Ma Jian - The Dark Road

Waterborn is lying naked between Meili’s breasts, panting for breath like a wawa fish freshly scooped from a river. When the sun’s rays hit her red swollen eyes, she turns her head and wails. Nannan rushes up and says, ‘Stop crying, you naughty girl!’ then, just as Kongzi used to do to her, she raises a palm and shouts, ‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll hit you!’

‘Waterborn will get heatstroke if we don’t cool her down,’ Meili says. ‘I can’t bathe her in that filthy creek. Let’s take some towels and sail to the Xi River.’

‘You need a permit to sail during a flood. If the river police caught us, we’d get a huge fine.’ The truth is, Kongzi sailed along the Xi River all morning without being stopped once. He just doesn’t want to have to go out on the boat again. He looks at Meili and says, ‘If we don’t pay off the 4,000-yuan fine for Waterborn’s birth soon, we’ll be in deep trouble.’

‘But now that she’s born, we’re safe,’ Meili replies. Seeing that the water in the pan hasn’t come to the boil yet, she goes to crouch in the shade of a willow and pushes her nipple into Waterborn’s mouth. ‘The officers are rolling in money — they won’t bother trekking down here just to collect our miserable cash.’

‘Didn’t you hear about that woman called Cui who lives at the edge of the village? When she couldn’t pay the illegal birth fine, the officers drowned her six-month-old baby in a pigs’ water trough. It’s true — I promise.’

‘That was years ago. You weren’t afraid of the officers when I was pregnant. If you’re so terrified of them now, why don’t you dig yourself a deep hole under the hut and hide from them?’

‘Confucius lay in a deep hole for two thousand years, but the Communists still yanked him out in the end. I tell you, these days, there’s nowhere left to hide.’

‘You were desperate to have a second child, and now, because she’s a girl, you want to get rid of her. Has a dog eaten your conscience?’ Meili goes back to the stove, drops some dried pulses into the boiling water and kicks an empty liquor box lying at her feet.

‘I don’t care what you say — I’m still determined to have a son… We must lie low next week. Dexian leaders are coming to inspect the flood zone, and they’re bound to bring family planning officials with them.’ This morning, the village Party Secretary paid Kongzi thirty yuan to take the tramp who loiters outside the village restaurant downriver and drop him in a neighbouring county. He also asked Kongzi to stay away during the leaders’ visit, as he’ll need to assure them that there are no illegal migrants in the village.

Nannan comes running up with a can of insect killer, points the nozzle at Kongzi and says, ‘Waterborn’s my sister! You can’t sell her!’

‘The ground’s burning hot, Nannan, put those on,’ Kongzi says, pointing at the two, unmatched flip-flops he found in the floodwater today. The sun starts to sink below the distant mountain and the ducks on the pond begin to squawk.

‘See, you are able to feel compassion for a daughter!’ Meili says with a sarcastic sneer. She pulls off her wet vest and turns off the stove. Then she sits down beneath the porch, squeezes both nipples, and crams the one that produces most milk into Waterborn’s mouth. ‘Don’t touch those filthy flip-flops, Nannan,’ she says. ‘After I sell the eggs at the market tomorrow, I’ll buy you a new pair.’

‘If we give Waterborn to the Welfare Office, we’ll get four thousand yuan to pay her illegal birth fine,’ Kongzi says.

‘That’s not giving, it’s selling! I tell you, Kongzi, if you try to get rid of her, I’ll leave you and I’ll never come back… Look how bad her heat rash has become. You said you’d buy some powder for it in Dexian.’ Meili wipes the sweat from Waterborn’s face. The blood-filled bulge on her crown is now as large as a shallot, and its purple stain has spread down over her forehead and right eye. In the sunset’s rosy light, her skin has turned the colour of a rotten mango. She lifts her tiny hands and rests them on the breast she’s sucking.

‘We’ve hardly any money left. If we don’t sell her, what will we live on?’ Kongzi says, staring with bloodshot eyes at the stubborn flood. He once said that his aim in life was to own a motorbike, a fridge, a rice cooker and a colour television. But now, as he looks at the filthy waters and the new baby, this goal seems like a distant dream.

As the last strip of pale light at the horizon is pressed into the earth, the infant spirit sees Waterborn open her eyes. Father goes into the bamboo hut to light a mosquito coil.

‘I’m fed up with this useless junk you keep bringing back, Kongzi,’ Mother says, stroking Waterborn’s cheek. ‘Look: scraps of timber, plastic buckets, broken shoes. This is supposed to be a home, not a rubbish tip. If we were back in the village now, I would have spent the last month confined to my bed, with nutritious food brought to me on a tray. But since the baby was born, you haven’t bothered to make one nice meal for me.’

‘You’re right. You should be drinking chicken soup to build up your milk supply. I’ve no money to buy a chicken, but I’ll make some duck stew for you instead. Once we give Waterborn away we’ll be able to eat whatever we want.’

‘Even if I were dying of hunger and my milk had run dry, I wouldn’t let you take her from me!’ Mother says, squashing a mosquito that’s sucking Waterborn’s arm. ‘Come on. Let’s get on the boat and sail to the Xi River for some fresh air. My one-month confinement would end tomorrow. I want to wash myself with clean water and soap.’

‘The doctor said she’s not mentally handicapped — she just has something inside her brain that needs to be removed,’ Father says into the dark.

The light from the lamp inside the hut splays through the bamboo wall onto Mother’s face. Smells of soy sauce and spring onion briefly veil the stench of duck shit drifting from the enclosure. At night, everything melts into the darkness and becomes equal: water and earth, father and mother, ducks and disposable nappies. On that night many years ago, Waterborn stares at the black sky, or at her strange birthplace, and with all the strength that her four-week-old life can muster, lets out a piercing cry.

‘She needs her nappy changed,’ Mother says.

‘We’ve run out of clean water,’ Father replies, rubbing an unlit cigarette.

‘I want to cuddle Waterborn, like you cuddle Mummy,’ Nannan says to Father, skipping about restlessly.

Along the distant public road, a few lights twinkle in the concrete houses while closer by the fluorescent strips of the village restaurant and night stalls shine through the dust raised by passing trucks.

KEYWORDS: win — win situation, egg lady, amino acids, orphanage, fermented hair, motherwort.

NAKED FROM THE waist up, Meili sits on a concrete brick beneath the porch and stares out at the enclosure. In the midday sun, the pond and the white ducks look blindingly bright. A small bird darting across the creek faints from the heat and falls into the water with a loud splash. The sky and earth seem paralysed by the sun’s burning rays.

The dead fish Kongzi scooped from the floodwater and laid out to dry were washed away in a torrential downpour last week. Kongzi and Meili have bought thirty new ducklings and cordoned off a section of the pond to protect them from the adult ducks. With any luck, they’ll be able to sell them next month for two hundred yuan. Waterborn is eight weeks old now, and still does nothing all day but eat and sleep. Meili is afraid to put her down for naps inside the hut in case she’s attacked by stray dogs, so she carries her around all day wrapped to her chest with a long cloth, as is the custom in Guangdong Province. Now, all she wants is to find a job and start making some good money. There’s an agricultural market in a town four kilometres downstream, and she’s considering going there to ask if she can hire a stall. The feeling of emptiness in her flat belly is reassuring. If family planning officers were to catch her now and insert an IUD into her or even sterilise her, she wouldn’t put up a fight.