The Boat to Redemption (3 page)

She raised her arm and gave me a threatening look. ‘To rebel is right! Chairman Mao says so! Don’t you dare come over here!
If you do, you’re thumbing your nose at Chairman Mao. Shit this, piss that. How about cleaning out that filthy mouth of yours?
See those people? Are they coming to help you? The people’s eyes are too bright for that. Your dad has fallen into disgrace,
and you’re nothing, a nobody, nothing but a
kongpi
!’

No doubt about it, that was a big loss of face. But I can’t avoid the fact that, thanks to that girl, I had a new nickname.
I was now Kongpi. I can still recall the glee on the faces of the crowd that had gathered at the sound of those two syllables.
In wonderful appreciation of his sister’s quick-witted sarcasm, Scabby Seven burst out laughing so hard he nearly choked.
‘Kongpi! Kongpi! That’s right, now he’s a
kongpi
.’ Their glee infected everyone within hearing. People around the pharmacy, early-morning passers-by on the street, and those
standing beneath the family-planning billboard echoed their gleeful laughter, and within seconds I could hear those two syllables
swirling triumphantly in the air all over Milltown.

Kongpi, Kongpi, Kongpi!

People may not know that
kongpi
is a Milltown slang term that dates back hundreds of years. It sounds vulgar and easy to understand, but in fact it has a
profound meaning that incorporates both
kong
, or ‘empty’, and
pi
, or ‘ass’. Placed together, the term is emptier than empty and stinkier than an ass.

I
N THE
winter of that year I said goodbye to life on the shore and followed my father on to a river barge. I didn’t know then that
it was to be a lifetime banishment. Boarding was easy, getting off impossible. I’ve now been on the barge for eleven years
with no chance of ever going back.

People say that my father tied me to the barge, and there were times when I had to agree, since that provided me with the
justification for a life of sheer tedium. But in the eyes of my father, this justification was a gleaming dagger forever aimed
at his conscience. At times when I could not contain my displeasure with him, I used this dagger as a weapon to injure, to
accuse, even to humiliate him. But most of the time I didn’t have the heart for that, and while the procession of barges sailed
downstream, I gazed over the side at the water and felt that I’d been bound to the river for eternity. Then I looked at the
levees and houses and fields on the banks and felt that I was bound to them as well. I saw people I knew there, and others
I didn’t; I saw people on other barges, and couldn’t help feeling that they were the ones who had bound me to the barge. But
when we sailed at night, when the river darkened, when, in fact, the whole world darkened, I turned on the masthead lamp and
watched as the hazy light cast my shadow on to the bow, a tiny, fragile, shapeless watermark of a shadow. The water flowed
across the wide riverbed, while my life streamed on aboard the barge, and from the dark water emerged a revelation. I discovered
the secret of my life: I was bound to the barge by my shadow.

Traces of the martyred Deng Shaoxiang criss-crossed the towns and villages on the banks of the Golden Sparrow River. The year
I came to the fleet, my father’s view of his bloodline was unwavering; he was convinced that the investigative team had viewed
him with enmity and prejudice, and that their so-called conclusion was nothing more than murder by proxy, a crazed incident
of persecution. The way he saw it, he was in the bosom of the martyr Deng Shaoxiang as he sailed the river with the other
barges, and that invested him with an enormous, if illusory, sense of peace. Once, when we sailed past the town of Phoenix,
he pointed out a row of wooden shacks – some tall, some squat. ‘See there?’ he said. ‘The memorial hall, that one with the
black roof tiles and white wall, that’s where your grandmother hid the weapons.’

I gazed out at the town and at the building with the black roof tiles and white wall, which I’d never seen before. ‘Memorial
hall? So what!’ I said. ‘What about the coffin shop? Where’s that?’

He erupted angrily. ‘Stop that nonsense about a coffin shop. Don’t listen to people who just want to smear your grandmother.
She was no coffin girl. She relied upon coffins to smuggle weapons and ammunition to serve the needs of the revolution, that’s
all.’ He pointed insistently at the ruins. ‘It’s there, behind that row of buildings. Don’t tell me you can’t see it!’

Well, I couldn’t, and I said so. ‘There’s no memorial hall!’

That infuriated him. After swatting me across the face, he said, ‘Your grandmother fought a battle for that place. Now do
you see it? If not, you must be blind!’

My father moved his commemoration of Deng Shaoxiang to the river. Each year, at Qingming – the fifth day of the fifth lunar
month – and on the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month, he unfolded a banner on our barge with the slogan:

THE MARTYRED DENG SHAOXIANG WILL
LIVE FOR EVER IN OUR HEARTS.

Several months separated the two dates, and as I recall how the seasonal winds snapped at the red cloth on those holidays,
I am visited by disparate and unreal visions: autumn winds billowing Father’s banner cover our barge with a heavy pall, as
if the martyr’s ghost were weeping on the river’s surface; she reaches out a moss-covered hand and grabs our anchor. ‘Don’t
go,’ she says. ‘Don’t go. Stop here!’ She is, we can tell, dispirited as she tries to prevent our barge from sailing on, so
that her son and grandson can stay with her. Spring winds, on the other hand, like all spring winds, blow lightly, carefully
across the water’s surface, laden with the smell of new grass, awakening the name of the martyr Deng Shaoxiang, and I invariably
sense the presence of an unfamiliar ghost as it nimbly climbs aboard from the stern and, dripping with water, sits on our
barge to gaze tenderly at Father.

I was perplexed. In the autumn I believed what others were saying – that my father was not Deng Shaoxiang’s son. But when
spring rolled around, I believed
him
when he insisted he was.

Whatever the truth, Father’s one-time glory had vanished like smoke in the wind, and all he’d been left with was a sofa he’d
once kept in his office. Now he sat on that sofa, a memento of the power he’d once wielded, and slowly grew accustomed to
life on the water, treating the barge as if it were the shore and its cabin as his office. The second half of his life was
like a rubbish heap, with no place to hide beyond the river and the barge. In his later years, he and the shore parted company,
and on those rare occasions when we approached Milltown, he’d stick his head out to take a peek at the shore, but then I’d
walk over and close the porthole.
Other people could appreciate the sights of Milltown all they wanted, but not him. He’d get vertiginous and complain about
his eyesight, saying that the land was moving, like flowing water. I knew all about his fears. The shore wasn’t moving; what
moved were his shameful memories. After so many years had passed, his frail, ageing body had split into two halves, one having
grudgingly fled to the water, the other remaining for ever on the riverbank, where people no longer punished him yet had forgotten
to forgive him; they had tied him to a pillar of shame.

I could not free my father from that pillar of shame, and this brought him his greatest torment and me my greatest heartache.

A
FTER THE
incident with the investigative team, Father remained ashore for three months, the first two in the attic of the Spring Breeze
Inn, where he was kept in isolation while being checked out. A metal door with three locks separated the attic from the rest
of the hotel; the keys were kept by three members of the team, two men and a woman who occupied rooms on the second floor.
An endless stream of problems arose for my father, beginning with his education and as much of his work history as could be
verified. He gave them the names of two schoolmates who could testify on his behalf, a man and a woman. No one knew the whereabouts
of the man, while the woman had suffered a nervous breakdown. As for testimonials from the White Fox Logging Camp, where he’d
worked for many years, the two individuals whose names he provided had died in a forest fire. And the person who had vouched
for his acceptance into the Party was particularly suspect. A man of considerable renown, his reputation was badly tainted.
Known as the most notorious rightist in the provincial capital, he had been sent to a labour-reform farm, where he was generally
recalcitrant until the day he mysteriously disappeared.

Even Father was surprised to learn how dubious his own
personal history was. ‘Who are you?’ the investigative team asked repeatedly. ‘Just who are you anyway?’

Eventually, they managed to wear him down. ‘Is there some sort of mental illness that can cause a person to remember everything
wrong?’ he asked earnestly.

They rejected the implication. ‘Don’t try to turn this into a health issue,’ they said. ‘No neurologist can solve your problems.
Seeing one would be a waste of time. You need to do some serious soul-searching.’

No therapy for him. So the soul-searching began, and over time he began to see the error of his ways. It wasn’t his memory
that had let him down, it was his fate. A dark path lay in front of him, one with no visible end, and he could no longer validate
himself.

As rumours flew around Milltown about how my father had created a false identity to fool the Party, the wall outside our house
began to fill up with angry graffiti: ‘
LIAR … ENEMY AGENT … SCAB … BUFFOON
.’ Someone even labelled him a secret agent for Chiang Kai-shek and the US imperialists. Mother, who seemed to be on the brink
of a nervous breakdown, went to the General Affairs Building to speak with Party leaders. That had the desired effect, for
they assured her that she would not be implicated, that even though she and Father shared a bed, they could take divergent
political stances. So she was still on safe ground when she returned home. With uncertainty she made the necessary arrangements
for my life, while deep down, she was planning her own future. I had a premonition about what her future entailed. I could
not be sure if I was included in that future, but I knew that Father was not.

Without telling Mother, I went to see him, but was stopped by the metal door. I knocked, attracting the attention of one of
the team members, a middle-aged man in a blue tunic who escorted me out of the hotel. ‘Is that what you call solitary confinement?’
he screamed at a hotel employee. ‘Do you people still not understand
what this is all about? Unauthorized people are not allowed in here, period!’

‘But it’s Ku Wenxuan’s son,’ the employee said. ‘He’s just a boy.’

The official scrutinized my face. ‘A boy, you say? He’s got the start of a beard already. He’s unauthorized and is not allowed
in!’

During the two months Father spent in the hotel attic, people reported that he began to behave bizarrely. He stubbornly dropped
his trousers once a day, regardless of time or occasion, to let the team examine the fish-shaped birthmark on his backside.
For humanitarian reasons, they decided to end the solitary confinement early and notified us to come and get him.

So Mother and I waited in the third-floor hallway for the green metal door to swing open. When it did, Father emerged, bent
at the waist, carrying a bag in one hand and a chess set in the other. Deprived of sunlight for so long, his face was wan
and slightly puffy. At first glance, he seemed relatively healthy, but on closer examination, it was obvious that he bore
the look of fatigue. He cast Mother a fervent glance, but when she turned away, fear replaced the fervour in his eyes as his
timid gaze fell on me. That gave me goose bumps – he was so humble, so helpless. It was as if I were the father and he the
son. Having committed serious errors, he was now trying to ingratiate himself, begging for my forgiveness.

I no more knew how to forgive than how to punish him. So I followed him down the stairs, watching as he stepped cautiously,
still bent at the waist, like a doddering old man. After living in the attic, with its low ceiling, for two months, he’d become
used to standing in a semi-crouch. ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘you’re out of the attic now. Why are you still bent over like that?’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I am out of the attic. Am I bent over?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘like a shrimp.’

Suddenly aware of his posture, there, on the third-floor stairs of the Spring Breeze Hotel, he raised his head anxiously and
jerked his body straight, which induced a painful scream. He dropped the bag as if his body had snapped in two. Then he dropped
the chess set and braced himself with his hand on the small of his back. His face was a study in suffering. ‘That really hurt!’
he said as he stared fearfully at Mother.

Mother bent down to pick up the bag, as if she hadn’t heard his scream. ‘What’s in here?’ she asked. ‘What’s that jingling
sound? Why not throw it away? Why take it home?’

I went to give him a hand. He looked at Mother, expecting her to help as well. But she stayed put, bag in hand, and looked
away without moving a muscle. So Father composed himself and pushed me away. ‘Pick up those chess pieces,’ he said. As I did,
I watched him bend, little by little, and start downstairs. ‘It’s all right,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll walk like this. It doesn’t
hurt as much.’

The investigation was brought to an end, at least for the time being. The team had got half of what they were after. My father
refused to admit that he’d created a false identity or that he’d misled the Party, and insisted he was the son of the martyr
Deng Shaoxiang. But they’d had more success in another area than they’d expected. After only a few sessions, during which
he’d put up strong resistance and argued in his own defence, Father eventually confessed that there were problems with his
lifestyle, either because he was being too honest or because he was trying to evade a more serious issue.

There were problems with his lifestyle.

And those problems, I heard, were serious.