Ma Jian - The Dark Road

The two sisters, Gu and Hua, who rent out this plot to them, turn up after lunch. They drop by once a week to collect rent, buy ducks from Meili and pick fruit from the lychee trees. Gu is tall and thin, and is wearing a conical straw hat. Hua, shorter and stockier, is holding a dainty black parasol.

‘Nannan, bring the beer crate over here for the aunties to sit on,’ Meili calls out, picking up the paper fan that Kongzi made.

‘No need,’ says Hua, as she and her sister squeeze into the remaining shade beneath the porch. ‘Look how the baby’s grown! She must be a good feeder.’

‘You don’t mind if I don’t put on a vest, do you? It’s just too hot today.’ The sweat streaming down Meili’s cleavage has soaked Waterborn’s face and the piece of cloth in which she’s wrapped.

‘Your ducks are selling well in the village. They taste just like the ones I used to eat as a child.’ From her smooth pale hands, one can tell that Hua has never worked on the fields.

‘We feed them a pure grain diet, and don’t let them touch the dead fish that wash up on the beach.’ Meili’s heart always beats faster when she lies. ‘Give the aunties some fizzy orange,’ she calls out to Nannan, who’s standing naked beside the pond, spraying water onto an ant nest.

‘Yes, your baby’s a sturdy little thing, but look how her feet curl inwards,’ says Gu, sneering under her conical hat. ‘I heard your husband say that there might be something wrong with her.’

‘Think about your future, Meili,’ says Hua. ‘Bringing up a handicapped child is expensive, and exhausting too. All that money and effort, and you won’t even be able to marry her off in the end!’

Meili crosses her legs, rests a foot on a burnt tin can and pushes her nipple back into Waterborn’s mouth. ‘What does your husband do, Hua?’ she asks.

‘He works at the Radiance Hair Factory. I believe your husband’s delivered some stock to them.’

‘What do they do with the hair?’ Meili asks, coiling her own hair into a bun then securing it with a twig.

‘If it’s long, they make wigs out of it. If it’s short, they ferment it.’ The two sisters are now sitting down on the beer crate, cooling themselves with the paper fans Nannan has just made.

‘Ferment it? To make shampoo?’ Meili closes her eyes briefly and imagines sailing upstream to a clean stretch of the Xi River, then jumping in and washing herself with soap. Although according to custom she is allowed to bathe now that her confinement is over, she still wouldn’t dare enter the filthy creek. Kongzi brings back bottles of clean river water from his trips, but never enough to wash more than her hands and face.

‘See that brand of soy sauce you have there?’ says Hua, pointing her fan at the bottle. ‘It’s made from fermented hair. Hair is amazing stuff: it’s full of nutritious protein and amino acids, and it never rots. A corpse’s hair can survive thousands of years.’

Waterborn frowns nervously. She has very little hair on her scalp, and small scratches on her eyelids and forehead. Although she’s in the shade, she doesn’t dare open her eyes. Her damp face glistens like a peeled lychee.

‘I’ve heard that parents in the village mutilate their babies then rent them out to illegal gangs,’ Meili blurts, unable to restrain her curiosity.

‘Nonsense!’ exclaims Hua, the gold wedding ring glinting on her chubby finger. ‘Only a couple of families have done that. They may have nice houses now, but no one will speak to them. They’ve ruined the reputation of the village.’

‘She’s got your ears, I see,’ says Gu, ‘and your upward-slanting eyes.’

‘Thank goodness the family planning officers are relaxed here, or I would have got into deep trouble,’ Meili says.

‘They used to be much stricter,’ Hua replies. ‘When the Fujian couple’s third daughter was just three days old, the officers came down here and drowned her in the pond.’

‘No!’ gasps Meili, her eyes moving to the pond’s still surface. The drake is floating in the middle, his beak in the air, while the ducks drift slowly around him with bowed heads.

‘No, they didn’t drown the baby — they kicked her to death up there,’ Gu says, pointing to the terraced hill behind. A dog’s black tail darts down a path running between the overgrown fields.

‘I heard someone’s offered you seven thousand yuan for her already,’ Hua whispers to Meili.

‘If you wait any longer, the price will go down,’ Gu says softly.

‘So, you’re agents?’ Meili asks, staring at the crate lying at the edge of the creek, which she uses as a rubbish bin to keep the flies away from the hut.

‘It can’t be cheap, rearing ducks. Look, it’s not as if you’re paying Sister Mao to break her legs. You’ll be selling her to an orphanage who will export her to a foreign country where there are no mosquitoes in summer, no flies in winter, and medical care is free. She’ll be in Heaven!’

‘Your baby’s retarded, no doubt about it. So do it for her sake. If not for her sake, then do it for your husband and your elder daughter.’

‘But I heard that if orphanages can’t get the children adopted, they sell them to child traffickers who break their limbs and force them to beg on the streets,’ Meili says testily.

‘No, no, that’s complete nonsense,’ Gu says, flicking a fly away from her bottle of fizzy orange.

‘Trust us, egg lady, we wouldn’t lie to you,’ Hua says. The drake on the pond puffs out his chest and grunts.

‘My name is Meili — so don’t call me “egg lady”!’ Meili says, staring down angrily at the plantain leaves on the ground.

‘But that’s what we call people who live on boats. Perhaps you northerners use a different term.’

‘We’re not from the north, and we’re not from the south — we’re from the very centre, just like this!’ Meili says, pointing to her crotch, then laughing triumphantly. The sisters roll their eyes, not knowing where to look. ‘Yes, I was born in the birthplace of Nuwa, the goddess of fertility and the founder of the Chinese race. So don’t patronise me.’

Gu pulls out a box from her bag. ‘Try one of these, my dear. I made them myself. You’ve only recently finished your confinement. You need to build up your strength.’

Meili takes the box and lifts the lid. ‘How pretty! Nannan, come and look! I’ve never seen sticky rice cakes as green as this before.’

‘It’s a local speciality,’ Hua says. ‘We colour glutinous rice with crushed motherwort, then divide it into small balls which we steam then roll in shredded coconut.’

‘Would you like to buy today’s batch of eggs?’ Meili asks, trying to steer the conversation further away from Waterborn. ‘I’ll sell them to you for three mao each and you can sell them on for five. Pay me later, if you don’t have cash on you.’

‘All right,’ Gu says. ‘I’ll take some and see how I do. If they don’t sell, I’ll preserve them in salt and eat them myself. Those bananas up there look ripe. Feel free to chop some off.’ Most of the banana trees have died; only two are still producing fruit. A swarm of flies are now circling the sisters, attracted perhaps by the smell of warm rice rising from their clothes. They stand up and get ready to leave.

‘You’re so clever, you family planning violators — you’ve realised you can make far more money having babies than you could raising pigs!’ Hua says conspiratorially. ‘How many more do you plan to have?’

‘I’m finished now!’ Meili says, getting up and brushing off the coconut shreds that have fallen onto her breasts. ‘My husband’s desperate for a son, but I refuse to have any more.’

‘I only ever wanted one,’ says Gu. ‘I read in the papers that if a woman eats tadpoles on a regular basis, she’ll never get pregnant. So after I had my first child, I scooped some from a pond every week and swallowed them. Fine lot of good it did! I was pregnant again within two months!’ Gu laughs loudly, revealing her long yellow teeth.