While the two of us, father and son, faced each other, one on the river, the other on the shore, Desheng’s wife joined her husband on our barge and asked Father to give her the rope. ‘You two are causing a scene. Dongliang’s a grown man,’ she said, ‘old enough to be a father himself. He’s stronger than you, and you can’t tie him up unless he lets you. And even if he did, because he’s a dutiful son, it’d be such a loss of face for him he’d never be able to live it down.’ She was right. The people who were watching us nodded in agreement.
But not Father. He shook his head. ‘I don’t want him to be dutiful, I want him to be better than he is. You don’t understand how hard it is to get him to improve himself. I teach him, but he doesn’t get any better. But if I stop teaching him, he’ll just get worse. And if I simply leave him alone, he’ll break every rule there is. He’s a disgrace, and I have to treat him like a little tyrant, because that’s the only thing he responds to.’
‘All this talk about getting better or worse doesn’t mean anything aboard these barges,’ Desheng’s wife said with a scowl. ‘All we want is to get by and live a peaceful life. I’ll talk to him, tell him to come up and admit he was wrong. I’ll make him promise to stop doing things that make you angry.’
‘Who cares if he admits he was wrong or not?’ Father said. ‘He’s the type who refuses to mend his ways.’
Desheng’s wife was first to notice the pained look on my face. She pointed to me. ‘Take a good look at Dongliang,’ she said. ‘His face is as white as a sheet. He can’t stand the way he makes you mad. Put the rope down, Old Ku, or take it into the cabin. You can use what you want, national laws or family law, there’s no loss of face if no one sees. But you can start by letting Dongliang come aboard.’
Desheng and his wife both tried to take the rope away from Father, but he tightened his grip and refused to let go. But he looked a bit less angry, which Desheng noticed. This time he gave the rope a hard tug and wrenched it out of Father’s hand.
Now that he was no longer holding the rope, Father’s face showed how weary he was. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to tie you up. Don’t come aboard today, stay where you are. Lead as degenerate a life as you want. Go ahead, stir up plenty of trouble and break all the rules. I won’t need to use family law; I’ll let national laws do their job. Sooner or later you’ll be handed over to the dictatorship of the proletariat.’
Thinking he was beginning to give in, I started up the gangplank, and barely avoided getting hit by a flying rolling pin. ‘Who said you could come up here?’ he shouted. ‘Get your ass back on the shore!’
My hip really hurt from twisting my body to get out of the way of the rolling pin, and that only fuelled my anger. ‘Are you going to let me come aboard today or aren’t you?’ I gave him my final ultimatum. ‘If you won’t, then I’ll never step foot on that barge again.’
‘Is that a threat? Do you think I’m afraid of your threats? Go on,’ he said with a wave of his hand, ‘get back on the shore. From this day on I have no son!’
‘Who wants to be your son anyway? Who needs a father like you?’ The blood had rushed to my head and stoked my courage. A stream of ugly curses gushed from my mouth, washing over Father like a raging torrent. ‘Take off your trousers, Ku Wenxuan, and show everybody. Who wants a father like you? Everybody else’s father has a whole dick. How come you only have half of one? Where do you get the nerve to try to educate me with only half a dick? And you wanted to tie me up! Half a dick. I tell you, I’m like I am today all because of that dick of yours!’
My cries hit the boat people within earshot like a thunderclap and provoked more shouting. ‘Ku Dongliang is rebelling, he’s rebelling!’ My father blanched and began to sway. The gaze in his eyes was very peculiar. What I saw wasn’t panic or terror, it was despair. A glob of phlegm caught in his throat, and when he tried to bring it up to spit it out, he was racked by a coughing fit.
Desheng and his wife, who were still aboard our barge, rushed up to help him into the cabin. Desheng glared at me as he propped my father up. ‘Dongliang, are you possessed by a demon or something? Your father isn’t a class enemy, but you might as well kill him as talk to him that way.’
His wife patted Father on the shoulder. ‘Don’t let it get to you,’ she said to him. ‘Someone in town ran into a demon recently, in broad daylight. It scared them out of their wits. I’m sure that’s what has happened to Dongliang.’
‘No, it didn’t!’ I shouted. ‘I’ve suffered for eleven years, and I’ve had enough. Now I’m rebelling!’
On the barges and on the shore, people were looking at me, shocked. ‘I’m rebelling!’ I yelled. ‘I’m rebelling!’ Tossing the quilt stuffing over my back and slinging my bag over my shoulder, I turned and headed back down the pier.
Sun Ximing and his wife ran after me; one of them grabbed my bag, the other held on to the cotton. ‘Where are you going, Dongliang?’ Sun asked. ‘What makes you think you can just leave? Where will you go?’
With a wave of my hand, I said, ‘Where I go is none of your business. It’s a big world, and there has to be a place for me in it.’
‘The world may be big,’ Sun said, ‘but it doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the Party and to socialism.’
‘What’s wrong with you today, Dongliang?’ Sun’s wife said, stamping her foot and waving her arms. ‘Everybody’s always talking about your bad points, but you’re a dutiful son. I told my husband that when the fleet chooses its most civilized family this year, it has to be barge number seven.’
‘Our barge isn’t civilized,’ I said, ‘but you choose whatever barge you want, I don’t care.’
Sun grabbed hold of my bag again and said, ‘Dongliang, you can’t abandon your father. How’s he going to live if you leave?’
‘He’s got arms and legs,’ I said. ‘He can take care of himself.’
‘OK,’ Sun said, ‘forget about him if you want, that’s your business. But shipping goods is my business, and how is your barge going to keep working if you leave? Tomorrow we’re taking on a load of oilseed. Your father doesn’t know a thing about how these barges work, and I can’t let you affect production.’
‘What do I care about oilseed? Or about production? From now on, the only thing I care about is me. I’m a free man!’
I started running, and didn’t stop till I’d left Sun Ximing and his wife far behind. But a couple of kids from other barges quickly overtook me. ‘They’re saying you almost lost your dick today,’ Xiaofu said. ‘Is that true?’
Chungeng sneaked a look down at my crotch. ‘Are you running away to keep from getting punished?’ he asked. ‘Wang Xiaogai says you go to the barbershop in town every day, and that you went there to harass Huixian. Have you already thumped her? Have you?’ Their questions pissed me off, but I was in no mood to wrangle with a bunch of kids, so I kicked Chungeng and started running again. He grabbed his knee where I’d kicked him, and started to scream, ‘You’re a moron, Dongliang, an ugly toad that wants to thump a swan. You deserve to have your dick cut off!’
As I was passing the oil-pumping station, a crumpled piece of paper flew in the air and landed at my feet. Li Juhua was standing in the doorway in her blue work clothes, watching me, her severe demeanour mocking me.
‘What have I ever done to offend you, Li Juhua?’ I said. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘You’ve never offended me,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I’ve been thinking that you know everything about someone except what’s in his heart. On the surface you look all right, so how could you have such a filthy mind?’
I just stared at her, stunned by her comment. ‘What do you mean, a filthy mind?’