The Boat to Redemption

by Su Tong

  I was digging in my pocket for the money when a strange voice whistled past my ear. There was a commotion at the intersection, with several people calling my name. ‘Stay there, Ku Dongliang! Don’t leave, don’t go anywhere!’ Some kids who’d come running over from the Sunnyside Fleet were calling my name, and they surrounded me like a swarm of hornets. One of them wrapped his arms around my legs, another grabbed my bag. Xiaofu stamped his foot and yelled at me, ‘Ku Dongliang, while you’ve been having a carefree time out here, your dad swallowed some pesticide. They’ve taken him to hospital.’

  I had a dim image of Baldy Chen and his rifle, a delayed bullet emerging from the barrel and hitting me in the chest, the bad news arriving mercilessly. I shuddered, jumped down off the running board and ran as fast as I could towards the hospital, arms flailing. I thought I was flying down the road, but then my hip started aching, my legs felt rubbery and I started gasping for breath. I slowed down in spite of myself.

  Xiaofu, who was off to my left, yelled, ‘Come on, run! Your dad’s in hospital fighting for his life, and you’re moving like a fat old pig.’

  Chungeng, to my right, joined in. ‘It’s all your fault. A real man has the guts to take the heat for what he’s done. What kind of man are you? Are you scared now? You drove your own dad to suicide, but you’re like a turtle that pulls in its head. A turtle runs faster than you!’

  Six-Fingers Wang’s youngest daughter, Little Four, was urging me on from behind by smacking my rear end with a switch, as if she was whipping a horse. ‘Get moving!’ she said. ‘You have to do something to atone for your crimes.’ She was panting and cursing at the same time. ‘Ku Dongliang, no matter what you think of him, he’s still your dad. People only have one father and one mother, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. But you abandoned your dad and ran off! If my mother hadn’t swallowed pesticide once and my father didn’t have such a good nose, your dad would have died in his cabin without anybody knowing anything about it.’

  Her words hit me hard. I was crying like a baby as I ran. Those kids had never seen me cry, and it stopped them in their tracks. I covered my face with my hands so they wouldn’t see my tears. They thought it was their scolding and pressure that had brought on the tears, so they stopped. ‘Don’t cry,’ Little Four said, ‘we won’t say any more. So you were wrong this time. Next time you’ll do better.’

  With a frown, Chungeng said, ‘What good does it do to cry? The harder you cry, the slower you run.’

  People out on the street gaped curiously at this contingent on the run. ‘Hey!’ they said. ‘What’s the hurry? Has someone in the fleet died?’

  ‘People are dying in town all the time,’ Little Four shrieked, ‘but not in the fleet.’

  Xiaofu shoved the busybodies out of the way as he pushed me along. ‘What business is it of yours if we run? Go ahead, get an eyeful, we’re training for a long-distance race. Haven’t you ever seen one of those?’

  Desheng and Sun Ximing’s wives were waiting for me at the hospital entrance. They exchanged relieved looks. ‘Dongliang, you didn’t leave after all, that’s good,’ one of them said.

  ‘My Xiaofu knows how to get things done,’ said the other. ‘He managed to bring Dongliang here.’

  I was on the verge of collapse. ‘My dad, is he OK?’ I managed to shout before falling at their feet. I couldn’t stand up; I felt the women try to pull me to my feet by my arms. I didn’t resist, but my body and my soul lay fearfully on the ground, refusing to get up. I was shaking uncontrollably.

  ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ Desheng’s wife said. ‘Your dad’s going to be OK. He’s got us to take care of him. Now stand up, come on, stand up.’

  But Sun Ximing’s wife kept pointing to my head and giving me a good scolding. ‘Now you know what it means to be afraid. Why didn’t you listen to us earlier? It’s OK not to trust the people on the shore, but have you stopped trusting us too? You call yourself a rebel. Well, you nearly rebelled your father to death!’

  They walked me into the hospital’s intensive-care unit. I have no recollection of the hospital’s layout or facilities, but I’ll never forget the smell of the room he was in. It stank of dirty feet and blood, along with the acrid smell of iodine and the aroma of food. Father had forced me into a relationship with that place: the first time as a result of his severed penis, and this time in an effort to save his life. I couldn’t escape a measure of responsibility for either. Standing in the doorway, I suddenly felt as if my stomach was about to betray me. Afraid that I was going to throw up, I crouched down in front of a spittoon.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Dongliang?’ Sun’s wife said. ‘Your father’s lying there in the corner, what are you doing down there?’

  I rubbed my belly. ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘wait a minute.’

  When she saw my ashen face, Desheng’s wife said, ‘Yes, let’s wait a minute. He looks as if he’s going to throw up, probably from hunger, or fright.’

  I strained to raise my head from the spittoon to search for Father. Most of the beds in Intensive Care were occupied. He was lying on a bench in the corner, surrounded by oxygen tanks, IV racks and lots of people. It was obvious that his condition was critical from the way two nurses were bouncing around beside him and the doctor was pumping his stomach. It looked like a slaughterhouse or meat-processing plant. Father was a feeble but stubborn old ox that refused to be led to the slaughter, and was upsetting the nurses.

  Since they didn’t dare vent their frustrations on him, they took them out on the people standing nearby. ‘How can you be so inept? You men, with all that strength, and you can’t even hold an old man down. Look how he’s thrown up all over me!’

  The boat people shuttled back and forth beside the bench until they finally settled into place. Six-Fingers Wang pressed down on Father’s body, with Sun Ximing and Desheng in position on either side of the bench, one holding a spittoon, the other holding up an IV bottle. That was when Sun Ximing saw me. He glowered. ‘What are you standing around for? Get over here and help Six-Fingers hold him down. Your stubborn dad refuses to let them pump his stomach.’

  So I rushed across and pushed down on my father’s midsection. He looked up at me and tried to say something, but the tube in his mouth made that impossible. Next best was to push me away, but Six-Fingers was holding his arms down at his sides. Obviously he wanted me out of there, and that was probably a good idea, since my stomach was churning and I felt like throwing up. But I had to force it down. He was the one who needed to throw up. I pushed down hard. ‘Throw up, Dad, get rid of it.’ But he was determined not to. He was breathing as hard as he could, trying to expel the tube from his throat. ‘Empty your stomach, Dad, forget about the tube. Get rid of the pesticide and you’ll be fine.’

  I looked into his eyes and saw that the anger had given way to torment, just before a geyser of foul liquid burst from his mouth and hit me full in the face. I didn’t even try to get out of the way, strangely enough. I just emptied the contents of my stomach right after he did.

  An Orphaned Barge

  THE FLEET had left town by the time Father got out of hospital.

  I carried him on my back down to the piers, from where we could see barge number seven tied up beside the embankment some distance away, an abandoned vessel seemingly floating at the edge of the world. In my eleven years on the river this was the first time our barge had not been part of the fleet, and it seemed quite alien, as did the shore and even the Golden Sparrow River. Normally, the river flowed so rapidly it could be heard at a distance, with floating objects just about everywhere you looked: brightly coloured or steel-grey patches of grease, dead branches and leaves, and the rotting corpses of drowned animals. But that afternoon the river was so implausibly unspoiled that it spread out before me like a timeworn piece of dark-blue satin, perfectly still and beautiful. Yes, beautiful, but bleakly so.

  Father stank after three days in the hospital. I smelled his fetid breath, the dried sweat in his hair and t
he acrid stench of his clothing. All combined, he gave off a strong fishy odour. Why, I wondered, did he smell like that? Bringing him back that way was like carrying a large marinated fish.

  Father was wide awake the whole time, but he refused to speak to me – his last remaining display of authority. He was mired in silence, the only punishment he could think of. Except for an occasional glimpse of his swaying feet, he was hidden from me, especially his eyes, but I knew that the hostility was gone, and that, except for glimmers of suffering, only a blank, empty gaze remained – fish eyes. As we were leaving the hospital, a doctor had recommended that I talk to Father more often, telling me that it was common among rescued suicides, especially older ones, to descend into dementia.

  I wanted to talk to Father, but didn’t know what to say, how to start or end a conversation with him. His shrivelled body rested against me, but I knew that our hearts and minds were miles apart. While I couldn’t see his mouth, that was not the case with the frothy bubbles that emerged from it. I don’t know if they were caused by the treatment he had received or by what his body had experienced, but the result of the stomach-pumping was dark-and light-brown bubbles at first, followed by transparent and, I must admit, enticing bubbles.

  Sunlight glinted off the river as we approached the piers, with a light breeze caressing Father’s face to dislodge the last of the bubbles, which first landed on my shoulder and then fell to the ground at my feet. I was surprised to see them change colour to a glistening rainbow of hues, and the sight made me laugh for the first time in ages. Unfortunately but predictably, Father misinterpreted my laughter. I felt him move and heard him speak for the first time: ‘Go ahead, laugh, I know why you’re laughing. I’m going to die soon, and you’ll get your freedom.’

  A trio of longshoremen stood on the pier smoking. ‘What’s the story with number seven barge?’ Master Liu shouted. ‘The others have all left, so what are you doing strolling around here?’ Then they spotted Father on my back, and that got them animated. The local labourers had long been curious about my father, and this was a rare opportunity to get some answers. They crowded around to get a good look at Father’s face and body, before retreating to a nearby crane to exchange opinions. I heard one of them say, ‘He’s as strange as they say. He’s blowing bubbles like a fish.’ I detected a sympathetic note in Master Liu’s voice as he said with a sigh, ‘It’s only been ten years or so since I saw him last. How did he get so old so fast? He’s had a tough life.’ I didn’t like what I heard from the third man, who was younger than the others; he contrasted my father’s appearance with what he’d heard of the life of Deng Shaoxiang, and, thinking himself quite clever, concluded, ‘No, this old-timer can’t be the one, he has to be a fraud. No way he’s Deng Shaoxiang’s son. Think back to when Deng Shaoxiang was martyred, and the baby was in her basket. He wouldn’t be this old, not now.’

  I felt Father stir on my back and was hit by a dose of foul breath; he’d opened his mouth, probably to defend himself by giving his age. But the second thing he said was also directed at me. ‘Just keep walking a bit further, and you can deposit me on the barge. Then you can leave. I haven’t got long to live, and I won’t be around to run your life any more. You can have your freedom.’

  A stray cat that had prowled around the piers for years was crouched on the bow of our barge, watching the river flow past. It might have recognized me. Seeing its master return, it jumped on to the gangplank and skittered past my legs to the shore.

  The first thing I saw after carrying Father on deck was a gift the cat had left us: its droppings. Then I noticed that someone had pulled back the hatch of the forward hold, which was now empty, half in sunlight and half in darkness. Echoes of the flowing river emerged, now that there was nothing in there for us to ship. I was remarkably sensitive to the sound of the river, and that afternoon I distinctly heard the faithful echo of its call in the forward hold: Come down, come down. There was no question that Father heard it too, for I felt his head rise weakly from my shoulder. ‘What’s that sound?’ he asked. ‘Are they shipping oilseed?’

  ‘It’s too late for that, Dad, the hold is empty. There’s nothing on our barge except some cat droppings.’

  We went aft into the cabin, where I put him down on the sofa. He collapsed with a contented sigh. ‘We’re home, Dad,’ I said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

  ‘I’m fine now,’ he said. ‘You can go.’ I asked him if he wanted to take a bath. After a brief hesitation, he said, ‘Yes, that’s what I need. After that you can go.’ So I got up and started to boil some water, accompanied by his mutterings. ‘Don’t worry about me, and I won’t worry about you.’

  ‘You might not worry about me,’ I said loudly, ‘but I’m worried about you. Not because I want to be, but because you’re my father and I’m your son.’

  Everyone in the fleet knew it was a chore for my father to take a bath, and you had to be on your toes. I moved our wooden tub into the cabin and made sure the window was closed to keep nosy people from peeking in at us. He may well have been the most unique man on either bank of the Golden Sparrow River. Other men wouldn’t bat an eye if they were asked to do the sorcerer’s dance nude, but my father’s naked body was a true curiosity for almost everyone. If the front was exposed, he was deeply shamed by his restored penis, but the rear view, with its fish-shaped birthmark, was a source of great pride to him, and both were of considerable interest to all sorts of people. I knew that he had struggled for years to avoid exposing himself to the shame or horror of public viewing. Even I had had no opportunity to see his uncovered penis. In the past, whenever he took a bath, it was my job to patrol the decks outside the cabin to keep out the prying eyes of curious children. But now the other barges were gone, so there was no need for that. After closing the window, I saw that the look in Father’s eyes was one of trepidation. Darting glances to one side and the other, he said, ‘What’s that buzzing in my ears? Who’s out there?’

  ‘The fleet’s gone,’ I said. ‘Ours is the only boat left, so there’s no one to make any noise.’

  With a watchful glance at the door, he said, ‘That’s not safe, not safe at all. Shut the door.’

  So I did, and the cabin got stuffy. After filling the tub with hot water, I helped Father out of his filthy clothes, but only as far as his underpants. ‘Those stay on,’ he said. ‘I’ll take them off when I’m in the tub.’ I helped him in and watched as he slowly sat down by leaning to one side, like a stroke victim. ‘Don’t look,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to see. You didn’t listen, and nearly suffered the same fate. Hand me the towel and turn around.’

  I did as he asked, and stared at the poster of Deng Shaoxiang on the wall. Then something came over me, and I thought I saw the slumbering martyr come to life. Turning her head slightly, she gazed down at the naked body in the tub. Ku Wenxuan, she said, are you my son? If not, whose son are you? The sounds of splashing rose behind me. ‘Can you manage, Dad?’ I asked. ‘I don’t want you to tire yourself out.’

  ‘I’m not dead yet,’ he said. ‘I can manage the front, but you’ll have to wash my back.’ A few moments later, he said, ‘The front’s done, so now you can do my back. It must be filthy. It won’t stop itching.’

  Crouching down beside the tub, I had a clear view of his birthmark. The fish’s head and body had faded until they were hardly recognizable. But the tail remained stubbornly imprinted on the sagging skin. I was shocked. ‘Dad!’ I blurted out. ‘What happened to your birthmark? Everything but the tail has almost disappeared.’

  He shuddered. ‘What do you mean? What kind of crazy talk is that?’ Straining to twist his neck so he could see, he said, ‘Stop scaring me like that. My birthmark is different from other people’s, it’ll never fade.’

  ‘But it has, Dad! It used to be a whole fish, but now there’s only the tail.’

  Again he tried to see behind him, but failed, and in his anxiety to turn his head around, he lurched from side to side. ‘Crazy,’ he sa
id. ‘That’s crazy talk!’ He began thumping me with his hand. ‘Let me see for myself.’

  ‘Have you lost your mind, Dad? It’s on your backside, where you can’t see. But I’m not lying, it’s faded. Why would I lie about something that important?’

  But he wouldn’t stop thrashing in the tub. I leaned to the side to see him from the front. He was trembling and tears were running down his sunken cheeks, though suspicion blazed in his eyes. ‘I know what happened, the doctors rubbed it off. No wonder the itch has been driving me crazy over the past few days. It’s a conspiracy. Pretending they were saving my life, they were actually destroying my birthmark, removing the evidence so they could sever the relationship between me and your grandmother!’

  ‘Don’t try to pin it on the doctors, Dad. I was there every day, and I saw what they did. They pumped your stomach three times, but never laid a hand on your backside.’

  ‘Don’t be naive. You watched them pump my stomach, but they wouldn’t let you see them carry out their conspiracy. Zhao Chuntang runs things on the shore, and the doctors do his bidding. It was all planned. Why did you people send me to hospital to have my stomach pumped? It was an evil plan. Why did you take me ashore? You delivered me into their hands. You might as well have taken me straight to the morgue.’

  His face twisted into a sad grimace. A frantic series of tiny bubbles emerged from his mouth and popped in the air, releasing a fishy smell. Why had I said anything? So what if it had faded, he couldn’t see it! Me and my big mouth! I hadn’t been forgiven yet for my earlier behaviour, and now I’d caused a new problem. I didn’t know what to do, and, with a deep sense of self-recrimination, missed the people in the fleet as never before. How wonderful it would have been if they had still been around. Desheng’s wife, with her glib tongue, could have smoothed things over with Father by being sympathetic. Sun Ximing could have talked him around from a political angle, while Six-Fingers Wang, who was usually more negative and passive, could have done some good with a more threatening attitude. It was a critical moment, and none of them were around. They’d sailed off and left Father to me, and me alone.