For days, it has hopped up and down my body. Sometimes it flies around the room. I’ve dreamed about flying all my life, but with just a flap of its wings and a jump, this creature can make the dream a reality. I can tell from its chirp that it’s a sparrow. I imagine that it has tawny grey feathers and yellow claws. It’s waiting for me to wake up, so that we can fly away together. A-Mei once said that she wanted to come back as a bird in the next life.
The slightest noise — even the sound of a mung bean rolling onto the floor — will cause its claws to tremble.
My mother has tried many times to flick it out of the room with a feather duster, but it always manages to flap its wings just in time and fly through the duster’s feathers. After every narrow escape, I catch a whiff of fresh bird shit.
~ ~ ~
‘All right, stay in the flat if you want!’ my mother grumbles. ‘This building’s going to be pulled down soon, so enjoy it while you can.’ A few moments ago, she pinched some of the acupuncture points on my feet that Master Yao told her about, but I didn’t feel a thing.
On the phone, Master Yao explained to my mother that the bird was perhaps a reincarnated soul sent by the Buddha to watch over me, and that she shouldn’t harm it. He’s been very busy recently. A few days ago, forty-five practitioners were arrested during a protest staged outside the offices of a Tianjin magazine which published an article critical of Falun Gong. Master Yao is now helping to organise a demonstration, demanding the release of those detained in Tianjin and official recognition of their movement.
The noises the sparrow makes as it moves through my room allow me to form a picture of my surroundings. When it hops along the windowsill of the covered balcony, I feel I’m touching everything it treads on. I discover there’s a row of empty beer bottles on the sill, as well as my old chess set and a shoebox that contains a hammer and screwdriver. The sparrow is under my bed now, trying to peck out the herbs from the medicinal waist belt Yu Jin gave me for my thirtieth birthday. I hear it trip on some pills that have fallen down the side of the bed. When its wings brush over the table in the sitting room, I can hear there’s a pile of newspapers on top of it, as well as a telephone directory. It knocks over a teacup, which smashes to the ground. I touch whatever the bird hits. My memories are scratched awake by its claws.
Is it really A-Mei’s spirit, visiting me from another realm? I regret that she and I never entered those seven interconnected caves in Guangxi Province. Perhaps if I’d walked through them, I would have achieved enlightenment by now, and been able to tap into the secrets of the spirit world.
I feel a change taking place.
Before the sparrow arrived, I was scattered around the room — over the fibres of my quilt, the ashtray on the table and the metal bowl under the radiator. I had dreams of being crushed between two moving walls, and of a swathe of toppled bicycles glinting in the sun like a wheat field. I even dreamed of glueing my shattered skull back together, taking a bath, then boarding a slow train to death. I’d separated myself from my body, or perhaps my body had separated itself from me. But then the bird arrived and dragged me back into my fleshy tomb.
You lie on your bed like a stone on a riverbed, while time flows past above you.
‘Dai Wei! Are you still playing dead?’ This is Wang Fei’s voice. haven’t heard it for ten years.
‘That can’t be Dai Wei,’ Liu Gang gasps. ‘It can’t be…’
‘He looks even thinner than the last time I saw him,’ Mao Da says.
Wang Fei grabs my hand and starts trembling. ‘He’s just a heap of bones. He’s skinnier than a mummified corpse. That fucking Premier Li Peng! If I had a gun, I’d shoot the bastard dead!’
Mao Da and Liu Gang are still catching their breath. It can’t have been easy hauling Wang Fei and his wheelchair up six flights of stairs.
‘I’m sorry the flat’s in such a mess,’ my mother says, walking in. ‘I keep meaning to tidy it up, but I never have time. What prompted you to visit me all of a sudden? Has the sun gone to your heads?’
‘What do you mean?’ Wang Fei says, tapping the side of his wheelchair. ‘I’ve been writing to you and phoning you for years, Auntie. You look very well. You haven’t changed a bit.’
‘How are your parents?’ my mother asks.
‘My father was persecuted so badly during the Cultural Revolution, he went insane. He spends most of his time in a mental hospital.’
In all our days together, Wang Fei never mentioned this to me.
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. Now, this man looks very familiar to me.’
‘My name’s Liu Gang. I was in Wang Fei’s dorm at Beijing University. I’m a book trader now. I live in Hefei.’
‘Oh, I remember. Your name was on the most-wanted list. I saw your photo on TV. Your hair’s turned grey. That’s why I didn’t recognise you. You were sentenced to seven years in prison…’
‘So you keep birds now, do you?’ Mao Da says, sitting down.
‘Huh! It flew in one day and refuses to leave. I’m a Buddhist, so I can’t kill it… I’ll get you something to drink. Do you have any siblings, Liu Gang?’
‘Yes. They still live at home. But I don’t see them. Since I’ve been released from prison, my parents haven’t let me back into the flat.’ Liu Gang’s voice sounds very frail.
‘Pass me a cigarette,’ Wang Fei says, pulling his hand away from mine. A smell of tobacco rises from the impressions his fingers left on my skin.
Wang Fei has lost both his legs, but at least he’s alive. I’ve been half dead for almost ten years. I’m worse off than Shao Jian. Although the beatings he suffered damaged his brain, at least he’s now able to use computers and hold down a job.
‘What does he eat, Auntie?’
‘See those plastic tubes? I pour his food down them: vegetable broth, milk, fruit juice, that kind of thing.’
‘Careful you don’t give him any of the fake milk that’s being sold now,’ Wang Fei says. ‘I drank some fake rice wine recently. It gave me a terrible rash.’ His Sichuan accent sounds less pronounced now.
‘Where do you put the tubes?’ Liu Gang asks. ‘Can he open his mouth?’
‘I usually put them into his nose.’
‘If he could open his mouth, he wouldn’t be in a coma, you fool!’ Mao Da says.
‘I haven’t had time to wash those tubes yet. They’ve been soaking in that bowl for two days. Look at all those glasses, syringes, feeding tubes — I have to sterilise them every day.’ My mother always moans about these things when visitors come round.
‘Where have you been this last year, Wang Fei?’ Mao Da asks. ‘You didn’t phone us once.’
‘I went to Hainan Island again, and Shenzhen, to help a friend set up an advertising business. But I’m determined to stay in Beijing now, at least until the police find me and send me back to Sichuan. The Beijing Handicapped Centre has picked me for their wheelchair basketball team. The government has put a lot of money into it. It’s part of their new bid to host the Olympics. I paid someone in Shenzhen to make me a fake identity card. I’ve kept my name but have changed my place of birth.’
I wonder how he made it into the team. The only sport he ever played at university was ping-pong.
‘I’d heard that Shao Jian’s condition had improved. But I bumped into him in Electronics Street the other day. He didn’t seem to recognise me when I said hello. He just stared at me blankly and nodded his head up and down.’