Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

‘People are dying in town all the time,’ Little Four shrieked, ‘but not in the fleet.’

Xiaofu shoved the busybodies out of the way as he pushed me along. ‘What business is it of yours if we run? Go ahead, get an eyeful, we’re training for a long-distance race. Haven’t you ever seen one of those?’

Desheng and Sun Ximing’s wives were waiting for me at the hospital entrance. They exchanged relieved looks. ‘Dongliang, you didn’t leave after all, that’s good,’ one of them said.

‘My Xiaofu knows how to get things done,’ said the other. ‘He managed to bring Dongliang here.’

I was on the verge of collapse. ‘My dad, is he OK?’ I managed to shout before falling at their feet. I couldn’t stand up; I felt the women try to pull me to my feet by my arms. I didn’t resist, but my body and my soul lay fearfully on the ground, refusing to get up. I was shaking uncontrollably.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ Desheng’s wife said. ‘Your dad’s going to be OK. He’s got us to take care of him. Now stand up, come on, stand up.’

But Sun Ximing’s wife kept pointing to my head and giving me a good scolding. ‘Now you know what it means to be afraid. Why didn’t you listen to us earlier? It’s OK not to trust the people on the shore, but have you stopped trusting us too? You call yourself a rebel. Well, you nearly rebelled your father to death!’

They walked me into the hospital’s intensive-care unit. I have no recollection of the hospital’s layout or facilities, but I’ll never forget the smell of the room he was in. It stank of dirty feet and blood, along with the acrid smell of iodine and the aroma of food. Father had forced me into a relationship with that place: the first time as a result of his severed penis, and this time in an effort to save his life. I couldn’t escape a measure of responsibility for either. Standing in the doorway, I suddenly felt as if my stomach was about to betray me. Afraid that I was going to throw up, I crouched down in front of a spittoon.

‘What’s wrong with you, Dongliang?’ Sun’s wife said. ‘Your father’s lying there in the corner, what are you doing down there?’

I rubbed my belly. ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘wait a minute.’

When she saw my ashen face, Desheng’s wife said, ‘Yes, let’s wait a minute. He looks as if he’s going to throw up, probably from hunger, or fright.’

I strained to raise my head from the spittoon to search for Father. Most of the beds in Intensive Care were occupied. He was lying on a bench in the corner, surrounded by oxygen tanks, IV racks and lots of people. It was obvious that his condition was critical from the way two nurses were bouncing around beside him and the doctor was pumping his stomach. It looked like a slaughterhouse or meat-processing plant. Father was a feeble but stubborn old ox that refused to be led to the slaughter, and was upsetting the nurses.

Since they didn’t dare vent their frustrations on him, they took them out on the people standing nearby. ‘How can you be so inept? You men, with all that strength, and you can’t even hold an old man down. Look how he’s thrown up all over me!’

The boat people shuttled back and forth beside the bench until they finally settled into place. Six-Fingers Wang pressed down on Father’s body, with Sun Ximing and Desheng in position on either side of the bench, one holding a spittoon, the other holding up an IV bottle. That was when Sun Ximing saw me. He glowered. ‘What are you standing around for? Get over here and help Six-Fingers hold him down. Your stubborn dad refuses to let them pump his stomach.’

So I rushed across and pushed down on my father’s midsection. He looked up at me and tried to say something, but the tube in his mouth made that impossible. Next best was to push me away, but Six-Fingers was holding his arms down at his sides. Obviously he wanted me out of there, and that was probably a good idea, since my stomach was churning and I felt like throwing up. But I had to force it down. He was the one who needed to throw up. I pushed down hard. ‘Throw up, Dad, get rid of it.’ But he was determined not to. He was breathing as hard as he could, trying to expel the tube from his throat. ‘Empty your stomach, Dad, forget about the tube. Get rid of the pesticide and you’ll be fine.’

I looked into his eyes and saw that the anger had given way to torment, just before a geyser of foul liquid burst from his mouth and hit me full in the face. I didn’t even try to get out of the way, strangely enough. I just emptied the contents of my stomach right after he did.

THE FLEET had left town by the time Father got out of hospital.

I carried him on my back down to the piers, from where we could see barge number seven tied up beside the embankment some distance away, an abandoned vessel seemingly floating at the edge of the world. In my eleven years on the river this was the first time our barge had not been part of the fleet, and it seemed quite alien, as did the shore and even the Golden Sparrow River. Normally, the river flowed so rapidly it could be heard at a distance, with floating objects just about everywhere you looked: brightly coloured or steel-grey patches of grease, dead branches and leaves, and the rotting corpses of drowned animals. But that afternoon the river was so implausibly unspoiled that it spread out before me like a timeworn piece of dark-blue satin, perfectly still and beautiful. Yes, beautiful, but bleakly so.

Father stank after three days in the hospital. I smelled his fetid breath, the dried sweat in his hair and the acrid stench of his clothing. All combined, he gave off a strong fishy odour. Why, I wondered, did he smell like that? Bringing him back that way was like carrying a large marinated fish.

Father was wide awake the whole time, but he refused to speak to me — his last remaining display of authority. He was mired in silence, the only punishment he could think of. Except for an occasional glimpse of his swaying feet, he was hidden from me, especially his eyes, but I knew that the hostility was gone, and that, except for glimmers of suffering, only a blank, empty gaze remained — fish eyes. As we were leaving the hospital, a doctor had recommended that I talk to Father more often, telling me that it was common among rescued suicides, especially older ones, to descend into dementia.

I wanted to talk to Father, but didn’t know what to say, how to start or end a conversation with him. His shrivelled body rested against me, but I knew that our hearts and minds were miles apart. While I couldn’t see his mouth, that was not the case with the frothy bubbles that emerged from it. I don’t know if they were caused by the treatment he had received or by what his body had experienced, but the result of the stomach-pumping was dark-and light-brown bubbles at first, followed by transparent and, I must admit, enticing bubbles.

Sunlight glinted off the river as we approached the piers, with a light breeze caressing Father’s face to dislodge the last of the bubbles, which first landed on my shoulder and then fell to the ground at my feet. I was surprised to see them change colour to a glistening rainbow of hues, and the sight made me laugh for the first time in ages. Unfortunately but predictably, Father misinterpreted my laughter. I felt him move and heard him speak for the first time: ‘Go ahead, laugh, I know why you’re laughing. I’m going to die soon, and you’ll get your freedom.’

A trio of longshoremen stood on the pier smoking. ‘What’s the story with number seven barge?’ Master Liu shouted. ‘The others have all left, so what are you doing strolling around here?’ Then they spotted Father on my back, and that got them animated. The local labourers had long been curious about my father, and this was a rare opportunity to get some answers. They crowded around to get a good look at Father’s face and body, before retreating to a nearby crane to exchange opinions. I heard one of them say, ‘He’s as strange as they say. He’s blowing bubbles like a fish.’ I detected a sympathetic note in Master Liu’s voice as he said with a sigh, ‘It’s only been ten years or so since I saw him last. How did he get so old so fast? He’s had a tough life.’ I didn’t like what I heard from the third man, who was younger than the others; he contrasted my father’s appearance with what he’d heard of the life of Deng Shaoxiang, and, thinking himself quite clever, concluded, ‘No, this old-timer can’t be the one, he has to be a fraud. No way he’s Deng Shaoxiang’s son. Think back to when Deng Shaoxiang was martyred, and the baby was in her basket. He wouldn’t be this old, not now.’