The Dark Road: A Novel Part 20

'What about your English name, "Hugo"? In Chinese it sounds like "Virtuous Accomplishment". Isn't that good?'

'Yes, Hugo Electronics it is then . . . Oh yes, I spoke to the headmaster of Red Flag Primary. He said he couldn't allow Nannan to attend even if you bribed him. The county guidelines insist that all pupils have local residence permits. So she'll just have to stay at that migrant school, I'm afraid.'

'Well, she's lucky to have a place there. It only takes fifty students but there are tens of thousands of migrant children in Heaven. And just think how many millions of other migrant children there are in this country who are being denied an education. It's a national disgrace.'

'Wait until I'm a member of the People's Congress, and I'll sort it out,' Tang says, pouring himself some more tea.

'You've studied abroad. You should go into education, not politics.' As Meili bites into a chunk of the roast duck, Heaven kicks her stomach so hard that she almost blacks out. Mummy got into big trouble today, little one, she says under her breath. So be kind, and keep still . . .

'I'll go to the Bureau of Industry and Commerce this afternoon and see if I can get your fine reduced,' Tang says. 'The shop licence is in my name, after all. But don't worry however much it is, I'll pay it.'

Meili smiles gratefully. 'But it was my fault. I can't let you-'

'Ah, you look so pretty when you smile! You can thank me with a kiss.' Tang closes his eyes and offers his cheek to her. Not wanting to bend over her belly, she gets up, walks round to him and places a kiss on his forehead. 'You're a good woman,' he says, taking her hand. 'If you get divorced, I'll be the first in line to-'

'And you're a good man, Tang. Whoever does marry you will be a lucky woman. Perhaps you and I will get married in our next life.' She pulls her hand away, returns to her seat and thinks how wonderful it would be to start her life again from scratch.

Tang picks up a piece of steamed pork with his chopsticks and places it in Meili's mouth.

'Do you know who gave me a second life?' Meili says.

'Me?' Tang replies, his buck teeth glinting.

'Well, of course, I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for you. So, let's say you gave me a third life. But the person who gave me my second life was a graduate called Suya who I met in a Custody and Repatriation Centre. I was with her for only two weeks, but she changed the way I look at the world. She was unlike anyone I'd met before. Even the way she moved and held herself set her apart. Through her, I began to understand the qualities that distinguish one person from another.'

'So what happened to her?'

'We were transferred to a labour camp, and she disappeared just before I left. I sneaked her journal out with me and have kept it with me ever since. But I've no idea where she is now, or even if she's still alive.'

'Those custody centres are a scandal. The police trawl the cities rounding up peasants, slam them in detention, then sell them to village officials who force them to work on farms for no pay. It's a modern-day slave trade . . . So, where was Suya from?'

'Chengdu. But I don't have her address. I feel as though my old self died in the camp and now Suya is living my life. I was never brave, strong or clever. I'm terrified that if something bad happens, I'll fall apart, like I almost did in the shop just now, and return to who I was. I'd like to go to Chengdu and try to track Suya's parents down. If they tell me she's dead, at least it will give me peace of mind. But if they've had no news from her . . .' Meili thinks of Weiwei searching the Xi River for his mother, and realises she hasn't thought about him for a long time. She looks up and scans the faces of the other diners in the restaurant.

'Who are you looking for?' Tang asks.

'I was just thinking about someone. A man I met. His mother was ill, and she drowned herself so that he wouldn't be burdened with her medical fees and could send his son to university. He travelled up and down the river for weeks, searching for her. I don't know if he ever found her.'

'People usually commit suicide to escape pain. But the pain doesn't go. It's just pa.s.sed on to the relatives they leave behind.'

When Meili returns home an hour later, Kongzi is busy correcting homework. She takes a deep breath and says, 'An inspection team swooped into the shop today and confiscated my goods,' then waits for him to explode. But he remains silent, takes a last drag from his cigarette and flicks the stub onto the floor. Meili squats down, picks it up and drops it in the bin.

'My eyelid keeps twitching,' she says, flopping onto the bed in an exhausted heap. In the corner, the television is buzzing and white snowflakes are flashing across the screen. The room still smells of the five-spiced tofu they ate for supper yesterday. 'It's my right eye. I forget, is that supposed to be a good or bad omen?' Heaven presses against her spine, cutting off the oxygen to her brain. She feels faint, and rolls onto her side, then reminds herself that Tang will pay her fine, saving her from financial ruin, and sighs with relief.

'If a man's right eye twitches, it's a good omen; if a woman's right eye twitches, it's the reverse,' Kongzi says blankly. He has cut a cardboard box in half and is lining up Nannan's textbooks inside, their spines facing outwards. 'So, what did they take?'

'All the milk powder. A thousand yuan's worth.' She waits again for an angry outburst. A few days ago when he saw a photograph online of the Temple of Confucius in Qufu being ransacked during the Cultural Revolution, he kicked their bookcase onto the ground, incensed that this humiliating episode in the Kong family history is now available for the whole world to see. Meili looks down at the cups, toothbrushes and socks soaking in an enamel basin, then at his books stacked up in the corner near the shattered bookcase. On the table, next to Nannan's satchel, three green caterpillars are crawling about in a paper cup.

But tonight, Kongzi doesn't explode. He goes into the yard, sits down on a chair and pulls out a bottle of beer from under the pile of plates beneath the gas stove. Since his mouth was electrocuted by the police, his ulcers have become so chronic that he's almost given up smoking and can only eat small amounts of food.

'Mum, I'm hungry,' Nannan whines, crawling sleepily onto Meili's lap.

'I've got some delicious steamed pork with sticky rice and hot-sour noodles for you.'

'But I only want fish and chocolate.'

Meili pulls the table over to the bed, opens the cartons she brought back from the restaurant, empties the contents into two bowls and calls out to Kongzi. 'Come inside and eat . . . Are you still sulking about your sister's baby? Don't worry, his name won't be entered in the Kong Family Register. And anyway, she can't be the only Kong in China who's had a child with a foreigner. You should learn to move with the times.'

'Mum, how come your baby still hasn't come out?' Nannan asks, swaying from side to side as she tucks into the food.

'Perhaps it's afraid it will be as unlucky as Happiness was, and be strangled before it takes its first breath.'

'When I grow up I want to live in a country that doesn't kill babies.'

'Well, if I make enough money, you can go and study abroad when you're eighteen,' Meili says. 'Look, even your little green caterpillars know they need to find the right place to live. When we're all tucked up in bed, they'll climb out of the cup, crawl over to that nice bush out there, weave themselves into chrysalids, then ten days later they'll turn into b.u.t.terflies and fly away.'

'If I lie down on this bed long enough, will I turn into a boy?' Nannan asks.

'It's not so bad being a girl. When you grow up you can wear earrings like mine, and necklaces and nice long dresses.'

'Mum, Daddy said that after Heaven is born we can go home. You'll have a son and a daughter, and everyone will be happy.'

'But we don't have a home to go back to,' Meili says. 'That's the price we had to pay to bring Heaven into the world.' Meili feels a sudden sense of pride that for three years, her belly has given Heaven a safe refuge. She wants to blurt out that Heaven is a girl, but stops herself. During the day, she pushes Heaven to the side so that it hugs her hips, making her b.u.mp much less visible.

After Nannan falls asleep, Meili pours herself a gla.s.s of beer and lies down on the bed. A man on the television sings, 'Let the moonlight bring you peace, let the sunlight bring you joy . . .' and is then abruptly interrupted by an advert for Wahaha children's sausages. She switches off the television, lies in the dark, and suddenly sees an image of Weiwei's tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses. That encounter happened years ago. How come her thoughts still return to it? All he did was stroke her in the dark. She remembers the sudden downpour that fell that night as they lay in the cabin, and the sound of the rain battering against the canopy, then forming a swishing pool above her that crashed onto the stern when the boat rocked to the side. But she knows that memory can't be right. The canopy always leaked, so if it had been raining, water would have dripped down the rusty pipes of the cabin's frame and seeped across the wooden deck all the way to her thighs . . . In her dream, she sees a banana tree tilt under the weight of its heavy fruit. She runs towards it and dissolves into a swarm of b.u.t.terflies. She enters a desert cave, climbs up a sand dune and hears a voice whisper, 'You've returned to your place of birth . . .' Then she raises her head and sees herself looming above like a steel tower, her iron legs planted firmly in the ground and her v.a.g.i.n.a arching through the blue sky like a rainbow.

KEYWORDS: deep well, foreign blood, index finger, telephone booth, pink blossom, tiger and dragon, paper women.

AS MEILI IS about to kick off her high-heeled shoes after returning home from a long day at the shop, Cha Na rushes in and says: 'I've just heard that Kongzi's lying blind drunk outside the Beautiful Foot Ma.s.sage Parlour. You'd better go and rescue him. Nannan can spend the night with us.' Meili grabs an umbrella and heads for Hong Kong Street where, sure enough, Kongzi is lying conked out in the rain below the ma.s.sage parlour's entrance, his head resting on the front step. His drenched clothes seem to be weighing him down, because though he's not a heavy man, Meili is unable to lift him onto her back. She tries dragging him along the pavement, but his bare feet become b.l.o.o.d.y as they sc.r.a.pe against the concrete. The girls in the ma.s.sage parlour stare mockingly at her through the window. Summoning all her energy, she grabs his hands, swings them over her shoulders and with a flick of her hips manages to shift him up onto her back. Like a farmer carrying a pig to market, she lugs him to the end of the street and hails a taxi home. It's her birthday today. Tang wanted to invite her to a French restaurant in Foshan, but she persuaded him to take her for a simple dim sum lunch in Heaven instead. She knew Kongzi would forget that it's her birthday, so she'd planned to tell him she wasn't up to cooking supper, and suggest that they go to a Cantonese restaurant called Lured by the Fragrance, You Dismount your Horse. She thought she'd be brave and order dog hotpot, and 'tiger and dragon fight to the death', a local speciality of fried cat and snake meat which is believed to help rebalance the body's yin and yang.

Back in the house, the room fills with a sickening stench as she removes his vomit-soaked clothes. When she pulls off his trousers, she sees his shrivelled p.e.n.i.s is sheathed in a condom. She freezes in horror and her scalp tightens. Her first impulse is to chop off the p.e.n.i.s or set fire to it. She screams and pounds his head and chest until his cries become an echo of her own.

Kongzi pushes her off, sits up and sees the condom lying on the ground. Sperm has escaped and formed a yellow stain on the white mat. Meili grabs her shoe-cutting knife and, as her mind returns to the nightclub boss who raped her, she shouts: 'You depraved b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You ugly, festering lowlife! If you have any b.a.l.l.s left, show them to me, come on, pull them out and let me chop them off!' She raises the knife high in the air then swings it down straight onto her left hand, severing her entire index finger. Her blood splashes onto the mat near the pool of sperm. She drops the knife, flings the door open and rushes blindly out into the rain.

For an hour she walks round the lake in utter despair. Then, feeling that the sky is falling on her head and the earth crumbling beneath her feet, she makes up her mind to go to an empty graveyard and hang herself from a tree. I'll never trust Kongzi again. The fraud! Going to work in a suit and tie, pretending to be a man of virtue . . . She sees a telephone booth and steps inside to shelter herself from the rain. The bloodied stump of her index finger hurts so much she's tempted to chop off the whole hand. Listening to the rain smashing onto the plastic roof, she picks up the receiver and considers phoning Weiwei, or Tang, but every man seems tainted to her now. She puts the receiver to her ear and imagines Suya picking up on the other end. Do you hear the rain here in Heaven Township, Suya? It's pelting down. You celebrated my birthday with me, and the next day you vanished into thin air. You too were attacked and defiled. But I set fire to the man who raped me, to avenge that crime, and all the crimes that other men committed against you. You were right this is no country for women. It's pointless forgiving men and expecting them to change. They never do. They're filthy sc.u.m, every one of them. Where are you now? Can I come and stay with you? I've nowhere left to go . . . Noticing a figure standing outside waiting to use the phone, she puts down the receiver and leaves, concealing her left hand in the crook of her right arm. The rain washes the blood from her wound. What hope is there left? she mutters as she wanders down the deserted street. She feels she's been born into the wrong time and the wrong place, and is descending into a spiral of misery where the only escape is death.

By the time she reaches the graveyard, the rain has stopped. Through tear-filled eyes, she stares at the rows of granite tombstones and the funeral offerings arranged below them: oranges, apples, sodden cardboard cars and paper women labelled MISTRESS in black ink that has blurred in the rain. She presses the bony stump of her finger and a sharp jolt of pain races straight to her heart, then blood begins to pour from it again like water from a tap. She rips off her sleeve and wraps it tightly around the wound to stem the flow . . . My life is dripping away from me. This is where I will say goodbye to the world . . . When she married Kongzi she persuaded herself that although he might not be rich, he was descended from an educated and ill.u.s.trious family, and that together they could lead a contented life. She never asked for much. She agreed to abandon their village and live as vagrants in order to give him the male heir he yearned for. But over the years, his obsessive desire for a son has blinded and warped him, and he sees her now only as a creature of reproduction. She'd hoped that once little Heaven was born, she could return to Kong Village, open a shop, look after her mother and live in peace. But this hope has vanished. Yes, she should walk straight to the end of her life and step over the edge . . .

Glancing down at her feet, she sees an imitation wedding certificate with a magazine snapshot of the beautiful film star Gong Li pasted next to a photograph of a wizened old man. Didn't Kongzi once say that when he reaches the netherworld, he too would like to marry Gong Li? Perhaps in that faraway land, all dreams really can be fulfilled. This isn't the burial place she'd imagined for herself, but what does it matter? In the end, we must all return to the earth, and one patch of soil is no different from another. She remembers, aged seventeen, sitting in a black car on the way to her wedding, her face caked in thick, itchy make-up. Attached to the roof were gifts of folded bedcovers and a warm, musty-smelling basket of ducklings. Kongzi turned to her and said, 'Once we're married, you'll belong to me, and I'll be making all the decisions in the family. Don't even think of spreading your pink blossom over the garden walls.' He put his hand on hers and she felt sick with shyness. As a child, she loved to hear her grandmother tell her the story of the cowherd and the celestial weaver girl, who crossed the Milky Way once a year on a bridge of magpies just to spend one night together, and she hoped that one day she would experience a love as pa.s.sionate as theirs. Meili walks to a tree and leans against it. She has no idea what it's called. It has leaves as large as her hands and smooth, snake-like branches. All she needs to do now is pull her belt off and strap her neck to a branch . . . Although Tang and Weiwei showed her affection, she has never been unfaithful to Kongzi. To save him distress, she never told him about the rape, and avenged the crime herself. Glancing at her feet, she sees a fat-bellied frog crawling through the gra.s.s and feels an urge to stamp on it. Her left hand has gone numb. Blood is dripping from the wound onto the wet, corpse-filled earth. She regrets that her efforts to help Kongzi preserve his family line prevented her fulfilling her duties towards her parents. For years, she's denied herself luxuries, scrimping and saving so that they can send money home, but most of it goes to Kongzi's family. She knows her mother would never contemplate drowning herself, as Weiwei's mother did. She remembers how her mother hugged her with trembling arms the day her friend jumped into a deep well with her four-year-old daughter strapped to her back after finding out that her husband had slept with another woman. Am I afraid of death? Meili wonders, reminding herself that in a few minutes' time she'll be hanging from the tree. No, I'm not afraid. I shake with terror at the sight of a family planning officer, but when I look death in the eye, I feel perfectly calm. She pulls off her leather belt. Perhaps she really does have foreign blood in her veins. She remembers hearing how her great-grandmother slashed her wrist after giving birth to a fair-haired child, and wonders whether a tendency for suicide runs in her family . . . Her brother has been slaving down the mines seven days a week, leaving her father to look after the fields on the weekends, but between them they still can't afford to pay for the imported drugs that have been prescribed to her mother to keep her cancer at bay. Her brother was considered to be the clever one, and Meili had to leave primary school early so that her parents could afford to send him to high school. But he failed his exams and never made it to university, so their sacrifices were in vain . . . If she dies in this graveyard, where will she be reincarnated next? All she knows is that if she does hang herself, she'll never see her parents or Nannan again, and little Heaven will die as well . . . My baby is still growing inside me. I can't let it die. I should at least wait until it's safely born before I end my own life. Oh, this is all Kongzi's fault! Why should I have to condemn myself to another reincarnation because of his sordid infidelity? Her muddled mind begins to clear. Yes, he's the one who should be hanging himself from a tree, not me.

On a weed-covered grave below, two mice stare up at her, reminding her of the two children she has lost. If she gives birth to Heaven, she will leave Kongzi, save enough money to pay the family planning fine, then move back to Nuwa Village with her two daughters. But if she wants to make enough money to have a comfortable life, she must never fall pregnant again, and the best way of ensuring that is for Heaven to curl up tight and stay where it is. She must become an independent woman, a person who not only has a body, but also a mind capable of thought. She shouldn't have to punish herself for her husband's crimes. She can sense that there is a woman asleep inside her who is slowly coming to life. She stands up and wraps her arms around herself . . . Yes, Kongzi can go to h.e.l.l! I'm twenty-eight today. My best years are still ahead of me. I'll struggle on and make my way back to my place of birth, like the sturgeon that swim up the Yangtze. I won't let you die, Heaven. Whatever the future holds, we will withstand it together . . .

Meili staggers out of the graveyard. The long road stretching through the darkness before her shimmers like a river of shattered ice.

KEYWORDS: wild gra.s.ses, urinal, escalator, complex characters, fast food, worm-like, missing girl.

FOUR MONTHS LATER, Meili, now with only nine fingers, is still living with Kongzi, but they've moved to a place further away from the hair salons of Hong Kong Road. Misfortunes always seem to come in pairs. The day Meili was hospitalised for blood poisoning when her unhealed stump became infected, she heard that her brother had got into a fight with the coal mine director over unpaid wages and had been arrested and sentenced to two years of reform through labour. Her family has sunk to rock bottom. Her mother's cancer has returned and her father has had to give up his job in the mine to look after her. Meili is now her family's only lifeline.

Meanwhile, Kongzi's temporary position at Red Flag Primary has come to an end, and he's taken up a permanent post as deputy head of the migrant school Nannan attends. In the evening, he puts on his gla.s.ses with an even greater air of authority as he sets about correcting homework. A few hours before he made his fateful visit to the Beautiful Foot Ma.s.sage Parlour, he went online and read a telegram the Red Guards sent to Chairman Mao after they'd destroyed the Temple of Confucius. They told their leader that they had burned ten thousand ancient books, smashed six thousand engraved stone tablets and a thousand gravestones, and toppled the statue of 'Kong the Second Son that so-called Teacher of Ten Thousand Generations', so that the radiance of Mao Zedong Thought could shine over the temple grounds once more. Kongzi told Meili that the telegram threw him into such a frenzied rage that he swallowed a full bottle of rice wine, and he has no memory of what happened next, or how he ended up lying on the steps of the ma.s.sage parlour. The girls in the parlour told Meili that he asked for a 'fast food' service. When they'd finished, he said he didn't have any money on him, so they had no choice but to throw him onto the street. Meili had concealed a hammer in her jacket, and was planning to smash the parlour up, but when she saw the girls in the back room lying asleep on camp beds, she felt sorry for them and changed her mind. She imagined all the days Suya spent on a bed in a similar, sour-smelling room, being treated like a human urinal as one nameless man after another pulled down his trousers and emptied himself into her.

She's had little time to think about her injured hand. When she returned home from the graveyard, she picked up her severed finger and wrapped it in a cloth, telling Kongzi, 'I'll keep it until we go home, then bury it in my parents' garden where I too will be buried one day. A body must enter its grave complete, after all.' After the turn of the year, her spirits lifted, and she felt that at last her run of misery had come to an end. The sight of Kongzi consumed by his work, reading and marking late into the night, has allowed her to recapture the pride she used to feel as the schoolteacher's wife in Kong Village. Although the migrant school is as illegal as the children who attend it, and his salary is miserable, Nannan is now able to study there free of charge. Their lives are back on track. Meili has asked Cha Na to run her children's shop, and has started work as general manager for Hugo Electronics. She no longer allows Tang to hold her hand. While she was in hospital, he visited her every day and warned Kongzi that if he ever dared sleep with a prost.i.tute again, he'd have him arrested. He lent Meili a laptop so that she could surf the internet from her hospital bed, and when he appointed her general manager, he not only gave her half the shares in the company, he set up its bank account in her name. She knows that she can't give him anything in return other than friendship and support.

Tang has rented an office in a smart block near a components warehouse in the centre of town. Since Meili first stepped on the escalator that leads to the first-floor office, her joy has been tinged with anxiety. She is not afraid that the company won't make money. The success of her children's shop has convinced her that her business instincts are good. She has helped to create a website which has attracted great interest from traders in the north, and has researched the latest developments in electronic machinery. Last month, she happened to hear that computers made in China will soon be installed with CD drives that can record as well as play, so she immediately slashed the price of their soon-to-be-defunct drives and managed to get rid of them in one day. Her anxiety stems from insecurity over her peasant background. She often feels like a scruffy partridge that has wheedled its way into a modern chicken pen. She has bought herself many clothes, but is never sure which ones to wear. (Fortunately, when she's in the office, little Heaven curls up so tightly that her belly shrinks to half its size.) She is self-conscious about her appearance, and also her lack of culture. When Tang showed her his extensive collection of CDs and foreign novels, she felt like an ignorant child, and was determined to fill some of the huge gaps in her knowledge. She's bought pirated discs of Beethoven, Puccini, Gershwin and Miles Davis which she listens to through earphones late at night, and is reading her way through translated editions of Les Miserables,A Christmas Carol, Light in August and A Brief History of Time which were selling for half price at a government-run bookstore. She feels that there's so much to discover, she has no right to remain ignorant. Every day she tries to increase her vocabulary, but when she comes across text on the internet from Hong Kong or Taiwan which is written in complex characters, she still has to ask her colleagues for help. When everyone has left the office at the end of the day, she remains at her desk flicking through journals and magazines and talking quietly to little Heaven. Since Kongzi begged for forgiveness and vowed on bended knees never to visit a ma.s.sage parlour again, she has felt that it's now safe for Heaven to be born. She knows Kongzi will be disappointed to discover the baby is a girl, but is confident that as he's in such disgrace, he wouldn't dare attempt to give the baby away. She's told Heaven that it can come out as soon as it wants. Everything is ready.

Their new home is directly opposite the illegal migrant school. It's an ugly tin shack, but at least it's watertight and windproof. In the yard outside is a barren durian tree whose bare branches are hung with damp laundry and bags of washing powder. Nannan found a dusty felt flower on the road the other day and has stuck it on the end of a branch. If it were an osmanthus tree, Meili would almost feel she were back in her parents' house. She has discovered from the red journal that osmanthus was also Suya's favourite flower. The shack and school are surrounded on three sides by abandoned fields fenced with the redundant gla.s.s interiors of dismantled televisions. Ten years ago, before the farmers turned to the e-waste business, these were well-irrigated rice fields, but apart from a few scattered plots cultivated with celery or taro, they are now overgrown with wild gra.s.ses and morning glories. Heaven Township can be seen to the north, its squat houses dwarfed by ancient trees. The air smells mostly of manure and gra.s.s, and the chemical odours are much less p.r.o.nounced.

The migrant school is in a fertiliser warehouse at the other end of Meili's washing line. The rent is cheap, as the area is low-lying and liable to flood. Last year in the rainy season, waters from Womb Lake flowed through here towards the sea, laden with timber and burnt plastic. Meili hopes that after one more year of hard work, they can move to an apartment in the centre of town, bring her parents to live with them and pay for her mother to be treated in Heaven Hospital. Her cancer has spread, and the rural hospitals are unable to perform the complicated operation she needs. The warehouse is only just large enough to seat the school's fifty pupils. If government inspectors turn up, the children escape through the back door and hide in the fields. During the nationwide clampdown on illegal schools last year, the teachers put the students on a rented bus and drove them into the countryside, giving lessons as they went.

At eight in the morning, the children stroll into the warehouse singing a Hong Kong pop song: 'Neither fragrant like a flower, nor tall like a tree, I'm just a blade of gra.s.s that people walk past. n.o.body knows it's me . . .' Meili drops her mobile phone into her bag, looks into the mirror hanging from the durian tree, applies a coat of lipstick, then steps into her kitten-heeled shoes and heads off to work up the road that runs along the river. It's Spring Festival next week, and before the holiday starts, she wants to sell off the company's excess stock of transistors, inductors and resistors. A small factory in Hubei has become an important client. The manager is one of the w.a.n.g Suyas with whom she formed an online friendship. This woman always sends cash payment before consignments are dispatched, and has even promised to travel down to Heaven with her five-year-old daughter to pay Meili a visit.

Through the morning mist rising from the river, Meili sees a Bureau of Industry and Commerce van parked further ahead. She turns on her heels, goes to a nearby kiosk and tries to phone the headmaster of the migrant school, Mr Sun, but he's teaching an elementary maths cla.s.s and has switched off his mobile phone. She phones Kongzi, but he's asleep, so she pulls off her shoes, returns to the school as swiftly as she can and tells Mr Sun to take the children out into the fields and hide them in the irrigation channels. As the children file out, she pushes the school bags, exercise books and lunch boxes into a corner and covers them with a black sheet. Then she goes into the yard and rakes out a pile of plastic granules so that the inspectors a.s.sume this is an e-waste warehouse. When Kongzi wakes up, she tells him to join the children in the fields.

Mr Sun reappears in a fl.u.s.tered state. 'Can you take the morning off work today and help us out, Meili? I've ordered a bus. Go to the intersection and flag it down. Here's the driver's business card.'

When Kongzi ushers the children onto the clean bus, he wishes he'd had time to put on his usual suit and tie. The children glance at his mud-splattered shorts and dirty flip-flops, and smirk. He's due to teach a maths cla.s.s and two literacy cla.s.ses this morning, but he has no textbooks with him, nor do most of the children.

'Keep going,' Meili tells the driver, pointing the way with her left hand, which she quickly hides in her pocket, embarra.s.sed by the missing finger. 'Just stick to the quiet roads.' Then she looks over her shoulder at the children, saying, 'How about I teach you a song?' The children cheer and clap. 'All right. This one's called "Waking from a Dream". It's the theme tune for a new TV series you might have seen: I remember you describing Heaven to me, drawing the outline of a house with your finger . . .' Her phone rings. She presses the answer b.u.t.ton. 'Yes, I'm the general manager,' she says. 'Fine. I'll send my a.s.sistant to inspect the goods at midday. And remember, we want hard box packaging . . .'

The bus drives on through a string of quiet villages. Poplars, willows and telegraph poles slice through the view outside the window. When a fresh breeze blows into the bus, Meili knows they've left Heaven Township behind. The bus stops at the edge of the next village. Apart from two figures in the distance and the aerials swaying on the roofs, everything is still. A pale blue banner proclaiming NEW TRENDS IN MARRIAGE AND PROCREATION SPREAD THROUGH THE NATION; FLOWERS OF JOY BLOOM IN EVERY HOUSEHOLD hangs from one end of the village to the other. The long empty road makes Meili nervous. She tells the driver to carry on and stop at the crossroads so that if the police turn up, they'll be able to escape.

Kongzi stands at the front of the bus, opens a textbook he's borrowed from a child and says, 'Turn to Lesson 18, please, and let's read out the story at the bottom of the page. Altogether now: "The Raincoat. Late one night, Premier Zhou Enlai was working feverishly by candlelight when suddenly there was a clap of thunder and a heavy rain began to fall. He immediately ordered his maid to take a raincoat to the man guarding the gate. The maid draped the coat over the guard's shoulders and said: 'Premier Zhou asked me to give this to you, and to remind you that one must never stand under a tree during a thunderstorm.' The guard was so moved by the premier's thoughtfulness that he didn't know what to say."' Kongzi returns the textbook to the child and says, 'Right children, make a list of the new vocabulary.'

Two hours later, the bus turns round and heads back to the school. Meili kneels on her seat and says, 'Don't worry, students. We should be back soon, so you won't miss lunch.' Smells of nitric acid from a workshop outside flow in through the open window.

'Auntie Meili, how come you still haven't given birth to your baby?' asks a boy at the front who has a worm-like bogey dangling from his nose. 'Nannan told me it's been inside you for four years.' A yellow-clawed eagle is embroidered on the front pocket of his red coat.

'I'm waiting for the baby to become legal, so that it can get a residence permit,' she says, thinking on her feet. 'Otherwise it will be like you lot, and won't be allowed to attend a proper school.' She's wearing jeans, a red-and-white-striped shirt and gold earrings today. If she had gla.s.ses on, she'd look like a teacher of a government primary school.

Lulu is sitting next to Nannan. She raises her unblinking goldfish eyes to Meili and says, 'My dad told me my residence permit is fake. Does that mean I won't be able to go to university in Beijing?'

'What's the point of us studying, Teacher Kong, if none of us will be allowed to go to university?' says a chubby boy with hair neatly parted down the middle.

'I want to be a judge when I grow up, and sentence all the family planning officials to death,' says a small boy at the back wearing a blue jacket with a broken zip.

'Don't worry, students,' Kongzi says. 'Mr Sun has applied for authorisation from the Education Department, so with any luck, our migrant school will soon be legal.'

'Teacher Kong, did Confucius get into as much trouble as us when he set up his own schools?' asks a girl with a ponytail, her small eyes darting behind her overgrown fringe.

'Back then, Confucius was an unofficial teacher, just like me,' Kongzi says with a smile, 'but he wasn't treated like a criminal. Anyone could set up their own school. Things may be very different now, but we mustn't lose heart. Every child deserves an education, whether they're recognised by the state or not. We must a.s.sert our rights, or this country will never change.'

'Yes, students, our paths are made as we tread them,' Meili says, rising to her feet. 'We must have the courage to strike out on our own and challenge injustices. On the internet, more and more people are daring to voice criticisms of the One Child Policy. The government is launching campaigns telling young couples that girls are as good as boys that shows they're aware of the millions of baby girls that have been killed because of their evil policies.'

A girl in a black-and-white-checked jacket gets up and says, 'Teacher Meili, I miss my mummy. She works in Zhuhai. After I speak to her on the phone, my grades always go down.'

'Teacher, why are we peasants?' asks a girl in an orange jacket with a white collar.

'Because we were born in the countryside,' Meili replies. 'And if we're born there, our fate is sealed: the authorities deny us free education, housing, medical care and all the other privileges city dwellers enjoy, and through the household registration system and family planning laws they bind us for ever to the land. But we mustn't despair, students. There are 900 million of us. We make up two-thirds of China's population. We can't be kept down for ever. Look how many millions of peasants have already dared to ignore the laws and move to the cities. We're on the move and no one can stop us. I've heard the police no longer bar peasants from boarding trains to the cities. Soon, pregnant women will be able to walk through the streets without fear of being dragged off for an abortion, and peasants will be able to move to any place they wish. The cages that have imprisoned us for so long will topple to the ground, and we will all be treated as legal citizens.'

'Please, Teacher, what is the countryside like?' asks a boy with a flat nose and thin, spa.r.s.e hair. He is the youngest child in the school, and the only one who was born in Heaven Township.

'Look, that's the countryside,' the boy next to him says, pointing his dirty finger at the window.

'Do those farmers have residence permits?' asks the flat-nosed boy.

'Probably,' says an older girl behind him. 'It's just us kids born without permission who aren't allowed to have residence permits we can't even get rural ones.'

A police car overtakes them and screeches to a halt, blocking the road ahead. Two officers step out and climb onto the bus. 'Who's the teacher here?'

'I am,' Meili says, confident that she'll be able to handle the conversation better than Kongzi.

'SARS has broken out in this county,' says one of the officers, whisking a fly from his face. 'Didn't you receive the notification?'

'No,' Meili says, then remembers reading about the disease on the internet. 'Oh, you mean the acute respiratory disease? Yes, of course we were informed. We were told not to go into school, so we've taken the children out on a trip.'

'A strict curfew has been imposed. The instructions were clear. Return to your school immediately. A team from the World Health Organisation is touring China to make sure we're in a fit state to host the Olympics. If they find out we've got SARS here, it will be a disaster, so no one must wear a face mask.'

'Fine, thank you, officers, we'll let everyone else at Red Flag Primary know,' Meili calls out to them as they return to their car.

'Auntie Meili, I need to go to the toilet,' a little boy says, frowning in discomfort.

The boys at the back laugh. 'He's always asking to go to the toilet in cla.s.s, Miss! He never stops drinking that's why. He's always thirsty.'

'Says if he doesn't keep drinking water, he'll die!'

'Be quiet! OK, get out and go behind that tree.' It occurs to Meili that the toilet pit behind the school hasn't been scooped out for months. Back in the village, excrement from the pits was removed regularly, dried and used as fuel, but in Heaven it all goes to waste.

'Why won't the government let us go to their schools?' Nannan asks as the bus sets off again. She's wearing a pink jumper and has her hair sc.r.a.ped back in a tight ponytail. When Kongzi took her to Red Flag Primary on his last day there, she took one look at the orderly rows of desks and bright posters in the cla.s.srooms and said she wished she could stay there for the rest of her life.

'After the Education Department grants us authorisation, our school will be just like their ones,' Kongzi replies. 'We'll get ourselves a tall flagpole, a big entrance lobby, flushing toilets and a canteen. Hey, have you at the back finished writing out the vocab?'

'I thought you wanted us to do the sums,' says the naughtiest boy in the cla.s.s. Kongzi found him smoking in the toilet pit yesterday and gave him a sharp kick in the shins.

'No, I told you to copy the new words from Lesson 17. Rivulet, ocean . . .'

'We'll be back in time for lunch, I promise,' Meili tells a child. 'There'll be rice, vegetables and a soup.' She reaches into her pocket and answers her phone: 'Hi, Cha Na . . . Yes, those Disney DVDs have been selling well. You'd better order some more.'

'Turn over your sheets of paper, everyone,' Kongzi says. 'I'll read out some keywords from the text. Write them down then copy them out ten times. Ready? Illuminate. Green meadows. Serene. Verdant . . .'

Meili stares at the picture of the little girl in pigtails on the cover of the textbook she's holding, then looks outside and sees a large photograph of a missing girl stuck to the side of a pa.s.sing van. On the van's boot is a notice with a telephone number and the message IF YOU FIND OUR DAUGHTER, WE WILL GIVE YOU ALL OUR SAVINGS AND BELONGINGS. Meili feels a stab of sympathy, and instantly thinks of Waterborn.

'I've seen lots of notices like that recently,' says Kongzi, watching the van speed off into the distance. 'I read in the papers that 200,000 children go missing in China every year, and that very few are ever found.' The eucalyptus trees along both sides of the road bask in the midday sun. The pale green leaves at the top look as soft as babies' hands. Kongzi turns round and shouts: 'Dong Ping! How dare you throw that carton out of the window!'

'But I picked it up outside,' the boy in the blue tracksuit says, kicking his legs about, 'so it belongs out there.'

'Oh, just stay still,' Kongzi says impatiently. 'If Confucius were here, he'd slap your hands with a wooden ruler.'

Boys in the seat behind get up and cheer. 'Hit him, Teacher!' one of them shouts. 'Here, you can use this ping-pong bat!'

'Use my hat!'