Freedom Swimmer

by Wai Chim

  Published by Allen & Unwin in 2016

  Copyright © Wai Chim 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 9781760113414

  eISBN 9781952534768

  Cover design: Debra Billson

  Cover image: Alphabe/Shutterstock

  Internal design and map illustration by Letterspaced

  Set by Letterspaced

  Editorial photographs courtesy of the South China Morning Post

  Passport documentation provided by the author

  For my father

  A note about phonetics

  I had a hard time standardising pronunciation and phoneticising Chinese words and idioms due to the different dialects and colloquialisms throughout China. (I mean, what can you do when Chairman Mao is referred to as both Mao Zedong and Mao Tse-tung in modern literature?)

  As such, proper names and places generally use standard Mandarin Pinyin for ease of identification, such as Guangzhou, Dapeng and Ping Chau. The spellings of nicknames and everyday speech of the regional dialect, especially exclamations, have mostly been chosen at my discretion.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  PART II

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  PART III

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Prologue

  Dapeng Peninsula, Longgang, Guangdong

  MING — Winter 1962

  Ma is gone. I fought back tears, gripping the handle of the wheelbarrow tighter so her body wouldn’t tip out too soon. I was taking her to the river to join the other villagers who had passed. I didn’t dare look around – what if one of those bodies had surfaced, caught on a rock instead of being swept away by the current after the last rains? I could almost picture the head of some weeks-dead villager bobbing up beside me, all sunken cheeks and lifeless eyes behind paper-thin lids.

  I was surprised that even at the end, Ma’s face looked plump and her cheeks soft. Her belly was swollen, but the rest of her body was all shrivelled skin and knobby bones. She seemed peaceful in death, so different from her constant bitterness when she had been alive and starving.

  We arrived at the riverbank, both of our clothes sodden from the rain. My hands kept slipping as I tried to tip out my load. I’d found the wheelbarrow beside one of the many barren fields along the path, likely used for this very purpose and then abandoned. Finally, I heaved it to the side, and took a few moments to arrange Ma’s hands on her chest so it looked like she was sleeping, even in the stench of rot and decay. She would stay here until the tide came in, and the river carried her out to sea.

  Ma’s last moments had been fitful. She had been in bed for over a week, unable to even lift her head to take a sip of water. I had tried spooning it into her mouth, but it dribbled down the side of her face. She’d been too frail to even swallow. It was unlike her; she was usually all angry energy – like a monsoon. I had expected her last breaths to be big, powerful, that Ma would be loud and forceful even in her passing.

  That was three days ago.

  I knew I had to take Ma’s body to the river, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It meant pushing the loaded wheelbarrow down to the riverbank on my own, because no-one in the village was strong enough or willing to help me. Maybe it was because it was too final. If I took her to the river, it would mean she would never again get up and make thin congee for breakfast. That she would never again sift through our meagre rice flour rations to pick out the worms. Never again shout my name in a fit of rage as she chased me out of the house, feather duster raised high above her head, ready for a lashing.

  So Ma’s body had stayed on the bed, her head rolling to one side like she was just resting. For the first night I kept thinking she would cough up again, that she would come back to me, in a wheezing, hacking fit.

  My hands slipped again as I pushed the wheelbarrow back up the muddy bank, leaving Ma’s body behind. I struggled to dislodge the stuck wheel, throwing all my weight behind it. At eleven, I was small for my age, having hit my growth spurt just as the famine was taking hold. For three years, it seemed like my body had been trapped in its own prison. I was always hungry, my stomach grinding itself raw. I hadn’t dared complain to Ma or Ba. We were all starving. Everyone in the village was. Ma did her best to make a meal out of anything she could find. While I foraged for molluscs and snatched at tiny minnows along the shore, she made meals from wild plants and even the bark and roots from the nearby trees.

  The villagers had grumbled under their breaths when the Cadre made the official Party announcement. ‘The cause for our nation’s suffering has been ... Three Years of Natural Disasters.’ The Cadre was the official head of our village, placed there by the Communist Party to execute the orders of Chairman Mao Zedong. A few years ago, the entire village was talking about ‘The Great Leap Forward’ delivering glory to China. Now, the Cadre had a new term for it: the lack of food, the hunger, the starving and finally the dying. Like everything else, the Party had a name for it.

  Three Years Natural Disaster.

  With a spurt, the wheel finally sprang free onto the road, dragging me with it. I grit my teeth and hoisted up the handles, pointing the wheelbarrow back to the village. The rain pattered against the steel bed. It reminded me of the small drum Ba had given me for Chinese New Year when I was three. Instead of spinning it, I bashed the face against the ground, clutching the thin red handle in my pudgy fists as I giggled with glee.

  Now I clenched my skeletal hands around the handles of the wheelbarrow. Salty sweat mingled with the dribbles of rain and I licked my lips. All was silent except for the rhythm of the rain and the roaring of the river. Nightfall wasn’t far off and I shuddered, thinking of the packs of wild dogs that might come for Ma’s body before the river rose high enough. But then I remembered. The wild dogs had been hunted by the villagers for meat. The nights were silent.

  My bottom lip stung and I realised I was biting down on it. A loud sob escaped and then another, the salt from my tears stinging my cheeks, already tender from too much crying. I leaned into the wheelbarrow and kept walking, the rushing water drowning out my whimpers.

  It had been two weeks since I’d been down to the river. I’d had nothing to eat but some bits of dried moss I’d gathered from the rocks along the banks. The rain had subsided but the air in the village was still heavy with the stench of death. I had hardly left the house since I’d dealt with Ma
’s body. There was no food, no firewood and the water in the jug was murky, with little tendrils of mosquito larvae under the woven cover. Funny how a parasite that fed on blood would still seek new breeding ground when everything around it was dying.

  I dropped the cover back over the jug and crawled under the netting of the wooden frame that served as our bed. There was no point getting fresh water. I wasn’t even crying anymore.

  Over the weeks, a few of the neighbours had already stopped by to peek inside and I’d hidden each time. Their curiosity wasn’t new to me. Instead of being among the knot of forty or so homes that made up the rest of the village, Ba had chosen to build our house on the other side of the main road that ran through the village, closer to the beach. He said he loved waking to the gentle crashing of waves, rather than the chattering of neighbours. Our house was just a hundred metres away from the others, but it was enough to arouse suspicion. Even before Ba died, the villagers were forever peering in and our little home was often the subject of gossip. Reactionaries, counter-revolutionists, what’s the Ming family up to? My young ears had picked up every whisper. In a tiny village like ours, where we had nothing but each other for entertainment, choosing to be away from the group simply wasn’t done.

  Ba had chuckled and dismissed the whispers, but they had always bothered Ma and they only got worse after he was gone. In some ways, the Three Years of Natural Disasters were a bit of a blessing – everyone was too desperate for themselves to mind their neighbours.

  I was starting to drift off when there was a faint knock at the door. Alarmed, I held my breath and kept very still. My heart pounded. There’d been stories about orphaned children whose desperate neighbours came to pillage their meagre belongings. There wasn’t anything in the house worth taking, but I couldn’t face the disapproving look of my father in my mind’s eye if I didn’t protect our home.

  The knock came again, timidly. It didn’t sound like one of the villagers, and no angry voice demanded to be let in. Padding over to the door, I reached for the handle.

  A girl stood on the other side.

  She stared, not saying a word, her hands clasped at the front of her muddy clothes. Everyone in the village wore the same faded blue shirts and trousers, all cut from the same cloth our monthly rations bought. Hers were oversized and misshapen like they might have once belonged to her elder brother. I didn’t recognise her, so she couldn’t have been from our village, but she must have lived close by.

  ‘Are you by yourself ?’ she asked. ‘Is there anyone else here?’

  ‘Why?’ My voice sounded like there were rocks and metal bits grinding together in my throat. I coughed to clear it but it felt like I was choking on ash.

  The girl said nothing, and I noticed the red circles around her eyes. There were streaks of dirt on her face and her shirt was torn.

  ‘It’s just me,’ I said. ‘Do you want to come in?’ I wasn’t sure why I asked. I had nothing to offer.

  She gave a slight nod and I stepped aside to let her through. She was cautious and careful, like a nervous wild animal. I wanted to put out a hand to calm her but kept them by my sides, especially when I saw angry gashes on her arm, like fingernail marks. Whoever she was running away from had tried hard to catch her.

  She decided it was safe and moved inside.

  There was a lone stool and a dusty table against the wall, but the girl ignored them and shuffled over to the stove in the corner of the room that we called a kitchen. She crouched in front of the pile of cold ashes. I hadn’t bothered to light a fire in weeks, since there was nothing to hang over it.

  I shifted my weight uneasily. What was she doing here? She looked as starved as me, but I didn’t think she was going to rob me blind.

  I tried to remember what Ma did, once upon a time, when we used to have visitors.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ I said automatically, and frowned. ‘I mean, there’s no tea. But I could get you some water or something.’

  The girl lifted the cover off the water jug to peek at the contents.

  ‘I, ah, don’t have water, really, either.’ I said sheepishly. ‘But I can get some.’

  She shrugged and covered the jug before flicking her eyes to me. There was a spark of curiosity in them, like she was sizing me up, but not in a cruel way. My face was getting hot and I looked down at the floor.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the dirt at my feet.

  Silence.

  ‘Fei. Lam Feiyen.’ It was so quiet I thought I’d imagined it. ‘I’m from Long-chi.’ The village, the largest of our subdistrict, was about half an hour’s walk from my house.

  ‘I’m Ming. Ming Hong,’ I said and dared to glance up at her. She gave me a small smile and my face burned.

  ‘I’ll go fetch some water.’ I seized the jar with both hands. I thought I had used up the last of my energy, but I seemed to have found a new source of strength.

  ‘Okay.’ She dug into her pants pocket and pulled out a cupped hand to show me. Nestled in the centre of it was a tiny, precious sweet potato.

  My stomach hardened at the sight of it. Ma had cooked the last of our sweet potatoes a month ago. I remembered exactly what it had tasted like. She’d made a broth out of scraps of the skin that was so watered down it had really been nothing more than a muddy sludge. And we drank down every last drop.

  ‘We can share some, when you get back,’ she said solemnly. I almost dropped the water jug. She was offering a gift that I knew I could never repay.

  I tried to force out words of gratitude, but they were caught in the chalky dust. All I managed was a grudging, ‘Okay.’

  That night, beside the freshly lit stove, Fei shaved off precious slivers from her potato and mashed it into a thin broth. A part of me wanted to just gobble the whole thing. It was too small to plant, half the size of what I used to think was a normal sweet potato. And even though my stomach clenched just at the thought of it, I knew we had to make it last as long as we could.

  I let Fei spoon out a little bit of broth into our bowls, and nodded in thanks. I swallowed it in just a few mouthfuls, barely tasting it as it slid down my throat. My body screamed for more, but I also knew that my stomach had shrunk too much to take it. Fei drank hers in dainty sips, letting the liquid swirl around her mouth before swallowing.

  When I went to bed, Fei crawled in beside me and buried her face in my neck. I had never slept with anyone except Ma and Ba before. But I could tell from the easy way she snuggled into the crook of my shoulder that Fei was used to sharing a bed with siblings.

  Fei’s limbs wound around my body. She smelled earthy, like wet dirt with a tiny hint of sourness. It was different from Ma’s scent, but comforting.

  We lay perfectly still in the dark until I thought she was asleep. But then she spoke. ‘What happened to your parents?’

  The lightness of her voice surprised me. No-one had ever asked me something like this before – I only ever heard sinister whispers. It took a moment for me to answer. ‘I took Ma to the river, two weeks ago.’

  ‘And your father?’

  I pressed my lips together and sighed into the silence. She pressed her fingers into my shoulder, massaging the tension from them as if she could squeeze the words out.

  ‘My father died too. He … he drowned.’ I said in a hurried breath. I had never spoken those words before. The day he disappeared, Ma had forbidden me from ever mentioning him in her presence again.

  ‘Was he a fisherman?’ Fei rubbed my shoulder in gentle soothing motions. It made me miss Ma even more.

  ‘He … he was swimming.’ A lump had caught in my throat. ‘He went swimming at night.’ I didn’t mention that it was probably the patrol guards who had shot him in the dark as he tried to escape. I hadn’t seen his body, but I’d heard the whispers.

  Fei seemed to understand. ‘I’m sorry.’ She snuggled in tighter, the points of her bones jabbing into my sides.

  ‘What about your parents?’ I asked.

  She was qu
iet and I felt her heart beat faster. I swallowed and pulled her in tight, her small body trembling as she tried to control her sobs.

  ‘Ba sent my younger sister to the forest to look for berries. She never came back. Two days later he sent me out and said if I didn’t find food, I couldn’t come home.’ She paused, mulling over her next words. ‘He doesn’t know I took the sweet potato,’ she confessed in a whisper.

  We laid in silence. I thought she had fallen asleep but then she spoke again.

  ‘Your house is nice, so close to the ocean.’ Her words slurred with drowsiness. ‘Maybe tomorrow, we can both turn into fish and swim away.’

  My heart ached and I hugged her tighter, stroking her hair. Despite its tangles, it felt as soft as the fluff of a chick.

  Eventually, she fell asleep on my shoulder, and I soon followed her into slumber.

  We woke in the morning to an angry knock at the door.

  ‘Fei! I know you’re in there; the villagers all saw you. Come outside this instant!’ screeched a woman’s voice. The mud walls shook as she pounded.

  Still heavy with sleep, I nudged the girl beside me.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  She didn’t reply as the screech came again.

  ‘Fei. You come out right now. You’re in so much trouble, running away from home after everything we have given you. I will beat you until you fly high for your disobedience! How could you disrespect your father?’

  The girl pressed her cheek against my shoulder. I went to get up and answer but she grabbed my arm and shook her head.

  ‘Okay. I’m coming in,’ the woman cried. The knocking stopped and a more terrible silence fell on the house. Finally, Fei stood up and shuffled to the door, her small feet kicking up the dust.

  She lifted the wooden bolt and opened the door just a crack, but the force outside it blew it all the way open.

  ‘Lam Feiyen, you selfish ingrate.’ The woman was not much taller than Fei but, despite the thinness of her frame, she was stout as a tree. Her hands were on her hips and her feet set wide to take up as much room as possible. Her hair was pulled up into a severe bun, and even with her tattered and patched clothes, she managed to give the appearance of being neat and trim. Fei cowered as she shouted.