The Boat to Redemption

by Su Tong

  ‘You’re just starting to get well, Dad, you mustn’t get over-excited.’ Lacking the gift of the gab, I had to try something to calm him down and make him feel better. ‘No matter what, Dad, the tail’s still there, and even if it was gone, you’d still be Deng Shaoxiang’s son. Truth is truth, and lies are lies, that can’t be changed. People who engage in conspiracies wind up dropping rocks on their own feet. Yesterday I heard some doctors say that another investigative team is coming to overturn the other verdict.’

  ‘Overturn it? I doubt that I’ll live to see that day. I’ve got it all figured out. I don’t need them to overturn anything. If they’ll issue a martyr’s family certificate, I’m ready to go and report to Karl Marx.’ As he sat in the tub, he began sobbing like a little boy. ‘I think about my life, and there’s no way I can be happy. How could I be?’ Grasping my hand, he said between sobs, ‘I’ve held out for eleven long years, waited all that time, and I ask you, for what? Where’s the good news I’ve waited for?’

  ‘It hasn’t come,’ I replied, my head down.

  ‘Only bad news. Rumours, slander and conspiracies!’ He dried his eyes with his hands and pointed to me. ‘You haven’t made anything of yourself. Day in and day out I hear how degenerate you’ve become.’

  ‘I’ll make something of myself from now on, Dad, for you. You need to hold on, to persevere, and good news will come sooner or later.’

  ‘I’m not made of steel, you know. I’m not sure I can hold on.’ His sobs became weaker, maybe because they were taking too much out of him physically, but his head fell back hard against my shoulder. Then he said in a small, raspy voice, ‘Tell me the truth, Dongliang, what do I have to live for? Shouldn’t I just die?’

  Unable to say a word, I wrapped my arms around his emaciated body. He squirmed instinctively, but I held him tight. My despairing father was wrapped up in my arms, as if our roles had been reversed. To me he felt more like a dried fish than a man, his spine thin and brittle, with fish-like scales suddenly appearing all over his back. The fragrance of the Glory bath soap wasn’t strong enough to mask the strange fishy smell of his body. Father, my father, where have you come from? And where will you go? I felt lost. Suddenly a scene from half a century earlier, of a boundless Golden Sparrow River, flashed before my eyes. The bamboo basket left behind by the martyr Deng Shaoxiang was floating down the river, the child and fish inside tossed by the rapid swells. I watched as the water swallowed up the child, leaving only the fish. A fish. A solitary fish. The image frightened me. Was that really what happened? A fish. If my father wasn’t that child, could he have been that fish?

  Father, who had seemingly fallen asleep in my arms, abruptly opened his eyes and said uncertainly, ‘It’s so noisy outside. That doesn’t sound like people. Is the river speaking? Why has the river started speaking?’

  I was amazed by the sharpness of his hearing. Even with his body in such a weak state, he had actually heard the river reveal its secret. ‘What did you hear, Dad?’ I asked. ‘What’s the river saying?’

  He held his breath to listen closely. ‘It’s telling me, come down, come down.’

  I fell silent. Even after the shock had passed, I didn’t know what to say. This was not a good sign. I’d always believed I was the only one who understood the river’s secret, but now he had heard it too, and if one day the river revealed all its secrets, why would barges continue to stay in its waters? I felt the steel hull of our barge start to rock, along with my father’s life and my home on the water. Come down, come down. The river’s secret became clearer and clearer, and it was beyond my power to jump in and stop up its mouth. River, ah, river, why are you so impatient? Are you summoning my father or a fish to your depths?

  There was nothing I could do. Then my eye was caught by a length of rope under my cot. It was the same rope that had nearly been used to tie me up. As I stared at it, I had an idea that made my heart pound. I hurriedly lifted Father out of the wooden tub and laid him on my cot. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Not on your cot! Put me on the sofa.’

  ‘Do as I say, just this once, Dad,’ I said to him. ‘The cot is sturdier. From now on, this is where you’ll sleep.’

  I began dressing him in clean clothes, and as I was putting on his socks, I bent down and took the rope out from under the cot. First I looped it around his feet, without his realizing what I was doing. Until, that is, he noticed that my hands were shaking. He shouted and began to struggle. ‘What are you doing? What? You’re tying me up? My own son! You’ve gone crazy! Is this how you get your revenge?’

  ‘This isn’t revenge, Dad. I’m trying to save you.’ In my anxiety, I wrapped the rope around him speedily and indiscriminately. ‘Bear with me, Dad, I’ll be finished in a minute, and I won’t let you go down. You can’t go down there. I’m here, and I’ll keep death away!’

  Father kept struggling until his strength ran out. ‘Go ahead,’ he said, ‘tie me up. I raised you to adulthood and taught you all those years, and this is what it’s all come to.’ A bleak smile creased the corners of his mouth, releasing a crystalline bubble that fell to the floor and disappeared. He gave me a cold look. ‘You’re too late,’ he said. ‘The river wants me. I don’t care if you’re a dutiful son or an unworthy one, you’re too late. Me tying you or you tying me, it makes no difference. It’s too late for anything.’

  The hopelessness I saw in him scared and saddened me. I felt the blood rush to my head. ‘It’s not too late, Dad, it’s not. You have to wait.’ I tied his hands to the sides of the cot as I prepared a vow. ‘Don’t fight me, Dad, don’t be stubborn. You have to wait. I’m going ashore in a minute and I’m going to make sure that bastard Zhao Chuntang comes aboard our barge to give you the apology you deserve.’

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Father cried out. ‘Even if you drag him aboard and force him to tell me he’s sorry, I won’t accept his apology. You mustn’t go. If you do, I’ll find a way to die before you get back.’

  But my mind was made up, and I wasn’t about to let my trussedup father interfere with my plan. I picked up the wooden tub, took it out on deck and dumped the dirty water into the river. Not wanting the rope to cut into Father’s flesh, I checked all the knots to make sure they were tight but not too tight. I placed two steamed buns and a glass of water next to his head. ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so if you’re hungry there’s food, and water if you’re thirsty.’ I put the bedpan down by his hip, but then it dawned on me that he could not relieve himself tied up like that. So I reached down to take off his trousers, to which he reacted by curling up and angrily spitting in my face. What I was doing, I knew, was taboo. We needed to talk this out. ‘I have to take them off, Dad. How else are you going to relieve yourself? Someone like you, so insistent on cleanliness, doesn’t want to pee in his trousers.’

  I saw a trickle of murky tears snake down his cheeks. Then he turned his face away and I heard him say, ‘Go ahead, take them off, but don’t look. Promise me you won’t look.’

  I promised, but when I pulled down his underpants, I couldn’t stop myself from looking down. What I saw shocked me. His penis looked like a discarded silkworm cocoon, shrivelled and ugly, lying partially hidden in a clump of grass. I’d imagined it to be ugly, but not that ugly or that shrivelled. It looked miserable and sad. Instinctively I covered my eyes and ran to the door, not taking my hands away until I was at the bottom of the ladder. I didn’t realize I was crying until the palms of my hands felt wet. I looked down at them – there were fresh tears falling through my fingers.

  Memorial Stone

  I WENT ASHORE.

  The sunset had begun to lose its brilliance at the far end of the Golden Sparrow River when I stepped off the gangplank, and in no time, empty, dark clouds had taken its place. This was normally the time when I’d be returning home from a visit to the shore, but everything was different now. As night began to fall, I left the barge with a plan.

  The lights had already come on around the pi
ers, including the searchlights at the oil-pumping station, their snow-white beams lighting up the loading docks and the sky above, then creeping across the embankment. Half of our barge was in the light, the other half lay in the water, brooding. The stray cat leaped out of the darkness as soon as I stepped on land and scurried up to the bow of our barge, and I let it be. With Father all alone in the cabin, having a stray cat watch over him was better than nothing.

  The evening wind chilled me as my sweat-soaked cotton jersey stuck to my chest and back. Having forgotten to put on shoes, I walked down the newly paved street barefoot, as if prowling the decks of the barge. The soft, slightly tacky surface seemed to be taking pity on the soles of my feet. There was no one to disturb the peace from the embankment to the loading dock. Li Juhua and her co-workers had turned off the machinery at the pumping station when their workday ended. The longshoremen had all gone home. A towering hoist and several light cranes sat quietly in the twilight like strange sleeping beasts. Cargo unloaded during the day had all been taken away, leaving the piers uncannily spacious and quiet.

  Too quiet for me. Ghosts are drawn to stillness. As I passed the office of the security group, where a dim light shone through the window, I heard someone intoning a verse or reciting a piece of prose. But that stopped abruptly, and was followed by raucous laughter. Baldy Chen and Scabby Five’s laughter was especially loud, while the woman, Wintersweet, was laughing so hard she could barely breathe. ‘Stop,’ she begged between bursts of laughter, ‘don’t read any more, or I’ll laugh myself sick!’

  I tiptoed up to the window, where I listened to what was going on inside. When the laughter died down, Scabby Five recommenced his intonation, and this time I heard a familiar phrase: ‘The water gourd will love the sunflower till the seas dry up and rocks turn to dust!’

  My head buzzed as I pressed my hands against my ears. No one was more familiar with that lyrical passage than I. Ah, ‘The water gourd will love the sunflower till the seas dry up and rocks turn to dust!’ It was from page 34 or 35 of my diary, where I wrote down my feelings about Huixian when she was singing with the district opera troupe. Now I knew that my diary had fallen into Wang Xiaogai’s hands. They were reciting passages from it. It was too late for regrets. I’d hidden my diary in the lining of my bag so Father wouldn’t find it. I’d managed to keep it out of Father’s hands, but not theirs, and they were reciting passages from it for their entertainment!

  As I stood outside the security-office window, I was both ashamed and angry. ‘Don’t stop, Xiaogai,’ Wintersweet said. ‘Read the juicy passages for us.’

  ‘These are the only pages I could get my hands on,’ Xiaogai said. ‘Old Cui got some of the others, and Little Chen tore out a few for himself. Huixian got the rest, and nobody wanted to take them from her, since she is the sunflower, and just about everything in that thick little book is about her.’

  Break up their little gathering or not? I couldn’t decide. In the end, lacking the courage to burst in on them, all I could do was mutter, ‘We’ll settle scores when this is all over. The time will come. But settle scores with whom? Xiaogai? Old Cui? Little Chen? Or Huixian? Or maybe I should get my revenge on Old Seven of Li Village. I looked up into the sky, then turned to face the riverbank, where barge number seven lay all alone in the deepening twilight. That snapped me out of it. Father was more important than me, and my vow to him took precedence over my lost diary. There was no time to waste, I had to find Zhao Chuntang and bring him back to the barge with me. Every debt has its debtor, and every injustice its perpetrator. I had to get him to apologize to my father.

  I headed for the General Affairs Building, but when I got there I realized that my plan had been a case of wishful thinking. I’d arrived too late – all the officials had left for the day. Other than the reception office and a few windows here and there, the lights were all off, including those on the fourth floor. I looked for Zhao Chuntang’s private car, and found it. The Jeep, which had seemed so impressive for a while, had been left idle, sitting dejected in a corner, while its original parking space was occupied by a brand-new, black and very distinguished Volga sedan.

  The driver, Little Jia, was washing the car with a hose, turning the ground around him to mud. Skirting the puddles, I went up and asked, ‘Are you waiting for Secretary Zhao to leave the office? Is he upstairs?’

  He looked at me askance and said, ‘Who do you think you are, asking after him, and what do you want?’

  ‘Nothing in particular,’ I said. ‘I just want to report something to him.’

  He scowled and continued washing the car. ‘You can tell me what it is,’ he said arrogantly, ‘and I’ll decide if it’s important enough to tell Secretary Zhao. Besides, what could you have to report? Still making trouble over the business of being a martyr’s descendant?’

  I was savvy enough about doing business in Milltown to know that cigarettes were a door opener, so I handed one to Little Jia. He took it reluctantly, checked the brand and said, ‘Flying Horse? I don’t smoke those. I only smoke Front Gates.’ He tossed the cigarette on to the front seat. ‘Hah, Flying Horse. You boat people are the only ones who think those are any good.’

  But I could see that he’d softened his expression a little, so I said, ‘I promise you, I’m not here to make trouble. It’s nothing important, so please tell me if Zhao has left to go home.’

  Another frown. ‘Kongpi, that’s a good name for you. You talk like a kongpi. If it’s nothing important, why do you need to see Zhao Chuntang? He puts in sixteen hours a day in the office, and then entertains guests after work. You should know that investigative teams have been sent down here just about every day, and Secretary Zhao has to go out drinking with his guests.’

  He’d piqued my interest. ‘What guests are those? What are the teams here to investigate?’

  Again he looked at me out of the corner of his eye; his lips were curled into a hostile grin. ‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘It’s family planning, including vasectomies. This has been a headache for Secretary Zhao. If there are three men in town without vasectomies, Milltown won’t be considered progressive. Since that thing of yours isn’t doing anything, why don’t you get one and perform a service for Milltown?’

  I ignored him. Little Jia had given enough information for me to guess that Zhao Chuntang was in the dining hall having dinner with guests, so I walked around to the side of the building and went up to the dining-hall window. In the dim light I saw that there were only two unfamiliar officials sitting opposite one another beneath the window, either eating dinner or talking.

  ‘No need to look over there,’ Little Jia shouted. ‘Milltown has exchanged its shotguns for cannons. Rank plays a role in entertaining guests these days. High-ranking officials are entertained at the Spring Breeze Inn. I doubt you’ve heard that the inn has private rooms. But you’d be wasting your time going there, because they won’t let you in.’

  I took my leave of Little Jia and rushed over to the Spring Breeze Inn, meeting a tall, skinny fellow on the way. He was wearing glasses and had sloping shoulders; he was carrying books under his arms, heading home from school. I knew who he was – Old Cui’s grandson, a local high-school student. Old Cui was forever boasting that the boy was a top-notch student with a bright future. Since people with bright futures generally stayed clear of those with no future, I had no interest in stopping to talk to him.

  He walked past me with a haughty air and then spun around and fell in behind me. ‘You’re Ku Dongliang, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Let me ask you a historical question. Do you know when Chairman Mao came to Milltown?’ I immediately sensed that this out-of-nowhere question had something to do with my diary, so I pretended I hadn’t heard him and started walking faster. I never imagined that getting away would be so difficult. He kept coming after me. Starting to breathe hard, he said, ‘Then let me ask you a common-sense question. Why would Chairman Mao meet with a sunflower and not Milltown’s masses? Is it really possible that the great man would st
oop to meet with something planted in the ground? Why are you creating a false history, Ku Dongliang?’

  Obviously, my diary was being read by people all over town, including Old Cui’s grandson. How could a bookworm like him be in on my secrets? I wasn’t interested in having a historical debate with the boy and was not obliged to reveal any of my youthful secrets. ‘How much history does a little bastard like you understand?’ I roared, glaring at him. ‘Get away from me!’

  I felt sheepish after chasing the youngster away, and as I walked the streets of Milltown at twilight, it seemed to me that my private affairs were like streetlamps lighting up the little town and its residents’ lonely lives. I had the feeling that the laughter emerging from windows along the way was directed at me and at my diary. Keeping to the dark side of the streets, I continued on to Spring Breeze Inn, taking pains to avoid meeting up with anyone else. Profound doubts filled my mind. How many more pages of my diary remained, I wondered, and how many of those were with Huixian?

  I stopped at the entrance to the inn, with its lanterns that heralded a May Day celebration. The spot was deserted; there was no trace of any vehicles. I glanced up at the third-floor windows of the concrete building, with its isolated ‘penthouse’. The purple curtains were shut, making it impossible to determine whether or not the investigative teams were up there. I breathed in deeply, but couldn’t smell food; when I held my breath, I heard nothing that sounded like people at a dinner table. Feeling dejected, I went up and tried the front door. It was locked. But by looking through the glass door, I could see someone asleep at the reception desk. I knocked, then knocked again, but the head didn’t move. ‘Who’s there?’ It was a woman’s listless voice. ‘You need permission from the police station to stay here.’