by Su Tong
Knowing that something was wrong, Father followed me with an almost spectral gaze, from the aft cabin to the forward hold, from bow to stern. Like a trained hound, he homed in on the smell of my desire. As my physiological urges grew stronger, my facial expressions hardened; I tried to hide them, but his gaze sharpened and became ruthless. ‘Dongliang,’ he said, ‘what are you always sneaking looks at?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
He just sneered and looked down at the front of my trousers. ‘I know what you’re looking at,’ he said irritably, ‘and I’m telling you to watch yourself!’
With his eyes always on me, I had nowhere to hide, so I walked back to the stern at a half crouch, feeling that my crotch was about to catch fire. I needed water. Half the river was in shadow, the other half in sunlight; a clump of grass was spinning mysteriously on the surface, creating a stream of bubbles. Once again I heard the river call to me: Come down, come down. The river was trying to save me with its coded message. This time I was ready to obey. Go down, why not? Go down. I stripped off my white vest and dived into the water.
I swam over to the perfect vantage point, the space between our barge and number eight, where I held on to the anchor, which was cold to the touch and slightly sticky. Maybe the ghost of the martyr Deng Shaoxiang had left a secret curse. I wasn’t afraid of the martyr’s ghost, nor of secret messages. I looked around – it was the ideal spot for me. Why, I wondered, hadn’t I understood the water’s secret message in the past? Come down, come down. Now that I was in the water, I knew what awaited me: freedom. I could not be free on the barge; I could be free only in the river. How good it was in the water, absolutely wonderful. Finally, I’d found a spot where I could be free, a spot where I could escape Father’s watchful eye.
I have a hard-on, Dad. I’m having one whether you want me to or not!
I’m firing my pistol, Dad. I’m firing it whether you want me to or not!
I heard Father’s anxious footsteps up on deck and experienced the joy of retaliation. In the shadows between the two barges, I availed myself of the water’s protection to calm the tumult fomenting inside me. My body was submerged in the water, submerged in darkness; maybe fish could see what I was doing, but they couldn’t talk, so I wasn’t worried. The men and boys in the water might have spotted me there, but they could only see my head and shoulders, not my hand, and heads and shoulders were incapable of firing a pistol. And even if they discovered what I was doing, I wasn’t worried that they’d say anything. The women and girls on the shore were too far away to see me, and I wasn’t interested in seeing them, anyway. Huixian was the only one I wanted to see. She was crouching down on the bank, painstakingly washing her clothes. From time to time her glance swept over barge number seven, but my secret was safe. My father was watching me, while I was watching her.
She loved to dress up at that age. She wore a gardenia on her breast and had on a green skirt, which she hitched up over her knees to keep it from getting wet. Her exposed knees were milky white, like a couple of lovely buns fresh from the oven – no, not buns, I mustn’t use such common food items to describe any part of Huixian. How about sweet, alluring fruit? But is there a fruit that resembles knees? I racked my brain, trying to come up with something, when all of a sudden a beam of light passed overhead. There in the spot between the two barges, in the narrow space I occupied, the upper half of Father’s face appeared, his staring eyes frightening me so much that I couldn’t react before I heard him roar, ‘Dongliang, what are you doing, hiding down there? Just what are you doing? Get up here, right this minute!’
I ducked my head under the surface. My ears were pounded by water as I tried to find a new secret message. But there was nothing. Trying to keep one step ahead of my father was hard, and the water offered no help. It was hopeless. I could stay in the water for ever, hold my breath until I drowned, and still I couldn’t escape Father’s watch over me.
I had to come up for air, I had no choice, like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. I took a quick look around me, fearful that he might spot signs of my crime. The fluids that had escaped from my body were as nothing in a riverful of water. The surface was as before – no joys, no anxieties – nothing had changed, and I had nothing to worry about. ‘It was hot,’ I said to him, ‘and I wanted to cool off. What’s wrong with that? How come you’re always watching me? Don’t I deserve a little freedom?’
With a sneer, he said, ‘I know what you want to do with your freedom. Freedom is wasted on a boy like you. OK, you’ve cooled off, now get up here.’
I pulled myself out of the water, and the moment I was on deck I was drained of energy, and felt dirty. As I sat there without moving I discovered that I looked like one of those legendary water demons, my skin mottled, rust from the anchor on the backs of my hands, and clumps of moss from the bottom of the boat on my thighs; a rotting leaf was tangled in my hair, plus a golden stalk of rice straw, both of which had been floating on the surface. The really strange thing was that a snail was stuck to my shorts; I picked it off and tossed it back into the river, and when I looked up, Father was standing in front of me, a scowl of disgust on his face. He was holding a bucket in his hand. ‘Go up to the bow,’ he said as he gave me a shove. ‘You’re filthy, body and mind. After I wash you down,’ he said, ‘go into the cabin.’
I was as disgusted with myself as he was, but I couldn’t put my feelings into words. While he was washing me down I shot a glance at the riverbank, where girls from the boats had already hung wet clothes on drying poles; colourful cottons, polyesters and rayons sparkled in the sunlight. One bucket of water was all he needed to wash off the dirt, as I scoured the bank for Huixian’s flowery blouse. But the boat girls all dressed pretty much alike, and many of them owned flowery blouses with sunflower patterns, so I couldn’t tell which one was hers. The wet clothes seemed flecked with gold in the bright sunlight, and to me it looked like a row of sunflowers in bloom, a sight that brightened my mood. But it also instilled a sense of self-reproach, an understanding that I owed Father an apology. So I took the bucket from him. ‘That’s enough,’ I said as cordially as possible, ‘I’m clean enough.’
‘Your body, yes, but not your mind. It’s a shame I can’t clean that.’
Not daring to argue, I walked into the cabin, with him right behind me. ‘What are you thinking now?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Kongpi, that’s what my head is, just kongpi.’ Actually, if I told him what I was thinking, he wouldn’t understand. I was pondering a perplexing matter: how can a water gourd and a sunflower come together? Two diverse things, one at home on the water, the other on land, how could they come together? Could they ever come together?
Red Lantern
NOBODY BUT me ever called Huixian a sunflower. The residents of Milltown all called her Little Tiemei.
When she was fourteen, Huixian and some of the girls on the other boats started playing a type of hopscotch called house-jumping. Crowding around lines of squares drawn in chalk, they giggled as they took turns jumping from square to square, competing to see who could acquire the most houses.
One day the girls encountered Teacher Song of the district’s propaganda troupe. Song was travelling from town to town and village to village, searching for an actress to play the part of Li Tiemei, the heroine of the revolutionary opera Red Lantern, and to ride in a National Day parade. The authorities had made strict demands: the actress chosen to play Li Tiemei had to be simple, unaffected and in good health; she should be old enough, but not too old; she had to fit the part, physically and in spirit; and her thinking was to be progressive. She would be required to stand in an open vehicle, holding a red lantern, for several hours. A delicate girl would not fit the bill. Song, who was searching the banks of the Golden Sparrow River, could not have come at a better time, for he had just arrived at the Milltown piers when he spotted the girls playing hopscotch. He stood to one side watching, mesmerized.
The girls appealed to him a
s simple and vigorous. They all had dark skin and heavy thighs, their feet were somewhat splayed, but their eyes were bright, their voices crisp and clear, and they appeared to be in good health. Naturally, he paid particular attention to their faces. He gave only a passing glance to those like Chunhua, Chunsheng’s little sister, with pointed mouths and sunken cheeks. People said that Huixian and Yingtao caught his attention at first, and that he kept looking from one to the other, unable to decide. But the attitude of the two girls, each from different boats, towards an obviously cultured man they’d never seen before could not have differed more. Song took a red paper lantern out of his bag and asked Yingtao to hold it up. She was a charming girl, but a bit ill at ease, guarded and shy in the presence of a strange male adult. Nothing he said could get her to hold the lantern up. She even went so far as to mutter, ‘Who do you think you are? You must be crazy to want me to hold up a lantern in broad daylight.’ Huixian, on the other hand, was not only confident and unaffected, but, thanks to her native intelligence, she sized the man up and knew that he was someone special. Instinctively grasping the opportunity, she straightened out her clothes, smoothed her hair with her hand and a bit of saliva, and held the lantern up high. She smiled at Teacher Song. ‘Comrade, is this how Li Tiemei would do it?’
Song’s eyes lit up. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘That’s a good pose. A real-life Li Tiemei.’
Yingtao saw her mistake, but too late. The Seagull camera in his hand revealed his identity. He snapped one picture after another of Huixian holding up the lantern in a variety of poses, each meeting with his approval. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘that’s the right look and the right pose, just like Li Tiemei.’
I still recall the spectacular National Day parade that year. The theme was the eight revolutionary operas, each represented by a truck fitted with tractor tyres towing a miniature stage up and down the banks of the Golden Sparrow River. The important characters from each opera assumed their signature poses, in full make-up, as they stood in the truck beds. The Red Lantern vehicle was given the lead position. Huixian, I recall, was wearing a red padded jacket with a pattern of white flowers; her hair had been combed into a single long braid, her face was resplendent with dark painted eyebrows and heavily rouged cheeks. For a whole day, she stood on her truck, posing motionlessly with a red lantern held high over her head. She seemed somewhat nervous. ‘Pay attention to your expression!’ Song shouted from the street. He wanted her to open her eyes as wide as possible to display Li Tiemei’s determination to revolt. After blinking a couple of times, Huixian opened her eyes until they were as round as the mouth of a bronze bell, and that expression seemed to infuse her with greater strength; she held the lantern as high as her arm would allow, turning it into a torch. ‘Watch that lantern!’ Song shouted. ‘Be careful with it!’ This incarnation of Li Tiemei neither sang nor acted, but standing all day on a truck holding a red lantern over her head was no mean task.
I was worried she wouldn’t have the strength to strike her pose the next day, but she was up to the challenge. Li Yuhe and Granny Li, played by a strapping young man with a small horse lantern and a woman in a coarse apron, also stood in the truck, clearly at ease. The eyes of everyone along the parade route were on Li Tiemei, on Huixian, who had quickly and cleverly mastered the pose; she looked the part, just like the propaganda poster of Li Tiemei. People cheered her on; my hands were red from clapping wildly, even though I spotted a cold sore at the corner of her mouth that her make-up could not hide. It could have been caused by nerves or simple exhaustion. Worried that the authorities might find that reason to replace her, I shouted to her and pointed to my mouth to call her attention to the cold sore. Did I really think she could hear me? As it turned out, I needn’t have been concerned, since someone had been assigned to look after her. The parade route shifted to Horsebridge on the third day, but this time they were to ride in a miniature steamboat. The Sunnyside Fleet docked at the piers, where we watched the performers – male and female, in costume and full make-up – strut their way to the steamboat; we all recognized the skinny girl among them, and excitedly called out Huixian’s name. She was too focused on tying her red hair band to respond, so the tugboat crew broadcast her name – Huixian! – over a bullhorn. She lurched and cast a quick glance at the fleet before catching up with Li Yuhe and Granny Li.
This was Huixian’s moment. She was an overnight sensation. Throngs of people on the banks of the Golden Sparrow River were witness to the girl’s sudden flowering. People up and down the river were talking about a Little Tiemei who rode past them on a truck, saying that a golden phoenix had flown out of a chicken coop. The lovable Little Tiemei had actually grown up under the communal wing of the Sunnyside Fleet. Reactions to this varied on the barges. Sun Ximing and Desheng displayed the smiling air of people who were responsible for her success, while Yingtao and her family held their own wrists in sadness. Yingtao often broke out crying for no apparent reason. But my reaction was unique. I don’t know why, but I was deeply troubled. In the days just before and after National Day, we were often kept so busy loading and offloading cargo that we missed our chance to watch the parades, and all we saw was the litter left by the trucks on their joyous passage: banners that hadn’t been taken down, rubbish on the ground, and an occasional abandoned shoe. In my eyes, that litter was all a part of Huixian’s glory, which was leaving me in its wake. My sunflower had been blown away, chased by the water gourd, which remained on the water and could never catch something on land.
Keeping up my diary was demanding work. Forced to draw on what little imagination I possessed, I based my understanding of what was happening to Huixian on what I gleaned from open-air movies and newspaper clippings. I sometimes daringly dreamed up magnificent scenes and wrote them down in my notebook: ‘A clear, sunny day. People crowded the Milltown piers under the blazing red sun, in a festive, excited mood to greet Chairman Mao in their midst. He warmly asked the sunflower—’ What did he ask her? Nothing came to mind, and I didn’t dare keep writing, since I’d brought our great leader into it; if I wasn’t careful, I might write something that could be interpreted as a counter-revolutionary slogan. So I turned the page and started a new line, asking the single most important question: ‘Sunflower, oh, Sunflower, when will you return to the fleet?’
Some time around November, the parades ended and the people playing the roles of Li Yuhe and Granny Li returned to their regular jobs, he to a farm tools plant, where he repaired tractors, and she to a general store, where she sold soy sauce. But Huixian did not return. She had been discovered, like a piece of raw jade that many people wanted to cut and polish to produce a fine jewel. Song, her most ardent promoter, became her teacher, taking on the task of turning her into one of the foremost portrayers of Li Tiemei.
Huixian’s early training came with the district revolutionary opera troupe, where she was taken under the wing of the renowned actress Hao Liping. Mother had mentioned this woman in the past, referring to her as the Golden Sparrow District’s version of Comrade Jiang Qing, the Chairman’s wife. An acknowledged authority, she was the most influential and talented actress in the troupe, regardless of which heroic role she was cast to sing and dance in; by donning a fake beard, she could even take on the role of Yang Bailao in The White-Haired Woman.
This actress, this Hao Liping, was not favourably disposed towards Huixian; her assessment of the girl was diametrically opposed to that of Teacher Song and others. Finding her anything but simple and natural, she criticized her voice as substandard and found her work ethic wanting. She said Huixian butchered every song she attempted, modifying it to suit herself. After trying her best to mould the new student, she took Huixian to see Song and told him to take her back. ‘She has plenty of pluck,’ she said, ‘but not an artistic cell in her body. She’s ambitious, but has no future.’
Though not convinced that Hao Liping was being fair, Song was forced to call together a group of artistic individuals in the district to evaluate Huixian’s potential. T
he results were less than ideal. She had, they concluded, a natural talent for striking the right pose, but her flaws became immediately apparent when she began to sing and act. Disappointed but not ready to let that be the end of it, Song transferred Huixian to a travelling propaganda troupe attached to the cultural centre, of which he was in charge. Having her under his direct supervision, he assumed it would be smooth sailing. It was an unmitigated disaster. The other girls had grown up in the troupe and formed a perfect chorus line. If a line of poplar trees was called for, all it took was an eye signal for them to stand tall and straight; if they formed a flower garden, as soon as the plum blossom opened, the apricot and the peach, the Chinese rose, the primrose and the other flowers bloomed in perfect sequence, without a hint of dispute. But not Huixian. On stage, if all the others were poplars, she was a weeping willow; if she was a lotus, she insisted on blooming before the plum blossom. The bad habit of always wanting to do things her way, which we’d fostered in the fleet, resurfaced. In her mind, when she was on stage, she was the only one the audience was watching. The director, knowing she didn’t fit in, placed her in the least conspicuous spot in a dance. Predictably unhappy with this arrangement, she would impulsively work her way to the front to show the audience that her role was the most important one. Her fellow performers quickly ran out of patience, complaining that she was incapable of getting anything right, which then took the shine off their reputation. Whatever they did when she was on stage was a waste of effort; she was ruining their chances of winning prizes in competitions. What could she do, besides hold up a red lantern, they asked. If the leaders of the troupe were interested in training her, they should wait till the next time there was a parade and let her enjoy the limelight by standing there holding her red lantern.
