Forbidden City (16 page)

“Ni men yi ding feng le! Ni men xiang gan shen me? Ting zhi she ji!
Are you insane? What are you doing? Stop the shooting!”

“Lao Xu! Stop!” I screamed as a soldier turned towards Lao Xu’s running figure.

The soldier raised his AK 47.

Crack!

Lao Xu spun around, his arms flung skyward. Before he fell the AK 47 spit flame again and the burst blew Lao Xu off his feet. His body slammed to the pavement, one leg caught under him, arms flung wide, his head twisted to the side at an impossible angle. His blood began to run onto the road, a dark stream in the red light.

Frozen, I stared at his still form. The thunder roared again. Someone beside me fell to the sidewalk. Someone fell against me, knocking me heavily to the ground on my back. Someone fell across my body, her head on my chest, facing me. There was a dark flower in the middle of her forehead. The flower slowly grew larger, then dark liquid trickled from it, flowing into her staring eye and across her cheek and onto my chest.

I shrieked and struggled, pushing her slack body away as other bodies fell around me

The firing stopped abruptly. I got up and ran with the screaming, panicking crowd, turned the corner into Tian An Men Square, ran along the sidewalk beside the Great Hall of the People. I tripped on something and fell headlong onto the wide steps
of the building. My forehead struck the concrete, sending a blinding flash of pain through my head. I got up onto my hands and knees. The fleeing crowd surged and flowed around me as I vomited on the steps.

I got to my feet, spitting and wiping my mouth on my sleeve. Strangely, the pain and convulsion of vomiting seemed to calm me a little. I looked around. The gunfire behind me had stopped. I could see that the soldiers near the burning buses had cleared a huge section of the square, the way a sharp scythe cuts down grass. There was shooting in the distance, to the south, where Eddie was.

I still had the camcorder around my wrist. I examined it turning it over in my hands, as if I had all the time in the world. It seemed to be undamaged, although there were scuffmarks on the plastic case. I raised it to my eye and videotaped the soldiers fanning out to my left.

I still had my backpack, too, so I shrugged it off and put the camcorder inside. I slung the pack back on, and took the tape recorder out of my pocket. I talked into it for a few moments, calmly, as if I were on the national news and I was reporting a bus accident in Borneo. I looked at my watch. It was 2:15
A.M.
I put the recorder back in my pocket.

I know it sounds crazy, but I just sat down there on the steps and looked around. To my left, the ghostly soldiers, illuminated by the burning buses, were still slowly advancing, fanning out. I couldn’t
see much to the right except masses of people milling around, not sure of what to do. Directly across the square from me was the museum, lit up with amber lights. Tiny figures flitted along the edge of the roof. Tiny pin-points of light flashed, followed by the
pok-pok-pok
of the guns. Soldiers were firing down into the square. I checked out Mao’s mausoleum. Soldiers lined the roof there, too. It struck me that the roof of the Great Hall behind me must be manned now, also, but still I didn’t move. I sat there, numb and paralysed, calmly watching the massacre.

From behind me and to my left came the throaty rumble of diesel engines. The rumble became a roar and a grinding vibration as if a rocket was taking off right beside me. And then I saw the first tank barging into the square, slamming one of the burning buses out of its way.

The tanks came on like obscene mutant insects in science fiction movies. The orange-red light from the flames on the buses flickered across them. On the top of each tank’s turret was a long machine gun. The hatches were closed.

The sight and sound of the tanks woke me up. I jumped to my feet and I ran towards the centre of the square where the students had set up their tent city. Before long I was in a mass of people again. I pushed deeper into the screaming and yelling crowd beside a line of buses.

I began to focus on faces, faces wild with anger
and streaked with tears. Many of the faces were young, and many had headbands across the forehead. I was in with the students now. There were thousands of them. And they weren’t moving.

I stopped. It’s funny how being in the middle of a sea of bodies gives you the feeling you’re safe.

I took out the two-way. “Eddie, this is Alex. Over.”

Nothing but a low hiss answered me. I tried again. “Eddie, can you hear me? It’s Alex. Over.”

“… hear you … wrong with the radio. Over.”

“Eddie something terrible has happened. Over.”

“… murdering people here, shooting indiscriminately into the crowds … directions … father? … — over.”

“I haven’t heard from him. Over.”

Nothing but a hiss.

“Eddie! Can you hear me? Over?”

Nothing. Desperately, I switched to five.

… incredible. They’ve stopped an armoured personnel carrier and set it afire right at the back gate of Zhong Nan Hai
.

… out of there! get out! They’re firing on the students! Repeat, they’re firing on the students!

The roar of diesel engines rose in the distance. I put the radio back into my pocket and clambered onto the roof of one of the two-section buses. There were at least a dozen students up there. One was waving a huge flag of China, his body swaying with the effort. The others, men and women, stood silent and defiant, arms linked, looking towards the
soldiers and the tanks. There were other buses near us, at least twenty of them, in an uneven line that didn’t quite reach across the square, and on the roof of every bus was a contingent of students holding banners and waving flags.

I heard the words “
wai guo ren”
and turned in the direction of the voice. A guy beside me was staring at me.

“You are American?” he asked in a thick accent. He was about my height, with long hair, a round face and wire framed glasses.

“No, Canadian.”

“Why you are here? It’s very danger. You should go.”

“Why don’t
you
go?”

He looked at me defiantly. “We have made the vow to stay here as long as we must. We won’t give in to fascist
PLA.”

In the distance I could see the tanks beginning to fan out, facing west, and then they stopped. Tiny sparks of flame sparkled at the front of each tank a split second before we heard the roar of machine-gun fire. From around me rose shouts of anger from the students. The machine guns chattered for at least ten seconds as dozens of citizens fell, shot in the back as they ran in the direction of the Beijing Hotel.

On the bus beside the one I was on someone was shouting through a loud-hailer. I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get out of the square. There was
no way I could do what Eddie wanted — get back to the hotel. Between it and me were at least a dozen tanks and hundreds of soldiers. From what Eddie had said, there were troops at the south end. The north was blocked. So that left one of the side streets. Pretty soon the square would be sealed off completely. When that happened, the soldiers might do anything, might kill all the students and citizens they could. Including me.

I had to get out of there.

But I was still my father’s son. And I was still Lao Xu’s friend. So I brought the camcorder to my eye and did a slow pan of the scene before me — the buses in flames, the soldiers advancing in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace towards the Goddess of Democracy, the tanks firing.

Then, through the viewfinder, I saw the tanks, in unison, turn towards us and start to move forward. They came on, slowly, moving up on a barricade of roadway standards. The sparks flashed again. The roar of guns split the air. The tanks were advancing on the students, firing as they ground forward.

I lowered the camcorder, ready to get down off that bus. Before I had a chance to move, I saw the tanks stop. Soldiers appeared from behind them, forming in ranks, making a wide front. I scrambled down from the bus. I knew what they were going to do.

I pushed my way through the throng of students, skirting tents, bicycles, and carts. Most of the students held fast. A few moments later, the AK 47s
began to rattle. And the screaming started over again.

I turned away, heading back across the square towards the Bank of China on the corner of a street that intersected with the west side of the square. Maybe I could slip down that narrow tree-lined street and get away from the tanks and the guns.

It took me about five minutes to get to the bank. I crouched behind a car in front of the bank with three or four students, trying to get my breath. The street was dark. I took off my pack again and I was putting the camcorder inside, thinking it was about time I concentrated on getting away for good, when I heard
“wai guo ren”
again.

“That is TV camera?”

The woman beside me looked young. Only the dirty white headband with
Democracy Now
in Chinese on it told me she was a university student. She was short and thin, with long pigtails. Her face was streaked with dirt.

“Yes.”

“Then you are reporter. You must help us. Please tell the outside world what is happening here. You must get the news outside.”

She turned to the others and talked fast in Chinese. They nodded their agreement to whatever she had said. I took a look over the hood of the car. The troops in the distance had stopped firing.

Suddenly, around the corner of the bank, a squad of
PLA
appeared. An arrow of fear cut into my chest. I froze.

But the students behind the car with me didn’t. They jumped up. Two of them, the woman and a guy with glasses on, hauled me to my feet. Their panic infected me immediately and before I knew it I was running down the dark street with them. We ran along the side of the road where the shadows were deepest.

Behind me I heard a shout, then the hollow rattle of machine-gun fire. Something that felt like a baseball bat slammed into the back of my leg, knocking it out from under me. I fell heavily to the road, face first, cracking my skull against the curb and driving all the breath from my chest. I groaned and gasped, trying to get my breath back, in a daze. I got to my knees, and tried to crawl away from the guns.

Hands pulled at my clothing, yanked my backpack off my body. Hands gripped my arms, my legs. I began to float, moaning and gasping, trying to breathe. I struggled to get free, but the iron hands held me.

I was lying on my back, on something hard. I heard voices in another language murmuring in the air around me. I lay still, drifting down into sleep, then up again to the voices and the pounding ache that filled my head, then down again. I guess I stayed half awake for quite a while. My head ached so much
that I was afraid to open my eyes and my body felt so heavy, as if I was lying under a lead blanket, that I didn’t want to move.

Later — I had no idea how much later — I floated up to the ache and the voices to feel a burning pain in my right leg. Slowly I opened my eyes, letting them adjust to the light. I tried to turn my head and felt an avalanche of pain thundering through my skull. I heard myself groan as I shut my eyes and kept absolutely still, hoping I would go to sleep again to stop the terrible ache. I did.

The next time I woke I felt alive at least. My head ached a bit. My leg hurt a lot. But at least my body didn’t seem made of cement.

It was still light, and the first thing I thought was, what time is it? I dragged my arm from under the heavy quilt that covered me. My watch said June 4, 5:52
A.M.
I thought for a second, trying to get my brain in gear. The last time I had checked my watch it was about 2:35
A.M.
Add a half hour at most for what had happened in between, and I figured they got me about 3:00
A.M.
So I had been out for almost three hours. It seemed more like three days.

A bolt of fear shot through me as I remembered I had been captured by soldiers. The same kind of soldiers who had murdered Lao Xu and probably grabbed my dad, or worse. The same soldiers who had shot at me. And there was no one to help me. No one else in the whole country knew where I was — or that I existed, for that matter. I was totally alone.

I heard machine-gun fire in the distance, a quick burst. The fear began to grow and spread through me, like a stain. What would they do with me? Then I remembered my backpack. When they went through it they’d find out I had been taking pictures of the
PLA
shooting students and citizens in Tian An Men Square. I doubted if they’d be thrilled about that.

I lay there, terrified, listening for the voices again. Or more shooting.

I found I was able to turn my head now without it pounding me with pain. Wherever I was, they had put me in a corner on a very large and very hard bed. Above me was a white plaster ceiling. The wall beside the bed was dark grey brick. On the right side of the bed there was a screen with a wood frame and green cloth panels.

Gingerly, I worked my way up onto my elbows. The movement set off the fire in my right leg. Just past the foot of the bed, against the wall, was a small desk with a gooseneck lamp on it, and beyond that what looked like a tall wardrobe of dark wood. The wall opposite me was brick to a height of about one and a half metres. The rest was window, made of square panes set into wood frames. The window was only about six metres away. In front of the window stood a wooden wash stand with a white basin on it.