Ma Jian - The Dark Road

Meili sees the ducks waddle downhill and head into a swathe of tall reeds. She pushes herself up onto her feet and chases after them, as fast as she can. At the foot of the hill the ground becomes soft and boggy. Through a gap in the reeds she glimpses a sparkling pond, with a cloud of white termites hovering above it. Termites, Meili whispers. That means a storm is brewing. The ducks at the front of the flock have already jumped into the water. Meili pushes through the reeds and tries to drive them out, but when her herding pole approaches their heads, they dive out of the way. What if I can’t get them out, or worse still: what if a farmer breeds fish in this pond? She picks two ducks up by the neck, but the rest of the flock are in the pond now, squawking, diving, splashing. She stands rooted to the ground, paralysed by fear. What if the farmer turns up and demands I pay compensation? The flock drifts towards the centre of the pond, beyond her pole’s reach. Waterborn swirls in the amniotic fluid. Meili’s belly contracts; she breaks into a sweat. Then the ground beneath her judders, and although the sky above is a brilliant blue, suddenly everything around her goes black. She senses someone staring down at her exposed belly. She wants to sink into the water and hide…

KEYWORDS: hot draught, umbilical cord, fetal grease, windless swamp, jellified residue, red cable.

THE VILLAGE DELIVERY room is in Sister Mao’s house. Her brother is a family planning officer, and for five hundred yuan, which she splits with him, she is willing to deliver unauthorised babies. For a supplementary fee she will also break the baby’s limbs, if the parents wish. As soon as the farmer came to the hut yesterday to say that Meili had fainted near his pond, Kongzi rushed to her side and carried her straight here. When she woke in the delivery room, in the early stages of labour, she said she wanted to give birth in the boat, but by then Kongzi had already paid Sister Mao’s fee.

Her waters have broken and the contractions are coming faster. As another wave of pain approaches, she passes out and sees Happiness’s face hover before her, one eye closed, the other staring at her impassively. She lifts her head and looks at herself lying on the metal table, her hands gripping the sides. From the blood-filled hole below her black pubic hair she notices a small arm reach out. A human life is struggling to emerge. The moment has come. This time, the baby will not be murdered upon arrival, though. She will make sure of that. As soon as it’s born, she’ll grab hold of it and kick anyone who tries to come near. All she needs to do now is go down on all fours, push as hard as she can, and everything will be fine… But like the jellied residue of a fish stew heated in a pan, she liquefies and evaporates, and finds herself drifting up to the ceiling and looking down on her body below. She sees her face contort and turn purple, her teeth bite into her lower lip. At last, she hears a slithery plop and sees a mass of human flesh slipping out from between her legs in a stream of fluid that becomes soiled with pubic hair and dirty tissues… Echoing voices slowly drag her back into her body… ‘A good size. Chubby, even.’ The room is stiflingly hot now; the wrinkles on Sister Mao’s face are filled with sweat. A whirring electric fan in the corner blows a hot draught into the stuffy air. Sister Mao’s assistant, Ying, opens the baby’s legs and sighs. ‘A girl! What bad luck! That’s the second we’ve had today. Ugh, the placenta smells disgusting…’

‘Quick! Cut the umbilical cord. And bung those sheets in the washing machine. Don’t touch the cloth — there’s shit on it. Just flick it into the bin.’

Once her senses have fully returned, Meili opens her eyes and scans the foul-smelling room. During the final stage of labour, Sister Mao pressed a cloth-covered brick against Meili’s anus, but the last push was so strong that her shit still sprayed out onto the wall.

‘Look, she’s opening her eyes,’ Ying says, wrapping the baby in a towel and wiping her little red face. ‘She still hasn’t cried yet, though.’

‘Slap her bottom, then!’ Sister Mao is the only plump woman in the village. When she looks down, the fat beneath her chin bulges out in thick folds.

Meili watches Ying unwrap the baby, swaddle her in white muslin and mutter into her ear. At last, the baby opens her mouth and lets out a feeble wail. You’re alive! Meili says silently. We can go back to Kong Village now — your rightful birthplace! She is certain that she’s not dreaming any more: she has given birth. After nine months of living in her womb — no, the government’s womb — Waterborn has finally come out into the world, and Meili is now a mother of two.

The delivery room has a dropped ceiling with a round fluorescent light that is as bright as a full moon. The curtain hanging over the door has an image of a red crane flying across a blue sky. A red cable dangling from the ceiling sways in the draught from the fan.

Meili feels limp and sapped of energy. She remembers that when she gave birth to Nannan at home she squeezed the metal bars of her bed frame so hard during the final push that they became twisted together. But the excruciating labour pains she endured just now, the splitting of bones and tearing of flesh as Waterborn’s head pushed through her pelvis, have already been forgotten and reabsorbed into her flesh. Immersed in a peaceful numbness, she watches the baby who was once part of her body adapt to her new surroundings. She senses that although the umbilical cord has been severed, an invisible thread still binds her to her daughter. They can never become one again, but neither can they ever be truly apart.

‘The arm came out first, the waters broke early, the labour was long and arduous: everything was pointing to a male birth,’ Ying sighs. During Meili’s labour, she said she was convinced the baby was a boy, and is clearly annoyed to have been proved wrong.

‘My daughter!’ Meili croaks, gesturing for the baby to be brought to her. She tries to think how she’d feel if the baby had been a boy, but just like her amniotic fluid, her imaginative faculties seem to have slipped out of her. I don’t mind what sex the baby is. She’s mine, and I’ll look after her just as I do Nannan. ‘Waterborn,’ she whispers, taking hold of the baby, a proud glow spreading across her damp face. Waterborn’s hands tremble and her head droops to the side. Her fine hair is caked with creamy white fetal grease.

‘Boy or girl, it’s still one more pair of hands to help out on the fields,’ Sister Mao says. ‘The placenta has been fully ejected. Scoop it up, Ying.’

Waterborn struggles floppily up Meili’s breast, as though searching for the warm wetness from which she’s been expelled. When at last her mouth becomes filled with Meili’s engorged nipple, her tiny body twitches with relief. ‘Drink my milk, little one. Keep sucking. That’s right.’ Meili’s tear-drenched cheeks flush a deep red.

‘Now that the baby’s born, you should return to your husband’s village,’ Sister Mao says. ‘I’ve seen that windless swamp where you’ve been camping. There are mosquitoes everywhere. It’s no place to bring up children.’

‘But we haven’t a home to return to,’ Meili says. ‘A family planning squad pulled down our house. Besides, my husband said we can only go home if the baby’s a boy.’ Meili sees her placenta lying in a plastic bowl on top of the washing machine. Flies swoop down and perch on the surface. Ying coils up the severed umbilical cord and places it beside the bowl.

‘So, is it a boy or a girl?’ Kongzi bellows, charging into the room, reeking of diesel. His legs and arms are lacerated from the glass panels he delivered last week. This morning he transported boxes of human hair to an illegal soy sauce factory. He’s brought four packets of instant noodles with him and a tin of processed ham.