Read Beijing Coma for Free Online Page A

my goal. I moved my lips towards it. She pushed me back again and we tussled for a while until her arms grew weak. When her face looked up at me again, I floated once more towards her white breath. I stroked her hair and her nose, then pressed my mouth over her lips and pushed my tongue between them until, with a sigh, she relaxed her clenched jaw. Her tongue felt warm and soft. She moved her lips and, like a fish, sucked the saliva from my mouth.
    I remember my trembling hand reaching towards her thighs and my legs shaking as I undid her belt and touched her warm stomach. When I stretched my hand inside her knickers, the lower half of my body disconnected from me and performed a dance of its own . . .
    ‘My hair’s all messy now,’ she said when it was over, clasping my hand. ‘And I forgot to bring a comb with me. What if someone sees me like this?’
    ‘Don’t worry.’ I let go of her hand and she sat up straight.
    ‘You’re such a hooligan,’ she said, doing up her belt.
    ‘No, I’m not. You’re the first girl I’ve ever touched.’
    ‘Did you notice that plastic grip Huang Lingling was wearing in her hair today? She doesn’t come from an artistic family. Who does she think she is, trying to pretty herself up like that?’ Then she moved close to me again and whispered, ‘I’m going to tell you something about my name. I want to see if you can keep a secret. My name is “Lu”, as in “road”, because I was born on the road. My mother was in the countryside on a training programme to prepare citizens for a possible American attack. Her group were made to run for hours, then throw themselves onto the ground, as though enemy planes were dropping bombs overhead. The third time my mother threw herself down, she couldn’t get up again. That’s when she gave birth to me. Because she didn’t complete the training, she was labelled a “backward element”.’
    ‘I promise on Chairman Mao that I won’t tell anyone.’ The sperm stuck to my trousers felt cold and sticky. I wasn’t in a mood to talk.
    During that moment of bliss, you were able to forget yourself and leave your body behind. That secret pipe was your road to a new home that felt both strange and familiar.
    One afternoon, I climbed into Lulu’s bedroom through the window. She had left it open for me so that I would escape the notice of her grandmother, who was in the bedroom next door removing the covers from the quilts. It was a Sunday, and her mother and stepfather were both out.
    After my father’s rehabilitation was confirmed, my family was able to move from the single room in the opera company’s dormitory block to a two-bedroom flat in a large residential compound of four-storey apartment buildings. Lulu’s family was moved into an apartment in the same compound, so we were still neighbours.
    She locked her door and we sat on her bed, and I listened to her play the harmonica. She’d transcribed all the melodies from The Best 200 Foreign Love Songs tape. I liked listening to the noise of the instrument and the sound of her breathing.
    I pulled from my bag the copy I’d made of the banned novella A Young Girl’s Heart . I’d spent the previous three nights writing it out. She put down her harmonica and leafed through the twenty-seven pages of neat handwriting.
    ‘Be careful!’ I said to her. ‘The glue hasn’t dried yet.’ The previous night, I’d chewed some noodles into a paste and used it to stick the pages together.

‘Is it a dirty book?’ She put it down on her bed and made me a cup of tea with an expensive-looking tea bag.
    ‘I bet you could brew five cups from that bag. Apparently, in the hotels where foreigners stay, there are baskets of tea bags like that in all the rooms. You can help yourself to as many as you like.’ I glanced at the photographs under the table’s glass top and said, ‘You’ve got lots of family photos.’
    On the cabinet by the wall there was a radio, a bust of Chairman Mao and an