Ma Jian - The Dark Road

Unable to control his anger any longer, Kongzi jumps to his feet, slaps Meili across the ear and shouts, ‘So, where the hell have you been these last four weeks? We’ve all been worried sick. When your grandmother heard you’d gone missing, she had a heart attack and died.’

Meili slumps onto the floor, buries her head in her hands and weeps. ‘I was arrested,’ she cries out. ‘Taken to a Custody and Repatriation Centre. It’s a miracle I’ve made it back.’

‘And what are you doing dressing like a prostitute?’ Kongzi barks, veins bulging from his neck.

‘You merciless beast! I’ve suffered ten thousand hardships to get here, and this is how you welcome me…’ The only sparks of light on Meili’s drawn face are the tears in her blue-black eye sockets.

‘I sent people to check every custody centre in the county, but you weren’t there. Your brother’s been with us for two weeks, and has gone searching for you every day.’ He sits back down on the crate of beer, his temper subsiding a little.

‘When did my grandmother die?’ Meili asks, wiping snot and lipstick on the bed sheet.

‘October the 9th — your birthday,’ Kongzi replies, taking out a cigarette.

Meili bursts into tears again. Nannan jumps off the bed, crawls into Meili’s arms and starts weeping too. The bamboo hut is shaken about so much that dried mud falls from the walls.

Kongzi goes outside. The last segment of the sun is reflected on the surface of the duck pond. A car moves below the black hills in the distance, leaving a thin trail of light. Through the reeds, he sees Meili’s brother returning from the village, and waves to him. They enter the hut together and find Meili lying on the floor like a wounded creature, howling at all the miseries and wrongs inflicted on her, her cries beating through the mud, the swamp and the cold autumn wind.

A few hours later, calm finally descends. The kerosene lamp hanging from the wall lights up the four faces in the hut, leaving everything else in darkness. Meili’s brother looks just like her, but his eyebrows arch downwards, giving him a crestfallen air. ‘I should leave tomorrow,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t easy getting time off from the mine.’ Nannan is lying asleep at the end of the bed. Meili’s eyelids are swollen from weeping. She bites into a cob of sweetcorn and chews slowly. When Kongzi turns his face towards the lamp, he looks much older. The tobacco smoke streaming from his mouth makes even the darkness seem sluggish.

‘There’s a detergent factory downriver, a vinyl factory, a fire retardant foam factory,’ Kongzi says to the brother, the reflection of the lamp’s flame flickering across his pupils. ‘They’re all looking for workers. Why not stay here and get a job in one of them? I met a guy the other day who used to be a miner. He told me there was an explosion at his mine last year. The director didn’t want news of it to leak out, so he immediately sealed up the mine and refused to let rescue workers winch up the trapped men.’

‘Yes, coal mining is treacherous,’ Meili says. ‘Accidents happen all the time.’ Now that she’s washed off her make-up, she looks more awake than the two half-inebriated men.

‘No, I couldn’t live here,’ the brother says. ‘The smell is too foul. Look at the rashes that have broken out on my skin.’ He scratches the red patches on his hands. He’s wearing a blue down jacket with a grease-stained collar. His chin and neck are ingrained with coal dust. The conversation dries up. Nannan rolls onto her side, making the hut’s bamboo walls creak.

‘Dad, I need to wee,’ she says, waking up and rubbing her eyes.

‘Go and do it by yourself,’ Kongzi says.

Meili walks over to her, takes her by the hand and leads her outside. ‘Do it by that tree. I’ll stand here and watch over you.’

‘She wet her bed almost every night while you were away,’ Kongzi whispers to Meili. ‘The foam mattress stinks of urine.’

Nannan returns, holding up her trousers, and climbs onto Kongzi’s lap. ‘Go back to bed,’ he says impatiently.

‘Tell me a “Once upon a time” first. A long one.’

‘No, it’s too late for that. Go to sleep. If you’re good, I’ll catch a frog for you in the morning and roast it on the fire.’

‘You know I don’t eat meat,’ Nannan whines, snuggling against his chest. ‘Meat is pink. I like pink.’

‘Go on, let Mummy put you to bed,’ he says.

‘No, I don’t want Mummy!’ Nannan cries. ‘Mummy smells bad. I miss my grandma.’

‘You were only two and a half when you last saw her. How can you miss her?’

‘Grandma gave me peanuts. She had white hair.’

‘I thought about you every second I was away, Nannan, but you didn’t miss me at all,’ Meili says, rubbing her ear, which is still sore from Kongzi’s slap.

Nannan wraps her arms around Kongzi’s neck and nuzzles her face into his shoulder. ‘I like you, Daddy. You’re warmer than the sun.’ Meili pulls her away, carries her to the bed and tucks a blanket around her. ‘I didn’t miss you a bit,’ Nannan says to her, closing one eye angrily. ‘Give me my red-dress doll.’

‘What an unlucky year this has been,’ Kongzi says, tapping his packet of cigarettes. ‘First your grandmother died, and now this week I heard my father’s fallen ill…’

‘I miss home as well,’ Meili says. ‘I want to go and see my parents. I don’t care if the authorities arrest me and bung an IUD inside me.’ She remembers glancing out of the window this morning, and seeing grey sunlight fall on a tarpaulin shelter in the middle of an empty field. The desolate scene made her pine for Nuwa Village, her family and her parents’ house with the osmanthus tree in the garden.

‘The village authorities don’t just arrest family planning criminals now,’ the brother says, cracking a sunflower seed between his teeth. ‘They confiscate their cash, and all the money in their accounts, and put it straight into the pockets of the county officials. There’s a farmers’ market now, near Nuwa Temple. It attracts many visitors. The authorities have set up an inspection post at the village gates, and everyone who passes through has to show their family planning certificate.’

‘I’m not afraid of those officers any more,’ says Meili. ‘It’s the custody centres that terrify me. They round up peasants and kick us out of the cities saying we ruin their image. But not everyone in the cities is rich and well dressed.’ Her mind suddenly returns to the pregnant woman who was kicked in the fields of the labour camp for daring to speak back to a policeman.

‘Well, I saw a notice up in Guai Village today forbidding landlords from renting their property to family planning criminals, so you won’t be safe here either for much longer,’ says the brother, cupping his mug of rice wine.

‘You’re right,’ says Kongzi. ‘And besides, this isn’t a healthy place for a family to live. I don’t want Meili to give birth to another handicapped child…’ He turns his eyes to Meili, who stops cracking the sunflower seed between her teeth and looks straight back at him. As soon as she thinks of Waterborn, her body seizes up with rage. She longs to know where Kongzi took her, but hasn’t the courage to ask him. She feels guilty for having run away, and can’t help seeing her grandmother’s death as some divine punishment for her irresponsible behaviour.

‘What about that place, Heaven Township, you were talking about?’ the brother asks, then spits onto the floor. ‘How long would it take you to sail there?’

‘Two, three weeks, at least. And God knows how many inspection posts we’d have to pass through on the way and how many fines we’d be forced to pay.’ Kongzi spits a small bone onto the floor and wipes his mouth.