Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

I decided to stay where I was until he’d cooled down enough to put down the rope. I called Xiaofu over to take the quilt stuffing on to our barge. But then I changed my mind. What if he wouldn’t let me come aboard? The stuffing would come in handy. So I decided to hand him my bag instead. But then I thought, what if he wouldn’t let me go aboard ever again, and I had to start a new life on the shore? I’d need the bag on my travels, by train or bus, so I decided to keep it with me for the time being.

My abnormally hesitant behaviour began to unnerve Xiaofu, who complained, ‘What do you want me to help you with? You’re driving me crazy.’ So I took the jars and cans out of the bag for him. He picked up the soy sauce and vinegar bottles and took them up on to the barge, laying them at my father’s feet.

‘Thank you, Xiaofu,’ Father said politely. ‘You’re a good boy.’ He didn’t seem so angry, after all, but the moment Xiaofu turned back to me, Father picked up the bottles and flung them back on the shore. ‘You coward!’ he shouted. ‘What is it you don’t have — legs or guts? Why don’t you come aboard instead of having somebody else act as your porter?’

The soy-sauce bottle shattered at my feet, spilling its contents on the ground and splattering my trouser legs. Now I was the angry one, as I wiped it off. ‘You’ve got legs, haven’t you? If you want to tie me up, come over here and do it if you can!’

I regretted the provocation the moment the words were out of my mouth. It only made things worse. Father’s face turned almost green with rage. ‘You think I won’t come after you, is that it? I haven’t turned into a fish, not yet, so dry land doesn’t scare me. I’ll come down there, all right, and I’ll tie you up.’

He’d been on the barge so long he’d forgotten how to use the gangplank. He rested one foot tentatively on the edge to see how springy it was, then the other foot. But that’s as far as he dared go. He stood there, looking strangely awkward as the gangplank bounced up and down. ‘Careful!’ I shouted. Straining to keep his balance, and gasping for breath, he pointed at me. ‘Don’t give me that,’ he said. ‘If I fell into the river and drowned, you’d be free. Too bad for you, I’m not going to die that easily. I’m still your father.’

Desheng jumped aboard our barge and pulled my father off the gangplank. ‘Don’t get worked up, Old Ku. Don’t try it. You’re not used to it any more. If you try walking on it, you’ll be in the river for sure.’

‘What do you mean, not used to it? I used to walk on it all the time, even carrying a sack of rice.’

‘I know that,’ Desheng said, ‘but you haven’t done it in years. Even if you made it across, you’d get motion sickness on land.’

The fear in Father’s eyes was unmistakable as he looked nervously at Desheng. ‘What do you mean by that? You’re making that up. Why would I be unsteady on land?’

Desheng began to sway, holding his head in his hands and rocking it back and forth. ‘Being unsteady on land and on the water are the same. People not used to being on a boat get motion sickness on water, just like people who aren’t used to walking on land are unsteady on the riverbank. You’ve been on the river so long the barge is your land and the land is your barge. That’s why you won’t be able to walk on the shore.’

I could see that Father’s mind had begun to wander. He cast a wary eye to the shore, blinking rapidly as he pondered what Desheng said. But then his gaze bounced back to where I was standing. ‘Are you coming here or not? Are you waiting for me to wobble on the gangplank or on the ground?’ He twisted the rope around his hand and shouted, ‘You’re acting awfully brave, putting up a desperate struggle with your back to the wall.’

‘And I’ll keep struggling if you’re set on tying me up,’ I said. ‘Hand the rope to Desheng, and I’ll come up.’

‘Why should I? He doesn’t represent the government, and he’s not your dad. I am. You’ve done a terrible thing today, and I’m going to punish you by tying you up.’

While the two of us, father and son, faced each other, one on the river, the other on the shore, Desheng’s wife joined her husband on our barge and asked Father to give her the rope. ‘You two are causing a scene. Dongliang’s a grown man,’ she said, ‘old enough to be a father himself. He’s stronger than you, and you can’t tie him up unless he lets you. And even if he did, because he’s a dutiful son, it’d be such a loss of face for him he’d never be able to live it down.’ She was right. The people who were watching us nodded in agreement.

But not Father. He shook his head. ‘I don’t want him to be dutiful, I want him to be better than he is. You don’t understand how hard it is to get him to improve himself. I teach him, but he doesn’t get any better. But if I stop teaching him, he’ll just get worse. And if I simply leave him alone, he’ll break every rule there is. He’s a disgrace, and I have to treat him like a little tyrant, because that’s the only thing he responds to.’

‘All this talk about getting better or worse doesn’t mean anything aboard these barges,’ Desheng’s wife said with a scowl. ‘All we want is to get by and live a peaceful life. I’ll talk to him, tell him to come up and admit he was wrong. I’ll make him promise to stop doing things that make you angry.’

‘Who cares if he admits he was wrong or not?’ Father said. ‘He’s the type who refuses to mend his ways.’

Desheng’s wife was first to notice the pained look on my face. She pointed to me. ‘Take a good look at Dongliang,’ she said. ‘His face is as white as a sheet. He can’t stand the way he makes you mad. Put the rope down, Old Ku, or take it into the cabin. You can use what you want, national laws or family law, there’s no loss of face if no one sees. But you can start by letting Dongliang come aboard.’

Desheng and his wife both tried to take the rope away from Father, but he tightened his grip and refused to let go. But he looked a bit less angry, which Desheng noticed. This time he gave the rope a hard tug and wrenched it out of Father’s hand.

Now that he was no longer holding the rope, Father’s face showed how weary he was. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to tie you up. Don’t come aboard today, stay where you are. Lead as degenerate a life as you want. Go ahead, stir up plenty of trouble and break all the rules. I won’t need to use family law; I’ll let national laws do their job. Sooner or later you’ll be handed over to the dictatorship of the proletariat.’

Thinking he was beginning to give in, I started up the gangplank, and barely avoided getting hit by a flying rolling pin. ‘Who said you could come up here?’ he shouted. ‘Get your ass back on the shore!’

My hip really hurt from twisting my body to get out of the way of the rolling pin, and that only fuelled my anger. ‘Are you going to let me come aboard today or aren’t you?’ I gave him my final ultimatum. ‘If you won’t, then I’ll never step foot on that barge again.’

‘Is that a threat? Do you think I’m afraid of your threats? Go on,’ he said with a wave of his hand, ‘get back on the shore. From this day on I have no son!’

‘Who wants to be your son anyway? Who needs a father like you?’ The blood had rushed to my head and stoked my courage. A stream of ugly curses gushed from my mouth, washing over Father like a raging torrent. ‘Take off your trousers, Ku Wenxuan, and show everybody. Who wants a father like you? Everybody else’s father has a whole dick. How come you only have half of one? Where do you get the nerve to try to educate me with only half a dick? And you wanted to tie me up! Half a dick. I tell you, I’m like I am today all because of that dick of yours!’