Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

I felt Father stir on my back and was hit by a dose of foul breath; he’d opened his mouth, probably to defend himself by giving his age. But the second thing he said was also directed at me. ‘Just keep walking a bit further, and you can deposit me on the barge. Then you can leave. I haven’t got long to live, and I won’t be around to run your life any more. You can have your freedom.’

A stray cat that had prowled around the piers for years was crouched on the bow of our barge, watching the river flow past. It might have recognized me. Seeing its master return, it jumped on to the gangplank and skittered past my legs to the shore.

The first thing I saw after carrying Father on deck was a gift the cat had left us: its droppings. Then I noticed that someone had pulled back the hatch of the forward hold, which was now empty, half in sunlight and half in darkness. Echoes of the flowing river emerged, now that there was nothing in there for us to ship. I was remarkably sensitive to the sound of the river, and that afternoon I distinctly heard the faithful echo of its call in the forward hold: Come down, come down . There was no question that Father heard it too, for I felt his head rise weakly from my shoulder. ‘What’s that sound?’ he asked. ‘Are they shipping oilseed?’

‘It’s too late for that, Dad, the hold is empty. There’s nothing on our barge except some cat droppings.’

We went aft into the cabin, where I put him down on the sofa. He collapsed with a contented sigh. ‘We’re home, Dad,’ I said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

‘I’m fine now,’ he said. ‘You can go.’ I asked him if he wanted to take a bath. After a brief hesitation, he said, ‘Yes, that’s what I need. After that you can go.’ So I got up and started to boil some water, accompanied by his mutterings. ‘Don’t worry about me, and I won’t worry about you.’

‘You might not worry about me,’ I said loudly, ‘but I’m worried about you. Not because I want to be, but because you’re my father and I’m your son.’

Everyone in the fleet knew it was a chore for my father to take a bath, and you had to be on your toes. I moved our wooden tub into the cabin and made sure the window was closed to keep nosy people from peeking in at us. He may well have been the most unique man on either bank of the Golden Sparrow River. Other men wouldn’t bat an eye if they were asked to do the sorcerer’s dance nude, but my father’s naked body was a true curiosity for almost everyone. If the front was exposed, he was deeply shamed by his restored penis, but the rear view, with its fish-shaped birthmark, was a source of great pride to him, and both were of considerable interest to all sorts of people. I knew that he had struggled for years to avoid exposing himself to the shame or horror of public viewing. Even I had had no opportunity to see his uncovered penis. In the past, whenever he took a bath, it was my job to patrol the decks outside the cabin to keep out the prying eyes of curious children. But now the other barges were gone, so there was no need for that. After closing the window, I saw that the look in Father’s eyes was one of trepidation. Darting glances to one side and the other, he said, ‘What’s that buzzing in my ears? Who’s out there?’

‘The fleet’s gone,’ I said. ‘Ours is the only boat left, so there’s no one to make any noise.’

With a watchful glance at the door, he said, ‘That’s not safe, not safe at all. Shut the door.’

So I did, and the cabin got stuffy. After filling the tub with hot water, I helped Father out of his filthy clothes, but only as far as his underpants. ‘Those stay on,’ he said. ‘I’ll take them off when I’m in the tub.’ I helped him in and watched as he slowly sat down by leaning to one side, like a stroke victim. ‘Don’t look,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to see. You didn’t listen, and nearly suffered the same fate. Hand me the towel and turn around.’

I did as he asked, and stared at the poster of Deng Shaoxiang on the wall. Then something came over me, and I thought I saw the slumbering martyr come to life. Turning her head slightly, she gazed down at the naked body in the tub. Ku Wenxuan , she said, are you my son? If not, whose son are you? The sounds of splashing rose behind me. ‘Can you manage, Dad?’ I asked. ‘I don’t want you to tire yourself out.’

‘I’m not dead yet,’ he said. ‘I can manage the front, but you’ll have to wash my back.’ A few moments later, he said, ‘The front’s done, so now you can do my back. It must be filthy. It won’t stop itching.’

Crouching down beside the tub, I had a clear view of his birthmark. The fish’s head and body had faded until they were hardly recognizable. But the tail remained stubbornly imprinted on the sagging skin. I was shocked. ‘Dad!’ I blurted out. ‘What happened to your birthmark? Everything but the tail has almost disappeared.’

He shuddered. ‘What do you mean? What kind of crazy talk is that?’ Straining to twist his neck so he could see, he said, ‘Stop scaring me like that. My birthmark is different from other people’s, it’ll never fade.’

‘But it has, Dad! It used to be a whole fish, but now there’s only the tail.’

Again he tried to see behind him, but failed, and in his anxiety to turn his head around, he lurched from side to side. ‘Crazy,’ he said. ‘That’s crazy talk!’ He began thumping me with his hand. ‘Let me see for myself.’

‘Have you lost your mind, Dad? It’s on your backside, where you can’t see. But I’m not lying, it’s faded. Why would I lie about something that important?’

But he wouldn’t stop thrashing in the tub. I leaned to the side to see him from the front. He was trembling and tears were running down his sunken cheeks, though suspicion blazed in his eyes. ‘I know what happened, the doctors rubbed it off. No wonder the itch has been driving me crazy over the past few days. It’s a conspiracy. Pretending they were saving my life, they were actually destroying my birthmark, removing the evidence so they could sever the relationship between me and your grandmother!’

‘Don’t try to pin it on the doctors, Dad. I was there every day, and I saw what they did. They pumped your stomach three times, but never laid a hand on your backside.’

‘Don’t be naive. You watched them pump my stomach, but they wouldn’t let you see them carry out their conspiracy. Zhao Chuntang runs things on the shore, and the doctors do his bidding. It was all planned. Why did you people send me to hospital to have my stomach pumped? It was an evil plan. Why did you take me ashore? You delivered me into their hands. You might as well have taken me straight to the morgue.’

His face twisted into a sad grimace. A frantic series of tiny bubbles emerged from his mouth and popped in the air, releasing a fishy smell. Why had I said anything? So what if it had faded, he couldn’t see it! Me and my big mouth! I hadn’t been forgiven yet for my earlier behaviour, and now I’d caused a new problem. I didn’t know what to do, and, with a deep sense of self-recrimination, missed the people in the fleet as never before. How wonderful it would have been if they had still been around. Desheng’s wife, with her glib tongue, could have smoothed things over with Father by being sympathetic. Sun Ximing could have talked him around from a political angle, while Six-Fingers Wang, who was usually more negative and passive, could have done some good with a more threatening attitude. It was a critical moment, and none of them were around. They’d sailed off and left Father to me, and me alone.

‘You’re just starting to get well, Dad, you mustn’t get over-excited.’ Lacking the gift of the gab, I had to try something to calm him down and make him feel better. ‘No matter what, Dad, the tail’s still there, and even if it was gone, you’d still be Deng Shaoxiang’s son. Truth is truth, and lies are lies, that can’t be changed. People who engage in conspiracies wind up dropping rocks on their own feet. Yesterday I heard some doctors say that another investigative team is coming to overturn the other verdict.’