Ma Jian - The Dark Road

At dawn, Weiwei leaves his address, telephone number and two packs of cigarettes on the bamboo stool beside her, and stands at the stern, his face looking slightly calmer than yesterday.

Meili goes out to join him. ‘You should give up your search and go home now,’ she says. ‘Your mother will be more at peace in the river than she would be buried in the earth.’

‘No, I must keep searching until I find her, for my own peace of mind,’ he replies, then without saying goodbye, he steps onto the jetty, climbs up the bank and walks away.

Meili grabs a bag of preserved mustard greens from the galley area, runs up the bank after him and tosses it into his hands. ‘Soak them in water overnight, then simmer them with beef and tomatoes — the longer the better.’

‘I’m a terrible cook,’ Weiwei says.

‘But you must eat them. I preserved them myself.’

He turns and continues along the path. As she watches his departing figure, her stomach churns as though a mudfish were writhing inside it. Without stopping to think, she chases after him, grabs the tortoiseshell glasses from his face to keep as a memento and runs back to the boat with them.

KEYWORDS: metallic, marshy beach, handicapped, groping hand, rotten shrimp paste, cross-infection.

‘THERE’S GOING TO be an almighty downpour any minute!’ Kongzi says, pointing to the leaden sky above Dexian. Seconds later, the dark clouds crack open and unleash torrential rain. ‘The deck’s too slippery,’ Meili cries out to Kongzi. ‘Quick, come into the cabin.’ The rain crashes against the bow then streams into the river. Inside the bamboo cage, the ducks shake their wings and hoot.

‘Look, the rain’s so polluted, it’s almost metallic,’ Kongzi says. ‘The boat will get corroded if we stay any longer. Let’s lift anchor and get going to Guai Village. Pass me my straw hat and raincoat.’

‘But you won’t be able to see a thing through this rain,’ Meili says. ‘What if we crash into something?’ Kongzi transported a cargo of quicklime this morning, and when the rain makes contact with the powder that’s fallen into the cracks of the deck, white fumes reeking of rotten eggs rise into the air. Nannan vomited last night and has eaten nothing all day apart from a dry biscuit and a cauliflower floret. She’s lying on her back in the cabin, gazing out at the pelting downpour through a gap in the door curtain.

Kongzi wipes the lenses of the metal-rimmed glasses he bought last week, then shoves away from the bank. For hours they sail through heavy rain along a bewildering maze of waterways. Occasionally, Meili calls out: ‘Be careful, the water smells muddy here — we’re probably too close to the bank. Steer to the right a little.’ When they pass beneath a bridge and she hears the engine’s rumble echo against the concrete arch, she feels anxious and locked in.

After taking Weiwei to Yinluo, they returned to the sand island to find the river police knocking down their shelter. They grabbed a handful of ducks from the pen, collected Nannan from Xixi, then sailed downstream, picking up and delivering cargos as they went, until they reached the dirty industrial town of Dexian in Western Guangdong Province, where they anchored for the last week. Although Kongzi was able to pick up delivery jobs there, it was not a pleasant place to stay. At night the paper factories would spew into the river foul waste water that smelled of rotten shrimp paste and caused the three of them to cough and gag in their sleep.

On their second day in Dexian, Meili bought a pregnancy test in a dockside pharmacy. After she dipped the test stick into her urine and saw the plus sign appear, she wondered why her IUD hadn’t worked. Forgetting that her period was already three weeks late when she met Weiwei, she presumed that his groping hand had dislodged the device, allowing Kongzi to impregnate her during the following days. Weiwei’s touch awakened feelings she had never known before. In the week after he left, she no longer pushed Kongzi away when he wanted sex, but instead pulled him close to her and told him to move harder and faster. She suspects that it was on one of those nights, between a moan of pleasure and a sharp intake of breath, that Kongzi’s sperm penetrated her egg, and the infant spirit once more descended into her womb.

When she told Kongzi she was pregnant, he said that they must find a safe place to live until the baby is born. He asked around and found out about a village called Guai, thirty kilometres downstream, where the family planning policies are not strictly enforced. But the village is set a kilometre back from the river, so for the last few days, he’s been wondering how he’ll be able to make a living there.

‘Look, that must be Guai Village!’ Kongzi says, seeing beyond the dust-covered trees on the left a distant huddle of houses spiked with satellite discs.

‘It’s larger than I expected,’ Meili says. ‘Are you sure we’d be safe living there? If this baby’s ripped out of me, I won’t have another. The village looks depressing. I’d prefer to stay by the water and have the baby on the boat. You did say we’ll call this one Waterborn, after all.’ She glances at the litter-strewn bank and a dusty stack of cabbages on the field above, and feels a wave of revulsion.

‘All right, we’ll stay on the boat, but we must find a safe place to settle. Happiness died because we chose the wrong place. We can’t make that mistake again.’

From under a blanket, Nannan says sleepily, ‘I’m hungry, Daddy. I want some nice food. No more dirty fish.’ Last night, Kongzi cooked a fish he’d caught in the polluted river, and he can still taste its foul odour in his mouth. It was Meili’s birthday. She spent the whole day sulking in the cabin. Kongzi went into Dexian and bought her plates, pans, an electric heater and a pocket mirror, to replace the ones they had to leave on the sand island, but she didn’t show any gratitude. Kongzi complained about the Weiwei trip, moaning that not only did they receive no payment, they lost their home as well. Meili is angry that she allowed Weiwei to fondle her that night, and hates him for taking advantage of her.

An oily film of pollution hovers on the river’s surface. Along the bank, the willow’s branches bend under the weight of litter while their tips struggle upwards towards the sun. Kongzi drives the boat under another bridge, steers left down a narrow creek and stops below a flight of steps leading to what he thinks must be a path to Guai Village. Dogs, ducks and chickens watch them from the bank. ‘I heard the village sells handicapped children to criminal gangs,’ Meili says. ‘Apparently most of the crippled kids you see begging in train stations around the country come from round here.’

‘That’s just hearsay,’ Kongzi replies. ‘See those children up there? They look fine to me… So we’ve made it at last! What a journey it’s been. It reminds me of that poem: “Mountain after mountain, river after river, it seems there is no way out. / But beyond a shady willow and a tree in bright blossom, another village finally appears.” I’ll go up and have a look around.’ He fetches the gangplank and slides it onto the lowest concrete step.

‘Dad, I wait here for you,’ Nannan says, peeking round the door curtain at the unfamiliar surroundings outside.

Rising onto her toes, Meili sees, on the large field above, patches of unharvested crops, two tarpaulin shelters, a duck pen, a coiled black hose lying beside an empty ditch and a storehouse with bricked-up doors and windows. Painted in white on the red walls is a notice that says TO AVOID COMMON GYNAECOLOGICAL COMPLAINTS AND VENEREAL DISEASES, IT IS IMPORTANT TO MAINTAIN GENITAL HYGIENE, WASH PUBIC AREA FREQUENTLY AND CHANGE UNDERWEAR DAILY. TO PREVENT CROSS-INFECTION, REFRAIN FROM SITTING ON TOILET SEATS… The reflection of the red walls and the blue sky above them waver on the creek’s oily surface. Scraps of white plastic float by like a raft of ducks.