He just looked at me out of the corner of his eye and snorted contemptuously. ‘That’s funny, you asking about other people.
What is it
you
want?’
What could I say? ‘I’m waiting for Huixian,’ I said once I’d gathered my wits. ‘She told me to.’
‘You think she likes you, don’t you? She says wait, and you wait. Maybe she wants you to take in a movie. Or maybe have a
wedding picture taken at the photographer’s shop. Dream on!’
‘Say what you like, I’m not leaving. I’m waiting for Xiaogai to come back and cut off my dick.’
He sneered. ‘This is no place for you to be showing off, Kongpi. We know all about you. You’re no match for Wang Xiaogai,
so I’d steer clear of trouble, if I were you, and head back to the fleet now, before it’s too late.’
The clock on the wall said it was nearly four o’clock. It was beginning to get dark outside. I spotted Chunsheng and his sister
walking past the barbershop shouldering a bag of rice. Fortunately, they didn’t see me on the other side of the glass door;
that would have meant trouble for sure. The waiting was beginning to get to me, and in my mind’s eye I could see Father, eyes
glued to the shore, rolling pin in hand, and his worry had turned to anger; he was willing me to return to the barge. Tired
of sulking, I decided to go across the street to pick up the quilt stuffing, but I’d only made it as far as the door when
a familiar figure appeared. It was Huixian; she’d come back.
She was loaded down with purchases, and I wondered what that was all about. A green nylon mesh bag over her shoulder was crammed
full of sweets, biscuits and bottles of orange soda, while in her hands she was holding a thermos flask and a sack of apples.
I stepped aside and held the door open for her. She smiled; I returned the smile. As we looked at each other, her smile froze.
One after the other, she laid her purchases on the floor by my feet. Not sure what was coming, I stepped over the vacuum bottle
and bag, but she grabbed hold of my shirt to stop me.
‘Let’s settle our accounts.’ It sounded like a casual comment, but the look in her eyes was anything but casual. ‘You said
you
didn’t want money or ration chits, right? Well, I broke one of your thermos flasks when I was a little girl, and I ate a lot
of your food – biscuits, sweets, orange soda, things like that. I’m paying you back now. These are the only things I remember,
but if I’ve forgotten anything, just tell me.’
Who’d have thought this would be how she’d decided to call it quits with me? I was on the verge of tears as I looked down
at all those things. What could I say?
‘I know I’m acting like a spoiled child. Go ahead, take this home with you. Now we’re even.’ She walked away, heading towards
the boiler room, but stopped after a couple of steps and said, ‘Are we quits now, or aren’t we? I don’t want to make you mad,
Ku Dongliang. I haven’t forgotten where I came from. You may not care about the future, but I do, so please stop coming here
to pester me. If word gets out, it’ll look bad for me.’
The tension in the shop was palpable. The twisted expression on my face must have frightened them. I picked up the flask and
flung it to the floor; the glass lining shattered with a bang, sending the plastic case rolling on the floor as broken glass
spread quickly. Then I picked up a soft-drink bottle and aimed it at Huixian. ‘Don’t you dare!’ she shrieked.
That stopped me, but only for a moment. I spun around and aimed it first at Old Cui and the woman he was working on, then
at Little Chen. They’d never shown me any respect, but none of this was their fault, so I turned again and flung the bottle
at the shop’s mirror. ‘We’re quits!’ I shouted. ‘That makes us quits!’ The mirror shattered. Then I aimed at the second mirror,
which merely cracked. So I threw a third bottle. ‘We’re quits!’ I was crying by the time the third bottle was in the air.
Hot tears ran down my face. Old Cui and Little Chen rushed up to grab me. Raising another bottle over my head, I swung at
Old Cui’s face. Little Chen grabbed my left hand, so I hit him in the head with a bottle in my other hand.
Chaos ensued. Huixian and the woman in the chair screamed, blood and orange soda stained Old Cui’s face, who glared at me
with disbelieving pain in his eyes.
‘Are you out of your mind, Kongpi?’ A trickle of blood oozed from Little Chen’s scalp. Boiling with rage, he picked the last
bottle of soda out of the nylon bag and flung it at me. Dropping whatever was in my hand, I turned and ran, but too late.
I’d barely made it to the door before I was stopped by people who had quietly sealed off my escape route. I felt like a ball
that had banged into a wall, as fists and feet slammed into me, driving me back inside the shop.
A trio of young men surrounded me like three gloomy bombs. One was a powerful fellow with a goatee who went by the name of
Old Seven of Li Village; a distant relative of Wang Xiaogai, he’d killed a man during his youth. I knew that Xiaogai had sent
them to the barbershop; what I didn’t know was what they planned to do.
At first I just stood there to get a good look at them. They were all younger than me, in their late teens, and were dressed
alike, with white bell-bottomed trousers and similar checked shirts. They wore fashionable digital watches, and Old Seven
had a leather pouch hanging from his belt; something gleaming was sticking out of the top – an electrician’s knife. I wasn’t
scared, not at first, because they merely had mischievous looks in their eyes; I even saw them wink at the barbers. But then
Old Seven did something that put me on my guard: he spat in his hand and reached down towards my crotch. I jumped back and
shoved him. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
He responded with a sinister grin. ‘What am I doing? I hear you’ve been a bad boy, letting that thing act up in public. Well,
we’re here to see it doesn’t happen any more.’ Now I knew what they had in mind, and I broke for the door, but again not in
time. One of them grabbed me around the waist, another held my legs,
and I heard Old Seven shout, ‘Pull his trousers off!’ All three bombs exploded at once. They were stronger than I’d given
them credit for. Suddenly, I felt like a sack of rubbish being thrown to the floor.
As they were taking off my belt, I looked through their legs and saw Old Cui standing against the wall, covering his face
with a towel. I wanted to yell for him to come and help me, but I couldn’t, not after hitting him in the face with a bottle.
Besides, it wouldn’t have done any good, not with those three ganging up on me. So I sought out Little Chen, who was sitting
to one side, enjoying the show. When our eyes met, he jerked his head away and I saw the blood where my bottle had hit him.
As I lay there, the person I really wanted to help me was Huixian, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. Someone was choking me,
so I couldn’t even call out her name. I lay there, unable to move. I was like a pig under the butcher’s knife.
I saw a glint from Old Seven’s electrician’s knife, which was moving back and forth in front of my privates. ‘Get hard! Stick
up! Hurry up, so we can carry out the procedure!’ There in front of everyone in the barbershop he began teasing my genitals
with his knife. I felt a sharp, cold pain. I forgot that I was lying on the floor, and saw myself lying in my bed on the boat.
The faces of my three tormenters swayed in front of my eyes, all a blur, but the face of my father appeared in the space behind
them, the crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes and the age spots on his cheeks clearly discernible. There were tears in
his eyes, but the trace of a smile floated on to his aged face. ‘Go ahead and cut it. Then I won’t have to worry any more.’
I was paralysed with fear. Who were these men? And who had sent them? Was it Wang Xiaogai? Or was it my father? With my eyes
opened wide in despair, I waited for my salvation. Now it was all up to Fate. I couldn’t stop them from molesting me, couldn’t
keep them from humiliating me. ‘Can’t get it up, is that it? You
can’t get it up when you ought to and can’t keep it down when should. Without a hard-on, you lose big time. If we can’t get
a good measure, we might remove the whole thing, and then you’ll be worse off than your old man, who at least has half a dick.’
Then, with rising excitement, he said, ‘Bring Little Tiemei over here. That’ll give him a hard-on for sure!’
A hush fell over the barbershop. The hands and legs that were pinning me to the floor went slack as Huixian emerged from somewhere,
angry as a hen. I heard a string of vile curses burst from her mouth, mixed with tearful howls. ‘Here I am! I’ll give you
all a hard-on! Get it up, get it up!’ She swung a hairdryer at Old Seven’s head. He ducked, and the dryer hit one of the other
men in the arm. ‘What do you think I am, a sow, a bitch, a whore? Don’t you dare think I’ve fallen so low that the likes of
you can take advantage of me! The person who can do that hasn’t been born. I know who you are. You might feel like hot shit
today, but tomorrow I’ll call Commander Wang at Division Headquarters and have him send a squad of riflemen to take care of
all three of you!’
Huixian’s anger stunned Old Seven and his friends. They backed off, grinning, and said, ‘What’s got into our Little Tiemei
to make her so mad? We’re doing this for you. Once we take care of him, he won’t come around to bother you ever again.’
‘Don’t you try to toss me on to a manure pile. I don’t even know you. If you want to do something for me, then get the hell
out of here!’ Then she turned and hit me with her hairdryer. ‘Why are you still lying there, stupid? Nobody on the shore likes
you or wants to help you. For that you need the people in the fleet, so get yourself back on your boat.’
I tried to get up, but couldn’t, so she reached down, took my hand and pulled me to my feet. Old Seven came over to stop her.
‘Little Tiemei, you’re a miserable little bitch,’ he cursed. ‘We come to your aid, just so you can help him. He’s not the
good
little boy you think he is. How’d you like him to rape you?’
Huixian spat in his face, then spun around and said, ‘Old Cui, Little Chen, are you men or aren’t you? How can you stand there
watching at a time like this. Get over here and help him. Help me!’
I took advantage of the confusion to run out of the door. Old Seven ran after me and kicked me on the hip. I couldn’t get
out of the way fast enough. One of his friends picked up a cut-throat razor and ran outside, then threw it at me; luckily,
it whizzed past my ear. By then I was in the middle of the street. The old man and woman from across the street were standing
in front of their shop. ‘Three against one, what kind of—’ she swallowed the rest, clearly frightened by the looks of the
men. Then I heard the old man trying to get them to stop. ‘Let him go,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to get involved with the
likes of him, he’s not right in the head.’
I still hadn’t got over my terrible fright, but there was nothing wrong with my head, which was clear enough to recall the
adage that a wise man doesn’t fight against impossible odds. But strange as it may sound, in the midst of the fix I had found
myself in, I had suddenly longed to see my mother. I’d be safe if she were here. I ran through the intersection and past the
general store, followed by curious stares from everyone who saw me. Some even attempted to stop me. ‘What’s wrong, Ku Dongliang?
What are you running from?’
Kongpi
. All those voices at once, just a jumble of noise. I turned and saw the propaganda poster on a wall and conjured up the image
of another mother, a deeply anxious mother holding a faceless child. As I passed the public toilet on People’s Avenue, I caught
a glimpse of my mother, Qiao Limin, standing beneath a parasol tree, which she was hitting with the sole of a plastic sandal.
‘You useless son, you see what’s happened to you? You’re just like your father. Why aren’t you running? Run as fast as you
can, and come home!’
I ran down the path behind the steel warehouse and instinctively headed for the piers. And when I looked up again, my mother
appeared on the path ahead. She had emerged abruptly from the dark recesses of the warehouse gateway. ‘Where are you going?’
she demanded, shaking her sandal in my face. ‘Don’t go back to the boat, not after disobeying him and causing all that trouble.
He’ll kill you if he lays hands on you. Go home instead! Go home!’
I stumbled to a stop, and, strangely, my mother faded away.
Go home instead! Go home!
I wanted nothing more. But where was home? I had no home on the Milltown shore. After eleven years on the river, no home
remained on land. All those familiar streets and houses and gates and windows belonged to other people; they had homes, I
didn’t.
This was the first time I was willing to do as Mother wanted. Too bad I couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. With nowhere
to go, I loitered in the warehouse area until I heard the sound of a bell off to the northwest, telling me that school had
finished, and that sound triggered a memory of my childhood and the path I’d taken home at the end of the school day. With
no clear purpose in mind, I headed for the scrap-metal heap beside the warehouse. That had been my shortcut. I walked past
stacks of prefabricated concrete slabs and wove my way in and around piles of discarded sheet metal and oil drums, until the
path opened up on to a familiar street. There it was, Number 9 Workers and Peasants Avenue, my childhood home.
Twilight accentuated the most peaceful street in the heart of Milltown. Workers and Peasants Avenue was no longer worthy of
the name. Ordinary residents had moved away, effectively handing the street over to officials. A Jeep and a Shanghai sedan
parked in front of houses were testimony to the neighbourhood’s exclusive nature. The cobblestone road had been paved over,
and the tightly shut doors were accentuated by the shade of parasol
trees, a sign of the elite families inside. The roof and walls of Number 9, my childhood home, had been refurbished – no more
birds’ nests and mossy eaves. The red roof tiles were brand new, the walls had recently been whitewashed and were covered
by lush loofah gourd vines. The roses my mother had planted were gone.