The Boat to Redemption by Su Tong Read Free Book Online

Wenxuan, leniency
     to those who confess their crimes and severity to those who refuse!’ The shouts emanated from a bedroom confrontation. It
     sounded comical to me, but scary as well.
    The truth is, the more they argued, the less I cared. On the contrary, the quieter and more peaceful they were, the more I
     worried. Caution piqued my curiosity. They might be able to deceive the neighbours, but not me. One night a deadly silence
     descended in their room, throwing me into a panic. I climbed the date tree and had an unobstructed view through the transom
     window. The lamp was lit, so I could see them both. Mother was sitting at her desk, notebook in hand, her cheeks wet with
     tears; my father was kneeling at her feet like a dog and had pulled down his trousers to show her his honoured fish-shaped
     birthmark. At it again! He’d brought his sickness home with him. I saw her curse him loudly, glaring at him with contempt
     and disgust. But he was relentless. His trousers were round his knees, and he was crawling along the floor, moving to wherever
     Mother turned her face. Sharp light glinted off his pale, bony backside in the darkened room. Then his shouts tore through
     the night.
    ‘Look! You used to like looking at it. Why won’t you look at it now? Take a good look at my birthmark, I’m Deng Shaoxiang’s
     son! That’s the truth! I said look, take a good look. It’s a fish. I’m Deng Shaoxiang’s son. Don’t be in such a hurry to make
     a clean break. If you file for divorce, you’ll live to regret it!’
    I burst into tears. Was I crying for him or for her? I couldn’t say. I climbed down out of the tree and took a long look at
     my house, then at the blue sky. I dried my eyes and snarled into the sky, ‘Goahead, divorce! If you don’t, you’re
kongpi
. And if you do, you’re still
kongpi
!’
    Their divorce went without a hitch. The only problem was me. If I went with him, I’d sail the river; if I went with her, I’d
     stay on dry land. The river had its appeal, but I was afraid to give up dry land. So I said to Father, ‘I’ll spend half the
     year on the barge with you and half the year with Mother. What do you say?’
    ‘Fine with me,’ he said. ‘But check with your mother. I doubt she’ll go along with it.’
    So I checked, and was met with boiling anger. ‘Absolutely not! If you want me, you can’t have him. And if you want him, you
     can’t have me. If the top beam is crooked, the one below can’t be straight. How am I supposed to take care of a child he’s
     had a hand in raising?’
    So I had to choose. Two sets of inauspicious gifts were arrayed before me. One was Father and a barge, the other was Mother
     and dry land. There was no way out, I had to choose one over the other. I chose Father. Even now the boat people sometimes
     talk about my decision.
If Dongliang had stayed with his mother
, they say,
he’d be this or that
. Or,
If he’d stayed with her, Ku Wenxuan would be this or that
. Even,
His mother would
be this or that
. But I ignored all the ‘this or that’ talk. And ‘what ifs’ bored me.
Kongpi
, all of them. Like water that keeps flowing, or grass that keeps growing, there was no choice involved; it was all up to
     fate. My father’s fate was tied up with a martyr named Deng Shaoxiang, and mine was tied up with him.
    At the end of that year, a notice regarding the forced-transfer barge fleet was posted on the door of my house, spelling the
     end of my time in Milltown. When we boarded the barge, Mother had to move, and she did. But she was in such a hurry that she
     accidentally left her notebook behind. As she rushed out of the house she tossed a cloth bundle on to my bed, and when I pickedit up, I found the notebook inside. She’d made a cover for her cherished notebook out of an illustrated newspaper. The front
     was graced with the ruddy face of Li Tiemei from the revolutionary opera
The Red Lantern
. The back showed Li’s hand, holding a red lantern.