The Boat to Redemption (2 page)

Feng Four’s hand had spanked the bottom of my father, and that loud smack settled the question. From then on, everyone knew
that dirty little Wenxuan, the boy no one cared for, was in reality the son of the martyr Deng Shaoxiang.

For years people said that the boy found amidst clumps of water grass and a red carp was the son of the martyred Deng Shaoxiang.
But then everything changed. One year, a team of martyr-orphan investigators, shrouded in mystery, was sent by the district
government to determine whether the orphan was in fact the martyr’s son. Taking up residence in Milltown, they travelled to
towns and villages up and down the banks of the Golden Sparrow River, sometimes openly, at other times in secret. The starting
point of their investigation was the disgraceful personal history of Feng Four, whose word they had determined was not to
be trusted.

Who was this Feng Four, anyway? In his youth he’d been a river pirate, but when he gave up the lifestyle – or as the Chinese
proverb goes, washed his hands in a golden basin – he built a hut on the riverbank and settled down to the life of a fisherman.
People who lived near the river agreed that he’d been a handsome young man who’d lived a dissolute life, choosing to become
a pirate because of a woman. With a boat and a rifle, he’d pursued an amorous woman who peddled garlic from her boat. Later
he went ashore because of yet another woman. He’d had his eye on a farmer’s daughter who picked broad beans and gave herself
to him in the field, but would not marry him. So he next turned his attention to a widowed seamstress in Horsebridge. She
was happy to carry on a furtive affair, but not to live openly with him, and while she refused to marry him, she would not
let him marry anyone else. In the end, he simply wove nets on the riverbank all day long, nets for catching both fish and
women. A handsome, bold fellow who was favoured by the opposite sex, he caught more women than fish. One – it was never made
clear who – passed on a venereal disease that not only forced him to keep his trousers buttoned from then on, but eventually
ended his life.

It is wise to avoid examining these matters too closely. How could a man like Feng Four be qualified to recognize the orphaned
son of the martyred Deng Shaoxiang? One of the members of the investigative team, a college student who knew his history,
even suspected that Feng had done a swap, palming off his own bastard
child as the legitimate offspring of Deng Shaoxiang. It was an audacious charge that took the other team members’ breath away.
Unwilling either to dismiss or endorse this theory, they wound up simply including it in the remarks column of their report
as an item for consideration.

Everything centred on the birthmark. Drawing on the scientific study of heredity, the team rejected the fish-shaped-birthmark
theory, announcing that the residents of the Golden Sparrow River region were all Mongoloids, who had birthmarks on their
backsides. And if the birthmarks looked exactly like fish, that was mere coincidence, with no basis in science.

But the residents of Milltown hankered after things that had no basis in science. They went crazy that autumn looking for
birthmarks on their bodies. At first the craze was limited to males around the age of forty, but it spread to children and
then to old men, until nearly every male in Milltown was caught up in it. Walk past any public toilet, and this is what you
might have seen: a man taking down his trousers or asking someone else to take his down so they could eagerly look for birthmarks
on their backsides. And in public baths, it was rare for a person not to show off his birthmark, which frequently led to watery
squabbles, not to mention the occasional fistfight. But despite the outrageous extremes of the birthmark craze, since people
lacked eyes in the backs of their heads, they could not examine their own backsides. That, of course, was how the craze worked
to some people’s advantage, for there was always someone eager to analyse the prophetic symbols imprinted there. Several of
the examined backsides revealed fish-shaped birthmarks. Some were like goldfish, others resembled carp, and some actually
looked like pomfrets. But not all inspections ended happily. Some of the exposed flesh was dark as ebony, some white as ivory,
but could boast no birthmark. Had it faded over the years or had it never been there in the first place? Imagine the consternation
this caused these unfortunate individuals, who quickly covered up and would let no one else look. Left to taste the bitter
fruit of failure alone and in silence, they suffered from a crippling sense of inferiority.

As for my family, the craze took a back seat as rising winds threatened to engulf our home. I ignored the gentle and persistent
entreaties of my classmates at school and refused to be caught up in the entanglements out on the street, which all centred
on one thing: they wanted me to drop my trousers. My backside was not for public viewing – end of discussion! I tightened
my belt and heightened my vigilance, taking a brick along whenever I visited a public toilet, and keeping my hands in my pockets
when I was out walking, eyes peeled and ears alert to all sounds. By forestalling sneak attacks, I managed to preserve the
integrity of my backside, but was powerless to ward off the domestic storm that had been gathering for so long. It hit, in
all its fury, on the twenty-seventh of September, when the visiting team announced the startling results of their investigation.
Ku Wenxuan, they concluded, was not Deng Shaoxiang’s son!

They said my father was
no longer
Deng Shaoxiang’s son!

The events of that day are indelibly etched on my memory. The twenty-seventh of September – coincidentally the commemoration
day for the martyr Deng Shaoxiang, the day when my father ought to have been wreathed in glory – turned out to be the day
of his greatest shame. I recall that my mother emerged from her propaganda broadcast studio in a daze, looking like someone
who had just escaped from hell. She wore a white scarf as a makeshift mask as she pedalled her bicycle precariously down the
busy People’s Avenue, weeping the whole time. People she passed noticed that the scarf was wet. Sending humans and animals
scurrying out of her way, she careened into Workers and Peasants Avenue and stopped at a blacksmith’s shop, where she borrowed
a hammer and chisel. People said they saw her lips quiver under
the scarf, though they could not tell if she was cursing or praying. ‘Qiao Limin,’ they said, ‘what do you need those for?
What’s wrong?’

‘It’s nothing,’ my mother replied. ‘It’s just my lungs, they’re about to explode from anger!’

The twenty-seventh of September. I heard someone hacking away at our front gate, so I went out and saw that my mother had
chiselled off the red plaque announcing that we were honoured as a martyr’s family. She weighed the plaque in her hand for
a moment before stuffing it into a cloth sack. Then, before any passers-by could open their mouths, she pushed her bicycle
into the yard, closed the gate behind her and sat on the ground.

When my mother said her lungs were about to explode, it was no exaggeration. Her anger was so intense that her face had lost
all its colour, and there were traces of tears on her cheeks. ‘Go and get the first-aid kit,’ she said. ‘My lungs are bursting,
I need to take something.’

But instead of leaving, I asked, ‘Why did you take down the martyr’s family plaque?’

She removed the scarf from her face and glared at the little table my father and I had set up in the yard the day before,
on which a chess board and pieces rested. Another white-hot flash of anger filled her eyes. I stood watching as she walked
over, picked up my father’s chess set and flung it over the wall, as if she was dumping rubbish. ‘So you like to play chess,
do you? Well, from this day on, you’re no longer a martyr’s descendant. No, you’re the son of a liar, and the grandson of
Feng Four, a river pirate!’

Hearing the sound of shuffling feet outside the yard, I climbed the wall in time to see our neighbours scrabbling about on
the ground, snatching up the chess pieces. Some got their hands on steeds, some on warriors; the blacksmith’s son managed
to get hold of a general, which he waved proudly in my direction. I had no idea why these people had gathered outside our
yard,
but now they were looking at me as if their eyes held secrets, happy secrets. A slightly demented guffaw burst from the mouth
of one woman. Then she became serious. ‘You!’ she screeched. ‘You gutless little boy, no wonder you wouldn’t let anybody see
your backside! A guilty conscience, that’s what it was. Just whose grandson are you?’ I ignored her, preferring to watch what
was happening down there from my perch on the wall and to keep my eyes peeled for my father. I didn’t see him; what I did
see was a town in mutiny, now that the news had spread. I heard shouts of liberation and screams of joy from the heart of
Milltown and beyond. Milltown was in uproar.

My father was not Deng Shaoxiang’s son. That was not a rumour, not hearsay. He just wasn’t. So who was the martyr’s son? The
investigative team would not say, and my mother certainly didn’t know. Based on hope alone, most of the town’s residents were
caught up in the birthmark craze, running around making wild guesses, with no two people able to agree.
Who is Deng Shaoxiang’s son? Whose birthmark looks most like a
fish?
I heard several names being mentioned, including the idiot, Bianjin, whose birthmark came closest. I didn’t believe that
for a second. Nor did anyone else. An idiot like Bianjin could not possibly be a martyr’s son. So who was it? No matter what
anyone said, only the investigative team could provide the answer. And all they were prepared to say was that Ku Wenxuan was
not the one. It was not my father.

There can be no doubt that the injustices I’ve suffered have their origin in those visited upon my father. Now that he was
no longer Deng Shaoxiang’s son, I was not her grandson. Not being Deng Shaoxiang’s son meant that he was a nobody. And his
being a nobody had a direct impact on my mother and on me. I too was now a nobody.

The next day I became a
kongpi
. And that became my nickname.

Everything happened so fast that I was caught on the back
foot. On the day after the news broke, before I had chance to amend my princely ways, I ran into Scabby Five and Scabby Seven
on my way to school. They were standing in front of the pharmacy with their older sister, waiting for it to open; Seven’s
head was swathed in gauze stained by thick gunk that attracted hordes of flies, which encircled all three of them. I stopped.
‘Scabby Seven,’ I said as I gaped at the flies on his head, ‘have you opened a toilet on your head? Is that why all those
flies are landing on it?’

Their eyes were glued to me, especially Scabby Seven’s, who was looking at the buttered bun I was holding. He swallowed hungrily,
then turned to his sister. ‘See!’ he bawled. ‘He’s got a buttered bun. He gets one every day!’

With a little pout, his sister shooed the flies away from his head and said, ‘What’s so great about a buttered bun? Who cares
if he’s got one?’

‘Who cares?’ Seven complained. ‘I’ve never tasted one. I ought to care about something I’ve never tasted, shouldn’t I?’

His sister paused, glancing at the bun in my hand, and sighed. ‘They cost seven fen,’ she said. ‘We can’t afford that. I’ve
never tasted one either, so let’s just pretend we don’t care.’

But Seven was having none of that. Stiffening his neck, he said, ‘His father isn’t Deng Shaoxiang’s son and he’s not her grandson.
So how come he gets a buttered bun?’

His sister’s eyes lit up. ‘You’re right, he’s a nobody. Who said he can eat that for breakfast? He’s mocking us.’

The siblings exchanged glances, and in that brief moment I had a premonition that something bad was about to happen. But not
ready to trust my instincts, I stood there, unafraid. Then, as if at an agreed signal, they all rushed at me. Holding the
bun over my head, I said, ‘How dare you try to steal my food?’ They ignored me. Seven jumped up and, like a crazed animal,
grabbed my wrist. Then his sister prised my fingers apart, one at a time,
until she could snatch the bun, now squeezed out of shape, from my grasp.

I was fifteen at the time. Scabby Five and Scabby Seven were both younger than me, and shorter. And their sister, well, she
was just a girl. But by ganging up on me, they easily snatched the food out of my hand. For that I have only lack of preparation
to blame, thanks to my princely habits, not ability or physique. Someone riding past on a bicycle turned to look at me and
then at the brothers and sister. ‘Stealing food,’ they said. ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves.’

They weren’t. Scabby Seven’s sister watched with a sense of pride as he took big bites. ‘Slow down,’ she said. ‘Don’t eat
so fast, you’ll choke on it.’

After a long moment I began thinking logically. This incident was tied up with my father. Since he was not the martyr’s son,
Scabby Seven was free to steal my bun, and bystanders could look on without lifting a hand. I understood what was going on
here, but I refused to take it lying down. I pointed at Scabby Seven. ‘How dare you eat my bun!’ I shouted. ‘Spit it out!’

He ignored me. ‘What are you shouting about?’ his sister said. ‘I don’t see your name on it. Buns are made of flour, and that
comes from wheat, which is planted by peasants. Our mother’s a peasant, so some of this belongs to her.’ She dragged her younger
brother over to the wall and used her body as a shield. ‘Hurry up!’ she demanded. ‘Finish it. He won’t be able to prove a
thing once it’s in your stomach.’ Apparently she was getting worried, though she put on a brave front as she searched the
faces of the people near the pharmacy. Then she looked at me again. ‘What are you complaining about? You eat a bun every day,
but my brother has to settle for thin gruel. That’s not fair, it’s not socialism! It gives socialism a bad name.’

She walked off, dragging Scabby Seven along with her and followed by Scabby Five. I took a few menacing steps towards
them. ‘Is this a rebellion?’ I said. ‘Well, go ahead and rebel. Eat up. Today the bun is my treat; tomorrow I’ll bring you
shit to eat!’