Their expressions hardened when they heard my voice. ‘What do you know?’ Xiaogai said with a disgruntled look. ‘Can’t you read? We’re the Milltown Security Group.’
‘Security group?’ I said. ‘Under whose authority?’
‘The General Affairs Building, pig brain. What do you think?’
But I couldn’t let it go. ‘Three guys keeping watch over a rundown chemical warehouse, and you call it a security group!’
‘At the moment it’s just the three of us,’ he said, ‘but there’ll be more of us pretty soon. We might not have a big office, but we’ve got big-time authority, and we’re going to let you see just how big that is.’
With obvious impatience, Scabby Five, my long-time foe, glared at me and cut his colleague off. ‘What are you doing, explaining things to someone like him?’ he said, making a handcuffing gesture. ‘He wrote a counter-revolutionary slogan, and that makes him a target for us! If he doesn’t watch his mouth, I’ll come down hard on him.’
Nothing but farts came out of Scabby’s mouth — empty, stinky talk — and I wasn’t about to argue with him. I focused my attention on the sign on the door. ‘Zhi-an,’ I said. ‘Do you know what that means?’
Blinking furiously, Xiaogai glanced at his two colleagues, looking for help. But, less well educated even than him, they too were stuck for a response. Having suffered an embarrassing loss of face, he growled, ‘You and your goddamn never-ending questions, Kongpi. It means just what it says — zhi-an. Don’t try any of your tricks on me.’
I wasn’t trying to trick him. I knew that the word an meant ‘safety’, but I didn’t know if zhi meant to take charge of people or to make them suffer, so I said, ‘Since you have no authority over the goods or the longshoremen, who are your supposed zhi?
Scabby Five was the first to react. ‘Good question!’ he said hatefully. ‘And the answer is you!’
‘Not only you,’ Baldy said, ‘though you’re the one we need to watch the closest. We’re charged with watching the whole fleet.’
Wang Xiaogai, who had a ‘2’ on his armband, was the group’s second-in-command, I later learned, so no wonder he talked like a bureaucrat. ‘And not only you people on the barges,’ he said as he adjusted his armband. ‘These are critical times, and things get busy at the police station, so we’re in charge of wharf security — all of it.’
I looked up into the blue sky, with its patches of puffy white clouds, then stood on my tiptoes to gaze at the top of the General Affairs Building — no signs of those so-called critical times, as far as I could see. ‘What’s all this nonsense about critical times?’ I said. ‘What’s so critical about them? I for one can’t see it.’
‘If we let a kongpi like you see things,’ Wang Xiaogai said with a sneer, ‘they wouldn’t be critical, would they?’
Usually, when we pulled up to a pier, I avoided the other boat people, either by going ashore before or after them. On this occasion I’d been the first person ashore, so after leaving the Security Group office, I headed for Milltown. But I hadn’t got far before Wang Xiaogai and the others caught up with me. ‘Stop right there,’ they called out. ‘You have to wait till everyone’s ashore, so you can all go into town together.’
‘Says who?’ I said. ‘We’re boat people, not soldiers. Why do we have to travel as a unit?’
‘Instructions from our superiors,’ Xiaogai said. ‘A new regulation. Critical times always require new regulations. Otherwise they wouldn’t be critical. The regulation takes effect today. Members of the Sunshine Fleet are not permitted to go wherever they damn well please in town.’
I looked over at the distant streets, where people seemed to be going wherever they damn well pleased. ‘Why do boat people have to travel together,’ I said, ‘but people in town can go where they damn well please?’
Wang Xiaogai’s gaze followed mine. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said with a derisive snort. ‘We treat everybody the same, boat people and townspeople. We were just told to deal with signs of trouble — wherever the wind’s blowing and the grass is swaying, on land and on water.’
I hated people playing with words, so I said, ‘Does that mean you can always tell how the wind’s blowing and the grass is swaying? Fine, go and watch the wind and grass if you want, but forget about keeping me under observation. I’m going into town, it’s my right.’
Xiaogai pushed me back. ‘I’m not going to argue with you,’ he warned. ‘Your rights don’t count during critical times, and I’m telling you not to go anywhere by yourself.’
Baldy walked up and gave me a shove. ‘Your boat people are on their way. Wait for them. It won’t kill you.’
But Scabby Five was the worst. Taking a red and white truncheon from his waistband, he pointed it at me. ‘That loud-mouth of yours isn’t going to do you a bit of good,’ he said. ‘Who said you had any rights? That’s one thing people like you don’t have.’
I stared at the truncheon in his hand. ‘What do you plan to do with that,’ I said with a sneer. ‘Enter a relay race?’
‘Go ahead, laugh,’ he said. ‘But this is a security group, and if you disturb the peace in Milltown, I’ll use it on your head.’
‘Come on, then,’ I said as I pressed up close to him. ‘I just disturbed the peace. Now use that on my head.’
Xiaogai and Baldy Chen rushed up to pull us apart, just as there was a sudden flurry of activity at the pier. The barge crews were coming ashore. Seeing what was happening, the security group sprang into action. Xiaogai pulled a whistle out of his pocket and blew it. Scabby Five and Baldy cast sombre looks at Xiaogai, who draped the whistle around his neck and said, ‘Take your positions and get ready for action!’
Action? What was he expecting? To my amazement, I saw that they planned to follow the crews as they disembarked, like a trio of annoying dogs tagging along behind the rag-tag, boisterous gang of boat people. Xiaogai called out numbers that Baldy Chen recorded in his notebook.
At first the boat people didn’t realize they were being followed. It was common knowledge that the Sunnyside Fleet — men and women, old and young — came to town in a slovenly group, leaving splayed footprints in the road and bringing all manner of containers with them, including woven baskets and plastic pails. Their joyful expressions belied the sounds of bickering that marked their passage — they were a happy group. So I fell in behind them, adding a morose tail. They turned around. ‘I see Dongliang’s coming with us today,’ one of them commented with a puzzled look. ‘He’s in a good mood.’
‘I thought you went ashore early,’ Desheng said. ‘What are you hanging around here for?’
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. They turned and saw what was behind them. ‘Hey, it’s Scabby Five and Baldy Chen, and there’s Xiaogai. What are they doing? They seem burdened by a guilty conscience, whether they’ve done anything wrong or not.’
Someone, it must have been Six-Fingers Wang, uttered a panicky scream. ‘They’re going to arrest us!’ The women grabbed their kids and scattered, while the men’s reactions varied: some bent at the waist, clenched their fists and stood their ground; others wrapped their arms around roadside trees. Chunsheng, timid as always, crouched down and covered his head.
The chaos among the boat people was echoed by chaos among the security group. A flustered Xiaogai blew his whistle madly — with no results — then cupped his hands, gesturing for everyone to come back. ‘Don’t scatter,’ he shouted. ‘Stay as a group. Don’t pay any attention to Six-Fingers’s crazy talk. We’re not going to arrest anybody! We’re here to supervise people, not arrest them.’