The Dark Road A Novel

KEYWORDS: tortoiseshell glasses, greatest good, wet dress, preserved mustard greens, peace of mind.

KONGZI TIES THE boat to a small wooden jetty that is coated in fine cement dust. He looks up and sees a brick shack with a wooden sign that says GOOD FOOD RESTAURANT. A child is squatting down for a shit next to a telegraph pole. In a shed close by, an engine is loudly chugging.

They enter the restaurant. Kongzi studies the menu and orders sweet and sour fish, spicy spare ribs, fried string beans and a bottle of rice wine. On a television in the corner, a woman in a flowery dress is singing, ‘Your tenderness bewilders me. My fate is loneliness . . .’ The food is brought to the table. Meili stares at the darkness outside the window, glancing occasionally at Kongzi and Weiwei whose faces soon turn red from the alcohol.

‘Don’t give in to despair,’ Kongzi tells Weiwei. ‘Death is merely a turning off of the lights. Come on, have another drink. And you too, Meili.’

Meili raises her glass and looks into Weiwei’s bespectacled eyes. She assumes he’s abandoned the search, but knows that the thought that his mother’s corpse may be lying undiscovered in the river must be torturing him. She notices his filthy collar and wishes she could pull off his shirt and scrub it clean.

Kongzi lifts his eyes to the ceiling and sighs. ‘The ancient philosopher, Laozi, said: “The greatest good is like water: it gives life to the ten thousand things, but does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao . . .” But this Xi River doesn’t give life. It’s a flowing cemetery of bodies, pollution and waste . . .’

‘The Taoist philosophers were attempting to come up with principles to govern human conduct,’ Weiwei replies. ‘But who’s interested in principles now? When his mother passed away, the Taoist sage, Zhuangzi, beat his drum and laughed. His mother died a natural death, so he could regard it with equanimity. But my mother was driven to her death by a government that has washed its hands of the sick and the poor. I can’t help giving in to despair. Since the Tiananmen Massacre, this country has lost its conscience. Money is the only religion.’ Weiwei puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights up, but chokes at the first puff.

‘Don’t smoke if you’re not a smoker,’ Meili says, taking the cigarette from him. She sucks a puff then keeps it held between her fingers, tapping it against an empty cup when the ash becomes too long.

‘You’re right,’ Kongzi says. ‘I never dare discuss such things with my wife, but mark my words: one day the official verdict on Tiananmen will be reversed. My old teacher, Mr Zhou, is convinced of it. A toast, Weiwei: “Friends from afar meet but rarely. Let us raise our glass in joy and drown our sorrows!” Since you didn’t find your mother today, we won’t charge you anything for this trip. Come on, now. It’s not often I get to sit down with a graduate. Let’s test our wits. We’ll take turns to recite a line of ancient poetry that contains a character connected to water. Whoever slips up must drink a shot.’ At the back of the restaurant, two men covered in cement dust are drinking beer. The only light in the room is coming from the single bulb overhead and the glowing television screen. A rusty electric fan on the cashier’s desk slowly stirs the air. Mosquitoes and flies flit from the plates of food to one of the six forearms pressed on the table.

‘Fine, let’s toast the Xi River and give it a go!’ Weiwei says. He undoes the top button of his shirt, then, glancing at Meili, quickly does it up again.

‘“The white sun sinks behind the mountain as the Yellow River glides towards the sea,”’ Kongzi recites, tapping the line’s rhythm on the table.

‘“A low ray of sun spreads across the water which is emerald along one side, and red along the other,”’ Weiwei chants, rubbing the edges of his tortoiseshell glasses.

‘I said the line should contain a word with a watery connection, not the word “water” itself. You lose! Drink up!’

‘If you insist,’ Weiwei sighs, and empties the glass. ‘But next time, if I manage to replace “water” with another word, while retaining the sense, you must let me off.’

‘All right, I’ll agree to that. Ready? “The bright moon rises from the sea; at different edges of the sky, we admire the same view.”’

‘“I at the head of the Yangtze River, you at the tail, we drink—”’ The next word is “water” but Weiwei stops himself just in time and says, ‘No, make that “we mourn our loved ones who rest on the river’s bed.”’

‘A fine line,’ Kongzi says, the image striking at his heart. He pauses to wipe a tear from his eye, then continues the game. ‘“The moon follows the river’s waves for ten thousand li; in spring, its radiance overflows the banks.”’

‘“The mountain pass is hard to breach; who feels sorrow for the man who has lost his way?” Weiwei says, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

‘No water connotation!’ Kongzi shouts out, banging the table. ‘You’ve lost again!’

‘But the character “sorrow” contains the water radical on the left.’

‘You need two radicals for it to count, I’m afraid. You’ve definitely lost, brother. Drink up!’

Once the men empty the last dregs from the bottle, Meili whispers to Kongzi that they should return to the boat to sleep. Kongzi ventures out into the dark to find a toilet. Weiwei settles the bill then returns to the table and says to Meili, ‘Are you sure you’ve had enough to eat?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ she answers, staring at the fish bones on the plates, wondering, with a shudder, whether the fish they’ve just eaten once fed on the corpse of Weiwei’s mother. More flies gather on the plates and crawl over the leftovers.

‘You looked so beautiful when you were driving the boat,’ Weiwei says. ‘Kongzi is a lucky man.’ As she looks up at him, he glances out of the window, too embarrassed to meet her gaze, and they hear a loud, grating rumble outside that sounds like a truck emptying rubble onto a boat. Meili’s heart begins to thud. This is the first time that any man apart from Kongzi has told her that she’s beautiful. Not knowing what to say, she looks down again and stares at the plates and at Weiwei’s watch.

‘I’ve put you both to so much trouble today,’ Weiwei says, gripping his empty glass. ‘“Where will I be when I wake from my drunken sleep? / On the willow banks, in the dawn breeze, under a fading moon.” That would work. “Drunken” and “banks” both have watery connotations . . .’

‘It’s been no trouble at all. So, how many children did your mother have?’ Meili wants to tell Weiwei that with his round tortoiseshell glasses he looks just like the university professors who give lectures on television.

‘Four boys and one girl. I’m the eldest. Tell me your name again.’

‘Meili.’

‘As in “Beautiful and Pretty”? How apt.’

‘How common, you mean. Every woman in the countryside is called Meili. But my “Mei” is the dawn “Mei”. I was born in the morning.’

‘Ah, that’s different, then. “Beautiful Dawn”, or “Beautiful Beginning”. Very poetic.’

Meili thinks of her mother, and remembers her lying asleep on a chair while breastfeeding Meili’s brother, her milk tricking down his cheek. She wonders whether her grandmother is still well enough to walk about and go out into the garden. ‘When our parents are alive, we’re young,’ she says. ‘But as soon as they die, we become old.’

‘You’re right,’ Weiwei says, looking down. ‘When our parents are alive, they stand in front of us, blocking our view of death. But once they’ve gone, we find ourselves at the cliff edge. Whether we jump now or later doesn’t make much difference. The next step we take will be the end.’

‘Don’t be so negative. Perhaps your mother didn’t throw herself into the river after all. Perhaps she’ll turn up at your home one day. You only have one life: you must be kind to yourself.’

‘Yes, we’re only here once. We’re unlikely to cross paths again.’ Weiwei returns his blank gaze to the window. The only sign of the river now is the trail of light from a passing boat. The flies and mosquitoes swarming the night air are only visible once they hit the glass pane.

‘You have a long life ahead of you, a son who’s off to university . . .’ Meili says, glancing at the educational programme being broadcast on the television now. Moths flit around the bulb above. One of them breaks a wing, falls to the table and flutters about in distress.

‘Somehow, I’d prefer to find out that she was dead. It’s the uncertainty that’s so unbearable. I know now that there is no greater torture in life than to have someone you love go missing.’ Weiwei spots a mosquito on his arm and slaps it.

‘No, you men have no idea. The greatest torture any human being could suffer is to be pregnant with a child and not know which day it might be torn from you; and then, when it is taken from you, to have to watch it being strangled before your eyes. My aborted son often appears to me in my dreams, lying dead in a plastic bag, his face all swollen and purple. If he were alive now, he’d probably call you “Uncle Glasses” . . .’ She sinks her face into her hands and weeps.

‘You’re a good mother, Meili, don’t cry,’ Weiwei says, handing her a paper napkin. ‘My mother had a hard life too. She married at the height of the Land Reform Campaign, when the Party was encouraging the masses to kill rich landowners. The day after her wedding, her father was dragged to the village hall and hanged in public, and my parents were made to watch. My mother told me that as his dead body swung from the ceiling, the peasants whipped it with ropes so fiercely that scraps of his flesh splashed onto her face. I was there too at the time, inside her womb. For the next two years, my parents had to remain “empty-handed”.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It meant that when they left the house they couldn’t take anything with them, no bags or wallets. And in summer, they weren’t allowed to wear socks or long trousers. The authorities were afraid they’d conceal weapons on their bodies and try to avenge her father’s death. Many of the victims’ family members committed suicide during those years. But my mother struggled on, for my sake. I was born three months prematurely. I weighed just three pounds. When I was six she taught me the Three Character Classic and the English poetry she learned at her missionary school. For my sake she clung to life, and now for my sake again she has killed herself.’ Weiwei takes off his tortoiseshell glasses and rubs his tear-filled eyes.

Meili searches for words of comfort. ‘I’m not a good mother,’ she says at last. ‘To tell you the truth, I’ve had an IUD fitted. I don’t want to have any more children. I want to work hard, make money, and live the kind of life where I can eat my meals at a proper table and wash my clothes in a machine.’

Weiwei looks up. ‘That shouldn’t be hard to achieve. Times have changed. Any woman can set up her own business now, become her own boss. But not every woman can be as good a mother as you . . .’

‘I’d like to take a television correspondence course,’ Meili says, glancing back at the professor on the flickering screen. ‘I venerate learning, but I’m so uncultured and poorly educated. I only went to school for two years . . . Kongzi doesn’t know I’ve had an IUD fitted. Please don’t tell him.’

‘Your secret’s safe. I’ll be leaving tomorrow and will probably never see either of you again.’

‘I know you look down on us peasants. Once you’ve gone, you’ll forget all about us.’

‘No. I’ll never forget you. I’ll leave you my address. You and Kongzi would be more than welcome to come and stay with us.’ Their eyes meet as they inhale the smell of each other’s sweat. ‘You really are beautiful,’ he says. ‘How easy life would be if I had someone like you by my side.’ In the dim light, Weiwei’s hair looks shinier and less grey. ‘You have something caught . . .’ He points at her mouth, but before she has a chance to touch it, he reaches over and picks out from between her front teeth a strand of spinach. Meili jumps to her feet and asks Kongzi, who’s just walked in, where the toilet is.

‘Don’t go. It’s pitch black out there. Wait until we’re back on the boat.’ She can smell that he’s just vomited. His face is purple and bloated.

‘It’s so quiet now,’ Weiwei says, ‘I feel much better after that swim.’ Meili watches the water drip down his bare back and hands him a towel. Then she goes into the cabin, slips off her wet dress, dries herself quickly with a sheet and puts on Kongzi’s long white vest. ‘You can sleep in here with us,’ she says, poking her head round the door curtain. ‘We’ll have to squeeze up, I’m afraid.’

The night is breezeless, but a faint smell of osmanthus seems to be moving through the still air. Meili and Weiwei are now lying on either side of Kongzi, who’s quietly snoring. Meili can sense that Weiwei is still awake. When they returned to the boat, Kongzi crashed out in the cabin, and she jumped into the river for a swim, having noticed when they arrived at dusk that the water was clean. Weiwei jumped in after her. It was too dark for her to see the expression on his face; all she could make out in the light from the restaurant was the dark outline of the boat.

‘I’m so sorry to have inconvenienced you like this,’ Weiwei whispers to her across Kongzi’s sleeping body.

‘Don’t worry. It would have been too dangerous to sail at night. This boat is wooden, and would fall apart if it collided with anything. We’ll sleep here and head back to Xijiang in the morning.’ Although the smells around her are familiar, the cabin feels strangely different. She can’t sleep. Kongzi’s snoring is embarrassing her. ‘You don’t snore, do you?’ she asks Weiwei. She wedges a jumper under her pillow to raise her head a little, then flaps her damp sheet in the air so that it falls flat over her body.

‘No, I don’t snore,’ Weiwei whispers. ‘But I’m finding it hard to fall asleep. I’ve never spent the night on a boat before.’

‘I couldn’t get used to it either, when we first moved onto the boat,’ Meili says, her nose touching the back of Kongzi’s head. ‘But now, unless I’m rocking from side to side, it takes me hours to drop off. Are you hot? Our electric fan’s broken, I’m afraid. Here, use this bamboo one. I suppose you town dwellers all have air conditioning on at night.’

‘No – not many people can afford to have it installed. And even if they can, they’re afraid to use it because the electricity costs so much.’

‘Which university did your wife go to?’ Feeling her hot skin begin to stick to Kongzi’s, she edges back a little, then pulls her squashed right breast out from under her side.

‘We went to the same university, but were assigned jobs in different towns. She’s the sub-director of a circuit board factory in Dunhuang. Her salary’s much higher than mine.’

‘You may live apart, but at least you’re still married.’

Kongzi has sunk into a deep sleep and is snoring his head off.

‘Doesn’t feel like we’re married. When I phoned her to tell her my mother had killed herself, she didn’t offer to come down and see me. She doesn’t care about me any more.’

‘Marriage is for life. Perhaps you should show her more affection, try to win her round. Persuade her to move back in with you.’ Meili is embarrassed by the smell of alcohol on Kongzi’s breath. She knows that town people brush their teeth twice a day.

‘No, she wouldn’t give up her job for me. She didn’t want to go to Dunhuang at first, but we needed the money to support our family. Now she’s so used to it there she doesn’t want to come back.’

‘You don’t know how important something is until you lose it. You mustn’t let her slip away. Even if a woman flies off for a while, she’ll always want a nest to return to.’ Meili remembers the woman with the crimson lipstick she met on the boat to Sanxia, and suspects that her husband in the countryside had no idea she worked as a hair-salon prostitute.

Suddenly Meili wishes she could put her arms around Weiwei. Her body feels as hot as beans frying in a scorching wok. She picks up a jacket lying beside her and drapes it over Kongzi’s chest, letting her hand brush against Weiwei’s. Immediately, he grasps hold of it, and she feels the heat inside her explode. His hand then slides over her body, moving slowly, then fast, then slowly again. She curls up and lets him caress her to sleep, as she rocks dreamily back and forth inside the dark cabin . . .

At dawn, Weiwei leaves his address, telephone number and two packs of cigarettes on the bamboo stool beside her, and stands at the stern, his face looking slightly calmer than yesterday.

Meili goes out to join him. ‘You should give up your search and go home now,’ she says. ‘Your mother will be more at peace in the river than she would be buried in the earth.’

‘No, I must keep searching until I find her, for my own peace of mind,’ he replies, then without saying goodbye, he steps onto the jetty, climbs up the bank and walks away.

Meili grabs a bag of preserved mustard greens from the galley area, runs up the bank after him and tosses it into his hands. ‘Soak them in water overnight, then simmer them with beef and tomatoes – the longer the better.’

‘I’m a terrible cook,’ Weiwei says.

‘But you must eat them. I preserved them myself.’

He turns and continues along the path. As she watches his departing figure, her stomach churns as though a mudfish were writhing inside it. Without stopping to think, she chases after him, grabs the tortoiseshell glasses from his face to keep as a memento and runs back to the boat with them.





KEYWORDS: metallic, marshy beach, handicapped, groping hand, rotten shrimp paste, cross-infection.

‘THERE’S GOING TO be an almighty downpour any minute!’ Kongzi says, pointing to the leaden sky above Dexian. Seconds later, the dark clouds crack open and unleash torrential rain. ‘The deck’s too slippery,’ Meili cries out to Kongzi. ‘Quick, come into the cabin.’ The rain crashes against the bow then streams into the river. Inside the bamboo cage, the ducks shake their wings and hoot.

‘Look, the rain’s so polluted, it’s almost metallic,’ Kongzi says. ‘The boat will get corroded if we stay any longer. Let’s lift anchor and get going to Guai Village. Pass me my straw hat and raincoat.’

‘But you won’t be able to see a thing through this rain,’ Meili says. ‘What if we crash into something?’ Kongzi transported a cargo of quicklime this morning, and when the rain makes contact with the powder that’s fallen into the cracks of the deck, white fumes reeking of rotten eggs rise into the air. Nannan vomited last night and has eaten nothing all day apart from a dry biscuit and a cauliflower floret. She’s lying on her back in the cabin, gazing out at the pelting downpour through a gap in the door curtain.

Kongzi wipes the lenses of the metal-rimmed glasses he bought last week, then shoves away from the bank. For hours they sail through heavy rain along a bewildering maze of waterways. Occasionally, Meili calls out: ‘Be careful, the water smells muddy here – we’re probably too close to the bank. Steer to the right a little.’ When they pass beneath a bridge and she hears the engine’s rumble echo against the concrete arch, she feels anxious and locked in.

After taking Weiwei to Yinluo, they returned to the sand island to find the river police knocking down their shelter. They grabbed a handful of ducks from the pen, collected Nannan from Xixi, then sailed downstream, picking up and delivering cargos as they went, until they reached the dirty industrial town of Dexian in Western Guangdong Province, where they anchored for the last week. Although Kongzi was able to pick up delivery jobs there, it was not a pleasant place to stay. At night the paper factories would spew into the river foul waste water that smelled of rotten shrimp paste and caused the three of them to cough and gag in their sleep.

On their second day in Dexian, Meili bought a pregnancy test in a dockside pharmacy. After she dipped the test stick into her urine and saw the plus sign appear, she wondered why her IUD hadn’t worked. Forgetting that her period was already three weeks late when she met Weiwei, she presumed that his groping hand had dislodged the device, allowing Kongzi to impregnate her during the following days. Weiwei’s touch awakened feelings she had never known before. In the week after he left, she no longer pushed Kongzi away when he wanted sex, but instead pulled him close to her and told him to move harder and faster. She suspects that it was on one of those nights, between a moan of pleasure and a sharp intake of breath, that Kongzi’s sperm penetrated her egg, and the infant spirit once more descended into her womb.

When she told Kongzi she was pregnant, he said that they must find a safe place to live until the baby is born. He asked around and found out about a village called Guai, thirty kilometres downstream, where the family planning policies are not strictly enforced. But the village is set a kilometre back from the river, so for the last few days, he’s been wondering how he’ll be able to make a living there.

‘Look, that must be Guai Village!’ Kongzi says, seeing beyond the dust-covered trees on the left a distant huddle of houses spiked with satellite discs.

‘It’s larger than I expected,’ Meili says. ‘Are you sure we’d be safe living there? If this baby’s ripped out of me, I won’t have another. The village looks depressing. I’d prefer to stay by the water and have the baby on the boat. You did say we’ll call this one Waterborn, after all.’ She glances at the litter-strewn bank and a dusty stack of cabbages on the field above, and feels a wave of revulsion.

‘All right, we’ll stay on the boat, but we must find a safe place to settle. Happiness died because we chose the wrong place. We can’t make that mistake again.’

From under a blanket, Nannan says sleepily, ‘I’m hungry, Daddy. I want some nice food. No more dirty fish.’ Last night, Kongzi cooked a fish he’d caught in the polluted river, and he can still taste its foul odour in his mouth. It was Meili’s birthday. She spent the whole day sulking in the cabin. Kongzi went into Dexian and bought her plates, pans, an electric heater and a pocket mirror, to replace the ones they had to leave on the sand island, but she didn’t show any gratitude. Kongzi complained about the Weiwei trip, moaning that not only did they receive no payment, they lost their home as well. Meili is angry that she allowed Weiwei to fondle her that night, and hates him for taking advantage of her.

An oily film of pollution hovers on the river’s surface. Along the bank, the willow’s branches bend under the weight of litter while their tips struggle upwards towards the sun. Kongzi drives the boat under another bridge, steers left down a narrow creek and stops below a flight of steps leading to what he thinks must be a path to Guai Village. Dogs, ducks and chickens watch them from the bank. ‘I heard the village sells handicapped children to criminal gangs,’ Meili says. ‘Apparently most of the crippled kids you see begging in train stations around the country come from round here.’

‘That’s just hearsay,’ Kongzi replies. ‘See those children up there? They look fine to me . . . So we’ve made it at last! What a journey it’s been. It reminds me of that poem: “Mountain after mountain, river after river, it seems there is no way out. / But beyond a shady willow and a tree in bright blossom, another village finally appears.” I’ll go up and have a look around.’ He fetches the gangplank and slides it onto the lowest concrete step.

‘Dad, I wait here for you,’ Nannan says, peeking round the door curtain at the unfamiliar surroundings outside.

Rising onto her toes, Meili sees, on the large field above, patches of unharvested crops, two tarpaulin shelters, a duck pen, a coiled black hose lying beside an empty ditch and a storehouse with bricked-up doors and windows. Painted in white on the red walls is a notice that says TO AVOID COMMON GYNAECOLOGICAL COMPLAINTS AND VENEREAL DISEASES, IT IS IMPORTANT TO MAINTAIN GENITAL HYGIENE, WASH PUBIC AREA FREQUENTLY AND CHANGE UNDERWEAR DAILY. TO PREVENT CROSS-INFECTION, REFRAIN FROM SITTING ON TOILET SEATS . . . The reflection of the red walls and the blue sky above them waver on the creek’s oily surface. Scraps of white plastic float by like a raft of ducks.

Kongzi soon returns with a fisherman who leads him onto the bridge and says, ‘See that marshy beach further down the creek? No one’s renting it now. It has a pond where you can keep your ducks.’ On a road far behind them, a red car drives slowly past.

Meili sits at the bow and begins to remove dead leaves from a bunch of spinach.

‘If I wash the spinach in that water, the spinach get clean but I get very dirty,’ Nannan says, pointing to the muddy creek.

‘Oh, stop talking nonsense,’ Meili says irritably.

Kongzi jumps aboard and drives the boat towards the place the fisherman indicated. The banks here are so darkened by dust and pollution that, compared to them, the fumes billowing from the far-away factories look clean. Sickened by the scenery, Meili stares down at her shoes and reflects on her predicament. To protect what might be Kongzi’s precious male heir, she’ll have to spend another eight months lying low. When she discovered she was pregnant, she suggested they go straight to Heaven Township, where she knew they’d be safe. But Kongzi said the journey would be too long and arduous, and insisted they find a hiding place closer by. Meili’s only hope now is that she’ll suffer a miscarriage before the government has a chance to tear the baby out. Inside her wet shoes and socks, her feet feel cold and pinched.

The boat draws up onto the marshy beach of mud, coarse grass and dirty pools. Above it are a large swampy pond enclosed by a bamboo fence, and a small bamboo hut. Kongzi jumps ashore. ‘This is a perfect place for us to hide until Waterborn is born!’ he says excitedly. ‘We’ll be safe. We could rear a hundred ducks inside that enclosure, easily. And the creek seems to have life in it. The fisherman back there said the rent is only five hundred yuan a year. Look, it’s surrounded on three sides by hills. Ideal feng shui for a home!’

Meili looks up at the dry gravelly hills. Villagers have carved terraces into the slopes. Some are cultivated with corn, but the rest have gone to seed. There are a few banana and papaya trees around the enclosure and some lychee trees behind the hut.

‘This isn’t a creek,’ Meili says. ‘It’s a waste gutter! “Untamed rivers, barren hills . . .”’ She’s been short-tempered ever since she took the pregnancy test. She’s terrified by the thought that the IUD might still be inside her and that the fetus is now growing around it. As soon as she told Kongzi that she was pregnant, she immediately regretted it. In bouts of anger since then, she has been tempted to take Weiwei’s tortoiseshell glasses out from under her pillow and fling them into the river. She knows that when his hand moved over her body that night, it was really his mother that he was searching for, and she wishes she could forget him. But part of her longs to talk to him again about matters that still confuse her. Kongzi never has the patience to listen to all the things she wants to say.

‘Dad, a snake in the water – look!’ Nannan says, pointing to a submerged stick. ‘It’s dead. No, it’s moving!’

So the three of them set up camp on the marshy beach below Guai Village, and wait anxiously for the birth of the seventy-seventh generation male descendant of Confucius.





KEYWORDS: flood diversion area, bamboo hut, blood donating, tightly stuffed, yellow foam, severe deformities.

THE PUBLIC ROAD that winds out of Guai Village leads to Dexian, but only two or three cars drive along it each day. The creek connects the Xi River to factories along the Huai River, but it’s too shallow for large boats to navigate. In the afternoon, the sunlight lingers on the marshy beach for a while, then disappears behind a distant mountain that is surrounded by fields of yellow rape. Guai Village is in a flood diversion area. At times of emergency, the sluice gates upstream are raised, and the entire village becomes inundated. When the pollution from the factories is severe, yellow foamy waters flow into the creek, carrying dead chickens and dogs.

Guai villagers used to take water from the swampy pond to irrigate the paddy fields behind. But ten years ago, a villager sold his club-footed son to a criminal gang who made the boy beg on the streets of Anhui Province. In one year, the boy was able to send his parents ten thousand yuan. Envious of their good fortune, other parents in the village have sought to get rich through similar means. They mutilate their babies at birth, twisting or snapping their limbs, knowing that the severer the handicap the more money they will earn, then they sell or rent their maimed children to illegal gangs who bundle them off to beg in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Within months the parents are able to buy colour televisions, refrigerators, imported cigarettes, electronic alarm clocks and mobile phones. The village’s economy is booming from the deformed infant trade, and the mud houses have been replaced with three-storey villas. Eager to claim their share of the wealth, the local government has hiked taxes, and to promote the production of the village’s valuable commodity, has turned a blind eye to family planning violations. But just to be safe, Kongzi has bribed the village family planning team five hundred yuan to allow Meili to carry her pregnancy to term. The team’s chairman told him that if the baby is a girl and they decide not to keep her, the Welfare Office would take the baby off their hands and pay the 4,000-yuan fine for the illegal birth. It’s common knowledge that the Welfare Office sells children in their care to foreigners for a 30,000-yuan profit.

Kongzi, Meili and Nannan have moved into the bamboo hut. A Fujian family who lived here before reared turtles in the pond, and made enough money to pay a human trafficking gang to smuggle them into England. Most of the mud plaster has now dropped from the hut’s bamboo walls. At dawn, sunlight breaks through the cracks and falls in splinters on the floor. As Meili gets dressed, she remembers the blue tracksuit with two white stripes running along the sides which she wore to primary school. Her uncle who lives in the county town bought it for her. She was the only girl in the village to own one, and it always made her stand out from the crowd.

The rooster in the bamboo cage pops its head out, yodels loudly at the dawn, then draws it back again. Nannan is on the marshy beach, tossing twigs and old batteries into the creek. As the water splashes up, flies resting on a floating banana peel dart into the air.

‘We’ll never make much money rearing ducks,’ Kongzi sighs, watching Meili drop shredded cabbage leaves into the bucket of slops.

‘We’ve sold the first batch and thirty-three from the second,’ Meili says. ‘That’s not bad. But now that winter’s set in and the nights are getting colder, the breeding seems to have slowed down.’

‘I spoke to your brother when I phoned your parents yesterday,’ Kongzi says. ‘He can’t lend us any money. If we don’t raise four thousand yuan to pay the birth fine by the time the baby arrives, I dread to think what will happen.’

‘Feed these slops to the ducks, Nannan!’ Meili calls out. Her belly is so large now that she can’t see her feet. When the flea bites dotted over her toes itch, she has to rub them against a tree.

‘No, that bucket’s too heavy,’ Nannan says, biting her nails.

Kongzi picks up the bucket, takes it into the duck enclosure and pours the slops into two bowls. The ducks ruffle their wings and jostle their way to the feed, quacking and grunting. Downy white feathers flutter into the morning sunlight.

‘I’ll look after the ducks today,’ Meili says. ‘You have a cargo to deliver this afternoon. Don’t worry, I’m sure if we work hard, we’ll be able to make four thousand in the next two months. And if we don’t, we’ll just have to run away to Heaven Township.’ Meili is wearing Kongzi’s blue cotton trousers and a white shirt she’s left unbuttoned over her bump.

‘You think you can run, with a belly that size? No, we’ll stay here until the baby is born. A cousin of mine travelled the country giving blood for two years. He’s just returned to the village, apparently, and built himself a four-bedroom brick house.’

‘Giving blood too often can be dangerous,’ Meili says, sitting on a pile of old fishing nets. The willows along the creek sweep their branches across the water as though trying to catch her long shadow.

‘It’s no more dangerous than having a piss. Once the bladder becomes empty, there’s always more urine to fill it up.’

‘So you’re going to sell your blood, now? You think you have any left after these mosquitoes and fleas have sucked on you all night?’ Meili is terrified of needles, and the thought of giving blood revolts her.

‘Blood donating is a great career! It doesn’t need any investment – the natural resource is inside one’s own body. Why didn’t I think about it before?’ He pulls off his shirt, turns it inside out, picks off a flea from the sleeve and squeezes it. A drop of blood stains his nails red.

‘How can you dream of getting rich, when you know we’ll soon have another baby to look after?’ Meili takes long, deep breaths. Her belly feels as full and hard as a tightly stuffed pillow.

‘I want to swim, Daddy,’ Nannan says. She picks up a piece of polystyrene lying next to the kennel and flings it into the water. Her feet are bare and the bottom of her long-sleeved dress is wet and muddy.

‘No, the water’s too cold,’ Meili says. ‘Go and scrape the rest of the potatoes, then I can start making breakfast for you.’

‘The brick has gone,’ Nannan says, stroking a long beetle she’s picked up.

‘There’s another brick poking out of the mud behind you. You can use that, or you can scrape them against the tree instead. If you don’t help, your father will make you recite the Three Character Classic.’

‘Nannan, didn’t you hear what your mother said?’ Kongzi shouts, seeing Nannan walk into the creek. Since they set up camp here in October, they’ve felt cold and damp every day. At night, after supper, they either retreat to the boat and huddle around the electric heater, or light the fire pit in the hut and snuggle under blankets with hot-water bottles.

‘Get out of the water, Nannan!’ Meili yells. ‘The yellow foam will give you a rash.’ Afraid that the pollution might harm the baby, Meili hasn’t dared bathe in the creek yet.

‘Why the ducks got no rash, then?’ Nannan asks, stepping back onto the beach.

‘They have feathers to protect them,’ Kongzi replies. He stoops down and pulls out an old cloth shoe from the mud. Behind him is a mound of metal rods, wooden sticks, bamboo poles and greasy ropes covered with flies. A procession of small beetles are crawling towards his feet, searching for food.

‘You told me Happiness likes the water,’ Nannan says, her fringe dangling over her eyes. She has a plaster on her nose because when Kongzi had to stick one over a cut on his nose yesterday, she insisted on having one as well.

‘Happiness is dead – he doesn’t care if the water’s cold,’ Kongzi says.

‘You miss him, Daddy?’

‘No!’ Kongzi replies, his eyes flashing with anger.

‘So when I die, you won’t miss me either?’

‘If you mention Happiness again, I’ll kill you!’ Kongzi shouts, his face crumpling with fury, veins bulging from his skinny neck.

Nannan purses her lips, goes to Meili and says, ‘When I die, I won’t ever wake up again.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Meili replies. ‘When people die, they can’t hear or see anything any more. It’s peaceful.’

‘Happiness is dead, so is Waterborn going to die, too?’ Nannan says, raising her flea-bitten face to Meili.

‘Go and scrape the potatoes and we’ll talk about this later.’ Meili feels anxious. She’s afraid the authorities will drag her off to have an abortion. She’s afraid the IUD is imbedded in the fetus, and has caused severe deformities. She’s also afraid that when Kongzi sees the IUD poking out of the baby’s body, he will fly into a violent rage.

Waterborn has settled into a routine. As soon as the rooster cries at dawn, it stretches its legs and wiggles its toes. At noon, it stays still for two hours, then, after supper, it turns somersaults, kicking into her ribs, its tiny elbows and toes poking through her skin. During this pregnancy, Meili’s hair and nails have been growing much faster than usual. As she can no longer reach her feet, Kongzi has to clip her toenails for her.

‘You remember Kong Qing?’ Kongzi says as he watches Meili plait her hair, the sunlight falling on her bulge. She’s sitting next to the smoking fire pit inside the hut. Soon she will add more twigs to the fire and start cooking a potato gruel flavoured with pickles and preserved egg.

‘No, remind me,’ she says. Although she lived in Kong Village for three years, she was more familiar with the actors she saw on television than the confusing array of neighbours who shared the surname Kong.

‘He’s my second cousin, the ex-artillery soldier. You know, the man who came to our house that night, carrying his aborted son in a plastic basin.’

‘Oh yes, Shasha’s husband. So what’s happened to him?’ Meili joins Kongzi outside and sits on a rickety cane chair propped against a wooden box. A swarm of rice skippers fly past, leaving a scent of paddy fields.

‘Well, after we left the village, their house was demolished and Kong Qing was sent to prison. Shasha travelled to the county headquarters with her daughters every week to complain to the authorities, but was eventually declared mentally ill. Once you’ve got that label stuck on you, you might as well be dead. You lose your residence permit, work permit and every other document that proves you exist. No official will listen to your complaints. Kong Qing was released from prison last month, but Shasha has now been locked up in a mental asylum and no one’s allowed to visit her. Poor Kong Qing’s in despair. His parents are having to look after the daughters now. He told me he wants to come and visit us next week.’

‘But how does he know where we are?’

‘I phoned Kong Zhaobo, and Kong Qing picked up the phone. He said I should come out of hiding and take command of his battle.’

‘What battle?’ Meili asks, then seeing Nannan rub a potato very slowly against a tree says, ‘That’s enough, Nannan. I’ll do the rest.’ Nannan brings the potatoes over and Meili begins to scrape them swiftly with a shard of glass she picks up from the ground.

‘No idea what he’s planning. But it turns out we’re not far from Kong Village. The road to Dexian continues all the way to Hubei Province. He could reach us by long-distance bus in one day.’

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to come. It seems like most of the Kongs in the village have been arrested or jailed at some point. It would be safer if you kept your distance.’ Meili stares out at the ducks on the pond, and at the public road far behind that winds towards the distant hills like a long umbilical cord.