Ma Jian - The Dark Road

‘You think you can run, with a belly that size? No, we’ll stay here until the baby is born. A cousin of mine travelled the country giving blood for two years. He’s just returned to the village, apparently, and built himself a four-bedroom brick house.’

‘Giving blood too often can be dangerous,’ Meili says, sitting on a pile of old fishing nets. The willows along the creek sweep their branches across the water as though trying to catch her long shadow.

‘It’s no more dangerous than having a piss. Once the bladder becomes empty, there’s always more urine to fill it up.’

‘So you’re going to sell your blood, now? You think you have any left after these mosquitoes and fleas have sucked on you all night?’ Meili is terrified of needles, and the thought of giving blood revolts her.

‘Blood donating is a great career! It doesn’t need any investment — the natural resource is inside one’s own body. Why didn’t I think about it before?’ He pulls off his shirt, turns it inside out, picks off a flea from the sleeve and squeezes it. A drop of blood stains his nails red.

‘How can you dream of getting rich, when you know we’ll soon have another baby to look after?’ Meili takes long, deep breaths. Her belly feels as full and hard as a tightly stuffed pillow.

‘I want to swim, Daddy,’ Nannan says. She picks up a piece of polystyrene lying next to the kennel and flings it into the water. Her feet are bare and the bottom of her long-sleeved dress is wet and muddy.

‘No, the water’s too cold,’ Meili says. ‘Go and scrape the rest of the potatoes, then I can start making breakfast for you.’

‘The brick has gone,’ Nannan says, stroking a long beetle she’s picked up.

‘There’s another brick poking out of the mud behind you. You can use that, or you can scrape them against the tree instead. If you don’t help, your father will make you recite the Three Character Classic .’

‘Nannan, didn’t you hear what your mother said?’ Kongzi shouts, seeing Nannan walk into the creek. Since they set up camp here in October, they’ve felt cold and damp every day. At night, after supper, they either retreat to the boat and huddle around the electric heater, or light the fire pit in the hut and snuggle under blankets with hot-water bottles.

‘Get out of the water, Nannan!’ Meili yells. ‘The yellow foam will give you a rash.’ Afraid that the pollution might harm the baby, Meili hasn’t dared bathe in the creek yet.

‘Why the ducks got no rash, then?’ Nannan asks, stepping back onto the beach.

‘They have feathers to protect them,’ Kongzi replies. He stoops down and pulls out an old cloth shoe from the mud. Behind him is a mound of metal rods, wooden sticks, bamboo poles and greasy ropes covered with flies. A procession of small beetles are crawling towards his feet, searching for food.

‘You told me Happiness likes the water,’ Nannan says, her fringe dangling over her eyes. She has a plaster on her nose because when Kongzi had to stick one over a cut on his nose yesterday, she insisted on having one as well.

‘Happiness is dead — he doesn’t care if the water’s cold,’ Kongzi says.

‘You miss him, Daddy?’

‘No!’ Kongzi replies, his eyes flashing with anger.

‘So when I die, you won’t miss me either?’

‘If you mention Happiness again, I’ll kill you!’ Kongzi shouts, his face crumpling with fury, veins bulging from his skinny neck.

Nannan purses her lips, goes to Meili and says, ‘When I die, I won’t ever wake up again.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Meili replies. ‘When people die, they can’t hear or see anything any more. It’s peaceful.’

‘Happiness is dead, so is Waterborn going to die, too?’ Nannan says, raising her flea-bitten face to Meili.

‘Go and scrape the potatoes and we’ll talk about this later.’ Meili feels anxious. She’s afraid the authorities will drag her off to have an abortion. She’s afraid the IUD is imbedded in the fetus, and has caused severe deformities. She’s also afraid that when Kongzi sees the IUD poking out of the baby’s body, he will fly into a violent rage.

Waterborn has settled into a routine. As soon as the rooster cries at dawn, it stretches its legs and wiggles its toes. At noon, it stays still for two hours, then, after supper, it turns somersaults, kicking into her ribs, its tiny elbows and toes poking through her skin. During this pregnancy, Meili’s hair and nails have been growing much faster than usual. As she can no longer reach her feet, Kongzi has to clip her toenails for her.

‘You remember Kong Qing?’ Kongzi says as he watches Meili plait her hair, the sunlight falling on her bulge. She’s sitting next to the smoking fire pit inside the hut. Soon she will add more twigs to the fire and start cooking a potato gruel flavoured with pickles and preserved egg.

‘No, remind me,’ she says. Although she lived in Kong Village for three years, she was more familiar with the actors she saw on television than the confusing array of neighbours who shared the surname Kong.

‘He’s my second cousin, the ex-artillery soldier. You know, the man who came to our house that night, carrying his aborted son in a plastic basin.’

‘Oh yes, Shasha’s husband. So what’s happened to him?’ Meili joins Kongzi outside and sits on a rickety cane chair propped against a wooden box. A swarm of rice skippers fly past, leaving a scent of paddy fields.

‘Well, after we left the village, their house was demolished and Kong Qing was sent to prison. Shasha travelled to the county headquarters with her daughters every week to complain to the authorities, but was eventually declared mentally ill. Once you’ve got that label stuck on you, you might as well be dead. You lose your residence permit, work permit and every other document that proves you exist. No official will listen to your complaints. Kong Qing was released from prison last month, but Shasha has now been locked up in a mental asylum and no one’s allowed to visit her. Poor Kong Qing’s in despair. His parents are having to look after the daughters now. He told me he wants to come and visit us next week.’

‘But how does he know where we are?’

‘I phoned Kong Zhaobo, and Kong Qing picked up the phone. He said I should come out of hiding and take command of his battle.’

‘What battle?’ Meili asks, then seeing Nannan rub a potato very slowly against a tree says, ‘That’s enough, Nannan. I’ll do the rest.’ Nannan brings the potatoes over and Meili begins to scrape them swiftly with a shard of glass she picks up from the ground.

‘No idea what he’s planning. But it turns out we’re not far from Kong Village. The road to Dexian continues all the way to Hubei Province. He could reach us by long-distance bus in one day.’

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to come. It seems like most of the Kongs in the village have been arrested or jailed at some point. It would be safer if you kept your distance.’ Meili stares out at the ducks on the pond, and at the public road far behind that winds towards the distant hills like a long umbilical cord.

KEYWORDS: uprising, nits, untamed rivers, financial loss, humble disciple, suicide bombers.

MEILI WAKES ABRUPTLY in the middle of the night, having rolled onto a cold bicycle pump. She hears the ducks padding about and squawking, as though someone were shooing them out of the enclosure. As she crawls out onto the deck, she sees a long shadow flit across the path and disappear. She leans back into the cabin and shakes Kongzi awake. ‘Quick! Get up! Someone’s stolen our ducks!’

Kongzi grabs his torch, shines it over the enclosure and sees that the wooden hutch has been smashed open and all the ducks are gone.