Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

With a surprised shriek, she said, ‘You’ve got a mama too? Everybody said you do, but I didn’t believe them.’

My head buzzed. ‘Why wouldn’t I have a mama?’ I demanded. ‘Did you think I slithered out from between some rocks?’

She knew she’d said the wrong thing. With a wounded look, she whined, ‘I never said that. But if you’re not trying to find her, that makes you a bad person. Why aren’t you looking for her?’

Huixian might have been small, but she was no stranger to resentment. The minute I blew up at her, she stopped obeying my commands. When I told her to start walking, she stopped to rest, and when I told her to speed up, she slowed down. Somehow, we managed to make it to People’s Avenue and walked up to the general store, at the entrance to the marketplace, where there was always lots of traffic; that meant plenty of wear and tear. Half of her missing-persons poster was missing, the other half had been covered with writing. Someone had written ‘Three Cheers for the Revolutionary Committee’, another had written ‘Li Caixia is a tattered shoe, a whore’, and someone else had written ‘Down with Liu Shaoqi’, to which someone else had added Scabby Five’s name. None of these scrawled comments surprised me; what struck me as odd was that someone had drawn a fish — a very realistic fish — on the poster in chalk. Huixian gawked at the fish in alarm and asked, ‘What does that mean? Why did they draw a fish?’

‘Some kid,’ I said casually. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Liar!’ she said. ‘It has to mean something. I think it’s telling me that my mama has turned into a fish!’

Huixian was a lot smarter than I gave her credit for. Thanks to what she’d said, I really did start to wonder what significance that fish held. It must have been hinting at something. Fish live in the water; her mother was in the river and had turned into a fish. I took a long look at the drawing and had a premonition of imminent danger. The truth, which the boat people had conspired to hide, was not mine to reveal. Then I had a flash of inspiration. This was the perfect time for me to apply my skill at altering words and pictures. Reaching into my bag, I took out a ballpoint pen, leaned up against the wall and redrew the picture, neatly turning the fish into a sunflower.

‘That’s a sunflower!’ she shrieked. ‘What does it mean?’

‘A sunflower brings happiness.’

‘What does that mean?’

Never imagining she would ask me what happiness meant, I was stumped for a response. I realized that she was smart only some of the time, and dense the rest. Since I lacked the patience of a schoolteacher and the wisdom of a dictionary, a strange sense of dejection came over me. ‘You’re driving me crazy,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you what unhappiness is, and you’ll know its opposite. You don’t have happiness, and neither do I. Now do you understand?’

That earned me a blank stare. Not feeling like describing happiness in detail, or willing to sully the word, I put it in the simplest terms I knew. ‘Happiness is something that will come later; it’s what you’ll have when you find your mama.’ As soon as that comment left my mouth, my heart sank. What a damned lie. I avoided the puzzled look in her eyes, secretly regretting the cruel web of deceit I’d spun for her. Where had her mother gone? Where was her happiness? How could I even have said the word? What nonsense! Here were the two of us, Ku Dongliang and Jiang Huixian, actually discussing happiness!

The noise level around the general store rose suddenly. Somebody riding past us on a bicycle slammed on the brakes, while people across the street pointed at Huixian and me. I turned round, and there was my mother, Qiao Limin, standing on the steps. How weird was that! I was trying to help Huixian find her mother, talking to her about happiness and unhappiness, only to run into my own mother. It had been a long time. After all this time, she and I had accidentally run into each other at the general store.

She was paler than ever, but still dressed like a young woman. She had on an army cap, a red woollen scarf and a black woollen overcoat. Her hair was combed into a shoulder-length braid. From where I stood, she had the revolutionary romantic look Father had talked about. But as she walked up to me, I realized it was all an illusion. She had a debilitated appearance. She was just Qiao Limin, an amateur actress whose professional skills and looks had deteriorated. She reeked of face cream.

‘Run!’ I ordered Huixian. ‘I said run!’

She didn’t get the message. She took one step and stopped. ‘Why?’ she asked, looking wide-eyed at me.

I couldn’t think of an answer that made sense. ‘It’s a tiger!’ I blurted out.

She looked around. ‘You’re lying again,’ she said with a stamp of her foot. ‘I don’t see anything but people. There’s no tiger.’

Since she wouldn’t listen, I had no choice but to leave her standing there and run straight to the public toilet. I hadn’t planned on running away; I just didn’t know what else to do. When Mother had first left, I hadn’t known what to do, so I’d looked everywhere for her. Now here she was, coming straight towards me, disappointment showing in her eyes. And still I didn’t know what to do, so I ran off. I might as well admit it, I wasn’t just running, I was running away. My destination? The best place to keep us apart — the men’s toilet. At the moment that seemed the safest bet.

Mother was holding a newspaper and had a red nylon bag slung over her shoulder. She started moving the minute I ran off, stuffing the newspaper into her bag and stepping spryly down the general-store steps. Holding the bag tightly, she started running too, her hips swaying. It looked as if she was chasing me while doing a dance with a red silk streamer, and that struck me as comical and depressing at the same time. First she ran up to Huixian, and her streamer stopped moving. I watched as she held up Huixian’s face with her fingers and studied it intently. She said something — maybe telling her how pretty she was or maybe asking a question — but I couldn’t hear what it was. I was concerned only about myself.

First I stood at a urinal. But a strange thing had happened. The wall beside the urinal, which had been so tall, was now so short that my head showed over the top. What had they done to it? I wondered. My thoughts were interrupted by Scabby Seven, who came out of one of the cubicles, hitching up his trousers. He seemed to have shot up suddenly — he looked like a grown-up! And then it dawned on me. The wall hadn’t been shortened — I’d grown taller.

Seven gave me a suspicious look. ‘Kongpi,’ he said, ‘what are you so flustered about? You haven’t come in here to write another bad slogan, have you?’ I ignored him and rushed into a cubicle, but he followed me in. ‘You didn’t come in here to do your business,’ he said. ‘I think you’re planning to write something dirty on the wall.’

‘I’m here to draw a picture of your dad’s prick,’ I said. ‘And your mum’s cunt. Here, let me show you!’

‘Big talk,’ he said, pointing his finger at me. ‘You just wait, I’ll get Five to take care of you.’ He started out of the toilet, but wasn’t through with provoking me. ‘You can’t do your business with your pants on. Pull them down and let me see. Your dad only has half a prick, let’s see what you’ve got.’

That did it. I grabbed him by the arm and started pushing him out the door. ‘Seven,’ I said, ‘I don’t have time to mess around. Another word from you and I’ll stuff you down the toilet.’

While I was struggling with Seven, I heard my mother shout from outside, ‘No fighting in there, Dongliang. Who are you fighting with? Who’s fighting with Dongliang? If you don’t stop this minute, I’ll call the police.’