Ma Jian - The Dark Road

‘I signed a contract to be a cleaner. I refuse to do any other work, so you’d better let me go straight away.’

‘Your job is to be a hostess, to look after our clients. The men who come here are rolling in money: shake them about a little, and coins will fall into your hands. If you do as you’re told, you’ll have hot meals and a shower every day. For a peasant like you, it’s heaven! We’ll teach you all you need to know.’

‘I’ll clean rooms, wash dishes — anything. I’m not afraid of hard work. But I won’t sell my body. I’m a simple woman with no education. I’m not suited to this job.’

‘But peasant girls like you are very popular with our clients. They’d love your simple, honest, wholesome look, and would pay good money for you. But I warn you straight away: all tips must be handed over to us. From now on your name is Ah-Fang, and you’re twenty years old.’

A girl reeking of cheap musk enters the room. She’s wearing high heels and a red skintight cheongsam. She places a bowl of noodle soup in front of Meili and sits down, the long slit in her dress exposing her bare thigh.

‘This is Ah-Fang,’ the boss says to the girl as he gets up to leave. ‘She arrived today. Show her the ropes.’

‘How can you dress like that?’ Meili says to her as soon as the boss has left. ‘What if your parents saw you? You’d bring shame to your village.’

‘Who cares — now that I’ve left that miserable dump, I’ve no intention of moving back!’ says the girl, a look of disdain darting across her young face. ‘My name is Xu, by the way. When you’ve finished your meal, have a shower, then I’ll give you a new dress, cut your hair and see you transform from a mother hen into a phoenix!’

‘Don’t boss me about, little sister — I’m a mother of two,’ Meili says, casting a condescending eye over Xu’s skinny, adolescent frame.

‘Well, I warn you, big sister: if you don’t cooperate, you’ll be treated worse than Communist martyrs were in Guomindang jails. The boss paid good money for you, so you’ll have to repay his debt. I was a bit rebellious myself, when I first arrived. See this wound on my thigh? That’s where the boss jabbed a needle into me. He never injures your face or cunt, because those are the parts that bring the money pouring in.’

‘Why haven’t you tried to run away?’ Meili asks, staring down at the bowl of noodles.

‘Run away? I’m only here because I ran away from my village. Where could I run to now? Besides, I wouldn’t get very far. The boss’s brother is head of the Public Security Bureau. He launched a crackdown on prostitution last week. The police raided every nightclub and brothel in the city, but they didn’t touch this place. If I did escape, they’d arrest me and bring me straight back.’

‘But this is such grubby, shameful work. You’re a pretty young girl. How can you bear to let all those filthy men touch you? Don’t you care about losing face?’

‘What does face matter? All I want is money. And being a nightclub hostess is less tiring than working in a salon, where you have to wash men’s hair and massage their bloody feet before you have sex with them.’

‘You’re quite a girl! Do you have a boyfriend?’ Meili stares at Xu’s straightened, shoulder-length hair and remembers Suya saying that a straightening treatment in a hair salon can cost a hundred yuan.

‘No, I’m single. I’m waiting for a rich guy to make me his “second wife” and buy me a car and a nice apartment. Many Korean businessmen visit this place. If you agree to be their second wives, in two years you’ll have enough money to last the rest of your life. Still, I’m doing pretty well already. I make a hundred thousand yuan a year. My parents have built themselves a house with the money I sent back. You’re a mother of two, so I don’t need to tell you about the sex side of things. All I’ll say is that if you don’t reach orgasm, you must pant and groan as if you have. And there are some terms you must learn. “Fast food” is no foreplay, straight in and out, and costs a hundred yuan; “playing the flute” is a blow job, and costs fifty; “visiting Miss Five” is a handjob, with some breast fondling thrown in—’

‘Shut up! I have a husband, for God’s sake.’

‘You think your husband is any different from the men who come here? I’ve seen them all in this place — from municipal government officials to foreign CEOs. I may have a flat chest and an average face, but this month I’ve slept with two British engineers and three American tourists. All of them have wives and children. These days, a man who remains faithful to his wife is either an idiot or a loser.’

‘Hah — you and I live in very different worlds, it seems,’ Meili says, remembering Suya telling her that prostitutes have to think of themselves as a commodity, not a human being.

‘You think so? Bring your husband here for a night and he will leave you within three days! I’ll never make the mistake of getting married.’

‘How do your parents imagine you make all this money? Wouldn’t they be horrified if they knew?’ Xu’s pink lipstick and turquoise eyeshadow remind Meili of the foreign women she’s seen in magazines.

‘My parents are village cadres who have to scrape by on sixty yuan a month. I told them I’m a shop manager. When I went home last Spring Festival and handed them a fat envelope of cash, they beamed with pride.’

‘I must leave this place!’ Meili looks out of the window and sees on a large billboard across the road, a little girl in a pink dress and leather shoes smiling up at her. Diesel fumes from the cars streaming past far below slide into the room through the metal bars of the open window.

‘You want to escape? The boss will hunt you down, drag you back and beat you to death. You won’t be able to say I didn’t warn you.’

Meili lowers her eyes again, picks up her chopsticks and gulps down the noodle soup.

‘You’ll see, it’s not so bad here,’ Xu says with a smile. ‘I’ll give you a health certificate in case the hygiene inspectors turn up. I promise you, in three months’ time, you’ll like it here so much, you won’t want to leave. The boss is putting you in room 303 tonight. There’s no need to be nervous. After your shower, rub some lubricating oil between your legs. When the client walks in, turn off the lights, help him off with his clothes, then slip a condom onto him straight away, before his erection wilts. Most of the men will be drunk, so don’t waste time making conversation. If they turn violent, kick the door…’

‘Shut up, shut up…’ Meili hisses, staring down at the tiny dead shrimp floating on the dregs of her noodle soup.

KEYWORDS: heaven on earth, cloud of smoke, source of life, unsheathed pillow, blazing fire.

MEILI CREEPS DOWN the dark corridor and locks herself in the toilet. All she can see are a bucket, a mop, a mirror, a rusty nail jutting out from the brick wall — nothing that she could use as a weapon. The window is open, but it also has metal bars, so there’s no escape. The steel security door is the only way out of this place, but it’s double-locked. She has no choice but to return to her room. When she enters, she sees the boss lying on the single bed, a bottle of liquor in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He puffs a cloud of smoke into the air and tells her to shut the door.

‘No, it’s too hot in here, I’ll leave it open,’ she says, her voice faltering. She decides that if he touches her, she’ll fight him off with all her strength. During the shower she took after lunch, she scrubbed off all the mud and grime from the camp, soaked her lice-infested hair in conditioner and combed out every insect. Then she sat on the bed, pulled Suya’s journal out of her bag and read the third page: ‘… He pushed my thighs up and stuck his head between my legs. I told him he wasn’t allowed to do that, and tried to wriggle free, but he said: “What’s your problem? I’m paying you enough money, aren’t I?” I pulled his hair and tried to yank him off, but then he pinned me down and rammed himself inside me without a condom, and pounded and pounded, first one hole and then the other…’ Meili couldn’t bear to read any further. Her skin, which had relaxed in the warmth of the shower, became cold and tense.