I’m afraid that my mother will be physically punished for her thoughts and actions, just as I was. In this police state, I’ve managed to gain freedom of thought by pretending to be dead. My muteness is a protective cloak.
You lie hidden inside your body, like a stowaway concealing himself in the hold of a ship.
‘Mum? Are you there? Please pick up the phone. It’s me! I remember you mentioning that you’ve taken up Falun Gong. I heard on the BBC today that 10,000 practitioners have been arrested. The Chinese government has jammed the internet. None of the emails I’ve been sending my old classmates have been getting through. Are you there, Mum? Please pick up…’
The sparrow flies around the room all day. Sometimes it goes to the kitchen to drink some water or peck at the bag of millet. In the last few days, it’s taken to shitting on my bed. I remember dissecting a sparrow when I was at Southern University. Its feathers had been plucked off. Through the thin, purplish-red skin, I could see its translucent stomach, suspended inside its abdomen like a small sausage.
Before I slowly die of starvation, I must try to take stock of my predicament.
My pulse is stable, my organs are functioning well. If someone were to pour milk or vegetable soup down my feeding tube, I would be able to produce some urine.
Although my motor cortex has atrophied, my synapses have been strengthened through continual use. My cognitive ability has improved and my memories have been consolidated. The plain-clothes officer who shot me destroyed my body, but he didn’t destroy my mind. I’m probably the only citizen still alive in this country who hasn’t yet signed a statement supporting the government crackdown.
If I were to wake from this hibernation, perhaps I’d become the manager of a computer company or a nightclub security guard. Or maybe I’d take up Falun Gong and end up dying in jail. Do I really want to wake from this deep sleep and rejoin the comatose crowds outside? I withdrew from society and retreated into my bedroom, then from my bedroom I retreated into my body. Eventually, I will leave my body behind and retreat into the earth. When seen from this perspective, death looks like an easy escape route. But although I’m tempted to take it, something pulls me back. I still want to read the Illustrated Edition of The Book of Mountains and Seas one more time, then travel through the landscapes it describes, and write a scientific treatise elucidating every geographical, botanical, zoological…
A stone smashes through the window of the covered balcony. A kid in the yard probably threw it in an attempt to kill the sparrow. A gust of hot, dry air rushes into the room.
The Arrogant Father chases after the sun. Just as he’s about to catch it, he collapses, faint from lack of water. He drinks the Yellow River, then drinks the Wei River, but still dies of thirst.
As well as the sparrow, there is now a mouse in the room. A couple of nights ago, when everything was quiet, I heard it nibbling a bag of flour in the kitchen. Now, it skips and leaps around the flat all day. When the sparrow leaves my room, the mouse climbs onto my bed and nibbles at my cheek.
I haven’t had any food poured into me for four days. If my mother doesn’t return soon, I’ll rot to death. If I was buried under rubble after an earthquake, I could command my body to dig me out. But since I’m buried inside my flesh, all I can do is wait patiently until the bacteria consume me from within.
A light so bright that it’s almost black hovers above my bed. I’ve been lying here for ten years. I have retrieved every detail of my life. There is nothing left for me to remember. If I’m to die now, I won’t feel many regrets, only grief and guilt about the students who died before me.
I don’t want to see Tian Yi again. She is now no more than a bundle of memories I will take with me to my grave. At this moment, she’s probably lying next to her fiancé, about to crawl out of bed.
What torments me is that I have no way of finding out what happened to A-Mei, even though her bloodstained letter is lying under my bed, inside the box my mother bought for my ashes. I’ve never heard any mention of a foreign student being injured or killed during the crackdown. I remember standing at the window of our room at Southern University, watching her walk down a paved path. She kept stopping in her tracks. I didn’t know why at the time, but now I understand. She could never do two things at once. When a thought came to her mind, her feet would forget to move. I watched her walk under the large banyan tree. Her beautiful image flitted in and out of view behind the branches and green leaves. When she emerged from the other side I had a clear view of her again. I watched her bare knees move like two shiny pebbles under her smooth skin, then looked at her thighs and thought about the warm, damp space hidden between them…
Only now do I understand that, while I watched A-Mei being embraced by the arms of the banyan tree, I felt an irrational jealousy, and worried about who else or what else might want to wrap their arms around her. So when she walked through the door, I shot her an angry frown. ‘You walk as slowly as a cow.’
‘It’s such a lovely day,’ she said breezily. ‘I was just taking my time. It’s not as if I had a lecture to run to.’
‘Well, I’ve been waiting here for twenty minutes,’ I barked.
If I’d realised that my anger was fuelled by self-doubt, I would have made an effort to control myself.
Another image comes to mind. I see her open mouth and the green pak-choi leaf I’d just placed inside it with my chopsticks glinting between her red-painted lips.
That’s enough. Everyone feels nostalgia for things they have lost. Memories are no more than regurgitations of the past. They can’t lead you anywhere new. I can tell the sunlight is about to leave the far corner of the window. When it has gone, the room will fall dark.
The heavy rainstorm two nights ago soaked the covered balcony’s windowsill and the cotton sheets lying on the ground below it. The air smells dank and mouldy. I myself am soaking in my own urine and excrement. My skin is beginning to decay. Swarms of mosquitoes are sucking at my blood. Flies are crawling into my mouth and nostrils. The moment my heart stops beating, my internal bacteria will multiply and begin to ingest me from within. A few days later, I will be no more than a heap of maggots and bones.
Chemical changes are beginning to take place. I see A-Mei reflected in a distorted mirror. Her face grows longer, splits into two, then disperses like paint in a pool of water. Then I see Tian Yi, Nuwa, Mou Sen and Sister Gao standing close together with big grins on their faces, waiting for me to take a group photograph. Chen Di and Yu Jin are standing behind them. The scarlet Tiananmen Gate in the background becomes a black silhouette which slowly melts like a scorched negative. That shot was on a roll of film I never got developed. Before the negative completely melts away, the image flashes before me one last time. Those memories that seem so sacred will all vanish in the end…
I’d like to go to a hotel bathroom, fill a clean bath with hot water and soak in it until I die… As my mind begins to empty, the mouse suddenly jumps off the chest of drawers that’s crammed with medicine bottles and lands noisily on the ground. It leaps onto my bed, darts up my thigh and stomach and settles on my shoulder. As it flicks its head from side to side in trepidation, its skin rubs against the base of my neck. The sparrow hops off my chest, perches on the bedstead and chirps angrily. The mouse isn’t frightened away, though. It nibbles at my sheet for a while then sinks its teeth into my right earlobe. How wonderful. If it bites through a few blood vessels, I will be dead within a matter of hours. When the police took us to Mount Wutai last year during the 4 June anniversary, a mouse bit my finger and the wound didn’t heal for two months.