‘You know the Cultural Revolution ended twenty years ago, right?’ called Gao Ling. ‘You know Mao Zedong is dead?’
‘Stinking capitalist!’ Wei Hong shouted. ‘Chairman Mao will live for ten thousand years!’
‘Quiet now,’ scolded Old Chen. ‘People need to sleep.’
Old Chen in bed three was not mentally ill but a homeless vagrant swept up by the police in a street-cleaning campaign before the National Day parade of 1989. Institutionalized for eight years, Old Chen was glad of the shelter, regular meals and medication for his Parkinson’s and, not in any hurry to return to the streets, he faked an episode of dementia at every threat of discharge. ‘After eight years of living with the insane,’ he confided to Wang, ‘I impersonate them well.’
In the spring Wang came out of hibernation and went out in the yard, where the patients gathered and spoke of their pasts. They spoke of husbands and wives, sons and daughters. They spoke of careers as schoolteachers, bus drivers, post office clerks and engineers.
‘I was somebody once,’ they insisted, ‘before they put me in here.’
Wang came to know of many kinds of madness. The madness of those who thought they had magic powers and could levitate. The madness of disciples of religious cults who communed with their leaders through emissions of alpha waves. There was the madness of those arrested for running naked through the streets. The madness of the woman who chased the head of her Neighbourhood Committee with a frying pan. There was the madness of those who opposed the government. The madness of petitioners who had come to Beijing from other provinces and queued at the Bureau of Petitions to lodge complaints about the seizure of land by local officials or a husband beaten to death by hired thugs. Some of the petitioners lived in a shanty town near Beijing South railway station and, clearly suffering from psychosis, went to the Bureau of Petitions every day. They were a threat to public security. The police rounded the worst of the psychotics up for the mental home.
There was the madness of those who had lost the ones they loved (the wife who left for another man, the child killed in a hit and run), and there was the madness that had caused the loss of the ones they loved. Qi Rong, a schizophrenic with razor-scarred wrists, showed Wang a photo album of her 27-year-old son. Photos of her son as a baby. Photos of his graduation in mortar cap and gown. Photos of her son and his pregnant wife.
‘He’s now a chemical engineer for Sinopec,’ Qi Rong boasted of the man who three years ago dumped her in the home of demented, broken souls and has never visited — not even to introduce her to her grandson. ‘I’m so proud of my boy. He was always the cleverest in his class. Not like his crazy old ma!’
There was the madness of the president’s mistress, who danced about the hospital yard, spinning round and round in the arms of an invisible partner, her skirt flaring up and showing her pale, varicose-veined legs. As she danced she recounted a life of banquets and private jets, giddy as a sixteen-year-old girl.
‘Jiang Zemin and I waltzed together in a Russian ballroom,’ she called out to Wang, ‘when he took me to meet President Yeltsin in Moscow. We drank champagne, and oysters slipped down our throats.’ The president’s mistress then grinned, showing the black holes where her teeth used to be. ‘He’s coming for me,’ she whispered to Wang, ‘any day now he will come and whisk me away.’
Later that day she saw her lover on TV, touring a factory in Shandong province. She walked up and touched him tenderly on the screen, deaf to the other patients shouting at her to get out of the way.
Aware of Wang’s privileged background and prestigious education, white-coated Dr Fu was more deferential to him than to other patients. He smiled warmly at Wang from across his desk, considering him one of the few patients to be treated with respect. Potted plants trailed vines from the window ledge and on his desk was a thousand-page edition of the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders, scuffed with the overlapping ring-marks from hundreds of cups of tea. Serve the Patients, instructed the needlepoint hanging on the office wall.
‘How have you been feeling lately, Wang Jun?’ Dr Fu asked.
‘Tired,’ said Wang. ‘Low.’
The doctor nodded sympathetically.
‘But you have improved. When you came here in November you barely ate or spoke and spent most of your time in bed. You are much more sociable now. I see you out in the yard every day, chatting with the other patients.’
Wang shrugged.
‘There’s not much in the way of intellectual stimulation here, is there?’ continued Dr Fu. ‘Don’t you want to return to university and finish your education? You have been here for four months. Wouldn’t you like to try, Wang Jun?’
Wang’s gaze hardened. ‘I am not ready to be discharged,’ he said. Then, after a pause, ‘Can I go?’
Before Dr Fu could nod his consent, Wang had scraped back his chair and stood up. Though the doctor was offended, he did not insist Wang stay and discuss the matter further. As well as paying the monthly fee, Wang’s father was making generous donations to the hospital and would continue to do so as long as his son was resident there. Progress meeting adjourned.
‘Toothpaste?’
Wang looked at Zeng Yan in his vest, silver dog-tags and faded jeans, holding his forefinger out. He grudgingly squeezed some toothpaste out of the tube on to Zeng’s finger and Zeng grinned and rubbed the toothpaste on his teeth. Wang ignored him. He leant over the sink and washed his face.
Wang hadn’t spoken much to Zeng, but knew of him. The boy from the south who had chased his dreams of pop stardom to Beijing, only to end up selling his body in karaoke bars. Zeng was handsome enough to be on magazine covers and TV, but Wang had heard him singing Faye Wong ballads and knew his ambitions of becoming a professional singer wouldn’t amount to much. ‘Stop torturing us! You can’t sing!’ some of the patients yelled.
‘What do you madmen know about singing?’ Zeng yelled back. Though they were the same age, Wang hadn’t gone out of his way to make friends with Zeng. Wang didn’t know much about homosexuals, but had heard they had AIDs and other diseases and thought it safest to avoid him entirely.
Zeng gargled and spat in the sink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and said, ‘I heard you’re a rich kid. That your father is a Communist official.’
Wang shrugged.
‘Why didn’t your father send you to a proper clinic then?’ asked Zeng. ‘Somewhere they actually treat patients so they get better, instead of drugging them and locking them up?’
‘He is punishing me,’ Wang said.
‘For what? He must really hate you,’ said Zeng. ‘If I were you I’d get the hell out of here. Run away.’
Wang countered, ‘Why don’t you run away?’
Zeng laughed. ‘After they arrested me, I was lucky to be sent here and not to Re-education Through Labour. Run away and I’ll end up in prison. But you should get out, Wang Jun. The police won’t go looking for you.’
Wang rubbed his face with the towel. Arrested for what? he wondered. Sodomy? Singing in public? Zeng leant his hip against the sink, tilted his peroxide-dyed head to one side and watched Wang with interest.
‘Why are you here anyway?’ asked Zeng. ‘You don’t seem ill to me.’
‘I had a breakdown at university.’
‘Didn’t you go to Beida? You must be a genius. I heard the cleverest people in China go there.’
Wang thought of his classmates and laughed. ‘The richest,’ he corrected. ‘The ones with the best guanxi. The ones who are good at passing exams.