The barge children usually ran around butt naked, both as an economy measure and as a sort of identification mark. There was no fear of their getting lost ashore, for anyone who found them invariably returned them to the piers. Boys, of course, were favoured over girls. They wore little pigtails, bracelets on their wrists, and long-life necklaces around their necks. The girls, on the other hand, went without jewellery, and their mothers cut their hair haphazardly and unevenly, leaving them with little haystacks on their heads. Adolescent girls covered their private parts with belly warmers made of white handkerchiefs sewn together. Older girls wore either their mother’s or their father’s hand-me-downs, which meant they never fitted. Though they were more or less unloved, that had no effect on their sense of family duty. All day long they ran up and down the decks doing chores, hollering at their mischievous little brothers and sisters.
The only truly pretty girl in the fleet, Yingtao, was so intent on playing the role of a mother that she carried her baby brother strapped to her back with red cloth, day in and day out, going from family to family. She once walked up to the stern of barge number six, where she watched me steely-eyed, like a sentry.
‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘Go away.’
‘I’m on barge number six,’ she said, ‘not yours, so mind your own business.’
‘I’m not interested in minding anybody’s business,’ I said. ‘I just don’t want you watching me.’
‘If you weren’t looking at me,’ she said, ‘how’d you know I was watching you?’
‘OK, I won’t look at you, and you don’t talk to me.’
‘Who said I want to talk to you?’ she replied. ‘You spoke to me first.’ She was too quick for me, so I just glared at her with the fiercest, most threatening look I could manage. It didn’t faze her. Instead, with an enigmatic smile she said, ‘Don’t act so cocky. I know all about your family. I’ll let you see my brother’s backside. He’s got a birthmark, and it’s a fish too!’ She untied the cloth holding her brother and exposed his tiny rear end to me. ‘See! See that birthmark. It looks just like a fish!’ I could hear the pride in her voice, while the boy, who was now in her arms, began to fidget. ‘Don’t you dare snap it off,’ Yingtao said, raising her voice. ‘I said, don’t you dare! You can go on the potty in a little while.’
Seeing that the child was about to let go, I turned my head so I didn’t have to keep looking at his rear end. Angered by the encounter, I headed towards our stern and muttered, ‘Thump! Thump your goddamned fish! Thump! Thump your goddamned birthmark!’ Just like all the sailors.
My days on the river were unrelievedly lonely, and that loneliness comprised the last thread of my self-respect. There were lots of boys in the fleet, but they were either too old and stupid or too small and disgusting, so I had no friends. How could anyone expect me to make friends with the likes of them? But they were curious about me and as friendly as could be, often dropping by barge number seven to see me, sometimes bringing gifts of mouldy peas or a toy train to tempt me into being their friend. Who did they think I was? I sent them scurrying.
I’m sort of embarrassed to describe my early days aboard the barge. Father wanted me to study, so he started teaching me things I needed to know. He’d let me sit on his favourite sofa as I read from a pile of books that included the notebook that had belonged to my mother; that one I studied on the sly. In recording Father’s lifestyle, Mother seemed to have been in a forgiving mood, since the harshest words she used were ‘did it’. I counted — she used that phrase more than sixty times — Who he ‘did it’ with, when he ‘did it’ with her, as well as where and how many times, plus who initiated it. Had they been caught in the act? As for other details, she settled for thick, heavy exclamation marks and the unhappy comment ‘I could just die, my lungs are about to explode!’
I had nothing to die about as I read what she had written, trying to figure out exactly what had gone on. I wound up wallowing in a space between reason and imagination, and was frightened by the outcome. That outcome was a chemical reaction that made a prisoner of my body — I experienced one erection after another from her words. My crotch was on fire. A shameful flame burned out of control in our cabin, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I closed the notebook, only to have Li Tiemei rekindle the fire from the notebook’s cover. I can’t tell you why, but while there was a look of revolutionary fervour in her eyes, the image of her thin, red lips, her long, straight nose and her soft, titillating ears came across to me as flirtatious. Unable to suppress this imaginary flirtatiousness, I hid the notebook in a chest, an action that settled the upheaval in my groin. But my ears remained unsettled. I thought I sensed a red image on the shore: it was my mother, running along the bank, chasing our barge and shouting angrily, ‘Give me back my notebook! Give it back! Dongliang, you’re shameful and disgusting! If the top beam is crooked, the bottom one can’t be straight. I could just die, Dongliang. Thanks to you, my lungs are about to explode!’
Father was the top beam, I was the bottom one. I couldn’t deny that the top beam controlled the bottom one, but at the same time, I was convinced that being the bottom beam is better than being the top one. It’s easy for the bottom beam to supervise the top beam. I observed Father’s lifestyle with a detached eye, centring observations on his relations with women. But even after prolonged observation, I could draw no clear conclusions. I knew that he was a crooked upper beam, but didn’t know how it was crooked, and in whose direction it bent.
The Sunnyside Fleet was the grudging home of his last few remaining adoring supporters. Even after he was banished to the river, they kept calling him Secretary Ku, and the women in the fleet felt that they bore a responsibility to come to our aid. Qiao Limin, they said, was heartless. With a wave of her hand, she had banished father and son to a river barge. How would they survive with no women aboard? So they brought their feminine sensibilities and a warmhearted nature to barge number seven, often bringing us bowls of noodles or a pot of tea. Desheng’s wife was the kindest of all. On laundry day she’d walk up to the bow of barge number five, carrying her wooden tub like a rice-sprout dancer, and call to my father, ‘Come out here, Secretary Ku. Anything you need to wash? Just toss it in my tub.’
I’d stay in the cabin to watch his reaction. Even if he went out empty-handed, courtesy — which was important to him — demanded that he engage Desheng’s wife in casual conversation. I scrutinized her carefully from inside the cabin, starting with her bare feet, with their ruddy backs and red toenails — obviously painted with balsam oil. All the boat women painted their toes in the hope that people would look at their feet. My father did not disappoint. He’d comment, ‘Desheng’s wife, I detect a look of revolutionary romanticism about you.’
She’d just giggle, missing his point altogether. ‘I spend all my time on this barge,’ she’d say, ‘so stop that nonsense about revolutionary romanticism.’ I knew this praise from him was filled with danger. I was pretty sure he had his eye on Desheng’s wife, and on Sun Ximing’s as well. My guess was, he had his eye on lots of women. With my face up against the porthole, I watched with my heart in my mouth, because the minute he got close to a woman, as soon as the two of them began talking, I’d start to worry and the word ‘thump’ would pop into my head. Based on my experience, I’d send a silent warning: Careful, be careful, don’t get any ideas, keep that thing down. Nervously, I’d glance at his trousers, not daring to breathe. Joyfully, whether he was with Desheng’s wife or Sun Ximing’s, the crotch of Father’s trousers remained as flat as a placid river. He avoided making a fool of himself, and I guessed that his years as an official had taught him that there were two ways of dealing with people — one to their face and another behind their back.