The Boat to Redemption

by Su Tong

  ‘Why are you driving all us old men into the market?’ Sun Ximing complained. ‘What are we supposed to do here?’

  ‘Why can’t you boat people shed your feudal ideas?’ Baldy Chen replied. ‘Will your dicks fall off just because you’re in a market?’ He pointed to me. ‘What about Ku Dongliang? He’s here to buy provisions, isn’t he? Has his dick fallen off?’ He laughed at his own little joke – there was more he wanted to say, and by the way he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, I could guess what it was, and knew it would be about my father. The one thing I could not tolerate was people saying bad things about my father’s injured penis. So I grabbed a knife from the pork counter, walked up to Baldy and said in a low voice that only he could hear, ‘Say anything about me you want, I don’t care. It’s like farting in the wind. But mention my father and this knife will go in white and come out red.’

  Unnerved by what I said, he looked down and pointed his truncheon at the knife. ‘I said a dick, not half a dick. But go ahead, stab me. We’re a martyr’s family, too, but a real one, not phoney like yours.’

  Baldy Chen had a mouth fouler than mine, and even an idiot would have known what he meant by that. I raised the knife, but didn’t have the guts to use it. All I could do was give him a dirty look as I began to shake with anger. Fortunately, Sun Ximing and one of the meat vendors rushed up and snatched the knife out of my hand.

  That, in a nutshell, was my problem: I was quick to anger, but incapable of translating that into violent action. I invariably reacted to critical moments with fear. I grumbled as I bought my provisions – grains, vegetables and lamp oil. A potato seller gave me a wary look and backed away, not knowing why I was acting the way I was. ‘Buy them or not, it’s up to you,’ she said. ‘But you don’t have to grumble like that.’

  ‘I’m grumbling at somebody else,’ I said, ‘not you.’

  ‘If you’re angry at somebody else,’ she said, relieved, ‘don’t take it out on me. Those potatoes may have turned dark, but they’re still good.’

  ‘You can’t fool me,’ I said impatiently. ‘How can black potatoes be any good? Don’t you have fresh ones?’

  ‘All gone,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with potatoes as long as they haven’t started to sprout. Besides, you boat people aren’t the picky type.’

  That was the wrong thing to say. ‘Thump your mama,’ I cursed. ‘We boat people are human too. What makes you think you can force us to eat rotten potatoes? You shore people are as rotten as your potatoes. I was grumbling at somebody else, but now I’m grumbling at you.’

  In truth, she had every reason to discriminate against us boat people, since we didn’t enjoy the luxury of fresh meat and vegetables. For the most part, we bought large quantities of potatoes, cabbage, salted pig’s head – things like that, since they keep well. With this in mind, the security group staked out certain vendors, getting the men to line up to buy rice, and the women fresh produce. ‘Go on, buy it and move on,’ they urged. ‘Don’t be picky. Get what you came for and then form up again.’ But the crowd had no sooner entered the market than they dispersed like ducks on the river, way beyond anyone’s control. Short-handed to begin with, the security group was helpless to gather them together again.

  The women were complaining about the supervision as they quickly made their purchases, looking daggers at the vendors and at what they were selling – rotten goods to go with rotten attitudes. The first argument broke out between Sun Ximing’s wife and a corn seller, and it grew in intensity until the two women were sparring with cobs of corn, using some as clubs and others as flying missiles. The security group rushed over to break up the fight, losing sight of the fact that, as Mao had said, a single spark can ignite a prairie fire. Before the waves of discontent had died down at the corn stall, Six-Fingers’s mother was embroiled in a tug-of-war with one of the local women over a pig’s head. The combatants began to wrestle, leaving the pig’s head in peace for the moment, but when the vendor was knocked to the ground, she screamed blue murder.

  I was the first to run, but was followed outside by the other men. As always, people were coming and going on the same street, with the same rows of buildings and the same townspeople in the same blue, grey, or black tunics; but on this particular morning, Milltown seemed to hold new significance for the boat people. All that hounding by the security group made us want to recapture the joy of walking freely in town. Weren’t those free times going to return? The men looked lost and slightly fearful. ‘Run!’ I shouted. ‘Go and do whatever you want! Run!’ Which is exactly what I did. I saw that Desheng was running, too, as were Six-Fingers and Sun Ximing. To outsiders it must have looked like a jailbreak. We made it to the Ironsmith Avenue intersection, where we peeled off in different directions. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Desheng head towards the public bath, his favourite spot in town. Six-Fingers was heading towards the cultural palace, but as far as I knew, air hockey and not culture was what he had in mind. Sun Ximing ran with me for a while, until we reached Broom Alley, where he vanished. I knew where he was going: to see a widow who lived there. That was his business, not mine, so the less said the better.

  And me? I wasn’t sure how I wanted to spend this precious time. With so many important things to do, I couldn’t make up my mind where to start. So I just kept running, heading for the vegetable-oil processing plant. My feet had made up my mind for me – I missed my mother. No matter how badly I had disappointed Qiao Limin, I still missed her. Why? I couldn’t say. My feet were doing the talking, so you’ll have to ask them.

  I ran and I ran, my bag slung over my shoulder. At the plant I wandered through the various sections amid the roar of milling machines, enveloped in air filled with rice dust, its fragrance mixed with the smell of kerosene. Women in white uniforms were busy on the floor, but they were either too tall or too short, too heavy or too slight to be my mother. One of them spotted me and asked who I was looking for. ‘You’ll have to shout,’ she said. ‘It’s too noisy in here.’

  But I refused to shout. I’m looking for Qiao Limin, I wanted to say. My mother. But I couldn’t get the words out.

  I left the milling section and walked to the women’s dormitory, where I stood beneath the window. I could see Mother’s bed and desk. The bed was empty, the exposed slats covered with discarded newspapers. My heart sank. ‘She’s gone,’ I concluded, just as Father had predicted. He’d said she had aspirations and would leave this godforsaken place. ‘What was she chasing?’ I wondered. The words popped out of my mouth: ‘kongpi.’ With a sense of anger, I examined her desk, on which rested an ageing enamel mug; the little bit of tea inside was mouldy, but the mug attested to her glory: ‘AWARD OF EXCELLENCE FOR AMATEUR FEMALE CHORUS.’ ‘It’s mouldy,’ I said to myself, ‘what kind of excellence is that?’ With my face pressed against the glass, I noticed that one of the desk drawers was half open, and that a faint light glinted off something inside. I pushed the window open and slipped into the room. When I yanked the drawer open, I was greeted by a cockroach, which scared the hell out of me. A framed photograph lay in the drawer; it was a family photo – Father, Mother and me. Our faces had been touched up with colour, giving us a healthy, ruddy glow, sort of cosmetically enhanced. I couldn’t recall when it had been taken, though my parents were both much younger and I was a tiny innocent. We were huddled closely together.

  So, Mother had left a family portrait behind in her drawer. What did that mean? I wavered, trying to decide if I should take it with me. My right hand, I recall, was in favour, my left opposed, preferring to smash it. So I took it out with my right hand and placed it in my left, then flung it to the floor and stamped on it. The glass shattered, some of the shards flying up and hitting me. I looked down at the broken glass and said, ‘Kongpi.’

  I actually did much more than that. As I walked through the gate, my ears were assailed by loudspeakers blaring the melody ‘Commune Members Are All Sunflowers’. Mother had once performed this by dressing up as
a peasant woman, a scarf over her head, an apron around her waist; she was holding a sunflower and dancing in the yard, hiding her face behind the sunflower. ‘Commune members – are all –’ her face emerged from behind the sunflower and she smiled at me, ‘sunflowers – ah!’ With these thoughts running through my mind, my eyes began to fill with tears. The tears running disobediently down my cheeks reminded me that I could not forgive my mother, that what she deserved from me were curses; and that’s what she was going to get, whether she actually heard them or not. I turned and ran back to her workplace, where I bent over, took a deep breath, and shouted at the women working there, ‘Commune members aren’t sunflowers, and Qiao Limin is a filthy cunt!’

  East Wind No. 8

  IN MY mind’s eye I can still see the grand ceremony that marked the beginning of the project known as East Wind No. 8. An army of labourers was mobilized in Milltown, where the town’s enormous sleeping abdomen was split open and cleaned out. Under the leadership of a provisional supervisory authority, the town was given a gullet filled with asphalt, cement intestines, a metallic stomach, and an automated beating heart. Not until later did I learn that the rumoured predictions swirling around the General Affairs Building were right on target: East Wind No. 8 was not an air-raid shelter, but the first petroleum pipeline in the Golden Sparrow River region, a secret wartime project.

  As it turned out, that autumn witnessed a hundred-year flood. It was as if someone had ripped open a hole in the sky and let water stored up for a century come cascading down. As the river rose, the surrounding land receded abruptly. Floods began in the mountainous upper reaches and surged downriver, drowning riverside villages on their way. Land transportation came to a halt, leaving only waterways open. With water everywhere and as the Golden Sparrow River overflowed its banks, heroic qualities emerged. I’d never seen so many boats and ships, all headed for Milltown, so numerous they caused a bottleneck on the river. To the distant eye, the masts and sails turned the river into a floating market.

  The Sunnyside Fleet was detained on the river for two full days. I found the first day of this watery assembly especially interesting. Standing on the bow of our barge, I gazed at boats in other fleets, most sporting red banners that read ‘HONOURED TRANSPORT FLEET’. But not ours. They not only carried cargo, but also transported PLA soldiers and militiamen. We were limited to transporting farm labourers. I mentioned the disparity to Father. ‘What do you know?’ he said. ‘Ours is a complicated fleet politically. The Party is showing its trust in us by letting us transport farm labourers.’

  On the second day, I was surprised to see a travelling propaganda troupe. They had converted the cabin roof on one of the barges into a stage, where colourfully dressed women representing workers, peasants, soldiers, students and merchants performed; as rain fell around them they recited the women’s anthem, ‘Song of Struggle’. I was shocked to see Mother among them; she was the oldest member of the troupe, but was playing the part of a young worker in blue work clothes, with a white towel tied around her neck. The rain had washed away her make-up and obliterated her painted eyebrows to reveal a gaunt, wrinkled face. But she was oblivious, caught up in the drama, putting everything into her role. When others shouted, ‘Fight against the heavens!’ she raised her arm, brandished a fist, and in the loudest voice she could manage shouted, ‘We welcome the fight!’

  I’d been denied the chance to see her on shore, and now here she was, out on the river. Sure she was old – old and unattractive, and totally lacking in self-awareness, surrounded as she was by a bunch of girls. I worried that people would laugh at her presumptuousness. This accidental encounter distressed me so much that I headed back into the cabin, where Father was leaning against the porthole, staring at the distant stage.

  ‘That’s your mother’s voice,’ he said. ‘It’s her voice. I can tell from here. How is she?’

  ‘What do you mean, how is she?’

  He paused a moment. ‘Everything – no, how she acts, how she looks.’

  I nearly said, ‘She’s disgusting,’ but I couldn’t. ‘About the same,’ I said. ‘No change.’

  ‘Did she see you?’

  ‘Why should anyone want her to see me? And what if she did, anyway?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her in a long time,’ he said. ‘With all the boats out there, I can hear her, but I can’t see her.’

  ‘What good would that do? She wouldn’t want to see you, even if you did.’

  Lowering his head, he said unhappily, ‘“What good would that do?” Is that all you can say? What good would anything do? That’s how nihilists talk, and it must be challenged.’ He took a straw hat down off the wall. ‘Would people recognize me if I went out in this?’ he asked.

  I knew what he was getting at. ‘What difference would it make if they did?’ I said. ‘Lying low in the cabin all day long solves nothing. If you feel like coming out, do it. Nobody out there is going to eat you.’

  Father laid down the hat, shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed over at all those boats. With a burst of excitement, he blurted out, ‘How stirring! How incredibly stirring! No, I won’t go out there. I’ll stay here and compose a poem. I’ve already got a title: I’ll call it “A Stirring Autumn”!’

  Of course it was a stirring autumn. Hundreds of sailing vessels choked the Golden Sparrow River for two days and nights. Our fleet had never shared the river with so many others, all close together. I’d always thought that the world’s barges somehow belonged to the same family, until, that is, I spotted a strange fleet out in the middle of the river. Six boats, all ‘manned’ by young women, including one at the helm. Bright-red banners fluttering at the bows proclaimed they were the Iron Maiden Fleet, while the sterns were adorned with feminine clothing and underwear, like an array of national flags. No one knew where this unique fleet had come from, including Desheng and his wife, who nearly came to blows over it. She forbade him from gawking at the women on the boats, and punished him with a whack across the back with a bamboo pole when his eyes turned in that direction. That sparked a reaction: ‘If you’re going to use that pole, try pushing those boats out of the way, if you think you can. Well, I’ll tell you, you can’t, so don’t tell me where I can look and where I can’t!’ My ears rang from the arguments on Desheng’s barge, which continued throughout that day and the next. Fortunately, on the third day, the fleet began to move, slowly opening up a passage down the river. A squad of armed militiamen jumped aboard one of the boats, rifles slung over their left shoulders and bullhorns over their right. An embarkation system had been created, and no ships were to nestle up to the piers – we were all to sail east. The Honoured Transport Fleet led the way, an effective manoeuvre, with as many as three hundred barges sailing downstream through rain and mist until, in the midst of a torrential downpour, we reached the piers at Milltown.

  I hardly recognized the place, though I’d only been away a few days. It had been turned into a – into a what? By nature given to confusion and disorder, and deficient at expressing my feelings, I’m incapable of describing the town that autumn. So, if you’ll bear with me, I’ll borrow a few lines from my father’s poem: ‘Come on, come on, who’s afraid of a flood? Floodwaters open up our way ahead. In this stirring autumn red flags flutter in the wind, songs of triumph rise into the air, as we move forward, forward, racing towards a workers’ paradise, a revolutionary advance guard.’

  An advance guard, to be sure, but our barges, the Sunnyside Fleet, brought up the rear, so when the drums and cymbals welcomed the flotilla, we could only look on from a distance to where Young Pioneers waited in the rain: the boys lined the road, arms raised in a salute, while the girls flocked to the ships like swallows to present each honoured sailor with a red flower. As the pier-side welcoming ceremony began, a mass campaign was under way in every corner of the town; labourers with farm tools over their shoulders were everywhere, their shouts drowned out by the driving rain. While the barge crews waited to go ashore, our ears were pounded by the
voice of an anxious young man coming over the loudspeaker: ‘Red Flag Fleet, come ashore, move sharply, come ashore.’ The crews made ready, but then rousing music blared from the PA system, followed by static. Then the anxious young man returned: ‘Comrade so-and-so, report to the construction site command post. An urgent matter awaits!’

  Our crews were standing at the bows awaiting a command from the PA system. But our cargo appeared to be the least important of all. The Great Wall Fleet barges, with their cargo of pork, fresh produce and rice, had received their call, and we were still waiting. Sun Ximing ran to the riverbank to complain to a raincoat-clad man. ‘We’re carrying human cargo, so why are we lined up behind barges carrying pork?’

  The official bellowed his response: ‘Have you forgotten what times these are? Do you see this as some sort of competition? All people and cargo coming ashore must be registered, and registering cargo is faster than registering people. With only us few working, of course we register pork first.’ That cleared things up.

  I heard Desheng’s wife say to her husband, ‘We’re working as hard as anyone else. Will we get red flowers too?’

  ‘Revolution isn’t a dinner party,’ Desheng replied. ‘If it’s a flower you want, go and get yourself a water gourd.’

  As the rain eased off, the people inside our cabin began to shout, ‘It’s suffocating in here, give us some air!’ So I raised the hatch, and was hit by a blast of sweat-sour air, mixed with the stench of cigarette smoke, urine and vomit. Then the heads of the workers started popping up, more men than women, most of them young. With bed rolls on their backs, they elbowed one another to get their first look at the legendary workers’ paradise. Mouths open, they breathed deeply and gawked at the construction scenes on the banks. One of the women shrieked, ‘They’re turning the earth upside down! They’ll work us to death!’ She could have chosen a better time to shout – someone shouted back at her: ‘What did you think we brought you here to do, loaf around? If you’re afraid of hard work you shouldn’t have come to Milltown.’ The uproar in the cabin died out quickly. A man who looked like a demobilized soldier travelling with the fleet began recording the passengers with a roll call, but he’d only managed a few people when the PA system blared out the name of the Sunnyside Fleet. He hopped down on to the deck and began issuing orders: ‘Shock Troops Three over here! Shock Troops Four over there! Gao Village Shock Troops and Li Family Crossing Shock Troops to the rear!’