by Ma Jian
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 . . .”’
‘“Question One: What is the name of the flag? . . .”’ Kongzi says, lowering his voice to an authoritative pitch. Although he only teaches three afternoons a week, he is delighted to have returned to his true calling. As soon as he wakes up, he puts on his dark grey suit and polishes his glasses, whether he’s working that day or not.
The Sunday broadcast booms through the town from distant loudspeakers: ‘As part of our ongoing campaign to improve the implementation of national population control policies, Director Jie Ailing, Deputy Chair of the Provincial Family Planning Association, will visit Heaven Township today to carry out a thorough investigation of . . .’
‘Did you hear that, Kongzi?’ Meili says, looking in the mirror attached to the front door as she applies her lipstick. ‘Does that mean we’ll have to lie low today?’ She’s wearing her favourite cream coat and a white maternity dress she paid a seamstress to copy from a photo in a fashion magazine.
‘No, don’t worry,’ Kongzi says. ‘Director Jie won’t have a chance to inspect anything. Heaven officials will whizz him around town on a quick sightseeing tour, then take him out to lunch and get him drunk.’
‘Dad, when the family planning has finished, will we be able to go home?’ Nannan asks.
‘The Family Planning Policy is a protracted war waged against women and children,’ Kongzi replies. ‘No one knows how long it will last. That’s why your little brother is still inside Mummy’s tummy. He’s too afraid to come out.’
‘Why didn’t I get family planned?’
‘You were our first child, so your birth was legal. When you’re older you’ll be able to apply for a residence permit and go to university.’
‘Mummy has a residence permit, so how come she was arrested when she went to that big city?’
‘Because she has a rural permit, not an urban one, and she didn’t have any money on her.’
‘Do we have money now?’
‘Some. Not much. When we have a bit more, we’ll be free. We’ll be able to go to whichever city we like.’
‘I don’t want to go to university. I want to make money for you and Mummy.’
‘Nannan, remember that saying I taught you: “Children who don’t read books don’t know what treasures they contain. If they knew how precious these treasures were, they’d stay up all night, reading by candlelight.” The meaning is simple: if you study hard, you’ll get rich.’
‘But, Dad, you studied hard, so why aren’t you rich?’
‘Because I’ve had to concentrate on making sure you have a little brother. Once he’s born, I’ll make lots of money for us, I promise.’
‘Why doesn’t Grandpa give you money?’
‘You mean my father?
He doesn’t have much money now. But before the Communists came to power, his father – my grandfather that is – was very wealthy. He was a rich landowner and respected scholar. Everyone in the village looked up to him. In 1951, when Mao told peasants to attack counter-revolutionary forces, every landowner in Nuwa County was buried alive, but no one touched my grandfather. He was arrested ten years later, though, and died in prison.’
‘What happened to his wife?’
‘You’re too young to hear about all this, Nannan. All I can tell you is she died a few years later, in the Cultural Revolution.’
‘What about your mother’s parents – what happened to them?’ For the last week, Nannan has refused to eat breakfast. She hasn’t touched the fried eggs and soya bean milk Meili gave her, and is just nibbling on a coconut bun left over from yesterday.
‘They died years ago. Enough questions! Back to your work. Let’s have a look at Lesson Five. The title is “What a good idea!”’
Nannan turns to the page and starts reading: ‘“One day, when Chairman Mao was seven years old, he and his friends went into the mountains to let their cattle graze on fresh pastures. The question was: how could they keep an eye on the animals, collect firewood and pick wild fruit, all at the same time? Mao had a good idea. He divided his friends into three teams and told the first team to look after the cattle, the second team to chop wood, and the third team to pick fruit—”’
‘Fine, class over,’ Meili interrupts. ‘Nannan, you’re coming with me today.’ She ties a scarf around Nannan’s neck and heads off to work.
‘Don’t forget to kill the rat in the toilet, Dad,’ Nannan shouts to Kongzi as they walk out of the gate.
When they’ve left, Kongzi wonders again how much he’ll be able to get for his broken van. Three hundred yuan at the most, he thinks. The owner of the car-repair workshop is coming to buy it back this morning. Once it’s sold, Kongzi will open a new bank account. Since they arrived in Heaven, they’ve been stashing all their earnings under their bed, apart from the small sums they send back to their parents or spend on food and rent. They’ve saved sixteen thousand yuan already. If they bought shares with the money, they could make a fortune. Kongzi visited an underground gambling house the other day. It charges no entrance free, provides a free lunch at noon, and if your money runs out, it will lend you more. He spent all day there and lost eighty yuan. Today, he’ll try his luck again. If the gods look favourably on him, perhaps he’ll have a big win, and will be able to open his own Confucius school. The Confucius Temple would be an ideal location. When he’s saved enough money, he’ll discuss the matter with the local Education Department and request official authorisation. Yes, he’ll go gambling again today. Even if he loses a few hundred yuan, Meili will never find out. In preparation for Nannan’s birthday meal tonight, he inflates some red and pink balloons and hangs them outside the front door. Meili said she’d buy a cream-filled birthday cake on her way home this evening. Before he has time to finish his cup of tea, the owner of the car-repair shop pulls up outside the compound and honks his horn.
At noon, Kongzi arrives at the entrance of the underground gambling house with three hundred yuan in his pocket, but as soon as he steps inside, four men huddled around the card table jump onto their stools, pull guns from their pockets and shout: ‘Freeze!’ Kongzi and the other gamblers in the room are handcuffed, bundled into a van and driven to the local police station, where they’re dragged to the backyard, searched and cross-questioned one by one. The first three men to be dealt with only went to the gambling house for a free lunch, and have no money on them. After a fierce kicking, they’re released, and are left to crawl out onto the street, bruised and covered in dust.
Kongzi is the last to be seen. He fills out a form and empties his pockets. ‘I’d only just stepped through the door,’ he says angrily. ‘I didn’t go there to gamble. You had no right to arrest me!’
‘What were you doing with all this cash, then – looking for whores?’ a young officer says mockingly, picking up the wad of notes and counting them.
‘Give that money back to me, you fucking gangsters! I didn’t commit any crime.’
A bald man standing behind him kicks him in the shins. ‘You dare swear at us, in this place?’ he shouts. Kongzi falls to the ground, then quickly jumps up, but just as he’s about to swing his fist at the bald man’s face, another officer kicks him down again. The bald man pulls out an electric baton and smashes it onto Kongzi’s head. As Kongzi attempts to rise to his feet, the bald man grabs him by the hair and rams his knee into his jaw.
‘Come and hit me again, you motherfuckers, if you think you have the balls!’ Kongzi cries out after falling flat on his back.
‘Shut your mouth, you filthy vagrant!’ the young officer shouts, and kicks Kongzi’s mouth until it bleeds. Kongzi spews out another stream of abuse. The three officers crouch down, pin back his arms and legs, then the bald man leans over and shoves the electric baton into Kongzi’s mouth. ‘After this, you’ll never be able to swear at us again!’ he says, and flicks on the switch.
Just as Meili is placing Nannan’s birthday cake onto a plate after returning home from work, the landlord runs into the compound and tells her that he’s heard Kongzi has been arrested. She leaves Nannan in his care, rushes to the police station and finds Kongzi lying semi-conscious in the waiting room. While she pays the thousand-yuan fine before taking him off to hospital, the sergeant behind the desk tells her that Kongzi confessed to sleeping with a hair-salon prostitute. ‘You think we beat him up for no reason?’ he says. ‘No, he attacked us and we fought back in self-defence. He’s lucky we’re letting him go. But when he wakes up, tell him this: next time we find him in a gambling house, he’ll get ten years behind bars.’
When Kongzi returns from hospital two weeks later, the electrical burns on his lips and tongue have almost healed, but he’s still unable to speak. This episode has cost them a total of eleven thousand yuan. Meili had to take time off work to look after him in hospital, and Nannan had to stay with Lulu. The events have upset her greatly. She went missing yesterday. Meili searched for her for several hours, and found her at last standing all alone on a riverbank.
Although Kongzi is on the mend, Meili is on the verge of a breakdown. The morning of Kongzi’s birthday, she takes out the ‘Fishing Boat Lullaby’ CD she gave him when they were living on the sand island, and attacks it with the kitchen cleaver. She tolerated him watching porn movies, but the thought of him sleeping with a hair-salon prostitute is too much for her to bear. She deplores the police’s brutality but loathes Kongzi’s degenerate behaviour even more. The village teacher she once worshipped has become a man who fills her with disgust. She looks down at him now and spits: ‘What were those sayings you kept rattling off? “Cultivate yourself and bring order to your family, and the nation will be at peace . . .” and “The gentleman embraces virtue and the sanctions of the law . . .” Huh! You foul hypocrite!’ She stares into his eyes and asks him if he did indeed sleep with a prostitute, and he looks back at her and calmly shakes his head. She knows it’s possible that the sergeant was lying when he told her about the confession, but suspects that he wasn’t. When Kongzi first returned from hospital, the sight of his gruesomely swollen face aroused her pity, but as soon as he was able to take his first sip of milk, she felt like grabbing her shoe-cutting knife and plunging it into his neck.
As evening falls, Mother continues to curse Father, tears streaming down her face. ‘You spineless rat! You heartless, brainless bastard! Drinking, gambling, sleeping with prostitutes! Where did you get all the energy? Did you really think that there would be no consequences?’ Father opens his eyes feebly then closes them, unable to respond . . . ‘Filthy sod! Not satisfied with eating from the family wok, you have to scoff from the dirty saucepans as well! Womb Lake is just out there! I wish you’d fling yourself into it and drown . . . Kong the Second Son, indeed! Remember what they used to sing about Confucius? Kong the Second Son was an ev
il man. He spouted righteousness from his mouth, while concealing ruses in his heart. How right they were!’ Mother dances around the room, singing the Cultural Revolution song, her hands cupping her swollen belly. Nannan peeps out from under her blanket. Father stays still, his eyes tightly closed. Several hours later, the lights are finally switched off. In the darkness outside, the wind sways the strings of dried chillies and shrivelled red and pink balloons hanging from the front door, then races out through the gates, lifts chewed sugar-cane pulp from the pavements and swirls along the riverbank, tossing scraps of tarpaulin into the river.
KEYWORDS: dirges, black coffin, wild ghost, gold-rimmed glasses, lotus pond, funeral objects, mandarin ducks.
AFTER SHE FINISHES work for the day, Meili decides to go to the market to buy chicken blood and chives for tonight’s dumplings. Spring Festival is only a few days away, but she still hasn’t prepared a decorative table display. She’s bought New Year sticky rice buns and some dates to make the traditional ‘give birth to a noble son’ cakes. Little Heaven has now been inside her for two years. It thoughtfully keeps itself tightly curled up, so her bulge is much less noticeable. When Kongzi’s mouth was injured, Meili began having long conversations with the infant spirit instead, and this has continued even now that Kongzi is able to speak again.