The lights in Pock-faced Li’s bean-curd shop, which was next door to the inn, came on, as Li and his wife busied themselves emptying bags of soy beans that were piled up at their door on to their millstone. Father had always liked the bean curd from this shop, and since you could buy it without ration coupons, I figured this was too good an opportunity to pass up. Father could use some nutritious food. ‘Two cakes of bean curd!’ I called out. ‘I’ll buy two cakes.’
The response was immediate. Li’s wife stepped outside with two cakes, but when she didn’t see anyone at the door, she cried out, ‘Who’s that shouting? A ghost?’
‘Over here,’ I said with a wave of my hand. ‘It’s me.’
Seeing me sitting on the steps of the inn, she said with obvious displeasure, ‘You must think you’re some kind of big shot, buying bean curd with the airs of an official! Rather than take a few steps, you expect me to deliver it to you.’
I tried to stand up, but couldn’t, and was reminded that buying the bean curd would stop me from doing what I’d come to do. How would it look if I went searching for Zhao Chuntang with two cakes of bean curd in my hands? I changed my mind. ‘Forget it,’ I said to Li’s wife. ‘I don’t want it after all. I’ll just rest here a while.’
‘How am I supposed to trust anything you say?’ she grumbled. ‘First one thing, then another. Are you going to rest or do you want this bean curd? Don’t play games with me. There are plenty of customers for bean curd from our shop.’
I muttered an apology, then changed the subject. ‘Do you know where Zhao Chuntang moved to, Aunty?’
Something clicked when she heard my question. Still holding the two cakes of bean curd, she gave me a long look, her eyes lighting up, and exclaimed, ‘Aha, you’re Ku something-or-other Liang, aren’t you? I know you, you’re Ku Wenxuan’s son. Still running around pleading your father’s case, are you? Well, you can stop running. They’ve located the martyr Deng Shaoxiang’s son. It isn’t your dad and it isn’t the idiot Bianjin. The ordained descendant is a one-time schoolteacher in Wufu with a bright future. He used to be a middle-school headteacher, but has been promoted to chief of the Education Bureau.’
About halfway through her rant, she noticed the pained grimace on my face, and a note of fear crept into her voice. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she demanded. ‘You look as if you’d eat me alive if you could. Well, I’m not the one who determined that you’re not the descendants of the martyr. I heard that from Aunty Wang at the inn, who heard it from some comrades in the investigative team.’
Just then Pock-faced Li walked outside in his apron, looking angry, and without so much as a glance at me railed at his wife, ‘You blabbermouth, what are you doing out here — selling bean curd or selling information? And if you’re a spy selling information, you’re supposed to ask how much they’re paying and who you’re selling it to. A dog’s got a better memory than you. Have you forgotten how his dad once sent people over to chop off our capitalist’s tail, how they confiscated three bags of beans and our millstone? I guess you don’t remember how you screamed and wailed. But now the scar is healed and the pain’s a distant memory, is that it? Don’t you dare answer his questions till they give us back our three bags of beans!’
Pock-faced Li’s hatred of my father took me by surprise, since I had no idea that Father and this couple had a past grievance. But then I was reminded of Li Yuhe’s song in the opera Red Lantern: ‘Plant a peach tree and you get peaches, sow rose seeds and roses bloom.’ That, in a word, summed up the failure of my father’s political career. I gritted my teeth and walked over to People’s Avenue under the withering stares of Li and his wife. Once I was out of view I breathed a sigh of relief. Night had fallen and the streetlamps were lit, leaving one side of Milltown’s streets in darkness. The town’s main street looked cleaner than ever, in contrast to the lanes, which appeared even dirtier than before. Oily smoke from kitchens filled the air with the tempting smells of pork and spicy greens. My stomach began to grumble as I wondered where to go now. Li’s wife hadn’t produced any evidence to back up what she’d told me, but the news that a new descendant of Deng Shaoxiang had been chosen must have already been making the rounds in town. Father’s long wait was about to end in a crushing defeat. He wouldn’t believe it, of course, but that no longer mattered.
As I passed the darkened culture hall I noticed shadowy objects on the remains of the open-air stage. Someone had tossed a broken chair on to the stage, and in my mind’s eye I saw a pair of shamed figures being pushed up on to the stage: my father and me. I was standing, hands tied behind my back; Father, naked, was sitting in the tilting chair, head bowed as he revealed his disfigured penis to the crowd below. ‘I’m not guilty of anything,’ he said, his grey head bowed. Wind passing my ears carried the people’s angry shouts. ‘Yes, you are, you’re guilty!’ Then a barrage of arrows flew at him from all directions, and I saw my dying father, his body impaled by arrows, terror filling his eyes, turn to me and say, ‘Tell them, son, tell them whose son I am. Tell them I’m Deng Shaoxiang’s son!’
I couldn’t look at that stage or the chair any longer, so I turned and trotted over to the chess pavilion. I didn’t have anything particular in mind, but that was a place where people gathered and rumours spread, and I decided to find out from someone where Zhao Chuntang’s new home was. I was intent on rescuing Father. When I reached the pavilion, I was surprised to find the place deserted. Widow Fang had left with her stall and so had the people who had once gathered around it. I saw several oil transporters and cargo trucks in the car park, and some of the drivers playing poker on a tarpaulin they’d spread out on the ground. A man with a full beard waved to me from the cab of his truck. ‘Want a ride? Come on up, I’m getting ready to shove off. I’ll take you to Xingfu for fifty cents.’
Fifty cents to Xingfu. Xingfu again. Too bad I couldn’t go this time.
I paced the area around the pavilion, watching my shadow shrink and lengthen under a streetlamp. I was wavering. Suddenly I doubted the wisdom of coming ashore in the first place. Kongpi, that’s what my vow to Father was, kongpi! I couldn’t find Zhao Chuntang, but even if I could, what could I say to get him to go aboard our barge and apologize to Father? Nothing, unless I had a gun or happened to be his superior. I had nothing. I was nothing. Nothing but a kongpi.
I stared blankly at the partially demolished pavilion; it was hardly more than rubble. A gust of wind blew open a corner of the plastic wrapping, releasing a weird triangle of dim light that nonetheless hurt my eyes. The light unexpectedly drew me to it; I crept inside.
Workers’ tools were strewn all over the floor — hammers, pickaxes and some small jacks — but their owners were not there; nor was the idiot Bianjin. I did, however, see a pair of his geese, one of which was perched cockily on one of the hammers; the other one unforgivably stood atop the martyr’s memorial stone and was soiling it with its excrement.
It was that stone that had sent the dim light my way, presenting me with the greatest inspiration I’d ever had. It was lying on its side, secured by thick ropes, which could only mean that they would be moving it within the next few days, and when it left it would take the martyr’s spirit with it. Would they go to Phoenix in the upper reaches, or to Wufu, some forty li up the road? At that moment, a light went on in my head and I felt my blood begin to churn as a splendid, almost manic idea was born. I wanted that memorial stone. I’d make it mine by moving it to our barge. I was going to return Deng Shaoxiang’s martyr spirit to my father!