The Dark Road A Novel

KEYWORDS: Yin forces, silkworm pupae, hunted animal, duck shit, bamboo mat, army tanks.

IN THE DARK hour before dawn, Meili wakes with a start and feels as though she’s trapped inside a coffin. Last night, as she was falling asleep, Kongzi whispered into her ear, ‘“Autumn shadows linger. / The frost is delayed. / Lotus leaves withering on the pond / listen to the patter of rain,”’ then climbed on top of her. Rain is rattling on the shelter’s roof, sounding like dried beans dropping into a metal bowl. Gusts of wind sweep water from the trees and send it crashing onto the tarpaulin in heavy sheets. Meili closes her eyes and waits for the storm to reach its peak. As lightning flashes through the black sky and thunder shakes the ground, Kongzi rolls on top of her again. ‘Be kind . . . to me . . . Kongzi,’ she mumbles. ‘I don’t want to . . . fall pregnant . . .’ Her hands linked behind his neck, she holds onto him, tighter and tighter, until her body is so compressed and her lungs so empty, she feels she is drowning. She opens her mouth and gasps for air. The alcohol on Kongzi’s breath makes her stomach turn, but she can’t escape it. She senses herself sinking into the ground as his jolting body weighs down on her. ‘It’s pouring outside. I must . . . bring in those pickles . . . I left to dry on the hutch.’ Desperately she tries to push him off.

To avoid having intercourse with him every night, Meili often goes to sleep on the boat with Nannan. She’s terrified of falling pregnant, of the government cutting out from her a piece of flesh as warm as her own, of having to conceal inside her body a contraband object which would grower larger and more visible by the day. She left Kong Village to find freedom, but if she falls pregnant again she knows she will become a hunted animal once more.

After the rooster in the bamboo cage greets the dawn, smaller birds begin to sing in the willows and insects fly out from the reeds. Meili feels a stream of sperm leak out from between her thighs. Am I already done for? she wonders to herself. Her period is three weeks late, and she suspects that her IUD might have fallen out.

She sits up and looks at the imprint of the bamboo mat on Kongzi’s forehead. He’s grown so familiar to her, he almost looks like a stranger. She wants to shout, ‘I’m pregnant! Are you happy now?’ but stops herself just in time. If she is pregnant, she wonders whether she could induce a miscarriage by lifting heavy objects or encouraging Kongzi to make love to her more aggressively than usual. She crawls outside and puts on a T-shirt. Her breasts feel heavy and tender and she can detect a sour taste in her mouth. Yes, I have all the symptoms. As her bare feet press into the sand, images from the past flit through her mind. She sees the winter morning she first set eyes on Kongzi, walking up to her wearing a yellow down jacket like a promise of a golden future. The first time he asked to meet her in the woods, her legs trembled with fear. She and Kongzi crouched in the dark shade of a tree beside a group of gravestones. He gave her some peanuts and said he’d invite her to a film in the county town and take her out for a meal. He told her a friend of his had opened a Sichuan restaurant on the ground floor of the County Cultural Centre which served beef poached in hot chilli oil and Chongqing hotpot. She remembers the photograph of Kongzi as a child, standing next to Teacher Zhou with a big smile on his face. She knows that Kongzi was Teacher Zhou’s favourite pupil, and that in 1989, when he went to stay with him in Beijing, they joined the democracy protests and, on 4 June, stood at a street corner arm in arm and watched the army tanks enter the capital. Now she is Kongzi’s wife. For his sake, she left the village designated on her residence permit and the comfort of their tiled-roofed house. She’d dreamed that if she worked hard, she could open a shop one day and buy a modern apartment in a county town with a flushing toilet and hot shower, like the one owned by Cao Niuniu, the son of Kongzi’s artist friend, Old Cao. She still believes that as long as she avoids another pregnancy, she’ll be able to live a good life one day, and stroll along supermarket aisles wearing nylon tights and high-heeled shoes.

She peeps back into the shelter. Nannan sits up and says, ‘I want to cuddle Daddy.’

‘No, you’ll wake him up,’ Meili replies.

‘I want to tell him I not going wake him up, then!’ Nannan says, leaning over to hug Kongzi’s head. Meili puts a second jumper on Nannan, then shuts the door and goes down to the beach. Hugging herself against the cold, she watches the rising sun stain the horizon red and pour its soft light over the river, the banks and the distant bridge. Once more, she feels an urge to tell Kongzi that she’s pregnant, just to see the look of joy on his face. Then she considers keeping quiet about it, and getting rid of the fetus on the sly by swallowing some castor oil. No – I will have this baby, she says to herself, digging her toes into the sand. Once it’s born, Kongzi will leave me alone, and I’ll never have to get pregnant again. Suddenly she sees a vision of herself as a girl, leaning over an enamel basin and splashing icy water onto her face before setting off for school. She remembers the coldness of the water seeping through to her cheekbones.

Smells of fish and duck shit begin to rise from the ground. The ducks in the pen preen their feathers and ruffle their wings. Meili sniffs the stale sweat on her skin and longs for a shower or a bath. She knows that although the town’s public bathhouse doubles as a brothel, it has warm pools in which visitors can bathe for just six yuan if they bring their own soap and towel. She hasn’t dared go there yet, as she hates the thought of having to undress in front of strangers. The river has been too cold for bathing. But winter is over now. She grits her teeth and steps in up to her ankles. The cold refreshes and invigorates her; her feet transmit forgotten memories to her brain. She feels fully awake, conscious of the beating of her heart and the ticking of each passing second. She wades deeper into the river and feels the coldness dragging her further into her past. She is aware of being, at the same time, both a woman and child: her daughter’s mother and her mother’s daughter. She remembers the day twenty years ago, during the osmanthus-blossom season, when she accompanied her mother to the dentist to have her molar capped, and realises that she is now as old as her mother was then, and that in another twenty years she’ll be as old as her mother is now, and that all that will await her after that will be old age and decrepitude . . . As her thoughts begin to freeze, she glances over her shoulder and sees the ducks force their way out of the pen and wade into the shallow water.

Kongzi rolls out of the shelter and rinses his mouth. Meili walks up to the stove, opens a bag of slops she bought from a restaurant yesterday and ladles some into the bucket of duck feed. A large container ship shrouded in diesel smoke chugs past, blasting its horn. The huge wake it leaves behind surges onto the beach, floods the shelter then recedes, taking Meili’s flip-flops with it. Meili goes into the shelter to brush her teeth, but discovers that her toothbrush has been washed away as well.

As usual, during the few minutes before dusk, the wind drops and the river becomes calm. Kongzi is sitting at the bow of their boat, gazing at the ducks and the back of Meili’s neck as she stands knee-deep in the river, her skirt hitched up to her waist. In her rippling reflection, her skin is the same colour but her white skirt is slightly darker. Nannan lies in the cabin, gazing at her plastic doll in the red dress and singing a nonsense song she’s made up: ‘A-da-li-ya, wah wah! . . .’ A golden, late-spring haze spreads over the river, making the watery landscape resemble a blurred and muted colour photograph.

By the time Kongzi walks down the beach with the bucket of shredded cabbage for the ducks’ last feed, the evening sun is so low in the sky that his silhouette is dragged halfway across the river. With sudden alarm he notices six or seven ducks being swept downstream. He wades into the river, scrambles onto the boat, and tries to shoo them back towards the beach with the long bamboo pole. In the commotion, the boat becomes untethered and it too starts to drift downstream. Kongzi turns on the engine and drives it back to its mooring, while Meili chases after the errant ducks and tosses pebbles at their heads to encourage them to swim back. The ducks shake their wings in a fluster, splashing water into the air.

‘Call them back, Kongzi!’ Meili shouts.

‘“What passes is just like this, never ceasing day or night . . .”’ Kongzi yells, quoting a line from the Analects as he gazes with excitement at the current. ‘Don’t worry, Meili, I’ll put some food on the beach. That’ll bring them back.’ He leaps off the boat, making it rock so violently that Nannan is knocked onto her side. Meili strides further into the water, positions herself in front of the ducks and with open arms shoos them back. At last, they turn round and swim to the beach, then they shake their feathers dry and wobble off towards Kongzi’s bucket.

An hour later, the river sinks into darkness and the island becomes shrouded in a cold dank mist. The kerosene lamp shines on Kongzi’s and Chen’s weathered faces.

‘Beautifully recited, my friend,’ Kongzi says, then swigging some beer stares at Meili’s backside as she bends over the stove. ‘Now let’s hear another one.’

Chen crashed his boat into a ship last week, and it will take a month to repair. After Nannan burnt her foot, he bought her a new pair of flip-flops. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘I’ll try “Feelings on a River in Early Winter”, by Meng Haoran. Here goes: “Trees shed their leaves, wild geese fly south. / Rivers shiver in the north wind. / My home is far away, at a bend of River Xiang / In the Land of Chu, high above the clouds. / A melancholy vagrant, whose tears have run dry, / I fix my gaze on a solitary boat at the edge of the sky. / Having drifted off course, I long to find my way home. / Before me stretch the flat sea and the endless night.” Ah, I remembered every line! You really are a fine tutor. Would you consider teaching my daughters as well?’ Chen has a gold tooth which at night always glints in the lamplight.

‘Yes, I could give them lessons every morning. They may be black children with no residence permits or legal status, but you must think of their futures. At the very least, they should learn to read and write.’

‘How lucky we are to be able to rub shoulders with a scholar of your calibre – a descendant of Confucius, no less! Come, a toast to you, my friend!’ Chen’s face crinkles into a broad smile. As he munches one of the deep-fried silkworm pupae he’s brought, a pungent yeasty smell fills the air around him.

‘Teachers are the least respected and most poorly paid members of society,’ Kongzi says. ‘Chairman Mao called us the “stinking Ninth category”. But teaching is my vocation. I don’t care about the money. As Confucius said, “A noble man should seek neither a full belly nor a comfortable home.”’

‘Why you not a doctor, Dad?’ asks Nannan, stroking her doll’s red dress.

‘Because I wanted to be a teacher, and I’m too old to change professions now.’

‘Wen’s cat died today. You must make it better. When I had big burn, you made my foot better.’

‘You’re right, Kongzi – our pockets may be empty but our will is strong,’ says Chen. ‘When our children grow up, they can find jobs in factories that provide free food and lodging. They won’t have to live like tramps any more.’ Since he crashed his boat, Chen has been going over to the town every day to look for work. Kongzi has been busy as well. This morning he hauled a cargo of asbestos to a Sino-Hong Kong flagstone factory three kilometres away.

The island has suffered many disruptions this week. River police, municipal police and family planning officers have turned up repeatedly to check boat licences, residence permits and birth permits. Two days ago, Bo and Juru and Dai and Yiping packed their bags and left. Kongzi now uses their abandoned shelters as supplementary duck pens.

Meili clears away the bowls and chopsticks and says to the men, ‘You stay here and chat. I’ll go and sleep in the cabin.’

‘The gods haven’t favoured us,’ Kongzi sighs, watching Meili hitch up her skirt and wade over to the boat, her bottom swaying from side to side. ‘I still haven’t managed to get her knocked up.’

‘I just hope our one will be a boy,’ Chen says. His wife Xixi is due to give birth to their third child any day now.

‘Meili was born in the birthplace of Goddess Nuwa,’ Kongzi says. ‘The Yin forces of the area are too strong. Every name has a female connotation: Dark Water River, Riverbrook Town, Pool of the Immortals Mountain. Women from such a place are clearly not meant to produce sons.’

‘Without a son, a man can never stand tall,’ Chen says. ‘The bloody family planning policies have ruined our lives! Back in the village we owned two hundred turtles – they were worth eight thousand yuan – but after our second daughter was born, the officers confiscated the lot.’

Chewing angrily on a pupa, Kongzi says, ‘Not even the most evil emperor in China’s history would have contemplated developing the economy by massacring unborn children and severing family lines! But today’s tyrants murder millions of babies a year without batting an eyelid, and if a baby slips through their net, they cripple its parents with fines and confiscate their property.’

‘I’m your baby, Daddy, so why you want another baby?’ Nannan says, perching on an old motor cylinder beside him.

‘Don’t interrupt when the grown-ups are talking,’ Kongzi says to her. ‘It’s time you went to sleep. Go and join Mum on the boat.’

Nannan wraps her arms around Kongzi’s neck. ‘I eaten so much food, I’m a grown-up too, now. Daddy, why you got hair in your nose?’

Kongzi pulls Nannan onto his lap and gently tugs her ear. ‘A grown-up, you say? Then how come you still wet your bed every night?’ Since Nannan burned her foot, he has become much more affectionate towards her.

‘When you’re here, I like you. When you’re not here, I like Mummy.’ The bottoms of Nannan’s long trousers are damp and her bare feet are stone cold.





KEYWORDS: spouse’s return, hairy armpits, water burial, Dragon Mother, corpse fisher, dead fish.

ON A SWELTERING day, while Kongzi is having a lunchtime nap in the cabin, Meili sees a man on the bank waving his bag and shouting out to them. ‘Wake up, Kongzi!’ she says. ‘I think someone wants to hire our boat.’ In the last month, she’s sold thirty ducks for two hundred yuan, and Kongzi has made three hundred yuan delivering cargos of watermelons injected with growth chemicals, and batches of last year’s mouldy rice which unscrupulous traders milled and waxed so that it could be sold as new.

Meili steers towards the bank. Kongzi’s gold-rimmed spectacles fell into the river last week, so she’s been driving the boat since then. The man jumps aboard and says, ‘I need a ride to Yinluo.’ He is tall, with unkempt greying hair, a goatee and tortoiseshell glasses. His white shirt clings to his sweaty back.

‘What, there and back in one day?’ Meili asks.

‘I don’t know yet,’ the man says, wiping his wet forehead.

‘What cargo are you picking up?’ Kongzi asks sleepily, drawing back the door curtain. He’s crouching down, unaware that his penis is hanging out from the open zip of his shorts.

‘I’m not picking up any cargo. I’m looking for my mother. She drowned herself in the river last week. I want to find her body and give her a proper burial.’

‘You want us to transport a corpse?’ Kongzi says, stepping out onto the deck. ‘Never! I’ll transport fake goods or contraband goods, but not dead bodies.’

‘I know it’s an unusual proposition, so I’m prepared to pay you eighty yuan for the day.’

‘It’s not a question of money,’ Kongzi says, softening his tone a little. ‘Don’t you know it’s bad luck to bring a corpse aboard a boat?’

‘Yes, yes, I understand,’ the man says. ‘Let’s say ninety yuan, then. All right?’ He’s now so drenched in sweat, he looks as though he’s just emerged from the river.

Kongzi thinks it over for a moment, and says, ‘I’d want one hundred yuan. No less. And I’ll need to pay the twenty-yuan administrative fee at the inspection post, and the mooring fee at the Yinluo pier.’ The truth is, Kongzi never moors at the pier, he always anchors along the banks further down.

‘Please, brother, do it for ninety. I’m just a humble schoolteacher. I don’t have much money.’

‘Let’s take him,’ Meili says, squatting behind the engine, her bare feet forming sweaty footprints on the deck.

Hearing that the man is a teacher, Kongzi feels unable to refuse. ‘All right, ninety it is,’ he says. ‘Meili, you and Nannan stay on the island and look after the ducks.’

‘No, it wouldn’t be safe for you to drive the boat without your glasses,’ she says. ‘Xixi can take care of Nannan and the ducks. Her baby’s four months old. She can strap him onto her back now and walk around.’

They sail to the island, leave Nannan and the ducks in Xixi’s care, then set off for Yinluo. ‘I’m a teacher as well, as it happens,’ Kongzi says, crouching down next to the man.

As the boat moves downstream, a cool breeze blows through the hot air and rustles the tarpaulin canopy. Meili stands at the stern, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding down the back of her cotton dress so that it doesn’t fly up in the wind. She wonders why the man’s mother chose to drown herself. Back in Nuwa Village, a few women killed themselves by jumping into a well and one or two hanged themselves from trees, but most women committed suicide by drinking pesticides.

‘. . . I’ve been searching the Xi River for ten days, but haven’t seen any sign of her,’ the man says. ‘I was told that near Yinluo there’s a stagnant backwater where bodies often wash up.’ Meili glances at the man through the corner of her eye. Although his face is grimy and his hair dusty and unkempt, he has a distinguished air about him. He pulls off his round tortoiseshell glasses and mops the sweat from his brow.

‘Yinluo’s not too far,’ Kongzi says, taking the cigarette the man offers him. ‘We should get there in two hours.’

The man has relaxed a little. He looks no older than forty. He’s wearing sports sandals that have labels printed with foreign letters. His grey shorts are mud-splattered and his white shirt has a frayed collar and ink stains, but together they still look quite stylish.

‘Why did your mother drown herself?’ Kongzi asks bluntly.

‘She was diagnosed with breast cancer. The hospital treatment was going to cost a thousand yuan a day. She knew that we’re struggling to find the money for my son’s university fees, and she didn’t want to drain our resources.’

Kongzi’s eyes widen. ‘So your son has got into university?’

‘Yes, we slaved for two years helping him prepare for the exams. He’s the only student in our county who’s been offered a place. Such glory he’s brought to our ancestors! But the fees have risen to eighteen thousand yuan this year, and my salary is just five thousand. Still, I’m determined to raise the cash. I’m planning to give up teaching and look for a factory job in Shenzhen. When the acceptance letter arrived, I showed it to my mother, and she drowned herself that very afternoon.’

‘Did anyone see her jump? Perhaps she’s just gone travelling.’

‘She left a will and a letter instructing me not to search for her body. She said if we found it we’d have to pay for a cremation, and she’d rather we put all our money towards my son’s fees. She left her keys on the kitchen table.’

Upset by the man’s story, Meili pushes down the throttle handle to accelerate.

‘So she chose to drown herself, rather than hang or gas herself, just to save you the thousand-yuan cremation fee!’ Kongzi exclaims. ‘The government is shameless, trying to make money from corpses. The poor can’t even afford to die these days!’

‘I don’t care how much it costs. I must find her body and give her a decent burial. If I don’t, how will I be able to look my descendants in the eye?’ He lowers his bloodshot eyes. The sweat on his face evaporates in the breeze.

‘If no one saw her jump, she’s technically a missing person,’ Kongzi says. ‘Why don’t you contact the river police and ask them to help you look for her?’

‘I’ve spoken to them. They told me a person must be missing for one month before they can open a case, and she’s only been gone for ten days. They won’t help. Here, brother, have another cigarette.’

‘No, I couldn’t. They’re a top brand. Must have cost you a fortune.’

‘Don’t worry. The Education Board gives us two packs a month. It’s some shady deal they’ve cooked up with the tobacco company. They deduct the cost from our salary, whether we smoke them or not. What’s your name, brother? Mine is Weiwei.’

‘I’m Kong Lingming,’ Kongzi says, the wind blowing in his face. ‘The problem is, if the river police did agree to follow up the case, they’d probably just send a few messages out to local police stations. They wouldn’t dispatch a search party unless you paid them a huge bribe.’

‘That’s why I’ve come to search for her myself.’ Then he raises his head and looks Kongzi in the eye. ‘So, Mr Kong Lingming, I presume from your name that you’re a seventy-sixth generation descendant of the great sage. It’s an honour to make your acquaintance. We have a Kong in our county too, from the seventy-fifth generation. He’s a deputy to the National People’s Congress.’

‘Yes, I am a descendant – but I’m having to live like a tramp now so that I can continue my illustrious line,’ Kongzi says, embarrassed by his lowly circumstances.

Green forested mountains begin to tower on both sides. Meili gazes up at the peaks then down at their reflections plunging into the river. She breathes in the green light and feels her mind clear. There are no villages or towns in sight. She closes her eyes and lets the peace and calm wash over her.

‘Why not make a television appeal to see if anyone saw her jump?’ Kongzi suggests, trying to keep the conversation going.

‘I tried. My brother works for the local TV station. He asked his bosses to air an appeal, but they refused to. They’ve had to broadcast so many appeals for missing children and women recently, they’ve decided to stop offering the service. I printed hundreds of notices and stuck them on street corners, but no one’s responded. There’s no official organisation that can help me. I’m all on my own.’ He wipes a tear from his eye.

‘Don’t get upset. It’s not our fault we were born into a dynasty that prevents men performing their filial duty.’ Since Kongzi lost his spectacles, he’s been wearing a pair of cheap brown sunglasses that make him look like a shifty hawker of fake medicine in a country market. ‘I toiled for years teaching in a village school, for the sake of my country, but what did the government do for me in return? I couldn’t even feed my family on the meagre salary they paid me.’

‘But you’ve plunged into the sea of commerce now, and become a private entrepreneur. I envy your freedom!’ Weiwei rubs his goatee, then brings out from his bag a photograph of his mother which a strong gust almost blows from his hands.

Kongzi takes the photograph and studies it in the shade of the canopy. ‘What a lovely lady she looks,’ he says. ‘You wouldn’t guess she was ill.’

Feeling the wind blow the back of her dress towards Weiwei’s shoulder, Meili pulls it down and stuffs it between her legs.

‘We’ve entered Fengkai County now,’ Weiwei says. ‘Look up there. That’s Yearning for the Spouse’s Return Rock, one of Xi River’s eight scenic sites.’ He swigs back some lemonade from the bottle Kongzi gave him and points to a leaning stack of rocks on the summit of a green mountain.

‘Is it a wife yearning for her husband or a husband yearning for his wife?’ Meili asks him, squinting up at it. The engine is chugging so loudly now, she has to shout to be heard.

‘A wife yearning for her husband, of course,’ Kongzi says, before Weiwei has a chance to reply. ‘In the past, the men went travelling and the women always stayed at home.’ Meili is annoyed that Kongzi butted in – she wanted to hear Weiwei speak. Kongzi turns to him and says, ‘When we fled the village, we never thought that two years later, we’d still be on the run. We imagined the rivers would be safe, but they’re almost as heavily policed as the roads. So-called Boat Safety Inspection Posts have popped up all along Xi River. The inspectors couldn’t care less how safe your boat is, all they want is your money. If they stop you, they’ll confiscate your licence unless you pay fees of two hundred yuan.’

Meili pulls a white T-shirt over her sleeveless dress, and feels more comfortable now that her hairy armpits are concealed. With her free hand she rearranges the sachets of washing powder, magazines and bamboo fans behind her into a neat pile.

‘How much did this boat cost you?’ Weiwei asks.

‘Oh, about ten thousand yuan,’ Kongzi lies, wanting to impress him.

‘And business is going well?’ Weiwei’s gaze shifts to Meili who is now clutching the steering wheel with both hands, the wind rippling through her hair.

‘The money isn’t great. Small boats like this can only take heavy cargo short distances. Most of the time, I deliver fake goods that registered boats are too afraid to touch. And the price of diesel keeps rising. I get through forty yuan of it a day.’

‘Have you thought of taking up fishing?’ Weiwei says, still looking at Meili. ‘You could open a crab and shrimp stall on the banks.’

‘The river’s become so polluted, there are hardly any fish left. Most of the fishermen round here have abandoned their nets and gone to find jobs in the cities. Ah! What a beautiful stretch of the river this is. It brings to mind that Song Dynasty poem: “Clouds appear to drift beneath the moving boat / The empty water is clear—”’

‘“—I gaze up, gaze down, and wonder whether / Beneath the lake’s surface, another Heaven exists,”’ Weiwei interrupts, completing the quatrain. He looks to the right and points to a mountain peak. ‘See that white sculpture at the top? That’s the mythical Dragon Mother.’

‘She’s so beautiful,’ Meili gasps. ‘But she looks like an angel or a goddess, not a mother.’

‘But mothers can be beautiful as well – just look at you!’ Weiwei says with a smile. Meili looks away bashfully and blurts out the first thing that enters her mind. ‘So, is the Dragon Mother a dragon herself, or a human being who’s a mother of dragons?’

‘She’s a local deity,’ Weiwei replies, ‘a goddess of rain, mothers and children. The legend goes that as a baby she was put on a wooden tray and cast off by her parents into the Xi River, then found and raised by a fisherman. When she grew up, she was able to control the floods. The people in this area call anyone with supernatural powers a dragon.’

Meili feels sick at the thought of a mother abandoning her baby. She imagines waves rolling over the baby’s head and its tiny body sinking to the riverbed. She looks up again at the Dragon Mother’s sparkling white figure, and the golden temple and bamboo grove behind it. Tourists appear to be crawling up the narrow path to the summit like an army of wriggling maggots.

As the boat approaches Yinluo, the river widens and divides, with a backwater branching off to the right. The dark water appears stagnant, but plastic bottles and polystyrene boxes are moving sluggishly across its surface. Shacks built from broken doors and plastic sheeting are dotted among the long grass at the far end. The warm evening breeze smells of rot and decay.

‘This must be the place I was told about,’ Weiwei says, gripping the canopy.

Meili steers to the right and advances with care. The water grows shallower and the engine begins to rumble and spew blue smoke into the air. Kongzi moves to the bow and darts from side to side, prodding his bamboo pole into the riverbed to check the depth. When they reach an expanse of floating rubbish that seems impassable, Meili slows the boat to a crawl. She tries veering to the right but Kongzi shouts out, ‘No, we’ll never make it to the bank this way,’ so she steers in the other direction and, after a while, finds a cleared channel that leads to the shore. A man walks out of one of the shelters and stares at them. Clouds of crows and mosquitoes hover overhead, making the grey sky look dark and soiled.

‘Are you a corpse fisher, my friend?’ Weiwei shouts to the man as they draw closer. ‘I’m looking for my mother.’

‘When did she drown?’ the man asks, walking to the shore. He’s wearing black trousers and a white vest, and is fanning his face with a straw hat.

‘Ten days ago,’ Weiwei answers, rubbing his goatee anxiously.

‘Only three women have washed up here this week. How old was your mother?’

‘Sixty-five.’

‘Those three are much younger than that. One is naked from the waist down. Her hands and feet are bound with rope and her toenails are painted red.’

‘And the other two?’ Weiwei asks plaintively.

‘The oldest looks no more than forty. Dark blue trousers, purple jacket, bare feet.’

‘Purple jacket? Let me see her.’

Meili turns off the engine and Kongzi punts the boat to the shore.

‘I must warn you, comrade, it will cost you 150 yuan to look at the corpse, and three thousand if you want me to dredge it out and arrange for a van to deliver it to your home. My fees are the lowest, though. That guy up there will charge you two hundred to look at the corpse. But he’s a crook. Unlike me, he can read, so he scans the newspapers’ missing persons notices, phones the families and tells them to come here, knowing very well he doesn’t have the bodies they’re looking for. I’d never do that. I have principles.’

‘You must make a fortune!’ Kongzi says. ‘A hundred and fifty yuan just to look? That’s robbery! This boat only cost me three thousand.’ Kongzi bites his lip, remembering that he told Weiwei it cost him much more.

‘No one gets rich from this trade. Only five or six families a year turn up here looking for dead relatives, and we have to buy all the rope and plastic sacks ourselves. There are four of us fishing corpses, and none of us have made much money. If you don’t believe me, go and ask them.’

‘Does the woman in the purple jacket have grey hair?’ asks Weiwei, scrutinising the man’s face.

‘A few grey hairs, perhaps. Not many. See, I’m an honest man. If you’d asked Chang, he would’ve lied to you.’

‘All right, let me see her. Where is she?’

‘All the bodies are tethered to poles under the floating rubbish. But I can’t show you the woman in the purple jacket. She belongs to Chang. We stick to the rules here. He’s gone into town today. He’ll be back tomorrow.’

Kongzi whispers to Weiwei that they should speak to the other corpse fishers, then in a louder voice asks the man if there’s a police station nearby.

‘Yes, a station was opened near here a couple of years ago,’ he answers. ‘The police used to pay us a hundred yuan to pull out the bodies, then would take them away to be cremated. But so many bodies washed up last year, the police couldn’t cope. For a while, they’d still come once a week, to photograph the corpses and cut locks of hair. But money is tight now, and they’ve stopped coming altogether. So we have to rely entirely on people like you for our income.’

Weiwei and Kongzi climb the littered bank towards shelters further up, pinching their noses from the stench.

‘Stinks, doesn’t it?’ the corpse fisher shouts out to them, putting on his straw hat. ‘It’s not easy living here, I tell you!’

They come to a shelter surrounded by heaps of plastic bottles. A man steps out, holding a can of Coke.

‘Hello, my friend,’ Weiwei says. ‘I’m looking for my mother. She’s sixty-five, with grey hair. Have you seen any bodies like that recently? Here, have a smoke.’ He hands the man a cigarette and searches his pocket for a lighter.

‘I saw an old woman’s corpse bobbing on the water yesterday, but it was bloated and decayed.’

Kongzi glances back at the man they just spoke to, annoyed that he made no mention of this body to them.

‘How long would it take for a corpse to reach that state?’ Kongzi asks.

‘I’m not in the business, but I should think three weeks at least, a bit less if crabs have got to it. Old Gui down there keeps his bodies under the rubbish for six months. If no one comes to claim them, he drags them back to the river and lets the current sweep them away. But by then they’re unrecognisable.’

‘So you don’t keep any corpses yourself?’ asks Kongzi, stepping back from a cockroach he sees crawling towards his feet.

‘No, no! That work would give me nightmares. Every morning, the corpse fishers row out into the floating rubbish to check if any bodies have got trapped beneath it during the night. When they come across a patch that smells particularly bad, or has flies hovering above it, they plunge their hooked poles into it, hoping to pull up a body. I don’t have the stomach for that.’

‘Do you ever get babies washing up here?’ Kongzi asks, his mind turning to Happiness.

‘Huh! More dead babies wash up here than dead fish! But no families ever come looking for them, so the body fishers leave them to rot on the bank.’

Kongzi whisks the flies from his face and glances at the shacks above.

‘Don’t bother asking the other guys,’ the man says. ‘They’ll con you out of all your money. I doubt your mother’s here. The bodies I’ve seen recently have been either much older or younger.’

Kongzi and Weiwei return to the boat. Meili is still standing at the stern, her hand clamped over her mouth. ‘The stench is unbearable,’ she groans as the men step aboard. The brown water below is littered with white polystyrene, empty cans and dead fish. Weiwei stares down dejectedly. ‘Perhaps her body has got caught on an anchor, or under a rock on the riverbed, or perhaps it’s been swept further downstream and I’ll never find it.’

The river and sky are darkening, but the pale swathe of floating refuse is still glowing faintly. Kongzi retreats into the cabin. Meili follows him inside and says, ‘I can’t stand the smell any longer, and I’m getting bitten to death by the mosquitoes. Let’s get out of here.’

‘We should give him a bit more time,’ Kongzi replies, lighting a cigarette.

‘No, I’ve had enough. I don’t care about the money. This place is a floating graveyard. Who knows how many corpses are bobbing under the rubbish?’

‘Be quiet – you’ll upset him,’ Kongzi whispers, peeping round the door curtain at Weiwei, who’s still leaning overboard staring down at the floating debris. ‘Do we have any beer left?’ Kongzi asks.

‘No,’ Meili snaps. She wants to scream out in anger, but doesn’t dare open her mouth too wide in case the insects swarming around her fly inside.

‘Anything to eat?’ Kongzi asks tentatively.

‘No, nothing!’ Meili shouts.

Kongzi goes out onto the deck and pats Weiwei’s trembling shoulders. ‘Shall we get going, my friend? If we don’t leave this wretched place soon, we’ll have to spend the night here.’

‘Yes, let’s sail upstream and find a better place to anchor,’ Meili says, joining them outside. ‘It’s too late to go home now. Don’t worry, we won’t charge you any extra for the night.’

Weiwei reluctantly nods in agreement. Meili goes to the stern, presses a towel to her mouth and starts the engine. As the boat sets off, the breeze becomes cooler and fresher. But the backwater’s stench has infused her skin, and whenever it drifts up to her nose, she gags. They sail upstream in the dying light, and her eyes fill with tears as she wonders whether Happiness’s body is still lying on the bed of the Yangtze, or has been swept down to this backwater as well, and is decaying under the floating rubbish along with all the other rotting corpses.

‘After our second child was ripped out of Meili’s womb and murdered by the authorities, we gave him a water burial in the Yangtze,’ Kongzi tells Weiwei, crushing out his cigarette. ‘At least I know now that if he’d washed up here, the corpse fishers would have left him alone.’

Weiwei looks at him, his face seized up in horror, then buries his head into his folded arms and weeps like a child.

Meili steers the boat towards a distant mooring place below a cluster of brick shacks. In the deep dusk, the water’s surface has become as smooth as skin, tearing open as the bow cuts through it then sealing up again behind the stern.