Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

‘None of those. There’s a rubbish dump at the end of a gravel road in front of our house. My mother goes there every day to dump rubbish.’

‘You say your mama dumps rubbish every day?’ Baldy’s eyes flashed. He clicked his tongue. ‘Tell your uncle what’s in the rubbish.’

Sun Ximing had heard enough. He rushed up and knocked the register out of Baldy Chen’s hand. ‘What’s in the rubbish! Landlord restoration records, radio transmitters, counter-revolutionary handbills? What the hell kind of security guard are you? What do you expect from a little girl like that? What harm can come of letting her come ashore? You should be ashamed of yourselves, treating her like a class enemy.’

Other members of the delegation expressed their opinions in much more colourful language. Desheng’s wife walked up and pulled Huixian into her arms. ‘How dare you treat her like that! Don’t let them register you. Whatever they ask, just ignore them.’

Desheng and Six-Fingers Wang rolled up their sleeves and placed themselves in front of Desheng’s wife and Huixian, shoving Xiaogai and Scabby Five aside. Scabby swung his truncheon and hit Six-Fingers in the face. ‘You rotten boat people!’ he shouted. ‘This is a rebellion!’

I was standing some way off, since I never liked sticking my nose in other people’s business. But for some unknown reason, I felt compelled to get involved in what was happening with the girl. The crowd pushed Huixian towards me. She was screaming, frightened and not knowing who to turn to. She reached out to me, and the sight of her little hand seeking help made my blood boil. I grabbed it, pulled her out of the crowd and shouted, ‘Run! Run, everybody!’

Running, that was something I’d become good at. Knowing the lie of the land around the piers as well as anyone, I had our escape route mapped out. We’d skirt the mountain of coal and head for the cotton warehouse, which would take us out of Xiaogai’s sphere of authority. I hadn’t run far with Huixian in tow when I turned to see quite a scene behind us. The delegation had formed a human wall to keep the security group from following us. Scabby Five was swinging his truncheon and Baldy Chen was following his lead, both aiming at the heads of the boat people. Hand-to-hand combat ensued, a wild mêlée of clubs and fists; even the wives of Desheng and Sun Ximing joined the battle. Someone, I couldn’t see who, kicked Baldy in the balls, and I watched him jump and run around in obvious pain, screams bursting from his open mouth. Then Xiaogai blew on his whistle — jerky, panicky. ‘It’s a riot!’ he shouted. ‘A riot! A counter-revolutionary riot! Go and report this to Secretary Zhao, and do it now!’

By now Huixian and I had reached the foot of the mountain of coal. Scared by what was happening behind us, she asked me, ‘Why are they fighting?’

‘They’re fighting over you, you dope.’

She still didn’t get it. ‘I never asked them to fight. Fighting’s no good, it breaks down discipline.’

I was in no mood to explain things to her. I started up the mountain of coal, but she refused to let me pull her along. ‘Why do we have to go up that? All that black coal will get my clothes dirty.’ She was too young to appreciate what was going on. Angry and increasingly anxious, I hoisted her up on to my back and started climbing. She fought me at first with her fists and feet, but when she began pretending she was on horseback her excitement led to whoops of joy. She smacked me on my backside. ‘Giddy up!’ she shouted. ‘Giddy up!’

With Huixian still on my back, I made it to the cotton warehouse, as the sound of an avalanche erupted behind me. The boat people were cheering me on, like a revolutionary phalanx, as they clambered proudly down the mountain of coal. Wintersweet’s shrill voice carried on the wind from the other side: ‘Go ahead, run! Don’t think we won’t settle the score sooner or later! You can run from the monk, but not from the temple!’

We reassembled at the entrance to the cotton warehouse. Six-Fingers’s face was scratched, Sun Ximing’s wife used a handkerchief to cover her chest where her shirt was ripped. The delegation had suffered some minor losses, but everyone looked triumphant. They were excited over their easy victory.

The workers inside were understandably unnerved by the tumult at the warehouse entrance; when the iron gate swung open with a clang, two women stepped outside, one middle-aged, the other quite young. They eyed the crowd cautiously. ‘What are you people doing here?’ one of them asked. ‘Are you planning to steal coal, or maybe cotton? You can do what you want with the coal, but if you try to steal our cotton, we’ll call the police.’

‘How dare you!’ Sun Ximing’s wife protested. ‘Do we look like thieves?’

‘Thieves don’t paint the word on their foreheads,’ the middle-aged woman said enigmatically. ‘What difference does it make what you look like?’

‘We’re not going to argue with you,’ the younger woman said as she pointed to the warehouse wall. ‘Read that if you can. “STR ATEGIC WARE HOUSE: FIRES FOR BIDDEN. THEFTS WILL BE PUNISHED!”’

‘You have no right to treat us this way,’ Desheng’s wife said. ‘What we’re doing has nothing to do with you. I’d have thought you’d have your hands full taking care of the cotton, so leave us alone!’

‘You can do your business somewhere else.’ The middle-aged woman’s eyes swept the crowd, filled with hostility. When she spotted the scratches on Six-Fingers’s face, she clicked her tongue. ‘Where did you people come from, and how did you get those injuries?’

Embarrassed by the comment, Six-Fingers glared at her and cursed angrily, ‘You filthy cunt, I’ll thump the life out of you!’

The woman obviously knew what the word ‘cunt’ meant, and understood what it was to thump somebody. She rolled her eyes at Six-Fingers and shoved the younger woman back into the warehouse, saying, ‘This is none of our business. If they’re not gone in two minutes, call the police.’

Her threat had the desired effect, since the delegation moved away docilely, though not without plenty of grumbling. Their timidity was understandable, given their fear of the police. Taking Huixian by the hand, Desheng’s wife started heading back to explain things to the women, but was stopped by Sun Ximing. ‘We’re here to make arrangements for the girl,’ he announced with a wave of his hand, ‘so forget them. We’ll find another spot. Don’t tell me there’s no place for us to talk things over anywhere in Milltown.’

That sounded good, but there really wasn’t any place for us in the town, we knew that. So the discussion resumed as we walked, and in the end, Sun’s suggestion carried the day. Rather than go to the Women’s Federation, the Civil Administration or the Family Planning Commission, we’d take the child straight to Zhao Chuntang.

The General Affairs Building was at the far northern end of the piers, and we kept running into restricted areas with signs that read, ‘DEAD END’ and ‘DETOUR’. We skirted the construction area by the piers until, with considerable difficulty, we found ourselves in front of the white, four-storey building. I can’t say what kind of deterrent power it had, but the moment the boat people arrived at the steps of the building, a sense of fear gripped them; there was no grumbling and no talking, just wide-eyed looks and unconscious backing away.

Desheng’s wife managed to remain unflappable. ‘I’ll bet Xiaogai and his bunch are in there,’ she said to Sun Ximing. ‘They probably ran over to report us.’

Sun lit a cigarette and took several deep drags. ‘We’ve sustained injuries,’ he said at last, ‘so let them make their report. We have the girl to worry about, and nothing’s going to keep us from doing what we came to do.’ He looked first at Huixian, then at me, and finally pointed to the building with his cigarette. ‘Dongliang,’ he said, ‘you grew up around this building, so you must know it well. Go in and have a look around, all right?’