by Su Tong
Huixian leaned closer and confidently studied the red printed words. Recognizing the words ‘people’, ‘coming’, and ‘ashore’, she read them aloud. ‘What does that mean?’ she asked.
Her question went unanswered. A simple enough question, its answer was significant. Regardless of how cute and bright she might have been, she was still one of the ‘people coming ashore’, and had to be registered as such.
The security group and boat people crowded around Huixian, combining all their efforts to help record the girl’s information. It was hard work.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Huixian.’
‘Your family name?’
She muttered something in a child-like stammer, impossible to understand.
‘Is it Zhang, written like this or this?’ Baldy asked her. ‘Or maybe it’s Qiang, like in rifle. Which one is it?’
‘I’m not a rifle, you are. I’ll write it for you.’ She squatted down, picked up a lump of coal and wrote her name on the ground. It was Jiang.
‘Ah!’ those who could read exclaimed. ‘Her name is Jiang.’
‘Do you remember your date of birth, little comrade?’
‘What’s that?’
‘You don’t understand. OK, how old are you? That way we’ll know the year you were born.’
‘I’m nine. I was eight last year, and I’ll be ten next year.’
‘I know you’re a smart little girl, but you don’t need to tell us all that. You’re nine, that’s enough. Do you know your parents’ names? What do they do for a living?’
‘My father’s name is Jiang Yongsheng, my mother’s name is Cui Xia. But they’re gone.’
‘How’d that happen? Where’d your father go?’
‘My mother said he was accused of something he didn’t do and some bad people dragged him out of his office.’
‘Bad people? Who were the bad people who took him away? And where did they take him?’
‘I don’t know. Mother said she’d take me to see him, some place with a steel fence and soldiers. But I didn’t get to see him, and the soldiers said he’s missing. Now my mama’s missing too. Have you seen her?’
Everyone who heard her tensed. Not everything she said sounded believable, but they couldn’t dismiss it out of hand. The boat people, always alert to such things, assumed that the girl’s father had been locked up, either as a criminal or as a counter-revolutionary. Desheng’s wife whispered to him, ‘I’m telling you, don’t let them register her. Nothing good can come of it. Look at their faces. You’d think they’d captured one of Chiang Kai-shek’s agents.’
The security group exchanged knowing looks. ‘Write down what she said,’ Xiaogai said to Baldy. ‘All of it, every word.’
Baldy nodded. ‘I’ve got it all, every word.’
Wintersweet took a long, proud look at her colleagues. ‘I told you there’s a problem with this girl, didn’t I?’ Her eyes flashed. But then she breathed a sorrowful sigh. ‘Too bad it turns out to be a little girl.’
The comment deflated Baldy Chen, who had been writing furiously. ‘Are we going to let her come ashore,’ he asked Xiaogai, ‘with a blot on her record?’
Xiaogai wasn’t sure. He looked at the girl, then turned to Baldy. ‘Go ahead, register her,’ he said as he scratched his head. ‘That’s what the regulations say.’
The boat people were all talking at once, voicing their doubts about the whole process, as the questioning recommenced. Baldy Chen cleared his throat and, trying his best to sound agreeable, said, ‘Don’t listen to them, little girl. Pay attention to my questions and you’ll be fine. Just be sure to give me straight answers. Now I want you to tell me your address. What is your address? You don’t understand that? All right, where’s your home?’
‘By the railroad tracks. Upstairs. There’s a peach tree in the yard. Lots of peaches.’
‘That’s not an address. An address means the city or town or district or county, things like that. What’s the district called? What street? Which commune or production brigade?’
‘None of those. There’s a rubbish dump at the end of a gravel road in front of our house. My mother goes there every day to dump rubbish.’
‘You say your mama dumps rubbish every day?’ Baldy’s eyes flashed. He clicked his tongue. ‘Tell your uncle what’s in the rubbish.’
Sun Ximing had heard enough. He rushed up and knocked the register out of Baldy Chen’s hand. ‘What’s in the rubbish! Landlord restoration records, radio transmitters, counter-revolutionary handbills? What the hell kind of security guard are you? What do you expect from a little girl like that? What harm can come of letting her come ashore? You should be ashamed of yourselves, treating her like a class enemy.’
Other members of the delegation expressed their opinions in much more colourful language. Desheng’s wife walked up and pulled Huixian into her arms. ‘How dare you treat her like that! Don’t let them register you. Whatever they ask, just ignore them.’
Desheng and Six-Fingers Wang rolled up their sleeves and placed themselves in front of Desheng’s wife and Huixian, shoving Xiaogai and Scabby Five aside. Scabby swung his truncheon and hit Six-Fingers in the face. ‘You rotten boat people!’ he shouted. ‘This is a rebellion!’
I was standing some way off, since I never liked sticking my nose in other people’s business. But for some unknown reason, I felt compelled to get involved in what was happening with the girl. The crowd pushed Huixian towards me. She was screaming, frightened and not knowing who to turn to. She reached out to me, and the sight of her little hand seeking help made my blood boil. I grabbed it, pulled her out of the crowd and shouted, ‘Run! Run, everybody!’
Running, that was something I’d become good at. Knowing the lie of the land around the piers as well as anyone, I had our escape route mapped out. We’d skirt the mountain of coal and head for the cotton warehouse, which would take us out of Xiaogai’s sphere of authority. I hadn’t run far with Huixian in tow when I turned to see quite a scene behind us. The delegation had formed a human wall to keep the security group from following us. Scabby Five was swinging his truncheon and Baldy Chen was following his lead, both aiming at the heads of the boat people. Hand-to-hand combat ensued, a wild mêlée of clubs and fists; even the wives of Desheng and Sun Ximing joined the battle. Someone, I couldn’t see who, kicked Baldy in the balls, and I watched him jump and run around in obvious pain, screams bursting from his open mouth. Then Xiaogai blew on his whistle – jerky, panicky. ‘It’s a riot!’ he shouted. ‘A riot! A counter-revolutionary riot! Go and report this to Secretary Zhao, and do it now!’
By now Huixian and I had reached the foot of the mountain of coal. Scared by what was happening behind us, she asked me, ‘Why are they fighting?’
‘They’re fighting over you, you dope.’
She still didn’t get it. ‘I never asked them to fight. Fighting’s no good, it breaks down discipline.’
I was in no mood to explain things to her. I started up the mountain of coal, but she refused to let me pull her along. ‘Why do we have to go up that? All that black coal will get my clothes dirty.’ She was too young to appreciate what was going on. Angry and increasingly anxious, I hoisted her up on to my back and started climbing. She fought me at first with her fists and feet, but when she began pretending she was on horseback her excitement led to whoops of joy. She smacked me on my backside. ‘Giddy up!’ she shouted. ‘Giddy up!’
With Huixian still on my back, I made it to the cotton warehouse, as the sound of an avalanche erupted behind me. The boat people were cheering me on, like a revolutionary phalanx, as they clambered proudly down the mountain of coal. Wintersweet’s shrill voice carried on the wind from the other side: ‘Go ahead, run! Don’t think we won’t settle the score sooner or later! You can run from the monk, but not from the temple!’
We reassembled at the entrance to the cotton warehouse. Six-Fingers’s face was scratched, Sun Ximing’s wife used a handkerchief to cover her chest where
her shirt was ripped. The delegation had suffered some minor losses, but everyone looked triumphant. They were excited over their easy victory.
The workers inside were understandably unnerved by the tumult at the warehouse entrance; when the iron gate swung open with a clang, two women stepped outside, one middle-aged, the other quite young. They eyed the crowd cautiously. ‘What are you people doing here?’ one of them asked. ‘Are you planning to steal coal, or maybe cotton? You can do what you want with the coal, but if you try to steal our cotton, we’ll call the police.’
‘How dare you!’ Sun Ximing’s wife protested. ‘Do we look like thieves?’
‘Thieves don’t paint the word on their foreheads,’ the middle-aged woman said enigmatically. ‘What difference does it make what you look like?’
‘We’re not going to argue with you,’ the younger woman said as she pointed to the warehouse wall. ‘Read that if you can. “STR ATEGIC WARE HOUSE : FIRES FOR BIDDEN. THEFTS WILL BE PUNISHED!”’
‘You have no right to treat us this way,’ Desheng’s wife said. ‘What we’re doing has nothing to do with you. I’d have thought you’d have your hands full taking care of the cotton, so leave us alone!’
‘You can do your business somewhere else.’ The middle-aged woman’s eyes swept the crowd, filled with hostility. When she spotted the scratches on Six-Fingers’s face, she clicked her tongue. ‘Where did you people come from, and how did you get those injuries?’
Embarrassed by the comment, Six-Fingers glared at her and cursed angrily, ‘You filthy cunt, I’ll thump the life out of you!’
The woman obviously knew what the word ‘cunt’ meant, and understood what it was to thump somebody. She rolled her eyes at Six-Fingers and shoved the younger woman back into the warehouse, saying, ‘This is none of our business. If they’re not gone in two minutes, call the police.’
Her threat had the desired effect, since the delegation moved away docilely, though not without plenty of grumbling. Their timidity was understandable, given their fear of the police. Taking Huixian by the hand, Desheng’s wife started heading back to explain things to the women, but was stopped by Sun Ximing. ‘We’re here to make arrangements for the girl,’ he announced with a wave of his hand, ‘so forget them. We’ll find another spot. Don’t tell me there’s no place for us to talk things over anywhere in Milltown.’
That sounded good, but there really wasn’t any place for us in the town, we knew that. So the discussion resumed as we walked, and in the end, Sun’s suggestion carried the day. Rather than go to the Women’s Federation, the Civil Administration or the Family Planning Commission, we’d take the child straight to Zhao Chuntang.
The General Affairs Building was at the far northern end of the piers, and we kept running into restricted areas with signs that read, ‘DEAD END’ and ‘DETOUR’. We skirted the construction area by the piers until, with considerable difficulty, we found ourselves in front of the white, four-storey building. I can’t say what kind of deterrent power it had, but the moment the boat people arrived at the steps of the building, a sense of fear gripped them; there was no grumbling and no talking, just wide-eyed looks and unconscious backing away.
Desheng’s wife managed to remain unflappable. ‘I’ll bet Xiaogai and his bunch are in there,’ she said to Sun Ximing. ‘They probably ran over to report us.’
Sun lit a cigarette and took several deep drags. ‘We’ve sustained injuries,’ he said at last, ‘so let them make their report. We have the girl to worry about, and nothing’s going to keep us from doing what we came to do.’ He looked first at Huixian, then at me, and finally pointed to the building with his cigarette. ‘Dongliang,’ he said, ‘you grew up around this building, so you must know it well. Go in and have a look around, all right?’
I jumped at the chance. But in order to avoid getting held up by Gimpy Gu in the reception area, I told Sun Ximing and the others to wait by the gate while I circled round and entered through a ground-floor toilet window.
I’d been in every office in the building, and knew them all well. I immediately ran upstairs to the fourth floor, only to discover that we’d chosen a bad day to come, since all the officials were out on their weekly voluntary-work day. The doors were locked, and by rights I should have gone back downstairs to tell the others. But, inexplicably, I forgot what I was there to do and stopped in front of Zhao Chuntang’s door. It had once been my father’s office. A sign that read ‘IDLERS KEEP OUT’, in my father’s hand, had once decorated the familiar glass door, and I’d become so used to seeing it that I’d ignored it. A sign saying the same thing was still there, but now in Zhao Chuntang’s hand, and the familiar words disgusted me. I pushed the door, but it didn’t open. The lock jangled. Keep out! Keep out! The sound of those words rattling around in my head ignited a destructive desire.
‘Fuck you and your keep outs! Change those words, change them or else!’ Hanging on the wall was a blackboard with an emergency announcement, ordering all officials to go down to the construction site for manual labour. I picked up a piece of chalk, wiped out the words ‘KEEP OUT’ on the sign and replaced them with ‘PLEASE ENTER’. That took the edge off my indignation, but I was still far from being satisfied or mollified. The image of those profound words scrawled on the wall of the public toilet on People’s Avenue came to mind. I still wasn’t sure what they meant. I couldn’t get my head around the ‘alien’ accusation, but I was sure it was a condemnation of Zhao Chuntang. So, chalk in hand, I scribbled the words ‘ZHAO CHUNTANG IS AN ALIEN CLASS ELEMENT’ on the fourth-floor corridor wall.
I threw down the chalk and ran to the second floor, where I stopped to calm myself down, just as a commotion broke out downstairs. Gimpy Gu had come out of his room and hobbled towards the delegation, railing at them, ‘Don’t you boat people know anything? These are critical times, and you’re not helping things by bringing in a stray kid. There’s nobody here to take her from you. All the officials are down at the construction site.’
Wouldn’t you know it, on my way downstairs Gimpy Gu stopped me. ‘What are you up to? Why were you upstairs when everybody else is downstairs? What were you doing up there?’
I ignored him and waved to the delegation. ‘It’s the day they do their voluntary work,’ I said. ‘Let’s go down to the construction site.’
Stung by Gimpy Gu’s criticism, the boat people turned and left the General Affairs Building, grumbling about their treatment. Desheng’s wife handed Huixian to her husband and told him to hold her up in the air so the people at the piers could see her. ‘That way they’ll know we’re coming to turn her in, not to make trouble.’
‘She’s high enough already,’ said Desheng, who had the girl on his shoulders. ‘They can’t see her, anyway, since they’re all working. They’re not paying us any attention.’
‘Isn’t it strange,’ Desheng’s wife complained, ‘how many officials are out there worrying about land and cement, and how many more are concerned with all those tools, but there’s no one to give a damn about this little girl?’
I knew that the best way to find someone in authority in that crowd of workers was to look for a red flag. I saw one that said ‘PUBLIC SERVANT SHOCK TROOPS’, and that is where I headed, along with Sun Ximing and the others, only to find that Xiaogai had got there ahead of us. He was resting on his haunches under the flag, register in hand, and reading from it to someone down in the trench. Reporting on us. We looked down to see who it was. As I guessed, it was Zhao Chuntang. He was wearing a hard hat and knee-high rubber boots and had a whistle around his neck as he supervised the work group digging the trench.
One of the women in our group leaned over and shouted, ‘Secretary Zhao, this girl turned up at our fleet, so we’re bringing her to you!’
Xiaogai jumped up and pointed angrily at her. ‘You’ve got a nerve coming here to cause trouble! Who kicked Baldy in the balls? They’re all swollen, and if he suffers a permanent injury, you’ll pay. I’ve told Secretary Zhao how you came ashore to c
ause trouble on the pretext of bringing over a child. There’s a new trend in class struggle, you know!’
Everyone began talking at once, insisting they hadn’t attacked Baldy Chen. Six-Fingers stepped up to the edge of the trench. ‘Don’t listen to him. Look at my face. See how puffy it is? Who did that? Scabby Five did it. Bringing the child ashore is part of the new trend in class struggle, but can you say the same about a security group that uses its truncheons on the heads of the revolutionary masses?’
Everyone on the ground and in the trench turned to look at Zhao and see his reaction. I watched as he waved three times. The first wave was a more or less polite sign to the people to move on. But the delegation stood its ground. There was an angry edge to the second wave, implying that they were ill informed and were interfering with the work under way. Still they stayed put.
‘Don’t listen to Wang Xiaogai’s false accusations,’ Desheng’s wife said. ‘We’re not worthy of any new trend, and we’re not here to make trouble. We brought this little girl ashore, a living, breathing child we can’t abandon and we can’t keep. How can we go home before the authorities have taken responsibility for her?’
At that Zhao Chuntang stuck his shovel in the mud and had a hushed discussion with an official named Four-Eyes Zhang. Then he turned back and waved for the third time, a gesture we found a bit strange. ‘Come down here, Sun Ximing,’ Four-Eyes explained. ‘We want to talk to you.’
Sun was about to take the little girl down into the trench, but one of the women snatched her out of his hands. ‘You go on down if you want to,’ she said, ‘but she stays here.’
‘Quieten down, you women,’ Four-Eyes said, ‘and keep out of this. Bring the girl down and let Secretary Zhao see her before he decides what to do.’
So Sun Ximing took Huixian by the hand to go down into the trench, but she baulked at the sight of it. ‘It’s muddy down there,’ she said. ‘My clothes will get dirty.’
‘Those people are all officials,’ Sun said to reassure her. ‘They’re rich and powerful, so you don’t have to worry if you get dirty. They’ll buy you some new clothes.’
