The Dark Road

by Ma Jian

  Through the side window she sees a troupe of dragon dancers appear at the end of the lane. Processions are a common sight in Heaven Township, not only on Workers’ Day or National Day, but before weddings or the openings of new businesses. Behind the dragon, four men are holding aloft a statue of the Dark Emperor, the black-bearded Taoist deity. Meili visited a Taoist temple with Tang, and prayed to the Dark Emperor to protect the baby in her womb. When she told Tang that she’s pregnant and that the baby refuses to come out, he said he’d take her to a temple in Foshan where she can pray to a huge statue of the Golden Flower Mother, the goddess of fertility and childbirth. He said that all the Golden Flower Mother statues in the temples in Heaven Township are replicas of the one in Foshan. Meili sees the procession stop at the intersection beneath a ragged red banner that says THE IMPORT OF ELECTRONIC WASTE IS ILLEGAL, and a young couple step out from the crowd to perform the ‘clam dance’. The man dressed as the fisherman has a wicker basket tied to his waist and is swaying his hips and clapping his hands in the air. The woman playing the clam fairy is moving her arms, opening and closing the shells attached to her back. When the fisherman reaches out to catch her, she snaps her shells shut, trapping his hands. He keeps trying, and she keeps snapping, but each time they touch, she grows fonder of him and tightens her grip, until by the end he can’t prise his hands free. Meili thinks of the video clip Tang downloaded from a foreign website of a woman being penetrated by two men. She turned away as soon as he showed it to her, but the images have stuck in her mind. Whenever she passes a marital-aids shop now, she casts a brief glance at the products in the window. She has started to wear prettier clothes, and has had her hair cut in a fashionable shoulder-length bob.

  Although Meili has kept Tang at arm’s length, he is still besotted with her, and the knowledge that she’s pregnant hasn’t put him off. He even lent her ten thousand yuan to settle the unpaid bills for her mother’s operation. She doesn’t know when she’ll be able to repay him. She makes three thousand yuan a month from her shop. But the cyst that was removed during her mother’s operation was found to be cancerous, and if the disease returns, there will be endless medical bills to pay. Her father and brother have exhausted their savings and have sold the pig they were hoping to eat at Spring Festival. She can imagine the wretched scene at her parents’ house now, with no money to heat the brick bed, or buy New Year posters or her mother’s favourite five-spiced sunflower seeds. Tang has become her protector and benefactor. She’s grateful for his help, but is still careful not to cross any lines. She suspects her emotions are blunted. Kongzi still burrows his way inside her every night, but as soon as he’s finished, she washes all traces of him from her body and returns to how she was. She knows she won’t leave him. He assured her that he never slept with a prostitute, and having no proof, she’s given him the benefit of the doubt. As long as both sides remain faithful, she believes that marriage should last for ever. She knows this is a stupid belief. It seems as childish to her as the infant spirit who’s now smiling inanely at the toddler playing with a bamboo snake in the doorway. But at the same time, she is aware of deeper longings. She wants to be as independent and confident as Suya, as enterprising as Tang. She knows that a simple peasant woman like her has no right to an independent existence, but she understands that money can widen one’s choices in life, so is determined to earn as much as she can. Without money, no marriage or family is secure. She feels that, for years, her true self has been lying buried in the depths with Happiness, but that since meeting Tang, it has begun to rise to the surface again. She wants to dismantle the Meili that has been damaged by men and the state, and reassemble it, like a refurbished computer that may not be as sophisticated as the latest model, but is at least stronger than it was before. She will struggle on and, as Suya advised, use her past suffering as an impetus to achieve happiness.

  After the procession has passed, Kongzi phones to say that his sister and her Pakistani husband have had a son. ‘They’ve taken their little black baby to Kong Village to spend Spring Festival with my mother. What a loss of face for the Kong clan!’

  ‘Oh, you have such a feudal mentality!’ Meili replies. ‘Who cares what colour the baby is? The black dolls in my shop sell just as well as the white ones. And besides, the Kong family could do with some new blood. After two thousand years, they still haven’t produced an offspring of Confucius’s calibre.’

  ‘We’ll talk when we get back,’ Kongzi says, slamming the phone down. Since Meili told him that her mother has been forcefully fitted with an IUD, he becomes short-tempered whenever babies or childbirth are mentioned. Meili is also upset that both their mothers have had IUDs shoved inside them as a result of their quest for another child, so she puts up with his outbursts. She knows the importance Kongzi places on his responsibilities as a son to his mother. Whenever they made dumplings at home, he’d always serve his mother a bowl first. Now that his brother has moved back to the village following the death of their father, she knows Kongzi is racked with guilt that he’s not there too, looking after her.

  A young man suddenly storms into the shop and says, ‘We’re from the Bureau of Industry and Commerce. Open all the bags of milk powder in that crate!’ He looks barely out of high school. There are four officers behind him wearing hats emblazoned with gold badges. A large truck is parked outside.

  Meili notices that one of the officers is a woman who visited the shop last week, and quickly slips a one-hundred-yuan note into her palm.

  ‘I can’t take it,’ the woman whispers, glancing behind her. ‘Someone’s reported you, and we’ve been told to search your stock and confiscate any counterfeit goods.’

  ‘This brand’s definitely fake,’ the young man says, pulling a bag from the crate. ‘There was a big report about it last week: it contains zero protein. And these ones? Let’s see: “Milk Powder for Primary School Children”, “Calcium-Enriched Milk Formula” – yes, they’re fake too.’ His eyes flit between the list in his hand and the bags he pulls from the crate.

  ‘No, that brand’s not fake,’ Meili protests. ‘The government awarded it a gold prize last year. I research my products very carefully, I assure you.’

  ‘Drag the crates outside,’ says a middle-aged officer standing in the doorway.

  ‘I bought them from a legitimate wholesale company,’ Meili says. ‘How was I to know that they’re fake?’ The truth is, she is fully aware that everything in her shop is counterfeit. If she bought genuine products, her costs would quadruple and she’d make no profit.

  ‘If you had a child of your own, you’d never dream of feeding it fake formula,’ the young man says. ‘They provide no nourishment at all.’

  ‘I do have a child, and if I could afford it, I certainly would give her this. The women who buy my formula are migrant workers, many of whom have several children, so they get through a lot of it, but not one of them has ever come back to complain.’

  ‘Real formula is a creamy colour, but look, this stuff is white,’ the young man says, opening a bag and pouring the powder onto his hand. ‘This is just ground rice and instant chrysanthemum tea powder, with some melamine added to ensure it passes the protein tests. Melamine – that’s the plastic that kitchen cupboards are made of. If a baby were to drink this powder, it would develop kidney stones and die.’

  ‘We’ll fine you and confiscate your goods,’ the middle-aged officer says. ‘Count yourself lucky. If you dare sell fake products again we’ll revoke your licence.’

  Meili’s heart sinks as she watches the eleven crates of milk powder being dragged out of her shop and loaded onto the van. That’s a thousand yuan lost for ever.

  One of the officers notices Meili’s round belly and says to his colleague, ‘This place really is a heaven for family planning fugitives!’ in a local dialect he mistakenly presumes Meili doesn’t understand.

  Passers-by gather outside the shop and mutter among themselves: ‘We can’t trust anything we eat these days! Tofu fermented in
sewage, soy sauce made from human hair, mushrooms bleached with chlorine, and now fake baby formula! Whatever next? . . . Apparently, after just three days on that powder, babies lose weight and develop “big head disease”. . . I heard that thirteen babies have died already from kidney stones . . . Those evil peasants who make this stuff – have they no conscience? . . .’

  Meili looks down, aghast, at the 5,000-yuan fine the officers handed to her. She considers phoning Kongzi, but is afraid he’ll blow his top, so she phones Tang instead and asks him to come over straight away.

  ‘I want to throw myself in the lake,’ she sobs as Tang walks in.

  ‘This fake milk powder has been in the news a lot recently. The government announced that there would be a national crackdown. Hundreds of infants have developed swollen heads, apparently, and a few have already died. One manufacturer raised the protein levels in the powder by adding ground leather from old shoes and boots. Can you believe it?’

  ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’ Meili says, feeling stupid and incompetent.

  ‘I had no idea you sold fake goods.’

  ‘But everything in Heaven is fake! Those Clarks shoes you’re wearing are as fake as the baby Nike trainers on that shelf. That teddy bear with the Made in France label, that American dummy, that Hong Kong baby-walker, even the President Clinton autobiography I’ve put in the front window – they’re all pirated, copied, fake, made in Shenzhen . . . I have a sack of foreign designer labels which I can stick on any product I want. If I didn’t sell fake goods, how could the government expect me to pay all the fees they charge? Just take a look at these!’ She opens a drawer stuffed with bills. ‘Urban infrastructure improvement fee, private leaseholders’ public security administration fee, migrant worker integration fee, public security joint defence fee, children’s products company administrative fee, fire prevention fee—’

  ‘All right, I understand,’ Tang says. ‘Come on, let me invite you to lunch. It’ll help you take your mind off things.’

  The Hunan restaurant he takes her to is a five-minute walk away. By noon the place is packed, and filled with the noise of clanking crockery, loud television and animated chatter. Meili takes a small bite of the taro croquette she ordered, then carefully dabs her mouth with her napkin to stop her lipstick staining the food.

  ‘I have something important to tell you, Meili,’ he says. ‘I want to set up a business selling second-hand computer components. Would you be my general manager? The salary will be low to start with, but I’ll give you a percentage of the profits and shares in the company.’

  ‘Yes, I’d love to! But what about my shop, and your family’s business?’

  ‘You can find someone to run the shop for you. And I’ve had enough of working for my family. I need to strike out on my own, be my own boss. I’ve researched the computer trade. Dealers from Beijing are already travelling down here to buy used components. There’s a big demand for CD drives and motherboards from repair shops up there. An old classmate of mine has set up a similar company in Guangzhou. We can start by supplying him first, then gradually expand nationwide.’

  ‘Have you thought of selling second-hand televisions as well? I bought one for two hundred yuan the other day. It’s been cleaned and repaired, and works perfectly. A similar model would cost five thousand yuan new. If you sell cheap products like that to the poor, you could make a fortune. After all, most people in this country are peasants.’

  ‘We can think about that later. But first let’s come up with a name. How about Fangfang Electronics? No, that doesn’t work well in English.’

  ‘What about your English name, “Hugo”? In Chinese it sounds like “Virtuous Accomplishment”. Isn’t that good?’

  ‘Yes, Hugo Electronics it is then . . . Oh yes, I spoke to the headmaster of Red Flag Primary. He said he couldn’t allow Nannan to attend even if you bribed him. The county guidelines insist that all pupils have local residence permits. So she’ll just have to stay at that migrant school, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, she’s lucky to have a place there. It only takes fifty students but there are tens of thousands of migrant children in Heaven. And just think how many millions of other migrant children there are in this country who are being denied an education. It’s a national disgrace.’

  ‘Wait until I’m a member of the People’s Congress, and I’ll sort it out,’ Tang says, pouring himself some more tea.

  ‘You’ve studied abroad. You should go into education, not politics.’ As Meili bites into a chunk of the roast duck, Heaven kicks her stomach so hard that she almost blacks out. Mummy got into big trouble today, little one, she says under her breath. So be kind, and keep still . . .

  ‘I’ll go to the Bureau of Industry and Commerce this afternoon and see if I can get your fine reduced,’ Tang says. ‘The shop licence is in my name, after all. But don’t worry – however much it is, I’ll pay it.’

  Meili smiles gratefully. ‘But it was my fault. I can’t let you—’

  ‘Ah, you look so pretty when you smile! You can thank me with a kiss.’ Tang closes his eyes and offers his cheek to her. Not wanting to bend over her belly, she gets up, walks round to him and places a kiss on his forehead. ‘You’re a good woman,’ he says, taking her hand. ‘If you get divorced, I’ll be the first in line to—’

  ‘And you’re a good man, Tang. Whoever does marry you will be a lucky woman. Perhaps you and I will get married in our next life.’ She pulls her hand away, returns to her seat and thinks how wonderful it would be to start her life again from scratch.

  Tang picks up a piece of steamed pork with his chopsticks and places it in Meili’s mouth.

  ‘Do you know who gave me a second life?’ Meili says.

  ‘Me?’ Tang replies, his buck teeth glinting.

  ‘Well, of course, I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for you. So, let’s say you gave me a third life. But the person who gave me my second life was a graduate called Suya who I met in a Custody and Repatriation Centre. I was with her for only two weeks, but she changed the way I look at the world. She was unlike anyone I’d met before. Even the way she moved and held herself set her apart. Through her, I began to understand the qualities that distinguish one person from another.’

  ‘So what happened to her?’

  ‘We were transferred to a labour camp, and she disappeared just before I left. I sneaked her journal out with me and have kept it with me ever since. But I’ve no idea where she is now, or even if she’s still alive.’

  ‘Those custody centres are a scandal. The police trawl the cities rounding up peasants, slam them in detention, then sell them to village officials who force them to work on farms for no pay. It’s a modern-day slave trade . . . So, where was Suya from?’

  ‘Chengdu. But I don’t have her address. I feel as though my old self died in the camp and now Suya is living my life. I was never brave, strong or clever. I’m terrified that if something bad happens, I’ll fall apart, like I almost did in the shop just now, and return to who I was. I’d like to go to Chengdu and try to track Suya’s parents down. If they tell me she’s dead, at least it will give me peace of mind. But if they’ve had no news from her . . .’ Meili thinks of Weiwei searching the Xi River for his mother, and realises she hasn’t thought about him for a long time. She looks up and scans the faces of the other diners in the restaurant.

  ‘Who are you looking for?’ Tang asks.

  ‘I was just thinking about someone. A man I met. His mother was ill, and she drowned herself so that he wouldn’t be burdened with her medical fees and could send his son to university. He travelled up and down the river for weeks, searching for her. I don’t know if he ever found her.’

  ‘People usually commit suicide to escape pain. But the pain doesn’t go. It’s just passed on to the relatives they leave behind.’

  When Meili returns home an hour later, Kongzi is busy correcting homework. She takes a deep breath and says, ‘An inspection team swooped into the shop today and confi
scated my goods,’ then waits for him to explode. But he remains silent, takes a last drag from his cigarette and flicks the stub onto the floor. Meili squats down, picks it up and drops it in the bin.

  ‘My eyelid keeps twitching,’ she says, flopping onto the bed in an exhausted heap. In the corner, the television is buzzing and white snowflakes are flashing across the screen. The room still smells of the five-spiced tofu they ate for supper yesterday. ‘It’s my right eye. I forget, is that supposed to be a good or bad omen?’ Heaven presses against her spine, cutting off the oxygen to her brain. She feels faint, and rolls onto her side, then reminds herself that Tang will pay her fine, saving her from financial ruin, and sighs with relief.

  ‘If a man’s right eye twitches, it’s a good omen; if a woman’s right eye twitches, it’s the reverse,’ Kongzi says blankly. He has cut a cardboard box in half and is lining up Nannan’s textbooks inside, their spines facing outwards. ‘So, what did they take?’

  ‘All the milk powder. A thousand yuan’s worth.’ She waits again for an angry outburst. A few days ago when he saw a photograph online of the Temple of Confucius in Qufu being ransacked during the Cultural Revolution, he kicked their bookcase onto the ground, incensed that this humiliating episode in the Kong family history is now available for the whole world to see. Meili looks down at the cups, toothbrushes and socks soaking in an enamel basin, then at his books stacked up in the corner near the shattered bookcase. On the table, next to Nannan’s satchel, three green caterpillars are crawling about in a paper cup.