Forbidden City

by William Bell

“Got it, Dad. Over.”

  “Eddie? Over.”

  “Yeah, I picked you guys up. Nothing here so far. Over.”

  Lao Xu was seated beside me now, talking softly into the tape recorder and making notes to himself in quick, scrawly Chinese characters. I wrote down 1:10 and switched to five.

  … at least fifty trucks filled with troops, moving slowly from the west. They are temporarily stymied by the hastily rebuilt barricades and by the crowds …

  Back to one. Dad’s voice: “… setting fire to the buses that are ranged across Chang An just in front of me … I can’t tell who’s doing it. Over.”

  “Dad, I just got a report that fifty trucks full of troops are headed your way. You’d better move out. Over.” I closed my eyes and added to myself, Dad, please, for once, be sensible.

  1:20, channel five…. making their way slowly around the barriers. They are not stopping for the citizens in their way. I’ve seen at least two people crushed under the wheels of the trucks. I repeat. The troop trucks are driving into the crowds! They are not stopping. The crowd is parting reluctantly, letting them by …

  “Dad, get out! The troops are on their way! Over!”

  “Yes, I see them, Alex. I can see the trucks coming. The crowd is surging west to meet them. I’ll be okay. Over.”

  “Alex! Ted! I can hear shooting! I can hear shooting! It’s coming from somewhere south of the square! Over.”

  Lao Xu’s strained voice cut in. “No, no. He must be mistaken. The PLA wouldn’t shoot at the people!’

  I was already on my feet. I ran into the bedroom and grabbed my backpack. The camcorder was still in it. I rushed back into the living room and yanked battery packs out of the chargers and tossed them in the bag with some 8mm videotapes. I threw on my Mao jacket and pulled my cap on. I dashed to the desk, grabbed the tape recorder, and stuffed it into my jacket pocket. When I picked up the two-way Lao Xu finally clued in to what I was doing.

  “Shan Da, no! You must stay here!”

  “He won’t leave the square, Lao Xu. I know he won’t. The only way I can get him out of there is to drag him out.”

  “He’ll come back soon, Shan Da. He will!”

  “You don’t know him, Lao Xu. He’ll forget about everything except getting pictures. I’ve got to go get him out! I’m not staying here while he’s down there!”

  Lao Xu searched my face for a moment. I guess he realized he’d have to tie me up and gag me to get me to stay. He went to the door and threw on his own sports jacket.

  “Then I must go with you.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Wait. Tell Eddie and your father what we’re doing.”

  “No way. By the time we finish arguing, I’ll be twenty-three years old.”

  We tore out of the suite and down the hall. We got down to the lobby to find a couple of hundred people massed in front of the hotel doors gawking into the street, all talking at once. We shoved rudely through the crowd and ran out onto Chang An Avenue. Once there we found that running was impossible. So we threaded and shouldered our way through the masses of bodies as fast as we could. To the west of us we could see flames with wicked black smoke roiling up from them. That must be the buses and armoured personnel carrier burning, I thought.

  We had almost reached the statue of the Goddess of Democracy when Dad came on the radio “The troops are dismounting from the long line of trucks and forming up. They have AK 47s with fixed bayonets. They look like they mean business. Over.”

  I realized that I was holding the radio in one hand and the tape recorder in the other. I looked at my watch. 1:40 A.M. I talked into the recorder.

  “… coming towards me! I think they’ve seen the camera. “

  Lao Xu and I stopped. We were opposite the Gate of Heavenly Peace. The Goddess stood to our right in a blaze of white light. Between me and my dad were thousands of people and a barricade of burning buses lighting up the western reaches of the square.

  “… after me!”

  I held the two-way to my ear. I could hear my dad running and a lot of yelling in Chinese. Then I heard a crash.

  “No! Don’t!” A smashing sound. More yelling in Chinese. “Alex! They’ve —” Dad let out a blood chilling scream. The radio squealed, then went dead.

  I barged through the crowd towards the burning buses. Lao Xu was right beside me.

  “They got Dad!” I cried.

  Nearer the Great Hall of the People the crowd was thicker, if that was possible. We pushed through, got onto the sidewalk and stopped in front of the huge building. We could see the troops lined up right across Chang An Avenue. I looked around frantically, thinking I might see Dad somewhere. Lao Xu was talking rapidly to people around us and they were shaking their heads.

  I keyed the radio. “Eddie? Alex here. Over.”

  “Got you, Alex. Hey! You’ll never guess what I saw a minute ago. A guy walking around with a kid up on his shoulders, sight seeing. You’d have thought he was at Ontario Place! He —”

  “Eddie,” I heard my own voice shaking, “I think Dad’s been arrested. He might be badly hurt. Over.”

  Eddie was all business. For once I was glad of his take-charge tone. “Alex, you stay put, you hear? If he’s been picked up, Lau Xu and I can make a call. I’m going to head back now. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Over.”

  Eddie thought we were still in the hotel. As soon as he signed off we heard gunfire coming from the south.

  I’ve heard a lot of gunfire on TV and in the movies and it’s mostly pretty exciting, with a lot of pow and rat-tat-tat and the zing of ricochets. It doesn’t sound anything like what we heard echoing through the dark troubled city that night. The machine-gun bursts sounded as if someone far away was beating rapidly on hollow log with hard batons.

  There were two long bursts that seemed to go on forever. Probably they lasted five seconds each. The crowd around us started screaming in rage. You didn’t need Chinese to know what angered them. Guns, used by Chinese against Chinese. Out in the street the phalanx of PLA began to move towards the square, slowly, stepping in unison. The long wide column was lit by the eerie orange-red light from the flaming buses. They held their AK 47s at waist level, bayonets forward. The flickering orange-red light made them look cold and mechanical.

  The crowd let them get about twenty yards, then started throwing things — stones, bottles, anything. Individuals would burst from the crowd in the street and hurl something, then disappear back into the mass of people.

  “Shan Da, we must leave!”

  I stuffed the radio, still on receive mode, and the tape recorder into my pockets and struggled out of my pack. I pulled out the camcorder and shouldered the pack again. I looped the camcorder’s strap tightly around my wrist and started to record the machine-like advance of the soldiers, not thinking, possessed by the idea that I had to get this on tape, thinking, people have to see this, people have to know this happened.

  Lao Xu was yanking at the back of my coat, trying to pull me away. I shrugged him off.

  Through the viewfinder I saw the soldiers stop.

  They raised their AK 47s to their shoulders.

  Then the night was split open as if a long earsplitting roll of thunder had burst in the sky above us.

  I could see it all through the viewfinder, as if I were watching under water. Long spears of flame shot out of the ends of the AK 47s. People dropped away from the crowd in the street. Some fell in heaps like sacks of grain pushed from the back of a truck. Some seemed to leap backward as if yanked on ropes, to collapse on the road, unmoving. The deafening volley continued for at least ten seconds.

  The people surged away from the guns, roaring, screaming as the crowd rolled backward to the east. People around me on the sidewalk shouted in rage and terror, waving fists in the air, shrinking back towards the Great Hall a little, but not turning and running, holding on as if they were numbed by what was happening. One voice separated itself from the din. It was Lao Xu.

  H
e had stopped pulling at my coat. “What are they doing?” he screamed. “What are they doing?” His face was ghostly red from the flames, his eyes wide, unbelieving.

  A tiny blob of flame separated from the crowd on the sidewalk across the avenue from us, arched gracefully into the air towards the soldiers, then fell to the road, bursting and sending a miniature river of flame towards them The snouts of the AK 47s came up in unison, spit flame, and the gunfire roared again. Bodies fell by the dozens.

  Lao Xu was still screaming, in Chinese now. He pushed his way through the crowd, elbowing his way towards the soldiers. I followed him to the curb. This time it was me clutching the back of his coat.

  “Lao Xu, no! Stay here!”

  We had a clear view now. We were on the front rank of the people on the sidewalk. The soldiers had lowered their guns and were standing still.

  Suddenly Lao Xu burst from the curb and into the street, running towards the soldiers just as they started to move forward again. He raised his hands in the air as if he imagined he could hold them back all by himself. In spite of the noise I could hear his enraged yelling.

  “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.”