Free The Dark Road by Ma Jian Page B

making sure, of course, not to tell him that its polluted air renders men sterile. Kongzi said that this was just the kind of enlightened place where Happiness should be born.
    ‘Cooking lunch?’ Meili calls out to the pregnant woman in the houseboat moored a few metres away. ‘It smells good.’
    The woman is sitting at the bow, her toes like chicken claws gripping the edge of the boat. She and her husband already have a baby, and two daughters who are old enough to go into Sanxia and buy provisions on their own. Meili glanced at the baby when the woman held it over the river to defecate, and saw that it was a girl. The woman’s boat is twice the size of Meili’s. It has a tall control room and a shorter cabin behind with a bitumen-coated felt roof held down with bricks. When the boat is stacked with polystyrene panels the husband hauls to construction sites, it looks like a sparkling iceberg. While he’s away on a trip, the woman and her daughters often wander around the wharf, hawking home-made snacks, shaking plastic bags of eggs boiled in tea, spiced tofu and marinated broad beans below the windows of buses waiting to board the ferry.
    ‘It’s imported Thai rice,’ the woman calls back to Meili. ‘I bought it in the supermarket. What are you having?’
    ‘Fried celery and some reheated chicken soup.’
    ‘You shouldn’t drink hot liquids in the middle of the day,’ says the woman, hoisting up a bundle of garlic shoots she’s been soaking in the river. ‘And with a belly that size, you should move more slowly around the boat.’
    ‘Let those soak a little longer if you want to wash off the chemicals. I planted half a field of garlic shoots last year and had to spray pesticides on them twice a week to keep the insects away.’
    ‘No need – I’m going to boil them for ten minutes. The river water may look clean, but it’s riddled with threadworm.’
    Meili grimaces. They’ve been drinking boiled river water since they moved onto the boat. ‘But the water’s safe to drink, surely, if you boil it?’ she asks.
    ‘No, not at this time of year! You should fetch your drinking water from the barge hotel’s washroom. Go at lunchtime when no one’s about. Or give the man at the diesel station a couple of mao and he’ll let you fill your bucket at his tap. You can drink river water in the winter, but in the summer, it’s infested with germs and parasites.’
    ‘How come your stove doesn’t give off smoke?’ Meili asks, looking at the broad beans the woman has laid out to dry on the deck.
    ‘It’s a gas stove. Cost me a hundred yuan. Come and have a look at it, if you want.’
    Meili fetches her hooked bamboo pole.
    ‘Always turn off your stove before you disembark,’ the woman says, her eyes beady as a cormorant’s. ‘If it topples over, your boat will burn to a cinder.’
    Meili extends her pole, drags the woman’s boat towards hers then ties them together with rope.
    ‘The current is strong,’ the woman says. ‘Your boat will break free with a knot like that.’ She loosens Meili’s knot and reties it. ‘This is a bowline knot. It won’t slip.’
    ‘I should learn how to do that,’ says Meili, gripping her canopy. She glances into the woman’s spacious cabin, and inhales the fragrant smell of rice wafting from the pot on the gas stove.
    After checking that Nannan is still asleep, Meili steps over onto the woman’s boat and squats on the cabin’s vinyl-covered floor. ‘What a great stove!’ she says, and looks at the clothes and hats hanging neatly on the wall next to a glossy calendar with a photograph of a woman in a long silver dress.
    ‘You should buy one. One canister will last you a whole week. And another tip: when a large vessel approaches head on, slow down and turn towards the bank so the waves hit you at right angles, or your boat will capsize. Ha! I could tell from the way you were gripping your canopy just now that you haven’t been on the river long. Is that your