I had to keep moving to stay out of range of the mop. ‘Why don’t you put that down? Don’t worry, I won’t touch you. I just want to clarify something. You said my father is Rotten Rapeseed’s son. Where’s your proof?’
‘I don’t need proof, my brother is Zhao Chuntang, a Party leader. Whatever he says is all the proof anyone needs.’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ I said. ‘If he spouts nonsense in his sleep, is that proof? I’m asking you, how does Zhao Chuntang know that my father is Rotten Rapeseed’s son? Can he prove it?’
She blinked and pondered my question for a moment before laughing smugly and saying, ‘He’s a leading official, so of course he can prove it. He read it in a top-secret document.’
Zhao Chunmei’s expression told me everything I needed to know: that what she said was not an empty rumour. My heart fell as I imagined Zhao Chuntang opening a manila envelope with ‘Top Secret’ stamped mysteriously in red. I imagined what the document said: Upon investigation, it has been revealed that Ku Wenxuan is the son of the river pirate Old Qiu and the prostitute Rotten Rapeseed. Effective immediately, make appropriate changes in all the materials in Ku Wenxuan’s dossier and terminate all financial benefits for a martyr’s family member. Then an almost paralysing fear and boiling anger hit me, and I began to quake. Top-secret document? That’s not what it was; it was a death-dealing document, and I didn’t believe it. Could they change an orphan’s parentage so easily? — a martyr one day and a prostitute or a bandit the next? I didn’t believe a ridiculous document like that existed. At that moment I was reminded of the birthmark on Father’s backside. Maybe it had never been a mark of glory, but of sin! Could he ever atone for his sin? My poor father, my self-confident father, my atoning father, all that remained to him in this world was a single barge. He had gone into hiding on the river, and if this shameful news were ever to reach him, where could he hide then?
I despaired for my father and, lacking any other course of action, decided to negotiate with Zhao Chunmei. ‘Aunty Zhao —’ Hearing my own voice, soft, supplicating, ingratiating, I was incredulous. Was that me?
She looked as surprised as I was, her eyes big and round. ‘So now you’re calling me Aunty, are you? Sounds strange to my ears.’ She snorted and produced a little sarcastic smile. ‘Well, it won’t do you any good. I can’t save your father, and wouldn’t if I could.’
‘I’m begging you, Aunty Zhao. You have to leave him a reason to live. You’re driving him to his death.’
‘Who is? Don’t you put that on me! You never heard me say that pretending to be a martyr’s son or being the son of Rotten Rapeseed was a death sentence. Take my word for it, the organization has treated him as well as he deserves, and my brother has showered him with kindness. Even after committing a crime of that magnitude, he still draws his pay and receives his food rations. And don’t forget, he has a barge, so you have no reason to be dissatisfied with your lot.’
‘I’m begging you, Aunty Zhao, please don’t lump Old Qiu and Rotten Rapeseed together with my father, and please don’t go spreading this around.’
‘I’ve spread nothing. It’s confidential information, and if you hadn’t forced me, I wouldn’t have brought it up.’
‘Please, Aunty Zhao, go to Zhao Chuntang and, if this top-secret document really exists, ask him not to go public with it.’
‘I can’t do that. I’m not my brother’s superior. What makes you think he’d listen to me?’ She rested the mop against the wall, enjoying the taste of victory. I heard her breathe a sigh. ‘I hear you’re a dutiful son,’ she said. ‘Too bad you have to be dutiful to a father like him!’
She walked away and I fell in behind her. She wasn’t getting rid of me that easily, and was obviously growing anxious. She turned into Cotton Print Lane and sort of jogged in the direction of the Milltown police station. ‘You’re worse than your father,’ she said without slowing down. ‘Come on, follow me — I’ll even let you catch up — all the way to the police station, where we’ll see what they have to say about all this.’
That worked. The last place I wanted to be was a police station, so I stopped following her. Standing in the entrance to Cotton Print Lane, I saw several old men sitting on stools at a table they’d set up in the sunlight next to a water-boiling tiger oven. They were drinking tea and passing the time of day. Spotting me and knowing at once who I was, they began talking in hushed voices. ‘That’s Ku’s son,’ one of them said. ‘He used to swagger around town, but no longer. Now he walks with his tail between his legs.’ The other oldster, who gossiped like a woman, was passing judgement on my appearance. ‘As a boy he looked like Qiao Limin, but the older he gets, the more he takes after Ku Wenxuan, with that hang-dog look.’ I’d forgotten their names, but I knew who their sons and daughters were. The one with the bulging growth on his neck was Scabby Five’s father. A retired blacksmith, he kept spitting on the ground and smearing his spit with the sole of his shoe. The other man was the father of Little Chen, the barber. He’d worked at the public baths, where he was in charge of cleaning bathers’ ears and trimming their corns, until he managed to pull the right strings to get a transfer to the piers as a longshoreman, although he still plied his old trade, clearing the ears and trimming the corns of high officials after hours. I recalled the days when he’d show up at our place with a little wooden box to perform his services on my father.
I took a good hard look at them, trying to guess how old they were and see if they were ageing faster than my father. But then it hit me — they were the winners in this drama. They might have been old and slovenly, but they were more carefree than my father. There were no crimes or sins associated with their names, so they were spared the need to reform themselves. Ordinary citizens all their lives, they’d never had much of anything, which meant they had nothing to lose. They were in good shape; so were their sons. A bizarre thought struck me: wouldn’t it be interesting if everyone’s lineage was as easy to change as my father’s? And if I hadn’t been the son of Ku Wenxuan, but instead called the old blacksmith or the professional ear-cleaner father, would I have turned out like Scabby Five or Little Chen? How would I feel about that? I stood there thinking for a long time, until I was brought up short by the beating of my own heart. I was actually envious of that bastard Scabby Five, actually willing to trade places with Little Chen the barber. I had answered my own question: I’d be just fine with that.
It was noon, and Father’s going-ashore plan called for me to be at the clinic by one thirty and then return to the barge to make lunch. As I passed by the tiger oven, golden flecks of rice chaff fell from its ledge on to my shoes. There were piles of the stuff up there. The operator of the stove, Old Mu, stripped to the waist, was shovelling it into the oven. I couldn’t see the flames, but I heard them crackle. Pop! Pop! Burn, burn, burn. My heart echoed the beat of the flames, and I suddenly felt hot all over. There was a stabbing pain in my foot, and when I bent down to look, I saw a rice husk embedded in the space between two toes. I picked it out and saw that it had the world’s tiniest and most abject little face; the inevitable progression from a piece of grain to fuel for a fire gave it a fearful and terribly sad expression. I rolled it around in the palm of my hand. The rice paddy had been plundered until there was nothing left. The next thing I felt was the hot sun on my scalp, and then I saw my father’s face in the shrivelled rice husk, his look of fear and sadness greater even than the solitary husk in my hand. I heard the subdued sound of his pleas: Save me, please save me!