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.
KEYWORDS:
uprising, nits, untamed rivers, financial loss, humble disciple, suicide bombers.
MEILI WAKES ABRUPTLY
in the middle of the night, having rolled onto a cold bicycle pump. She hears the ducks padding about and squawking, as though someone were shooing them out of the enclosure. As she crawls out onto the deck, she sees a long shadow flit across the path and disappear. She leans back into the cabin and shakes Kongzi awake. ‘Quick! Get up! Someone’s stolen our ducks!’
Kongzi grabs his torch, shines it over the enclosure and sees that the wooden hutch has been smashed open and all the ducks are gone.
‘I can hear him shooing them on! Quick! That way!’ Meili hurries to the bow and points into the darkness.
Kongzi jumps ashore, grabs a sack and a wooden stick and sets off up the hill, following the man’s voice. Ten minutes later he returns dragging a large sack of ducks. He takes out the birds and counts them one by one. ‘We’re eight short,’ he says. ‘When the thief saw me, he grabbed two ducks by the neck and bolted off into the hills.’ They search the bushes, find another six ducks, then return the birds to the hutch, bolt the enclosure gate and go to check the bamboo hut. The two crates of ducklings and bags of birdfeed are still there, but the radio is gone. Kongzi runs outside and curses the village: ‘Evil bastards! The ancients were right: “Barren hills and untamed rivers spawn wicked men!”’