One Bright Moon

by Andrew Kwong

  According to the herbalist, Baba hadn’t broken any bones, yet for months he couldn’t walk, even after the bruises had disappeared. The herbalist visited regularly but refused to accept any fees. He said he wouldn’t have been there caring for Baba had it not been for my Grandfather Kwong helping his family to survive when he was a young boy during the Great Depression. Later Baba told us that the herbalist was from a very poor family in town, and that on the eves of major festivals my grandfather had always distributed the unsold grains from his rice mill to the poor families in Shiqi.

  Baba had many months off work to recover, and he earned another Model Worker T-shirt in recognition of his injuries and dam-building.

  After the summer of 1961, even though the Mid-Autumn Festival with its cooler days was near, dam-building ground to a standstill because many labourers became so weak and sick that they deserted their jobs; and even the comrades themselves were too tired to round up the workers and return them to the work sites.

  *

  Although he’d twice been hailed as a Model Worker, Baba was still under some form of street arrest, supervised by the District Head. On warm and humid days, wearing one of his prized white T-shirts, he sat on the levee wall catching the cool breeze from the lotus pond. I often found him staring at the horizon, drawing hard on his cigarettes, his eyes glinting in the receding light.

  I know now that at such times he must have been transporting himself over the border to the east where the colonies were, imaging a life for us across the South China Sea. I hadn’t been able to cope with living there in the past, but now I sometimes began to feel I’d like to try again. Baba and I didn’t talk about my failure to stay in Hong Kong, and he never raised his disappointment with me. Perhaps he sensed that I’d come to understand what it meant to fail to grasp an opportunity, and that I’d learnt one of my first life lessons.

  ‘Let’s look to the future and make the best of it,’ Baba often said to me when we shared our moments on the wall.

  I was always puzzled as to how we could make the best of something that wasn’t there, but I would nod and shift my gaze past my favourite playgrounds – the fishponds, the lotus pond, the paddies and Come Happiness Road – to the clear sky stretching eastward towards the South China Sea, dreaming, wishing, wondering. I tried hard to resist the thought that Baba had had enough of the revolution we were all so proud of, even though we were dispirited by hunger that seemed to go on forever.

  Shiqi was prone to typhoons, so at an early age we’d learnt how to tell when one was approaching. The chickens stopped clucking and the dogs became restless, looking for somewhere to hide. Sparrows, dragonflies and butterflies disappeared, and even the normally aggressive geese huddled together hissing timidly, their feathers trembling. The sky turned black in minutes, and clouds gathered at great pace. Just moments before a typhoon struck, an eerie silence descended.

  Then the blows hit. The mighty wind uprooted trees and crushed buildings effortlessly, while thunder and lightning split the sky. Rain filled the waterways, spilling over onto the flatland. If the tide happened to be in, the whole of Shiqi would be under water, and the levee wall wouldn’t stop the schools of fish, eels and poisonous snakes swimming in and out of our house through the open front door. We’d have to stay home until the floods subsided, during which time we’d swim in our lounge room and fish from the top step of our bedroom. Afterwards, we’d have to help the adults with a lot of cleaning up.

  One hot day after school, Ah-dong, Yiu-hoi, my classmate Hui and I were rowing a small wooden boat downstream into the countryside, looking for somewhere to have a cool swim. Without much warning, clouds rushed and tumbled, turning day into night. Fearful, we turned the boat around and headed for home against the strong wind from the sea. We pulled hard on the oars to get to the bank before the typhoon struck. Everyone else had already deserted the river as quickly as mourners leave a cemetery after a funeral.

  As soon as we touched the bank, Yiu-hoi and Ah-dong jumped from each end of the boat, unwittingly pushing it back into the rising water. At that very moment, Hui jumped from the middle of the boat. The two other boys ran off, not realising that Hui had fallen into the river. He struggled in a frenzy to free himself from the swollen tide, his arms flailing in useless attempts to lift his head above water. His eyes were closed, and his face was grotesquely distorted.

  Left alone in the boat, I was gripped by terror and panic. Hui must be fighting the river ghosts and spirits, I thought; he must be so frightened. I shouted for the boys to come back, but the storm drowned out my voice and they kept on running.

  With a deafening howl, the big wind bore down. I didn’t know what to do except try to keep the boat afloat. I screamed. I cried. I didn’t want to desert my friend, or to watch him being pulled to the bottom and drowned. If Hui died, I’d have to face his father, a comrade in town; what would I tell him? How would I explain the accident to Hui’s mother, the kind lady who had at times tried to slip more food into my bowl like Ah-dong’s mother did in the dining room? But if I reached out to Hui, he might pull me in, and I wanted to die only for communism and Chairman Mao.

  Hui was looking more desperate and ghastly by the second, gulping in water and air as he rose and sank, unable to keep afloat. Then his thrashing got slower and weaker till he was just writhing and jerking.

  Lightning tore at the sky, and thunder shook the earth. It felt like the end of the world was near. Rain started to pour down. The little boat began to fill up with water.

  Hui was losing the battle but still trying to get to the surface. His face was horror itself. And that horror has never left my memory. His eyes opened wide, staring at me, pleading, and perhaps accusing me for not helping. He began to sink. It looked like the battle would soon be over. How disappointed he must have been with me as he gave in to the river ghosts.

  At that very moment, some unknown force pushed me to hold out an oar to him. He grabbed it and pulled his whole head and shoulders above water. He took one big gurgling breath after another, coughing and choking. He vomited. He gasped and tried to suck in air. His purple face went green, yellow and then crimson and grey, like a dead fish in the sun. He pulled himself onto the side of the boat, grunting and crying. But the boat was tipping into the rising current. Water was rushing in. I yelled at him to ease off as I tried to balance the boat.

  Just then, Yiu-hoi returned with Ah-dong crying behind him. Somehow we kept the boat afloat and pulled Hui to safety. The crushing wind beat down with great force, trying to smash the ground and everything on it. Huddled together, we made our way home. As the rain bucketed down without mercy, it washed away our tears.

  The next day Hui’s mother burned bundles of incense and paper money at the spot where her son had almost drowned, to thank the spirits and ghosts of the river for not taking him. She didn’t allow Hui near the waterways for months, not until after September, when it was too cold for swimming.

  ‘They should thank you for saving their son,’ Ying said.

  ‘How could they?’ Mama replied. ‘His father is a comrade and his uncle is a senior official, and our family has a dubious background.’ She lowered her gaze to the ground.

  I didn’t care. I just wanted to forget the whole thing, and I felt greatly relieved that I didn’t have to face an important man to explain how his son had drowned.

  *

  After Hui’s near drowning, Baba was concerned about my safety around the many waterways in Shiqi. He also worried about my stunted growth and physical weakness from poor nutrition. I heard him discussing this with Mama. ‘Can’t keep him away from the water,’ Baba told her. ‘So we’ve got to make sure he becomes a better swimmer, a stronger one. There’s more than just the Wonder River to conquer one day . . .’

  After returning from Guangzhou, Ying hadn’t stopped swimming. She’d kept up her training with the local squad under a Russian-trained instructor, Mr Lee, who was well known around town. In fact, the young man was a local celebrity due to h
is swimming prowess and amazing physique. (He wasn’t related to the good Mrs Lee; there were many Lee families in Zhongshan.)

  Baba would go along to watch Ying train, making the half-akilometre walk his daily exercise as he recuperated from his injury, still relying on a bamboo cane. Having been a physical education teacher in his younger days in Macau, Baba knew a lot about sports. He and Mr Lee chatted and shared their ideas about training. Before long, they struck up a friendship. Mr Lee began visiting my father on a regular basis, often after the squad had finished for the day. Kids in Kwong Street would hang around outside our door to catch a glimpse of the man, hoping they would be picked for his squad. We children admired him, worshipping him almost like a god.

  One day I announced to Ah-dong and the rest of the gang on the levee wall that Mr Lee had accepted me as an associate member of his squad. Their jaws dropped, and they nearly fell off the wall.

  ‘You didn’t cross the Wonder River,’ Ah-dong reminded me with disbelief. ‘You’re too skinny.’ His remarks didn’t upset me. Ah-dong was never a jealous person, and despite the fact that some kids called him an imbecile behind his back, he knew a lot more than the others thought he did.

  Yiu-hoi jumped off the wall and went to ask my father if it was true.

  ‘Yes,’ Baba said, leaning on his bamboo walking stick, ‘I’ve asked Mr Lee to teach Ah-mun how to swim properly. Then he can conquer the Wonder River one day.’

  In the squad line-up, I peeped from the end of the line, past the big boys and girls, at Mr Lee, and listened to his every word. The round muscles in his arms and shoulders were easily as big as Ah-dong’s head. No wonder people in town looked up to him, the District Head included. I was more than a foot shorter than the shortest kid in the team and self-conscious about my bony frame. But although I couldn’t complete the required number of laps each session, I felt proud to carry my towel on my shoulder, making sure the red imprint of ‘Shiqi Swimming Squad’ was visible to everyone around. I hoped it would help erase my failure to cross the Wonder River.

  My friends waited on the levee wall for me to return after swimming sessions and tell them what I’d been taught. When the weekend came, I shared the techniques with my gang in the Wonder River. Except for Hui, whose mother kept him out of the water, we all seemed to be swimming better and faster by autumn that year. How I enjoyed the envy and admiration in the eyes of the other Kwong Street children, while Ah-dong and Yiu-hoi grinned at me with pride and stuck by my side.

  Baba was recovering well, but I noticed he hid it from the District Head. And when Mr Lee stopped by our place, he and Baba leant close to each other when they chatted, their voices hardly audible. If a tenant approached, they’d sit back in their chairs and talk in a louder tone on completely different matters. Occasionally they appeared to be absorbed in some serious conversations that were of little interest or relevance to us children. Later I would hear my parents whispering in bed. I was too tired to take much notice, though I understood that their conversations related to what the men had been discussing earlier.

  Ying became suspicious of Mr Lee’s frequent visits – she thought he and Baba were debating the prospect of her marrying him. After all, she was seventeen, nearly the revolutionary age to marry and have many sons to join the People’s Liberation Army and protect China. Each time he appeared Ying went to her room, slammed the door and stayed there. She remained surly even after he’d left; she wouldn’t talk to anyone. For a while the ancestral home eddied with the gossip that Mr Lee was interested in her, like the constant murmuring of the nearby Nine Meanders River. My parents didn’t publicly dismiss or validate the rumour, although inside our room they tried to reassure Ying it wasn’t the case.

  Around this time, Baba also took a sportsman under his wing. A young track sprinter called Ho-bun had begun training by himself on Come Happiness Road and had captured Baba’s attention. He would nod with approval at the young man’s start, and how he held his arms, and he would mumble to himself when he noticed the young man was not sprinting with the right posture or attaining sufficient speed. After some weeks he couldn’t help himself and went up to Ho-bun and offered to be his coach. Ho-bun never looked back from that day on, and he went on to become the town’s champion sprinter. He also began to take a keen interest in my sister Ying.

  CHAPTER 15

  When hunger pangs woke me before dawn, I would creep outside to sit on the levee wall. There I thought of food and the challenges facing my family, and waited for the sun to rise. To me, sunrise was the best time of day in any season. The whole universe stood still as the magic of the sun’s rays filtered through the thick lychee branches onto the banks of the lotus pond and over the weary houses that lined our street. The soft light dressed the dreary grey bricks and weather-beaten tiles in a warm salmon gleam, and it covered the ponds with a smooth emerald sheen. Peace at dawn softened the contradictions of life, enticing me to look forward to a new day. No wonder we were told that Chairman Mao was our rising sun.

  Like Baba, I now looked to the east when sitting on the wall, and my thoughts carried me all the way to Hong Kong and Macau. Earlier I’d turned my back on those places, but now in my mind’s eye I saw children enjoy dim sums, or butter and jam on toast for breakfast. I could smell the dim sums being steamed. I could feel the crunch of the toast as it crumbled between my teeth. The creamy taste of butter lingered on my tongue. It soothed my hunger. But the feeling never lasted long enough. Soon I would drink a cup of hot water, pretending it was my breakfast, and go off to school.

  Starvation hurt more in the winter. On the levee wall I had to pull up the collar of my padded jacket to stop the chill biting the back of my neck. I rubbed my numb face with numb hands, and gazed towards the commune’s vegetable garden, looking for a mature cabbage, hoping its disappearance wouldn’t cast suspicion on my family. When darkness came I slipped out of the house into the night, pulled a cabbage from the cold earth, shook the mud from its roots and carried it home. I was always very careful to stay out of sight of the People’s Militia officers who guarded the farm and would belt me if they caught me, and stop me from ever getting the Red Scarf.

  I didn’t feel too guilty, as it seemed unfair to me that most of the vegetables were being either exported for foreign currencies or distributed to comrades, Party members and officials, and that only a few would be sent to the vegetable market for the benefit of the commune. The same applied to the fish kept in the commune ponds. There, using roasted cockroaches as bait, I planted my line and waited quietly in the dark for a carp or any fish that would help feed my family. With Baba unemployed, there was no choice: we had to look everywhere for food. The algae ponds had long been abandoned; now only mosquitoes flourished there.

  One wintry day after school late in 1961, Ah-dong, Yiu-hoi and I decided to try our luck catching wild prawns from the commune’s fishpond just off Come Happiness Road. Ah-dong said as long as we threw any fish we caught back into the pond, the guards probably wouldn’t mind. He pushed his chest forward to show off his Red Scarf. Besides, our homemade sewing-needle hooks were too small to catch any fish.

  Crouching on the muddy bank, our tiny hooks baited with earthworms, we brought in prawn after prawn in a short time. They jumped and jerked inside our fishing baskets, trying to get back to the water. We chatted away, feeling happy – until some big hands landed on us.

  Two stern-faced militia officers lifted the three of us from the embankment onto Come Happiness Road. Ah-dong burst into tears, his ear twisted and pinched by one of the guards.

  It was early evening, the light turning dim. People were on their way home from their production units after a twelve-hour working day, and they stopped to watch the commotion as we begged for mercy. Stealing commune property would surely jeopardise our chances of being accepted for high school, and that was bad enough. Worse still was the thought of being trussed up and marched off, to be locked away for the night with the water buffalos. But worst of all was the thought of mis
sing the only meal of the day. Hunger cramps were like wrenches tightening around my stomach, and my legs were shaky and weak. Sweat soaked my clothes. I felt cold.

  I dreaded people judging us as bad elements. I’d just got into Sixth Class in September 1961 and hadn’t yet been awarded the prized Red Scarf. The prestige I had gained from being in Mr Lee’s swimming squad didn’t seem to count enough to outweigh my family’s low status. Ah-dong, Hui, Ah-bil, Big Eye and Earring had already earned their scarves, and it would be shameful to start high school without one. Even though hunger was hard to bear, I still yearned to be one of Chairman Mao’s obedient children.

  Ah-dong hung on to his Red Scarf with both hands, and I was sure he was prepared to martyr himself for it. ‘The . . . they are oh . . . only . . . wild prr . . . prawns.’ He was speaking to the guards but couldn’t meet their stern eyes.

  ‘They are commune property,’ shouted a guard, his eyes fearsome as he tightened his grip on Ah-dong’s ear. ‘Shame on your Red Scarf!’

  Ah-dong shook and cried more. He gripped his Red Scarf even tighter. His stutter had become worse than ever, and his big head flopped to his chest. Yiu-hoi looked petrified, and I felt sick with fear.

  ‘Let the kids go,’ pleaded a woman in the crowd. ‘It’s only a few wild prawns.’

  A few people nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  Then a loud voice called from the crowd, ‘If they weren’t hungry, they wouldn’t—’

  ‘Commune property is sacred!’ one of the guards yelled back. ‘We’d rather starve to death than steal from the people.’

  ‘But they are hungry kids, and there’s no food,’ came another civilian voice. ‘And we’re all hungry!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ echoed the crowd, getting louder as more people surrounded us.