Ma Jian - The Dark Road

KEYWORDS: balloons, uterine walls, work permit, vegetables, vaginal speculum.

AS KONGZI BOARDS the ferry holding a bag of rape seeds he plans to sow in Time Square, Meili asks Xixi to look after Nannan for the morning and prepares to go into town. She’s determined to prevent the infant spirit re-entering her womb, the fleshy prison in which it would be doomed to await another execution.

Standing at the edge of the river brushing her teeth, she watches Kongzi disembark on the other side. The colourful rags and plastic bags caught in the trees above him remind her of the balloons that were hung above their front door on their wedding day. It suddenly occurs to her that this view is unfamiliar. The river level must have fallen, exposing the rubbish-festooned trees. In the bright morning sun, the rags and plastic bags sparkle like jewels. The river has dropped and the days are getting colder. Meili remembers Kongzi say that they should start trying for a baby before winter sets in, so that by the time her bump shows it can be concealed under thick jumpers. He ejaculated twice last night onto the entrance gate of her state-owned womb. Get on with it, she tells herself. No time to waste.

The street is dusty and scattered with broken bricks. Workers with greasy hair push past her. When she catches sight of the forbidding sign of the Family Planning Centre, she hesitates. Installing a security device at the entrance of her womb would enrage Kongzi, but the thought of falling pregnant again and being bound to the surgical table of an abortion room fills her with greater dread. Happiness’s motionless face flashes through her mind.

She walks in and goes to the reception. ‘Comrade, I want an internal examination and an IUD insertion,’ she says to the young nurse sitting behind the counter.

The nurse’s eyes narrow. ‘I’ll need your identity card, marriage certificate and migrant workers’ fertility record.’

Meili’s mouth goes dry. ‘I only have an identity card and an abortion certificate,’ she replies. The nurse gives her invoices for a forty-yuan pelvic examination and a fifteen-yuan disposable vaginal speculum, then takes her to the Family Planning Management Room at the end of the corridor and hands her a married woman’s gynaecological and fertility assessment report form.

A female doctor wearing a white face mask palpates and prods Meili’s breasts and abdomen, then tells her to lie on the bed and let her legs flop apart. The nurse tears open a sachet, pulls out a plastic speculum the shape of a duck’s head, inserts the device’s cold beak into Meili’s vagina and opens it. A smell of disinfectant wafts into Meili’s body.

‘You say you just have one, three-year-old child, but it’s clear you’ve given birth much more recently,’ the doctor says, shining a torch onto Meili’s cervix. Then she turns to the nurse and says, ‘Write: smooth, no cervical erosion or polyps.’

‘Yes, look — you can tell these red nipples have just been sucked,’ the nurse says, resting her pen in her mouth and squeezing Meili’s left breast.

‘There’s no milk in there!’ Meili says. ‘I have no baby, I promise, just one daughter who’ll be four next month. I had an abortion last year. Why would I lie to you? I came here to have an IUD inserted because I don’t want to fall pregnant again.’ Meili is embarrassed by the redness of her nipples. It’s Kongzi’s fault: he insists on sucking them every night as he drops off to sleep.

‘Why didn’t you have one fitted after your first child?’ asks the doctor, glancing at Meili’s abortion certificate. ‘And what does your husband do?’ She clearly assumes that Meili is a hair-salon prostitute.

‘He’s a boatman, and grows some vegetables on the side,’ Meili answers, feeling ashamed of Kongzi’s diminished status. She winces with pain as the speculum continues to stretch open her cervix.

‘All right, we’ll give her an IUD,’ the doctor says, pulling on rubber gloves. ‘You’re lucky the director isn’t here today. If he were, we’d have to take you straight up to the third floor and get you sterilised.’

‘But women are only supposed to be sterilised after their second child, and I only have one.’ Meili looks at the door, unconsciously preparing for an escape.

‘How do we know how many children you have? You said you were at the end of your cycle, but look how much blood there is on your sanitary towel. Are your periods usually so heavy? When did this one start?’

‘Ten days ago. They’re very irregular.’ She wonders whether the doctor has seen traces of Kongzi’s sperm inside her. A wad of surgical gauze is pushed into her vagina and twirled around. She grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut. Beads of sweat run down her face.

A cold pair of forceps yanks Meili’s cervix forward, then a long needle is inserted into her womb, extracted and measured against a selection of IUDs.

‘I suggest this oval one,’ the nurse says to Meili. ‘It’s a domestic product, and only costs eighty yuan. The Sino-foreign joint venture ones cost two hundred. Go for the cheaper one. With the procedure fee, it will come to 180 yuan.’

‘Oh no! I don’t have that much money on me,’ Meili says, wishing she could close her legs. ‘I thought the IUD would be free.’

‘It’s only free for local residents,’ the nurse replies.

‘Exactly how much money have you got?’ the doctor asks brusquely.

‘Check my pockets,’ Meili says, pointing to her trousers.

The nurse pulls out the cash from the pockets and counts it. ‘Only a hundred yuan,’ she says. ‘Are you sure this is all you’ve got on you?’

‘Haven’t I seen you in the market?’ the doctor says. ‘Do you run a stall there?’

‘Yes. I sell vegetables, herbs and pickles. Look out for me next time you go. All my produce is free from pesticides.’ Meili’s lease on the stall will soon expire, and the market’s manager has informed her that since she doesn’t have an official work permit it can’t be renewed.

‘Well, we’ll do it for a hundred yuan then. I hope you appreciate our leniency. Bring me the oval one, nurse.’ The doctor picks up the IUD with long blunt tweezers, opens the speculum even wider and slides the device inside. As her warm uterine walls tighten around the cold metal object, Meili stares at the two red gulls painted on the wall above the radiator.

The nurse hands Meili an appointment form. ‘You’ll have a follow-up examination three months from now, to check that the IUD hasn’t fallen out or been deliberately removed,’ she says. ‘Any woman who attempts to take out their IUD, even if it’s causing them pain, will be fined five hundred yuan.’

‘You may suffer cramps, nausea and light bleeding, but these side effects are usually only temporary,’ the doctor says, removing her face mask and revealing her brightly painted lips.

The nurse continues to fill in the examination report. ‘Did you say her vaginal ridges have flattened out?’ she asks, glancing up at the doctor.

Meili watches the bloodstained speculum being tossed into the bin and hears her cervix release a last thread of air before closing its entrance gate.

KEYWORDS: willow branches, dead chick, chicken wings, cotton fluffer, Three Nos, ox in a yoke.

‘COME AND JOIN us, everyone. It’s my daughter’s birthday. Let me fill your glasses so we can drink to her health!’ Kongzi is sitting on a broken, legless office chair he found on the rubbish dump and has tied to a tree trunk with rope. The battery-operated strip light he bought today is suspended from branches overhead, lighting up the plates of food set out on wooden crates.