The Boat to Redemption (10 page)

I
CAN’T SAY
why, but one look at Huixian and her mother raised doubts in my mind about them.

I’d always been suspicious about people like that. If they were shock troops, my name wasn’t Ku Dongliang. I didn’t know why
they’d boarded our barge and was pretty sure they’d tricked their way on. We’d received strict orders not to allow unknown
persons, as well as the old, the weak, the sick and the infirm, to board the barges for the trip to Milltown, and I hadn’t
seen a single child at the Horsebridge pier. I wondered if they’d slipped aboard barge number seven in all the confusion during
the two days when the river was clogged with all those ships. If so, why had the former soldier turned a blind eye when they
came aboard, and how had the shock troops let her get away with it? Whatever the reason, they’d made it possible for Huixian
and her mother to hide inside an army raincoat for two days and two nights.

Since the woman and her daughter definitely hadn’t come to Milltown to work, they’d probably come in search of someone. Announcements
of missing persons were broadcast daily, and it usually took only one to locate someone. If the announcement was repeated,
the person was truly missing. The announcements for whoever this woman was looking for must have been repeated several times,
but the name had made no impression on me. Stuff
like that didn’t interest me. With so many people travelling, not finding someone wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. As far as
I was concerned, other people’s misfortunes weren’t worth more than a tear or two, compared to what my family had gone through.

I had no idea where these two were from. In Milltown, food was supplied at the work sites, and when ration cards were handed
out, personal information was dutifully recorded. So if Huixian and her mother had eaten at a public canteen, their details
should have been recorded. But there was so much going on at East Wind No. 8 that no one had checked up on Huixian and her
mother. Even if they had, who could say whether the data was reliable or not, since it was even rumoured that a murderer had
managed to pass himself off as belonging to the shock troops? That made a mockery of recording personal details in the first
place.

I watched Huixian and her mother closely, mainly because they must have had a shady background, but also – I forgot to tell
you this – because the woman resembled my mother. I know it sounds strange, but I wondered if she might have been my aunt,
a Horsebridge woman I’d never met. For three days the Sunnyside Fleet waited at the piers for orders. I had time on my hands
while everyone else was busily running around; everything I needed to do had to wait till I was ashore. Until then, I was
on my own. So I stood on the bow, hands on my hips, coolly watching the construction work at the piers.

The heavens opened and the sound of rain rose around us. Rudimentary tents popped up, occupied by labourers from the surrounding
areas. Some ran up to our barge to borrow firewood or a bucket or bowl. I said no, but Father invariably overruled me, and
I had to lend them whatever they wanted. But the borrowed items never made it back to us, and before long we were down to
a single bowl, which Father and I were forced to share at mealtimes. When I complained, he criticized me for being small-minded.
‘A few bowls, what does that amount to?’ he said. ‘Sharing a bowl
can be our contribution to the success of East Wind No. 8. You’re young enough to make a real contribution, so why don’t you
go ashore instead of standing around looking down at what’s going on, as if it’s got nothing to do with you? That kind of
behaviour will get you into trouble.’

Talk like that from my father went in one ear and out the other. He thought I got a kick out of watching people busily running
around, never considering that I might be concerned about the loneliest people down there. I kept searching out the mother
and her daughter. With the oversized army raincoat draped around her, from a distance it was hard to tell if she was a man
or a woman. But up close she was obviously a woman whose face showed that she was sick. Instead of continuing down the road,
she paced back and forth on the riverbank. The weary look on her face could not mask the fact that she was pretty, her eyes
exuding a charm and warmth that was tempered by signs of resentment, as if there was an unpaid debt owed her; it was a heart-chilling
look. She seemed more emotional than my mother, yet given to bottling things up. Every time she came near the water I felt
like asking, ‘Are you from Horsebridge? Did your family run a butcher’s shop? Is your family name Qiao?’ But the looks she
gave me, cold and resentful, made me shrink back rather than engage her in a conversation. I could see that the raincoat did
more than protect her from the rain, that it had multiple uses, in particular providing a makeshift roof for someone on the
move. All her belongings were hidden under that raincoat, not to mention her daughter, the skinny little Huixian, who was
never without her grimy little doll; she’d poke her head out every so often and blink once or twice before slipping back inside.

Tents had been thrown up on the school playground, some clearly marked ‘women’, where women with children were welcome. Maybe
because she had her child with her, or maybe because she was just too shy, she walked into one of them and walked right
back out again. As I continued my observation, separated from them by a strip of water, I concluded that they had to be looking
for someone. But who? And although they were looking, they were not finding that person.

The day before the incident, I watched the woman pace back and forth by the piers, shielding her daughter with the raincoat.
If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought she was just out for a walk or checking the lay of the land. And as darkness settled
around us, the rain fell harder, swallowing up mother and daughter.

After cooking dinner, I took the food to Father in the cabin. ‘Have you ever seen my aunt, the one who lives in Horsebridge?’
I asked him.

‘Yes, back around the time of our wedding. I’d have liked to see her again after that, but I never did, since the sisters
had a falling out.’ That’s not what I wanted to hear. Apparently, they hadn’t come looking for my mother after all. Why I
felt bad I couldn’t exactly say.

The incident on the pier occurred the following morning. Our barge was loaded with broken bricks and tiles, and we were about
to weigh anchor and head downriver when a shrill wail burst from the shore. The voice was crisp and clear, but obviously juvenile
and hysterical, and loud enough to drown out the rousing voice coming over the PA system. From aboard the barge I spotted
the little girl; she was holding her doll in one hand and dragging the army raincoat in the mud with the other as she ran
madly back and forth. Running and bawling, she attracted the attention of everyone within sight and earshot.

Several of the female labourers chased after the girl. ‘Stop running!’ they shouted. ‘Your mother’s coming back!’ Someone
near me recognized the girl and told me she’d cried and made a fuss all night. ‘She can’t find her mother. At first I thought
she’d gone off on some sort of errand, but it’s morning now and the girl’s still all alone.’ That was when we knew that something
was
wrong. The woman in the raincoat was missing. The labourers, loving mothers all, went up to Huixian with toys, food, even
some plastic flowers. She fought off all their pity and heartfelt sympathy and ran towards the barges, biting one woman’s
hand and spitting in the face of another. She dodged in between the legs of the women trying to catch her, and when she reached
the gangplank to barge number one, she stopped in her tracks. Then she came aboard. ‘Where are you going?’ they shouted. ‘Your
mama’s not on one of those boats. They bring people here, they don’t take them away.’

I still recall how Huixian searched for her mother aboard the barge. Stumbling along with terror-filled eyes, she looked everywhere,
crying out for her mother the whole time. The tugboat started up its engine, but then shut it off. ‘Whose child is she?’ people
wondered. ‘Why is she running around like that?’ She’d changed into a red-striped shirt since the last time I’d seen her;
her braid had been combed and was tied with a bow. I recognized her right away, though. I noted that she’d not only lost her
mother, but that her canteen and little blackboard were also missing.

While some of the crew members ran after her, others shouted across to people on the shore, discussing what might have happened
to her mother. Opinions differed on the water and on the shore. The labourers on shore came mostly from farming villages and,
given their view that females were next to useless, assumed that the girl’s mother had abandoned her. Few of the barge people
accepted that, probably because they spent their lives on the water and had seen their share of drownings, many intentional.
Their initial reaction was that ill luck had found the woman. I saw Six-Fingers and his mother, one at the bow and the other
on the starboard deck, crouching down to look into the water. Looking for what? Everyone knew the answer. The tugboat crew
were on the roof of the engine room searching the water, shielding the sun from their eyes with their hands. I knew
that everyone on the river was of the same sad but unexpressed opinion that the woman would not be coming back, that she’d
taken the easy way out.

Boat people consider it taboo to look for a dead person aboard a sailing vessel. But no one on the Sunnyside barges had encountered
anything quite like this before. A taboo is meaningless to a seven-or eight-year-old girl, and nothing can change that. She
had her own logic: her mother had brought her to Milltown on a boat, so that’s the way she was going to leave. People tried
to talk some sense into her: ‘Little girl, we bring people here, we don’t take them away. Your mother isn’t here.’ But Huixian
would have none of it. Even at her young age she knew adults’ weaknesses. ‘You’re lying!’ she said through her tears. ‘If
a boat can bring people somewhere, it can take them away too.’

She stamped her foot in front of Sun Ximing, convinced that her mother was hiding below deck and trying to get her to come
out. Sun Ximing’s son tried to get her to stop. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said. ‘You’ll stamp a hole in our hatch, and you’ll have
to pay.’ But Sun’s wife pushed her son aside and opened the hatch to let Huixian see for herself. ‘See, little girl? There’s
no one in there, nothing but bricks.’

Huixian got down on her knees and stuck her head in. ‘Are you down there, Mama?’ she cried into the darkness. ‘Come out, Mama!
Please come out!’

The crew exchanged glances. Desheng’s wife wiped her moist eyes and glanced at her husband.

‘Why look at me?’ he said. ‘I’m not the Dragon King.’

His wife lowered her eyes and gazed down at the water. Since she couldn’t argue with the Dragon King, she took her frustrations
out on the water. ‘It’s all because of this year’s floods. Why was there so much water? It’s the damned water. Come and stand
over here. See how easy it would be to jump in.’

However ridiculous the woman’s comments may have sounded,
I was struck by the knowledge that she’d fathomed the river’s secrets: it sends the autumn floodwaters downstream, causing
the riverbed to lose its temper. The banks slink off, leaving the murky water to rush angrily along and cover the river’s
cruellest secret. I’d thought about this secret in the past, and I knew what it was. It was whispered in people’s ears, two
simple words: ‘Come down, come down.’

The tugboat blew its whistle, pressing the people on the barges to do something about the little girl. But no one knew what
that something should be, so they congregated on Sun Ximing’s barge. As he looked down at the tree limbs and leaves floating
by, Six-Fingers made a quick calculation of the speed of flow. ‘Already past the town of Wufu,’ he announced. ‘Way past Wufu.’
At first they didn’t know what he was talking about, but only for a moment. What he meant was, if the woman had jumped into
the river, her corpse would already have been carried down below the town of Wufu. No one spoke; they all turned their heads
to gaze sadly in the direction of Wufu.

Sun’s wife took the girl’s hand and raised her voice in angry protest. ‘What kind of woman abandons her own daughter? With
officials on land and the Dragon King in the water, someone should deal with people like that. I don’t care where she’s run
to, they should tie her up and drag her back.’

Unfortunately, she hadn’t considered the effect of her angry denunciation on the girl, who yanked her hand free and began
pounding Sun’s wife on the arm. ‘I’ll tie
you
up!’ she screamed. ‘Tie you up!’

I saw the women trying to pull the girl away, but she’d have none of it. Some of them walked up with open arms, but to no
avail. She moved up next to Sun Ximing, which pleased and surprised him; he gestured for the others to watch what they said
around her and had his wife go and get the girl some sweets. His normally tight-fisted wife suddenly turned generous, stuffing
a
sweet into the little girl’s mouth, which opened wide to accept the treat. Her eyes lit up as she sucked it, and she spotted
me. ‘It’s him!’ she shouted, pointing at me. ‘My mama’s on his boat!’

Panicked, I turned and ran. But Huixian took off after me. I knew why she was chasing me, but not why I was running away.
Whatever the reason, by overreacting I caused a bizarre scene, as people on all the barges started running, turning the fleet
into a rocking runway. They were chasing each other up and down the sides of the barges, shouting, ‘Don’t run! Don’t run!’
But no one stopped. I kept looking back, afraid that Huixian might fall in. I needn’t have worried, for she had an astonishing
sense of balance. Like an avenging demon she kept after me, her feet virtually flying on what for her were unfamiliar boats.

I calmed down once I made it back to barge number seven, where I pulled back the tarp and said to the girl, ‘Go ahead, look
for yourself. Your mama won’t be hidden on our boat unless she turned into a brick. If she didn’t, she won’t be in there.’