The infant spirit observes its first incarnation writhe and squirm as the long needle enters its head. When the cold astringent liquid is released into the brain, the spirit sees the cells shiver and contract, and the fetus flail about in the amniotic fluid, pounding Mother's warm uterine walls, then gradually grow weaker and weaker until all that moves is its quivering spine.

'Is this what your mothers brought you into the world for?' Mother cries out to the men. 'To kill babies? Well, you'd better kill me too, while you're about it . . .'

'Good work, Dr Gang!' the woman says. 'You must have been studying me on the sly.'

'It was much simpler than this morning's one. Look, when you press the belly here you can see the head clearly. It was easy to hit the target.'

Ignoring her moans and handling her as roughly as they would a corpse, the doctors part Meili's legs, slide a speculum into her v.a.g.i.n.a, mop up the discharge, then, when the mouth of the cervix is visible, insert a prostaglandin suppository. Meili tries to scream but can produce only a soft sigh. She tries to roll onto her side but, apart from her neck, nothing will move. 'Forgive me, Happiness,' she whispers. 'I couldn't protect you. I'd kill myself if I could, so that we could die together, but my hands and feet are bound . . .' She lifts her head, squeezes her eyes to expel her tears and stares at her belly. A sharp pain shoots through her womb, spreads to her lower back and flows to every part of her body.

'G.o.ddess Nuwa, Mother of Humanity, rescue me!' Mother wails. 'Oh, Father of Darkness-'

'What a fine voice you have,' the man says coldly. 'Your cries won't change anything, though. We've seen it all in this room: vomit, faeces, blood, urine, screaming tantrums. But however much the women curse and resist, they must all surrender their babies to us in the end. You think you can defy the state? Don't waste your breath.'

'When we tied you to this table there were two of you, but when you get off there'll be just one,' a male nurse in a blue hat tells her softly.

'Devils! Animals!' Meili moans. She tries to cross her legs to close her cervix, but all she can feel is her toes clench slightly. The hot air in the room smells of deep-fried sausage. 'May you die without sons or grandsons! May your family lines perish!' Mother cries, drenched in sweat, her lips the colour of frozen meat.

'If you want to leave this room alive, you'd better shut up!' the male nurse says, taking off his blue hat and fanning his face with it.

'Yes, if you don't keep quiet, you'll be responsible for any medical accident that might happen in this room,' says the woman. 'Your womb belongs to the state. Getting pregnant without authorisation is against the law. Argue your case with the government, if you want. Go to America see what they say. China's population control policy has the full support of the United Nations. Do you understand, you ignorant peasant?'

'Doctors have a duty to rescue the dying and heal the wounded, but you-'

'We're professional surgeons. We had well-paid hospital jobs. You think we wanted to come here and operate on you lot? For the measly bonus they give us?'

'If you don't like this job, I'll tell the director to transfer you back home,' says the woman. The men behind her chuckle.

The blood-engorged walls of Meili's womb begin to soften and the cervix is prised apart. She watches blood trickle down her thigh towards the fingers of her left hand, then sees the trickle become a stream which runs along the table's incline and falls onto the floor.

'This imported oxytocin seems to take effect much faster. Look, the membranes have already broken.'

The woman walks round and takes a look. 'What thick black hair it has! Let's use the forceps.'

Meili senses what feels like a hot soldering iron enter her body. When she hears the sound of ripping flesh, in her mind she sees the baby's eyes, ears, throat.

'Mother, help me!' she howls through every strand of her hair. 'Don't come out, my child. Don't come out into this evil world. Stay inside me and we can go to our deaths together . . .' But the forceps continue to press around the baby and yank it from her flesh.

Hearing the baby cry, Meili lifts her head, desperate to catch a glimpse of it.

'It's still alive, the stubborn little thing,' Dr Gang says, holding Happiness by the neck. 'What shall we do with it?' Happiness kicks its little legs about just as it did in the womb. Meili looks at the s.p.a.ce between its legs. It's a boy. She tries with her eyes to reach out to him, but soon all she can see is the colour red.

'Strangle it,' the woman says. 'We'll register it as a stillbirth. Don't wipe its face. Illegal babies aren't ent.i.tled to have their mucus removed. Squeeze the neck here. That's right. Keep squeezing. That's it . . .'

When Happiness's body turns stiff, Dr Gang drops it into a plastic bag as though it were a criminal who's just been dragged from an execution ground.

Meili cranes her neck, straining to catch another glimpse of her son. 'Your mother heard you cry three times, my child. I heard you. Come back to me soon in your next incarnation and I'll give you my milk to drink . . .' She looks up at the doctors, and with no strength left in her voice mutters: 'Murderers, murderers . . .'

'I'm going to miss the afternoon boat and won't get home until ten. I bet my son will sneak off to that d.a.m.n internet cafe . . . Wen, fill this basin with water.'

'They've just done the woman next door as well. Whose name shall I put on the abortion certificate?'

'Guo Ni, the wife of the Road Bureau chief. She gave birth to a second son yesterday. The chief gave the clinic twenty thousand yuan this morning, so we'll all receive a good bonus this month.'

'It's not your son you should be worrying about, Dr Su. I heard your husband visits the sauna house every night on his way home from work. Won't be long before he finds himself a "second wife".'

'You want to break up our marriage? No chance!'

'You don't believe me?' says Dr Gang, pulling off his bloodstained surgical gloves. 'Just wait and see.' He sits on a plastic chair, dangles a sandal from his toes and puts a cigarette in his mouth.

'Stop stirring things up. And go outside if you want to smoke.'

The electric fan overhead circulates the smell of stale blood through the room. Meili's placenta flops onto the metal table like a wet, purple sock.

The woman in white coils the remains of the umbilical cord around her gloved hand and puts the placenta inside a second plastic bag.

'That placenta looks nice and plump.'

'Well, you can't have it. The Party Secretary has already reserved it . . .'

Meili feels as though she's floating on water. Her thoughts become foggy and vague. Like the severed neck of a duck, the hole between her legs drips with dark blood.

When she returns to consciousness, the bulb is still shining and the electric fan still whirring. She remembers the image of Kongzi being forced onto the deck and handcuffed. The girl on night duty is curled up on the desk, fast asleep. Empty intravenous bags hang from a nail next to a clock with stationary hands. The room smells like rotten fish. Suddenly aware that she's lying on the surgical table naked from the waist down, she lifts her limp hands to shield herself and discovers the ropes have been removed. She tries to sit up but can't summon the energy. Her womb feels utterly empty. A jolt of pain shoots through her lower abdomen. Her legs are still leaden and numb. From a radio further down the corridor, a man's voice sings, 'I've just met a beautiful woman with soft arms and dewy eyes . . .'

The girl gets off the desk and rubs her eyes. 'You've woken up, then,' she says to Meili. 'Here once you've signed this form and paid the bill, you can leave.' She takes Meili's pillow and pulls off the case. Meili's left arm is so swollen from the injection that she can't bend it. 'This bag is for you, too,' the girl says. 'There's a free bottle of mineral water inside, four packs of condoms and a contraceptive handbook. Now, please get off the table. I need to wash it.'

After carefully shifting her legs to the side, Meili leans on the girl and lowers her feet to the ground, but as soon as she puts weight on them, her knees buckle. She collapses back onto the table and pulls her dress over her belly. The girl mops up the blood and amniotic fluid that has dripped onto the floor then helps Meili put on her knickers. Meili rolls onto her side, looks down and sees Happiness lying in the plastic bag below. His tiny corpse reminds her of the chickens she used to buy freshly plucked and slaughtered from the village market. He's floating in a shallow pool of fetal and maternal blood, his eyes and mouth wide open.

'Yes, that's your baby,' the girl says, glancing down. 'If you want me to get rid of it, you'll have to sign the form and settle the bill.'

'He's my son. I want to take him with me.'

Suddenly the door swings open and Kongzi charges in, pushing back the officer escorting him. When he sees the blood on Meili's legs he explodes with rage. 'f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d! May your family line perish! You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d-'

'Swear at me again and I'll strangle you,' the officer barks.

The girl hands Kongzi the bill. 'It's all itemised,' she says. 'Two hundred and ten yuan for the intrauterine injection, 160 for the anaesthetic, 190 for miscellaneous expenses which is the fee for disposing of the corpse then there's laundry, labour. It comes to a total of 775 yuan. The usual fee for an eighth-month termination is 1,400 yuan, so you've been given a 50 per cent discount. I'd pay up and leave, if I were you. If you haven't gone by midnight, you'll be charged an extra thirty yuan for the room. You can take the form home and fill it out later. Just sign here, agreeing that you, Comrade so-and-so, willingly consented to terminate the pregnancy in accordance with state guidelines, and in so doing have made a glorious contribution to China's population control efforts.'

'You've killed our baby,' Kongzi says, red with anger. 'And now you want us to give you money and sign forms?'

'Forget about the form if you want,' says the officer, 'but next time the Family Planning Commission arrests you, you'll be sorry.'

'Let's pay the money and leave, Kongzi,' Meili says, leaning down and picking up the plastic bag with both hands.

'You can't take the baby with you,' the officer says. 'It's against the rules. Throw it in the bin. What do you want a dead baby for, anyway?'

'We have a right to take our child away,' Kongzi says. He takes a wad of cash from his trouser pocket, hands it to the girl and signs the form.

'I warn you,' says the officer. 'We're in the Three Gorges Epidemic Prevention Zone. If you dare bury that baby anywhere around here, you'll be arrested and fined.'

'Arrest me then, arrest me!' Kongzi shouts. Two security guards appear, seize Kongzi by the arms and fling him out onto the street. Clutching the plastic bag, Meili carefully dismounts the table and hobbles out of the room, leaning against the walls for support. As soon as she leaves the main entrance, she crumples to her knees. Kongzi rushes over and pulls her up.

'Get lost now, you vagrant sc.u.m!' the officer shouts as they walk away.

A man on a motorbike pulls up and says, 'Five yuan a trip. I'll take you anywhere. Are you coming?'

Kongzi tries to help Meili onto the back seat. 'I can't get on,' she cries. The blood clots clogging her v.a.g.i.n.a have begun to harden, and she's terrified she'll haemorrhage if she opens her legs. Gently, Kongzi lifts her left leg and moves it over the back seat. Squealing softly, Meili lowers herself onto the seat. Her face turns deathly white. 'Does it hurt?' Kongzi asks, sitting down behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. 'No, no,' she hisses through her teeth. 'Let's go back to the boat.' She closes her eyes and rests her head on the driver's back. 'Did you leave Nannan alone?' she asks Kongzi. 'What if she's fallen overboard?' The motorbike drives down the broken mountain road. No matter how hard Meili is jolted, her hand remains fiercely clamped around the plastic bag on her lap.

KEYWORDS: newly hatched carp, water heaven, red dress, frozen blood, funeral song.

KONGZI STARES AT an object floating down the river, wondering whether it's a dead fish, a piece of straw or a chopstick. He's turned off the ignition and allowed the boat to be dragged downstream by the current. Gra.s.sy embankments and scatterings of mud houses slide swiftly by. The side winds nudging the boat off course smell of the factory effluent flowing into the river from large waste pipes.

Meili is lying on her front on the side deck, staring at the pa.s.sing hills and bamboo forests, her left leg trailing in the water. The deep still river is as blue and transparent as the sky. Nannan splashes some water onto Meili's head and cries, 'Look, Mum! You have flowers on your hair!' Then she ties a piece of string around her plastic doll and lets it trail in the water as well. The doll's red dress fans out like a pool of blood. Meili closes her eyes and hears her grandmother wailing a funeral song: 'My darling child, like a newly hatched carp that leaps from its pond for the first time only to fall into the jaws of a cat, you have entered the netherworld before your first tooth has appeared. The mother and father you've left behind weep in misery . . .' Meili grew up listening to her grandmother's grief-stricken wails. They planted inside her a seed which has grown into a tree that supports her spine, pelvis, ribs and every fibre of her flesh. She wants to sing a line from the lament, but all she can do is cry: 'Mother, Mother, oh Mother . . .' She puts her arms around Nannan and, unable to cry out, breaks into sobs, her back rising and falling, rising and falling, like a rag tumbling over a wave.

'Your face has too much crying, Mummy,' Nannan says, edging away. Against the green shorts she's wearing, her tanned legs look as dark as soy sauce.

A long time later, Kongzi puts on his black vest, steers towards the middle of the river and drops anchor. Then he picks up the plastic bag containing Happiness's corpse, places a brick inside and ties the top with string.

'Wait!' Meili says. She opens her cloth bag and takes out the little hat, vest and pair of shorts she knitted for Happiness. 'Put these inside too,' she says to Kongzi, handing them to him.

'Why my brother dead, Mummy?' Nannan asks, pressing her small hand on Meili's sunken belly.

'The bad people took him out before he was ready,' Meili answers. She thinks of the anxiety and nightmares she's endured since their flight from Kong Village, and realises that in this country there is not one roof under which she can live in safety. In the past, she ignored Kongzi whenever he described the horrors of the Tiananmen Ma.s.sacre, the Cultural Revolution, the Campaign against Lin Biao and Confucius. Only now does she fully understand that, in the eyes of the Communist Party, she is but a criminal whom they can torture as they please, a woman who doesn't even have the right to be a mother to her unborn child.

'But I not want him dead, Mummy,' Nannan cries, pointing to the plastic bag. 'I want him moving. You said you give me brother.'

Against the pallor of her face, Meili's lips are the colour of dark plums. After returning to the boat, she slept for two entire days, still leaking clots of blood. In her sleep, she could hear Nannan crying out to her and feel Kongzi place fresh wads of paper inside her knickers or pieces of banana into her mouth. When she woke, she saw blood on her dress, on the bamboo mat, and even under Nannan's fingernails.

A swarm of flies crouch on the canopy like a squad of family planning officials.

In the twilight, a sand-dredging vessel sails past, leaving a trail of gleaming foam that makes the surrounding water appear wetter and heavier.

'I finished,' Nannan says, lifting her bare bottom in the air and peering down into her potty.

Mother wipes Nannan's bottom and hugs her tightly. 'Your brother had a sad fate, Nannan. He must go to heaven now. Say goodbye to him.' Her eyes are two narrow slits between lids red and swollen from crying.

'But heaven in the sky. Why you put brother in water heaven? He can swim? He going swim to Sea Dragon's palace?'

'No, your brother just wants to have a long sleep,' Mother says. 'Kongzi, put Happiness into the river.'

Mother flops onto her stomach again and lies on the deck with her long hair over her eyes, her swollen left arm outstretched towards the bow. Two ducks stick their heads out of the bamboo cage below and stare at the darkening water and sky. 'Wait,' Mother calls out. 'Drive back to the bank and pick some osmanthus.'

The infant spirit can hear the sounds from that evening, but can't see the images clearly as the sky is not yet pitch black. The river is calm. All that can be heard is the dull thud of the propeller churning through the water. After a short absence, Father returns to the boat holding three branches of osmanthus. He drives the boat back to the middle of the river, threads the branches through the string knot of the plastic bag then gently lowers the bag into the water. The infant spirit plummets to the riverbed and watches the bag descend.

'Look at that leaf, Mummy,' Nannan says. 'It swimming.'

Once the water burial is finished, Kongzi sails back to the bank and drops anchor. 'Let's spend the night here,' he says, crouching down and staring out at the smooth surface of the river.

The night thickens and the river turns black. Happiness and the osmanthus flowers have vanished. The flies have gone. In the candlelight, Meili sees Nannan's doll floating in the river, one arm outstretched. After soaking in the water all day, its red dress has turned the colour of frozen blood, and its eyes a more intense blue. Its yellow hair streams and scatters around the shiny plastic face.

Meili feels milk begin to leak from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She leans over the side of the boat and squeezes it out. Drip, drip, drip . . . The river opens its mouth and swallows.

KEYWORDS: sand island, National Day, forced abortion, blood clot, pota.s.sium permanganate.

BEFORE NIGHTFALL, KONGZI anchors the boat near a jetty that juts out over the river beneath a munic.i.p.al rubbish dump. Other ramshackle boats and barges are tethered nearby, each one crammed with scavenged plastic crates, sofa cushions and lampshades. Chickens, ducks and children are scampering over the muddy sh.o.r.e while above them foragers pick their way over the dump's broken bricks and tiles. The buildings on the hill behind are festooned with National Day celebration banners and flags. It looks like a sizeable county town.

Meili sees a woman in the next boat washing spinach, and reminds Kongzi that they've run out of rice.

'I'll go up to the town and buy some,' he says. 'And I'll buy some soap as well, so you can wash in the river this evening.' Kongzi hasn't earned any money since he paid the abortion fee, and only has fifty yuan left.

'No, I don't want to wash.' Meili still can't bring herself to touch the river in which Happiness is buried. Her body is filthy and covered in insect bites, but at least the swelling on her left arm has subsided, and she can now bend it again.

'I want play with them, Daddy,' Nannan says, pointing to some children in a cabbage field who are poking a flock of chickens with bamboo sticks. The ducks in the cage on the side of the boat ruffle their wings, desperate to be let out onto the river.

Kongzi ties the boat to a broken slab of concrete, picks Nannan up into his arms and crosses the dump, heading for the town.

Meili turns round and sees a long sand island in the middle of the river. A jumble of houseboats, as dilapidated as theirs, lie anch.o.r.ed by the sh.o.r.e. Children are playing hide-and-seek among the bushes and babies are lying asleep on car tyres. Colourful laundry hangs from cables strung between trees, giving the place a homely air. She can tell at a glance that the islanders are fellow family planning fugitives and, suspecting that they club together to bribe local officials into leaving them alone, thinks it might be safer if they joined them. She wouldn't want to stay long, though. Once they've crossed Guangxi Province, they'll reach Guangdong, and be able to make their way to Heaven Township. For the first time since her abortion, she allows her hand to touch her hollow belly. A taste as foul as rotting vermin rises into her mouth. She senses that death is lurking somewhere deep within her, cold and implacable. Her abdomen cramps as another blood clot is expelled from her womb. She remembers her friend Rongrong's sallow face wince as she swallowed the bitter herbal medicine for her pelvic disease, and feels frightened and far from home.

At night, the river is tranquil, apart from the occasional dog bark or squealing of a baby. The roar that flows from the distant motorway makes the trees tremble but doesn't stir the boats. Meili rests her head on a baby mattress she found on the dump and hugs a hot-water bottle, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s beneath her white shirt drooping to either side. The kerosene lamp casts an orange light over her neck and face. 'Let's moor by the sand island for a few days, Kongzi,' she says. 'This river is so broad and winding I've lost track of where we are.'

'We've left the Yangtze and have followed the Gui River into Guangxi Province. This town is called Xijiang. Guangdong is just over there in the east. All right, let's stay here and rest for a while. I can pick up some work and we can search the dump for things to sell. The shops here aren't expensive. Peanut oil is four yuan a bottle, and rice is just 3.2 yuan a jin. Diesel and kerosene are quite reasonable too.'

Although Meili can eat now, she still suffers bouts of acute abdominal pain. 'The days are like water,' she says to Kongzi. 'They stretch out before me but I can't hold them in my hands.' Before supper, Kongzi poured some boiled water into a basin for her. She scrubbed her hands and face with soap and, for the first time since the abortion, washed between her legs as well then disinfected the area with pota.s.sium permanganate.

'You mustn't give way to despair,' Kongzi says to her. 'We'll have another child. We won't give up.' He opens the bottle of rice wine he bought at a stall near the motorway and pours himself a gla.s.s. A white cruise ship pa.s.ses in the distance, a red flag tied to the mast. A couple on the back deck stand locked in an embrace beneath a loudspeaker blaring out 'Ode to our Motherland': 'Our beloved nation is rich and powerful. Signs of prosperity are all around us . . .'

'Why don't we just go home and hand ourselves over to the authorities?' Meili says. 'If we show them the abortion certificate, perhaps they'll drop the fine. Life here is no safer than anywhere else. I've had enough . . .'

'The certificate wasn't stamped, so it's not valid . . . Oh, it's all my fault. We should have left Sanxia as soon as we bought the boat. Rivers are our country's arteries. As long as we keep following them, we'll eventually reach the heart a mystical haven where we can live in peace.'

'You think we'll find anywhere more mystical than Nuwa Cave? As soon as I placed my hand on it, I fell pregnant with Nannan. Women from Nuwa aren't destined to have sons. You'd better accept our fate.' Happiness's asphyxiated face suddenly flashes before her eyes. She leans over and extinguishes the lamp. 'Besides, I can't go through another illegal pregnancy and forced abortion. Do you want to see me die?'

'Of course not. You're my wife. But we have a right to try again for a son.' Kongzi slaps his arm, trying to swat a mosquito. Then he stares into the darkness, at the mosquito's fluttering wings, perhaps, or a remembered image of Happiness's corpse.

'We have no rights, you stubborn fool! Only the state can decide whether I have another child or not. Pull the curtains down. I'm cold.' As the darkness thickens around her, Meili feels her heartbeat slow down and her hearing become more acute.

Kongzi takes a last drag from his cigarette and says, 'The b.l.o.o.d.y Communists have destroyed Confucius's legacy. Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom all the values he upheld have gone. If a panda gets pregnant, the entire nation celebrates. But if a woman gets pregnant she's treated like a criminal. What kind of country is this?' He tosses his stub into the river then sits silently, his eyes darting about. When it becomes too dark to see a thing, he lowers his head and lets out a guttural cry of misery. 'My son, my son! Make your way back to us. "Summer wildfires cannot destroy the gra.s.s, For in spring, soft winds will restore it to life . . ." I cannot believe that in this immense country there is no s.p.a.ce for my male descendant.'

Kongzi's brother, three years his senior, also has one daughter, but didn't register her in Kong Village in case they had a second child before she turned five. But a fellow villager who worked on his construction team in Wuhan reported him to the village police, so now neither his daughter nor any second child they might have will be granted a residence permit. Kongzi and his brother look almost identical. The brother left home ten years ago to work in Wuhan, and when he returned every Spring Festival with bundles of cash, Kongzi, the poorly paid school teacher, always felt inferior. The village school had so little money that parents had to buy the children's desks and Kongzi had to provide his own. His brother paid for their wedding, spending five thousand yuan on a banquet for eighty guests and entertainment provided by the local song-and-dance troupe. He doesn't enjoy conversation or reading books. When he returns to the village, he sits in front of the television all day, chain-smoking. Kongzi would love to talk to him now, but knows that if he mentioned the family's need to produce a male heir, he'd be met with a blank silence. Kongzi is still convinced that only a son will bring him happiness. If his brother fails to produce one, the responsibility to continue the family line will fall on him. His brother's wife is almost forty, so time is running out. Kongzi hasn't dared phone his father and tell him that Meili was subjected to a forced abortion, and that the baby was a boy. Nor has he dared tell Meili that after they fled the village, his father was arrested and locked up for a week, and that because Meili didn't turn up for her mandatory IUD insertion, his mother was forcefully fitted with one instead.

Nannan rouses from her sleep, kicks off her blanket and crawls blindly onto Kongzi's lap.

'Go back to your mat, Nannan,' Kongzi says, pushing her away.

'I frightened of Sea Dragon he hiding here,' Nannan says, pointing to her head. Before she went to sleep, Kongzi told her a story about a fairy called Flower Girl who was imprisoned by the Sea Dragon and rescued by the Bodhisattva of Mercy.

'Don't be silly,' Kongzi replies. 'The Sea Dragon died a long time ago.'

'You said after my brother dead, he wake up again.'