The Dark Road (3 page)

Suddenly, loud clanging thuds can be heard, the front gate swings open, and district policemen sweep inside followed by members of the family planning squad. The women in the house scurry into the kitchen and the men rush outside. Before Wang Wu gets a chance to launch into a tirade he’s bashed to the ground. Kongzi’s father steps onto a bamboo stool and shouts, ‘No fighting. No violence!’

Clutching the plastic basin containing his aborted son, Kong Qing yells, ‘Fascist slaughterers! I’ll have my revenge! A life for a life!’

Old Huan, director of the Hexi Family Planning Commission, steps out from behind the policemen. ‘I warn you, Li Peisong,’ he says, jabbing his finger aggressively. ‘If by tonight you haven’t paid the remaining nine thousand yuan for Little Fatty’s birth, we’ll confiscate your stove, pans and wok, and pull down your house!’

Kong Guo elbows his way to the front and butts in, ‘Go ahead! If you tear our houses down, we’ll just come and move in with you.’

The policemen head for Kongzi’s front door, shouting, ‘Yuanyuan was seen entering this compound. We must search the house.’

‘Step inside and I’ll kill you!’ Kongzi yells, waving a kitchen cleaver, unrecognisable when compared to the teacher in the grey nylon suit who walks to school every morning with his black briefcase. This is not his first experience of protest, however. In 1989, he travelled to Beijing to visit the man he still calls Teacher Zhou – a former urban youth who was sent to Kong Village in the Cultural Revolution and taught Kongzi in the village school. Together, he and Teacher Zhou marched through the streets of Beijing with the student protesters, waving banners and shouting slogans in support of democracy and freedom. The County Public Security Bureau has kept a detailed file of the subversive activities he engaged in during his month in the capital.

In the yard, which is only half laid with concrete, the crowd grows agitated. Villagers begin to push and shove, knocking into the date tree sapling that’s propped up with bamboo sticks. Children and barking dogs climb onto a mound of broken bricks in the corner to escape the crush.

District Party Secretary Qian, the most senior member of the squad, emerges from the crowd, accompanied by a hired thug, and shouts, ‘Kongzi, as a Party member, you have a duty to assist the squad with its efforts. If you don’t behave, we’ll fling you behind bars.’

‘Don’t you dare threaten my son, Mr Qian,’ Kongzi’s father says with quiet authority, dropping his cigarette stub and grinding it into the ground with his heel. ‘Get out of this yard.’

Kongzi goes to stand beside his father. ‘Yes, this is my home!’ he says. ‘A Kong family home, and in here, the Kongs make the decisions. I’ve committed no crime. So, get out, and take your rotten minions with you!’

‘You want to start a fight, then?’ says the shaven-headed officer who arrested Fang two days ago. ‘We’ll bury you alive.’ He throws the hired thug a glance, signalling for him to give Kongzi a beating.

But before he has a chance to strike, Kong Qing, who’s standing behind him, raises his basin in the air and, shouting ‘Fuck you!’ at the top of his voice, thrashes it down onto his head. Immediately the villagers grab bricks and shovels and attack the officers and policemen. The children perched on the compound walls hurl stones at Secretary Qian’s back. Inside the house, Kongzi’s mother crouches with the other women in the kitchen, holding Nannan tightly in her arms, while Meili cowers in the corner of the bed, pressing the folded quilt close to her belly, her eyes squeezed shut.

Kongzi runs back inside to help Yuanyuan into the dugout, then grabs a spade, charges out again and strikes Old Huan on the shoulder. Dusty and beaten, Wang Wu swings a hoe at a policeman’s chest shouting, ‘May your home lie in ruins too.’ The shaven-headed officer grasps his arm and twists it up behind his back but is then struck in the ribs with a shovel. In a sudden rush of courage, the spindly mother of Xiang pounces on a policeman and sinks her teeth into his shoulder. The burly Kong Guo grabs an officer in an armlock and wrestles him to the ground, shouting, ‘Fuck your mother, you crooked bastard.’ Finding themselves outnumbered and overpowered, the panicked intruders flee. Kong Zhaobo and Li Peisong see Old Huan sprawled in a corner moaning, so they pick him up and fling him out onto the lane as well.

‘Bolt the gate, Meili!’ Kongzi’s mother says, once everyone has left. Meili opens her eyes at last, takes her torch and ventures outside. The red-and-gold Spring Festival couplets which she hung on either side of the door have been ripped to shreds. The date tree sapling has been knocked right over and Kong Qing’s aborted son lies trampled on the ground. As a piercing gunshot explodes in the distance, she quickly bolts the gate, then wedges a spade against it and runs back into the house.

In the lanes outside, angry villagers pour out of their houses with hoes and spades and march to the school, Kongzi and his pupils leading the way holding rocks and sticks. When they reach the school’s compound walls, the policemen guarding the gates raise their batons and lash out at them.

‘Run, Teacher Kong!’ the children shout. The marchers scatter in panic. Little Fatty tries to keep up with his father Li Peisong, clutching the corner of his jacket, but is knocked over by the fleeing crowd, pulling his father down with him. Another procession of angry villagers emerges from a lane to the north, holding the old seamstress’s corpse in the air and shouting, ‘Every murder must be avenged!’ and ‘Give us back our property!’ Enraged by the sight of the corpse, Kongzi and his pupils turn round and attack the policemen at the gates. Young boys stuff a bundle of straw under a police car and toss lit matches onto it, while Clubfoot chases a police dog away with his walking stick. The women who’ve been locked in the school kitchen bash their way out into the playground, throw chairs at the family planning officers, then run off to grab bags of rice and fertilisers that were confiscated from their homes. The police sergeant fires another gunshot and the women drop the bags and retreat. Outside in the lane, the police car becomes shrouded in black smoke then, with a deafening bang, explodes into a ball of fire. The young boys light torches from the flames and toss them over the compound wall into the playground. ‘That man’s from the District Family Planning Commission!’ a voice shouts. ‘Chase him! Kill him! . . .’

The infant spirit sees once more that February night nine years ago when Kong Village became a battlefield. Mother has come out to look for Father. She’s wearing a white down jacket. The north wind is whipping up her hair. When a gunshot rings out, she drops to her knees and shrinks into a tight ball, shivering with fear and cold . . . A man in a sergeant’s uniform switches on a megaphone and shouts: ‘Villagers! If China’s excessive population growth isn’t curbed, the whole of society will suffer. Our nation won’t be able to achieve sustainable economic development and take its rightful place in the world. Deng Xiaoping has commanded us to take effective measures to ensure the birth rate is brought down. An enemy of the family planning policies is an enemy of the state. A class enemy. The masses must not allow themselves to be manipulated by a small band of troublemakers. The grain and furniture we’ve confiscated is now state property. Do not touch them . . .’ Blazing torches fly into the playground, lighting up piles of doors, aluminium window frames and wooden rafters expropriated from the demolished houses. Below a locust tree further away, flames begin to rise from a heap of confiscated wardrobes, bookcases, fridges, enamel basins and trussed pigs. A cluster of ducks and chickens scurry off to a dark corner, frightened by the noise, while the family planning officers dart about, trying frantically to put out the flames. Outside in the lane, an angry mob swing their hoes and spades at a white slogan painted on the compound wall which reads:
SEVER THE FALLOPIAN TUBES OF POVERTY; INSERT THE IUDS OF PROSPERITY
. A crack opens which grows larger and larger until the whole wall tumbles down. Fearing for their lives, the family planning officers run to a ladder and escape over the back compound wall.

Mother stands by the gates and watches villagers surge into the playground and search through the piles, pulling out their spades, basins or chairs. Holding a kitchen clock close to her chest, a frail, spindly woman wanders through the crowd shouting, ‘Xiang, Xiang, where are you?’ Two boys in army caps waving long sticks herd a flock of mongrel ducks over the rubble of the fallen wall and off into a dark lane. Unable to find Father, Mother hurries home. Still gripping her electric torch, she runs down the treeless lanes that are illuminated by the fires’ orange glow. In a corner buffeted by the north wind lies a swept-up heap of snow scattered with dog faeces and the red shells of firecrackers that were detonated at Spring Festival.

KEYWORDS:
birth permit, Dark Water River, family planning office, propaganda van, Sky Beyond the Sky, subversive slogans.

JUST AS DAWN
is beginning to break, Kongzi creeps back into the house, collapses on the bed and pulls off his grimy glasses. ‘The county authorities are sending a thousand riot police to the village and a truckload of Alsatian dogs. We must escape at once.’

‘Where to?’ Meili says. ‘Why don’t we just hide in the dugout?’

‘No, Kong Guo knows about it. He’s been arrested, and is bound to give us away.’

‘Why are you wearing that black armband?’ She has only just managed to doze off, and her eyes are heavy with sleep.

‘The police beat two villagers to death last night. We were so outraged, we hitched rides to Hexi and joined the protests outside the Party headquarters. There were thirty thousand peasants surrounding it. Can you imagine? They’d come from villages all over the county to protest against the crackdown. The police cordon was four-men thick, but we still managed to set light to the building. The Family Planning Commission nearby had already burnt to a cinder. If the One Child Policy isn’t repealed soon, there’s going to be a revolution.’

‘Is that blood on your hands?’ asks Meili nervously.

‘No, red paint. I wrote some slogans on the wall. If you weren’t pregnant, I would have gone to the county police station today and tried to rescue Kong Guo and the others.’

‘Subversive slogans? Are you mad?’ Meili runs her fingers through the tangles of her hair which still smell of the musty quilt.

‘All I wrote was: “Bring Down the County Party Secretary and Execute the County Chief”. I didn’t dare write “Bring Down the Communist Party”.’

‘Trying to show off your talent for calligraphy again! How could you be so stupid? You could get five years in jail for that.’

‘They won’t be able to pin it on me. The whole county is in revolt. But we must leave today, or the baby won’t survive. The officers are prowling the village with bloodshot eyes, carrying out abortions in broad daylight. I’ve just been told about Yuanyuan. She left our dugout last night and went to hide near the reservoir, but the family planning officers hunted her down. They pushed her against the bank, pinned her arms down with their knees and injected her belly with disinfectant . . . My parents have guessed that you’re pregnant. They would want us to leave. Did Nannan sleep at their house last night? Well, we can collect her on our way, then. Let’s pack our bags. We’ll return once the baby’s born. Hurry! We’ll need our residence permits, the birth permits, our marriage certificate, cash . . .’

‘But where shall we go? To your brother in Wuhan or your sister in Tibet?’ Kongzi’s older brother works for a construction team in Wuhan and his younger sister runs a souvenir shop outside a monastery in Lhasa.

‘No, we’ll go to Dark Water River, sail down to the Yangtze and stay with my cousin in Sanxia. The town’s being pulled down to make way for the Three Gorges Dam project. The place is in chaos, so the family planning policies won’t be strictly enforced. We’ll be safe there. Quick, get our things ready.’ He feels behind the wooden cabinet and pulls out a large hemp sack.

There’s still no scent of spring shoots in the cold February air. The young poplars growing in the roadside ditch seem like railings driven deep into the earth. The icy breeze blowing down the concrete road to Hexi raises no dust, but when a truck or bus drives by, the shreds of plastic bags littering the ground fly up and swirl about.

A passing cyclist stops to tell them that a police checkpoint has been set up on the road ahead.

Kongzi has pulled his blue cap low over his face. His glasses steam up when he exhales. His right hand is thrust into his trouser pocket, gripping Meili’s forged birth permit.

Squinting into the distance, he sees a police car approach with a red light flashing on its roof. He jumps into the ditch, taking Meili with him, and they crouch on all fours until the car has passed.

‘What did you put in there?’ Kongzi asks, glaring at the huge sack Meili has brought.

‘Not much. Just a few clothes, two flannels, a bar of soap, Nannan’s shoes and pencils—’

‘Nannan! Oh God, we forgot to pick her up. I must go back to my parents and fetch her. You wait for me here.’

‘While you’re about it, pop back to our house and get my address book, and my sewing patterns in the top drawer of the cabinet, and your woollen long johns as well . . .’ In her clean white down jacket and red scarf Meili looks like a tour guide, not an illegal mother on the run.

After Kongzi climbs back onto the road and disappears into the village, Meili feels a spasm of morning sickness. She leans over, retches and, like a cat, covers the vomit with soil. Then she cautiously rises to her feet and looks around. On the snow-covered field to her left she sees the grave of one of Kongzi’s distant relatives. Only a few paper petals remain on the bamboo wreath that was laid during the Festival of the Dead. Behind it, dry stalks arch down onto the snow like strands of black hair on a man’s white scalp.

On the other side of the road is a fodder-processing plant. The huge white slogan –
RATHER TEN NEW GRAVES THAN ONE NEW COT
– which Kongzi was commissioned to paint last year is still visible on the red compound wall. The two osmanthus trees in front are smaller than the one in her parents’ garden in Nuwa Village, but they produce beautiful white blossom in spring. She picked a few branches last May and arranged them in a green bottle with some bamboo leaves, and they stayed fresh for two weeks.