‘Why called wawa fish, Mummy?’
‘Because when it mates, it cries “wa-wa”, just like a baby.’
‘Why it called fish? It no look like fish.’
‘It just is. Don’t touch it. It’s very expensive.’ Meili remembers reading that women are given wawa soup during their one-month postpartum confinement to restore their energy and encourage lactation. ‘All right, I’ll buy it,’ she says. But as she digs into her bag for her purse she looks up and sees the words
RATHER RIVERS OF BLOOD THAN ONE MORE UNAUTHORISED CHILD
sprayed in red paint onto a wall that is splattered with chicken shit and blood. Struck with panic, she abandons the purchase, grabs Nannan’s hand and runs away down a side lane, turns left into another and stops outside a row of half-demolished buildings. ‘Why your face red, Mummy?’ asks Nannan.
‘I’m hot, that’s all.’ Meili pulls off Nannan’s yellow hat and fans her face with it. Her new kitten-heeled shoes are covered in dust.
The deserted lane is littered with broken bricks and refuse. An old man passes through the ruins behind, dragging a bundle of flattened cardboard boxes. Nannan climbs a heap of rubbish and picks up a plastic duck.
‘Drop it, it’s filthy!’ Meili shouts. She thinks of their house in Kong Village. Before Spring Festival this year, she and Kongzi painted the front door and window frames dark red and began re-cementing the yard. She’d wanted to plant an osmanthus tree beside the date tree so that when she opened the windows next spring the house would be filled with its fragrance.
‘Me wash it,’ says Nannan, smiling at the dirty plastic duck. On the broken window frames and doors behind her is an empty can of almond juice and some smouldering charcoal briquettes.
They walk down another lane, climbing over toppled telegraph poles. The segments of wall on either side are still pasted with flyers advertising the services of lock-breakers and door-menders. On a broken bulletin board next to an abandoned shop is a list of women of childbearing age drawn up by the local residents’ committee. Around the next corner they find themselves in a large demolition site from which there appears to be no way out.
‘Mum, that dog poo is dead,’ Nannan says, pointing to two dry turds.
Meili takes Nannan’s hand and enters a roofless building which was once a restaurant. On one of the greasy walls are a photograph of a roast duck on a white platter and a laminated menu featuring Sliced Beef in Hot Chilli Oil and Fish Poached in Pickle Broth.
Meili has lost all sense of direction. She climbs over the rubble and heads downhill, searching for a path. As long as she makes her way down to the river, she’ll be able to find her way back to the barge hotel.
‘Me can’t walk, Mum,’ says Nannan, her floppy sun hat slipping off her hot head.
Meili squeezes her hand and leads her across the shattered tiles and bricks. In the distance she sees a red car speeding past. Assuming it’s driving along a proper road, she walks in that direction, and soon comes to an ancient brick house that’s in the process of being torn down.
A large crowd has gathered to watch. A bulldozer is ramming into the remains of the ground floor. Workers with hammers are pounding the compound walls. The owner of the house bellows a curse, picks up a wooden bed leg and charges at a man dressed in the uniform of a judicial cadre. But before he can strike, three policemen jump on him and throw him to the ground. The cadre shouts, ‘If you continue to put up a fight, you’ll be charged not only with endangering state security but with political crimes as well, and will get three years in jail.’
‘I’m just a simple boat puller,’ the man shouts back, his face contorted with rage. ‘I can’t read or write. What would I know about politics?’
‘We have all the evidence we need. We found the business card of a Hong Kong journalist in your drawer, so we can have you for “resisting the Three Gorges Dam Resettlement Programme” and “divulging state secrets to foreigners”.’
‘What state secrets do you imagine I know? I warn you, if you upset it enough, even a timid rabbit will bite! I’ll take this to the higher authorities. Just wait and see!’ He’s kicking his legs wildly now, as the policemen press his face onto the floorboards and twist his arms behind his back.
An old man in a straw hat, presumably the owner’s father, scrapes some loose plaster from a wall into a paper bag then holds it close to his chest.
An elderly woman beside him wraps her arms tightly around a wooden chair and sobs: ‘The Japanese bombers didn’t manage to flatten our house in 1941. Who would have thought that you Communists would end up destroying it!’
Two demolition workers pick up the old woman and carry her to the pigsty, her arms still clutching the chair. Meili wonders whether this is the demolition team Kongzi belongs to. The team manager has a limp. He hobbles over to the owner and shouts angrily: ‘I warn you, if you petition the higher authorities we’ll bury you alive. We offered you land to build a new house on, a weekly allowance, but you turned it all down. You dare resist the edicts from the Party Central Committee?’
‘The land you offered was in the mountains, a hundred kilometres away,’ the owner says. ‘What would I do there? I’ve spent my life working on that river.’ He looks down over the compound wall. Although the view of the sky and river is intersected by tall emerald peaks, one can still sense the sweeping expanse beyond – the warmth of the sunlight on the boats and barges, the coolness at the base of the gorge, the giddiness one feels when disembarking onto the riverbanks.
‘Shut up and go, and take your parents with you,’ the team leader yells to the man. ‘There’s no need to worry about your future. The authorities are going to pay boat pullers like you to tug rafts up a tributary as a spectacle for foreign tourists.’ He then knocks off an elm door lintel carved with two dragons leaping through turbulent waves. After a brief glance at the intricate design, he stamps on it, breaking it in two. The two children squatting on a sofa cushion behind him look younger than Nannan.
Spluttering clouds of diesel fumes, the bulldozer knocks over the last section of wall, then trundles back and forth across the rubble, until all that remains of the house is a flat expanse of crushed wood, glass and brick. The old woman is cowering behind the toilet hut now, a finger in each ear. The heady fragrance of the lilac tree beside her scatters onto the ground.
Meili feels the fetus give a sharp kick and tug its umbilical cord. Afraid that someone might notice the juddering of her belly, she turns away and runs, forgetting for a moment Nannan, who was crouched at her feet playing idly with the dirty plastic duck.
KEYWORDS:
glossy magazine, peach blossom, azure, barge hotel, deep-fried meatballs, black children.
AFTER DUSK HAS
fallen the crowds and buildings disappear and the riverside becomes tranquil. Scraps of polystyrene criss-cross the dark green river like flecks on an antique mirror, making one forget the watery world that extends a hundred metres below the surface. A song drifts from a cassette player on a nearby boat: ‘
I give you my love, but you always refuse it. Did my words sadden you that much? . . .
’
At this moment, Meili feels happy, as though every part of her body were connected, from her toenails to the hairs on her scalp. A sense of contentment, long dormant, stirs within her. She knows that to remain happy, love is not enough: one must make a living, strive to accomplish something, find a sense of purpose. When she realised that Kongzi’s only aim in life was to impregnate her again and again until she produced a son, she feared that her road to happiness would be blocked for ever. But now she is confident that as long as she pursues goals of her own, however unachievable they may be, a happy life will be possible.
Only a few lights are still twinkling in the old town. Soon the mountains will merge into the dark sky, and everything will become quiet. Meili remembers opening a glossy magazine and seeing a fashion spread featuring a woman walking barefoot on a beach, her white dress fluttering in the wind. Not daring to let her gaze fall too long on the exposed legs and cleavage, she leafed through the other pages, mesmerised by the vibrant scarves and jewellery. She’d never seen such vivid colours before. As a child, she’d always loved the soft hues of the countryside: the dark greens and light greens, the pale yellow of celery shoots, the tender pink of peach blossom, the milky white of osmanthus blooms and the rusty orange of the wild chrysanthemums that grow at the margins of fields. But the colours in the magazine seemed to come from another world. She didn’t know where this world was, but sensed that its colours were infused with joy. She used to loathe blue. It was the colour she had to look up at every day when she worked on the fields. But the azure of the sea in the magazine transfixed her. If coffins were painted such a heavenly blue, she thought to herself, one could lie down inside one without fear. She was sitting in the garden of the Sky Beyond the Sky Hotel at the time, facing the setting sun. The magazine had been left behind by a guest from a distant city.
The cabin is filled with the smell of someone’s fish and red turnip soup, and the deep-fried meatballs Kongzi bought at a stall near the wharf. The meatballs will be delicious once they’re reheated: crisp on the outside, with a soft, piping-hot interior. She can almost taste them in her mouth now. Kongzi is kneeling by the kerosene stove, tossing chopped spring onions into the wok.
‘Have a glass of Addled Immortal with us, Mr Kong,’ calls out one of the four men who live in the cabin next door and work for the same demolition team as Kongzi. On the dirty wall behind them is a pin-up of a Chinese model with peroxide hair.
‘No, you carry on without me,’ Kongzi replies, dropping the meatballs into the sizzling spring onions. His greasy hair is thick with dust. The only clean thing on his body is the sweat running down his face.
As Meili gets up to fetch some bowls, she feels the blood rush to her head. The fetus kicks her low in the abdomen, making her lose balance. She has to remind herself that this isn’t their kitchen back at home. There is no table to lean on. They have left the village and are now living on a barge hotel.
‘Why not have a shower before we eat?’ she says to Kongzi. After he grabs a towel and wanders off, she sits down and hums along to the song playing on the distant cassette player. Closing her eyes, she imagines herself onstage belting out the ballad wearing an elegant silk gown. But soon two men on the deck below start arguing over a stolen leg of ham, a child cackles in the corridor and a soap opera’s theme tune booms from the television in the meeting room. Annoyed by the din, she wraps a rag around her hands and carries the stove onto the deck. The air is fresher outside, although smells of rust and mould from the cabins leak out now and then.
‘I know there’s no family planning squad here,’ Meili says to Kongzi when he returns from his shower, ‘but I still feel nervous, living on this boat like outcasts.’
‘You’ve no need to,’ Kongzi says, sitting down, bare-chested, beside the cardboard box they use as a table. ‘We’ve been in Sanxia almost four months, and haven’t been approached by one family planning cadre. Your hormones are making you overly anxious.’
‘Have you called home recently?’ she asks, slipping her shoes off and rubbing her bare feet on the metal deck.
‘Not since last month. Father said the whole of Nuwa County is under martial law. Riot police have been stationed in every village. He told me not to phone them again until the baby’s born. I don’t know why he’s so nervous. The county authorities would never turn on a war hero like him. The school’s summer term has started. Kong Dufa has taken over my post.’
‘That po-faced bore – what does he know about teaching?’ Meili says testily, whisking a mosquito from her face. ‘If only we’d waited five years before having a second child. Look at all the sacrifices we’ve had to make to bring little Happiness into the world. When is this going to end?’ She sits on a stool, bending her legs behind her so that her knees don’t press into her large belly.
‘Don’t worry – we’ll go home as soon as martial law is lifted,’ Kongzi says, trying to sound confident.
‘The baby is due in three months, but this town is a demolition site – it doesn’t even have a hospital. I think I’m developing a fever. You must buy me some Yellow Ox pills tomorrow to bring it down.’ Meili feels stifled by the darkness surrounding her, and wishes something stimulating could break the atmosphere. She looks over to the boat near the wharf which has been converted into a video parlour. Three coloured light bulbs are flashing above its entrance. It screens martial arts films during the day and porn movies at night. Kongzi sneaked off to watch one a few nights ago without telling her. When he returned to the cabin afterwards he made love to her like an animal.
‘I’ll find a hospital for you when the time comes, I promise,’ he says to her. ‘I earn ten times more as a demolition worker than I did as a teacher. Once I’ve saved enough money, we’ll buy ourselves a boat. Many local fishermen are planning to leave town before the valley is flooded. I met one who’s moving to Guangzhou. He owns a fishing boat that’s worth ten thousand yuan, but he said he’ll sell it to me for just three thousand. Once we have a boat of our own, we’ll be free. We won’t need residence permits. If the police try to arrest us, we’ll start the engine and escape. And if we don’t manage to find a hospital in time, you can have the baby on our boat.’
‘Yes, at least a boat would give us somewhere to hide. How much money have we got now? Last night I dreamed that little Happiness left my belly and flew into the sky. It was terrifying.’
As night falls, the infant spirit can see Mother and Father sitting at the cardboard box eating dinner. Nannan has come out from the meeting room. She’s walking along the deck, or skipping – it’s hard to tell.
‘You keep talking about the fetus having a spirit,’ Father says. ‘That’s why you had the dream. We have one thousand yuan now. In two more months, we’ll have enough to buy the boat.’