'I must warn you, comrade, it will cost you 150 yuan to look at the corpse, and three thousand if you want me to dredge it out and arrange for a van to deliver it to your home. My fees are the lowest, though. That guy up there will charge you two hundred to look at the corpse. But he's a crook. Unlike me, he can read, so he scans the newspapers' missing persons notices, phones the families and tells them to come here, knowing very well he doesn't have the bodies they're looking for. I'd never do that. I have principles.'

'You must make a fortune!' Kongzi says. 'A hundred and fifty yuan just to look? That's robbery! This boat only cost me three thousand.' Kongzi bites his lip, remembering that he told Weiwei it cost him much more.

'No one gets rich from this trade. Only five or six families a year turn up here looking for dead relatives, and we have to buy all the rope and plastic sacks ourselves. There are four of us fishing corpses, and none of us have made much money. If you don't believe me, go and ask them.'

'Does the woman in the purple jacket have grey hair?' asks Weiwei, scrutinising the man's face.

'A few grey hairs, perhaps. Not many. See, I'm an honest man. If you'd asked Chang, he would've lied to you.'

'All right, let me see her. Where is she?'

'All the bodies are tethered to poles under the floating rubbish. But I can't show you the woman in the purple jacket. She belongs to Chang. We stick to the rules here. He's gone into town today. He'll be back tomorrow.'

Kongzi whispers to Weiwei that they should speak to the other corpse fishers, then in a louder voice asks the man if there's a police station nearby.

'Yes, a station was opened near here a couple of years ago,' he answers. 'The police used to pay us a hundred yuan to pull out the bodies, then would take them away to be cremated. But so many bodies washed up last year, the police couldn't cope. For a while, they'd still come once a week, to photograph the corpses and cut locks of hair. But money is tight now, and they've stopped coming altogether. So we have to rely entirely on people like you for our income.'

Weiwei and Kongzi climb the littered bank towards shelters further up, pinching their noses from the stench.

'Stinks, doesn't it?' the corpse fisher shouts out to them, putting on his straw hat. 'It's not easy living here, I tell you!'

They come to a shelter surrounded by heaps of plastic bottles. A man steps out, holding a can of c.o.ke.

'h.e.l.lo, my friend,' Weiwei says. 'I'm looking for my mother. She's sixty-five, with grey hair. Have you seen any bodies like that recently? Here, have a smoke.' He hands the man a cigarette and searches his pocket for a lighter.

'I saw an old woman's corpse bobbing on the water yesterday, but it was bloated and decayed.'

Kongzi glances back at the man they just spoke to, annoyed that he made no mention of this body to them.

'How long would it take for a corpse to reach that state?' Kongzi asks.

'I'm not in the business, but I should think three weeks at least, a bit less if crabs have got to it. Old Gui down there keeps his bodies under the rubbish for six months. If no one comes to claim them, he drags them back to the river and lets the current sweep them away. But by then they're unrecognisable.'

'So you don't keep any corpses yourself?' asks Kongzi, stepping back from a c.o.c.kroach he sees crawling towards his feet.

'No, no! That work would give me nightmares. Every morning, the corpse fishers row out into the floating rubbish to check if any bodies have got trapped beneath it during the night. When they come across a patch that smells particularly bad, or has flies hovering above it, they plunge their hooked poles into it, hoping to pull up a body. I don't have the stomach for that.'

'Do you ever get babies washing up here?' Kongzi asks, his mind turning to Happiness.

'Huh! More dead babies wash up here than dead fish! But no families ever come looking for them, so the body fishers leave them to rot on the bank.'

Kongzi whisks the flies from his face and glances at the shacks above.

'Don't bother asking the other guys,' the man says. 'They'll con you out of all your money. I doubt your mother's here. The bodies I've seen recently have been either much older or younger.'

Kongzi and Weiwei return to the boat. Meili is still standing at the stern, her hand clamped over her mouth. 'The stench is unbearable,' she groans as the men step aboard. The brown water below is littered with white polystyrene, empty cans and dead fish. Weiwei stares down dejectedly. 'Perhaps her body has got caught on an anchor, or under a rock on the riverbed, or perhaps it's been swept further downstream and I'll never find it.'

The river and sky are darkening, but the pale swathe of floating refuse is still glowing faintly. Kongzi retreats into the cabin. Meili follows him inside and says, 'I can't stand the smell any longer, and I'm getting bitten to death by the mosquitoes. Let's get out of here.'

'We should give him a bit more time,' Kongzi replies, lighting a cigarette.

'No, I've had enough. I don't care about the money. This place is a floating graveyard. Who knows how many corpses are bobbing under the rubbish?'

'Be quiet you'll upset him,' Kongzi whispers, peeping round the door curtain at Weiwei, who's still leaning overboard staring down at the floating debris. 'Do we have any beer left?' Kongzi asks.

'No,' Meili snaps. She wants to scream out in anger, but doesn't dare open her mouth too wide in case the insects swarming around her fly inside.

'Anything to eat?' Kongzi asks tentatively.

'No, nothing!' Meili shouts.

Kongzi goes out onto the deck and pats Weiwei's trembling shoulders. 'Shall we get going, my friend? If we don't leave this wretched place soon, we'll have to spend the night here.'

'Yes, let's sail upstream and find a better place to anchor,' Meili says, joining them outside. 'It's too late to go home now. Don't worry, we won't charge you any extra for the night.'

Weiwei reluctantly nods in agreement. Meili goes to the stern, presses a towel to her mouth and starts the engine. As the boat sets off, the breeze becomes cooler and fresher. But the backwater's stench has infused her skin, and whenever it drifts up to her nose, she gags. They sail upstream in the dying light, and her eyes fill with tears as she wonders whether Happiness's body is still lying on the bed of the Yangtze, or has been swept down to this backwater as well, and is decaying under the floating rubbish along with all the other rotting corpses.

'After our second child was ripped out of Meili's womb and murdered by the authorities, we gave him a water burial in the Yangtze,' Kongzi tells Weiwei, crushing out his cigarette. 'At least I know now that if he'd washed up here, the corpse fishers would have left him alone.'

Weiwei looks at him, his face seized up in horror, then buries his head into his folded arms and weeps like a child.

Meili steers the boat towards a distant mooring place below a cl.u.s.ter of brick shacks. In the deep dusk, the water's surface has become as smooth as skin, tearing open as the bow cuts through it then sealing up again behind the stern.

KEYWORDS: tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses, greatest good, wet dress, preserved mustard greens, peace of mind.

KONGZI TIES THE boat to a small wooden jetty that is coated in fine cement dust. He looks up and sees a brick shack with a wooden sign that says GOOD FOOD RESTAURANT. A child is squatting down for a s.h.i.t next to a telegraph pole. In a shed close by, an engine is loudly chugging.

They enter the restaurant. Kongzi studies the menu and orders sweet and sour fish, spicy spare ribs, fried string beans and a bottle of rice wine. On a television in the corner, a woman in a flowery dress is singing, 'Your tenderness bewilders me. My fate is loneliness . . .' The food is brought to the table. Meili stares at the darkness outside the window, glancing occasionally at Kongzi and Weiwei whose faces soon turn red from the alcohol.

'Don't give in to despair,' Kongzi tells Weiwei. 'Death is merely a turning off of the lights. Come on, have another drink. And you too, Meili.'

Meili raises her gla.s.s and looks into Weiwei's bespectacled eyes. She a.s.sumes he's abandoned the search, but knows that the thought that his mother's corpse may be lying undiscovered in the river must be torturing him. She notices his filthy collar and wishes she could pull off his shirt and scrub it clean.

Kongzi lifts his eyes to the ceiling and sighs. 'The ancient philosopher, Laozi, said: "The greatest good is like water: it gives life to the ten thousand things, but does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao . . ." But this Xi River doesn't give life. It's a flowing cemetery of bodies, pollution and waste . . .'

'The Taoist philosophers were attempting to come up with principles to govern human conduct,' Weiwei replies. 'But who's interested in principles now? When his mother pa.s.sed away, the Taoist sage, Zhuangzi, beat his drum and laughed. His mother died a natural death, so he could regard it with equanimity. But my mother was driven to her death by a government that has washed its hands of the sick and the poor. I can't help giving in to despair. Since the Tiananmen Ma.s.sacre, this country has lost its conscience. Money is the only religion.' Weiwei puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights up, but chokes at the first puff.

'Don't smoke if you're not a smoker,' Meili says, taking the cigarette from him. She sucks a puff then keeps it held between her fingers, tapping it against an empty cup when the ash becomes too long.

'You're right,' Kongzi says. 'I never dare discuss such things with my wife, but mark my words: one day the official verdict on Tiananmen will be reversed. My old teacher, Mr Zhou, is convinced of it. A toast, Weiwei: "Friends from afar meet but rarely. Let us raise our gla.s.s in joy and drown our sorrows!" Since you didn't find your mother today, we won't charge you anything for this trip. Come on, now. It's not often I get to sit down with a graduate. Let's test our wits. We'll take turns to recite a line of ancient poetry that contains a character connected to water. Whoever slips up must drink a shot.' At the back of the restaurant, two men covered in cement dust are drinking beer. The only light in the room is coming from the single bulb overhead and the glowing television screen. A rusty electric fan on the cashier's desk slowly stirs the air. Mosquitoes and flies flit from the plates of food to one of the six forearms pressed on the table.

'Fine, let's toast the Xi River and give it a go!' Weiwei says. He undoes the top b.u.t.ton of his shirt, then, glancing at Meili, quickly does it up again.

'"The white sun sinks behind the mountain as the Yellow River glides towards the sea,"' Kongzi recites, tapping the line's rhythm on the table.

'"A low ray of sun spreads across the water which is emerald along one side, and red along the other,"' Weiwei chants, rubbing the edges of his tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses.

'I said the line should contain a word with a watery connection, not the word "water" itself. You lose! Drink up!'

'If you insist,' Weiwei sighs, and empties the gla.s.s. 'But next time, if I manage to replace "water" with another word, while retaining the sense, you must let me off.'

'All right, I'll agree to that. Ready? "The bright moon rises from the sea; at different edges of the sky, we admire the same view."'

'"I at the head of the Yangtze River, you at the tail, we drink-"' The next word is "water" but Weiwei stops himself just in time and says, 'No, make that "we mourn our loved ones who rest on the river's bed."'

'A fine line,' Kongzi says, the image striking at his heart. He pauses to wipe a tear from his eye, then continues the game. '"The moon follows the river's waves for ten thousand li; in spring, its radiance overflows the banks."'

'"The mountain pa.s.s is hard to breach; who feels sorrow for the man who has lost his way?" Weiwei says, pushing his gla.s.ses further up his nose.

'No water connotation!' Kongzi shouts out, banging the table. 'You've lost again!'

'But the character "sorrow" contains the water radical on the left.'

'You need two radicals for it to count, I'm afraid. You've definitely lost, brother. Drink up!'

Once the men empty the last dregs from the bottle, Meili whispers to Kongzi that they should return to the boat to sleep. Kongzi ventures out into the dark to find a toilet. Weiwei settles the bill then returns to the table and says to Meili, 'Are you sure you've had enough to eat?'

'Yes, thank you,' she answers, staring at the fish bones on the plates, wondering, with a shudder, whether the fish they've just eaten once fed on the corpse of Weiwei's mother. More flies gather on the plates and crawl over the leftovers.

'You looked so beautiful when you were driving the boat,' Weiwei says. 'Kongzi is a lucky man.' As she looks up at him, he glances out of the window, too embarra.s.sed to meet her gaze, and they hear a loud, grating rumble outside that sounds like a truck emptying rubble onto a boat. Meili's heart begins to thud. This is the first time that any man apart from Kongzi has told her that she's beautiful. Not knowing what to say, she looks down again and stares at the plates and at Weiwei's watch.

'I've put you both to so much trouble today,' Weiwei says, gripping his empty gla.s.s. '"Where will I be when I wake from my drunken sleep? / On the willow banks, in the dawn breeze, under a fading moon." That would work. "Drunken" and "banks" both have watery connotations . . .'

'It's been no trouble at all. So, how many children did your mother have?' Meili wants to tell Weiwei that with his round tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses he looks just like the university professors who give lectures on television.

'Four boys and one girl. I'm the eldest. Tell me your name again.'

'Meili.'

'As in "Beautiful and Pretty"? How apt.'

'How common, you mean. Every woman in the countryside is called Meili. But my "Mei" is the dawn "Mei". I was born in the morning.'

'Ah, that's different, then. "Beautiful Dawn", or "Beautiful Beginning". Very poetic.'

Meili thinks of her mother, and remembers her lying asleep on a chair while breastfeeding Meili's brother, her milk tricking down his cheek. She wonders whether her grandmother is still well enough to walk about and go out into the garden. 'When our parents are alive, we're young,' she says. 'But as soon as they die, we become old.'

'You're right,' Weiwei says, looking down. 'When our parents are alive, they stand in front of us, blocking our view of death. But once they've gone, we find ourselves at the cliff edge. Whether we jump now or later doesn't make much difference. The next step we take will be the end.'

'Don't be so negative. Perhaps your mother didn't throw herself into the river after all. Perhaps she'll turn up at your home one day. You only have one life: you must be kind to yourself.'

'Yes, we're only here once. We're unlikely to cross paths again.' Weiwei returns his blank gaze to the window. The only sign of the river now is the trail of light from a pa.s.sing boat. The flies and mosquitoes swarming the night air are only visible once they hit the gla.s.s pane.

'You have a long life ahead of you, a son who's off to university . . .' Meili says, glancing at the educational programme being broadcast on the television now. Moths flit around the bulb above. One of them breaks a wing, falls to the table and flutters about in distress.

'Somehow, I'd prefer to find out that she was dead. It's the uncertainty that's so unbearable. I know now that there is no greater torture in life than to have someone you love go missing.' Weiwei spots a mosquito on his arm and slaps it.

'No, you men have no idea. The greatest torture any human being could suffer is to be pregnant with a child and not know which day it might be torn from you; and then, when it is taken from you, to have to watch it being strangled before your eyes. My aborted son often appears to me in my dreams, lying dead in a plastic bag, his face all swollen and purple. If he were alive now, he'd probably call you "Uncle Gla.s.ses" . . .' She sinks her face into her hands and weeps.

'You're a good mother, Meili, don't cry,' Weiwei says, handing her a paper napkin. 'My mother had a hard life too. She married at the height of the Land Reform Campaign, when the Party was encouraging the ma.s.ses to kill rich landowners. The day after her wedding, her father was dragged to the village hall and hanged in public, and my parents were made to watch. My mother told me that as his dead body swung from the ceiling, the peasants whipped it with ropes so fiercely that sc.r.a.ps of his flesh splashed onto her face. I was there too at the time, inside her womb. For the next two years, my parents had to remain "empty-handed".'

'What does that mean?'

'It meant that when they left the house they couldn't take anything with them, no bags or wallets. And in summer, they weren't allowed to wear socks or long trousers. The authorities were afraid they'd conceal weapons on their bodies and try to avenge her father's death. Many of the victims' family members committed suicide during those years. But my mother struggled on, for my sake. I was born three months prematurely. I weighed just three pounds. When I was six she taught me the Three Character Cla.s.sic and the English poetry she learned at her missionary school. For my sake she clung to life, and now for my sake again she has killed herself.' Weiwei takes off his tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses and rubs his tear-filled eyes.

Meili searches for words of comfort. 'I'm not a good mother,' she says at last. 'To tell you the truth, I've had an IUD fitted. I don't want to have any more children. I want to work hard, make money, and live the kind of life where I can eat my meals at a proper table and wash my clothes in a machine.'

Weiwei looks up. 'That shouldn't be hard to achieve. Times have changed. Any woman can set up her own business now, become her own boss. But not every woman can be as good a mother as you . . .'

'I'd like to take a television correspondence course,' Meili says, glancing back at the professor on the flickering screen. 'I venerate learning, but I'm so uncultured and poorly educated. I only went to school for two years . . . Kongzi doesn't know I've had an IUD fitted. Please don't tell him.'

'Your secret's safe. I'll be leaving tomorrow and will probably never see either of you again.'

'I know you look down on us peasants. Once you've gone, you'll forget all about us.'

'No. I'll never forget you. I'll leave you my address. You and Kongzi would be more than welcome to come and stay with us.' Their eyes meet as they inhale the smell of each other's sweat. 'You really are beautiful,' he says. 'How easy life would be if I had someone like you by my side.' In the dim light, Weiwei's hair looks shinier and less grey. 'You have something caught . . .' He points at her mouth, but before she has a chance to touch it, he reaches over and picks out from between her front teeth a strand of spinach. Meili jumps to her feet and asks Kongzi, who's just walked in, where the toilet is.

'Don't go. It's pitch black out there. Wait until we're back on the boat.' She can smell that he's just vomited. His face is purple and bloated.

'It's so quiet now,' Weiwei says, 'I feel much better after that swim.' Meili watches the water drip down his bare back and hands him a towel. Then she goes into the cabin, slips off her wet dress, dries herself quickly with a sheet and puts on Kongzi's long white vest. 'You can sleep in here with us,' she says, poking her head round the door curtain. 'We'll have to squeeze up, I'm afraid.'

The night is breezeless, but a faint smell of osmanthus seems to be moving through the still air. Meili and Weiwei are now lying on either side of Kongzi, who's quietly snoring. Meili can sense that Weiwei is still awake. When they returned to the boat, Kongzi crashed out in the cabin, and she jumped into the river for a swim, having noticed when they arrived at dusk that the water was clean. Weiwei jumped in after her. It was too dark for her to see the expression on his face; all she could make out in the light from the restaurant was the dark outline of the boat.

'I'm so sorry to have inconvenienced you like this,' Weiwei whispers to her across Kongzi's sleeping body.

'Don't worry. It would have been too dangerous to sail at night. This boat is wooden, and would fall apart if it collided with anything. We'll sleep here and head back to Xijiang in the morning.' Although the smells around her are familiar, the cabin feels strangely different. She can't sleep. Kongzi's snoring is embarra.s.sing her. 'You don't snore, do you?' she asks Weiwei. She wedges a jumper under her pillow to raise her head a little, then flaps her damp sheet in the air so that it falls flat over her body.

'No, I don't snore,' Weiwei whispers. 'But I'm finding it hard to fall asleep. I've never spent the night on a boat before.'

'I couldn't get used to it either, when we first moved onto the boat,' Meili says, her nose touching the back of Kongzi's head. 'But now, unless I'm rocking from side to side, it takes me hours to drop off. Are you hot? Our electric fan's broken, I'm afraid. Here, use this bamboo one. I suppose you town dwellers all have air conditioning on at night.'

'No not many people can afford to have it installed. And even if they can, they're afraid to use it because the electricity costs so much.'

'Which university did your wife go to?' Feeling her hot skin begin to stick to Kongzi's, she edges back a little, then pulls her squashed right breast out from under her side.

'We went to the same university, but were a.s.signed jobs in different towns. She's the sub-director of a circuit board factory in Dunhuang. Her salary's much higher than mine.'

'You may live apart, but at least you're still married.'

Kongzi has sunk into a deep sleep and is snoring his head off.

'Doesn't feel like we're married. When I phoned her to tell her my mother had killed herself, she didn't offer to come down and see me. She doesn't care about me any more.'

'Marriage is for life. Perhaps you should show her more affection, try to win her round. Persuade her to move back in with you.' Meili is embarra.s.sed by the smell of alcohol on Kongzi's breath. She knows that town people brush their teeth twice a day.

'No, she wouldn't give up her job for me. She didn't want to go to Dunhuang at first, but we needed the money to support our family. Now she's so used to it there she doesn't want to come back.'

'You don't know how important something is until you lose it. You mustn't let her slip away. Even if a woman flies off for a while, she'll always want a nest to return to.' Meili remembers the woman with the crimson lipstick she met on the boat to Sanxia, and suspects that her husband in the countryside had no idea she worked as a hair-salon prost.i.tute.