by Su Tong
I took a good hard look at them, trying to guess how old they were and see if they were ageing faster than my father. But then it hit me – they were the winners in this drama. They might have been old and slovenly, but they were more carefree than my father. There were no crimes or sins associated with their names, so they were spared the need to reform themselves. Ordinary citizens all their lives, they’d never had much of anything, which meant they had nothing to lose. They were in good shape; so were their sons. A bizarre thought struck me: wouldn’t it be interesting if everyone’s lineage was as easy to change as my father’s? And if I hadn’t been the son of Ku Wenxuan, but instead called the old blacksmith or the professional ear-cleaner father, would I have turned out like Scabby Five or Little Chen? How would I feel about that? I stood there thinking for a long time, until I was brought up short by the beating of my own heart. I was actually envious of that bastard Scabby Five, actually willing to trade places with Little Chen the barber. I had answered my own question: I’d be just fine with that.
It was noon, and Father’s going-ashore plan called for me to be at the clinic by one thirty and then return to the barge to make lunch. As I passed by the tiger oven, golden flecks of rice chaff fell from its ledge on to my shoes. There were piles of the stuff up there. The operator of the stove, Old Mu, stripped to the waist, was shovelling it into the oven. I couldn’t see the flames, but I heard them crackle. Pop! Pop! Burn, burn, burn. My heart echoed the beat of the flames, and I suddenly felt hot all over. There was a stabbing pain in my foot, and when I bent down to look, I saw a rice husk embedded in the space between two toes. I picked it out and saw that it had the world’s tiniest and most abject little face; the inevitable progression from a piece of grain to fuel for a fire gave it a fearful and terribly sad expression. I rolled it around in the palm of my hand. The rice paddy had been plundered until there was nothing left. The next thing I felt was the hot sun on my scalp, and then I saw my father’s face in the shrivelled rice husk, his look of fear and sadness greater even than the solitary husk in my hand. I heard the subdued sound of his pleas: Save me, please save me!
I knew I had to save Father.
But who could I find to help me?
All of Milltown, in my mind a great metropolis, had once been my playground; now it was alien territory. There was no one on whom I could rely; then I thought of someone – Huixian. She owed us, and she remained a celebrity. I placed my hopes on her, but what could I say to convince her to come to my father’s aid? I couldn’t begin to guess if she’d be willing to do so. I passed a bakery stall on the eastern edge of town, its fragrance reminding me that I was hungry. I bought a baked flatbread and immediately sank my teeth into it. Just then I heard my name shouted in a crisp voice. It was Desheng’s wife, who was gaping at me in complete surprise. ‘Why aren’t you back on the barge, Dongliang? Your father is waiting for his lunch.’
‘So what? I’m not his personal servant, you know. He’s got two hands, and there’s a pot in the kitchen and rice in the pantry. What’s keeping him from making his own lunch?’
She gave me a bewildered look. ‘Why is a dutiful son like you saying things like that? Have you fought with your father again?’
I waved her off and started walking. I hadn’t fought with my father. It was the rest of the world that was fighting with him.
I returned to the barbershop, where, amid the smells of food and Glory soap, the barbers were eating on a makeshift table made of two stools pulled together. Their surprise at seeing me again was matched by my surprise at what I saw: since when had Wang Xiaogai of the security group started eating with this lot? There he was, sitting in the middle, stuffing a fried egg into his mouth.
Old Cui stared at me uncertainly. ‘What are you doing here? You’ve had your haircut.’
I’d come to help my father, after pondering what I’d say to Huixian on the way over. But one look at Wang Xiaogai drove that thought out of my mind. What was he doing, enjoying a meal with the barbers? I glared at him – his hair, his new grey jacket, and the area around his crotch – and was immediately reminded of the talk I’d been hearing about Huixian, especially the rumour that Xiaogai had the hots for her. I’d laughed it off as crazy talk. Could it possibly be true?
Huixian laid down her bowl and looked me up and down. ‘Did you fight it out with Zhao Chunmei? How come you look like you’ve lost your best friend?’ She could see I was staring at Xiaogai. ‘Who are you looking for? Wang Xiaogai?’
I knew what I must have looked like, so I turned away from Xiaogai and said to her, ‘I want to talk to you about something. Can you come outside?’
‘Why do we have to talk outside?’ There was a guarded look in her eyes. ‘I don’t like that sneaky expression of yours. Who do you want to talk about? You? Me?’
‘N–neither,’ I stammered, beginning to lose my composure. ‘What’s got you so uppity?’ I said. ‘All I’m asking is for you to step outside. It won’t take long. What do you say?’
‘I say no.’ She shook her head, showing she meant what she said. ‘I’m not afraid to step outside, but I’m not a girl who shares sweet nothings with just anybody.’
The men around the table exchanged knowing looks. With a grin, Little Chen smacked his chopsticks against his lunch box. ‘You heard her. She doesn’t go for that kind of talk. If you’ve brought a love letter along, read it for us. We’d love to hear it.’
Wang Xiaogai hadn’t taken his eyes off me. I was his enemy, and he was ready for anything. But then he sneered and pointed to the mirror. ‘If you’ve written a love letter, go and take a look at yourself and see if you’re fit to read it.’
I sneered back. ‘That’s enough of that talk, Xiaogai,’ I said. ‘I may not be fit to read a love letter, but you’re not even fit to write one. You’re not educated enough to write one even if you wanted to.’
Being put down in front of his friends infuriated him. He threw his spoon at me. ‘Kongpi,’ he snarled, ‘maybe you can write love letters, but you’re still a kongpi. I may be dumb, but I’m a hell of a lot better than you!’ He stood up and pointed to me threateningly, his eyes blazing. ‘I told you to take a look in the mirror, but since you won’t, I’ll tell you what you look like: you look like a parasite. Who’ve you come here to feast upon, that’s what I want to know. Who is Huixian to you? And what does she owe you? Do you think you own her just because she had a few meals on your boat? What do you want to talk to her about? Everybody knows what’s on your mind. You’re like the toad that wants to feast on a swan.’
I responded to the thrown spoon by picking up a pair of clippers and throwing them at him, hitting him on the leg. ‘My new clippers!’ Old Cui shouted. ‘You’ll buy a new pair if you’ve broken them. Now get out, all of you! I’m not going to have you two fighting over a woman in my shop!’
The veil of motives was broken by that shout. No one in the shop spoke. Boiling with rage, I glared at Xiaogai. My anger stemmed in part from his aggressive behaviour, but also because the words had hit home. I glanced at Huixian, hoping she’d come to my aid, but she bent over to pick up the clippers, her expression giving away nothing of what she felt. The hint of a vacant smile appeared on her lips. She tested the clippers. ‘Do me a favour,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you fighting over me here. If word got out, people would be thrilled to place the blame squarely on me.’ She walked over to the washbasin, then turned and beckoned me over. ‘Come on, Ku Dongliang, I’ll wash your hair for you. Since you don’t want them to hear what you say, come here and let me wash your hair, and they won’t hear a word.’
I hesitated as I saw Huixian turn on the water and test the temperature on the back of her hand. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘You said there’s something you want to talk about. Well, everything’s open and above board here. You can talk while I run the water, then stop and leave after I’ve turned it off.’
As they say, riding a tiger is easy, getting off is hard. So, under the mocking gazes of Xiaogai and the
others, I stumbled nervously over to the washbasin. ‘Put your bag down,’ she said. I didn’t. Instead, I laid it on my knees after I’d sat down on the stool. ‘What do you have in there, gold ingots? No one’s going to steal your stuff.’ She took it from me and laid it to one side.
Warm water flowed from the hose, and I was encircled by an unfamiliar but rich fragrance, one I couldn’t begin to describe. It came not only from Huixian’s jasmine face powder, but drifted over from somewhere else as well, and I wondered if it might be her natural smell, the faint aroma of sunflowers. I know it sounds far-fetched, but her body gave off the aroma of sunflowers. ‘My dad … my dad, he …’ I couldn’t say what I wanted to say and felt as if I were suffocating.
‘What about your dad?’ she said. ‘Is that what you want to talk about, your dad?’
‘I mean, you helped my dad …’ I felt her fingers moving between my scalp and the tap and swallowed the rest of the words. ‘I mean, my dad … he’s actually a good man, someone who’s suffered a lot.’
‘That’s something you should talk to the authorities about. Why tell me?’ She kept massaging my scalp. ‘What’s wrong with your head, why’s it so stiff? Lower it for me.’
I did, and I felt her push it down further, her fingers gently massaging. Then she put one finger into each of my ears and made two full circles. My memory is clear on that, two full circles, and my old problem returned: I forgot what it was I wanted to talk to her about as a mysterious current shot down from the top of my head through my body, all the way to my crotch, where an erection sprang up. Now the feeling of suffocation intensified. Danger! Danger! My brain was sending a warning, stronger and stronger. The tap was turned off and no more water ran through the hose. The sound was replaced by my father’s raspy shout: ‘Leave, get out of there, come back to the boat!’
I jumped down off the stool, flustered, picked up my bag and held it in front of me to hide the bulge in my trousers. I fled from the People’s Barbershop before anyone knew what was happening. ‘What got into him?’ someone shouted. ‘Did he say something?’
I looked behind me. Huixian had run to the door. I’d really offended her this time. Her face was flushed. She raised her fist; she was still holding the bar of soap. ‘Ku Dongliang!’ she shouted. ‘You’re crazy. People kept telling me you were, but I didn’t believe them. Now I do! And you said you wanted to talk! I tell you, go to Horsebridge, that’s where the lunatic asylum is!’
I ran like an escaped convict, all the way to the public toilet on People’s Avenue. I’d shamed myself, and every time I did that on the shore, that’s where I went. I was a sick young man, and this was my remedy. But, just my luck, the toilet offered no aid this time, had no place for me. A skinny monkey of a man was standing in front of the only cubicle, impatiently trying to undo a knot in his trouser sash. I couldn’t get him to hurry, and was forced to stand there and wait. And as I watched him getting ready to urinate, I found myself envying him. What a good life people like him had, with a home to return to when the need to vent his desire came upon him, able to relieve himself in the toilet, pull up his pants, and leave without a care, unlike me, who had a different need for a public toilet. The stink inside got stronger, so I edged closer to the urinals. But the smell was strong there too, forcing me to hold my nose.
Outside, either a gust of wind or a passer-by kicked up the sand on the ground and called out to me. ‘Danger, Dongliang, danger!’ It sounded so familiar. It was my mother’s voice. I went out and looked around, but there was not a trace of Qiao Limin, who had been gone from Milltown for years. I was puzzled. What special talents did she have? After all this time, being so far away, how and why had she returned now to interfere with my private life? I was in control of my own body, and yet her voice could come on the wind to remind me that I was twenty-six years old and ought to have a sense of shame and propriety, that I must keep up the struggle against erections and must not continually seek that remedy; I must stop acting rashly and find a new solution. A determination to mend my ways arose as I headed back inside and stood in front of the urinals, head down. I could sense Qiao Limin’s shadow floating in the air outside, forcing me to develop a new remedy, but nothing suggested itself. And so I shouted my nickname to myself – ‘Kongpi, Kongpi, Kongpi’ – seven or eight times, and a small miracle occurred: my erection finally listened to me and subsided. With some difficulty, I pissed into the urinal, feeling a great sense of accomplishment, and then, like all the local residents, strode guiltlessly out of the toilet.
I felt suddenly weary. I checked my watch; it was already gone one o’clock, well past the time my father had told me to be back onboard. Time to leave. I took a shortcut behind the steel warehouse and headed to the piers. It was a secluded path. I didn’t know if I should count myself lucky or unlucky, but I spotted several kids from the barges under the rear window of the warehouse; Sun Ximing’s younger son, Xiaofu, had climbed up on to the ledge and was prising the window open with a piece of wood. I knew they were up to no good. ‘What are you doing?’ I shouted.
With a wink, Xiaofu said, ‘Stealing iron to sell for scrap.’
‘I’m going to tell your father,’ I said. ‘You and your stealing! You little bastards are ruining the fleet’s good name.’
But my threat went in one ear and out the other, as he made a contemptuous gesture and said, ‘Mind your own business, Kongpi. What have you been up to? Ku Wenxuan is waiting for you with a rolling pin. You’re going to get a beating!’
Now I realized the trouble I was in. He wasn’t lying. I knew my father well enough to realize that coming home so late meant big trouble. So I left the kids to their own devices and turned back towards the piers, head down, my steps heavier than usual. But I hadn’t gone far before I turned and went back, thinking, I’m twenty-six years old, too old to stand on the bow of our barge and get a beating from my father. No way was I going to lose face in front of all those people. I’d be punished whether I got home an hour late or three hours late, so why not go ahead and smash the cracked pot – hang out ashore for as long as I wanted to?
The boat people went ashore for a haircut about once a month. I went to the People’s Barbershop every day. If the barge people had known that, they’d have said I’d lost my head over Huixian and that I deserved to be driven away by her.
I was the last person to understand what possessed me, but I knew that I’d lost my soul in the barbershop. When I was hurrying there, I sometimes heard the things in my bag bang against each other; those objects had more self-respect than I did, as they voiced their resistance. Don’t go, they said, don’t go. What do you plan to do? Who are you to her? Her brother? Her father? Her intended? No, you’re nothing, just a kongpi, that’s exactly what you are in her eyes.
That’s right, I was nothing but a kongpi, and that made me unhappy. There was so much I wanted to say to her, so why did nothing come out of my mouth the minute I laid eyes on her? I didn’t want that to be so. Why was I filled with affection each time I stepped into the barbershop, but left feeling angry and resentful? How could love so easily turn into hate? I didn’t want that to be so. And since I didn’t, I kept returning to the People’s Barbershop like a moth to a flame.
Thoughts thronged my mind as I walked along, including memories of the time years before when I had helped poor little Huixian put up posters in Milltown looking for her mother. I passed the general store, where the intersection was flooded with sunlight, and I was taken back in time. I conjured up an image of a little girl carrying a jar of glue and heard her childish voice as she said urgently, ‘Over here, Brother Dongliang. Come here!’ I felt myself being pushed along, despite my weariness. It might have been the wind propelling me on, but probably it was my memories. My gaze wandered to the wall across the street from the general store; a large blackboard, recently mounted on the wall, was filled with drawings and clippings promoting family planning. A coloured propaganda image in the centre caught my eye with the words
B
OYS OR GIRLS, IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE:
JUST HAVE ONE CHILD!
printed above a drawing of a young mother standing in a bed of flowers, a baby girl in her arms. Possibly because the artist wasn’t particularly talented, the smile on the face of the rosy-cheeked mother was stiff and unnatural. As for her baby, either the elements or the mischievous actions of some child had reduced her head to a pair of pigtails – the face was gone. The poster alarmed me. Could that be Huixian? Fanciful thoughts swirled in my head. Was that her missing mother? What a strange day it had been, with all these missing mothers suddenly returning. The memory of a name I’d all but forgotten formed in my head: Cui Xia. Was Cui Xia her name? The woman who had paced the shore in the rain way back then, now hidden among the crowds in the town’s streets, her dripping-wet spirit now bright and dry, with no hope of being set free. She poured out her heart to me from the blackboard, nudging me to go and look for her daughter. My daughter has forgotten her mother. My daughter, she’s lost. My attention was focused on a water mark running down the blackboard, unbroken tears from a mother’s departed spirit. Don’t forget that my daughter is an orphan. She has grown into a beautiful, alluring young woman, but she remains an orphan. She is like a precious gem, picked up, discarded and picked up again; but she’ll wind up being discarded again, and I ask one of you kind-hearted people to come to her aid!
