The Abandoner
by Ma Jian
In 1979, just a month before the one-child policy was introduced, the wife of the vice-chairman of the Municipal Treasury Board gave birth to a retarded daughter, Miaomiao.
After the wife gave birth to a second daughter, who was normal, seven years later, the vice-chairman could often be spotted carrying Miaomiao down the street with a furtive look in his eye. His downturned mouth and sunken cheeks spoke of despair. Miaomiao’s expression was generally calm, but slightly bewildered. Neighbors remarked on how the pair of them seemed always to be on their way somewhere.
Since the vice-chairman was blood type A and had been born in the Year of the Rabbit, he was both stubborn and introverted. When he was twenty, a cabbage-faced old woman at the grain shop had read the lines on his palm and told him that he would never have a son. She had not told him, however, that his first daughter would be born retarded, or that the government was planning to institute a one-child policy. If he had known at the time how the future would unfold, he would have told his wife to have an abortion the moment she found out that she was pregnant.
After the birth of his second daughter, he locked himself in his room for a week and drank his way through four bottles of rice wine. Then he shaved, dressed, and went looking for a lame man called Zeng, to have his fortune read again. For six yuan, Zeng predicted that at forty-eight the vice-chairman would be promoted to a more senior position; at forty-nine, a disaster would befall him, but if he wore a red string around his waist he would escape with his life; at fifty, a gentleman would travel from the southwest and bring him good luck (the vice-chairman looked into his friends and relatives in the southwest and discovered that he had an uncle who was an ex-Kuomintang general and who was now living with a guerrilla force in Burma, though the family hadn’t heard from him in thirty years); at fifty-seven, he would lose his mother, and his wife would die of lung disease; at sixty, he would meet a young widow with blood type A who was born in the Year of the Sheep, and she would marry him and give him a third daughter. Death was destined to strike him in his sixty-third year. He asked Zeng if there was any way that he could prolong his life 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 vice-chairman was, in fact, more concerned about the lack of a son to carry on his family line than he was about the brevity of his own life. He pushed the thought of the young widow to the back of his mind and focussed all his attention on producing an heir. Since Miaomiao’s chromosomal abnormality had left her both mentally and physically handicapped, 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 never allow her to try for a third. Indeed, as soon as she had given birth to the second daughter, a man from the family-planning office turned up and inserted a coil into her uterus. The only way that she’d be able to procure another pregnancy permit now was if one of her children happened to disappear. As things stood, the vice-chairman decided, his only hope lay in getting rid of Miaomiao.
So the vice-chairman embarked on a battle against his fate. When his second daughter was just two weeks old, he took Miaomiao in his arms and set off for a public park, planning to abandon her there. His wife shed a few tears before he left, but was too weak to protest. In the evening he returned, still holding Miaomiao in his arms. He told his wife that he had left her sitting on a bench all afternoon and had watched from a distance, but no one had tried to take her away. After three more failed attempts to abandon his daughter, he took a day off work, hoping to finish the job properly.
Miaomiao 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. She knew to cry out when she felt the need to relieve herself, and had learned not to refuse food or medicine. After a few more of her father’s attempts to get rid of her, she also developed a fear of being removed from the family’s dank room and taken out into the fresh air. Whenever her father took 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 jaw clenched so hard that it was impossible to wrench it open. She had spent a whole weekend alone in the woods, a night on a stone bench, six days at a police station in the countryside, and forty-eight hours on a train bound for the capital. As each of these unhappy experiences began, she had suddenly lost sight of her father and found herself alone. But in the end she always managed to be rescued and returned safely to the dark room that smelled of mud and rotten cabbage.
The vice-chairman had no idea whether he would ever succeed in abandoning Miaomiao, but he was determined to continue his war against fate. For the sake of his future son, for the sake of the successful fertilization of his wife’s next egg cell, he continued to pursue his plan. He told himself that the only reason he took care of Miaomiao now was to prepare for an opportunity to get rid of her. For Miaomiao, each journey she took into the outside world was an opportunity to prove the resilience of her life force.
The vice-chairman had enrolled in the Party in 1958. During the Cultural Revolution, he’d joined a political cell that failed to keep up with the changing Maoist directives and was ousted by a rival cell. Fortunately, he had married an activist from the victorious cell, so he managed to escape persecution. He made love to his wife in their dark room in the workers’ block as bullets flew through the sky outside. Neither of them had much knowledge of sexual matters, other than the little they’d learned through the vocabulary of swearwords, so his wife didn’t become pregnant until their fourth year of marriage. The doctor told her that the child’s defects had been caused by excessive sexual activity during her pregnancy.
Six months after embarking on his mission, the vice-chairman still had not managed to abandon Miaomiao. He resolved to focus more of his energy on the task and began to take his work less seriously. The fortune-teller had told him that he would succeed in getting rid of his daughter only if he was certain that some kindhearted person would take her home and look after her. He never abandoned her if he thought there was any risk that she might come to harm or starve to death. This failure was clearly linked to the year in which the vice-chairman was born. He was convinced that if he had been born in the Year of the Tiger or the Year of the Cock he would now be holding a baby son in his arms.
Often, the vice-chairman took Miaomiao to the outskirts of town, hoping to abandon her in the open fields. He would lay her down beside a dirt track, then hide behind a bush and observe. Occasionally, passersby would stop next to Miaomiao and kick her in the shins to see if she was alive. Then they’d glance around and, when they were sure no one was looking, frisk her. If they found the envelope of cash that the vice-chairman had hidden in her pocket, they’d pull it out and sneak away with it. Some people even tried to take her clothes. Whenever this happened, the vice-chairman would run after the thief and snatch the clothes and cash from his hands. Then he would pick up Miaomiao and carry her to a different field. As the sun began to set and still no one had come to rescue her, he would stagger over to her, faint with hunger, take her in his arms, and carry her home.
One day, the vice-chairman read an article about an orphanage in a neighboring town. The dormitories were clean and bright, the newspaper said, and there was a swing in the yard outside. Foreigners from six different countries had visited the orphanage to have their photographs taken with the happy children. The vice-chairman’s heart leapt when he read this news. “How wonderful!” he said to himself. “This is what Communism has given us! An orphanage run by the government—at last Miaomiao will have a home!”
He took the next day off work and travelled to the town with Miaomiao. As he approached the gates of the orphanage, he stopped for a moment and rehearsed what he was going to say. He whispered to Miaomiao that she was not to reveal to anyone that he was her father—an unnecessary precaution, since he knew very well that she couldn’t speak a word. “Your mother is so busy with your little sister now,” he told her. “She doesn’t have time to look after you. You’ll be happy here. They’ll give you noodles every day, and candy, too. They’ll even teach you English. You’ll be much happier here than you are at home.” He wiped the saliva from her chin, carried her through the gates, and knocked on the door.
The director of the orphanage opened it. She was a stern-looking woman, a few years younger than his wife. The vice-chairman deposited Miaomiao on the reception desk and claimed that he had found her alone on the street outside. “I asked everyone whom she belonged to, but no one knew,” he told the director, poker-faced. “A street vender told me that she was probably an orphan and I should hand her over to you.”
The director peered into Miaomiao’s eyes. “You found her on the street, you say?” she asked. “We can’t be sure that she’s an orphan. Maybe she just got lost, or became separated from her parents. You should really take her to the public-security bureau.”
The vice-chairman began to sweat. “I just wanted to perform a good deed,” he said. “I don’t know my way around this town. I’m here only for the day. And, besides, I have a train to catch.” He took out his train ticket and waved it in the air. The director let out a sigh and reluctantly agreed to take the child to the public-security bureau herself.
The vice-chairman returned to the station. As he waited for his train, he was overcome with such joy that he ran to the food stall at the end of the platform and treated himself to a plate of pigs’ ears and two glasses of warm rice wine.
The next day, he sat at his desk gazing out of the window, planning the letter that he would write to announce the news of Miaomiao’s disappearance, and then the application that he and his wife would file for another birth permit. Just as he was imagining his future son suckling at his wife’s breast, the telephone rang. It was the chief of police in the neighboring town asking him to come and collect Miaomiao.
The following morning, he took another day off work, much to his leader’s consternation, as it meant missing the department’s weekly Party meeting, and set off to bring Miaomiao home. The vice-chairman wondered how the police had managed to track him down. “The eyes of the crowd see everything,” he muttered to himself. He realized that to get rid of Miaomiao he would have to travel farther afield.
On Miaomiao’s eighth birthday, the vice-chairman gave her a plastic coat to protect her from the rain. After a birthday meal of fried noodles, he prepared for their next journey. First, he put on his own waterproof jacket and some new walking boots. Then he dropped a sleeping pill into Miaomiao’s mouth. He was afraid to abandon her while she was awake, lest she choke on her tears, or her cries attract a pack of wolves.
Although the vice-chairman’s wife had at first contested his plan, he had slowly won her over, and she now supported him wholeheartedly. Before he left, she always slipped a flask of hot tea and a tin of dried beef into his rucksack. His determination and vigor impressed her. She marvelled at how young he looked in his elegant new gear. Her only wish now was to make her husband happy and give him the male heir he longed for. A month earlier, she herself had paid the cabbage-faced old woman to arrange the sale of Miaomiao to an infertile couple, but as soon as the couple discovered that the child was retarded they’d brought her back and demanded a refund. After this setback, the wife contemplated breaking the rules and trying right away for a third child. She had heard of a private clinic in the countryside that removed coils for thirty yuan. But when she saw the poster above the grain shop that said “One child too many: a lifetime of punishments!” her courage failed her.
Still, Miaomiao refused to disappear. She suffered accident after accident, but always managed to survive unscathed. Before she had taken her first step, she had survived two car crashes and a fall from a third-story window. She fell out of her bed onto the concrete floor almost every night without suffering any serious injury.
One day, the vice-chairman left her on a quiet path beside a canal. A few minutes after he had put her down, a tractor appeared from nowhere and rolled right over her. The wheels scraped past her head and splattered her face with mud. When the vice-chairman rushed over, he found her unharmed. The tires had passed on either side of her. When the neighbors heard this story, they said that only a child who was blessed could survive such a thing, and they predicted that she would bring the family good fortune and prosperity. So for an entire month the vice-chairman gave up his attempts to get rid of Miaomiao and waited for his fortunes to turn.
But nothing changed, and the vice-chairman again became convinced that the future the lame fortune-teller Zeng had predicted for him was cast in stone. The likely termination 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.
A few months after his forty-eighth birthday, he was promoted to the post of chairman of the Municipal Treasury Board, just as Zeng had foretold. If Zeng’s other predictions proved to be correct, then the following year a calamity was destined to befall him. If he didn’t escape with his life, his family name would die with him. He decided that his only choice now was to retire from his new post and concentrate all his waking hours on the mission to abandon Miaomiao.
The trouble was that each time he tried to get rid of Miaomiao he felt his attachment to her deepen. He had begun to enjoy the trips he took with her into the countryside. Having spent so much of his life tied to a desk, he loved to feel the wind in his hair and the sun on his face. He liked to put on his camping gear and sleep under the stars. His trips with Miaomiao had made him appreciate his life, and, in a way, he was grateful to her.
For years, he had hoped that she would coöperate with his plans and disappear quietly from his life. But, as this hope had slowly diminished, she had become his only comforter and sympathizer—his closest friend. Though he put her in danger, she was the only person in this world who could forgive him. He began to pour out his heart to her, telling her about his problems with his wife, 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 even the foulest language in her presence.
As he grew aware of the futility of his efforts, he gradually lost control of his thoughts. Each time he tried to abandon Miaomiao, he felt as though he were, in fact, abandoning himself, and the future that had been fated for him. Sometimes he felt that it was Miaomiao who was dragging him through the town, rather than the other way around. She, too, had learned a lot from these journeys. Each time she lay on her back in an empty field, cried in the arms of a stranger, or gazed up at her father’s tortured face, her knowledge of the world expanded.
One evening, on the edge of a remote village, as the retired chairman collapsed on the ground from exhaustion, he seemed to hear Miaomiao say to him, “Over the past two years, I have had to assume the role of the abandoned child. 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. I have taught you things about yourself you would have preferred not to know. You must understand that your mission will destroy you in the end. In a deranged world, only the retarded 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 that I exist. If you were retarded like me, 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 let neither me nor yourself down. There’s nothing more you can do.” As she spoke, her tears and saliva dropped onto her father’s chest. He was asleep now, his head resting against an adobe wall. The slogan above him read “Ten more graves are better than one crib!”
That afternoon, after the retired chairman had failed yet again to abandon Miaomiao, a farmer in the village told him that no one there would want her. He said, “The family-planning officers are clamping down on us now. Everyone wants a son to help out in the fields. No one wants a daughter, especially not a retarded one. You’d be better off throwing her into the river. In this village, if you give birth to an unauthorized child, the doctors inject a saline solution into the baby’s head as soon as it’s born, and ten minutes later it’s dead.”
As people’s lives became transformed by the country’s growing economic prosperity, they began to pay less attention to the retired chairman who spent his life abandoning his elder daughter and then retrieving her. But everyone knew who he was.
Out of the corner of their eyes, they often caught sight of a man with freshly washed collar and cuffs (they could tell at a glance that he was a former government cadre) flitting past the municipal museum carrying a retarded child in his arms. He would cross the pedestrian overpass and make his way through the new urban district, heading not for the park by the water but for the open fields beyond.
When the retired chairman reached his fifties, his energy waned and he could no longer carry his daughter to the fields. Instead, he would lay her down near the grain shop, her head pointing toward the southwest. Then he would squat behind a tree ten metres away, the red string around his waist dangling to the ground. Passersby noticed that as he squatted there the lines on his face seemed to disappear. He would wait for hours, as patient as a fisherman by a lake. But as soon as someone walked over and touched his “lost property” he would jump to his feet, charge over, and scoop Miaomiao up in his arms. In this town, he became the retarded child’s only protector. ♦
(Translated, from the Chinese, by Flora Drew.)