Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

Mother was on the shore, but I had no home there, and had to head back. Note that by heading back I meant back to the barge, back to the Sunnyside Fleet.

One morning a week later, the fleet was returning from its latest mission and I was on the pier, waiting anxiously for them. I could not say if I was waiting for my father’s barge and his home to return to, or if I was waiting for the return of my barge and my home.

So I stood there, bag in hand. It was wet underfoot after a foggy morning, almost as if it had rained. With a bit of hesitation the sun broke through, lighting up part of the pier and leaving the rest to fend for itself. Fog hung over the mountain of coal, the piled-up commodities and the many cranes. There were spots where the sunlight was nearly blinding and others so dark it was hard to see. I waited in the darkness. Someone was moving near the embankment, but I couldn’t tell who it was. The person was heading my way from the transport office, nearly running, and dragging a shimmering white light behind. It had to be a stevedore. When he was close enough to hear, I shouted, ‘Do you know when the fleet is expected back?’

As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them, for it was the general affairs typist, Zhao Chunmei. Ah, Zhao Chunmei. She was Zhao Chuntang’s younger sister, and her name appeared in Mother’s notebook at least ten times. She’d been one of my father’s lovers. Some of the words Mother had written after Father had told the truth floated into my head. They did it! They did it on the typing desk. They did it on a window ledge. They did it again and again! The description was particularly detailed in one spot. They were in a room where cleaning gear was kept, doing it, when the caretaker opened the door. Never one to lose control in the face of danger, Father covered himself with a broom and a mop and held the door partially shut with his shoulder. ‘You can take the day off,’ he said. ‘We are doing some voluntary work in here!’

I recalled seeing Zhao Chunmei in the office, and my abiding image of her was how fashionable and haughty she seemed. She wore milky-white high-heeled shoes virtually every day of the week, a sight rarely seen in Milltown, or — rarer still — purplish-red ones. Both made a loud click-clacking sound when she climbed the stairs. The other women in the building hated her, Mother included. They felt that her shoes served two purposes: to show off to the women and to tempt the men. I can still see that come-on look in her eyes, flirtatious as hell.

But no longer. She knew who I was, and the look she gave me was unusually cold, the sort of look a policeman might give a criminal, her eyes glued to my face. Then she looked down at my bag, as if it contained evidence of some crime. At first I was tempted to look away, but that would have been too easy. Then I recalled my father’s line about voluntary work, and felt like laughing. Suddenly she shuddered, which surprised me. I swallowed my laughter and kept my eyes on her. She was giving me the most hateful look I’d ever seen. ‘He’s dead!’ she cried. ‘My husband, Little Tang, is dead, and Ku Wenxuan killed him!’

That was when I noticed a white flower in Zhao Chunmei’s hair. Her shoes were also white — not high heels, but funeral shoes, with hempen ties on the backs and heels. Her puffy cheeks distorted what she was saying. I understood that her husband was dead and that she’d said Father had killed him. But I didn’t know why. My father had been on board our barge for a long time now, so how could he have killed Little Tang? I’d always been fascinated with death, so I felt like asking when Little Tang had died and whether he’d committed suicide or was killed by someone else. But Zhao Chunmei was in no mood to say more. She just glowered at me. Finally, she gnashed her teeth and said, ‘Ku Wenxuan, you’ll repay this blood debt one of these days!’

Her menacing glare frightened me. A woman’s face, no matter how pretty, becomes a terrible sight when it shows a thirst for vengeance. The look on Zhao Chunmei’s face was so terrifying that I instinctively stepped backwards to get away from her, reversing all the way to the loading dock. When I passed beneath a crane, I glanced up at Master Operator Liu in his cage, who signalled for me to climb up, as if he had something important to tell me. He didn’t. He just wasn’t a man who could mind his own business. Pointing to Zhao Chunmei, he said, ‘Don’t upset her. She hasn’t been herself for the past few days, ever since her husband killed himself with a pesticide.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said. ‘She upset me . Besides, it wasn’t me who gave her husband the pesticide, so what’s it got to do with me?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ he said, ‘but everything to do with your dad. He’s the one who made Little Tang wear a green hat — you know, a cuckold. People say that the green hat crushed him.’

‘Crushed by a green hat — so what! She let my dad thump her, didn’t she? Nobody forced her. Besides, he wore that green hat for years willingly enough, and no one forced him, either. My dad did it with lots of women. How come he decided to kill himself? Stop spreading malicious gossip!’

‘You don’t know a damned thing,’ Liu said. ‘Willing, you say? Whoever heard of a man willing to wear a green hat? It’s not their choice to make. You’re right, Little Tang wore that hat for years, but hardly anybody knew. As long as people pretended nothing was wrong, he could do the same. But when your dad fell from power, lots of people started talking. Then the backbiting started, with people saying that Little Tang had handed his wife over to someone in a position of leadership for his own advancement. Out on the street, people whispered things. Could he pretend he was deaf? When he went to the bathhouse, the old-timers laughed at him. When he couldn’t take it any longer, he got into a fight, and wound up with a bloody nose. They offered him cotton to stop the bleeding, but he refused. Instead, he threw on his clothes and went straight to the pharmacy, supposedly to buy Mercurochrome. But what he actually bought was a bottle of DDT, which he drank on the way home. People who saw him thought it was alcohol. Now I ask you, the way Little Tang died, wouldn’t you say he was crushed by that green hat?’

What Liu said made sense. It wasn’t very scientific, but since I didn’t know what it felt like to wear a green hat, my opinion didn’t count for much. But still I said, ‘There are internal and external causes for everything, but the internal causes are the main ones. Most of the responsibility for Little Tang’s death lies with him. You can’t blame my father for what happened.’

‘Don’t give me any of that internal and external bullshit,’ Liu said. ‘Do you think I don’t know my Marxism-Leninism? I never said your dad was the internal cause. If he had been, then he’d have been the one drinking the DDT.’

I’d have liked to keep the debate with Liu going, but I glanced down at the pier, where Zhao Chunmei was still looking daggers at me. Thrown off stride, I reacted with foul language. ‘What’s that cunt up to? Her old man’s dead, so that’s the end of it. Don’t tell me my dad has a blood debt. And even if he did, what’s that got to do with me?’

‘What kind of gutter talk is that?’ Liu said with a frown. ‘A comrade who’s just lost her husband doesn’t deserve to be spoken about like that. Nobody’s asking your dad to repay a blood debt. She’s backed herself into a corner, and all she can do is come down to the pier to get him to put on mourning attire and pay his respects at Little Tang’s grave.’

This was probably the only useful thing Liu said to me up there, because now the sight of Zhao Chunmei down below was more terrifying than ever. I’d have liked to stay up there in the cage, but Liu sent me back down, saying that safety regulations did not permit idlers, though the real reason was his unhappiness over my gutter talk.