Bad Traffic (5 page)

Ding Ming burst out from his box like a birthday surprise. Others were popping from their boxes, and the sound of splitting cardboard filled the air.

He sought out his wife. Little Ye’s hair was matted against her cheeks and her eyes were red, but she was smiling as she stood and stretched. Her T-shirt was so sweaty it clung to her body. The decorative red bows on the shoulders still stood out perkily, though. He took her hand, and together they clambered down from the container.

The truck was parked in a shabby farmyard. A
three-quarter
moon illuminated rusty machinery, a stack of tyres, weeds growing through cracked concrete. The horizon was bumpier than at home, the trees bushier. It seemed very quiet after the incessant hum of the truck. Just to be still and silent and breathing untainted air was as energising as a cold drink. Ding Ming felt a surge of optimism. Here was an end to feeling like luggage.

Simultaneously, Ding Ming and Little Ye admitted they were desperate for a wee. They laughed and squeezed hands.

Himself, he’d slip it out and piss anywhere, he didn’t care, but he respected her need for a little dignity. He peered into a barn. It looked derelict. One corner had fallen in, and pale moonlight streamed through holes in the wall and roof. A container, like the one they’d arrived in, was parked on a lorry flatbed. It seemed like the sort of place where a lady might have a little privacy. He looked back. The other
migrants were stretching and chattering. They too were nervous and excited with the adventure of arrival, and for the moment it was conquering fatigue. A white man moved among them, handing out cigarettes. No one was paying him or Little Ye any attention.

‘Go here, behind this trailer.’

‘I don’t want to pee inside, it’s not polite.’

‘They don’t use this place.’ He indicated fast-food wrappers. ‘It’s full of rubbish. Come on.’

But she was stepping carefully between a scattering of rusty metal bars. She stiffened, said ‘Ow’, and rubbed her ankle.

‘What is it?’

‘Stinging plants.’

‘So come in here.’

She followed him inside, and briskly squatted. He stood before her with his back turned, pissing against the trailer’s wheel. It felt good to take a piss in his new home, it was the beginning of coming to terms with it.

‘There’s a funny smell in here,’ said Little Ye.

It was a stench like rotten meat. It added to the gloom and sense of neglect to make the barn a dispiriting place.

A rustling drew his attention to a crowd of black birds gathered in the rafters. Moonlight illuminated a wing, a steady eye, a beak shining like a knife. Ding Ming didn’t like the way they were looking at him, so he stamped his foot and called ‘
Zou kai!
… Go!’ and the birds took off, with insolent lack of haste, flapping through the broken wall.

But now the white man, alerted by his call, was
hurrying
in. He called out things Ding Ming didn’t catch, but his tone was stern – though perhaps that was how they spoke all the time.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Ding Ming said, in English.

‘Get out.’

‘Sorry, my wife is having toilet.’

Ding Ming had looked forward to speaking English to an English person in England. Now here it was finally happening, a shame the circumstances were not better. He zipped up.

‘I don’t care if she’s having kittens, mate. Out.’

Ding Ming stepped sideways to block his view of the squatting woman, and said the first thing he could think of, anything to stop the man looking at his wife – ‘What is your name?’ It was the first English sentence he’d learned, one he considered himself good at.

‘What? Kevin.’

Ding Ming had seen few white people before and never so close. Mister Kevin was a peculiar sight, tall with a fat
general’s
belly that hung grandly over his waist, hiding his belt. His arms were thick and round – he was like a figure made of rolled putty balls. His skin was hairy and pink as a pig’s hide, stubble bristled on his chin, there was even hair
coming
out of his nose. With all these details to take in, it was impossible to concentrate on his barking English.

Nervous, Ding Ming smiled, but that only seemed to cause further aggravation.

‘What are you grinning about? Out.’ Mister Kevin jerked a fleshy thumb over his shoulder. Even his hand was of note – pale, doughy.

But if Ding Ming moved, it would reveal his wife. The more awkward he felt, the more his smile broadened. It was his natural response to awkward social situations. Now it was a rictus grin. He could not think of a new sentence, he was growing panicky.

‘What’s so bloody funny?’ demanded Mister Kevin. ‘Heh?’ He stepped around and glared at the squatting girl. ‘You too – out. Go on – out.’

Little Ye hurriedly pulled up her trousers. What a pity that she could not have gone to the toilet in private. It wasn’t much to ask. Now she’d be feeling ashamed.

Ding Ming took his wife’s hand and hurried her out of the barn, and Mister Kevin glared at them all the way back into the farmyard.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said, relieved to return to his mother tongue, the Fujianese dialect.

‘No, I’m sorry.’ She was fastening her trousers. ‘It was my fault.’

They watched Mister Kevin closing the barn off by
dragging
a sheet of corrugated iron across the entrance. He didn’t seem to have any more time for them.

Ding Ming felt mortified. He’d caused an uncomfortable situation for his wife, and it seemed he’d broken the rules of conduct of his hosts. He wished he’d never seen that barn.

‘It’s okay,’ said Ding Ming. ‘It’s fine. This is a thing of no importance.’

‘How can you be sure?’ She gnawed on her bottom lip in that way she had. He felt foreboding, too. They were in a new country with new rules and new rulers, people who cared about them were too far away to help, and there were no friendly faces to provide a single stroke of comfort.

All the migrants were from China’s Fujian Province. The five other men were all from one village, some place on the coast. Tough and taciturn, they’d expected to become
fishermen
like their fathers and grandfathers.

Ding Ming was aware that they did not see him as one of their own. Never mind that he was a peasant too, a
simple
village boy whose parents barely scratched a living out of a smallholding. He’d been educated, he could speak Mandarin Chinese and even some English, he didn’t smoke, and he’d brought his wife along. They’d left wives and
girlfriends
, and in some cases children, at home, knowing that they would not see them again for years, and they were still working at hardening their hearts. Perhaps it didn’t do them good to see a loving couple together.

The two girls were twins from a brood of three girls. Their unfortunate parents had been desperate for a son, and had kept trying, never mind the penalties. Squat and dark and big-eyed, they held hands and sucked their thumbs.

A couple of the men were relieving themselves against the wall of the barn. The girls were going in a ditch and
everyone else had turned their backs – that was the way to do it.

Kevin and his lieutenants stood apart, smoking and
chatting
. Little Ye followed his gaze and said, ‘I find them a little frightening.’

He knew what she meant. Kevin and the driver were
overweight
, and the sense their bodies gave of flesh multiplying out of control was alarming. But even their slimmer
companions
, with their booming voices and rudely assertive gestures, gave the impression of bigness.

Clicking his fingers and pointing, Kevin directed the men towards a dirty white van, while one of his lieutenants began herding the girls to a car.

‘I want all the men over here, and the women get in there.’

Ding Ming had no desire to act on those instructions, he did not even let go of his wife’s hand.

Kevin’s gestures got larger. There was something so
peculiar
about that babble and the big movements. A Chinese man laughed out of nervousness. Kevin punched him in the face and the man fell down.

‘Yeah? That’s what happens when you laugh at me.’ Kevin rubbed his knuckles.

There was a difficult silence and the felled man rose and wiped blood off his mouth. He waved away the
ministrations
of his friends and leaned against the lorry to recover his senses.

‘Men go to the van, women in the car.’

Little Ye let go of Ding Ming’s hand.

‘Wait.’

‘We have no choice.’

‘Let me ask.’

Without looking Mister Kevin in the eye, because he didn’t want to be distracted while he formed the clumpy
syllables, Ding Ming said, ‘Excuse me sir, but wife and me is come together.’

And Mister Kevin said to his lieutenants, ‘How about that? That’s not bad English, is it?’

Ding Ming pointed with his chin at Little Ye. She looked fretful that her husband had dared speak out like this. ‘This my wife.’

‘It’s regrettable, obviously, but you’ll be back together in a few weeks. We got orders, I got quotas. Nothing I can do.’

Mister Kevin put an arm around Ding Ming’s shoulder, easily the heaviest limb he’d ever felt. He wore a big gold ring on his finger, now with a smear of blood on it.

‘So you’re going to have to say goodbye to your lady wife, and she’s going to get in the car, and you’re going in the van.’

Ding Ming had understood little of the speech but he got the gist. ‘We stay together.’ He dropped his voice further. ‘Please.’

‘In a couple of weeks you’ll be together again. Say your goodbyes.’

‘I go with her.’

‘Soon as we get there, you’ll get a phone number. You can ring whenever you want. She’ll be having a much easier time than you – she’s off to pick flowers. Picking flowers is easy.’

The lieutenants gathered round and, because all were much taller than Ding Ming, he fell into a pool of shadow.

‘You’re doing temp jobs, you go where the work is. I’ll make sure you and your wife are together on the next job. Alright? Say your goodbyes.’

‘You will give phone number?’

‘Yes.’

There was clearly no point arguing any further. Ding Ming hugged Little Ye, chastely because people were looking,
then joined the other men in the back of the dirty white van. It was a gloomy space, with torn and muddy seats, and rakes, spades and buckets strewn across the floor. The only window was in the back door. He scrambled up to it, and apologised to a man whose foot he stepped on. He wiped the grimy glass with his sleeve and watched his wife get into the car. As the van was driven away he waved to her, though he doubted she was able to see.

All the migrants fell asleep. Ding Ming was used to travelling with his wife’s head either on his lap or against his shoulder, and the troubling absence of that warm weight kept him awake. He made his way forward, thinking to
consider
the view.

Mister Kevin hunched low over the steering wheel and chewed gum and smoked. The back of his neck was thick and hairy and a gold chain lay half-buried in one of its creases. Outside, cows grazed in giant fields. All that good soil seemed wasted on cattle, and there was a great deal of fallow land where nothing grew but trees. The landscape looked unkempt and desolate, and the sloppy way it was used violated his aesthetic sense. He compared it unfavourably to the Fujian countryside, so compact and efficient, with plots sunk into every scrap of land and the divide between them only wide enough to step along. On the other hand, he was very impressed with the road – a good camber, flat tarmac, the markings crisp and bright.

He could see few buildings, and those there were seemed huge. Perhaps the inhabitants lived in clan halls like Hakka people, or maybe the farms were giant communal ventures. He realised that the paucity of buildings and the desultory emptiness of the landscape were connected – this country was hugely underpopulated.

They came into a city. It was not so unlike the other one Ding Ming had been to, Fujian’s capital, Fuzhou – wide, well-lit streets, endless concrete, glass and brick, right angles
everywhere and no animals to be seen. The most obvious difference was the advertising. He found the slogans obscure. ‘Go Beyond’. It didn’t make sense without a
subject
. ‘Just do it’. Just do what?

The van stopped. The street was so empty it was eerie, as if some calamity had just occurred. Many lights burned needlessly. Ding Ming could see a splendid frontage filled with shoes, and next to it a magnificent restaurant. By
craning
forward he was able to read the English name, and his lips moved as he formed the words – ‘The Floating Lotus’.

A Chinese man came out of the place, got into the front seat and gave Kevin a polystyrene takeout box. Ding Ming salivated at the smell of hot food. The fishermen woke, stretched and sniffed.

The man introduced himself as Black Fort and handed out cigarettes. He was handsome, despite the ugly stain of a birthmark under his lip. He held up a mobile phone. ‘You know how it goes. One call each, keep it short, the money comes out of your wages.’

His Mandarin was stilted, it was obviously not his first language. ‘The call shows we’ve done our job and now you and your families have to start honouring the terms of the repayment contract.’

Ding Ming had the number memorised but was shaking with excitement and found it difficult to hit the right keys. He’d given his mother his mobile when he left, for just this occasion.

‘Mama? Mama? Dao le! Dao le!
… I arrived! I arrived!’

‘How is it? Is it cold?’

A good line – it was just like he was calling from across the street.

‘No, not too cold. Everything is fine. Tell everyone you have an abroad worker as a son now.’ He added, though he knew it was inane, ‘Sorry if I woke you up.’

‘No, I was about to go to market, it’s seven in the morning.’ He had forgotten about the time difference.

‘Celebrate. Buy some meat.’

Black Fort said, ‘Enough. Hand it over.’

‘Bye. Bye.’

Ding Ming felt his eyes growing damp, so he blinked quickly. He reminded himself that he’d see her soon enough, that when they did meet again she’d have a fancy phone like that one, paid for with all the money he’d sent back. And after he came home he’d build her a magnificent house, the biggest in the village. He could see the expression of joy on her face when she saw it.

Mister Kevin was eating fried rice and sweet and sour pork balls with a plastic fork. In easy conversation with him, Black Fort worked a match from one corner of his mouth to the other.

He said, ‘Yeah… yeah,’ which Ding Ming recognised from films as American English slang for the affirmative. He must have been born over here, there was no other way to achieve such an enviable level of English ability. How cool he was, with artfully dishevelled hair, a gold earring, jade necklace, bomber jacket, black jeans. When Ding Ming had money he’d dress exactly like that. He couldn’t get taller and paler, and he doubted he could ever achieve that self-assurance, but at least he could buy the look. He craned forward to check the brand of shoes, and the man grew aware of his attention.

‘
Ni kan shenme?
… What are you looking at?’

‘Your shoes.’

Black Fort rested a foot on the dashboard.

‘For basketball. They have air in the soles. Like walking on clouds. I understand you speak some English.’

‘I did some training to be an English teacher.’

‘I have to tell you, you won’t be able to use your English here.’

‘Why not?’

‘They think all Chinese are scum, they won’t talk to you. And if you even try, well, that’s your lookout. One of our guys, he looked at a white girl a little too long, and he was arrested.’

‘Arrested?’

‘They kept him in the cells, beat him up. Just for looking at a girl. What you have to remember is, these people think of us as rats.’

‘We are rats!’ declared a man, who had succeeded in
following
that much at least of their conversation. ‘We are the Fujian rats!’ He’d been watching Kevin’s fork go up and down. All the migrants, Ding Ming suspected, were
wondering
when they would get fed.

They made a chant of it.

‘We are the Fujian rats!’

Black Fort beckoned Ding Ming closer. ‘That guy was lucky.’

‘Lucky?’

‘We had another guy, he went into the police station to ask the time and he never came out. Rule number one is, you don’t have anything to do with authority. You’d be taking your life in your own hands. They’re bastards – even worse than in China. They’ll knock you on the head and whip out your heart and liver and eyes and sell them for transplants. You go in the police station, you never come out. Tell the others.’

Ding Ming repeated the advice. A man asked him to inquire about prostitutes, and he blushed as he did so, though he was glad to be of use. His Mandarin, it seemed, was proving handy, even if his English wasn’t going to be.

‘The chickens here are expensive and ridden with AIDS. We provide films and magazines.’ Black Fort worked the
match to the other side of his mouth. ‘I’m not going to lie to you. You’ve got a lot of hard work ahead. You’ll be going to bed tired every day. But keep your heads down, do the job, keep away from those chickens, and in a few years you’ll be rich men. Then you can go home and play all you like. You’ll have tarts all over you. You’ll be set for life.’

What was a few years of hard work? It would pass in a flash. Ding Ming was not afraid of hard work. He asked, apologetically because he didn’t want to be seen as
bothersome
, ‘So could you give me some more details about where my wife has gone?’

‘She’ll be fine. She’ll be picking flowers, and that’s a
simple
job.’

‘It’s just that I worry.’

‘You’ll be able to talk to her in a couple of days.’

He determined to put it out of his mind for now. Talking to his mother had proved to be without obstacle, and she was much farther away. Black Fort patted his arm.

A man made a sly comment to his friend, on how the failed English teacher was everybody’s favourite. Ding Ming pretended not to hear. At that moment he wished that he did not speak any English, and that he had not spent so long at school when he should have been working. He saw that he had too much education to be accepted by people of his own class, and not enough class to be accepted by people of
education
. He did not fit in. And was that, he wondered, one reason he had been keen to go abroad? The idea was quite new to him. He was experiencing the benefit a distant
perspective
gives on the problems of home.

Black Fort headed back to the restaurant. Ding Ming watched him though the windscreen. How cool he was, his confidence visible in every stride.

Kevin burped and started the engine. As the van drove away, the headlights swept across a shuttered building, and Ding Ming believed he glimpsed a Chinese man, sitting in its porch. The stocky figure wore a black leather jacket with the collar turned up. The way he was settled, it looked like he had been there some time. He did not look like a tramp or a beggar, perhaps he had just lost his keys and was waiting for someone to come and let him in. It was strange but
welcome
, as in this vast unknown every sight of a Chinese
person
brought comfort.

But it was the briefest flash, so Ding Ming could not be sure he had not imagined the scene. Perhaps his tiredness was putting shapes to shadows. He put it out of his mind. The smell of food still hung in the air, and he wondered when he would be fed.