Part 10 (2/2)

'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 sc.r.a.pe 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 sc.r.a.pe them against the tree instead. If you don't help, your father will make you recite the Three Character Cla.s.sic.'

'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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 doc.u.ment 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 sc.r.a.pe them swiftly with a shard of gla.s.s 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, s.h.i.+nes 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 ash.o.r.e, 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! The ancients were right: ”Barren hills and untamed rivers sp.a.w.n wicked men!”'

'Be quiet,' Meili says. 'The villagers have let us ”dwell beneath their hedge”. Don't antagonise them . . . Oh G.o.d! It looks like he stole the cash we buried. What if he comes back to murder us? Who would bury our bodies?'

'He can't have found it. I'll dig a little deeper.' Since they set up home here, Kongzi has been stas.h.i.+ng their cash in a hole he dug beside the hut. 'Don't be silly. No one will kill us. During his thirteen years in exile, Confucius toured the nine provinces and never once came to harm . . . You're right, the cash has definitely gone.' Kongzi rubs the mud from his hands, tramps back to the boat, sits down at the bow and lights a cigarette. 'We must view this setback as a blessing,' he says, watching Meili climb back onto the boat. 'As the ancients said, ”Today's financial loss prevents tomorrow's disaster.” Our cash has been stolen so that Waterborn can be granted a safe birth.'

'Touring the country, you say? Hah! We're not tourists, we're fugitives, you idiot. I'm fed up of this vagabond life, Kongzi. You think of yourself as some great philosopher, roaming the country, contemplating the troubles of the world, with me tagging along as your humble disciple. Well, I've had enough, I'm telling you! What if that man was from the family planning team? What if he sends his colleagues down to arrest us?'

'No, he was just a simple village thief. I've told you the family planning officers here don't care about illegal births. They're happy for the villagers to have as many children as they want, so long as they pay the fines. The more maimed children are sold, the richer everyone gets. No one wants to kill the golden goose. So stop worrying.'

'If we can't return to your village, let's go back to mine. I want to live in a house with a tiled roof. Nannan should be going to school now. This rootless life isn't good for us. Let's sell the boat and go home.' Meili squashes two mosquitoes on her arm then wipes the blood on the cabin's canopy.

'Officers have told your parents to report us to the police if we turn up,' Kongzi says. 'So we've nowhere to return to now.'

'But I'm tired of traipsing behind you,' Meili says, folding an empty plastic bag and placing it under the bamboo mat to use later.

'You're tired of me? But I'm a model husband. I don't play mahjong. The moment I wake up, I make breakfast for us. Didn't you say you wanted to live in Heaven Towns.h.i.+p? Once the baby's born, we'll sell this batch of ducks and sail south.'

'I still have another month to go. I heard that in Guangxi Province, family planning teams with metal helmets and s.h.i.+elds have been storming into villages to carry out forced abortions. A village priest who tried to take away the aborted fetuses and give them a proper burial was beaten up and put in jail.'

'This is Guangdong Province it's much more relaxed than Guangxi.' Kongzi turns off the torch and lights another cigarette. 'Do you remember, in Kong Village, how we'd hear frogs croak until dawn, just like that poem by Han Yu? But at night this filthy creek is as silent as death.'

'What about the buzzing of the mosquitoes?'

'Huh! Where's the poetry in that? Just now, you used the phrase ”dwell beneath their hedge”. Do you know which poem that comes from?'

'Stop testing me. Let's go back to sleep. You must go into the village in the morning and track the thief down. He'll probably be roasting the ducks by then, so the smell should lead you to his house.' Meili lies back down on the bamboo mat, turns onto her side and feels the taut skin of her large belly relax. 'Oh G.o.d, Kongzi! I just realised we left our tricycle cart on the sand island! How could we have forgotten it?'

'Didn't I tell you? Someone stole it while we took Weiwei up to Yinluo. All I found when we got back was a single wheel chained to the tree . . .'

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