Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

So Father handed me a chess set. ‘You spend all your time inside, anxious some of the time and energetic at other times, whatever’s called for. But you haven’t played chess in a long time, so take these outside and find someone to play with.’

‘Who? Who knows how to play chess? Tell me that?’ I pushed his hand away. ‘Barge people are stupider than pigs. All they know how to do is thump!’

‘What do you mean, thump? What’s that?’

He didn’t know what thump meant. ‘Thump their pig brains,’ I said, ‘that’s what. They couldn’t learn how to play chess if their lives depended on it.’

‘I don’t want to hear talk like that about labouring folks,’ Father said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with not knowing how to play chess. They know how to work, and that’s enough. They may not know how to play, but I do, so let’s have a game.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d rather play against a chess manual.’

He went inside to get the chess manual for me. But the sight of all those carriages, steeds, and cannons bored me, so I laid the manual down on the table, picked up our enamel spittoon, undid my trousers and aimed a stream of urine at a peony at the bottom.

‘How many times have I told you to go outside and pee over the stern?’ Father said. ‘Why do you insist on using the spittoon? Boatmen pee over the side. Who hides in a cabin to do his business? You’re not a spoiled bourgeois young mistress, are you?’

‘Who says a boy can’t pee in his cabin?’ I argued. ‘I don’t want people to watch me peeing over the side.’

‘Who’d want to watch you? You’re not a little girl. Nobody’s interested in watching you take a leak. This is more proof of your unhealthy attitude. There you go, looking cross-eyed at me again, and for no reason.’ With that, he turned his criticism to my eyes. ‘I keep telling you to stop that. No matter what you do, having the right attitude is the most important thing. I don’t want you looking at people cross-eyed any more, especially when you’re talking to them. Only social misfits do things like that.’

To be honest, I didn’t know if I was in the habit of looking cross-eyed at people, and I didn’t have a mirror to see if he was telling the truth. But I hated the way he used that excuse to pick on me, so I mumbled, ‘So what if I’m looking cross-eyed? That dick of yours is cock-eyed, go and pick on that.’

It was a good thing he didn’t hear that last comment. If he had, he’d have known exactly what lay behind it.

I was, as I’ve said, fifteen. Like a waterlogged branch, I was carried from swell to swell on the river. The wind and water had me under their control, as did Father on a daily basis, but I had no control over myself or my secret. One morning I was startled awake — smacked awake, more like. Still half asleep, I unconsciously covered my crotch with my hands. Sure enough, I saw a little mountain peak down there, thanks to an erotic dream about Li Tiemei from the revolutionary opera. But this time I wasn’t going to be punished for having a hard-on, because my father was standing by my bed and he’d discovered my secret. He hit me — in the face — with Mother’s notebook. In the process he knocked Li Tiemei and the red lantern off the notebook and on to the floor.

His hair was uncombed and there was sleep in his eyes. His face looked weird — pale white on one side and pig’s-liver red on the other, painted anger. ‘Where did you get this?’ he roared. ‘Get up. Get on your feet and tell me why you did this!’

Still not fully awake, I stood up and covered my face. ‘I didn’t write that,’ I said, putting up the only defence that came to me. ‘Mama did. I had nothing to do with it.’

‘I know she wrote it! You stole it. What I want to know is why you didn’t give it to me. Why did you hide it? This is damning evidence against me. What were you planning to do with it?’

Maybe I had a plan and maybe I didn’t. But I didn’t know why I had hidden it, and since I didn’t know, I should have kept silent. But I was not capable of that. So I said something to prove my innocence. ‘I hid it for fun,’ I said. ‘It was just for fun.’

‘For fun?’ he screamed. ‘What kind of fun?’ That really set him off. The questions began to pile up. ‘You say it was for fun. This is evidence your mother gathered to punish me. How was that supposed to be fun?’

How was it supposed to be fun? What could I to say to that? Nothing. There were flames of anger in his eyes that I’d never seen before, and I knew I was in big trouble. So I scooped up my trousers and burst out of the cabin. He was right on my heels. ‘Go on!’ he shouted, ‘get away from me. Get the hell out of my sight! Go ashore, go and find your mother.’

The fleet was moving downriver that morning. As I stood on the bow of our barge, there was no place I could run to. My eyes roamed over the other barges, now safe havens. But I didn’t want to be there. As day was breaking, the barges began to stir, and people emerged to discover that Father had kicked me out of the cabin and up to the bow of barge number seven, where I was holding on to the cable housing for dear life. Desheng was the first to react. ‘Secretary Ku,’ he shouted, ‘what’s the matter with Dongliang? I don’t know what’s made you so angry, but you have to stop now. If you keep this up, he’ll be in the water.’

Pretending he hadn’t heard, Father pointed a coal shovel at me, like a weapon. ‘I told you to leave, you shameless brat! I want you off this barge. Go and find your mother.’

I looked down at the water and, in all truth, I was scared. But I wasn’t about to let him know that, so I said, ‘I’ll leave as soon as you tell the tugboat to stop and let me off.’

‘Just who do you think you are?’ he replied. ‘Do you really think the tug will stop just because a little bastard like you wants it to? Dream on! You won’t drown, so get in and swim ashore.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘the water’s too cold. I’ll wait till there’s a sandbar. Do you think this old rust bucket is all I’ve got? Well, I’m telling you, once I’m off it I’m not coming back. You can live on without me.’

But my threat did not work. ‘All right,’ he said as he glanced at the riverbank, the coal shovel still in his hand, ‘there’s the duck farm sandbar. You can get off now.’ Then he slipped the shovel under my feet and picked me up. By then, Six-Fingers Wang’s daughters had come out on to the deck of barge number six and were giggling stupidly over the scene in front of them. I was mortified. He could have flung me off the barge.

I wasn’t a chunk of coal, but that’s what he treated me like. With a full-throated roar, he bent at the waist, squatted down, and shovelled me on to the sandbar near the duck farm.

THAT WAS the first time Father ran me off the barge. I went ashore at the duck farm, where there was no one around, just two rows of ducks waddling from side to side on a sandbar — a welcoming committee heralding my return to terra firma. I started walking towards Milltown, with the sensation that the ground beneath me was undulating like river swells, although the waters of the Golden Sparrow River were as still as a glistening roadway. At first glance, the boats’ masts looked like houses. As I neared the transformer substation several ducks met me head-on, followed by the idiot Bianjin, who was carrying a duck whistle and prancing proudly down the road. When he saw me he called out excitedly, ‘You’re Ku Wenxuan’s son, aren’t you? Want to know something? Go and tell your father that the investigative team is coming soon, and they’ll announce that I am Deng Shaoxiang’s son, her real son!’