Beijing Coma Read Online Free PDF Page A

her. One time when she turned round she tossed me a plum, but I didn’t catch it. The purple fruit rolled down the path, then came to a stop. ‘You idiot!’ she cried out, taking a few steps towards me. ‘No wonder you haven’t been allowed to join the Young Pioneers.’ When she spoke to me I could see her white teeth . . .
    The images are as light and brittle as falling leaves. Cells drift through the fluids of your body, leaving no trace.
    Lulu fades away, and all I see is a red plum rolling down a pavement . . . I remember the earthquake that shook northern China in 1976, a few weeks before Chairman Mao died. I was about to start secondary school. My father was granted a month’s leave from the Shandong camp so that he could look after us in Beijing. Although the tremors in the capital had been faint, everyone was told to sleep outside for a month in case there were any aftershocks. The residents of the opera company’s dormitory block moved into a large tent that had been erected for us in the yard. My parents, brother and I had to share a single camp bed. I slept so close to my father that our noses touched. One night, when the rain was beating down onto the plastic sheeting above our heads, my father glared at me, his eyes cold with fear, and whispered, ‘Don’t go over to the tree. The officers will take a note of your name. Remember, you’re the son of a rightist – you must learn to live with your tail tucked between your legs.’
    The tree he was referring to was about a hundred metres from our tent. A few days after Mao died, someone had hung dummies of the four leaders of the Central Committee from the tree’s branches.
    My father didn’t know that on the way home from school that day, I’d squeezed into the crowd that had gathered around the tree and taken a look. There were three male dummies labelled Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, and one female labelled Jiang Qing. They swayed back and forth in the breeze.
    I can’t remember much about that month in the tent. But I remember one meal we all had together. There was fried chicken and beer. My father cooked a large pot of braised rice noodles. He added to it some dried fungus he’d brought with him from the camp. It was full of sand, but it let off a delicious aroma that filled the tent. As he stirred the pot, he turned his red face to me and gave me one of his rare smiles. When he’d returned home for a few days the year before, he’d slapped me in the face for tearing down a large, handwritten political poster.
    It was during the weekly residents’ meeting in the yard. He played a tune from the ‘The Red Detachment of Women’ on his violin, then another one on his accordion. All the kids sang along with him: ‘ The Red Detachment of Women are Chairman Mao’s most faithful soldiers  . . .’ I could hear my brother’s flat tones squeaking above the other voices. A few minutes later, the chairwoman of the neighbourhood committee rose to her feet and said: ‘Please can all parents ensure that their children attend the cultural activities we organise every Sunday.’ Then she pointed to the large noticeboard beside the front gates and said, ‘Someone has torn off the corner of that big-character poster criticising Lin Biao and Confucius. Who did it?’
    ‘Me!’ I blurted. Everyone’s eyes turned to me, and then to my father.
    I saw a look of terror flash across his face. He was sitting under a large tree. Everyone could see him. He lifted his hands from his violin and locked them tightly together.
    ‘Why did you tear it?’ my mother said, pulling me up onto my feet.
    My father’s frightened face grew sombre. No one could have respected a man who had such a cowardly expression.
    ‘I was going to the toilet and I forgot to bring some paper with me, so I tore off a small corner of the poster.’
    ‘I tore some off too!’ admitted a boy who lived on the first floor. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a