Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ I said. ‘I’m perfectly happy with the Party and society in general. It’s me I’m not happy with. You’ve heard how people call me Kongpi, haven’t you? So that’s how you can see my diary — kongpi .’

I was lying, of course. I could be kongpi , but not my diary. That held my greatest secrets; it was the one thing I could rely upon. By opening it I was able to see Huixian’s face and her body; I could tell what her hair smelled like and could detect the delicate fragrance only a young maiden possessed. After so many years had passed the image of Huixian as a little girl to pity existed in my head, but not in my body; I embraced a hard-to-describe love and an uncontrollable desire for her. As I flipped through my diary, my heart was filled with anxieties that weighed me down and threatened my very existence, all because of a girl’s maturation. I resisted that process. As she matured, a pair of budding breasts pushed up underneath her red blouse; as she matured, hair sprouted in armpits that were like yellow jade; as she matured, I was burdened with erections. That spelled danger. Though I resisted her maturation, what I really resisted were those erections. I was a healthy young man who could forgive himself for having erections, whether they occurred at night or during the day, whether they were caused by fancily dressed, fashionable girls and women on the shore or by the full-figured, flirtatious daughter of Six-Fingers Wang, with her daringly wild nature. But I could not forgive myself for the dark, gloomy erections over which my mind and body were engaged in a bitter struggle. There were times when I triumphed over them, but I must confess that most of the time they were beyond my control; at those times my wilful genitals overpowered my will and my mind.

Summer, it seemed to me, was the truly dangerous season, and after Huixian came aboard, summers became more dangerous than ever. Each year seemed hotter than the year before, turning our steel-hulled barge into a blast furnace. When the fleet was berthed at the piers, we lay there baked by the sun. Men and boys who knew how to swim stripped naked and dived into the river. That did not include Father and me, not because we tolerated the heat better than the others, but because we shared an aversion to the naked body. I’d stand on the bow keeping watch, not looking at the men and boys in the water but the girls on the barges. They watched the swimmers, I watched them. The other girls were green leaves, Huixian alone was an eye-catching sunflower. I watched her go ashore with a bucket in one hand and wash basin on her hip, and I wondered why she chose to wash clothes on the shore. But when I looked more closely, I figured it out. Each time she dumped a bucketful of water into the basin, a thin jacket spread out and sank to the bottom; then her flowery pants floated to the top as the water turned red. Why red? I knew why, don’t think I didn’t. I’d sneaked a look at the Barefoot Doctor’s Handbook as a youngster, from which I’d learned a thing or two about female physiology. For her it was perfectly normal; I was the abnormal one. With my eyes trained on the shore, my heart cried out with great clarity and abnormal logic, Don’t wash that, don’t! Don’t grow up, don’t!

Knowing that something was wrong, Father followed me with an almost spectral gaze, from the aft cabin to the forward hold, from bow to stern. Like a trained hound, he homed in on the smell of my desire. As my physiological urges grew stronger, my facial expressions hardened; I tried to hide them, but his gaze sharpened and became ruthless. ‘Dongliang,’ he said, ‘what are you always sneaking looks at?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

He just sneered and looked down at the front of my trousers. ‘I know what you’re looking at,’ he said irritably, ‘and I’m telling you to watch yourself!’

With his eyes always on me, I had nowhere to hide, so I walked back to the stern at a half crouch, feeling that my crotch was about to catch fire. I needed water. Half the river was in shadow, the other half in sunlight; a clump of grass was spinning mysteriously on the surface, creating a stream of bubbles. Once again I heard the river call to me: Come down, come down . The river was trying to save me with its coded message. This time I was ready to obey. Go down, why not? Go down. I stripped off my white vest and dived into the water.

I swam over to the perfect vantage point, the space between our barge and number eight, where I held on to the anchor, which was cold to the touch and slightly sticky. Maybe the ghost of the martyr Deng Shaoxiang had left a secret curse. I wasn’t afraid of the martyr’s ghost, nor of secret messages. I looked around — it was the ideal spot for me. Why, I wondered, hadn’t I understood the water’s secret message in the past? Come down, come down . Now that I was in the water, I knew what awaited me: freedom. I could not be free on the barge; I could be free only in the river. How good it was in the water, absolutely wonderful. Finally, I’d found a spot where I could be free, a spot where I could escape Father’s watchful eye.

I have a hard-on, Dad. I’m having one whether you want me to or not!

I’m firing my pistol, Dad. I’m firing it whether you want me to or not!

I heard Father’s anxious footsteps up on deck and experienced the joy of retaliation. In the shadows between the two barges, I availed myself of the water’s protection to calm the tumult fomenting inside me. My body was submerged in the water, submerged in darkness; maybe fish could see what I was doing, but they couldn’t talk, so I wasn’t worried. The men and boys in the water might have spotted me there, but they could only see my head and shoulders, not my hand, and heads and shoulders were incapable of firing a pistol. And even if they discovered what I was doing, I wasn’t worried that they’d say anything. The women and girls on the shore were too far away to see me, and I wasn’t interested in seeing them, anyway. Huixian was the only one I wanted to see. She was crouching down on the bank, painstakingly washing her clothes. From time to time her glance swept over barge number seven, but my secret was safe. My father was watching me, while I was watching her.

She loved to dress up at that age. She wore a gardenia on her breast and had on a green skirt, which she hitched up over her knees to keep it from getting wet. Her exposed knees were milky white, like a couple of lovely buns fresh from the oven — no, not buns, I mustn’t use such common food items to describe any part of Huixian. How about sweet, alluring fruit? But is there a fruit that resembles knees? I racked my brain, trying to come up with something, when all of a sudden a beam of light passed overhead. There in the spot between the two barges, in the narrow space I occupied, the upper half of Father’s face appeared, his staring eyes frightening me so much that I couldn’t react before I heard him roar, ‘Dongliang, what are you doing, hiding down there? Just what are you doing? Get up here, right this minute!’

I ducked my head under the surface. My ears were pounded by water as I tried to find a new secret message. But there was nothing. Trying to keep one step ahead of my father was hard, and the water offered no help. It was hopeless. I could stay in the water for ever, hold my breath until I drowned, and still I couldn’t escape Father’s watch over me.

I had to come up for air, I had no choice, like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. I took a quick look around me, fearful that he might spot signs of my crime. The fluids that had escaped from my body were as nothing in a riverful of water. The surface was as before — no joys, no anxieties — nothing had changed, and I had nothing to worry about. ‘It was hot,’ I said to him, ‘and I wanted to cool off. What’s wrong with that? How come you’re always watching me? Don’t I deserve a little freedom?’