Xiaogai waited at the door while we went inside, followed by Scabby Five and Baldy Chen, who stood just inside the doorway, one on each side, like guardian deities. ‘Watch where you’re peeing, Six-Fingers,’ Scabby called out, disgusted by the man’s indelicate way of relieving himself. ‘Are you a man or a donkey? You’re pissing all over the place. You’re in town now, not on the boat, so step up to the urinal.’
‘What’s your interest here?’ Six-Fingers replied. ‘Security or pissing? Or is pissing part of security?’
‘That’s enough smart talk from you,’ Baldy Chen said. ‘You can read, can’t you? See that sign on the wall? “ONE SMALL STEP CLOSER TO THE URINAL IS A GIANT LEAP FOR CIVILIZATION.” It wouldn’t kill you to step up closer to the urinal, would it?’
Six-Fingers didn’t move, so Scabby walked up, stuck his security truncheon into the man’s back and nudged him forward. ‘I’m warning you, Six-Fingers, don’t give me any lip. It’s not just your pissing attitude I’m concerned about. You have political problems too. Who told you to shout something about arrests back there? I tell you, starting rumours is a political offence!’
The stream from Six-Fingers stopped abruptly, and I had to laugh. Scabby turned his anger on me. ‘Go ahead, Kongpi, laugh all you want, but you’re a worse case than him. Do you really think we don’t know what you did?’ He jumped over to the squat-toilet area and pointed to the scribbling on the wall with his truncheon. ‘Did you write this scurrilous attack on the leadership?’
I moved up to get a closer look. The words ‘ZHAO CHUNTANG IS AN ALIEN CLASS ELEMENT’ had been written in crayon. ‘Who says I wrote this? I don’t even know what an alien class element is. You’re the genius, you tell me.’
He obviously didn’t know either. ‘I know it’s nothing good, or it wouldn’t have the word “element” in it,’ he said. ‘You’ve written counter-revolutionary slogans before, so who are we supposed to suspect if not you?’
Everyone has his Achilles heel, and that was mine. I was too young to have a black mark on my record, that I knew, but I couldn’t work out what doing a number two in a public toilet had to do with politics. That added to my discomfort at having our toilet activities so closely monitored. Not knowing how to deal with Scabby, I squatted there to kill time. Keeping those guys holed up in a public toilet was the only tactic available to me in this struggle.
Desheng also squatted a few places away, mumbling to himself. Then he decided to taunt Baldy. ‘Why aren’t you monitoring what’s going on in the women’s toilet? With your authority, what’s to stop you?’
‘Enough of that,’ Baldy said. ‘Our security group is understaffed at the moment, but there’s a female comrade coming.’
Scabby Five appeared at my side and glared at me. ‘Kongpi,’ he said, ‘is that the best you can come up with, a bit of passive resistance? You’re supposed to pull down your pants before you shit. But go ahead, squat there. I’ll keep you company.’
As I looked up at the crayoned graffiti on the wall — ‘ZHAO CHUNTANG IS AN ALIEN CLASS ELEMENT’ — I wrestled with the word ‘alien’. ‘I’ll squat here as long as I want,’ I said, ‘and I’ll get up when I feel like it. You’re welcome to stay with me if you can stand the smell.’
‘Kongpi, your thoughts stink worse than your shit. You and your anti-socialist hatred.’
‘Bullshit,’ I said. ‘I love socialism, it’s you I hate. Your kid brother and sister stole half a buttered bun from me. That’s a political issue — why don’t you deal with them?’
‘You hate the proletariat,’ he replied, ‘which means you hate me because I’m part of it. Interesting how you can’t let go of something as small as half a buttered bun.’
All the time I was arguing with Scabby Five, my eyes were fixed on Zhao Chuntang’s name on the wall. Every debt has a debtor, every injustice a perpetrator. With hatred building up inside me, I spat on it. Hatred, Scabby Five had said, and he was half right. I didn’t really hate him, or Wang Xiaogai. I no longer hated my childhood enemies, and as I squatted in that public toilet, I began to understand the blind hatred that had risen within me: my number-one enemy was my father’s number-one enemy; my father’s enemy was my enemy. And that was Zhao Chuntang. I hated him from the bottom of my heart.
And so, finally, I got to my feet, looked at Scabby Five, and said, from memory, one slow word at a time, ‘“Zhao — Chun — tang — is — an — alien — class — element.” How’s my pronunciation?’
‘I wouldn’t be too cocky, if I were you,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later we’ll get to the bottom of that slogan, and whoever wrote it will be punished.’
When I emerged from the public toilet I spotted the green window of the Milltown Post Office. A postbox stood at the entrance, tall and dignified, mouth open, seemingly waiting there for me. The boat people had no need for the post office, which they had passed on their way to the open-air market. But that postbox and I had an appointment. When I reached it, I considered stuffing in Father’s letters while I was being watched by the security group. I delved into the bag, and when my hand touched Father’s letters I looked behind me, to see Scabby Five staring at me, his eyes shining. ‘Be careful,’ Father had said. ‘Be very careful.’ It was strange, but I felt the letters slip through my fingers, letters that had retained the warmth of Father’s hands. But this time they were fearfully cold, as if they wanted to escape. I tucked them back into the lining, and that made me feel that I was keeping Father safe with me.
I followed the boat people to the marketplace. This was the women’s domain, and where I too could take care of some small matters. By now the security group had herded the men into the open-air market. ‘Do what you’ve come to do, but do it together,’ they said. ‘Form lines and don’t squabble.’
‘Why are you driving all us old men into the market?’ Sun Ximing complained. ‘What are we supposed to do here?’
‘Why can’t you boat people shed your feudal ideas?’ Baldy Chen replied. ‘Will your dicks fall off just because you’re in a market?’ He pointed to me. ‘What about Ku Dongliang? He’s here to buy provisions, isn’t he? Has his dick fallen off?’ He laughed at his own little joke — there was more he wanted to say, and by the way he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, I could guess what it was, and knew it would be about my father. The one thing I could not tolerate was people saying bad things about my father’s injured penis. So I grabbed a knife from the pork counter, walked up to Baldy and said in a low voice that only he could hear, ‘Say anything about me you want, I don’t care. It’s like farting in the wind. But mention my father and this knife will go in white and come out red.’
Unnerved by what I said, he looked down and pointed his truncheon at the knife. ‘I said a dick, not half a dick. But go ahead, stab me. We’re a martyr’s family, too, but a real one, not phoney like yours.’
Baldy Chen had a mouth fouler than mine, and even an idiot would have known what he meant by that. I raised the knife, but didn’t have the guts to use it. All I could do was give him a dirty look as I began to shake with anger. Fortunately, Sun Ximing and one of the meat vendors rushed up and snatched the knife out of my hand.
That, in a nutshell, was my problem: I was quick to anger, but incapable of translating that into violent action. I invariably reacted to critical moments with fear. I grumbled as I bought my provisions — grains, vegetables and lamp oil. A potato seller gave me a wary look and backed away, not knowing why I was acting the way I was. ‘Buy them or not, it’s up to you,’ she said. ‘But you don’t have to grumble like that.’