The Pier
AFTER ONLY a few days in Mother’s dormitory I was ready to head back.
I don’t know if it was her doing or the fact that I’d earned a bad reputation, but the other women in the dormitory steered clear of me. Their attitude influenced the men in the neighbouring tool-repair factory, who scowled if I was around. My only fan was a mangy dog that gave me a fervent welcome. It was begging to be liked. Day in and day out it hung around me, sniffing at my trouser legs and at my crotch — mainly at my crotch. I didn’t appreciate the mongrel’s attention, and was particularly annoyed by its fascination with my crotch. Even if I had felt more unwelcome than I did, I would still have been unwilling to make friends with a mangy cur. Finally I kicked it, and was surprised that the animal retained a measure of self-respect — it was a good thing I could run fast, or I’d have been bitten for sure.
The dog chased me all the way to Mother’s dorm, where it set up a howl that frightened the women inside. Knowing I was the one who’d set the dog off, Mother ran out with a wet mop and drove the barking dog off, then went back inside to tell the women that everything was fine. But someone must have said something unpleasant, because when I went up to her room, she wore a dark, gloomy expression. I plopped down on the bed and began scratching my feet — the wrong thing to do, given her mood. Still holding the wet mop, she turned on me, jabbing the mop at my legs one minute and my arms the next. ‘You wicked boy,’ she scolded. ‘You’re isolated from the masses, animals hate you, and a mangy dog chases you! Even a shit-eating dog has no forgiveness in its heart for you!’
I was clever enough to keep my mouth shut, and just let her rant on as I pinched my nose and held my breath. Go ahead, yell at me, I thought. Anything you say goes in one ear and out the other. It’s nothing but kongpi! I sat down to dinner to a chorus of scolding, and for some reason the word ‘exile’ popped into my head. Maybe that’s what I was, an exile. But one thing I knew for sure was that Mother’s cramped dormitory was no home for me; it was just a way station. The words ‘mother’ and ‘son’ meant nothing here. I was a guest — and an unwelcome guest at that. Mother supplied me with three meals a day, but every grain of rice was saturated with her sadness, and every vegetable leaf was infused with her disappointment. If I lived with her like that, either she would die and I’d go crazy, or vice versa. And I wasn’t alone in feeling that way — she did too.
Mother was on the shore, but I had no home there, and had to head back. Note that by heading back I meant back to the barge, back to the Sunnyside Fleet.
One morning a week later, the fleet was returning from its latest mission and I was on the pier, waiting anxiously for them. I could not say if I was waiting for my father’s barge and his home to return to, or if I was waiting for the return of my barge and my home.
So I stood there, bag in hand. It was wet underfoot after a foggy morning, almost as if it had rained. With a bit of hesitation the sun broke through, lighting up part of the pier and leaving the rest to fend for itself. Fog hung over the mountain of coal, the piled-up commodities and the many cranes. There were spots where the sunlight was nearly blinding and others so dark it was hard to see. I waited in the darkness. Someone was moving near the embankment, but I couldn’t tell who it was. The person was heading my way from the transport office, nearly running, and dragging a shimmering white light behind. It had to be a stevedore. When he was close enough to hear, I shouted, ‘Do you know when the fleet is expected back?’
As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them, for it was the general affairs typist, Zhao Chunmei. Ah, Zhao Chunmei. She was Zhao Chuntang’s younger sister, and her name appeared in Mother’s notebook at least ten times. She’d been one of my father’s lovers. Some of the words Mother had written after Father had told the truth floated into my head. They did it! They did it on the typing desk. They did it on a window ledge. They did it again and again! The description was particularly detailed in one spot. They were in a room where cleaning gear was kept, doing it, when the caretaker opened the door. Never one to lose control in the face of danger, Father covered himself with a broom and a mop and held the door partially shut with his shoulder. ‘You can take the day off,’ he said. ‘We are doing some voluntary work in here!’
I recalled seeing Zhao Chunmei in the office, and my abiding image of her was how fashionable and haughty she seemed. She wore milky-white high-heeled shoes virtually every day of the week, a sight rarely seen in Milltown, or — rarer still — purplish-red ones. Both made a loud click-clacking sound when she climbed the stairs. The other women in the building hated her, Mother included. They felt that her shoes served two purposes: to show off to the women and to tempt the men. I can still see that come-on look in her eyes, flirtatious as hell.
But no longer. She knew who I was, and the look she gave me was unusually cold, the sort of look a policeman might give a criminal, her eyes glued to my face. Then she looked down at my bag, as if it contained evidence of some crime. At first I was tempted to look away, but that would have been too easy. Then I recalled my father’s line about voluntary work, and felt like laughing. Suddenly she shuddered, which surprised me. I swallowed my laughter and kept my eyes on her. She was giving me the most hateful look I’d ever seen. ‘He’s dead!’ she cried. ‘My husband, Little Tang, is dead, and Ku Wenxuan killed him!’
That was when I noticed a white flower in Zhao Chunmei’s hair. Her shoes were also white — not high heels, but funeral shoes, with hempen ties on the backs and heels. Her puffy cheeks distorted what she was saying. I understood that her husband was dead and that she’d said Father had killed him. But I didn’t know why. My father had been on board our barge for a long time now, so how could he have killed Little Tang? I’d always been fascinated with death, so I felt like asking when Little Tang had died and whether he’d committed suicide or was killed by someone else. But Zhao Chunmei was in no mood to say more. She just glowered at me. Finally, she gnashed her teeth and said, ‘Ku Wenxuan, you’ll repay this blood debt one of these days!’
Her menacing glare frightened me. A woman’s face, no matter how pretty, becomes a terrible sight when it shows a thirst for vengeance. The look on Zhao Chunmei’s face was so terrifying that I instinctively stepped backwards to get away from her, reversing all the way to the loading dock. When I passed beneath a crane, I glanced up at Master Operator Liu in his cage, who signalled for me to climb up, as if he had something important to tell me. He didn’t. He just wasn’t a man who could mind his own business. Pointing to Zhao Chunmei, he said, ‘Don’t upset her. She hasn’t been herself for the past few days, ever since her husband killed himself with a pesticide.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said. ‘She upset me. Besides, it wasn’t me who gave her husband the pesticide, so what’s it got to do with me?’
‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ he said, ‘but everything to do with your dad. He’s the one who made Little Tang wear a green hat — you know, a cuckold. People say that the green hat crushed him.’
‘Crushed by a green hat — so what! She let my dad thump her, didn’t she? Nobody forced her. Besides, he wore that green hat for years willingly enough, and no one forced him, either. My dad did it with lots of women. How come he decided to kill himself? Stop spreading malicious gossip!’