The Dark Road

by Ma Jian

  ‘Exploded it?’ Meili says, her mind returning to the dead face of Happiness.

  ‘Yes, he bunged a firecracker up her vagina and set light to it,’ Xixi says, crossing her legs and wriggling her toes.

  ‘Men get so obsessed with carrying on the family line, they lose all reason!’ Meili says, glancing at Kongzi again. He’s banging his fist angrily now, shouting: ‘Those fucking officials, turning up here and bombarding us with bloody condoms.’ Two days ago, officers from the County Family Planning Commission came to the island to hand out floating population fertility registration forms and bags of condoms printed with photographs of movie stars.

  ‘Hope you didn’t swear at them like that when they came,’ Chen says, then licks his teeth. ‘When my brother was locked up in a detention centre last year for entering a city without permission, he swore at an official, and they cut half his tongue off.’

  ‘I’ve been detained for vagrancy as well,’ Bo says, scratching his bald scalp. ‘If you have money and connections, they let you out after twenty-four hours. But I had nothing. They forced me to labour in the fields for two months, and beat me viciously every day. By the time I was let out, I was skin and bone.’

  ‘So, what documents do you need to avoid arrest?’ Dai asks, brushing some white cotton fluff from his jumper.

  ‘Identity card, health certificate, temporary urban residence permit, temporary work permit, birth permit, marriage licence . . .’ Kongzi says, rattling off the list. ‘But even if you have them all, if you are in a big town or city and you look like a peasant, they’ll still arrest you. And once you’re in handcuffs, they’ll squeeze as much money from you as they can.’

  ‘They call us the “Three Nos”: no documents, no homes, no income,’ says Bo. ‘When our son’s a bit older, I’ll go and work on a building site. Start living a normal life.’ Bo is in his late forties. A rumour has circulated the island that he spent time in jail for abducting his neighbour’s wife and selling her to a widower in the countryside.

  ‘No, what they really call us is “blind vagrants”, aimless drifters,’ says Chen, a foolish smile spreading across his face. The Western suit he’s wearing is thin and torn. He’s making good money now, hauling cargos of oranges up the river several times a week.

  ‘To think that it’s now a crime for us to live in our own country!’ Kongzi cries out, his face red from alcohol. ‘Where do they expect us to go?’

  ‘Keep your voice down – you’re not in a classroom now,’ Meili says. She looks over towards the town. An old warehouse behind the rubbish dump has been renovated and turned into the Earthly Paradise Nightclub. Its bright neon lights outshine the ones of the Eastern Sauna House above. People walk past and gaze up in wonder. A motorbike stops outside the entrance, and a smartly dressed couple climb off the back seat and become engulfed by children selling roses and chewing gum. Nearer the jetty, a crowd is wandering aimlessly outside a second-hand stall which is lit by a bright bulb. Meili suddenly remembers the CD player she bought from the stall and gave to Kongzi for his birthday. She rushes into the tent, brings out the CD of the ‘Fishing Boat Lullaby’ she also bought him, slides it into the CD player and turns the volume up. The melancholy notes of the zither ripple out like water. She closes her eyes and pictures fishing boats moving through an empty night, their sails gleaming above cresting waves. As plucked notes quiver, rise and fade, she imagines the sun setting in the west, waves lapping against a riverbank, willow branches softly swaying, a heron soaring into the sky. Slowly, the willows, waves, sails, river and sky turn the same brilliant gold, then the light fades and darkens. In a brief moment of silence, she remembers lying on the deck of their boat, wailing a funeral song for Happiness as the infant spirit flickered above her. After a final dissonant strain resolves into a sad chord, Kongzi raises his head to the moon and sighs, ‘Ah, can you feel yourself dissolve into the landscape? It’s just like the poem: “Scoop water from the river and the moon is in your hands. / Pick blossom from a tree and its perfume infuses your clothes.” Thank you, Meili, for my wonderful presents. I will treasure them.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a beautiful song,’ Chen says. Everyone else remains silent and begins to help themselves to more food.

  As they’re surrounded by water on all sides, at dusk the air becomes cool – especially now in winter – and the island feels more spacious.

  ‘How much grain do you feed your ducks every day?’ Juru asks Meili, picking a piece of straw from her jacket. Seeing the children come running up waving branches in the air, she shields her bowl and shouts, ‘Careful not to kick sand into the food!’

  ‘Here, one for each of you,’ Meili says, handing a meatball to each child.

  ‘Rub your hands on your trousers first, you grubby girl!’ Juru says to her daughter. ‘Look, they’re covered in mud.’

  Nannan wanders out from behind a tree and watches the children scurry into the bushes.

  ‘Don’t tread in the poo!’ Chen calls out to them.

  ‘I wish people wouldn’t shit in those bushes,’ Meili says, staring pointedly at Juru. ‘When there’s no wind blowing, the island stinks to high heaven. You asked how much we feed the ducks? We only have twenty-three left now. We give each bird a cup of grain a day, or two cups if they’re laying eggs.’ She sees Nannan pick up a tiny dead chick and says, ‘Drop it!’

  ‘Why is it dead, Mum?’ Nannan asks, studying its face closely.

  ‘It got sick, probably.’

  ‘Why it wants to leave its mummy and daddy?’

  ‘Huh, always asking questions! Come here and have another meatball!’

  ‘I’m full up,’ Nannan says, frowning. ‘My tummy’s tired.’

  ‘Why not bury the little creature in the ground to keep it warm?’ Meili says, and looks down at the ducks in the small pen Kongzi wove from branches and twigs. Nannan puts the chick down next to the stove and presses it into the sand with her foot.

  ‘You’re lucky to be able to have fresh eggs every day – my ducks seem to have stopped laying,’ Xixi says, taking a fried pickle from the plate Juru is passing round.

  ‘I’ve heard you’re not producing enough breast milk, Juru,’ Meili says. ‘You should give your baby a formula top-up before you put him down to sleep.’ The baby is sucking Juru’s left nipple now, his little nose and hands red from the cold.

  ‘The formula they sell at the market is fake,’ Juru says. ‘It’s just ground rice and sugar. No protein.’

  ‘I would’ve been lucky to have been fed rice and sugar at his age!’ Meili says. ‘Come on, let’s taste the duck soup. Pass me your bowls.’

  ‘“Condemned to the same life of wretched vagrancy, / At our first encounter, we laugh like old friends . . .”’ Kongzi intones, his gold spectacles glinting under the strip light. ‘So, who wrote that poem? If you can’t answer, you must drink a shot!’

  ‘We’re peasants,’ Bo protests. ‘What do we know about poetry?’ Bo never washes when he returns from the rubbish dump. As soon as any alcohol reaches his stomach, a smell of rot rises from his skin.

  ‘How about a game of rhyming couplets, Kongzi?’ says Dai, tossing his stub on the ground. ‘Let’s fill our glasses and have a go.’

  ‘No, play with him first,’ Kongzi says, pointing to Chen with his chin.

  ‘All right,’ Dai says, raising his glass to Chen. ‘You and me, then. If you can’t complete the couplet, you must empty your glass in one gulp. Here goes: Men who drift down the river . . .’

  Chen pauses for a moment then blurts: ‘End up getting stabbed in the liver . . .’

  Dai rolls his bulbous eyes. ‘Stabbed in the liver? When have any of us been stabbed in the liver?’

  ‘Help me out, someone!’ Chen whines.

  ‘No, I’m afraid you’ve lost, my friend. Drink up!’

  The infant spirit sees that these lives have now vanished from the island. All that remains is a smell of darkness and wisps of Mother’s breath blowing from the bushes that have grown o
ver the sandy beach. The reflections of the town’s neon lights stretch right across the river into the reeds below. Mother and Father’s plastic bag is still hanging from a branch. Inside it are some yellow flyers, a pocket mirror, three condoms, a stick of cinnamon, some star anise and a mouldy stub of ginger. Sounds from the evening return once more.

  ‘Come on, Master Kong. My turn to challenge you.’

  ‘All right. I’m ready.’

  ‘A man who doesn’t drink . . .’

  ‘Lives a life more tedious than you could think.’

  ‘A man who doesn’t smoke . . .’

  ‘Lives more miserably than an ox in a yoke.’

  Father’s efforts receive loud applause. ‘What a scholar! It’s clear you’re a chip off Old Confucius’s block. Such learning! Come, Master Kong, let’s fill our glasses again and have another go . . .’

  KEYWORDS: inferior breed, Mount Yang Guifei, merry-go-round, trampoline, bandages.

  LAST MONTH, AFTER two days of torrential rain, the sand island flooded. Some families retreated to their boats, others moved over to the opposite bank and built temporary huts near the rubbish dump. When the floodwaters receded, they all returned to the island and rebuilt their shelters. At Spring Festival, Kongzi wrote rhyming couplets for every family to hang outside their doors. Bo and Juru didn’t have a door, so they hung their couplet – IN THIS GOLDEN AGE, EVERY FAMILY WILL PROSPER / IN THIS NEW YEAR, EVERY HOUSEHOLD WILL REJOICE – from the branches of a nearby tree.

  Kongzi has released the ducks back onto the island. He lets them forage under the trees for water weeds, fish and slugs left behind by the flood, so only has to give them a full meal – usually a cabbage and cornmeal gruel – after he returns them to their pen at dusk. The pale brown hens scuttling about in the sunlight are squealing like children running home from school. Meili’s favourite bird is the large white drake that is double the size of the female ducks. Since she was forbidden to renew her lease on the market stall, she has spent most of her time on the island, looking after the birds. Every morning, she collects five or six luminous eggs from the cardboard boxes in which the egg-laying ducks roost.

  Kongzi bought a hundred little ducklings yesterday for just two hundred yuan. Meili suspects that at such a cheap price they must be an inferior breed. She tears a cardboard box into pieces, scatters them over the beach and ladles boiled rice onto each one.

  ‘Get up now, it’s lunchtime!’ she calls out to Kongzi, watching the yellow ducklings wander off towards a bush littered with plastic bags. It’s noon already, but Kongzi is still fast asleep, his legs draped over his blanket and peony-printed sheet. The new shelter he built from scavenged tarpaulin, wooden planks, tiles and old doors is finally, after many repairs, waterproof. It’s taller than their last one, and wider than the cabin of their boat, so the three of them are able to sleep quite comfortably. On the inside of the door Meili has nailed a coat rail, and on the outside a kitchen rack in which she keeps ladles, spatulas, chopsticks, spoons, and bottles of soy sauce and vinegar. Next to the pile of shoes beside the entrance is a coil of rubber hose which Kongzi found on the rubbish dump. He was going to take it to Time Square to water his plants, but last week the police discovered his vegetable patches and destroyed them, so it’s useless to him now.

  ‘Help me up, Meili!’ Kongzi shouts.

  Meili peeps inside the shelter and sees Kongzi’s penis sticking up under the sheet.

  ‘No, my hands are dirty,’ Meili says.

  Kongzi reaches up, pulls Meili down and presses her hands onto his penis. Reluctantly, she begins to rub it, peering out through a crack in the door at a duck stretching its neck in the sunlight. She glances down at the erection in her hands and feels a warm jolt between her legs. Kongzi squeezes her nipple. Her face flushes. ‘You lecherous pest,’ she says. ‘Can’t you wait until tonight?’

  ‘Don’t stop,’ Kongzi moans, trying to tug her trousers off. ‘Sit on me, will you?’

  The zip of her trousers breaks. She pushes him away and says, ‘Let me go for a pee, then we can do it in the cabin.’

  Once she’s lying flat on the heart-shaped sheet inside the cabin of their boat, Kongzi thrusts his penis into her, swivels it about for a while like an oar in a fulcrum, and ejaculates. Meili’s stomach cramps. His sperm is inside me now, she says to herself. Never mind. The IUD will kill them. She breathes a sigh of relief and crosses her legs.

  ‘This time, I’m sure I’ve planted a son inside you,’ Kongzi says. He ejaculates almost every day now, hoping desperately that one of his seeds will sprout.

  ‘The ducks have finished their lunch,’ Meili says, pulling her trousers back on. ‘I must spray some water on them.’

  ‘With what?’ he asks, scratching the mosquito bites on his arms.

  ‘My mouth. I heard the other day that if you spray them after a feed, it encourages them to preen their feathers. They need to rub themselves every day. It makes them feel good.’

  Kongzi sniggers quietly.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so vulgar! What’s happened to you? I preferred you when you were a schoolteacher and wore a clean suit and a shirt buttoned to the top.’

  ‘One must adapt to changing circumstances. I’m not a teacher any more, I’m a family planning fugitive.’

  ‘Well, I won’t let my standards drop. From now on, we must brush our teeth every day. Just look at yours – they’re as brown as rust. When you next go into town, buy three toothbrushes and a tube of Black Sister toothpaste – the advert said it protects against gum disease. And buy some roundworm tablets for Nannan as well. She’s always hungry these days. She probably has ringworm too. Have you seen that red patch on her leg? You can go to the pharmacy after you sell the eggs tomorrow.’

  Meili climbs out of the boat and walks to the shelter. A few seconds later, Nannan comes running up searching for something to eat. She stumbles over a ladle and wok lid and bumps into the stove, overturning a pan of boiling gruel straight onto her bare foot. She yells in agony. Meili steps over the pan and scoops her into her arms. Kongzi scrambles up the beach and stares at the large red blister already covering Nannan’s foot and ankle. Meili douses the blister with soy sauce and says, ‘This is serious. We must take her straight to hospital.’

  Kongzi carries Nannan to the boat, shouting out to the other islanders, asking if anyone can lend him some cash. Meili runs after him. ‘No, stay here, Meili,’ he says. ‘If you come to the hospital, they’ll put an IUD inside you.’

  She watches Kongzi sail Nannan across the river, carry her onto the jetty and disappear into the town. She imagines him carrying her along the road that leads to the hospital. First, they’ll pass the pleasure pond where she took Nannan last month, and watched her pedalling cheerfully in a small plastic boat, her lips and hands blue from the cold, while on a trampoline behind, two girls stared into space, munching sunflower seeds. After the pond, they’ll pass the Empress Yang Guifei Roast Chicken Store, with platters of burnished birds displayed in the front window, then a poky shop cluttered with crates of instant noodles and beer. The smell of roast chicken will follow them to the end of the road, all the way to the hospital forecourt. The entrance lies behind a cluster of large ornamental rocks and a large poster advertising cosmetic surgery. The thought of entering the hospital doors makes Meili sick with fear. To distract her mind, she boils up some water in which she’ll dunk their clothes and sheets to kill the bedbugs that have infested their shelter.

  A few hours later, Kongzi returns. Nannan is still sobbing, her left foot now wrapped in bandages. ‘Mum, take the hurt away,’ she cries. ‘It hurts, it hurts!’ Meili squeezes Nannan’s little hand and bursts into tears. ‘Good girl,’ she says. ‘I’ll buy you some instant noodles tomorrow, and a chocolate monkey. I promise.’ At this moment, Meili suddenly realises she’s a mother, and that her body is still connected to Nannan. She can feel the burns on Nannan’s feet as though they were singed into her own skin. She’ll make sure she never comes to harm again. Nanna
n curls up on Meili’s lap, as hot and limp as a boiled duck.

  ‘I had to pay two hundred yuan,’ Kongzi says, slumping into his legless chair, ‘just for a few bandages.’

  As the sky darkens and the air grows damper, ducks leave the bushes and waddle to the feeding bowls. The feathers they leave on the branches quiver in the cold breeze.

  Dai’s two daughters wander up and tell Kongzi that their father wants to have a drink with him.

  ‘Tell him I can’t tonight. Nannan’s hurt herself.’ Kongzi seldom refuses an invitation to join his neighbours for a drink. Many families have come and gone since they arrived, but their firmest friends are still here. The children spend their days playing together, and the families often eat together at night.

  ‘The ducks seem to be suffering from cramps,’ Meili says to Kongzi, carrying Nannan into the shelter. ‘We’d better not let them wade in the river.’

  The infant spirit watches Father squat down and tune the radio to a different station. A nasal voice whines: ‘Today, prosperity is within everyone’s reach. If you want to turn your dreams into reality, make sure you catch the next edition of The Road to Wealth . . .’

  ‘A man in the waiting room tipped me off about a good job,’ Father tells Mother. ‘It pays seventy yuan a day, lunch included. I’d be painting the jagged mountain behind the town. The authorities have renamed it Mount Yang Guifei. They’ve closed the quarry and are getting workers to paint the exposed rock face green, in time for a visit next month from the Provincial Tourism Department.’

  ‘I could do that,’ Mother says, lying down in the shelter, squeezing a flea that’s jumped onto her blue cotton trousers. ‘You could stay here and look after Nannan and the ducks.’

  ‘No, the spray paint is toxic. It can render women infertile. Two workers passed out from the fumes today. I saw them being carried into the hospital on stretchers.’