‘Why did you shout “stay” then shout “go”?’ Tang Guoxian asked Wang Fei, who was sitting beside him.
‘I just needed to shout,’ Wang Fei said. ‘I can’t hold my anger in any longer. Those fucking bastards!’
After the vote, Old Fu said, ‘The response for us to go was louder. So I now declare that we will withdraw from the Square! Everyone must file out through the south-east corner…’
The lights in the Square came back on. A second later, the machine guns opened fire, spraying rounds of bullets at the loudspeakers above us. The bullets screeched past our heads, hit the Monument’s obelisk and showered the cement ground with chips of stone. The students packed on the upper terrace screamed. Now that the loudspeakers had been silenced, the soldiers set to work. Some went to smash the shelters, others knelt down and aimed their rifles at us. The rest moved forward, skirting the spilt petrol that Tang Guoxian had just set light to.
Then a detachment of helmeted soldiers and armed police charged towards us wielding electric batons. They kicked and pushed their way to the top terrace and began driving everyone off the Monument. Soldiers with bayonets rushed up there too, and stared menacingly at the students climbing down to the lower terrace, prodding with their bayonets anyone who moved too slowly. They clubbed the students who were sitting on the steps. A few guys were beaten so badly their faces were covered in blood.
‘They’ve gone up to arrest the ringleaders,’ Wu Bin shouted. ‘Quickly, let’s go and protect Bai Ling.’ He and Tang Guoxian ran up the steps. Wang Fei followed behind. But without his glasses, he couldn’t see a thing, and he soon tripped and fell. I hurried over and pulled him to his feet. But as I stood up again, a soldier behind me knocked me to the ground…
The past surges forward like white waves crashing into a bay.
It’s the evening of Christmas Day. My thoughts are racing about wildly, because at this very moment, on the other side of the world, Tian Yi is about to get married.
My mother packed her suitcase and left home again this afternoon. A migrant labourer has just brought her back. He found her lying on the ground fast asleep, clutching her suitcase to her chest, while the bulldozers and trucks roared around her.
The communal heating has been turned off. This building is like an empty rubbish bin standing in the snow.
The only warm patch of skin on my body now is the place over my heart where the sparrow is sitting. I think of the freezing concrete pipe in which I hid with Lulu. I think of my father picking up his violin as he lay on his deathbed and playing a hymn. Although two of the strings screeched a little, he played with great earnestness. The last few notes seemed to hover between earth and heaven.
It is morning in America now. Perhaps there will be bells ringing in the church. Tian Yi will wear a white wedding dress and have her photograph taken surrounded by bouquets of flowers. I’m sure she will be clutching a few petals in her palm. I once promised I would give her a house, and a garden with a reclining chair…
I wonder if any of our old classmates will be attending the wedding. Ke Xi left America a couple of years ago, and has moved to Taiwan. He’s opened two small snack bars that sell spiced lamb skewers. Han Dan moved to America after he was released from prison, and is doing a PhD in political science, and Shu Tong and Lin Lu are in Boston, so those three will probably be at the wedding. No one has heard from Wu Bin and Sun Chunlin since they sought asylum in France. Perhaps they’ve met up with Tang Guoxian. After his epic journey across Siberia, he found God, settled in Marseille, and is now a Catholic priest.
Wang Fei’s fate is the reverse of mine. His body is alive, but his spirit has been killed. When he’s released from the Ankang mental hospital, perhaps he can go back to playing basketball. Maybe, by then, he will have lost all capacity to feel pain.
The headlamps of a passing vehicle fill this cold flat with a snowy-white light. They are probably illuminating the half-dead streets, telegraph poles and the mounds of concrete slabs on the construction site as well, and making the eyes of the cats crouched on the steel girders shine gold. I remember the bright patches of unmelted snow that would dot the compound in late December. You could spot them no matter where they were hidden. Girls in thin jackets would stand shivering under the locust tree, stamping their feet to warm themselves up, letting out an occasional shriek that made the cold air shudder.
‘Look what I just found among last year’s bills. I wonder who sent it. There’s a foreign address on the back.’ My mother comes into my room, tosses an envelope onto the pile of junk at the bottom of my bed and walks out again.
My heart jumps. Perhaps it’s a letter from A-Mei. I think of the bloodstained letter lying in the box for my ashes and wonder what it might have said… On a mountain seventy li north grow red flowers that can cure sadness and nightmares… I want to go to that mountain. But what is its name, and where is it?
The noise of crashing walls and bricks moves closer and closer…
In the mounting chaos, the tanks and armoured personnel carriers moved closer, shaking the ground so much that my head bobbed up and down.
They continued to push forward, forcing the students to the east of the Monument to begin evacuating the Square. The remaining crowds at the base shrieked in panic and retreated back onto the Monument. Thousands of students were still packed on the lower terrace. There were loud screams as people were knocked over or trampled underfoot. A few students who were being crushed against the balustrades at the edge of the terrace climbed over and jumped off.
I watched tanks driving back and forth across the nylon tents in the north, and wondered whether the boy I’d seen writing out his will had escaped. I never found my backpack. The thermos cup that Ge You brought me from Shenzhen had presumably been flattened by now. Two foreign journalists took flash photographs as more students began to file out towards the south-east. A band of plain-clothes policemen dressed like reporters snatched the cameras from the journalists, twisted their arms back and dragged them off into the bushes. One of my shoes had been pulled off during the stampede. I took off the other one and flung it at the battalion of soldiers behind us. They were forcing us forward, striking us over the heads with the butts of their guns as though they were driving out a pack of dogs.
We continued south across the Square along a route lined with armed police. A student at the front of our column began shouting slogans through a loudspeaker. The crowd became restive. A voice yelled, ‘I’m not leaving. I want to die here in the Square!’ Another cried, ‘Someone help me! I can’t walk!’ The soldiers behind us were clutching guns, the butts pointing in the air, ready to attack us if we stepped out of line. Wang Fei glanced back and shouted, ‘Down with Fascism!’ and was immediately struck across the face. The butt of the soldier’s gun hit my shoulder as it swung past. A girl who was being kicked ferociously by an armed police officer screamed, ‘Mum, help me…’
At last we squeezed our way out of the encirclement. As we walked away, we broke into the chorus of the Internationale, glanced back at the Square and flashed the victory sign. The noise of gunfire and screaming seemed to light up the sky.
One guy bravely unfurled a banner that said ALL DICTATORS WILL PERISH! I too felt my fear slip away as we moved further from the Square.
I looked back again. About three hundred students were still sitting on the south side of the Monument, refusing to move. The soldiers and policemen surrounding them were kicking and clubbing them. I spotted Zhang Jie among the crowd. He stood up and waved a flag but was quickly struck down by a rifle butt.
Xiao Li appeared in front of me. He looked smaller. His eyes were red. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, and the skin underneath was ripped open. He was covered in dirt and blood.