Ma Jian: The Abandoner or The Abandoned
19. December 2008 13:18
Between the writer and the blood donor
The conversations between the writer and the blood donor never lead anywhere. Instead of prolonging an argument, they often choose to leave it hanging in mid-air. It is interesting to note, however, that during tonight's conversation, the blood donor seems to be gaining the upper hand. The blood donor is by nature a profit seeker, believing that people should use all means possible to get what they need from this ugly world. The writer is an idealist, but when confronted by reality and his own failures, he overcomes his disappointment by adopting an air of indifference. He is a cripple who can think but not move. In his undernourished brain, he weaves the stories of the book he knows he will never write.
Since he was blood type A, and was born in the Year of the Ox, the father was both stubborn and shy. When he was twenty, a cabbage-faced old woman in a grain shop read the lines on his hand and told him he would never have a son. After he married, his wife produced a daughter with severe disabilities, and five years later, a second daughter, who was normal. The father then paid six yuan for a lame man called Zeng to read his fortune again. Zeng predicted that at forty-eight he would have a third daughter; at forty-nine, he would be promoted to a more senior position (he was now a middle-ranking accountant in the Municipal Treasury Board); at fifty, a gendeman would travel from the south-west and bring him good luck (he looked up all his friends and relatives who lived in the south-west, and discovered he had an uncle who was an ex-Guomindang general and was now living with a guerrilla force in Burma, although the family hadn't heard from him for over thirty years); at fifty-seven, his mother would pass away and his wife would die of lung disease; at sixty, he would meet a widow with blood type A who was born in the Year of the Sheep, and she would marry him and give him a fourth daughter. Death was destined to strike him in his sixty-third year. He once asked the lame man Zeng if there -was any way he could prolong his life span by a few years —just two more years would do — but the fortune teller insisted that it was impossible to alter the course of fate.
The father was in fact more upset about the lack of a son to carry on his family name than about the shortness of his own life. He pushed the thought of the widow to the back of his mind, and focused all his attention on procuring a son. Since their first daughter had been born disabled, his wife's work unit had made an exception to the One Child Policy and granted her a quota of two children, but they would certainly never allow her to try for a third. The only way she could procure another pregnancy authorisation would be if one of their children happened to disappear. Had it not been for the family planning regulations, the couple would have been free to conceive one child after another until a son turned up, but as things stood, the accountant decided that his only hope lay in getting rid of his retarded daughter.
So he embarked on a battle against his fate. When his retarded daughter reached the age of seven, he grabbed her in his arms, carried her to a public park and attempted, unsuccessfully, to abandon her on a bench. After three further failed attempts, he took a day off work, hoping to finish the job properly. His future depended on ridding himself of her. Only with her gone could he try again for a son. The fortune tellers hadn't mentioned that his first daughter would be bom retarded, or that the government was planning to introduce a One Child Policy. If he had known at the time how the future would unfold, he would have told his wife to get an abortion the moment she first found out she was pregnant.
His elder daughter looked similar to most children of the world who share her disability. She had a small flat head covered with thin downy hair, a broad and wrinkled forehead, tadpole-like eyes set deep into sallow sockets, a flat nose, and large nostrils that flared with each intake of breath. Her mouth was always open. Saliva and scraps of food would fall from it, drip down her small chin and collect in the creases of her thick neck. Her existence caused him only trouble.
During her seven years of life, she had acquired a few skills. For example, she knew to cry out when she felt the need to relieve herself, and had learned never to refuse any food or medicine. But she never lost her fear of being removed from the family's dank room and taken out into the fresh air. Whenever her father grabbed her in his arms and carried her to a place where an open expanse of sky could be seen, her hair stood on end, and her jaws clenched so hard it was impossible to wrench them apart. She had already spent a whole weekend alone in the woods, a night on a stone bench, six days in an orphanage in the countryside, and forty-eight hours on a train bound for the capital. Before each of these unhappy experiences, she would suddenly lose sight of her father and find herself alone. But in the end, she always managed to be rescued from danger and returned safely to the dark room that smelt of mud and rotten cabbage.
At the beginning of each journey, he had no idea whether he would succeed in abandoning her, but he was determined to continue his war against fate. For the sake of his future son, for the sake of the successful fertilisation of his wife's next egg cell, he would go ahead with his plan. He told himself that the only reason he looked after his daughter was to wait for an opportunity to get rid of her. For her, each journey they took together into the outside world was an opportunity to prove the resilience of her life force.
Although he had entered the Party in 1958, and had worked conscientiously for the following thirty years, he was still only a middle-ranking accountant. In the Cultural Revolution, he joined a political cell that failed to keep up with the changing times, and became outlawed by a rival cell. He ended up marry¬ing an activist from the cell that had outlawed his. He made love to his wife in their dormitory room as the bullets pelted through the sky outside. Neither of them had much knowledge of sexual matters, other than the little they'd learned from various swear words, so the wife didn't become pregnant until their second year of marriage. The doctor told her that the child's defects were caused by excessive sexual activity during her pregnancy. When he reached fifty, he resolved to focus more of his energies on the task of abandoning his elder daughter. He started taking his work less seriously. The fortune tellers had told him that considering the year in which he was born, he would only succeed in getting rid of his daughter if it was certain that someone would take her home and look after her. So he never abandoned his daughter if he thought there was any danger she might starve to death, or come to any harm. His failure in abandoning her was clearly linked to the year in which he was born. He was convinced that if he had been born in the Year of the Tiger or of the Chicken, he would be holding a baby son in
his arms by now.
One morning, he left her alone in an open field outside town. He hid himself behind a bush in the distance, and observed her for an entire day. When the sun was setting in the west, he gave up hope of anyone coming to her rescue, so, faint with hunger, he ran over to her, grabbed her in his arms and carried her back home. He endured all kinds of hardships for her. One day he read an article about an orphanage in a neighbouring town. He took a day off work, travelled to the town and deposited his daughter at the reception desk of the orphanage, claiming he had found her on the street. The director of the orphanage told him the child was not necessarily an orphan, and that she would have to be handed over to the public security bureau. In a panic, the father explained that he had wanted to perform a good deed and emulate Lei Feng, but could do no more, as he had a train to catch. So the director agreed to take the child to the public security bureau herself. The next day, when he was gazing out of the window by his desk, the police of the neighbouring town telephoned him and asked him to collect his child from their bureau. So he took another day ofFwork, much to his leader's consternation since it meant missing the department's weekly Party meeting. That afternoon, he waved goodbye to his wife and his younger daughter, who was now two years old, and set off on a journey to bring his elder daughter home.
Before abandoning his elder daughter, he always gave her a sleeping pill, afraid that if she were left awake, she might choke on her tears, or that her cries might attract a pack of wolves. Since she spent so much time out of doors, he even bought her a plastic coat to protect her from the rain. His wife was a typical Chinese woman. Each time he set off on a journey with his daughter in his arms, she always walked him to the door, her eyes filled with tears. Despite his repeated failures, she always managed to cry each time she waved him goodbye. She fully supported the course of action he had chosen to take. In the past, she herself had employed a go-between to arrange the sale of her elder daughter to an infertile couple, but unfortunately, when the couple discovered the child was retarded, they brought her back and demanded a refund.
The retarded child was subjected to an endless stream of trials and traumas, but always managed to escape with her life. Before she had taken her first step, she had survived two car accidents and a fall from a third-storey window. Later on, she found her¬self dropping from her bed onto the cement floor almost every night. Neighbours said that only a child who was blessed could survive so many accidents, and they predicted she would bring the family good fortune and prosperity. So for an entire year, the father gave up his attempts at abandoning her, and waited for his fortunes to turn.
But nothing happened, and the father became convinced once more that the future the lame man Zeng had predicted for him was cast in stone. The imminent end of his family line weighed heavily on his mind. He knew that if his wife exceeded her birth quota of two children, he would lose everything he had worked so hard to gain: his government job, his Party membership card, his room, his salary. The continued presence of his elder daughter in his family threatened every aspect of his existence.
In the end, he decided to take early retirement and concen¬trate all his waking hours on the mission to abandon his daughter. However, each time he tried to get rid of her, he felt his attachment to her grow deeper. In the past, he had hoped she would cooperate with him, and disappear quietly from his life so as to let him try again for a son. But as this hope diminished, she became his comforter and sympathiser. Although he caused her pain, she was the only person in this world who could forgive
him.
As time went by, she became his closest friend. He couldn't help but pour out his heart to her, telling her about his marital problems, his concerns about world affairs, and the heartache he felt for all the pain he'd caused her. Knowing that she could say nothing in reply, he felt free to use the foulest language in her presence. As he grew aware of the futility of his efforts, he slowly lost control of his thoughts. Each time he attempted to abandon her, he felt as though he were in fact abandoning himself and the future that had been destined for him. But he was still determined to keep trying.
Sometimes he felt that it was his daughter who was dragging him through the town, rather than the other way round. Before each of his attempts at abandoning her, he seemed to hear her say: 'I consent to being abandoned. Over the years I have gained my own identity, and through your struggles with me you have learned some lessons about life. A father can fool a retarded child, but a retarded child can also fool her father. I have given a pattern to your life, a rhythm. You must understand that your mission will destroy you in the end. I have taught you things about yourself you would have preferred not to know. In a deranged world, only retarded people can find happiness. I share none of your commitments or responsibilities. I care nothing about the past or the future, or whether your sperm will ever meet another egg cell. I am not even sure whether I exist. If you were retarded, you would understand what I am saying. I wish you would give up this futile mission of yours. You've done your best for everyone. You have neither let me down, nor yourself down. There's nothing more you can do.'
As people became caught up in the changes brought about by the Open Door Policy, they began to talk less about this father and daughter who spent their lives being separated, then reunited. But everyone knew who they were. Occasionally they would see a man with freshly washed collar and cuffs (you could tell at a glance he was a cadre) emerge from behind the municipal museum, holding a retarded child in his arms. He would cross the pedestrian flyover, then proceed through the new urban district, heading not for the seaside park, but for the open fields beyond. When he reached his destination, he would place the child down by the side of the road, then squat behind a tree ten or so metres away. Passers-by noticed that when he was squatting there, the lines on his face seemed to disappear. But as soon as someone walked over and laid their hands on his 'lost property', he would jump to his feet, charge over and scoop her up in his arms. In this town, he became the retarded child's only protector.
From Noodle Maker
Translated from the Chinese by Flora Drew