Water gourd. Sunflower. I’m sure she forgot that agreement long ago. I can imagine the belly laugh with which she’d greet
this explanation. ‘You’re weird, Ku Dongliang,’ she’d say. ‘That’s a stupid limerick, it doesn’t make sense, like a fart in
the wind. A water gourd loves water, a sunflower loves the sun. Not only that, but a water gourd lives on the river, a sunflower
lives on the shore, so how could they ever come together?’
I’d stand there and take her mockery. Would it anger me? Sure. But mainly it would break my heart, the sadness emanating from
both my rational nature and my inferiority complex. Only a deranged water gourd would fall in love with a sunflower. A water
gourd that waits for a sunflower has lost its grip on reality. For
me, this was the final pipe dream of my youth. My ruminations concealed my timidity, my obstinacy obscured my despair. I,
Ku Dongliang, was a twenty-six-year-old man of average intelligence, with a well-developed body, a decent appearance and a
fiery libido, yet I lacked the courage to tell a girl I was waiting for her. Kongpi, Kongpi, Kongpi, Kongpi! My life was enshrouded
by that nickname, and I needed no one to waken me from that dream of mine. I was alert to the fact that waiting was, for me,
kongpi
.
Having grown used to that pointless waiting, I had gone to the barbershop to see a girl with love and sadness in my heart.
That love and that sadness were simply
kongpi
. So too was my secret, since it could not be revealed. I certainly didn’t have the right to reveal it, but
kongpi
has the right to drift along. And it was this incredibly base right that I exercised on shore in the People’s Barbershop,
waiting for and watching over Huixian.
I wasn’t conscious of my abnormal behaviour until one day when Desheng’s wife quietly summoned me to the stern of our barge.
From where she stood on the bow of barge number eight, she said, giving me a strange look, ‘Did you go to the barbershop again
today?’
‘I’m no counter-revolutionary,’ I said, ‘so I can go where I want. Is going to a barbershop against the law?’
With a grim smile, she said, ‘It’s not against the law, it’s just repugnant!’ Then she blasted me: ‘What crazy thoughts are
running through that head of yours, Dongliang? What is Huixian to you? And what are you to her? As soon as you go ashore you
run over to spy on her. Why?’
I was speechless. Spy? Yes, I was spying on her. Desheng’s wife had laid bare my secret with a single remark. Though I was
in no mood to admit she was right, I realized the nature of the right that I had been exercising. It was to spy, that and
only that. There was nothing false about her accusation. I’d been spying on Huixian.
Everyone said that Huixian had a secret, and I longed to find out
what it was. My waiting may well have been
kongpi
, but I wanted to know the nature of hers; who was she waiting for? The fleet was a hotbed of rumours regarding her marriage
prospects. Some views were based on gossip overheard on the shore, others sprang from the rumour-mongers’ own baseless thoughts.
Some of what I heard was fine-sounding and utterly fantastic talk: Huixian was waiting for a singer in Beijing who had been
her voice coach when she was with the district artistic propaganda team. Their relationship had developed to the point where
the artist was waiting for Huixian’s twentieth birthday, when he would return and take her back to Beijing.
One of the other stories seemed credible. It also happened to be vulgar and sordid. Bureau Chief Liu’s grandson, the story
went, had returned to Milltown and gone to see Huixian at the barbershop. A life of luxury had fattened him up and turned
him so sluggish that she did not recognize him until halfway through the haircut she was giving him. How? Not visually, and
not by smell, but with her breasts. All the time she was cutting his hair he kept brushing his arm against her full breasts.
Finally, she grabbed his arm and said, ‘I know who you are. Everyone else may have forgotten me after all these years, but
not you. You haven’t given up your desire for my breasts.’
Realizing what was happening, the people waiting their turn jumped up and surrounded Little Liu. ‘Chief Liu has been dead
a long time,’ Old Cui said, grabbing Little Liu by the collar, ‘so there’s no reason to worry about offending him. The last
time Chief Liu came to town, I gave him a shave, and not only did he refuse to exploit his authority, but he gave me a cigarette
in thanks. How could a wonderful leader like him have a prick like you for a grandson?’ Together they hustled him out of the
barbershop.
But before he was out of the door, his head half shaved, he apologized to Huixian and pleaded with them to let her finish
the job. ‘I can’t go out looking like this,’ he said.
But Huixian stood by the door and said, ‘That’s exactly how you’re going out! Now you’ll know how it feels to be outside with
half your head shaved. You people never gave me a thought when you treated me the same way – my life was in the same disarray
as your head. Didn’t I go out into the world and keep on living?’
I recorded every rumour about Huixian in my diary. But rumours are just rumours. So I wrote them down in pencil, and rewrote
them in pen and ink only when they proved to be true. Dark pencil, blue ink, even an occasional entry in red – a mix of colours
that enhanced each other’s beauty. But that wasn’t why I did it. I owed it to Huixian, and I owed it to myself.
What I needed was facts, the truth. But I lived on a barge and she lived on the shore. How could a ship’s mast observe flowing
water? And how could flowing water keep watch over the banks of a river?
I continued to observe Huixian, but I did not learn any of her secrets.
B
ECAUSE OF
Huixian, though I lived on a boat, my heart was on the shore.
I refused to let Father witness my suffering, half of which came from the secret buried in my soul, the other half from the
secret my body held. As far back as my youth, erections had been a constant worry. Maybe it was the enduring loneliness of
being aboard a barge, or maybe I was simply oversexed, but my genitals were like a volcano about to erupt. Day or night, it
made no difference: if I let down my guard even for a moment, the volcano erupted. I had observed Chunsheng and Dayong when
they were looking at girls on the shore. Their eyes blazed as unhealthy thoughts ran through their minds, but the front of
their trousers stayed flat. Not me. I dreaded the summer, when Huixian dressed in skirts that exposed her knees; one look
and I lost control. I wondered if I had a sickness. I know Father thought so. But he did not think it was physical; as he
saw it, it was a character flaw.
Was my character flawed? I didn’t know. But for years I fought off the erections, for my benefit and for Father’s. By now
everyone knew how he had suffered over his erections, and how he’d come up with a unique way of dealing with the problem –
in essence, cut the weeds and dig up the roots. With one snip of his scissors, he had eradicated the evil at its source, thus
atoning for his sins. It
had also afforded him plenty of moral capital. By overseeing what went on in my head and how that affected my crotch, he was
able to exercise control over me. He considered this to be a lifelong mission.
I was stuck. Why did he have to be my father? He forced me to study Marxist-Leninist texts, believing it was for my own good.
Guarding against and forbidding erections was also for my own good. I knew that he was not like other people, and that his
rules of discipline differed from theirs. Sometimes I humoured him, as if I were the father. If he told me to read something,
I pretended to read it, even though it was all an act and I was actually doing something else as I held the book in my hands.
I’d become very good at that. But what angered and shamed me was his scrutiny of the front of my trousers. No matter where
or when he did this, it put me on edge. If, on a sunny day, Chunsheng called me over to his barge to play cards, I’d only
make it halfway there before I heard my father shout, ‘You should know better. Don’t go over there in shorts. Come back and
change your clothes.’ Or I’d wake up on a cold night to discover that he’d pulled back my quilt and, by the light of a lantern
in his hand, was examining my face and my crotch. ‘What were you dreaming? That’s all you think about, day and night. Look
at you, and look at this mess on your quilt! Don’t tell me you weren’t having one of your sordid dreams.’
My genitals were a constant worry. Genitals have no brain, no knowledge and no ability to pretend. God, how I hated my hand!
Its assistance was the reason why I left evidence of my genital crimes on my quilt. I tried everything. I made it a point
not to let my hand come into contact with my genitals. They had to be kept apart, and the best way to do that was to give
up some of the comforts of sleep. So I began wearing long trousers and a belt to bed; I got into the habit of slipping under
the covers each night wearing a pair of work trousers over my underpants, and prayed to the image of Deng Shaoxiang to help
me get through the night
without incident. I lay stiffly on my army cot, not relaxing until I heard the martyr’s stern command –
Come down, come down
– and fell asleep. The habit served me well. Granted, the stink of sweat rose from my bedding, but my dreams were clean and
pure. All I had was an infrequent nightmare. I’d wake up out of fright, drenched in sweat. I had one particular bad dream
I never told my father about. In it I saw Huixian standing on the shore, calling my name over and over again. I stayed in
the cabin, unable to move, since many people had conspired to tie me up and get Father to repeat a ritual over me. He was
crying as he snipped off half my penis with a pair of scissors. As he wiped the blood off the scissors he said to me with
fatherly concern, ‘Try to bear the pain, Dongliang, it’s for your own good. Now you’re just like me, we’re the same, and I
don’t have to worry about you any longer.’
On the river and on the shore, I was a captive of Father’s shadow. My trips ashore were tightly controlled, my freedom severely
restricted. He limited the time I could spend off the boat to two hours, one of which was for buying provisions, taking a
bath, getting a haircut and visiting the public toilet. The remaining hour was to be devoted to carrying out his instructions:
checking the fleet postbox, and going to the General Affairs Building to see if any political work teams were coming to town
from the district headquarters. The arrival of one of those teams was a special occasion that required special arrangements,
and I was to head back to the barge and tell him without delay if one came. He would then break his own rule by going ashore.
If a team arrived in Milltown, he’d hand over eleven years’ worth of reports on his ideological progress and detail the unjust
treatment and misfortunes he’d suffered during that period.
Before going ashore I’d put whatever I needed in my bag, then take pains to make myself as presentable as possible. Father
reminded me to wear my wristwatch. ‘I see you’ve polished your shoes. Well, keep your eyes off your shoes and on your wristwatch.’
Then he pointed to the alarm clock in the cabin and re-stated his rule. ‘I’ll be watching that clock,’ he said. ‘Two hours,
no more. Last time you were fifteen minutes late coming back. Don’t let it happen again.’ I climbed out of the cabin, bag
in hand, but stopped in the hatchway and turned for one more instruction: ‘Let me see you,’ he said.
I knew what he meant by that. Sucking in my gut, I shook my trousers and said, ‘OK, take a good look. See anything out of
order?’
With concern in his eyes, he looked at my crotch. ‘What kind of attitude is that? It’s for your own good. Be careful out there.
Don’t go anywhere you’re not supposed to go or do anything you shouldn’t.’ That left only the final ritual. I raised my eyes
towards the image of the martyr hanging on the wall, as he said in a sombre voice, ‘Whatever you do, always remember your
lineage. Shaming me doesn’t count for much, but don’t you dare besmirch the reputation of Deng Shaoxiang!’
Over our eleven years on that barge, people – me included – had pretty much forgotten Father’s and my status. Except for on
River Day, the twenty-seventh of September each year, and the infrequent occasions when I walked past Milltown’s chess pavilion,
I had all but forgotten that I’d once had the honour of being Deng Shaoxiang’s grandson and that we’d enjoyed the status of
being a revolutionary martyr’s descendants. Father defended his glorious bloodline like a drowning man vainly clutching a
leaky life-raft. I was baffled by my bloodline. Father had been registering appeals over the bloodline issue for eleven years,
but I had no place to appeal to. I was Ku Dongliang, and Ku Dongliang was Ku Wenxuan’s son. If he was not Deng Shaoxiang’s
son, then I was not her grandson. And if somebody like me was not the descendant of a martyr, I was a
kongpi
. And if I was a
kongpi
, what relationship could I ever have with Deng Shaoxiang? That being the case, what could I possibly do to vilify her name?
My bloodline held no fascination for me. I was too caught up in my concern for Huixian, and that constituted the greatest
betrayal of my father’s wishes from my youth onwards. That betrayal brought me no rewards. Huixian’s attitude towards me bounced
back and forth from cold to hot. Maybe she wasn’t interested in me – I could deal with that. But I had to know who she
was
interested in.
As I was going ashore I saw Six-Fingers Wang’s daughters Big and Little Phoenix on the deck of their barge, drying mustard
plants. Big Phoenix was standing with an armload of plants and looking at me with fire in her eyes. ‘Look at you, all dressed
up. Off to find a bride?’
Regardless of how bold Six-Fingers’s daughters were, or what they said to sound me out, or whether they were wearing shorts
and revealing vests, you have my word that I would never have given either of them a second look. Big Phoenix took being ignored
in her stride, but Little Phoenix felt a need to take up the fight on behalf of her sister. ‘If you haven’t got anything to
do,’ she said, ‘go and talk to the river, but don’t waste your breath on him. Everybody knows what he does over there. He
hangs out at the barbershop like a moron waiting to snag a wife, or like a toad wanting to feast on swan!’
No question about it, Desheng’s wife had not been able to keep her mouth shut, and my secret was now public knowledge. Sooner
or later it was bound to reach Father’s ears, and maybe sooner than I imagined, if he was within earshot of Little Phoenix’s
shouts.
Suddenly laden with worries, I walked faster, in case Father came out and called me back. I hustled past the piers, where
I heard Li Juhua reciting poems inside the oil-pumping station. ‘Youth, ah, youth, you are a flame that burns for Communism!
Burn on!’ On my way past, she burst through the door, just like a flame, and nearly crashed into me. ‘What’s your hurry?’
she said. Where’s the fire?’
I smiled. ‘You’re reciting poetry. Is there going to be a theatrical festival?’
Apparently, she didn’t want me to know why she was reciting poetry, so she shook her head, sending her pigtails in motion,
and said, ‘Ku Dongliang, how about going to the general store and buying a couple of rubber bands for me. Mine are about to
snap.’
‘No time,’ I said, ‘can’t do it.’
She snorted. ‘No time? You, Ku Dongliang? Except to spend a couple of hours sitting in the barbershop. You ought to take advantage
of your trip to read a paper or shoot some hoops, do something healthy for a change. Is there a circus troupe living in the
barbershop? Aren’t you afraid people will talk if that’s the only place you ever go?’
Though that bothered me, I kept my cool and said, ‘People will talk? What do you think I do there? I get a haircut. That’s
not against the law, is it?’
I went to the People’s Barbershop for a haircut, but I wouldn’t let Huixian do it. Old Cui cut my hair, and in his chair I
felt as if I were the sunflower and Huixian the sun. I turned to face her, wherever she was. ‘Sit still,’ Old Cui would say
as he turned my head back, ‘and quit looking where you’re not supposed to. Keep your eyes on the mirror.’ So I looked at the
mirror, and my gaze was transformed into a sunflower that struggled to turn to the sun, usually squinting at Huixian out of
the corner of my eye, which gave me a strange, ugly appearance. When Old Cui glanced in the mirror and saw what I was looking
at, he thumped me on the shoulder. ‘Watch out, Kongpi, or your eyes will fall out of their sockets.’
Ah, the mirror had revealed my secret, so I went over to get a newspaper and covered my eyes with it. Running short of patience,
Cui tore the paper out of my hands and tossed it to the floor. ‘High officials can read the newspaper when they’re getting
their hair cut, not you.’ Knowing what was on my mind, he didn’t like it
one bit, and he took his disgust out on my scalp. He cut everybody else’s hair with tender concern, but not mine. To him my
head was a dark, bleak patch of ground, which he attacked with scissors in one hand and clippers in the other, like a reaping
machine. And there was nothing I could do about it, because when I complained that it hurt, he stopped, turned to Huixian,
and said, ‘Here, take over. The people from the Sunnyside Fleet are too much trouble. I’m turning them all over to you.’
Huixian would shoot me a quick glance before smiling ambiguously at Old Cui and saying, deftly masking her attempt to get
out of it, ‘You’re a model worker, Old Cui. No one can compete with you, so you go ahead. Besides, he won’t let me work on
him anyway.’
Why wouldn’t I? She should have been curious, should have wondered what that was all about, but she wasn’t curious about an
eccentric like me, and not interested in asking. I actually felt OK about that, since I didn’t have to make up a story. But
disappointment took over as I tried to imagine what place, if any, I held in her heart. Maybe to her I was a
kongpi
, and the thoughts of a
kongpi
are
kongpi
, as are the eccentricities of a
kongpi
, so there was no need to give me another thought.
At the People’s Barbershop I was able to probe the rumours I’d heard about Huixian. Given the infrequency of my trips ashore,
the accuracy of my research was about one in ten thousand. There were times when I wished I were one of those swivelling chairs,
so I could be with Huixian morning, noon and night. Or I wished I were her scissors, always in the vicinity of people’s heads,
wondering who they were and if they’d really come for a haircut, or were just pretending. Why did some people keep dawdling
until they could get her to cut their hair? They talked about anything and everything, and they could well have been flirting.
I needed to keep a close eye on them. My eyes were a camera focused only on Huixian. My ears were a phonograph, with the same
intent. Too
bad my time ashore was so limited, and my camera and phonograph had such restricted functions. When I was there, Huixian was
so close, but still I was unable to glean any secrets of her heart.
The women who came to the barbershop talked mostly of romance and marriage. I found their wagging tongues valuable, but they
could never stay on one topic long enough. They were eager to pry into her private life. Did she have a mate picked out, they
wondered aloud. Is the boy you’ve chosen really in Beijing? That’d get my antennae twitching. But when they saw she wasn’t
interested in talking to them, they’d switch to the weather, or ask about the latest hair-styles. What would look best for
my face, Huixian? I had to bite my tongue to keep from reminding them that no hair-style could improve their looks. Ask more
questions, go on, ask her who the boy is. They couldn’t hear me, of course, and they only wanted to talk about hair-styles.
The camera in my eyes was secretly aimed at Huixian, the phonograph in my ears went on strike, and I angrily shut it down.