I jumped down off the stool, flustered, picked up my bag and held it in front of me to hide the bulge in my trousers. I fled from the People’s Barbershop before anyone knew what was happening. ‘What got into him?’ someone shouted. ‘Did he say something?’
I looked behind me. Huixian had run to the door. I’d really offended her this time. Her face was flushed. She raised her fist; she was still holding the bar of soap. ‘Ku Dongliang!’ she shouted. ‘You’re crazy. People kept telling me you were, but I didn’t believe them. Now I do! And you said you wanted to talk! I tell you, go to Horsebridge, that’s where the lunatic asylum is!’
I ran like an escaped convict, all the way to the public toilet on People’s Avenue. I’d shamed myself, and every time I did that on the shore, that’s where I went. I was a sick young man, and this was my remedy. But, just my luck, the toilet offered no aid this time, had no place for me. A skinny monkey of a man was standing in front of the only cubicle, impatiently trying to undo a knot in his trouser sash. I couldn’t get him to hurry, and was forced to stand there and wait. And as I watched him getting ready to urinate, I found myself envying him. What a good life people like him had, with a home to return to when the need to vent his desire came upon him, able to relieve himself in the toilet, pull up his pants, and leave without a care, unlike me, who had a different need for a public toilet. The stink inside got stronger, so I edged closer to the urinals. But the smell was strong there too, forcing me to hold my nose.
Outside, either a gust of wind or a passer-by kicked up the sand on the ground and called out to me. ‘Danger, Dongliang, danger!’ It sounded so familiar. It was my mother’s voice. I went out and looked around, but there was not a trace of Qiao Limin, who had been gone from Milltown for years. I was puzzled. What special talents did she have? After all this time, being so far away, how and why had she returned now to interfere with my private life? I was in control of my own body, and yet her voice could come on the wind to remind me that I was twenty-six years old and ought to have a sense of shame and propriety, that I must keep up the struggle against erections and must not continually seek that remedy; I must stop acting rashly and find a new solution. A determination to mend my ways arose as I headed back inside and stood in front of the urinals, head down. I could sense Qiao Limin’s shadow floating in the air outside, forcing me to develop a new remedy, but nothing suggested itself. And so I shouted my nickname to myself — ‘Kongpi, Kongpi, Kongpi’ — seven or eight times, and a small miracle occurred: my erection finally listened to me and subsided. With some difficulty, I pissed into the urinal, feeling a great sense of accomplishment, and then, like all the local residents, strode guiltlessly out of the toilet.
I felt suddenly weary. I checked my watch; it was already gone one o’clock, well past the time my father had told me to be back onboard. Time to leave. I took a shortcut behind the steel warehouse and headed to the piers. It was a secluded path. I didn’t know if I should count myself lucky or unlucky, but I spotted several kids from the barges under the rear window of the warehouse; Sun Ximing’s younger son, Xiaofu, had climbed up on to the ledge and was prising the window open with a piece of wood. I knew they were up to no good. ‘What are you doing?’ I shouted.
With a wink, Xiaofu said, ‘Stealing iron to sell for scrap.’
‘I’m going to tell your father,’ I said. ‘You and your stealing! You little bastards are ruining the fleet’s good name.’
But my threat went in one ear and out the other, as he made a contemptuous gesture and said, ‘Mind your own business, Kongpi. What have you been up to? Ku Wenxuan is waiting for you with a rolling pin. You’re going to get a beating!’
Now I realized the trouble I was in. He wasn’t lying. I knew my father well enough to realize that coming home so late meant big trouble. So I left the kids to their own devices and turned back towards the piers, head down, my steps heavier than usual. But I hadn’t gone far before I turned and went back, thinking, I’m twenty-six years old, too old to stand on the bow of our barge and get a beating from my father. No way was I going to lose face in front of all those people. I’d be punished whether I got home an hour late or three hours late, so why not go ahead and smash the cracked pot — hang out ashore for as long as I wanted to?
The boat people went ashore for a haircut about once a month. I went to the People’s Barbershop every day. If the barge people had known that, they’d have said I’d lost my head over Huixian and that I deserved to be driven away by her.
I was the last person to understand what possessed me, but I knew that I’d lost my soul in the barbershop. When I was hurrying there, I sometimes heard the things in my bag bang against each other; those objects had more self-respect than I did, as they voiced their resistance. Don’t go, they said, don’t go. What do you plan to do? Who are you to her? Her brother? Her father? Her intended? No, you’re nothing, just a kongpi, that’s exactly what you are in her eyes.
That’s right, I was nothing but a kongpi, and that made me unhappy. There was so much I wanted to say to her, so why did nothing come out of my mouth the minute I laid eyes on her? I didn’t want that to be so. Why was I filled with affection each time I stepped into the barbershop, but left feeling angry and resentful? How could love so easily turn into hate? I didn’t want that to be so. And since I didn’t, I kept returning to the People’s Barbershop like a moth to a flame.
Thoughts thronged my mind as I walked along, including memories of the time years before when I had helped poor little Huixian put up posters in Milltown looking for her mother. I passed the general store, where the intersection was flooded with sunlight, and I was taken back in time. I conjured up an image of a little girl carrying a jar of glue and heard her childish voice as she said urgently, ‘Over here, Brother Dongliang. Come here!’ I felt myself being pushed along, despite my weariness. It might have been the wind propelling me on, but probably it was my memories. My gaze wandered to the wall across the street from the general store; a large blackboard, recently mounted on the wall, was filled with drawings and clippings promoting family planning. A coloured propaganda image in the centre caught my eye with the words
BOYS OR GIRLS, IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE:
JUST HAVE ONE CHILD!
printed above a drawing of a young mother standing in a bed of flowers, a baby girl in her arms. Possibly because the artist wasn’t particularly talented, the smile on the face of the rosy-cheeked mother was stiff and unnatural. As for her baby, either the elements or the mischievous actions of some child had reduced her head to a pair of pigtails — the face was gone. The poster alarmed me. Could that be Huixian? Fanciful thoughts swirled in my head. Was that her missing mother? What a strange day it had been, with all these missing mothers suddenly returning. The memory of a name I’d all but forgotten formed in my head: Cui Xia. Was Cui Xia her name? The woman who had paced the shore in the rain way back then, now hidden among the crowds in the town’s streets, her dripping-wet spirit now bright and dry, with no hope of being set free. She poured out her heart to me from the blackboard, nudging me to go and look for her daughter. My daughter has forgotten her mother. My daughter, she’s lost. My attention was focused on a water mark running down the blackboard, unbroken tears from a mother’s departed spirit. Don’t forget that my daughter is an orphan. She has grown into a beautiful, alluring young woman, but she remains an orphan. She is like a precious gem, picked up, discarded and picked up again; but she’ll wind up being discarded again, and I ask one of you kind-hearted people to come to her aid!