The Boat to Redemption (32 page)

Since they didn’t dare vent their frustrations on him, they took them out on the people standing nearby. ‘How can you be so
inept? You men, with all that strength, and you can’t even hold an old man down. Look how he’s thrown up all over me!’

The boat people shuttled back and forth beside the bench until they finally settled into place. Six-Fingers Wang pressed down
on Father’s body, with Sun Ximing and Desheng in position on either side of the bench, one holding a spittoon, the other holding
up an IV bottle. That was when Sun Ximing saw me. He glowered. ‘What are you standing around for? Get over here and help Six-Fingers
hold him down. Your stubborn dad refuses to let them pump his stomach.’

So I rushed across and pushed down on my father’s midsection. He looked up at me and tried to say something, but the tube
in his mouth made that impossible. Next best was to push me away, but Six-Fingers was holding his arms down at his sides.
Obviously he wanted me out of there, and that was probably a good idea, since my stomach was churning and I felt like throwing
up. But I had to force it down. He was the one who needed to throw up. I pushed down hard. ‘Throw up, Dad, get rid of it.’
But he was determined not to. He was breathing as hard as he could, trying to expel the tube from his throat.
‘Empty your stomach, Dad, forget about the tube. Get rid of the pesticide and you’ll be fine.’

I looked into his eyes and saw that the anger had given way to torment, just before a geyser of foul liquid burst from his
mouth and hit me full in the face. I didn’t even try to get out of the way, strangely enough. I just emptied the contents
of my stomach right after he did.

T
HE FLEET
had left town by the time Father got out of hospital.

I carried him on my back down to the piers, from where we could see barge number seven tied up beside the embankment some
distance away, an abandoned vessel seemingly floating at the edge of the world. In my eleven years on the river this was the
first time our barge had not been part of the fleet, and it seemed quite alien, as did the shore and even the Golden Sparrow
River. Normally, the river flowed so rapidly it could be heard at a distance, with floating objects just about everywhere
you looked: brightly coloured or steel-grey patches of grease, dead branches and leaves, and the rotting corpses of drowned
animals. But that afternoon the river was so implausibly unspoiled that it spread out before me like a timeworn piece of dark-blue
satin, perfectly still and beautiful. Yes, beautiful, but bleakly so.

Father stank after three days in the hospital. I smelled his fetid breath, the dried sweat in his hair and the acrid stench
of his clothing. All combined, he gave off a strong fishy odour. Why, I wondered, did he smell like that? Bringing him back
that way was like carrying a large marinated fish.

Father was wide awake the whole time, but he refused to speak to me – his last remaining display of authority. He was mired
in
silence, the only punishment he could think of. Except for an occasional glimpse of his swaying feet, he was hidden from me,
especially his eyes, but I knew that the hostility was gone, and that, except for glimmers of suffering, only a blank, empty
gaze remained – fish eyes. As we were leaving the hospital, a doctor had recommended that I talk to Father more often, telling
me that it was common among rescued suicides, especially older ones, to descend into dementia.

I wanted to talk to Father, but didn’t know what to say, how to start or end a conversation with him. His shrivelled body
rested against me, but I knew that our hearts and minds were miles apart. While I couldn’t see his mouth, that was not the
case with the frothy bubbles that emerged from it. I don’t know if they were caused by the treatment he had received or by
what his body had experienced, but the result of the stomach-pumping was dark-and light-brown bubbles at first, followed by
transparent and, I must admit, enticing bubbles.

Sunlight glinted off the river as we approached the piers, with a light breeze caressing Father’s face to dislodge the last
of the bubbles, which first landed on my shoulder and then fell to the ground at my feet. I was surprised to see them change
colour to a glistening rainbow of hues, and the sight made me laugh for the first time in ages. Unfortunately but predictably,
Father misinterpreted my laughter. I felt him move and heard him speak for the first time: ‘Go ahead, laugh, I know why you’re
laughing. I’m going to die soon, and you’ll get your freedom.’

A trio of longshoremen stood on the pier smoking. ‘What’s the story with number seven barge?’ Master Liu shouted. ‘The others
have all left, so what are you doing strolling around here?’ Then they spotted Father on my back, and that got them animated.
The local labourers had long been curious about my father, and this was a rare opportunity to get some answers. They crowded
around to get a good look at Father’s face and body, before retreating to a
nearby crane to exchange opinions. I heard one of them say, ‘He’s as strange as they say. He’s blowing bubbles like a fish.’
I detected a sympathetic note in Master Liu’s voice as he said with a sigh, ‘It’s only been ten years or so since I saw him
last. How did he get so old so fast? He’s had a tough life.’ I didn’t like what I heard from the third man, who was younger
than the others; he contrasted my father’s appearance with what he’d heard of the life of Deng Shaoxiang, and, thinking himself
quite clever, concluded, ‘No, this old-timer can’t be the one, he has to be a fraud. No way he’s Deng Shaoxiang’s son. Think
back to when Deng Shaoxiang was martyred, and the baby was in her basket. He wouldn’t be this old, not now.’

I felt Father stir on my back and was hit by a dose of foul breath; he’d opened his mouth, probably to defend himself by giving
his age. But the second thing he said was also directed at me. ‘Just keep walking a bit further, and you can deposit me on
the barge. Then you can leave. I haven’t got long to live, and I won’t be around to run your life any more. You can have your
freedom.’

A stray cat that had prowled around the piers for years was crouched on the bow of our barge, watching the river flow past.
It might have recognized me. Seeing its master return, it jumped on to the gangplank and skittered past my legs to the shore.

The first thing I saw after carrying Father on deck was a gift the cat had left us: its droppings. Then I noticed that someone
had pulled back the hatch of the forward hold, which was now empty, half in sunlight and half in darkness. Echoes of the flowing
river emerged, now that there was nothing in there for us to ship. I was remarkably sensitive to the sound of the river, and
that afternoon I distinctly heard the faithful echo of its call in the forward hold:
Come down, come down
. There was no question that Father heard it too, for I felt his head rise weakly from my shoulder. ‘What’s that sound?’ he
asked. ‘Are they shipping oilseed?’

‘It’s too late for that, Dad, the hold is empty. There’s nothing on our barge except some cat droppings.’

We went aft into the cabin, where I put him down on the sofa. He collapsed with a contented sigh. ‘We’re home, Dad,’ I said.
‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

‘I’m fine now,’ he said. ‘You can go.’ I asked him if he wanted to take a bath. After a brief hesitation, he said, ‘Yes, that’s
what I need. After that you can go.’ So I got up and started to boil some water, accompanied by his mutterings. ‘Don’t worry
about me, and I won’t worry about you.’

‘You might not worry about me,’ I said loudly, ‘but I’m worried about you. Not because I want to be, but because you’re my
father and I’m your son.’

Everyone in the fleet knew it was a chore for my father to take a bath, and you had to be on your toes. I moved our wooden
tub into the cabin and made sure the window was closed to keep nosy people from peeking in at us. He may well have been the
most unique man on either bank of the Golden Sparrow River. Other men wouldn’t bat an eye if they were asked to do the sorcerer’s
dance nude, but my father’s naked body was a true curiosity for almost everyone. If the front was exposed, he was deeply shamed
by his restored penis, but the rear view, with its fish-shaped birthmark, was a source of great pride to him, and both were
of considerable interest to all sorts of people. I knew that he had struggled for years to avoid exposing himself to the shame
or horror of public viewing. Even I had had no opportunity to see his uncovered penis. In the past, whenever he took a bath,
it was my job to patrol the decks outside the cabin to keep out the prying eyes of curious children. But now the other barges
were gone, so there was no need for that. After closing the window, I saw that the look in Father’s eyes was one of trepidation.
Darting glances to one side and the other, he said, ‘What’s that buzzing in my ears? Who’s out there?’

‘The fleet’s gone,’ I said. ‘Ours is the only boat left, so there’s no one to make any noise.’

With a watchful glance at the door, he said, ‘That’s not safe, not safe at all. Shut the door.’

So I did, and the cabin got stuffy. After filling the tub with hot water, I helped Father out of his filthy clothes, but only
as far as his underpants. ‘Those stay on,’ he said. ‘I’ll take them off when I’m in the tub.’ I helped him in and watched
as he slowly sat down by leaning to one side, like a stroke victim. ‘Don’t look,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to see. You didn’t
listen, and nearly suffered the same fate. Hand me the towel and turn around.’

I did as he asked, and stared at the poster of Deng Shaoxiang on the wall. Then something came over me, and I thought I saw
the slumbering martyr come to life. Turning her head slightly, she gazed down at the naked body in the tub.
Ku Wenxuan
, she said,
are you my son? If not, whose son are you?
The sounds of splashing rose behind me. ‘Can you manage, Dad?’ I asked. ‘I don’t want you to tire yourself out.’

‘I’m not dead yet,’ he said. ‘I can manage the front, but you’ll have to wash my back.’ A few moments later, he said, ‘The
front’s done, so now you can do my back. It must be filthy. It won’t stop itching.’

Crouching down beside the tub, I had a clear view of his birthmark. The fish’s head and body had faded until they were hardly
recognizable. But the tail remained stubbornly imprinted on the sagging skin. I was shocked. ‘Dad!’ I blurted out. ‘What happened
to your birthmark? Everything but the tail has almost disappeared.’

He shuddered. ‘What do you mean? What kind of crazy talk is that?’ Straining to twist his neck so he could see, he said, ‘Stop
scaring me like that. My birthmark is different from other people’s, it’ll never fade.’

‘But it has, Dad! It used to be a whole fish, but now there’s only the tail.’

Again he tried to see behind him, but failed, and in his anxiety to turn his head around, he lurched from side to side. ‘Crazy,’
he said. ‘That’s crazy talk!’ He began thumping me with his hand. ‘Let me see for myself.’

‘Have you lost your mind, Dad? It’s on your backside, where you can’t see. But I’m not lying, it’s faded. Why would I lie
about something that important?’

But he wouldn’t stop thrashing in the tub. I leaned to the side to see him from the front. He was trembling and tears were
running down his sunken cheeks, though suspicion blazed in his eyes. ‘I know what happened, the doctors rubbed it off. No
wonder the itch has been driving me crazy over the past few days. It’s a conspiracy. Pretending they were saving my life,
they were actually destroying my birthmark, removing the evidence so they could sever the relationship between me and your
grandmother!’

‘Don’t try to pin it on the doctors, Dad. I was there every day, and I saw what they did. They pumped your stomach three times,
but never laid a hand on your backside.’

‘Don’t be naive. You watched them pump my stomach, but they wouldn’t let you see them carry out their conspiracy. Zhao Chuntang
runs things on the shore, and the doctors do his bidding. It was all planned. Why did you people send me to hospital to have
my stomach pumped? It was an evil plan. Why did you take me ashore? You delivered me into their hands. You might as well have
taken me straight to the morgue.’

His face twisted into a sad grimace. A frantic series of tiny bubbles emerged from his mouth and popped in the air, releasing
a fishy smell. Why had I said anything? So what if it had faded, he couldn’t see it! Me and my big mouth! I hadn’t been forgiven
yet for my earlier behaviour, and now I’d caused a new problem. I didn’t know what to do, and, with a deep sense of self-recrimination,
missed the people in the fleet as never before. How wonderful it would have been if they had still been around. Desheng’s
wife, with her glib tongue, could have smoothed things over with Father by being sympathetic. Sun Ximing could have talked
him around from a political angle, while Six-Fingers Wang, who was usually more negative and passive, could have done some
good with a more threatening attitude. It was a critical moment, and none of them were around. They’d sailed off and left
Father to me, and me alone.

‘You’re just starting to get well, Dad, you mustn’t get over-excited.’ Lacking the gift of the gab, I had to try something
to calm him down and make him feel better. ‘No matter what, Dad, the tail’s still there, and even if it was gone, you’d still
be Deng Shaoxiang’s son. Truth is truth, and lies are lies, that can’t be changed. People who engage in conspiracies wind
up dropping rocks on their own feet. Yesterday I heard some doctors say that another investigative team is coming to overturn
the other verdict.’

‘Overturn it? I doubt that I’ll live to see that day. I’ve got it all figured out. I don’t need them to overturn anything.
If they’ll issue a martyr’s family certificate, I’m ready to go and report to Karl Marx.’ As he sat in the tub, he began sobbing
like a little boy. ‘I think about my life, and there’s no way I can be happy. How could I be?’ Grasping my hand, he said between
sobs, ‘I’ve held out for eleven long years, waited all that time, and I ask you, for what? Where’s the good news I’ve waited
for?’

‘It hasn’t come,’ I replied, my head down.

‘Only bad news. Rumours, slander and conspiracies!’ He dried his eyes with his hands and pointed to me. ‘You haven’t made
anything of yourself. Day in and day out I hear how degenerate you’ve become.’

‘I’ll make something of myself from now on, Dad, for you. You need to hold on, to persevere, and good news will come sooner
or later.’

‘I’m not made of steel, you know. I’m not sure I can hold on.’ His sobs became weaker, maybe because they were taking too
much out of him physically, but his head fell back hard against my shoulder. Then he said in a small, raspy voice, ‘Tell me
the truth, Dongliang, what do I have to live for? Shouldn’t I just die?’

Unable to say a word, I wrapped my arms around his emaciated body. He squirmed instinctively, but I held him tight. My despairing
father was wrapped up in my arms, as if our roles had been reversed. To me he felt more like a dried fish than a man, his
spine thin and brittle, with fish-like scales suddenly appearing all over his back. The fragrance of the Glory bath soap wasn’t
strong enough to mask the strange fishy smell of his body. Father, my father, where have you come from? And where will you
go? I felt lost. Suddenly a scene from half a century earlier, of a boundless Golden Sparrow River, flashed before my eyes.
The bamboo basket left behind by the martyr Deng Shaoxiang was floating down the river, the child and fish inside tossed by
the rapid swells. I watched as the water swallowed up the child, leaving only the fish. A fish. A solitary fish. The image
frightened me. Was that really what happened? A fish. If my father wasn’t that child, could he have been that fish?