I turned my anxious gaze to barge number seven and looked for Father, since it was time to unload. I didn’t want him to see me. The gangplanks were down on the other boats by now, but not ours. Father was still inside, obviously hiding from Zhao Chunmei. But he was wasting his time. ‘You can hide through the first of the month, but not through the fifteenth,’ I heard myself grumble, quoting a popular saying. ‘Come out of there if you’ve got the balls. All you know how to do is thump women — thump, thump. Well, come out and take a look where your thumping has led!’
The other boat people, who were watching me pace back and forth, interrupted their discussions about Zhao Chunmei and waved greetings. ‘Hey, Dongliang, coming back, are you? That’s good. Things always work out when a son obeys his father.’ I was in no mood to pay any attention, so they directed their shouts at barge number seven: ‘Come on out, Secretary Ku. There’s nothing to worry about now, they’ve taken the woman away. Your son Dongliang’s back!’
Still he wouldn’t come out, and I refused to go aboard until he did. So I stood there watching a bunch of pigs squeal and squirm in our forward hold, giving off a stench I could smell from here. I wondered why our barge had been chosen to transport the pigs. Was it a sign of trust or just the opposite? Was it intended to show consideration for my father or to make things hard on him? I held my nose and surveyed the goods on the other barges, now that the oilcloth tarps had been removed and the goods were laid out in the open. There was machinery for the Southern Combat Readiness Base in wooden crates with strict warnings not to open them. There were also steel oil drums. Those I found interesting, since they had foreign words printed on them — not English, apparently, some language I’d never seen before. I’m kind of weird in a way — when I encounter words in languages I don’t know, I read them to myself. Ne-fo fo-gai-te ke-la-si si-que-ge: Never forget class struggle — a chain reaction. I read and I read, and my thoughts went in a new direction, until I began thinking things I shouldn’t.
Barge number seven was the last to unload, which made sense, since livestock is always hard to control. The stevedores, under the supervision of a man from the Pork Association, came aboard with bamboo poles and ropes, and were greeted by terrified squeals. When the first animal was carried off upside-down, its four legs tied to a pole, the others created a major disturbance, causing the barge to rock precariously as if tossed about by high waves. And still my father refused to emerge. Something must be wrong in there. I picked up a piece of coal, aimed at the cabin door, and threw it. ‘What are you doing in there, Dad?’
The porthole opened and Father’s hand made a brief appearance before vanishing again. Why was he hiding in there? I coughed. Something stirred, but he still wouldn’t come out. Busy as he was, Desheng glanced my way and tapped the deck of barge number eight with his foot as a signal for me to come aboard. ‘Hurry up,’ he said. ‘Don’t stand there like an idiot. Are you waiting for your dad to send a written invitation?’
I shook my head. ‘I can come aboard or not, it makes no difference to me. I will if he wants me to, and I’ll stay here if he doesn’t.’
Desheng’s wife giggled and poked her husband. ‘He wants his dad to ask him to come aboard,’ she said as she picked up a pole, ran to the bow of her boat and banged on our cabin. ‘Come out of there, Chairman Ku,’ she shouted. ‘Zhao Chunmei is gone, but your son’s here. He wants to know if you want him back on the barge.’
Still no sign of him. But the stirrings within grew in intensity. Something hit the deck with a bang, followed by the unmistakable sound of one of Father’s throaty moans. Then his head emerged slowly through the porthole. His face was the colour of clay, but his hand, which followed his head out, was covered with blood. He looked at me with a dull expression and waved his bloody hand. ‘Come here!’ he said. ‘Help me! Hurry!’
At first I thought he’d cut his finger, and as I ran across Desheng’s barge I shouted for him to get his first-aid kit. But I stopped dead when I got inside. He hadn’t cut his finger. I thought my eyes were deceiving me. I could not believe what he’d done.
You won’t believe it either. The stench of blood permeated the air, and blood ran between the cracks of the floorboards. A pair of scissors lay on Father’s favourite sofa. His trousers were down around his knees and there was so much blood in his crotch that I could barely see his penis. At first it looked whole, but then I saw that the front half was hanging by a thread. Rocking unsteadily, he leaned slowly towards me. ‘Help me!’ he said. ‘Use those scissors. It’s my enemy, you must help me get rid of it.’
I was scared witless. Desheng’s wife shrieked, but was quickly shouted down by her husband. ‘What are you standing around here for? Go on, get out!’ With studied calmness he crouched down and examined my father’s bloody organ. ‘It’s still connected!’ he exclaimed happily. ‘That’s a good sign. Let’s rush him to the hospital and get it sewn back on.’
I wrapped a blanket around Father’s waist and Desheng carried him ashore on his back, watched by all the barge people and stevedores. ‘What happened?’ they asked as I ran past. ‘Who stabbed him? All that blood!’
Desheng’s wife was running alongside us, helping by clearing the curious out of our way. ‘Haven’t you ever seen blood before? This isn’t a movie, you damned rubberneckers, so get out of our way.’
‘Did Dongliang stab his old man?’ someone asked.
‘What do you use for a brain?’ she said. ‘Whoever heard of a son stabbing his father? A demon got to him, and it’s all Zhao Chunmei’s fault. She brought that demon down on him.’
Desheng ran on to the pier with my father on his back. Patches of bright sunlight dotted the path, and a strange feeling came over me. Father and I seemed to be heeding Zhao Chunmei’s call, running down a path she’d laid out in white funeral garb. Though I felt the sticky blood leaking on to me, I was oblivious to his weight as I helped support him — from the waist down he was as light as a feather. All the curses that had been flung his way had been fulfilled. Men’s curses, women’s curses, curses by family members and mortal enemies — all fulfilled. Father’s slightly crooked but extraordinarily vigorous member, a one-time bully, an enemy of the people, of women and of men, and, most significantly, of himself, had at last been subdued by Father himself.
He was unconscious by the time we reached the Milltown Hospital, but he’d managed two sentences to Desheng before he lost consciousness. ‘I’m not afraid of Zhao Chunmei, Desheng,’ he said. ‘Brief pain is better than prolonged suffering, so now I can make amends.’ Then he added, ‘I guarantee you that I’ll never again be unworthy of the spirit of the martyr Deng Shaoxiang.’