Dark Water River, Riverbrook Town, Pool of the Immortals Mountain. Women from such a place are clearly not meant to produce sons.’
‘Without a son, a man can never stand tall,’ Chen says. ‘The bloody family planning policies have ruined our lives! Back in the village we owned two hundred turtles – they were worth eight thousand yuan – but after our second daughter was born, the officers confiscated the lot.’
Chewing angrily on a pupa, Kongzi says, ‘Not even the most evil emperor in China’s history would have contemplated developing the economy by massacring unborn children and severing family lines! But today’s tyrants murder millions of babies a year without batting an eyelid, and if a baby slips through their net, they cripple its parents with fines and confiscate their property.’
‘I’m your baby, Daddy, so why you want another baby?’ Nannan says, perching on an old motor cylinder beside him.
‘Don’t interrupt when the grown-ups are talking,’ Kongzi says to her. ‘It’s time you went to sleep. Go and join Mum on the boat.’
Nannan wraps her arms around Kongzi’s neck. ‘I eaten so much food, I’m a grown-up too, now. Daddy, why you got hair in your nose?’
Kongzi pulls Nannan onto his lap and gently tugs her ear. ‘A grown-up, you say? Then how come you still wet your bed every night?’ Since Nannan burned her foot, he has become much more affectionate towards her.
‘When you’re here, I like you. When you’re not here, I like Mummy.’ The bottoms of Nannan’s long trousers are damp and her bare feet are stone cold.
KEYWORDS: spouse’s return, hairy armpits, water burial, Dragon Mother, corpse fisher, dead fish.
ON A SWELTERING day, while Kongzi is having a lunchtime nap in the cabin, Meili sees a man on the bank waving his bag and shouting out to them. ‘Wake up, Kongzi!’ she says. ‘I think someone wants to hire our boat.’ In the last month, she’s sold thirty ducks for two hundred yuan, and Kongzi has made three hundred yuan delivering cargos of watermelons injected with growth chemicals, and batches of last year’s mouldy rice which unscrupulous traders milled and waxed so that it could be sold as new.
Meili steers towards the bank. Kongzi’s gold-rimmed spectacles fell into the river last week, so she’s been driving the boat since then. The man jumps aboard and says, ‘I need a ride to Yinluo.’ He is tall, with unkempt greying hair, a goatee and tortoiseshell glasses. His white shirt clings to his sweaty back.
‘What, there and back in one day?’ Meili asks.
‘I don’t know yet,’ the man says, wiping his wet forehead.
‘What cargo are you picking up?’ Kongzi asks sleepily, drawing back the door curtain. He’s crouching down, unaware that his penis is hanging out from the open zip of his shorts.
‘I’m not picking up any cargo. I’m looking for my mother. She drowned herself in the river last week. I want to find her body and give her a proper burial.’
‘You want us to transport a corpse?’ Kongzi says, stepping out onto the deck. ‘Never! I’ll transport fake goods or contraband goods, but not dead bodies.’
‘I know it’s an unusual proposition, so I’m prepared to pay you eighty yuan for the day.’
‘It’s not a question of money,’ Kongzi says, softening his tone a little. ‘Don’t you know it’s bad luck to bring a corpse aboard a boat?’
‘Yes, yes, I understand,’ the man says. ‘Let’s say ninety yuan, then. All right?’ He’s now so drenched in sweat, he looks as though he’s just emerged from the river.
Kongzi thinks it over for a moment, and says, ‘I’d want one hundred yuan. No less. And I’ll need to pay the twenty-yuan administrative fee at the inspection post, and the mooring fee at the Yinluo pier.’ The truth is, Kongzi never moors at the pier, he always anchors along the banks further down.
‘Please, brother, do it for ninety. I’m just a humble schoolteacher. I don’t have much money.’
‘Let’s take him,’ Meili says, squatting behind the engine, her bare feet forming sweaty footprints on the deck.
Hearing that the man is a teacher, Kongzi feels unable to refuse. ‘All right, ninety it is,’ he says. ‘Meili, you and Nannan stay on the island and look after the ducks.’
‘No, it wouldn’t be safe for you to drive the boat without your glasses,’ she says. ‘Xixi can take care of Nannan and the ducks. Her baby’s four months old. She can strap him onto her back now and walk around.’