Ma Jian - The Dark Road

‘Still clinging to those outmoded Confucian beliefs! I warn you, the modern world will leave you behind.’

‘Huh! Just a few days on the road and already you’ve become worldly-wise! Don’t forget, you left school at eight while I graduated at sixteen, so I’ll always be cleverer than you.’

‘Stop being so patronising. We’re both fugitives now. Let’s see how far your male chauvinism gets you here.’

‘Oh God! I’ve just remembered. I left our Kong family register in the dugout.’

‘Was it wrapped in newspaper, on top of that old edition of the Analects ?’

‘Yes. It dates back to Emperor Qianlong’s reign. It’s the twenty-second volume in the series, and proves that I’m a seventy-sixth generation descendant of Confucius in the direct patrilineal line.’

‘Look how you gloat at being his successor!’ Mother says, pinching his ear.

‘Well, Confucius had to wander through the country like a stray dog after he was banished from the State of Lu. So I’m happy to become a stray dog as well for a while, as long as I have you, my little bitch, to keep me company!’

‘You rascal!’ says Mother, running her hand further up Father’s sleeve to pinch his chest. In the darkness surrounding them, all that can be perceived is their laughter and warm breath. Someone wanders out on deck to have a smoke. Another figure leans out of a porthole to drop an empty orange crate into the river.

‘We’ve been away two weeks now,’ says Meili, nuzzling her face against his jacket. ‘I still haven’t dared write to my mother. What are we going to live on now?’

‘Don’t worry. I signed up to join the demolition team. They pay thirty yuan a day. So we can stay here until our son is born. In a year’s time, I’ll have saved enough money to pay the fine for his illegal birth, and we can all go home.’ He slides his hand up onto Meili’s breast. She feels her face grow warm. He hasn’t touched her for days.

‘It frightens me to think how little we have now,’ she says.

‘Yes, we’re starting from scratch, but we’ll soon have everything settled.’

‘I mean, I feel empty, cut off… You won’t leave me, will you?’

‘Never. Let me feel our baby.’ Kongzi lifts Meili’s jumper, undoes the lower buttons of her shirt and places both hands on her belly.

‘What if it’s a girl?’ she says, her heart thumping.

‘Well, she won’t be recorded in the family register with the boys of her generation who’ve been assigned “Righteousness” as the first character of their name.’

‘Never mind, let’s call her “Happiness” then.’

‘Yes, that’s good. And we can still add “Righteousness” to the name when we register her with the government.’

‘You really think we’ll be able to get this baby officially registered?’

‘Absolutely! Once it’s born, I won’t rest until I’ve made enough money to pay the fine…’

‘Your hands are freezing. Let’s go back to the cabin.’ As soon as Meili pushes Kongzi’s hands off her belly, he slides them between her thighs.

‘Don’t touch me there, it hurts…’ she says, sensing herself losing control.

‘It hurts? Let me make you feel better then…’

Meili feels her blood vessels prickle as though filled with scuttling spiders. She stretches out and lets the waves of pleasure sweep through her… ‘Don’t press on my belly. Keep going, keep going…’ Her thighs tremble against the metal bench; inside her leather shoes her ten toes clench.

With his hand still inside her, Kongzi puts a cigarette to his mouth and lights up.

‘Put that out!’ Meili says, tugging his hand out of her and wiping his middle finger on her sleeve.

A cruise boat sails past, a Viennese waltz pouring from loudspeakers on its rear deck. The breeze blowing across the river smells of spring earth and new growth.

‘As long as we stay together, I don’t care how many children we have. I just want us to be happy.’

‘Didn’t I make you happy just now?’

‘Be serious for a minute! If you loved me, you wouldn’t want to put me in danger. But it’s strange: the river does feel safer than the land…’

The infant spirit notices that there are fewer people walking along the bank now. The lights shining near the wharf sink the distant buildings into a deeper darkness.

KEYWORDS: cruise ship, wawa soup, kitten-heeled shoes, Three Gorges Resettlement Programme, boat puller, two dragons, bulldozer.

THE MAY SUNLIGHT gleams over the Yangtze, soaking up the river mist and spreading it about the deck. As the damp seeps into Meili’s skin, she feels her body soften and warm blood course through her veins into her unborn child and its infant spirit. In a relaxed stupor, it extends a leg. Don’t kick so hard, Meili whispers. She’s leaning on the deck railing wearing a white shirt and a long flowery skirt. When the breeze drops, her skirt becomes still. She’s finished washing Kongzi’s dirty work clothes and has hung them out to dry. Whether you’re a boy or a girl, you’re my flesh and blood and I’ll make sure you have a good life, she whispers, stroking her belly. You’ll go to university, then find a job in a tall building. Every morning, you’ll take a lift to your office on the top floor.

Kongzi’s white vest and her white bra flap in the wind. Meili sees a tall cruise ship glide slowly upstream like a floating skyscraper. Against the blue sky, the tourists on the front deck resemble party balloons tethered to the white railings. They turn their cameras to her. One man smiles broadly and waves. Meili raises her hand, about to wave back, but feels her face redden and quickly lowers her head. Inside her womb, the fetus squirms like a fish in a net. A foreigner, she says to herself, regretting her uncouth appearance. Kongzi told her that foreign men travel to China with the sole intention of sleeping with Chinese girls.

The ship’s large wake rocks the boats and barges moored at the bank. Meili stares at the white clouds sliding across the blue-green water, and the spray hovering above the wake’s splashing waves. Time seems to slow down. She looks up at the river town and through the corner of her eye sees the cruise ship slip away. Beyond it, where the river becomes enclosed by two bulging precipices, a small raft appears to sway towards a place beyond river and sky.

What am I doing, lazing in the sun like an old woman? she says to herself, then remembers that this morning she must go into town to buy mosquito coils and fresh vegetables. It’s her third wedding anniversary today. Kongzi has given her a pair of kitten-heeled shoes as a present, and she’s eager to try them out. They’ve been away for almost three months now, and this evening she wants the three of them to enjoy a celebratory meal. Although the barge hotel is foul-smelling and shabby, there’s a television in the meeting room, which Nannan is happy to watch for hours, so the days go pleasantly by. Meili also wants to phone her brother, who’s working in a coal mine with her father fifty kilometres from Nuwa, and tell him to go home and assure her mother that all is well. As it’s the second week of May, he’ll need to spray the sesame plants with insecticide. Her grandmother is eighty years old and too frail to help in the fields.

‘Me want jump in river, Mummy!’ Nannan cries, rushing out onto the deck and stepping onto the lower railing. ‘Me want see King Crab’s palace.’

‘Get down!’ Meili cries. ‘That palace only exists in the television — it’s not real.’

‘It is real! Me saw it. It has ice cream and big bed.’ Nannan is wearing a long green dress, and has her hair in two small bunches.