Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

One day, my father, who worked as a woodsman at the time, went to the factory to buy fertilizer and laid eyes on my mother for the first time. He was surprised to see a bright-red silk jacket under her work clothes, her costume for the red silk dance. He did not know what to think about her costume or how to sum up her singular charm. Their second meeting, which was arranged by a go-between, took place by the fertilizer drainage ditch; he watched as she emerged from the factory’s rear door, lithe and graceful, again with a costume under her work clothes, this one a familiar light-green dress, which, he recalled, would be worn in the tea-picker’s skit. This time he was prepared. He stirred feelings in her with the first thing he ever said to her: ‘Comrade Qiao,’ he said, ‘your body emanates the spirit of revolutionary romanticism.’

While one could say that my parents fell in love, it would be more accurate to say that they discovered one another at the same moment. My father discovered her beauty and talent; she discovered his bloodline and future prospects. He was half a head shorter than she, which even then made their marriage a mismatch, though there were reasons for them to come together. But then in September, my father’s secrets were exposed. Someone, it’s not clear who, revealed to Mother that the first thing he habitually said in furtherance of his womanizing was ‘Comrade So-and-So, your body emanates the spirit of revolutionary romanticism.’

My mother’s lungs felt as if they were about to explode — that was one of her favourite expressions. She once described for me the powerful reflex anger caused in her lungs: ‘I have trouble breathing,’ she said, ‘my lungs pound against my chest, and I’m sure that I lose part of them every time that happens.’ Anger and hurt led her to a new discovery about Father, that he was what is known as ‘cow dung disguised as a flower garden to trick the flowers’. She was one of those flowers, now growing in a pile of cow dung, and the reasons for them to have come together suddenly no longer existed, while reasons for them to part mounted. Mother began folding her clean autumn clothes and packing them away in a camphor chest, storing her treasured stage costumes in a suitcase that itself was a treasure, a relic from her life on the stage. A red seal on top of the suitcase said:

AWARDED TO THE POPULAR

ENTERTAINMENT ACTIVISTS

OF THE HARVEST NITROGEN FERTILIZER

FACTORY

Towards the end, our family life became chaotic and stifling. Mother divided the household chores into three categories. One was reserved for her, and consisted mainly of preparing lunch and dinner for me and for herself. Another was reserved for me, and consisted mainly of sweeping and dusting and taking out the rubbish. The final category was the most arduous: making breakfast for all three of us, cleaning the toilet twice a day, and taking care of all aspects of Father’s daily life: food, clothing and whatever else he needed. Those were his duties. Mother said she’d lost her appetite for washing his socks and underwear, and was adamant about not cooking for him. She said she’d suffered so much humiliation she could barely keep from poisoning his food.

My mother followed methods used by organs of the dictatorship in punishing criminals, subjecting Father to the ultimate settling of accounts. She overlooked nothing, from his labour-reform activities in the yard to special examinations in the bedroom. His last days at home were little more than house arrest, with Mother as his inquisitor, and everything centred on problems of lifestyle. Just that, his lifestyle, which of course involved only the area below the waist, not something people liked to talk about. Father, who was easily embarrassed, could not endure the questioning, so he took to keeping out of sight. The minute Mother came home from work, he hid in the toilet and stayed there as long as he could.

Whenever I saw Mother take a pen and her worker’s notebook out of a drawer, I knew the interrogation was about to begin. ‘Go on, call your father out here.’ She wanted me to bang on the toilet door, and if I refused, she did it herself with a broom handle. Father would emerge and pass under the broom, bent at the waist, heading for the yard. But he’d barely make it to the front door before hearing Mother’s sarcastic laugh. He’d stop, turn, and come face to face with her broom, pointing at him. ‘Go ahead,’ she’d say sternly. ‘Open the door and go outside, where a crowd of people is waiting to see Ku Wenxuan embarrass himself. Go out there and give them a show. I’m betting you don’t have the guts!’

He didn’t. After taking a turn around the yard, he’d obediently come back inside and sit opposite her, where he’d beat about the bush instead of answering her questions, or else admit minor transgressions but do whatever he could to avoid the more serious ones. To Mother, this smacked of passive resistance. They never argued in front of me and lowered the curtain to keep me from peeking in at the window, but on one occasion I heard Mother’s hysterical shouts tear through the window: ‘Ku Wenxuan, leniency to those who confess their crimes and severity to those who refuse!’ The shouts emanated from a bedroom confrontation. It sounded comical to me, but scary as well.

The truth is, the more they argued, the less I cared. On the contrary, the quieter and more peaceful they were, the more I worried. Caution piqued my curiosity. They might be able to deceive the neighbours, but not me. One night a deadly silence descended in their room, throwing me into a panic. I climbed the date tree and had an unobstructed view through the transom window. The lamp was lit, so I could see them both. Mother was sitting at her desk, notebook in hand, her cheeks wet with tears; my father was kneeling at her feet like a dog and had pulled down his trousers to show her his honoured fish-shaped birthmark. At it again! He’d brought his sickness home with him. I saw her curse him loudly, glaring at him with contempt and disgust. But he was relentless. His trousers were round his knees, and he was crawling along the floor, moving to wherever Mother turned her face. Sharp light glinted off his pale, bony backside in the darkened room. Then his shouts tore through the night.

‘Look! You used to like looking at it. Why won’t you look at it now? Take a good look at my birthmark, I’m Deng Shaoxiang’s son! That’s the truth! I said look, take a good look. It’s a fish. I’m Deng Shaoxiang’s son. Don’t be in such a hurry to make a clean break. If you file for divorce, you’ll live to regret it!’

I burst into tears. Was I crying for him or for her? I couldn’t say. I climbed down out of the tree and took a long look at my house, then at the blue sky. I dried my eyes and snarled into the sky, ‘Go ahead, divorce! If you don’t, you’re kongpi . And if you do, you’re still kongpi !’

Their divorce went without a hitch. The only problem was me. If I went with him, I’d sail the river; if I went with her, I’d stay on dry land. The river had its appeal, but I was afraid to give up dry land. So I said to Father, ‘I’ll spend half the year on the barge with you and half the year with Mother. What do you say?’

‘Fine with me,’ he said. ‘But check with your mother. I doubt she’ll go along with it.’

So I checked, and was met with boiling anger. ‘Absolutely not! If you want me, you can’t have him. And if you want him, you can’t have me. If the top beam is crooked, the one below can’t be straight. How am I supposed to take care of a child he’s had a hand in raising?’

So I had to choose. Two sets of inauspicious gifts were arrayed before me. One was Father and a barge, the other was Mother and dry land. There was no way out, I had to choose one over the other. I chose Father. Even now the boat people sometimes talk about my decision. If Dongliang had stayed with his mother , they say, he’d be this or that . Or, If he’d stayed with her, Ku Wenxuan would be this or that . Even, His mother would be this or that . But I ignored all the ‘this or that’ talk. And ‘what ifs’ bored me. Kongpi , all of them. Like water that keeps flowing, or grass that keeps growing, there was no choice involved; it was all up to fate. My father’s fate was tied up with a martyr named Deng Shaoxiang, and mine was tied up with him.