Ma Jian - The Dark Road

In the darkness, she sees Weiwei walk towards her. She goes up to him and says, I can’t leave Kongzi. We have raised a daughter together, we share the same bed and the same pillow. I can’t abandon this path. And besides, you are not in my heart… After daring to imagine this scene, she feels her cheeks grow hot and a sense of calm descend on her. She gives Kongzi a prod and whispers, ‘Wake up! It’s nearly six. It’s unlucky not to watch the sun rise on the first day of the new year.’

‘Yes, pour me another one,’ Kongzi mumbles under his breath, then rolls over and falls back to sleep. Meili gazes at the Kongzi who ten years ago she worshipped and admired, and feels a pang of regret. The past seems to her as drained of colour as wilting lotuses on the bottom of a dry lake.

‘Let’s open that bottle of French claret my client sent me,’ she says, getting out of bed and slipping into her flip-flops. The jubilant crowds, fireworks and singers in red dresses flashing across the silent television screen fill the dark room with festive light.

‘I dreamed of our son just now,’ says Kongzi. ‘He looked just like me when I was a child. He was standing on a street corner, flicking marbles into a hoop, like I used to do. What fun I had as a kid. I’d come home at the end of the day beaming with pride, my pockets stuffed with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms cards I’d won playing snap with my friends. I wonder where I put my card collection. I’m sure Heaven would like to play with them when he’s older.’

‘Huh! Little Heaven won’t be interested in those cards. You’ll have to buy him a computer game, or an electronic doll, if he’s a girl.’ Meili occasionally raises the possibility that Heaven might be a girl, to test Kongzi’s reaction.

‘If you let Heaven stay inside you any longer, he might very well change into a girl. Or he might calcify like that stone baby — the one I read about in the papers, that a ninety-year-old woman gave birth to after carrying him in her belly for sixty years.’ Kongzi takes a sip of the French claret and frowns. ‘Ugh! So sickly sweet. Chinese liquor has much more of a kick to it.’

‘I haven’t tried to stop Heaven from coming out. She’s probably afraid to leave the womb because she knows you don’t want a daughter. If she is a girl, you must promise to be kind to her.’

Kongzi remains silent. Relieved by his subdued reaction, Meili continues. ‘Someone from my family should go to Nuwa Cave tomorrow to pray for a speedy delivery. I wish I could give my parents a call. My brother’s due to be released from the camp this month. And I’d like to make sure they received the money I sent last month. I transferred it to my uncle’s account — the one who lives in the county town. When I phoned him last month he promised me he’d give it to my father.’ From this phone call, Meili found out that after her brother was jailed, her father travelled to the county town to complain about the miscarriage of justice. When the authorities refused to listen to him, he stood outside the County Party Committee Hall singing the ‘Internationale’, with a big placard around his neck that said FREE MY SON. Within ten minutes, the police arrived, and he was bundled into their van and locked up for a week. She pictures her parents’ home, the three-room house with the tiled roof and the osmanthus tree in the garden, and remembers how her grandmother would sit with her beneath the tree, brushing her hair and telling her stories of Goddess Nuwa, the deity with the face of a woman and the body of a snake who created the world and humankind. She told her that near Nuwa Mountain is a magic lake that can catch the moon’s reflection, and that at the beginning of time, this lake pulled Nuwa down from Heaven. After months of walking around the lake by herself, Nuwa felt lonely, so she sat on the shore, scooped up clods of yellow mud, moulded them into human beings and gave them life. After a while, she became frustrated by her slow progress, so she pressed a rope down into a pool of mud then flicked it from side to side, and when the flecks of mud fell onto the ground they were transformed into a mass of people.

‘Turn up the volume,’ Father says, ‘they’re talking about share prices. I bought some stocks in Shenzhen TV the other day…’

Mother holds the remote control and stares blankly at the screen. A spiral of incense smoke rises to the ceiling and escapes into the night through a hole in the roof. The infant spirit leaves the house and slips off towards Womb Lake, continuing its journey back in time.

KEYWORDS: red dust, white uniforms, Golden Flower Mother, Guinness World Record, red envelope, missing person’s case.

AFTER A SUDDEN downpour, a procession escorting the Town God Temple’s statue of Golden Flower Mother advances along the wet street. Large crowds pack the pavements. For a moment, all Meili and Nannan can see is a loudspeaker attached to a moving van, from which a high-pitched voice is singing: ‘ China has entered a new age. The nation is secure and the people live in peace. Dreams harboured for a hundred years are coming true. Happiness will be ours for ever …’ Behind the van comes a group of workers in red baseball hats, holding a cloth banner that says HEAVEN TOWNSHIP PLASTIC GRANULATION WORKSHOP VALUES EDUCATION AND DONATES GENEROUSLY TO LOCAL SCHOOLS. Meili scans the faces and sees Pang, her wiry plaits sticking out from under her hat, and Ah-Fei, who’s wearing thick make-up to conceal her vitiligo. She waves to them as they pass; they smile and wave back. Meili wonders how Old Shao is doing. Cha Na told her that he contracted pneumonia and has returned to his village in Jiangxi. Drummers appear, followed by schoolgirls in white uniforms, twirling spears and swords. Three boys march on either side, holding placards advertising a supplier of second-hand military electronic components. The humid air dampens the thud of the drums. Meili looks down and sees Nannan gaze admiringly at the schoolgirls’ white dresses, white socks and white shoes.

‘I wish I could follow them and see them dance,’ says Nannan. She’s wearing a yellow long-sleeved T-shirt over a red blouse, and jeans tucked into gumboots. The downpour has washed most of the smell of burnt plastic from the air, leaving only a faint tang of sulphur. Meili watches women dance past in low-rise jeans and white shirts, exposing their navels as they raise their arms in the air.

‘It’s too crowded now,’ Meili says, tugging Nannan back from the street. ‘Let’s have some dim sum, then I’ll take you to Foshan to see the largest Golden Flower Mother statue in the county.’ She’s heard that Golden Flower Mother’s powers are at their height today, and that all requests made to her will be fulfilled. She’s already withdrawn five hundred yuan from the cash machine to give as an offering. She and Nannan retreat into the entrance of a clothes boutique behind. The aluminium roll-up door suspended above bulges in the middle like the belly of a pregnant woman. Meili has agreed to have dim sum with Tang today, and to prevent him making any advances, she’s bringing Nannan along, even though she knows that the infant spirit inside her belly is her best protector. For the last six months, not even Kongzi has dared touch her.

They have to wait half an hour before the statue of the Golden Flower Mother finally appears. She’s inside a small wooden pavilion, carried on poles by four men in black mandarin hats and embroidered silk suits. Red powder has been rubbed onto her cheeks, and a plastic baby boy has been placed in her arms. She looks much more alive than she did last night in the Town God Temple. A few stragglers trail behind, smoking cigarettes and stopping now and then for a chat. Then dancing lions appear, jumping to the beat of more loud drums. The spectators on the pavements stare at them blankly as though they were watching a television show.