Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

‘What’s it to you. If it’s unattractive, that’s my business!’

Huixian began observing the chests of other girls and women, comparing herself to them and eyeing them critically. She was guided by curiosity, not malice. But the looks created a degree of pressure, and comparisons were inevitable. Between her and me, whose breasts are fuller and more attractive?

Back in their room, she paid particular attention to Leng Qiyun, her eyes glued to her when she got changed. Hurriedly covering her breasts, Leng demanded angrily, ‘What are you looking at?’

Huixian stifled a laugh. ‘I’m not a man,’ she said, ‘so what’s wrong with looking?’

Still angry, but now somewhat embarrassed as well, Leng replied, ‘You’re not a man, but that doesn’t mean you can look at me like that. What are you thinking?’

Huixian repeated what Zhao Chuntang had said: ‘I’m not thinking anything, but aren’t you the queen? What harm can a look do?’

Along with Leng’s responsibility came the authority to examine Huixian’s personal belongings. So when Huixian was out of the room, Leng opened Huixian’s chest, to find a number of racy brassieres hidden at the bottom, all exuding a worrisome air of sexuality. To Leng, this was clear evidence of the girl’s degeneration, but it was not something she could go to Zhao Chuntang to lodge a complaint about. Instead, she told the female officials, some of whom openly defended Huixian. ‘So what?’ they said. ‘She can buy all the brassieres she wants. No one can see them under her clothes.’

‘What about her motive?’ Leng said with a derisive snort. ‘Have you thought about that? No one can see them now, but sooner or later someone will. You just wait. If you let this go on, one day you might see her in one of those decadent miniskirts. She’s an accident waiting to happen!’

Little Liu’s visit had forced Huixian to put her disorienting girlhood behind her; she said goodbye with a brassiere, although it was a parting that brought her little joy. The decorations on Milltown’s once gaudy parade trucks had turned black in the farm tools factory warehouse, their treads missing, their wheels scattered on the floor. Teacher Song’s propaganda poster for the Red Lantern team still hung on the wall; the family in the drama now lived on a warehouse wall, three generations of revolutionaries staring down at abandoned objects, and left with nothing but cherished memories of past glory. The picture, locked away in this cold ‘palace’, attracted not the eyes of the masses, but mildew, dust and cobwebs. While Li Yuhe and Granny Li’s faces were covered with a layer of dust, Li Tiemei’s rosy cheeks and bright, staring eyes showed below her defiantly raised red lantern, which fought for space with cobwebs and struggled against the dust.

Whenever Huixian passed the warehouse, she hoisted herself up on to a windowsill to look through the glass at the poster, focusing on the fate of the poster’s Li Tiemei as if to somehow determine her own future. She cried on her windowsill perch one day, after seeing her disfigured face on the poster, half of it obscured by soot-like dust, while her lantern was losing its battle against a small spider that had circled its gleam with a web. The more she cried, the sadder she grew, and soon she attracted the attention of the factory workers. ‘Little Tiemei,’ the surprised workers asked, ‘what are you doing up there?’ How could they understand? She hurriedly dried her eyes, hopped down from the windowsill and ran off. Her heart ached, thanks to the factory, though she in fact already knew that it had all ended, whether or not she ever looked at what was stored inside. Li Tiemei would never again put on her make-up. Her glory had come out of the blue and then evaporated. It was over, all of it.

She was not Li Tiemei. She was Jiang Huixian, that’s all.

What to do about her waist-length braid caused her much anxiety. First she untied it and weaved it into a pair of braids, but after a while she didn’t like the way that made her look like a country girl. So she decided to coil her hair again, but instead of wearing it the old-fashioned way, at the back, she piled it up on top. That made her taller, and somehow fashionable, and brought her plenty of scrutiny. Her new hair-style caused a stir around town. Leng Qiuyun said it looked like a pile of horse dung, but no one could deny that after shedding her Li Tiemei appearance, Huixian continued to be someone to watch. Her sudden glow and new image, while gaudy and slightly frivolous, was uniquely hers. With her new stacked hairdo, she came and went at the General Affairs Building, the freshness of youth in full view; like a peacock fanning its feathers with blatant self-assurance, she elicited sighs of admiration from some, reproaches from others, and from one segment of the population, worry and unease.

Zhao Chuntang was particularly worried. A self-possessed man, his face never betrayed his emotions, but a good many occupants of the General Affairs Building could see that he disapproved of Huixian’s new hair-style. He had grown used to tugging on her braid. It had become a means of exercising leadership, whether in the building’s conference room or in the dining hall when he entertained guests. He made his instructions known by how he tugged the braid — to the side, downward, from the middle, or at the tip. But now that Huixian’s braid was stacked atop her head, when he reached behind her out of habit, what he held was not her braid but her lower back, an unintentionally inelegant and easily misconstrued action. Officials in the building frequently noticed a frown on Zhao’s face. ‘Take it down,’ he’d say to Huixian, pointing at her hair. ‘It looks like a pile of horse dung. You don’t really think it’s attractive, do you? It’s brazen and it’s ugly!’

Not daring to defy Zhao in public, Huixian would unclip the braid and let it hang down her back. As soon as he wasn’t around, she’d coil it back up on top again and complain to anyone who would listen, ‘What does he know about beauty? Besides, my braid isn’t public property. I don’t need him to tell me what to do with it. That’s my business.’

It was apparent that Zhao Chuntang was beginning to fold his protective umbrella. International and domestic conditions are in constant flux, and plans for Huixian’s cultivation were no different. Her case had become an intricate mystery, now that Zhao’s hand was growing tired of holding his umbrella. A desk that had been set up in the General Affairs Building intended for Huixian’s studies, complete with books and notebooks, was now covered with a layer of dust. The books had disappeared, and Huixian’s drawer was filled with junk: a hand mirror, face cream, a hair band, socks and toilet paper, not to mention her collection of sweet wrappers. That desk represented Huixian’s status in the building, and moving it out would signal the loss of her patron’s backing. She was in the midst of a transition that would be reflected by the descent of her desk. Transitions for some people have an upward trajectory; hers would go in the opposite direction, from the fourth floor to the ground floor. Her desk had occupied space on the fourth floor for a long time, just outside Zhao’s office door. Also on the fourth floor were an office for confidential matters, another for archives, and a small conference room. That in itself demonstrated a determination to invest heavily in Huixian’s development. When he was talking to her from his office one day, Zhao noticed that she’d stopped responding. He stepped out into the corridor. No Huixian. When he asked his typist where she had gone, she took a quick look around before saying, ‘Oh, I heard her cracking melon seeds just a moment ago, so now where’s she gone? Probably downstairs to get more.’