Smells of fish and duck s.h.i.t begin to rise from the ground. The ducks in the pen preen their feathers and ruffle their wings. Meili sniffs the stale sweat on her skin and longs for a shower or a bath. She knows that although the town's public bathhouse doubles as a brothel, it has warm pools in which visitors can bathe for just six yuan if they bring their own soap and towel. She hasn't dared go there yet, as she hates the thought of having to undress in front of strangers. The river has been too cold for bathing. But winter is over now. She grits her teeth and steps in up to her ankles. The cold refreshes and invigorates her; her feet transmit forgotten memories to her brain. She feels fully awake, conscious of the beating of her heart and the ticking of each pa.s.sing second. She wades deeper into the river and feels the coldness dragging her further into her past. She is aware of being, at the same time, both a woman and child: her daughter's mother and her mother's daughter. She remembers the day twenty years ago, during the osmanthus-blossom season, when she accompanied her mother to the dentist to have her molar capped, and realises that she is now as old as her mother was then, and that in another twenty years she'll be as old as her mother is now, and that all that will await her after that will be old age and decrepitude . . . As her thoughts begin to freeze, she glances over her shoulder and sees the ducks force their way out of the pen and wade into the shallow water.

Kongzi rolls out of the shelter and rinses his mouth. Meili walks up to the stove, opens a bag of slops she bought from a restaurant yesterday and ladles some into the bucket of duck feed. A large container ship shrouded in diesel smoke chugs past, blasting its horn. The huge wake it leaves behind surges onto the beach, floods the shelter then recedes, taking Meili's flip-flops with it. Meili goes into the shelter to brush her teeth, but discovers that her toothbrush has been washed away as well.

As usual, during the few minutes before dusk, the wind drops and the river becomes calm. Kongzi is sitting at the bow of their boat, gazing at the ducks and the back of Meili's neck as she stands knee-deep in the river, her skirt hitched up to her waist. In her rippling reflection, her skin is the same colour but her white skirt is slightly darker. Nannan lies in the cabin, gazing at her plastic doll in the red dress and singing a nonsense song she's made up: 'A-da-li-ya, wah wah! . . .' A golden, late-spring haze spreads over the river, making the watery landscape resemble a blurred and muted colour photograph.

By the time Kongzi walks down the beach with the bucket of shredded cabbage for the ducks' last feed, the evening sun is so low in the sky that his silhouette is dragged halfway across the river. With sudden alarm he notices six or seven ducks being swept downstream. He wades into the river, scrambles onto the boat, and tries to shoo them back towards the beach with the long bamboo pole. In the commotion, the boat becomes untethered and it too starts to drift downstream. Kongzi turns on the engine and drives it back to its mooring, while Meili chases after the errant ducks and tosses pebbles at their heads to encourage them to swim back. The ducks shake their wings in a fl.u.s.ter, splashing water into the air.

'Call them back, Kongzi!' Meili shouts.

'"What pa.s.ses is just like this, never ceasing day or night . . ."' Kongzi yells, quoting a line from the a.n.a.lects as he gazes with excitement at the current. 'Don't worry, Meili, I'll put some food on the beach. That'll bring them back.' He leaps off the boat, making it rock so violently that Nannan is knocked onto her side. Meili strides further into the water, positions herself in front of the ducks and with open arms shoos them back. At last, they turn round and swim to the beach, then they shake their feathers dry and wobble off towards Kongzi's bucket.

An hour later, the river sinks into darkness and the island becomes shrouded in a cold dank mist. The kerosene lamp shines on Kongzi's and Chen's weathered faces.

'Beautifully recited, my friend,' Kongzi says, then swigging some beer stares at Meili's backside as she bends over the stove. 'Now let's hear another one.'

Chen crashed his boat into a ship last week, and it will take a month to repair. After Nannan burnt her foot, he bought her a new pair of flip-flops. 'All right,' he says. 'I'll try "Feelings on a River in Early Winter", by Meng Haoran. Here goes: "Trees shed their leaves, wild geese fly south. / Rivers shiver in the north wind. / My home is far away, at a bend of River Xiang / In the Land of Chu, high above the clouds. / A melancholy vagrant, whose tears have run dry, / I fix my gaze on a solitary boat at the edge of the sky. / Having drifted off course, I long to find my way home. / Before me stretch the flat sea and the endless night." Ah, I remembered every line! You really are a fine tutor. Would you consider teaching my daughters as well?' Chen has a gold tooth which at night always glints in the lamplight.

'Yes, I could give them lessons every morning. They may be black children with no residence permits or legal status, but you must think of their futures. At the very least, they should learn to read and write.'

'How lucky we are to be able to rub shoulders with a scholar of your calibre a descendant of Confucius, no less! Come, a toast to you, my friend!' Chen's face crinkles into a broad smile. As he munches one of the deep-fried silkworm pupae he's brought, a pungent yeasty smell fills the air around him.

'Teachers are the least respected and most poorly paid members of society,' Kongzi says. 'Chairman Mao called us the "stinking Ninth category". But teaching is my vocation. I don't care about the money. As Confucius said, "A n.o.ble man should seek neither a full belly nor a comfortable home."'

'Why you not a doctor, Dad?' asks Nannan, stroking her doll's red dress.

'Because I wanted to be a teacher, and I'm too old to change professions now.'

'Wen's cat died today. You must make it better. When I had big burn, you made my foot better.'

'You're right, Kongzi our pockets may be empty but our will is strong,' says Chen. 'When our children grow up, they can find jobs in factories that provide free food and lodging. They won't have to live like tramps any more.' Since he crashed his boat, Chen has been going over to the town every day to look for work. Kongzi has been busy as well. This morning he hauled a cargo of asbestos to a Sino-Hong Kong flagstone factory three kilometres away.

The island has suffered many disruptions this week. River police, munic.i.p.al police and family planning officers have turned up repeatedly to check boat licences, residence permits and birth permits. Two days ago, Bo and Juru and Dai and Yiping packed their bags and left. Kongzi now uses their abandoned shelters as supplementary duck pens.

Meili clears away the bowls and chopsticks and says to the men, 'You stay here and chat. I'll go and sleep in the cabin.'

'The G.o.ds haven't favoured us,' Kongzi sighs, watching Meili hitch up her skirt and wade over to the boat, her bottom swaying from side to side. 'I still haven't managed to get her knocked up.'

'I just hope our one will be a boy,' Chen says. His wife Xixi is due to give birth to their third child any day now.

'Meili was born in the birthplace of G.o.ddess Nuwa,' Kongzi says. 'The Yin forces of the area are too strong. Every name has a female connotation: 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 ma.s.sacring 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 tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses. 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 p.e.n.i.s 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 gla.s.ses,' 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.'

They sail to the island, leave Nannan and the ducks in Xixi's care, then set off for Yinluo. 'I'm a teacher as well, as it happens,' Kongzi says, crouching down next to the man.

As the boat moves downstream, a cool breeze blows through the hot air and rustles the tarpaulin canopy. Meili stands at the stern, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding down the back of her cotton dress so that it doesn't fly up in the wind. She wonders why the man's mother chose to drown herself. Back in Nuwa Village, a few women killed themselves by jumping into a well and one or two hanged themselves from trees, but most women committed suicide by drinking pesticides.

'. . . I've been searching the Xi River for ten days, but haven't seen any sign of her,' the man says. 'I was told that near Yinluo there's a stagnant backwater where bodies often wash up.' Meili glances at the man through the corner of her eye. Although his face is grimy and his hair dusty and unkempt, he has a distinguished air about him. He pulls off his round tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses and mops the sweat from his brow.

'Yinluo's not too far,' Kongzi says, taking the cigarette the man offers him. 'We should get there in two hours.'

The man has relaxed a little. He looks no older than forty. He's wearing sports sandals that have labels printed with foreign letters. His grey shorts are mud-splattered and his white shirt has a frayed collar and ink stains, but together they still look quite stylish.

'Why did your mother drown herself?' Kongzi asks bluntly.

'She was diagnosed with breast cancer. The hospital treatment was going to cost a thousand yuan a day. She knew that we're struggling to find the money for my son's university fees, and she didn't want to drain our resources.'

Kongzi's eyes widen. 'So your son has got into university?'

'Yes, we slaved for two years helping him prepare for the exams. He's the only student in our county who's been offered a place. Such glory he's brought to our ancestors! But the fees have risen to eighteen thousand yuan this year, and my salary is just five thousand. Still, I'm determined to raise the cash. I'm planning to give up teaching and look for a factory job in Shenzhen. When the acceptance letter arrived, I showed it to my mother, and she drowned herself that very afternoon.'

'Did anyone see her jump? Perhaps she's just gone travelling.'

'She left a will and a letter instructing me not to search for her body. She said if we found it we'd have to pay for a cremation, and she'd rather we put all our money towards my son's fees. She left her keys on the kitchen table.'

Upset by the man's story, Meili pushes down the throttle handle to accelerate.

'So she chose to drown herself, rather than hang or gas herself, just to save you the thousand-yuan cremation fee!' Kongzi exclaims. 'The government is shameless, trying to make money from corpses. The poor can't even afford to die these days!'

'I don't care how much it costs. I must find her body and give her a decent burial. If I don't, how will I be able to look my descendants in the eye?' He lowers his bloodshot eyes. The sweat on his face evaporates in the breeze.

'If no one saw her jump, she's technically a missing person,' Kongzi says. 'Why don't you contact the river police and ask them to help you look for her?'

'I've spoken to them. They told me a person must be missing for one month before they can open a case, and she's only been gone for ten days. They won't help. Here, brother, have another cigarette.'

'No, I couldn't. They're a top brand. Must have cost you a fortune.'

'Don't worry. The Education Board gives us two packs a month. It's some shady deal they've cooked up with the tobacco company. They deduct the cost from our salary, whether we smoke them or not. What's your name, brother? Mine is Weiwei.'

'I'm Kong Lingming,' Kongzi says, the wind blowing in his face. 'The problem is, if the river police did agree to follow up the case, they'd probably just send a few messages out to local police stations. They wouldn't dispatch a search party unless you paid them a huge bribe.'

'That's why I've come to search for her myself.' Then he raises his head and looks Kongzi in the eye. 'So, Mr Kong Lingming, I presume from your name that you're a seventy-sixth generation descendant of the great sage. It's an honour to make your acquaintance. We have a Kong in our county too, from the seventy-fifth generation. He's a deputy to the National People's Congress.'

'Yes, I am a descendant but I'm having to live like a tramp now so that I can continue my ill.u.s.trious line,' Kongzi says, embarra.s.sed by his lowly circ.u.mstances.

Green forested mountains begin to tower on both sides. Meili gazes up at the peaks then down at their reflections plunging into the river. She breathes in the green light and feels her mind clear. There are no villages or towns in sight. She closes her eyes and lets the peace and calm wash over her.

'Why not make a television appeal to see if anyone saw her jump?' Kongzi suggests, trying to keep the conversation going.

'I tried. My brother works for the local TV station. He asked his bosses to air an appeal, but they refused to. They've had to broadcast so many appeals for missing children and women recently, they've decided to stop offering the service. I printed hundreds of notices and stuck them on street corners, but no one's responded. There's no official organisation that can help me. I'm all on my own.' He wipes a tear from his eye.

'Don't get upset. It's not our fault we were born into a dynasty that prevents men performing their filial duty.' Since Kongzi lost his spectacles, he's been wearing a pair of cheap brown sungla.s.ses that make him look like a shifty hawker of fake medicine in a country market. 'I toiled for years teaching in a village school, for the sake of my country, but what did the government do for me in return? I couldn't even feed my family on the meagre salary they paid me.'

'But you've plunged into the sea of commerce now, and become a private entrepreneur. I envy your freedom!' Weiwei rubs his goatee, then brings out from his bag a photograph of his mother which a strong gust almost blows from his hands.

Kongzi takes the photograph and studies it in the shade of the canopy. 'What a lovely lady she looks,' he says. 'You wouldn't guess she was ill.'

Feeling the wind blow the back of her dress towards Weiwei's shoulder, Meili pulls it down and stuffs it between her legs.

'We've entered Fengkai County now,' Weiwei says. 'Look up there. That's Yearning for the Spouse's Return Rock, one of Xi River's eight scenic sites.' He swigs back some lemonade from the bottle Kongzi gave him and points to a leaning stack of rocks on the summit of a green mountain.

'Is it a wife yearning for her husband or a husband yearning for his wife?' Meili asks him, squinting up at it. The engine is chugging so loudly now, she has to shout to be heard.

'A wife yearning for her husband, of course,' Kongzi says, before Weiwei has a chance to reply. 'In the past, the men went travelling and the women always stayed at home.' Meili is annoyed that Kongzi b.u.t.ted in she wanted to hear Weiwei speak. Kongzi turns to him and says, 'When we fled the village, we never thought that two years later, we'd still be on the run. We imagined the rivers would be safe, but they're almost as heavily policed as the roads. So-called Boat Safety Inspection Posts have popped up all along Xi River. The inspectors couldn't care less how safe your boat is, all they want is your money. If they stop you, they'll confiscate your licence unless you pay fees of two hundred yuan.'

Meili pulls a white T-shirt over her sleeveless dress, and feels more comfortable now that her hairy armpits are concealed. With her free hand she rearranges the sachets of washing powder, magazines and bamboo fans behind her into a neat pile.

'How much did this boat cost you?' Weiwei asks.

'Oh, about ten thousand yuan,' Kongzi lies, wanting to impress him.

'And business is going well?' Weiwei's gaze shifts to Meili who is now clutching the steering wheel with both hands, the wind rippling through her hair.

'The money isn't great. Small boats like this can only take heavy cargo short distances. Most of the time, I deliver fake goods that registered boats are too afraid to touch. And the price of diesel keeps rising. I get through forty yuan of it a day.'

'Have you thought of taking up fishing?' Weiwei says, still looking at Meili. 'You could open a crab and shrimp stall on the banks.'

'The river's become so polluted, there are hardly any fish left. Most of the fishermen round here have abandoned their nets and gone to find jobs in the cities. Ah! What a beautiful stretch of the river this is. It brings to mind that Song Dynasty poem: "Clouds appear to drift beneath the moving boat / The empty water is clear-"'

'"-I gaze up, gaze down, and wonder whether / Beneath the lake's surface, another Heaven exists,"' Weiwei interrupts, completing the quatrain. He looks to the right and points to a mountain peak. 'See that white sculpture at the top? That's the mythical Dragon Mother.'

'She's so beautiful,' Meili gasps. 'But she looks like an angel or a G.o.ddess, not a mother.'

'But mothers can be beautiful as well just look at you!' Weiwei says with a smile. Meili looks away bashfully and blurts out the first thing that enters her mind. 'So, is the Dragon Mother a dragon herself, or a human being who's a mother of dragons?'

'She's a local deity,' Weiwei replies, 'a G.o.ddess of rain, mothers and children. The legend goes that as a baby she was put on a wooden tray and cast off by her parents into the Xi River, then found and raised by a fisherman. When she grew up, she was able to control the floods. The people in this area call anyone with supernatural powers a dragon.'

Meili feels sick at the thought of a mother abandoning her baby. She imagines waves rolling over the baby's head and its tiny body sinking to the riverbed. She looks up again at the Dragon Mother's sparkling white figure, and the golden temple and bamboo grove behind it. Tourists appear to be crawling up the narrow path to the summit like an army of wriggling maggots.

As the boat approaches Yinluo, the river widens and divides, with a backwater branching off to the right. The dark water appears stagnant, but plastic bottles and polystyrene boxes are moving sluggishly across its surface. Shacks built from broken doors and plastic sheeting are dotted among the long gra.s.s at the far end. The warm evening breeze smells of rot and decay.

'This must be the place I was told about,' Weiwei says, gripping the canopy.

Meili steers to the right and advances with care. The water grows shallower and the engine begins to rumble and spew blue smoke into the air. Kongzi moves to the bow and darts from side to side, prodding his bamboo pole into the riverbed to check the depth. When they reach an expanse of floating rubbish that seems impa.s.sable, Meili slows the boat to a crawl. She tries veering to the right but Kongzi shouts out, 'No, we'll never make it to the bank this way,' so she steers in the other direction and, after a while, finds a cleared channel that leads to the sh.o.r.e. A man walks out of one of the shelters and stares at them. Clouds of crows and mosquitoes hover overhead, making the grey sky look dark and soiled.

'Are you a corpse fisher, my friend?' Weiwei shouts to the man as they draw closer. 'I'm looking for my mother.'

'When did she drown?' the man asks, walking to the sh.o.r.e. He's wearing black trousers and a white vest, and is fanning his face with a straw hat.

'Ten days ago,' Weiwei answers, rubbing his goatee anxiously.

'Only three women have washed up here this week. How old was your mother?'

'Sixty-five.'

'Those three are much younger than that. One is naked from the waist down. Her hands and feet are bound with rope and her toenails are painted red.'

'And the other two?' Weiwei asks plaintively.

'The oldest looks no more than forty. Dark blue trousers, purple jacket, bare feet.'

'Purple jacket? Let me see her.'

Meili turns off the engine and Kongzi punts the boat to the sh.o.r.e.