The Dark Road by Ma Jian

daughter sleeping in the cabin? Make sure she stays inside when the boat is moving, or she might fall overboard.’
    ‘You’re right. We only bought the boat a week ago. I haven’t got used to the constant movement. I feel as though I’m rocking on a swing the whole time. You have a television and an electric fan, I see. What luxury.’
    ‘We’ve lived on this boat for ten years. I still get seasick, though. Summers are tolerable, but in winter, if you don’t have an electric heater it’s as cold as the grave. Before the frost sets in, tell your husband to buy a mini generator and a heater or you’ll freeze to death.’
    ‘What do you use for a toilet?’ asks Meili, watching an army of weevils scuttle across the scorching deck and fall into the river.
    ‘When we’re anchored here, I just do it on the bank.’ Then she crawls to the bow and lifts a square panel from the deck. ‘And when we’re sailing, I can do it straight into the river!’
    ‘You’re family planning fugitives too, aren’t you?’ Meili says, seeing the baby strapped to the woman’s back focus her triangular eyes on her. ‘What’s your name, little one?’ she asks, realising suddenly that other people’s children are of little interest to her.
    ‘She’s called Little Third. A third girl. What bad luck! This one in my belly will be my last. I’m fed up with this drifting life. I want to live in a brick house with a front door I can lock, a wardrobe to store my clothes in, a big fridge to keep all my food fresh and a comfortable armchair I can sit on.’
    ‘But this boat is so much better than ours. It has everything you could need.’
    ‘The river may be nice to look at, but I don’t want to spend my life on it. I have parents back home. Fallen leaves must return to their roots, as the saying goes. Besides, this vagrant life is not good for men. My husband seldom sleeps here at night.’
    ‘Yes, like crops in the fields we all need roots to survive.’ Meili feels her belly expand. She wants to lie on her side and breathe deeply. Little Third peeps over her mother’s shoulder again and smiles. She has two upper and two lower teeth. Meili pretends not to see her.
    ‘I’ve seen your husband on the boat in the evenings,’ the woman says, ‘sitting out on the deck smoking while you cook supper. How lucky you are!’ Then she turns to the bank and shouts to her two older daughters, ‘Come and have your lunch, girls.’ They’re standing on a field of cabbages near an abandoned barge that’s being used as a chicken hutch. A rooster digging at the muddy bank spots a cabbage leaf out of the corner of its eye and scuttles over to it.
    ‘But your husband has done so well, setting up his cargo business,’ Meili says. ‘Mine just works on a demolition site. He used to be a teacher, though. Men – if you don’t keep them on a tight rein, their eyes are bound to wander.’ She glances into her boat and sees Nannan is still asleep. Her sweat-soaked hair is stuck to her face, and below her rucked-up skirt insects are crawling over her chubby thighs.
    ‘He’s grown tired of me,’ the woman says, snapping the garlic shoots in half. ‘You know what they say: the song of the wild duck in the fields always sounds more melodious than the clucking of the hen at home.’ Her T-shirt has large damp patches over her breasts.
    Meili watches the woman move about the deck – sallow cheeks, lined forehead, hunched, twig-like frame – and imagines how a man would feel lying on top of her at night. She thinks how, in ten years, she will be thirty and by then she too may have three or four children. The thought terrifies her. Whatever happens, she won’t confine herself to the role of housewife like this woman. Once Happiness is born, she will find a job, train as a beautician and dress her children in the finest clothes. The woman’s elder daughters jump aboard and the boat tips to the side. Their faces are grimy and their bare feet covered