The Dark Road

by Ma Jian

  On her way to the market, she strolls down Magnificent Street. The sparkling jewels and designer clothes in the shop windows and the bright hoardings overhead divert attention from the peasants selling oranges on grubby carpets, and the oily smells of grilled mutton wafting from the street stalls. Between the Cloudy Mountain Printers and the Friendship Hotel is a winding lane Meili went down last week to check out a noodle shop that was up for rent. The shop itself was all right, but she was put off by the clinic for sexually transmitted diseases next door, and its large notice that said WE SPECIALISE IN SKIN COMPLAINTS. Since Kongzi’s arrest and hospital treatment ate up most of their savings, Meili has wanted more than ever to give up work and open her own shop. Knowing that it’s a short cut to the market, she turns into the lane and immediately hears funeral wailing, then sees a large white mourning tent erected further down. A lead runs from the window of a house to a bulb on the tent’s roof. The wailing is coming from a cassette player. She thinks at once of her grandmother and feels her eyes fill up. Without hesitating, she strides into the tent and introduces herself to an old man in white mourning dress who’s standing beside an open coffin. ‘I can sing funeral laments,’ she says to him, glancing down at the corpse. It’s a woman in a white robe. She looks about fifty and has a big smile on her face. Roasted heads of a chicken and a duck have been placed on her chest. There are eight banquet tables of guests, all dressed in white. Plates are clattering, everyone is chatting noisily. ‘Fill your glasses,’ someone shouts. ‘Drink! Drink!’

  ‘What do you charge per hour?’ says a middle-aged man standing in front of a large photograph of the deceased. Meili assumes that he’s the husband.

  ‘Two hundred yuan,’ she replies, sweeping her gaze over the bright interior.

  The husband goes to fetch his father-in-law who asks her in a thick southern accent, ‘Can you sing “The Memorial Altar” and “Soul Rising from the Coffin” sutras?’ He has white hair and is holding a walking stick with a dragon-head handle.

  ‘Yes, I can sing dirges for fathers, husbands, mothers – the whole repertoire. How many children did your daughter have? If you tell me some interesting events from her life, I can weave them into the lament.’

  ‘Our family’s from Chaozhou,’ he answers. ‘We don’t understand your northern dialect, so sing what you like. Improvise as you go along.’ He coughs loudly into his hand. A woman walks up and leads him back to one of the tables.

  ‘The funeral band we hired has been delayed and won’t be here until ten,’ the husband says. ‘So, yes, you’re welcome to sing for a couple of hours. I’ll fetch you a microphone.’ As he walks off again, Meili suddenly regrets offering to sing, but knows it’s too late to back out now. Although she watched her grandmother perform at funerals, she has never sung at one herself.

  Meili takes off her jacket and drapes a white funeral cloak over her shoulders, and remembering the white turban her grandmother used to wear, ties a large napkin around her head. She steps nervously onto the dais, takes a deep breath and sings into the microphone: ‘My dearest mother, what grief we feel! You’ve left this world before you’ve had a chance to savour one moment of joy . . .’ Real tears begin to run down her face. She closes her eyes and listens to her high-pitched lament pour out of the loudspeakers, pound the walls of the tent and flow into the lane outside. She feels herself drown in the deafening noise . . . ‘Sparrows search for their mothers under the eaves of roofs. Pheasants search for their mothers in bramble bushes. Carps search for their mothers among river weeds. But where can I go to search for you? . . .’ When she comes to the end of ‘Yearning for My Departed Mother on the Twelfth Lunar Month’, she sits down on a stool, wipes the tears from her face and looks out at the guests seated before her. Some are still wolfing down their food, shoulders hunched over their plates, some are deep in conversation, but most are looking up, staring straight back at her. She has no idea what these southerners made of her performance. She’s never sung with such intense grief before. Feeling another wave of sadness take over her, she sinks her head into her hands. Someone taps her shoulder and gives her a bottle of mineral water. She takes it without looking up, but feels too weak to open it. She thinks of how Kongzi, the only person she thought she could rely on, sold her baby daughter, and has very probably slept with a prostitute. She thinks of how the nightclub boss pinned her to a single bed and raped her, and how the government pinned her to a steel table and murdered her newborn son. Unable to control herself, she kneels beside the black coffin and weeps: ‘Beloved husband, five hundred years ago, our marriage was predestined in Heaven. In this lifetime we met at last and became as inseparable as two mandarin ducks. But now you’ve released your hand from mine and returned to the Western Paradise. Who will feed the geese and chicken in our backyard? . . . I hope that evil bastard burned to death in the fire . . .’ Harrowing images flash through her mind. She weeps about her grandmother’s corpse being dug up and burned, about Happiness lying on a riverbed, about Waterborn’s unknown fate, and about her fear of giving birth to Heaven and of Heaven’s fear of being born. Moaning and sobbing, she cries herself into a stupor.

  ‘Take a break,’ the husband says, handing her a plate of rice and fish. ‘Have something to eat.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she replies, her snot dripping onto the floor. She looks at the deep-fried fish, but has no appetite to eat it. Through the tent’s open door she sees windows light up in the dark lane, and whispers to the infant spirit: It’s time to leave. Your daddy and sister will be getting hungry. I’ll make a soup for them with the turnip and squid Cha Na gave me. She glances down at the fish again and whispers: All right, little Heaven, I’ll have some, just for you. Then she picks up the fish with her chopsticks, takes a bite, and studies the paper funeral objects displayed below the portrait of the deceased: miniature cars, fridges, houses and wads of American dollars – all the things that she herself hopes to acquire one day. As she looks down at the discarded chopstick wrappers and cigarette butts on the floor, she senses someone’s gaze fall on her. She turns round and sees a tall bespectacled young man in a black suit and tie.

  ‘How beautifully you sang!’ he says. ‘I wish I could have recorded you.’

  ‘That wasn’t singing, it was just wailing!’ Meili replies. She looks down at the coffin and imagines the woman inside listening to their conversation. She saw many corpses at the funerals her grandmother took her to, so isn’t afraid of them.

  ‘Well, how beautifully you wailed, then! Where did you study?’ The young man’s hair smells freshly blow-dried. Meili has become familiar with the smell of scorched hair and lacquer. She visits the hairdresser once a month now for a wash and blow-dry, and walks out looking like a film star.

  ‘The songs were passed down through my family,’ Meili says, then shudders at the thought that her grandmother is now as motionless and lifeless as the woman in the coffin.

  ‘You sound like that Hong Kong singer, Anita Mui. I’m very happy to meet you. My name is Zhang Tang. Just call me Tang.’

  ‘Anita Mui is a superstar! How can you compare me to her?’ Meili turns her head away to swallow the remaining food in her mouth.

  ‘She was my aunt,’ Tang says, pointing to the corpse. ‘She died of pancreatic cancer. I’m sure the pollution was to blame.’

  Meili wipes her mouth with a napkin. ‘Your accent isn’t strong. Where are you from?’

  ‘I grew up here, but went to university in Europe. I graduated last year.’ When he closes his mouth his two front teeth protrude over his lower lip.

  ‘Europe? I’ve dismantled lots of computers and phones from there. Is it a nice country?’

  ‘It’s not a country, it’s a continent! France, Italy, Germany – they’re all part of Europe. I was studying in England.’

  ‘Well, those countries must be much better than China. They dump their rubbish on us, and we treat it like treasure. How lucky you were to go there. Why on earth did you come back?’

  ‘I love
this place. When I was a child, it was idyllic. There was a beautiful lotus pond near the harbour and every house had a clean well. My friends and I would go to Womb Lake after school and fish for carp and shrimp.’

  ‘I live right by the lake. It’s squalid. The rivers are so polluted that just six months after we arrived, our boat rotted away.’ Meili doesn’t want to continue the conversation. She steps off the dais and pretends to read the messages on the flower wreaths.

  ‘I’d like to give you an Anita Mui CD,’ Tang says, following her.

  ‘Don’t bother. I’m twenty-six now – too old to think of being a pop star.’ She puts her plate on the ground and, trying to get rid of him, says: ‘Could you move away a little? I think I should sing a last song.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Tang says, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses further up his nose. ‘It’s my turn to stay by the coffin.’

  The husband walks over and hands her a paper cup of tea. Wanting to make an escape, Meili gulps it down in one and says, ‘Boss, my throat is sore. I don’t think I can perform any more laments.’

  A few minutes later she strolls out of the tent, whispering to the infant spirit, I bet you’re even more afraid to come out after hearing Mummy wailing like that! She thinks of how the dead woman will be given a proper burial tomorrow so that her soul can rest in peace until its next incarnation. Nobody wailed when her grandmother died and her mangled remains entered the earth, so her spirit is doomed to wander for eternity as a rootless wild ghost. Meili puts the cash she was paid into her pocket and examines the business card Tang gave her before she left. As they were saying goodbye, he told her that his sister-in-law is looking for a nanny, and asked if she’d be interested in the job. She thinks of Nannan, and hopes she’s home by now. For the last few days, she’s gone to the train station after school to collect discarded ticket stubs which Kongzi then sells to business travellers who claim the cost back on expenses.

  Mother loses herself in the lampless winding lane. She passes a tricycle covered in a yellow cloth which in the faint light from a window above looks like a dusty cream cake. At last she sees a bright street ahead, and quickens her pace. In the distance, she hears a pop ballad lilt from the mourning tent: ‘Has anyone told you they love you or shed tears over the poems you wrote? . . .’ After crossing the street, she takes two lefts then a right, and comes to the lotus pond near the harbour. The plastic rubbish heaped around its edge emits a cold, deathly light. She walks down towards the lake and follows the stone path that leads straight to their gate.

  When she opens the front door, she sees Kongzi stuffing clothes into a bag, and asks him where he’s going.

  ‘My father died,’ Kongzi says, quietly enough for Nannan not to hear him.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Three months ago, on his birthday.’

  ‘Was it an illness or an accident?’

  ‘He drank some fake wine and it perforated his stomach.’

  ‘But if you go back to the village, the police will fling you in jail. My brother said that they have evidence you took part in the riots. Your family have always begged you not to go home. They didn’t contact you when he died, did they? They were probably afraid you’d want to attend the funeral. Anyway, he’s been buried for months, so what’s the point of going back?’ She puts her arm around him and takes him to sit down on the bed. Her heart softens. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Kongzi. I know you would have liked to have attended his funeral, but I’m sure your father wouldn’t have wanted you to put yourself in danger.’ She rests her head on his shoulder. This is the first time they’ve touched since his arrest.

  Kongzi punches his chest and wails like a strangled cat: ‘What an unfilial wretch I am! I should be garrotted, stabbed ten thousand times . . .’ Nannan runs out into the yard and sits in a corner with her eyes closed.

  ‘After my grandmother died, my mother fell ill and had to have an operation, but I didn’t go back to see her,’ Meili says, stroking his back. ‘Don’t leave tonight. It would be too hot-headed. See how you feel in the morning.’

  ‘Enough,’ Kongzi says, putting his hands over his ears.

  ‘Well, you sit here quietly and I’ll get supper ready.’ She wipes the table and sets out plates of marinated peanuts, deep-fried shrimp and mini tomatoes. ‘So who told you he died?’ she asks. ‘Who arranged the funeral?’ She tries to picture Kongzi’s father, but all she sees in her mind’s eye is the dead woman in the black coffin.

  ‘I phoned home to ask if they’d received the ham and dried fish I sent them for Spring Festival, and my mother told me the news. There was a proper ceremony. The County Party Secretary sent a wreath, and a Communist Party flag was draped over the coffin.’

  ‘What an honour! Aren’t you proud?’ Meili rubs the cash in her pocket, and thinks what an odd coincidence it is that just after singing at a stranger’s funeral she hears of a death in her own family. She resolves never to sing at a funeral again.

  ‘He was a twelfth-level cadre, so of course he was entitled to have a Party flag over his coffin.’ Kongzi takes a sip from the mug of warm wine Meili gives him, then swallows the rest in one gulp. Nannan runs back into the room with Lulu, who’s come round to see her. Unlike Nannan, whose eyes slant elegantly upwards, Lulu has large goldfish eyes.

  ‘Go out and play, girls,’ Meili says, noticing tears drip down Kongzi’s face. She gives the girls two date biscuits and says, ‘Off you go now!’

  ‘But I’m tired,’ Nannan says, pursing her lips. She’s wearing her red flower hairclip, blue jeans and a red jumper covered with stickers of cartoon characters.

  ‘Can you take Nannan back to your place, Lulu?’ Meili says. ‘Tell your mother I’ll fetch her in an hour.’

  KEYWORDS: tumour, bedraggled alchemists, heart as soft as tofu, electronic messages, refurbished, second-hand.

  HEARING LOUD WAILING, Meili leaves the kitchen, goes up to little Hong’s bedroom on the second floor and picks her up out of the cot. ‘Don’t cry, little one, here’s your milk,’ she says. She pushes the bottle’s teat into Hong’s mouth and watches her stomach rise and fall in time with the sucking noises, and drops of milk run down her chin and neck. Meili can tell genuine imported milk powder from the fake domestic products simply by squeezing the bag. While running her market stall in Xijiang, she learned that imported powder is soft, but fake powder is hard and granular and tastes so bad that babies will only drink it if strawberry flavouring is added. She’s been working as a nanny for Tang’s sister-in-law, Jun, since Jun gave birth to Hong seven months ago. She often fantasises that Hong is little Heaven, who’s still stubbornly planted in her womb. Hong’s fine black hair has grown so long that it now falls below her eyes. When it’s brushed back into a ponytail, the white marks from the chickenpox she contracted last month are visible on her forehead. Beside the cot are a nappy-changing table and a chest of drawers piled with soft toys – teddy bears, puppies, monkeys, elephants – which make the bare room seem full of life.

  ‘Don’t let her finish the bottle, Meili,’ Jun shouts up from the first-floor sitting room where she’s playing a game of mahjong. ‘I want her to finish off with some of my milk.’

  Meili doesn’t like the sitting room. The beige fake leather sofas and blue tiled walls dazzle her eyes, and the Hong Kong soap operas blaring from the television and constant clatter of mahjong grate on her nerves. Tang’s family bought this three-storey Western-style villa four years ago. Most of the Heaven residents who’ve made money from electronic waste live in houses like this. The ground floors are used as workshops or storerooms, the first and second floors for the living areas, and the flat roofs for drying clothes and sitting out in the summer. Meili hands Jun the baby to breastfeed, then stands at the kitchen sink washing bottles and bibs, listening to Tang speak to his brother about England. ‘And they’ve even stopped building new motorways, just so children can play safely in the fields . . .’ he says, glancing at little Hong as she latches onto Jun’s breast.


  ‘They put children before the country’s economic development? No wonder they’re an empire in decline.’ Tang’s brother slides a mahjong piece forward and expels a stream of tobacco smoke through the corner of his mouth. He has the same buck teeth as Tang.

  ‘Human life is more important to them than money. Heaven is so choked with waste these days that even if you’re rich, you have no quality of life.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ the brother replies. ‘You live in this beautiful villa, dine on fresh seafood every day, sleep on an imported sprung mattress and you can hop over the border to Hong Kong or Macao whenever you like. What more could you want?’

  ‘Yes, if China’s economy hadn’t developed so fast, you wouldn’t have been able to study abroad,’ Jun chimes in. ‘Down, naughty dog!’ she shouts to the black lapdog that’s coming up the stairs. Since Hong was born, the dog has been banished from the sitting room and has to live among the crates of cables on the ground floor.

  ‘May this fish bring us abundance!’ Meili says, walking out of the kitchen with steamed carp she has prepared in the Cantonese style. The fragrance of ginger, spring onion and sesame oil briefly masks the odours of sulphur drifting up from the workshop downstairs.

  She sits between Tang and his brother. After Jun finishes nursing Hong, she serves Tang’s mother a chunk of suckling pig and switches on a soap opera called The Qing Dynasty God of Medicine. An ancient courtyard residence is on fire, and men with long pigtails are rushing about in panic, shouting commands in Beijing accents. Tang’s father comes in and joins them at the table. He doesn’t like mahjong, so spends most of his time with the workers downstairs or tending his plants on the flat roof.

  Meili takes little Hong from Jun and studies the dishes she’s brought to the table. The pigs’ trotters braised in bitter gourd and the garlic-fried aubergines look fine, but when she sticks a chopstick into the carp she sees flecks of blood near the bones and wishes she’d given it two more minutes.