Ma Jian - The Dark Road

Mother’s legs are shaking uncontrollably. Trying to distract herself from the pain, she bites into her lower lip until it bleeds.

‘Relax, don’t tense up,’ Dr Tao tells her.

‘I can’t!’ Mother shouts, her whole body juddering. ‘I keep remembering my baby son kicking his legs about after he was pulled from me, then seconds later seeing the doctors strangle him to death. I can’t get those images out of my mind.’

‘I’m here to help deliver your child, not murder it. Come on, start pushing again, or I’ll have to call your husband in.’

‘No, it’s bad luck for husbands to see their wives giving birth,’ Mother says, her head swaying from side to side as another wave of contractions creeps up.

‘In foreign countries, men stay with their wives during childbirth to offer support and comfort,’ Qin says, pressing Mother’s legs down onto the bed.

‘Well, we’re not fucking foreigners!’ Mother yells. ‘Come out, little Heaven! Don’t be afraid. No one’s going to kill you, I promise…’

The infant spirit watches the fetus curl up with fright. When it was expelled from Mother’s ovary and rolled down the fallopian tube at the beginning of this third incarnation, it was aware of the two previous times it had made this journey. It remembered Mother screaming: ‘Don’t come out into this world, my child! Return to me in another incarnation. Murderers! Animals!…’ Then, when it reached the womb and was penetrated by Father’s sperm, memories from its former lives returned with greater clarity. It recalled Father’s anger on discovering that Waterborn was a girl, and it grew fearful of its own birth. As its senses developed, it became more aware of its surroundings. It cringed when Mother sighed with disappointment after being told she was pregnant with another girl, and squirmed when the bitter pollutants flowed through Mother’s blood. It realised it would have to choose between the poisons of the womb and the hostility of the outside world. The fetus isn’t sure what lies outside, but is certain now, after taking a brief look, that this isn’t its rightful birthplace. The date tree that was blessed in Nuwa Cave when it was a sapling isn’t growing in the yard. It decides that it must stay inside Mother’s womb, like a fish in a glass bowl, and wait for her to carry it back to Kong Village.

Mother howls out again, her legs splayed open like a forked tree. ‘Don’t let me return as a woman in my next life! I’d rather be a dog or a rat than suffer this pain again!’

‘You’ve had two doses of oxytocin, but the baby still won’t budge,’ Dr Tao says, tugging the fetus’s foot with his forceps, struggling without success to pull it out. ‘I’ve never seen a Chinese fetus resist so much. Are you sure it doesn’t have foreign blood?’ Giving up at last, he releases the foot and watches it slip back into the womb. ‘If I’d pulled any harder, its spine would have broken.’

‘Foreign blood?’ Meili shouts. ‘How insulting! I’m a descendant of Goddess Nuwa. My baby’s one hundred per cent Chinese!… Let me squat on the floor and try pushing again.’ Mother turns onto her side and eases herself off the bed.

‘It’s no use,’ says Dr Tao. ‘I’ve delivered hundreds of babies, but this one clearly has a psychological block: it just doesn’t want to come out. There’s nothing more I can do. I won’t take any payment. You must go to a government hospital at once and ask for a surgical delivery.’

‘You think I’d let someone put a knife to my belly? Never! Fetch me some more towels.’ Mother is squatting with her back against the bed, looking as though she’s trying to shit, but however hard she pushes, nothing is coming out.

‘I promise you, I couldn’t have pulled any harder,’ Dr Tao says, perching on a stool to catch his breath. ‘That fetus has unworldly strength!’

‘Of course it’s strong!’ Mother says, mopping the sweat from her face. ‘It’s been inside me for twenty months!’

‘Twenty months now, is it? When it does finally come out, it’ll be able to jump off the bed and scamper around the room…’

The contractions slowly abate, the cervix closes up, and the womb becomes still. Mother topples to the floor in exhaustion. The breeze blowing from the air-conditioning unit smells of old blood and deep-fried fish.

‘Still not out yet?’ Father says, walking in with a carton of orange juice.

‘The fetus has embedded itself into your wife’s flesh. I couldn’t extract it.’

‘When I came to see you two months ago you said the fetus was only eight months old,’ Mother says. ‘How can I believe anything you say?’

‘Listen, I’ve had enough!’ Dr Tao says. ‘I don’t want your money. Just go and get a surgeon to take it out for you.’

‘So that he can then strangle it to death?’ Mother cries. ‘Never!’

Seeing Father about to light up, Dr Tao shakes his head. ‘Sorry, this room is air-conditioned. No smoking allowed.’

Father drops the cigarette back into his pocket and says, ‘I know a bit about Taoist astrology, Dr Tao. Perhaps we should pay a priest to choose an auspicious day for the birth.’

‘Don’t waste time with that nonsense,’ the doctor replies. ‘Just listen to my advice: take her to a proper hospital straight away and pay for a Caesarean.’

‘All right, all right,’ Father says. ‘Let’s go home and fetch some more cash, Meili.’

‘No, I refuse to have my belly cut open. You know how I hate the sight of knives and blood…’ Meili is resolute. She’s terrified not only that the doctors will murder the baby, but that Kongzi will explode with rage when, after spending a fortune on a Caesarean, he discovers that the baby is a girl. Since the baby’s determined not to come out, Meili decides that she should have another ultrasound to confirm its sex. Perhaps it will turn out to be a boy, after all. How could that woman tell that the fetus was a girl from the blurred and grainy image on the screen? She will allow little Heaven to stay inside her for as long as it wants, and they’ll get through this difficult time together. If Kongzi or the government try to force her to do otherwise, she’ll resist them with every fibre of her body.

KEYWORDS: respected scholar, red and pink balloons, maternity dress, looking for whores, hammer and sickle, candlelight.

‘LET ME SEE if you’ve got everything you need,’ Kongzi says, opening Nannan’s satchel and checking that it contains the Year One textbooks, her pencil case and a ruler. She is eight today, and tomorrow he’ll take her for her first day at an illegal school for children of migrant workers. It’s housed in an aluminium warehouse on the southern edge of town, and the fees are reasonable. As a descendant of Confucius, Kongzi is annoyed that he didn’t think of opening a school like this himself.

After breakfast, he listens to Nannan read out the first chapter of the literacy textbook. He’s recently taken up a temporary, part-time post at Red Flag Primary — a government school next to the Confucius Temple — covering for a Chinese-literature teacher who’s gone on maternity leave. He and Nannan are sitting at a small table in the yard, the sunlight shining on their faces. The landlord now uses the three other houses as storerooms for his broken televisions, so the compound is much more peaceful. Kongzi’s delivery van has broken down and now stands in the corner covered with rusty metal sheets and bicycle frames. The ducks waddle out of the pen and peck at the noodles Meili is scattering on the ground.

Nannan reads out the words as she follows Kongzi’s moving finger. ‘“The red flag flaps in the wind. The hammer and sickle in the centre represents the Chinese Communist Party: eternally leading the people forward…”’