Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

‘I’m begging you, Aunty Zhao, please don’t lump Old Qiu and Rotten Rapeseed together with my father, and please don’t go spreading this around.’

‘I’ve spread nothing. It’s confidential information, and if you hadn’t forced me, I wouldn’t have brought it up.’

‘Please, Aunty Zhao, go to Zhao Chuntang and, if this top-secret document really exists, ask him not to go public with it.’

‘I can’t do that. I’m not my brother’s superior. What makes you think he’d listen to me?’ She rested the mop against the wall, enjoying the taste of victory. I heard her breathe a sigh. ‘I hear you’re a dutiful son,’ she said. ‘Too bad you have to be dutiful to a father like him!’

She walked away and I fell in behind her. She wasn’t getting rid of me that easily, and was obviously growing anxious. She turned into Cotton Print Lane and sort of jogged in the direction of the Milltown police station. ‘You’re worse than your father,’ she said without slowing down. ‘Come on, follow me — I’ll even let you catch up — all the way to the police station, where we’ll see what they have to say about all this.’

That worked. The last place I wanted to be was a police station, so I stopped following her. Standing in the entrance to Cotton Print Lane, I saw several old men sitting on stools at a table they’d set up in the sunlight next to a water-boiling tiger oven. They were drinking tea and passing the time of day. Spotting me and knowing at once who I was, they began talking in hushed voices. ‘That’s Ku’s son,’ one of them said. ‘He used to swagger around town, but no longer. Now he walks with his tail between his legs.’ The other oldster, who gossiped like a woman, was passing judgement on my appearance. ‘As a boy he looked like Qiao Limin, but the older he gets, the more he takes after Ku Wenxuan, with that hang-dog look.’ I’d forgotten their names, but I knew who their sons and daughters were. The one with the bulging growth on his neck was Scabby Five’s father. A retired blacksmith, he kept spitting on the ground and smearing his spit with the sole of his shoe. The other man was the father of Little Chen, the barber. He’d worked at the public baths, where he was in charge of cleaning bathers’ ears and trimming their corns, until he managed to pull the right strings to get a transfer to the piers as a longshoreman, although he still plied his old trade, clearing the ears and trimming the corns of high officials after hours. I recalled the days when he’d show up at our place with a little wooden box to perform his services on my father.

I took a good hard look at them, trying to guess how old they were and see if they were ageing faster than my father. But then it hit me — they were the winners in this drama. They might have been old and slovenly, but they were more carefree than my father. There were no crimes or sins associated with their names, so they were spared the need to reform themselves. Ordinary citizens all their lives, they’d never had much of anything, which meant they had nothing to lose. They were in good shape; so were their sons. A bizarre thought struck me: wouldn’t it be interesting if everyone’s lineage was as easy to change as my father’s? And if I hadn’t been the son of Ku Wenxuan, but instead called the old blacksmith or the professional ear-cleaner father, would I have turned out like Scabby Five or Little Chen? How would I feel about that? I stood there thinking for a long time, until I was brought up short by the beating of my own heart. I was actually envious of that bastard Scabby Five, actually willing to trade places with Little Chen the barber. I had answered my own question: I’d be just fine with that.

It was noon, and Father’s going-ashore plan called for me to be at the clinic by one thirty and then return to the barge to make lunch. As I passed by the tiger oven, golden flecks of rice chaff fell from its ledge on to my shoes. There were piles of the stuff up there. The operator of the stove, Old Mu, stripped to the waist, was shovelling it into the oven. I couldn’t see the flames, but I heard them crackle. Pop! Pop! Burn, burn, burn. My heart echoed the beat of the flames, and I suddenly felt hot all over. There was a stabbing pain in my foot, and when I bent down to look, I saw a rice husk embedded in the space between two toes. I picked it out and saw that it had the world’s tiniest and most abject little face; the inevitable progression from a piece of grain to fuel for a fire gave it a fearful and terribly sad expression. I rolled it around in the palm of my hand. The rice paddy had been plundered until there was nothing left. The next thing I felt was the hot sun on my scalp, and then I saw my father’s face in the shrivelled rice husk, his look of fear and sadness greater even than the solitary husk in my hand. I heard the subdued sound of his pleas: Save me, please save me!

I knew I had to save Father.

But who could I find to help me?

All of Milltown, in my mind a great metropolis, had once been my playground; now it was alien territory. There was no one on whom I could rely; then I thought of someone — Huixian. She owed us, and she remained a celebrity. I placed my hopes on her, but what could I say to convince her to come to my father’s aid? I couldn’t begin to guess if she’d be willing to do so. I passed a bakery stall on the eastern edge of town, its fragrance reminding me that I was hungry. I bought a baked flatbread and immediately sank my teeth into it. Just then I heard my name shouted in a crisp voice. It was Desheng’s wife, who was gaping at me in complete surprise. ‘Why aren’t you back on the barge, Dongliang? Your father is waiting for his lunch.’

‘So what? I’m not his personal servant, you know. He’s got two hands, and there’s a pot in the kitchen and rice in the pantry. What’s keeping him from making his own lunch?’

She gave me a bewildered look. ‘Why is a dutiful son like you saying things like that? Have you fought with your father again?’

I waved her off and started walking. I hadn’t fought with my father. It was the rest of the world that was fighting with him.

I returned to the barbershop, where, amid the smells of food and Glory soap, the barbers were eating on a makeshift table made of two stools pulled together. Their surprise at seeing me again was matched by my surprise at what I saw: since when had Wang Xiaogai of the security group started eating with this lot? There he was, sitting in the middle, stuffing a fried egg into his mouth.

Old Cui stared at me uncertainly. ‘What are you doing here? You’ve had your haircut.’

I’d come to help my father, after pondering what I’d say to Huixian on the way over. But one look at Wang Xiaogai drove that thought out of my mind. What was he doing, enjoying a meal with the barbers? I glared at him — his hair, his new grey jacket, and the area around his crotch — and was immediately reminded of the talk I’d been hearing about Huixian, especially the rumour that Xiaogai had the hots for her. I’d laughed it off as crazy talk. Could it possibly be true?

Huixian laid down her bowl and looked me up and down. ‘Did you fight it out with Zhao Chunmei? How come you look like you’ve lost your best friend?’ She could see I was staring at Xiaogai. ‘Who are you looking for? Wang Xiaogai?’

I knew what I must have looked like, so I turned away from Xiaogai and said to her, ‘I want to talk to you about something. Can you come outside?’

‘Why do we have to talk outside?’ There was a guarded look in her eyes. ‘I don’t like that sneaky expression of yours. Who do you want to talk about? You? Me?’

‘N — neither,’ I stammered, beginning to lose my composure. ‘What’s got you so uppity?’ I said. ‘All I’m asking is for you to step outside. It won’t take long. What do you say?’