her sleep, crawls back onto Meili’s lap, rests her head on the hemp sack and returns to her dream.
When dawn breaks, Meili wakes from her doze and sees Nannan’s face bathed in the early rays of sun and the reflected glow from her red quilted jacket. The mosquitoes that buzzed noisily all night have left small bites on Nannan’s neck, but her face is as smooth and unblemished as an egg. Meili’s own dream slowly dissipates as the boat continues downstream. All she retains of it is a vague sensation of swimming as freely as a fish through the deep waters of Womb Lake.
KEYWORDS: river towns, stray dog, contraband, happiness, spring earth, civilisation, toes.
‘WHY WE LEAVING boat, Daddy?’ Nannan asks, waddling up to him.
Kongzi lifts her up with one arm and joins other passengers, laden with bags, across a rickety boat and onto the steps of the wharf. Following closely behind, Meili scans the crowd nervously, trying to hold back another wave of nausea. Instinctively she places her hands over her belly, feeling like a woman she saw in a television drama who concealed contraband drugs inside her body. The red backpack she has filled with biscuits, milk powder and dried sausages drags on her shoulders as she climbs the wharf’s one hundred stone steps, dodging out of the way of travellers who are scrambling down to catch the boat.
At the top of the wharf, Kongzi cranes his neck back to take a look at the town clinging to the side of the steep mountain, the black plastic bag swung over his shoulder scraping the ground. ‘So this is Sanxia,’ he says. ‘In a few months, the water level will rise 150 metres, and all of the old town will be flooded. Look, they’re pulling it down now, and will move everyone into those newer buildings higher up the slope.’
The air is thick with charcoal smoke and the scent of boiled corncobs. A stream of people jostles past. ‘Looking for a hotel?’ a man calls out. ‘See that barge down there? You can get a bed in it for just five yuan a night. You won’t find cheaper accommodation in the whole county.’
‘Should we trust him?’ Meili whispers to Kongzi, folding her arms over her belly, convinced that everyone is staring at it, especially the men wearing blue caps. ‘That man over there looks like a policeman. He might try to drag us to a custody centre.’
‘No, he looks like a tax collector to me,’ replies Kongzi. ‘And only large cities have custody centres. Sanxia is smaller than Hexi. Look, that department store is only two storeys high, and there are hardly any cars about. So stop worrying.’
A young man on a motorbike passes them, then looks back and shouts to Kongzi, ‘Hey, my friend! Five yuan a ride. How about it? I’ll take all three of you.’
Kongzi shakes his head. ‘Dad, me want motorbike!’ Nannan cries as it speeds away. ‘Me want sit on motorbike!’
‘We’ll walk,’ Kongzi says, setting off down the dirt road.
‘You horrid!’ Nannan says in a huff. ‘Me hate you.’
Kongzi doesn’t understand how I feel, Meili says to herself. If the police arrest us, I’m the one who will be punished. The condemned fetus is hidden in my belly.
They pass houses and billboards smothered in dust then, further along, the gloomy skeletons of gutted and abandoned buildings. Wooden beams, floor tiles, glass panes and revolving chairs have tumbled onto the dirt road. The rows of ancient houses clinging to the steep slopes above appear to have subsided into a layered heap.
‘Look at all those houses squashed together up there,’ says Meili. ‘None of them have doors. How do people get inside?’
‘Don’t you know? In river towns, all the windows face the river, and the doors are at the back,’ says Kongzi. They come to a pathway of stone steps that leads endlessly up the mountain. Kongzi takes Nannan’s hand and begins to climb.
‘So many steps,’ Meili says, struggling up behind, sweating and puffing. ‘How high are we going? What if I faint and fall down? Kongzi, will your cousin still remember you?’
‘Of course. We ran through the village together as kids, stealing peanuts and dates from the neighbours’ yards. We grew up eating from the same cob of corn!’
‘Daddy, you got your energy?’ Nannan says, lifting her sweaty face to his, her ponytail skewed to one side. Her red quilted jacket is far too hot for this town.
‘No, I left it at home,’ Kongzi says, knowing