Beijing Coma by Ma Jian Read Free Book Online

store the previous day.
    She took the tongs from me and turned them around, inspecting them carefully. I watched her fingers move through the beam of sunlight. Her nails turned a transparent red. The lines of dirt caught under the tips looked like tiny crescent moons. I walked over and put my hands around hers. Together we clutched the tongs, squeezing tighter and tighter. Our hands began to tremble. We moved closer until our lips were almost touching. We were both breathing very loudly. ‘I want to kiss you,’ I said.
    She blushed and pulled her hands away. ‘It’s still light outside. Someone might see us.’
    I wanted to hold her hands again, but she wouldn’t let me. So I sat back down on the bed. Lowering my gaze to her thighs, I said, ‘Make sure the tongs aren’t too hot. You should test them with a piece of paper first. If the paper goes yellow, let them cool down a little before you use them.’
    ‘We’re still only fifteen,’ she muttered, then turned her head towards me again and said, ‘What happens if the tongs scorch my hair?’
    I thought of how my mother’s hair looked after she curled it. ‘I’ll do it for you. I promise I’ll be careful.’ I could feel myself blushing. ‘We’ve locked the door. What are you afraid of?’
    She sat down at the end of the bed.
    ‘What about when I go to school? Will I be able to press the curls down?’
    ‘You can hide them under a hat. No one will see them. If you want to get rid of them, you only have to wash your hair.’
    ‘Things have become so much more open now. People don’t say “you’re nice” any more, they say “I love you”.’
    ‘I love you!’ I blurted. The words came out very easily, because I’d been practising saying them all morning.
    She fell silent. Her face went bright red. She tried to cover a part of it with her hand.
    ‘If you want to love me, you must be faithful to me and never dance with other girls. Apparently a few of the older kids at school have been having dance parties at their homes when their parents are away.’
    ‘I know. Suyun’s been to one. She’s still going out with that boy who works in the pharmaceutical company.’
    ‘I forbid you to talk to her, or go to any dance party she invites you to. She’s only fifteen but she already owns a digital watch. Her morals are definitely suspect. You must promise on Chairman Mao’s life that you won’t speak to her again.’
    ‘I can’t dance,’ I said. ‘And anyway, her watch is a fake. It doesn’t tell the time . . .’
    ‘I don’t want big curls,’ Lulu said. ‘I want them to look natural.’ She untied her two small plaits, dipped a comb into a cup of water, then ran it through her jet-black hair, slowly straightening out the waves. ‘Does it look pretty like this? If I let it grow a little longer I’ll have proper shoulder-length hair.’
    ‘Only girls with loose morals have shoulder-length hair. Even adult women who go to work aren’t allowed to grow it that long.’
    ‘Ha! You’re too conservative. The woman who played the Party branch secretary in that revolutionary opera we saw last week wore a shoulder-length wig, so it can’t be that immoral.’
    ‘Still, it’s safest to keep it in a short bob.’ I could feel my heart thumping again. I moved my distracted gaze to the window. Lulu lived on the ground floor, so by three o’clock, the sunlight would already begin to leave her room. Our flat on the third floor remained sunny for at least an hour longer. A crab-claw lotus plant in a terracotta pot was sucking the condensation from her window. The flowers looked moist and red. The petals I’d knocked off as I’d climbed through the window lay limply on the sill.
    ‘I want to kiss you,’ I repeated, as thoughts of her smooth stomach and warm vagina filled my mind again.
    ‘You can’t. It’s not dark yet.’ She walked over to the mirror. ‘Your mother sings in the chorus. She must have an official licence to get a