The Dark Road Read online

  ‘Let those soak a little longer if you want to wash off the chemicals. I planted half a field of garlic shoots last year and had to spray pesticides on them twice a week to keep the insects away.’

  ‘No need – I’m going to boil them for ten minutes. The river water may look clean, but it’s riddled with threadworm.’

  Meili grimaces. They’ve been drinking boiled river water since they moved onto the boat. ‘But the water’s safe to drink, surely, if you boil it?’ she asks.

  ‘No, not at this time of year! You should fetch your drinking water from the barge hotel’s washroom. Go at lunchtime when no one’s about. Or give the man at the diesel station a couple of mao and he’ll let you fill your bucket at his tap. You can drink river water in the winter, but in the summer, it’s infested with germs and parasites.’

  ‘How come your stove doesn’t give off smoke?’ Meili asks, looking at the broad beans the woman has laid out to dry on the deck.

  ‘It’s a gas stove. Cost me a hundred yuan. Come and have a look at it, if you want.’

  Meili fetches her hooked bamboo pole.

  ‘Always turn off your stove before you disembark,’ the woman says, her eyes beady as a cormorant’s. ‘If it topples over, your boat will burn to a cinder.’

  Meili extends her pole, drags the woman’s boat towards hers then ties them together with rope.

  ‘The current is strong,’ the woman says. ‘Your boat will break free with a knot like that.’ She loosens Meili’s knot and reties it. ‘This is a bowline knot. It won’t slip.’

  ‘I should learn how to do that,’ says Meili, gripping her canopy. She glances into the woman’s spacious cabin, and inhales the fragrant smell of rice wafting from the pot on the gas stove.

  After checking that Nannan is still asleep, Meili steps over onto the woman’s boat and squats on the cabin’s vinyl-covered floor. ‘What a great stove!’ she says, and looks at the clothes and hats hanging neatly on the wall next to a glossy calendar with a photograph of a woman in a long silver dress.

  ‘You should buy one. One canister will last you a whole week. And another tip: when a large vessel approaches head on, slow down and turn towards the bank so the waves hit you at right angles, or your boat will capsize. Ha! I could tell from the way you were gripping your canopy just now that you haven’t been on the river long. Is that your daughter sleeping in the cabin? Make sure she stays inside when the boat is moving, or she might fall overboard.’

  ‘You’re right. We only bought the boat a week ago. I haven’t got used to the constant movement. I feel as though I’m rocking on a swing the whole time. You have a television and an electric fan, I see. What luxury.’

  ‘We’ve lived on this boat for ten years. I still get seasick, though. Summers are tolerable, but in winter, if you don’t have an electric heater it’s as cold as the grave. Before the frost sets in, tell your husband to buy a mini generator and a heater or you’ll freeze to death.’

  ‘What do you use for a toilet?’ asks Meili, watching an army of weevils scuttle across the scorching deck and fall into the river.

  ‘When we’re anchored here, I just do it on the bank.’ Then she crawls to the bow and lifts a square panel from the deck. ‘And when we’re sailing, I can do it straight into the river!’

  ‘You’re family planning fugitives too, aren’t you?’ Meili says, seeing the baby strapped to the woman’s back focus her triangular eyes on her. ‘What’s your name, little one?’ she asks, realising suddenly that other people’s children are of little interest to her.

  ‘She’s called Little Third. A third girl. What bad luck! This one in my belly will be my last. I’m fed up with this drifting life. I want to live in a brick house with a front door I can lock, a wardrobe to store my clothes in, a big fridge to keep all my food fresh and a comfortable armchair I can sit on.’

  ‘But this boat is so much better than ours. It has everything you could need.’

  ‘The river may be nice to look at, but I don’t want to spend my life on it. I have parents back home. Fallen leaves must return to their roots, as the saying goes. Besides, this vagrant life is not good for men. My husband seldom sleeps here at night.’

  ‘Yes, like crops in the fields we all need roots to survive.’ Meili feels her belly expand. She wants to lie on her side and breathe deeply. Little Third peeps over her mother’s shoulder again and smiles. She has two upper and two lower teeth. Meili pretends not to see her.

  ‘I’ve seen your husband on the boat in the evenings,’ the woman says, ‘sitting out on the deck smoking while you cook supper. How lucky you are!’ Then she turns to the bank and shouts to her two older daughters, ‘Come and have your lunch, girls.’ They’re standing on a field of cabbages near an abandoned barge that’s being used as a chicken hutch. A rooster digging at the muddy bank spots a cabbage leaf out of the corner of its eye and scuttles over to it.

  ‘But your husband has done so well, setting up his cargo business,’ Meili says. ‘Mine just works on a demolition site. He used to be a teacher, though. Men – if you don’t keep them on a tight rein, their eyes are bound to wander.’ She glances into her boat and sees Nannan is still asleep. Her sweat-soaked hair is stuck to her face, and below her rucked-up skirt insects are crawling over her chubby thighs.

  ‘He’s grown tired of me,’ the woman says, snapping the garlic shoots in half. ‘You know what they say: the song of the wild duck in the fields always sounds more melodious than the clucking of the hen at home.’ Her T-shirt has large damp patches over her breasts.

  Meili watches the woman move about the deck – sallow cheeks, lined forehead, hunched, twig-like frame – and imagines how a man would feel lying on top of her at night. She thinks how, in ten years, she will be thirty and by then she too may have three or four children. The thought terrifies her. Whatever happens, she won’t confine herself to the role of housewife like this woman. Once Happiness is born, she will find a job, train as a beautician and dress her children in the finest clothes. The woman’s elder daughters jump aboard and the boat tips to the side. Their faces are grimy and their bare feet covered in mud.

  ‘I’ll leave you to have lunch,’ Meili says, stepping back onto her boat and unfastening the rope. ‘It’s time for my daughter to wake up.’

  The noon sun scorches the tarpaulin canopy and the wooden deck at the bow and stern. Even the shade inside the cabin is swelteringly hot. Meili wants to sail downriver to pick up a breeze, but isn’t confident using the outboard motor yet. Kongzi has said he’d like to pick up some work hauling cargo, but doesn’t know who to approach. There are thirty or so families living in the houseboats moored here. Most of the men work in factories or on demolition sites; only a few have managed to make a living transporting goods. When the men return at dusk, they come laden with vegetables, deep-fried dough sticks and packets of instant noodles, and the wharf area becomes filled with the smell of chemical flavourings and the squealing and cursing of children.

  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 Sk
y 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—’