Free The Dark Road by Ma Jian Page A

Yangtze has become so polluted, there are only a few hundred sturgeon left. And when the dam is finished, their migration route will be completely cut off. They’re doomed to extinction.’ Kongzi watches the sturgeon sink below the surface. As he slows the boat down, Meili crawls to the bow. The breeze moving through the blazing summer heat feels cool and refreshing. Grassy embankments, mud houses and mandarin trees slip by on both sides. Her fears seem to blow away. Closing her eyes, she imagines soaring over the golden waters like a wild goose, the river mist in her face, seeing the boats and barges behind her form dark silhouettes against the low sun and the Yangtze stretch into the distance, dissolving finally between two cliff faces into a haze of water and sky.
    She begins to sense that drifting down the river could offer her a new way of life, a floating happiness. She feels free and at peace.
    Kongzi notices a barge approach and bites his lower lip nervously. He’s never driven a boat before, and is afraid of colliding. In a fluster, he decelerates too quickly and the engine stalls. Once the barge has passed, he pulls the start cord again, adjusts the throttle and the boat sets off once more. Eager to regain face, he slows the boat, throws it in reverse then artfully turns it in a circle. Looking both surprised and proud, he glances back at Meili and says, ‘As my great ancestor Confucius once remarked: “The benevolent find joy in mountains, the wise in water.” How right he was! When he left home after offending the Duke of Lu, he wandered from state to state for thirteen years, an exile in his own country. Now two thousand years later, I’m also on the run, but unlike him, I’m not free to travel across the land, so all I can do is drift down the Yangtze.’
    At noon, before Nannan has woken from her morning nap, Meili goes to the tiny galley area in the stern, lights the kerosene stove and puts a pan of water on to boil. Beside her is a mound of spinach leaves she cleaned earlier. Whenever she needs to wash vegetables or clothes, she simply leans overboard and scoops up a bucket of water. Thrilled to have a place of their own at last, she has already scrubbed the boat from stern to bow, torn off the mouldy bitumen canopy and replaced it with new tarpaulin. Now when they sleep in the cabin at night, they’re no longer disturbed by a musty smell of rot. Meili has also tied a rope from Nannan’s waist to the cabin frame, short enough to prevent her leaning overboard to dip her hands in the water. But Meili can’t stop the boat rocking. Although she feels more free on the water than she did on the land, she knows it will take time for her to become used to this fluid substance that adapts its form to the contours of the earth and exists in constant flux. The river is a moving landscape which flows in directions she can’t always determine.
    After becoming pregnant with Happiness, the earth no longer felt solid underfoot. Not even their house or the dugout Kongzi created beneath Nannan’s bed could provide a safe refuge. The land belongs to the government. Whether it’s rented or borrowed, every patch of soil in this country is controlled by the state; no citizen can own a single grain. If she’d stayed planted in the village like a maize stalk waiting to be trampled on, she too might have had her belly injected with disinfectant like Yuanyuan, or been bundled into a cart a few weeks after childbirth like her neighbour Fang, milk leaking from her bare breasts. Ever since they left the village, her muscles have clenched with fear as soon as her feet touch the ground. Although the barge hotel was on the river, it was in effect an extension of the town. But this wavering fishing boat has liberated her. She will learn to drive it and survive on the little they possess. She told Kongzi that in Guangdong Province there’s a place called Heaven Township where people can have as many children as they wish,