The Dark Road A Novel

KEYWORDS: watermelon, dirt poor, purple lines, osmanthus branches, blush, porn movie, I love you.

SITTING OUTSIDE THE cabin with his knees drawn up to his chest, Kongzi looks into the night sky and recites a Tang poem: ‘“Beside my bed, bright moonlight sparkles on the ground like frost. / I raise my head and gaze at the moon, then lower it and think of home . . .” Look how golden the moon is tonight. No wonder it’s inspired so much beautiful poetry.’

Meili remains silent, queasy from the heavy rocking of the boat. Every evening at this time, as mosquitoes start to swarm above the banks, they sail to the middle of the river to hide from the police patrol boat, and the waves are always much stronger here. Last night, Kongzi came home late, so Meili sailed herself and Nannan into the moon’s reflection which spanned almost the entire breadth of the river. When they reached the middle, she dropped anchor and watched the splintering moonlight on the water’s surface quiver and embrace, just as she and Kongzi did the night they first kissed behind the Sky Beyond the Sky Hotel. Although it was a squat concrete building with faded paint, its neat brick paths, circular doorways, trimmed lawns and white fences brought an air of the city to Kong Village. That night four years ago, when the moon hung high overhead, Kongzi pressed her against a tree, kissed her on the lips, then pulled her knickers off.

Meili brushes mosquitoes from Nannan’s sleeping face and looks out into the darkness. She remembers how sometimes when she stepped outside at night back in Kong Village their yard would look frozen, silver, dead. Now, she can see the same eerie and sombre light falling on a distant bend of the river.

‘What’s troubling you?’ Kongzi asks her as she walks out onto the deck. ‘Relax. Just look out at this wide-open space. It’s strange – I knew nothing about boats before, but now I feel I belong on the river. Life is so much better here than it was in the village.’ He’s lying across the bow, his head propped up on a folded jacket, swigging from a bottle of beer. He’s just had a dip, and his wet underpants are clinging to his skin. Meili and Nannan haven’t learned to swim yet, but are confident enough to wade about at the edge of the river, wearing inflatable rings. This afternoon, Meili floated in the river until sunset, enjoying feeling the water wash the sweat from her skin and her body become weightless. She could tell that Happiness was comfortable as well as it swirled around her womb, trailing its hands through her amniotic fluid.

‘How soon you’re ready to forget your own home!’ Meili says, rinsing Kongzi’s muddy sandals in the river then placing them neatly outside the cabin. ‘Kong Village is beautiful, too. Dark Water River is almost as broad as the Yangtze, and the reservoir is larger than any lake I’ve seen here.’ In her mouth she can still taste the sweet watermelon they ate a few minutes ago.

‘Confucius said, “The noble man embraces virtue while the petty man thinks only of his home,”’ Kongzi replies defensively. When he’s not wearing his thick glasses, his features seem to protrude more. His hands and face are covered in plasters. For the past week his team has been demolishing Sanxia’s Cultural Centre. He’s brought back many books and magazines he rescued from the shelves.

‘Last year, when I suggested we should leave Nannan with my mother and go south to find work, you said: No, we can’t leave home because Confucius said, “While your parents are alive do not travel afar.” You’re always contradicting yourself.’

Kongzi gets up and drives the boat back to the bank. Above the wharf, a single light bulb shines down on three bare-chested men who are leaning on a green billiard table smoking cigarettes. ‘You know very well that if we returned to the village now, we’d be finished,’ he says. He manoeuvres the boat into its mooring then sits down and takes another gulp of beer. ‘Half of these houseboats are occupied by family planning fugitives like us. We’re safe. The authorities won’t bother us. Next week I’ll find you a midwife.’

‘There’s no need. That pregnant woman who has three daughters told me she’s attended many births, and has offered to help me when my time comes . . . Stop drinking that cheap beer. If it’s fake, you’re going to get very sick.’ She turns down the radio Kongzi salvaged from the Cultural Centre, then leans over to scratch the mosquito bites covering his legs. ‘If we had a fridge, we’d be able to save the rest of the watermelon for tomorrow,’ she sighs.

‘As soon as I get my next wage, I’ll buy a mini generator and an electric heater,’ Kongzi says, proud that he’s now able to provide for his family. Yesterday, he bought four ducks and put them in the bamboo cage. This dilapidated boat has offered them the possibility of a better future.

‘No, let’s buy a television first. It’s so quiet here at night, I can hear every thought passing through my head.’ Meili lies down on her back next to Kongzi and stares at her bulge. ‘What if it’s a girl?’ she says. ‘I warn you, I won’t get pregnant a third time.’ Feeling her circulation become restricted, she turns onto her side and rests her swollen feet on Kongzi’s legs.

‘If it’s a girl, we’ll keep her. Then, when I’ve made enough money, we’ll buy a bigger boat, with two cabins, sail downriver and try again for a boy. No one will be able to stop us.’

‘You really think so? The land is controlled by the land police and the rivers by the river police. We can never escape the government’s claws.’ A smell of duck shit wafts up from the cage below and she wrinkles her nose in disgust.

‘The river police only collect navigation fees and check licences. They don’t deal with family planning crimes.’

‘But we can’t live like this for ever. Your parents need us. They shouldn’t be having to chase pigs around the yard and rake up chicken shit at their age.’ Under the bamboo stool beside her is a bag containing a towel, two muslin cloths, and a tiny vest and pair of shorts, ready for Happiness’s arrival. Knowing that she’ll be preoccupied after the birth, she has already made the small quilt Happiness will need in the winter. She’d like to light a candle now and begin sewing a baby jacket, but fears it might attract more mosquitoes.

‘All I miss about the village is the school,’ Kongzi says. ‘I miss standing in front of my class and delivering a lesson. My throat is dry from lack of use.’

Meili feels a pang of sympathy for him. To protect their family, he’s had to give up his vocation. Scratching his bitten calves with her toes, she says, ‘Let me sing you a song to cheer you up, then. Darling husband, we shared our home and the household expenses, trod the same floorboards, slept in the same bed. My head next to yours on the pillow – how happy I was! Now, alone under my single sheet, I roll to the left and weep, then roll to the right and sigh . . .’

‘Don’t sing me a funeral lament!’ Kongzi says, flicking his cigarette stub into the river. ‘It’ll bring us bad luck. Besides, your grandmother’s songs belong to the past.’

‘It’s supposed to be bad luck to bring a woman on board a boat, so why not throw me into the river if you’re so superstitious!’ Meili’s grandmother is a small, fragile woman whose forehead is pockmarked from childhood measles. When she was thirteen, and Nuwa County was gripped by famine, her destitute parents sold her for just half a bag of rice and a bamboo lute to the aged caretaker of Nuwa Temple. A year later, the old man married her. He taught her traditional opera and let her sing at every temple ceremony. At twenty, she learned the art of funeral wailing from a singer called Old Lady Wu, and became so proficient that her fame spread throughout the county. Meili remembers watching her stand before crowds of grievers wearing a turban of white mourning cloth, and unleash agonised high-pitched laments with tears streaming down her face. It was considered a mark of prestige for a family to have her sing at a wake. ‘The songs my grandmother taught me are beautiful,’ Meili says to Kongzi. ‘Her voice has cracked, so I’m the only one in my family who can sing them now. All right, if you don’t want a funeral song, here’s a Deng Lijun ballad instead: If I forget him, I’ll lose my way. I’ll sink into misery . . .’ When she finishes the ballad, she rolls onto her back again, bends her knees and waves a fan over her face. ‘I blush with shame when I have to tell people you work on a demolition site. When you were a teacher, I could hold my head up high.’

‘It wasn’t such a great job. The salary was pitiful.’

‘But I was the wife of a teacher. I had status. I didn’t care how much you earned.’

‘Before we married you said you’d love me even if I were dirt poor. I was manager of the Sky Beyond the Sky Hotel at the time. Is that what impressed you?’

‘That miserable job? Ha! One day, I’ll set up my own business and show you what a real manager is. I never did understand why Teacher Zhou closed the hotel in the end.’

‘He couldn’t attract enough people. I advised him to start breeding crabs in the hotel pond to make some money on the side, but he said if we did, the guests wouldn’t be able to swim in it.’

They fall silent. The only sound they can hear is the rumble of trucks on a distant mountain road, transporting cement to the construction site of the Three Gorges Dam.

‘I do still love you, Kongzi,’ Meili says at last. ‘But when you changed my name from “Beautiful and Pretty” to “Beautiful Dawn” you promised that our marriage would be the beginning of a wonderful new life.’

‘You regret me changing your name? But it’s so much more poetic. I promise you, Meili, a beautiful dawn is waiting for us.’

‘I never imagined that being pregnant could be so terrifying. Last night I dreamed that the baby had become frozen solid. I put it under a light bulb to warm it up, then I was afraid someone might see it, so I wrapped it in toilet paper and hid it in a drawer. I walked away and forgot all about it, and when I next opened the drawer I discovered it had suffocated to death.’ Meili’s eyes fill with tears.

‘Don’t cry, my dear wife. Everything will be all right. I give you my word: if this one’s a boy, we won’t try for a third. Let me feel your belly. My goodness. It’s so large now. So hard.’

‘I’m sure the baby is bigger than Nannan was at this stage. Stronger, too. Look at all the purple lines around my tummy button. Let’s not have a third, even if Happiness is a girl. We need to get on with our lives.’ Kongzi slides his hand down between her legs and she slaps it hard with the tip of her fan. ‘Don’t touch me! I’m boiling.’

When Kongzi came back late last night he confessed that he’d been to see a porn movie in the video parlour boat docked near the wharf. He said he couldn’t help himself because she hadn’t let him touch her for weeks. Meili knows that those films feature men and women making love in the nude. She’d always considered Kongzi to be a respectable man, and the knowledge that he’d watched porn movies in a grubby video parlour lowered him in her estimation.

‘All right, my turn to sing a song, then,’ Kongzi says, sitting up and tossing the fly-encrusted remains of the watermelon into the river. ‘In the village, is a girl called Xiao Fang. She’s pretty and kind, has big dark eyes and wears her hair in bunches—’

‘Agh! So out of tune . . .’ Meili groans. Sensing he wants to make love to her, she pulls the peony-printed sheet over her thighs and tries to change the mood. ‘You must phone home tomorrow, Kongzi. Find out what the situation is.’

‘I told you, my father asked me not to get in touch until the baby’s born. All right, I’ll phone them, if you insist, but if the line is tapped and the police track us down, don’t blame me.’ He pinches her arm playfully.

Meili hunches her shoulders and crosses her legs. ‘Just make sure you don’t tell them we’re in Sanxia,’ she says. In the breeze blowing across her face she can smell the scent of the osmanthus branches she put on the canopy. The smell always transports her back to her parents’ house and her grandmother, who planted an osmanthus tree in the garden the day Meili was born. She remembers how her grandmother always likes to rub the blossom between her fingers and dab the scent behind her ears.

‘So black and smooth,’ Kongzi says, stroking Meili’s hair that glistens like the skin of an eel.

‘At least it’s easy for me to wash my hair on this boat,’ she says, tucking a stray lock behind her ear. Every morning, she leans overboard and dunks her head in the river.

‘And such slender legs,’ Kongzi continues, running his hand up to her thighs.

‘Careful of the money!’ Meili gasps, and quickly presses the sachet of cash she sewed into the lining of her knickers to check that it’s still there. As he strokes her thigh she feels her face begin to flush. ‘If I weren’t pregnant, I’d have a slender waist as well,’ she whispers, nuzzling her head into the nape of his neck.

‘You’re beautiful from top to toe, but your best part is . . . here.’ He leans down and pulls her knickers off.

‘Can’t you even say “I love you” first? Since you watched that porn movie, you think you can just ram yourself inside me and tell me to moan.’ She cranes her neck round to check that Nannan is still asleep in the cabin, then closes her eyes and waits for Kongzi to repeat what he did last night.

‘No, my darling wife, all I want is to make you happy,’ he whispers into her ear. ‘That’s why I work so hard every day. I want to give our family a better life.’ Then he mounts her belly and pushes himself inside her.

‘No!’ Meili cries, knocking him off. ‘You know I black out when you go on top.’ She rolls onto her side, letting her belly rest on the deck, then reaches for an inflatable safety ring and wedges it under her head. Kongzi puts his arm around her and enters her from behind. Their breaths smell of the fried fishwort they ate for breakfast. Meili’s forehead and cleavage perspire and the blue veins on her belly pulsate. A stench of dead fish rises through the cracks in the wooden deck. The boat rocks from side to side as Kongzi moves in and out of her. A sense of well-being spreads through her soft ample body. ‘Careful of my belly. Gently, gently . . .’ Her head pressed against the bow, she raises her hips and clenches her thighs. With a loud groan, Kongzi releases a river of sperm into her and sinks back down onto the deck.

Suddenly Meili sees the infant spirit flit before her eyes, laughing inanely. Waking from her daze, she pushes Kongzi back. ‘Get out of me,’ she cries. ‘I don’t want to give birth to a dead child.’

‘Stop worrying! Everything will be fine. We’re living on the river now. We’re free! Look at the beautiful view . . . “The distant shadow of the lonely sail vanishes into a blue-green void. / All that can be seen is the Yangtze River flowing to the edge of the sky.”’ He fumbles for his matches and lights another cigarette.

‘I just saw the infant spirit again,’ says Meili, still catching her breath. The moon has become hidden behind clouds and the scent of osmanthus in the air seems to be flowing from her skin.

‘You were dizzy. Your mind must have been playing tricks on you. I always follow Confucius’s advice: respect the gods and the spirits of the dead, but keep your distance from them.’

‘But I saw the spirit. It flickered right in front of me like a candle flame, then drifted to my belly button and vanished. It must have returned to Happiness’s body.’ She sits up and brushes off the insects that have settled on her bump. Then she looks out at the river glimmering in the darkness and sees a white polystyrene lunch box float by. A few days ago, she saw a dead baby with thick black hair float by just as slowly. As it passed, children climbed onto a rocky outcrop and prodded it with long twigs.

‘Happiness is punching me again,’ she says. ‘Look, you can see its little fists poking out! It wants me to give birth to it on the river so it can float to the sea and travel the world. It won’t be long now. Just another week or two.’

Kongzi puts his hand on hers and exhales a cloud of smoke. Inside the cabin, Nannan coughs in her sleep. Meili looks up at the broken town. The ancient houses at the base of the mountain are flattened now, while the jagged edges of the unfinished structures above seem like the ramparts of a ruined city. On this single mountainside the past, present and future appear to have merged. Meili senses that her own future is hovering in the air above her, swirling about like the millions of sperm that are now entering her cervix.

She lies back, rests her head on Kongzi’s thigh, then wipes her damp forehead and says, ‘Here, give me a puff of your cigarette.’





KEYWORDS: soldering iron, family planning violators, stationary hands, imported oxytocin, miscellaneous expenses, dewy eyes.

AT THE END of a long day, looking grief-stricken and dusty, Kongzi shuffles across a raft moored close to the bank, steps onto the boat and collapses into the cabin.

‘So you got through?’ asks Meili. When she sees the look of despair in his eyes her heart sinks. ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

‘Our house has been torn down. They bulldozed it, just like I bulldoze those buildings up there every day. They didn’t leave so much as a window frame.’ He digs into his large pocket and pulls out a small plastic doll with long yellow hair and a red dress which he found on the demolition site. He taps the dust off its face and hands it to Nannan.

‘They’ve demolished our house? What about the walnut wardrobe where I kept my photographs and my grandmother’s bamboo lute?’

Kongzi lights a cigarette and presses it to his lips. A dragonfly that settled on the side of the boat darts into the air.

‘And your parents?’ Meili asks. She sees the ducks she let out to swim a few moments ago head for the shore, and wishes she could return them to their cage.

‘Their house wasn’t touched, thank goodness. I phoned Kong Zhaobo as well. He said the family planning squad destroyed the homes of nine families who refused to pay the fines. Li Peisong managed to pay off the remaining nine thousand yuan for Little Fatty’s birth, so he was allowed to keep his house. Of the forty-three villagers who were arrested, nine have been released and the rest are still waiting to be sentenced.’

Nannan kisses the plastic doll and presses it close to her chest. ‘What’s her name, Daddy?’

‘Unlucky,’ Kongzi replies. He lies on his side on the bamboo mat, next to Nannan’s half-eaten banana, a pair of Meili’s knickers and the dirty vest he’s just pulled off.

‘Is she real, Daddy? I like her yellow hair. I want wash her face.’

‘But why did they bulldoze our house?’ asks Meili. ‘They had no idea I was pregnant. Perhaps the police were monitoring the line when you phoned your father last month.’ Turning to Nannan, she says, ‘Let me wash that doll before you play with it.’ The cabin is suffocatingly hot. Unable to bend down over her pregnant belly, Meili picks up Kongzi’s vest with her toes, folds it and places it on the stool. Then she goes outside, turns her back to the setting sun and inhales deeply. The scorching breeze blows against her sweat-soaked dress. ‘At least the Kong Village police won’t be able to track us down to this place,’ she says. ‘Not from a phone call.’

‘Probably not. But I’ve heard that the authorities here are sending police to check the documents of every migrant worker in the county. Our team manager told us to make sure our papers are in order.’

‘Let’s sail downriver, then. If the inspectors find me, that’ll be it.’

Meili looks over to the bank and notices some men stepping off a van. Then a white boat approaches and a fat officer standing at the bow shouts out to her: ‘Hey, you with the big belly! Do you have a birth permit for that? Where are you from?’

Panic-struck, Meili stoops down into the cabin and says, ‘Kongzi, quick! Start the engine. They’ve come to arrest us.’

Kongzi scrambles to the stern and grasps the steering wheel, but before he manages to pull the start cord, three men from the van jump aboard and yank his arms behind his back. As swiftly and quietly as she can, Meili crawls to the starboard and lowers herself into the river.

‘Get back on the boat!’ one of the men shouts at her.

‘I’m just having a . . . w-wash,’ she stutters. She’s up to her shoulders in water, quaking with fear.

‘There’s no point trying to hide your belly from us. We can still see it through the water. Get back on board and show us your birth permit.’

‘She’s not pregnant – she’s just plump,’ Kongzi says, the colour draining from his face.

‘We’ll need to take her to the clinic to confirm that.’ As the man speaks, the white boat draws closer and is hooked to theirs. The fat officer at the bow takes a swig from his can of Coke then says to Meili, ‘Get out of the water! We’re from the County Family Planning Commission, and we’ve come to round up every woman in Sanxia who’s pregnant without permission.’ The silver buckle of his belt glints in the sun.

Kongzi pulls Nannan out of the cabin and says, ‘It’s my wife’s first pregnancy. This girl here belongs to our neighbours.’

‘I’m your girl, Daddy, not neighbour girl,’ Nannan splutters, bursting into tears. ‘I not blabbing nonsense. Mummy, Mummy . . .’

The fat man eyes Kongzi sternly. ‘If we take the girl away with us, will you still claim she’s not yours?’

A man in black sunglasses steps aboard. ‘Any woman pregnant without authorisation is both violating the family planning laws and endangering the economic development of our nation,’ he says. ‘You think you can turn up here and breed as you wish? This is the Three Gorges Dam Project Special Economic Zone, don’t you know?’

‘If you cooperate with us, you won’t have to pay the fine,’ another man says. ‘But if you resist, we’ll get your village Party Secretary to arrest every member of your family.’

‘We’re peasants, with rural residence permits, and our daughter here is already five years old, so my wife’s entitled to have a second child,’ Kongzi says.

‘Five years old, you say?’ says the man in sunglasses. ‘Three, more like. And who knows how many more children you’ve got hidden away.’

‘My wife’s eight months pregnant. Don’t take her to the clinic, I beg you. I’ll pay the fine right now.’ Standing stripped to the waist among the men in white shirts, Kongzi appears feeble and submissive.

The fat man drops his empty can into the river. ‘We’ve been ordered to terminate every illegal pregnancy we discover. If we let any woman off, our salaries will be docked.’

The word ‘terminate’ throws Kongzi into a fury. ‘Have you no humanity?’ he shouts. ‘You want to kill our unborn child? Have you forgotten that you too once lay in your mother’s womb?’

A female officer steps forward. ‘Humanity?’ she sneers. ‘If your baby turns out to be a girl, you’ll throw her into the river, so don’t talk to me about humanity! You migrant workers travel around the country, dumping baby girls as you go. You’re the ones who have no shame! You think we wanted to come here and deal with you squalid boat people? No, the higher authorities sent us here because of all the filth that’s been washing up downstream.’

Meili remembers the dead baby she saw floating past the other day, and suspects that this is what the woman is referring to. She wishes she could sink into the water and swim away.

‘Enough talk!’ barks the man in sunglasses. ‘Take her to the van!’ Four men reach down, tug Meili out of the river and drag her ashore. When she tries to resist, an officer kicks her in the belly. She yells in agony and feels her limbs go limp. After they shove her inside the van, she looks through the back window and sees Kongzi knock an officer overboard with a wooden oar, then two men push him onto the deck and force him into handcuffs. As the van drives off, she hears Nannan weeping inside the cabin.

The van trundles up through the flattened old town. Each bump on the road makes her aching belly throb. She screams to be let out, punches the window and bangs her head on the glass. The officer beside her grasps hold of her wrists. The van slowly climbs the mountain along a road flanked with new buildings, then turns down a dirt track and comes to a stop.

Meili can smell a stench of blood which reminds her of Nannan’s birth, but this time fills her with dread. She’s pulled to the entrance of the concrete building but refuses to go in. She knows that this is where they want to rip Happiness from her. But the men push her inside, drag her to an operating room and close the door. A woman in a white uniform looks up from a desk. Meili runs over to her and pulls the woman’s hair. The woman digs her nails into Meili’s hands and shouts, ‘Quick, call Dr Gang!’ Two men yank Meili’s arms behind her back. Forgetting about her belly, she kicks at everything in sight: the men, the woman in white, the air, the stainless-steel surgical table, the walls. Another man tugs her back by the hair. Then the door opens and Dr Gang walks in with a syringe. ‘Hold her left arm out for me,’ he commands. Meili manages to wrench her arms free, but is quickly punched in the small of her back. Startled by the jolt, Happiness pokes a clenched fist through her belly. The woman in white kneels down and grips Meili’s legs. From behind, a man locks his arm around Meili’s waist and another man pulls her left arm out, holds it straight and says, ‘You can inject her now, Doctor.’

Dr Gang lifts the syringe and stabs the needle into Meili’s upper arm. Meili sees the bulb dangling in front of her and the light filtering through cracks in the steel door begin to splinter and blur.

‘Where were you off to when I passed you in the corridor this morning?’ she hears the woman say.

‘To the latrines. The wawa I bought yesterday gave me the runs.’

‘Tell your wife that wawas must be soaked in boiling water and scraped clean before they’re cooked . . . Right, I think she’s under now. Lift her onto the table . . .’

The infant spirit watches Mother being tied to the steel surgical table all those years ago, her hands bound in plastic and hemp ropes, her pale, exposed bulge resembling a pig on a butcher’s table.

A man in a white coat rubs his nose, then plucks Mother’s knicker elastic and watches her flinch. ‘Give her another shot, to be safe,’ he says.

‘Don’t kill my baby, don’t touch my –’ Mother splutters, white foam bubbling from her mouth. But the man slides his hands beneath Mother’s bottom and pulls off her knickers. ‘Hooligan!’ Mother weeps. ‘If my baby dies, its spirit will haunt you for eternity.’ She tries to spit the foam covering her mouth onto his face, but it rises only slightly then falls back on her lips.

The man begins to prod Mother’s belly.

‘Don’t do it, I beg you . . .’ she moans. ‘Let me keep this child. I won’t have another, I promise . . . It’s a Chinese citizen. It has a right to live . . .’

The man is handed a second syringe with a much longer needle. He inserts the tip into Mother’s belly and pushes it all the way in.

‘Stop, stop! Don’t hurt my baby . . .’

The infant spirit observes its first incarnation writhe and squirm as the long needle enters its head. When the cold astringent liquid is released into the brain, the spirit sees the cells shiver and contract, and the fetus flail about in the amniotic fluid, pounding Mother’s warm uterine walls, then gradually grow weaker and weaker until all that moves is its quivering spine.

‘Is this what your mothers brought you into the world for?’ Mother cries out to the men. ‘To kill babies? Well, you’d better kill me too, while you’re about it . . .’

‘Good work, Dr Gang!’ the woman says. ‘You must have been studying me on the sly.’

‘It was much simpler than this morning’s one. Look, when you press the belly here you can see the head clearly. It was easy to hit the target.’

Ignoring her moans and handling her as roughly as they would a corpse, the doctors part Meili’s legs, slide a speculum into her vagina, mop up the discharge, then, when the mouth of the cervix is visible, insert a prostaglandin suppository. Meili tries to scream but can produce only a soft sigh. She tries to roll onto her side but, apart from her neck, nothing will move. ‘Forgive me, Happiness,’ she whispers. ‘I couldn’t protect you. I’d kill myself if I could, so that we could die together, but my hands and feet are bound . . .’ She lifts her head, squeezes her eyes to expel her tears and stares at her belly. A sharp pain shoots through her womb, spreads to her lower back and flows to every part of her body.

‘Goddess Nuwa, Mother of Humanity, rescue me!’ Mother wails. ‘Oh, Father of Darkness—’

‘What a fine voice you have,’ the man says coldly. ‘Your cries won’t change anything, though. We’ve seen it all in this room: vomit, faeces, blood, urine, screaming tantrums. But however much the women curse and resist, they must all surrender their babies to us in the end. You think you can defy the state? Don’t waste your breath.’

‘When we tied you to this table there were two of you, but when you get off there’ll be just one,’ a male nurse in a blue hat tells her softly.

‘Devils! Animals!’ Meili moans. She tries to cross her legs to close her cervix, but all she can feel is her toes clench slightly. The hot air in the room smells of deep-fried sausage. ‘May you die without sons or grandsons! May your family lines perish!’ Mother cries, drenched in sweat, her lips the colour of frozen meat.

‘If you want to leave this room alive, you’d better shut up!’ the male nurse says, taking off his blue hat and fanning his face with it.

‘Yes, if you don’t keep quiet, you’ll be responsible for any medical accident that might happen in this room,’ says the woman. ‘Your womb belongs to the state. Getting pregnant without authorisation is against the law. Argue your case with the government, if you want. Go to America – see what they say. China’s population control policy has the full support of the United Nations. Do you understand, you ignorant peasant?’

‘Doctors have a duty to rescue the dying and heal the wounded, but you—’

‘We’re professional surgeons. We had well-paid hospital jobs. You think we wanted to come here and operate on you lot? For the measly bonus they give us?’

‘If you don’t like this job, I’ll tell the director to transfer you back home,’ says the woman. The men behind her chuckle.

The blood-engorged walls of Meili’s womb begin to soften and the cervix is prised apart. She watches blood trickle down her thigh towards the fingers of her left hand, then sees the trickle become a stream which runs along the table’s incline and falls onto the floor.

‘This imported oxytocin seems to take effect much faster. Look, the membranes have already broken.’

The woman walks round and takes a look. ‘What thick black hair it has! Let’s use the forceps.’

Meili senses what feels like a hot soldering iron enter her body. When she hears the sound of ripping flesh, in her mind she sees the baby’s eyes, ears, throat.

‘Mother, help me!’ she howls through every strand of her hair. ‘Don’t come out, my child. Don’t come out into this evil world. Stay inside me and we can go to our deaths together . . .’ But the forceps continue to press around the baby and yank it from her flesh.

Hearing the baby cry, Meili lifts her head, desperate to catch a glimpse of it.

‘It’s still alive, the stubborn little thing,’ Dr Gang says, holding Happiness by the neck. ‘What shall we do with it?’ Happiness kicks its little legs about just as it did in the womb. Meili looks at the space between its legs. It’s a boy. She tries with her eyes to reach out to him, but soon all she can see is the colour red.

‘Strangle it,’ the woman says. ‘We’ll register it as a stillbirth. Don’t wipe its face. Illegal babies aren’t entitled to have their mucus removed. Squeeze the neck here. That’s right. Keep squeezing. That’s it . . .’

When Happiness’s body turns stiff, Dr Gang drops it into a plastic bag as though it were a criminal who’s just been dragged from an execution ground.

Meili cranes her neck, straining to catch another glimpse of her son. ‘Your mother heard you cry three times, my child. I heard you. Come back to me soon in your next incarnation and I’ll give you my milk to drink . . .’ She looks up at the doctors, and with no strength left in her voice mutters: ‘Murderers, murderers . . .’

‘I’m going to miss the afternoon boat and won’t get home until ten. I bet my son will sneak off to that damn internet cafe . . . Wen, fill this basin with water.’

‘They’ve just done the woman next door as well. Whose name shall I put on the abortion certificate?’

‘Guo Ni, the wife of the Road Bureau chief. She gave birth to a second son yesterday. The chief gave the clinic twenty thousand yuan this morning, so we’ll all receive a good bonus this month.’

‘It’s not your son you should be worrying about, Dr Su. I heard your husband visits the sauna house every night on his way home from work. Won’t be long before he finds himself a “second wife”.’

‘You want to break up our marriage? No chance!’

‘You don’t believe me?’ says Dr Gang, pulling off his bloodstained surgical gloves. ‘Just wait and see.’ He sits on a plastic chair, dangles a sandal from his toes and puts a cigarette in his mouth.

‘Stop stirring things up. And go outside if you want to smoke.’

The electric fan overhead circulates the smell of stale blood through the room. Meili’s placenta flops onto the metal table like a wet, purple sock.

The woman in white coils the remains of the umbilical cord around her gloved hand and puts the placenta inside a second plastic bag.

‘That placenta looks nice and plump.’

‘Well, you can’t have it. The Party Secretary has already reserved it . . .’

Meili feels as though she’s floating on water. Her thoughts become foggy and vague. Like the severed neck of a duck, the hole between her legs drips with dark blood.

When she returns to consciousness, the bulb is still shining and the electric fan still whirring. She remembers the image of Kongzi being forced onto the deck and handcuffed. The girl on night duty is curled up on the desk, fast asleep. Empty intravenous bags hang from a nail next to a clock with stationary hands. The room smells like rotten fish. Suddenly aware that she’s lying on the surgical table naked from the waist down, she lifts her limp hands to shield herself and discovers the ropes have been removed. She tries to sit up but can’t summon the energy. Her womb feels utterly empty. A jolt of pain shoots through her lower abdomen. Her legs are still leaden and numb. From a radio further down the corridor, a man’s voice sings, ‘I’ve just met a beautiful woman with soft arms and dewy eyes . . .’

The girl gets off the desk and rubs her eyes. ‘You’ve woken up, then,’ she says to Meili. ‘Here – once you’ve signed this form and paid the bill, you can leave.’ She takes Meili’s pillow and pulls off the case. Meili’s left arm is so swollen from the injection that she can’t bend it. ‘This bag is for you, too,’ the girl says. ‘There’s a free bottle of mineral water inside, four packs of condoms and a contraceptive handbook. Now, please get off the table. I need to wash it.’

After carefully shifting her legs to the side, Meili leans on the girl and lowers her feet to the ground, but as soon as she puts weight on them, her knees buckle. She collapses back onto the table and pulls her dress over her belly. The girl mops up the blood and amniotic fluid that has dripped onto the floor then helps Meili put on her knickers. Meili rolls onto her side, looks down and sees Happiness lying in the plastic bag below. His tiny corpse reminds her of the chickens she used to buy freshly plucked and slaughtered from the village market. He’s floating in a shallow pool of fetal and maternal blood, his eyes and mouth wide open.

‘Yes, that’s your baby,’ the girl says, glancing down. ‘If you want me to get rid of it, you’ll have to sign the form and settle the bill.’

‘He’s my son. I want to take him with me.’

Suddenly the door swings open and Kongzi charges in, pushing back the officer escorting him. When he sees the blood on Meili’s legs he explodes with rage. ‘F*cking bastard! May your family line perish! You bastard, you f*cking bastard—’

‘Swear at me again and I’ll strangle you,’ the officer barks.

The girl hands Kongzi the bill. ‘It’s all itemised,’ she says. ‘Two hundred and ten yuan for the intrauterine injection, 160 for the anaesthetic, 190 for miscellaneous expenses – which is the fee for disposing of the corpse – then there’s laundry, labour. It comes to a total of 775 yuan. The usual fee for an eighth-month termination is 1,400 yuan, so you’ve been given a 50 per cent discount. I’d pay up and leave, if I were you. If you haven’t gone by midnight, you’ll be charged an extra thirty yuan for the room. You can take the form home and fill it out later. Just sign here, agreeing that you, Comrade so-and-so, willingly consented to terminate the pregnancy in accordance with state guidelines, and in so doing have made a glorious contribution to China’s population control efforts.’

‘You’ve killed our baby,’ Kongzi says, red with anger. ‘And now you want us to give you money and sign forms?’

‘Forget about the form if you want,’ says the officer, ‘but next time the Family Planning Commission arrests you, you’ll be sorry.’

‘Let’s pay the money and leave, Kongzi,’ Meili says, leaning down and picking up the plastic bag with both hands.

‘You can’t take the baby with you,’ the officer says. ‘It’s against the rules. Throw it in the bin. What do you want a dead baby for, anyway?’

‘We have a right to take our child away,’ Kongzi says. He takes a wad of cash from his trouser pocket, hands it to the girl and signs the form.

‘I warn you,’ says the officer. ‘We’re in the Three Gorges Epidemic Prevention Zone. If you dare bury that baby anywhere around here, you’ll be arrested and fined.’

‘Arrest me then, arrest me!’ Kongzi shouts. Two security guards appear, seize Kongzi by the arms and fling him out onto the street. Clutching the plastic bag, Meili carefully dismounts the table and hobbles out of the room, leaning against the walls for support. As soon as she leaves the main entrance, she crumples to her knees. Kongzi rushes over and pulls her up.

‘Get lost now, you vagrant scum!’ the officer shouts as they walk away.

A man on a motorbike pulls up and says, ‘Five yuan a trip. I’ll take you anywhere. Are you coming?’

Kongzi tries to help Meili onto the back seat. ‘I can’t get on,’ she cries. The blood clots clogging her vagina have begun to harden, and she’s terrified she’ll haemorrhage if she opens her legs. Gently, Kongzi lifts her left leg and moves it over the back seat. Squealing softly, Meili lowers herself onto the seat. Her face turns deathly white. ‘Does it hurt?’ Kongzi asks, sitting down behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. ‘No, no,’ she hisses through her teeth. ‘Let’s go back to the boat.’ She closes her eyes and rests her head on the driver’s back. ‘Did you leave Nannan alone?’ she asks Kongzi. ‘What if she’s fallen overboard?’ The motorbike drives down the broken mountain road. No matter how hard Meili is jolted, her hand remains fiercely clamped around the plastic bag on her lap.