun reservoir, with the two plain-clothes policemen tagging along behind. Everyone we passed assumed we were a family on an afternoon stroll, and that I was a sick relative receiving care at a nearby rest home. This year, my mother demanded to be taken to an area of natural beauty. So the public security bureau allocated us a police car that drove us all the way to Mount Wutai, which my mother had always dreamed of visiting. For a week, she was able to worship in the ancient Buddhist temples and practise Falun Gong in the clean mountain air. She slept soundly at night, and by the end of our stay managed to feel a Falun wheel spinning inside her abdomen. Having not heard from us, Master Yao was sick with worry. My mother phoned him as soon as we got back this morning, and he has rushed over to see us.
‘… As soon as I stepped inside the Grand Hall of Xiantong monastery, I felt the Falun wheel turning just behind my navel,’ my mother tells him. ‘I wonder if Master Li Honzhi placed it inside me.’
‘Of course he did. It was he who led you to the temple and dispelled the karma from your body. All those who oppose Falun Gong will be destroyed in the end.’ Master Yao sits down on the sofa. I catch the smell of his scalp as he removes his hat.
I wish my mother would open a window. This flat is so stuffy. My mother’s room is barely larger than her double bed. There’s hardly any room to stand. My room is a little bigger, but it feels cramped and airless when the window of the adjacent balcony room is shut. The sitting room is a windowless passageway. But if you open the windows in the toilet and kitchen and keep the front door ajar, a small breeze can pass through it.
The rat poison Master Yao laid out a couple of weeks ago has killed all the mice in the flat. But my mother still hasn’t found the dead mouse that’s lying inside my father’s box of ashes. The smell of its decomposing corpse is disgusting. It makes me think of the frog I buried alive in the glass jar. Why does flesh take so long to disintegrate into dust?
‘There was a programme on Beijing TV attacking Falun Gong the other night,’ Master Yao says. ‘It’s a sign that the government has decided to suppress us. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re tapping my phone.’
‘You must be careful,’ my mother sighs.
‘It’s too hot in here. Let’s open the door. Everyone’s having their afternoon nap now. No one will disturb us.’
My mother rams her shoulder against the heavy metal front door a couple of times, and finally manages to shove it open. A Taiwanese song floats up from a flat downstairs. ‘I’m a tiny, tiny, tiny little bird. I try to fly, but I never get very high-igh-igh…’
‘The steel security doors they’re making now have little windows at the top that let air flow in and out,’ Master Yao says. ‘If you want to buy one, I can arrange to have it installed for you.’
‘I don’t want to make any changes to this flat right now. I’ll wait until Dai Wei’s situation is resolved.’ What she means is that she’ll wait until I’ve died.
My mother usually keeps the door shut, because whenever she opens it, the neighbours complain about the stench that pours out from our flat. They tell her it brings down the value of their property. Everyone in this building, apart from us, has taken advantage of the new policy allowing urban residents to buy their state-owned flats from the government. So our neighbours are homeowners now, with official property ownership certificates. But because my mother resigned from her job, she’s not eligible to buy the flat, and has to continue renting it from the National Opera Company. When the authorities demolish this compound, she will only get 10,000 yuan compensation, which isn’t nearly enough to buy her a flat in the new estate that most of our neighbours are moving to.
‘So you were here all the time! I knocked on your door earlier, but there was no answer. You’re sensible to stay indoors on a hot day like this. As soon as I step outside, my clothes become drenched in sweat. Then I have to take a shower when I get home, which wastes so much water…’
As usual, opening the front door has brought trouble. The woman from the flat upstairs, who is a sales agent for a fitness equipment company, wants to come in for a chat.
‘Sit down, sit down,’ my mother says reluctantly.
‘This tall gentleman here looks like a company director. Am I right?’
‘No. I used to be an accountant. I got laid off.’
‘I was laid off too. But I’ve turned my misfortune into good fortune. I work in direct sales now. I can make at least a thousand yuan a month, which is five times the subsistence salary my former work unit pays me. You look in good shape. I could recommend you to my boss, if you like. We sell exercise bikes. You get a 200-yuan commission for each one you sell. By the end of the year you could make enough money to buy yourself a house, or a car. It’s a fantastic scheme…’
This new neighbour has tried to persuade my mother to join her pyramid sales group three or four times already. Although my mother has never agreed, she’s picked out numbers from the telephone directory and phoned up strangers to test whether she could do the job.
‘The bikes are very expensive,’ my mother says. ‘And they take up a lot of room. You could only sell them to those rich people who live in the big new apartment blocks.’
‘But if people have some money to spend, they’d buy themselves a computer, not sports equipment,’ Master Yao says.
‘No, when people get rich, they start eating too much, and then they start wanting to lose weight,’ the woman says. ‘Fitness clubs make more money than computer training centres these days. You should look at our website and check out our products. This company has got a great future.’
‘I can’t afford to use the internet,’ Master Yao says. ‘It costs twenty yuan an hour. It would be cheaper for me to take a taxi to your warehouse and see the products in person.’
‘I like this movie star wall calendar you’ve got here. Look, this is the actress who did those TV adverts for diet pills.’
From a radio upstairs, a newsreader drones, ‘In advance of President Clinton’s historic visit to China later this month, President Jiang Zemin expressed his hope that the United States will conduct an honest and purposeful dialogue with China, and will take full advantage of the trading opportunities afforded by our nation’s growth…’