Ma Jian: The Dark Road

Looking to the north again, her gaze follows a line of telegraph poles that become shorter and shorter until they vanish into the ground. Beyond them, Nuwa Mountain stretches along the horizon. At its foot is Nuwa Village, where Meili’s parents still live. Meili knows she is a mother now only because three years ago she climbed to Nuwa Cave and rubbed the sacred crevice of Goddess Nuwa. A few days later she fell pregnant with Nannan. After Nannan was born, Kongzi said that their next child must be a boy. When he found out that she was pregnant again, he paid a Taoist priest to write an ancient spell on a piece of paper, which he then placed inside a longevity locket and buried beneath the date sapling, saying, ‘This is where the seventy-seventh generation male descendant of Confucius will be born.’

A propaganda van draws near. From the large loudspeaker strapped to its roof a voice blares out: ‘The County Family Planning Commission has dispatched officers to our village. This morning they will visit every household to fit women of childbearing age with an intrauterine device, and to provide information on reproductive health and fertility management…’ A truck follows closely behind, its open back packed with pregnant women whose legs are tightly bound with rope. Meili spots an old friend from primary school among them and looks away. A minute later comes the purple minibus which Kongzi’s cousin Shan uses to deliver materials to local factories and ferry villagers to the county town to sell their vegetables and eggs. His fares are half the price of the public buses, so his service is very popular. Meili clambers back onto the road and waves him down. The minibus stops briefly, drives on, then reverses and screeches to a halt. Justice Wang, the corpulent president of the Hexi law court, steps out followed by two policemen who seize Meili by the arms. ‘Let go of me!’ she shouts, kicking at the door as they try to shove her inside. ‘I have a birth permit! I’m allowed to fall pregnant so I don’t need an IUD!’

‘The family planning officers will want to check whether you’ve conceived yet, then,’ says the taller of the two policemen.

‘He’s my husband’s cousin,’ Meili says, pointing at the driver. ‘Shan, tell them I’m not pregnant!’

‘She can’t be pregnant, Justice Wang,’ says Shan, hunching his shoulders against the cold. ‘She had a daughter two years ago and had an IUD inserted straight after the birth.’

‘Well, the officers will need to confirm that the IUD’s still in place,’ the other policeman says. ‘Now, get inside.’

Suddenly Kongzi reappears, with Nannan following behind him. ‘Let go of my wife or I’ll set fire to the minibus!’ he shouts, flicking his lighter and holding the flame to a cotton shirt he’s pulled from his sack. ‘You can’t go around arresting people for no reason. Have you no knowledge of the law?’

Shan sticks his head out of the window. ‘Don’t set fire to my minibus, cousin,’ he implores, the wind blowing his fringe right back.

‘Me want to pee, Daddy,’ Nannan whines, tugging at Kongzi’s trousers. The red quilted jacket she’s wearing is three sizes too big and almost reaches her ankles. ‘Do it yourself in that ditch,’ Kongzi snaps.

‘Family planning efforts aren’t bound by the law,’ the tall policeman says, switching on his electric baton and staring at the blue sparks dancing over the tip.

‘Bloody traitor,’ Kongzi snarls, eyeing Shan coldly.

‘Meili flagged me down,’ Shan replies, his face colouring. ‘I wouldn’t have stopped otherwise. The Hexi family planning squad has commandeered every vehicle in the county. They’re paying us sixty yuan a day.’

‘We’ll let her go for the time being,’ Justice Wang says, then he turns his fiery gaze to Kongzi. ‘As for you, Kong Lingming — if you attempt to obstruct our efforts again, I’ll slam you in jail, and not even your revered ancestor will be able to save you then.’

The three uniformed men climb back into the minibus. As it drives off, children who’ve run out from the village hurl clods of earth at its windows, and a scruffy yellow dog chases after it until it disappears from sight.

Seconds later, a man called Scarface marches onto the road, one hand waving a kitchen cleaver and the other gripping a rope which is tied to the wrists of his three crying daughters. Kongzi tries to stand in his way, dodging his swinging cleaver. The two elder girls are his pupils.

‘Out of my way!’ Scarface shouts, the burn mark on his forehead turning bright red. ‘I’m taking my three daughters to the County Chief. Let him tell me which one is surplus, and I’ll kill her there and then, right in front of him.’ His youngest daughter is only three years old. Noticing that her shoes have fallen off, her older sisters stoop down and try to pick her up with their bound hands.

Nannan crawls out of the ditch. As Meili crouches down to hug her, her face suddenly creases with alarm. ‘Oh God, Kongzi, I’ve wet myself. I’ll have to go home and get changed.’

On a cold night, nine years ago, following a failed morning escape, Father leads Mother and Nannan out of Kong Village and across the snowy fields to the banks of Dark Water River. Here, they board a small boat and, leaving whirlpools and diesel smoke in their wake, head south in search of a safe place for their second child to be born. The infant spirit drifts away from them and continues along Dark Water River, following it upstream all the way to its sacred source in Nuwa Cave.

KEYWORDS: seasickness, testicles, tangled string, crimson lipstick, boiled frogs, custody centre.

THE PITCH-BLACK Yangtze River lies supine along the base of the steep limestone gorge, curving round the sinuous banks. The passenger boat moves over the water, leaving a trail of white foam which stretches hopelessly into the distance. Juddering violently, the diesel engine spews out fumes that fill each corner of the boat then leak into the night sky. Most of the passengers have come out onto the top rear deck to escape the stench of vomit and excrement in the cabins below. Meili is squashed against the railings, next to a woman wearing crimson lipstick who comes from a town only ten kilometres from Nuwa Village. When she came onto the deck and saw how ill Meili looked, she gave her a seasickness pill. She’s travelling to Fengjie, a town downriver where she works in a hair salon. She tells Meili that the river towns along this stretch of the Yangtze are being torn down before the dam is complete and the valley flooded, so demolition work is easy to find. She confides that her husband has just had a vasectomy. ‘Three days after he was snipped, the wounds became infected and now his testicles are the size of carrots. He spends all day drinking liquor, moaning about the agonising pain, saying he wishes he could murder the family planning officers who botched the operation.’ The woman is smoking a cigarette. When she speaks, her white teeth sparkle.

‘Men hate the idea of losing their manhood,’ Meili says. ‘You should press the Family Planning Commission for compensation.’ She has grown used to this woman’s high-pitched voice, and is now staring at the gold ring on her finger, wondering whether it’s real or gold-plated. Meili has a wedding ring as well, but she keeps it inside her bag as since she fell pregnant her fingers have swollen and it no longer fits.

‘He did demand compensation, but they gave him only 1,200 yuan — not enough to pay for even a week of hospital treatment. We asked for a copy of the follow-up examination report, but they refused to give it to us in case we lodged an official complaint. We tried to sue them, but the district judge told us that family planning authorities are above the law. If we took our case to Beijing, we’d be arrested for “illegal petitioning”.’