translated by Eric Abrahamsen

ANYONE ACCUSTOMED to life along the river knows a Songkeng boat, they’re longer and more slender than the black-tented boats of Shao-xing. Wooden-bodied, their decks are low to the waterline and covered in sheets of galvanised iron. Their deck-tents are distinctive, made not of felt sealed with asphalt, but of mats densely woven from wheat stalks; draped over four wooden posts, they resemble the emergency shelters erected by the roadside after an earthquake.

     The boats come from Songkeng every year, scorching summer heatwaves promoting the charms of the watermelons they carry in their holds. As the first boats of July shoulder their way past the vessels crowded at the distillery dock sharp-eyed children spot them from riverside windows and shout, ‘The watermelon boats are here, let’s go buy watermelons!’ Meanwhile, Idiot Guangchun and others run along the river banks, leading the way to Tiexin Bridge, calling, ‘The watermelon boats are here, the watermelons are here!’

     Moored beneath the bridge, the boats resemble a floating slum and even little children know them at a glance, their makeshift stoves built on the prows, their cooking smoke rising like clockwork at dawn and dusk. People from the north end of town choose some leisurely evening to wheel their bicycles down to Tiexin Bridge with a hemp sack or a nylon net bag to buy watermelons.

     The men from Songkeng are hard workers, but once beneath Tiexin Bridge they revert to indolence. When no one is buying they gather to play cards, or drowse among the watermelons, but when someone hops onto their boat they wake and quickly emerge from their tents. They wear white shirts with long sleeves and dark trousers and unaccustomed to leather belts, they secure their pants with strips of blue cloth. The older men trouble less with their appearance and their pants often hang open, revealing the colour of their underwear. They all own shoes but choose to go barefoot. Even fully dressed they still seem slovenly. Some have been selling watermelons beneath Tiexin Bridge for years and the locals call their names heartily, boarding the boats and slapping shoulders and rears, hoping to win a small discount. Some even show up with red-bean popsicles, bought for four fen from the corner store. The melon sellers acknowledge the calculated warmth of the residents of Xiangchunshu Street with broad smiles, but their knowing eyes glint as they urge, ‘Hurry up and pick a few. There were heavy rains this year and the harvest was bad. There are no more boats coming and these ones will go back empty in a couple days.’

     They use the old-style steelyards to weigh the melons and for a large sale, two men might be needed to hoist the basket onto the platform. If there aren’t enough hands someone leaps over from another boat. Amid the shifting boats haggling can sometimes flare into a fierce quarrel, sometimes progress as tactfully as a diplomatic negotiation. In the end, consensus is reached and the Songkeng watermelons make their way ashore. One of them ended up in Chen Suzhen’s basket.

     Chen Suzhen only bought one melon at a time, taking pains in choosing and haggling, fishing out her money only after the Songkeng men had pounded their chests and guaranteed their melons to be ripe and sweet. The melons are sold from July on into August, by which time the holds of the Songkeng boats begin to empty. Come August Chen Suzhen, thinking of her son Shoulai’s fondness for melons, had begun to make haste, buying more often, and choosing less carefully. Songkeng melons all appear full and round and you can never tell which might conceal the seeds of disorder, so as Chen Suzhen struggled to carry the melon home she had no idea she was carrying disaster in her basket.

     This all happened years ago, and the details of the purchase are long forgotten; suffice to say, the melon Chen Suzhen bought was less than ripe. Such melons are common – they may taste bad, but they are still watermelons. And it’s a common predicament, easily resolved: you can be big about it and eat the melon, pretending it’s a turnip, or, if you don’t mind the trouble, you can take it back to Tiexin Bridge and the boatmen will usually let you exchange it. Chen Suzhen decided to take her melon back. Xiangchunshu Street is home to many capable, efficient women, always trying to save time and energy, and Chen Suzhen was one of them. That morning, her basket already held other chores – empty soy sauce and yellow wine bottles to refill, material for the tailor to run up into pyjamas – and it was heavy enough without the watermelon, so she took it out. Chen Suzhen knew as well as anyone that a verbal statement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, so she carefully dug out a piece of the white watermelon flesh with a spoon and wrapped it in oil paper as evidence for the exchange.

     At Tiexin Bridge, Chen Suzhen discovered that of the last three watermelon boats, two had already departed and only Fusan’s remained. It was unfortunate – she usually bought her melons from Fusan, but this year she had been attracted by the crowds on Old Man Zhang’s boat. Now, Old Man Zhang was gone. Chen Suzhen guessed his watermelons were bad and, unable to sell them, he had rowed off to try his luck elsewhere. Standing beneath the bridge, Chen Suzhen felt the piece of melon in its oil-paper wrapping and was overcome by a sudden revulsion for the people of Songkeng. ‘Guaranteed ripe and sweet indeed!’ she began cursing. ‘People from the countryside are always trying to cheat you!’

     Fusan was alone on his boat, the youth who helped him nowhere to be seen. He was the least talkative of the Songkeng men, and Chen Suzhen knew people who didn’t talk were either the most honest or the most cunning – she didn’t know which Fusan was. She headed towards the boat intending to denounce Old Man Zhang, but she also felt a duty to issue a warning on behalf of the people of Xiangchunshu Street regarding the quality of the Songkeng melons. If you’ve got this many white-fleshed melons again next year, you’d be better off not bringing them here to sell – keep them in Songkeng and feed them to the pigs, she thought, and by the time she reached Fusan’s boat and saw his dark thin face rise up from below decks, a piece of red-fleshed melon cradled in his hand, she had resolved to put him on the defensive. ‘Fusan, Fusan, I’ve bought melons from you all these years, how could you give me a white-fleshed one?’

     Fusan had likely just woken and his face was imprinted with the marks of his straw mattress. Chen Suzhen hopped in front of him saying, ‘You’ve got a good melon for yourself, how could you give me a white one?’ Fusan looked down into Chen Suzhen’s basket. There among the soy sauce and yellow wine bottles were a pile of dripping pickles and an oil-paper packet. He plucked out a pickle and began chewing on it, smiling at Chen Suzhen, saying nothing.

     ‘Fusan, you’ve got some nerve, giving me a white melon,’ Chen Suzhen repeated. Fusan turned his head and spat the pickle into the river, muttering, ‘No good, too sour,’ then looked again at Chen Suzhen.

     ‘Cat got your tongue, Fusan? That’s fine, you’ve got nothing to say for yourself and I don’t need to hear it, anyway,’ she said. ‘All I want is action – go down there and get me a good melon.’

     Fusan had finished his piece of melon, the leftover rind bitten into little triangles as cleanly as if cut with a knife. Chen Suzhen watched as he placed the rinds one by one on the boat tent to dry. ‘You eat them dried? Do you pickle them or fry them?’ she couldn’t help asking.

     ‘Pickle them, frying would use oil,’ he said. Then he added, ‘That white-fleshed melon, how can I exchange it if you didn’t bring it with you?’

     Chen Suzhen opened the little oil-paper packet. ‘The melon was eight jin, three liang, too heavy to carry back again,’ she said. ‘I brought this bit along. Anyway, you can see it’s white, right? How can I eat this?’

     Fusan stared at the oil-paper packet in Chen Suzhen’s hand. He looked at the melon flesh, then at her face, and then started to laugh. ‘I’ve never met anyone as clever as you, trying to exchange a bit of flesh for a whole melon!’ he said.

     Chen Suzhen was unsettled by his laughter. ‘All the same, it’s proof enough,’ she said. ‘I’ve been buying melons from you for years, and you can’t even do this for me?’

     Fusan was still laughing, but now his laughter had grown cold, his face devoid of humour. ‘You’re lucky you haven’t bought a chicken, and then tried to swap a feather for a new one,’ he said. ‘You think all us people from the countryside are idiots, woman? There’re plenty of people in your street, but if there were twice as many I’d still remember them. Which boat have you been buying melons from this year? You think I don’t remember? Sure, we exchange, but here you come with your little packet – you’ve got some imagination, taking every advantage you can!’

     Chen Suzhen was humiliated, she had never imagined Fusan would let her play herself out then strike like this. She laughed, embarrassed, ‘I underestimated you, Fusan! Not bad…! You’ve an honest face; I never guessed you were so cunning.’

     Chen Suzhen was a proud woman and, her pride wounded, she became rash. ‘If you won’t exchange, you won’t exchange, I guess it’s my bad luck,’ she said, tossing the little packet into the river. ‘Country people will always try to cheat you!’ She stepped down from the boat intending to get away with this parting shot, but she had left her basket behind and Fusan had to pass it to her with a pole. As he raised the basket he scolded her saying, ‘Sister, you shouldn’t say such things, what’s wrong with us country people? If it weren’t for us you’d be eating empty air.’

     Standing on the bank Chen Suzhen grabbed the basket. ‘I’m not cursing country people, I’m just cursing anyone who sells white-fleshed melons,’ she said.

     ‘We’re not trying to cheat anyone,’ said Fusan. ‘There were heavy rains this year and the melons aren’t good. There’s nothing we can do.’

     Chen Suzhen’s temper was rising now, and she shot back, ‘If the melons are no good, what do you come sailing here for? Stay at home and feed them to the pigs. Who’s going to fall for your tricks next year?’

     That should have been the end of the matter. The way the residents of Xiangchunshu Street saw it, if Shoulai’s mother exchanged her melon, then good for her; if not, then it was no big deal. But Chen Suzhen had bought the melon for her son, Shoulai, who would eat the middle and leave the edges for his mother. Whether the incident could be written off depended not only on Chen Suzhen, but also on Shoulai.

     Shoulai was seventeen that year. Everyone still remembers his furrowed brow and sidelong glances as he walked down the street; he had the look of someone long persecuted. But who would dare persecute Shoulai? It was he who persecuted others. He’d already killed cats and dogs; so far no people, but some said it was only a matter of time. That though is getting ahead of the story.

     Shoulai came home that day to find half a watermelon soaking in a pan on the table. Noticing the flesh was white he scooped a piece into his mouth, muttering, ‘Why is this white? Is this watermelon or winter melon?’

     ‘I went to exchange it, but Old Man Zhang was gone,’ Chen Suzhen called from the kitchen. ‘Go ahead and eat it, pretend it’s a winter melon.’ Then she added, ‘That Fusan wouldn’t swap it for me. He may look like an honest one, but he’s sharp as the devil. Even if I’d brought a whole melon back he probably wouldn’t have exchanged it. You’ll never see a person from Songkeng take the short end of the stick.’

     As Chen Suzhen spoke to herself in the empty kitchen the note of complaint in her voice was clear. Chen Suzhen never poured out her grievances to her son, mostly because he never paid her the slightest attention. She had grown accustomed to talking to herself in the kitchen, and by the time the meal was prepared she had more or less worked out her frustration. How could she have known that though her son ignored her when she instructed him on how to be a man, and on the virtues of thrift and industry, he had heard every word of her complaint about the boats from Songkeng. She couldn’t have known Shoulai had snatched up the half melon and rushed out the door. Chen Suzhen heard him spit a dirty curse outside, but thought nothing of it. Later, she told a neighbour that it all happened in the time it took her to fry a dish of pickled vegetables and soy beans. She’d transferred the vegetables and beans into a bowl and was bending to retrieve one bean that had bounced out onto the floor when the neighbour’s boy rushed in saying, ‘Something’s happened, Shoulai stabbed someone from Songkeng by the watermelon boats!’

     Chen Suzhen went once more to Tiexin Bridge, this time at a run. Her health was poor and as she ran, she had to keep stopping to squat down and gasp for air. This slowed her down and she banged on the ground to vent her frustration. Many of us still remember the little iron thing in her hand; it was nothing special, just a common kitchen spatula.

* * *

Wang Deji from the farm machinery factory is perhaps best qualified to talk about Fusan’s death. He was pushing his bicycle across Tiexin Bridge when he saw Shoulai come bounding up like a panicked rabbit. Wang Deji was blocking the way and Shoulai shoved him aside shouting, ‘Get out of the way!’ Children might have feared Shoulai, but Wang Deji did not and he was about to start swearing when he felt something wet on his arm. One look told him it was blood. Knowing something bad had happened, Wang Deji commanded: ‘Shoulai! Stop where you are!’ Shoulai ignored him, running for the other end of the bridge. He was wearing a pair of plastic slippers, but he ran like the wind was under his feet. ‘Shoulai! Have you stabbed someone?’ Wang Deji shouted after him. ‘You’re running like you’ve stabbed someone!’

     In a flash Shoulai was over the bridge. He stopped at the far end, pulled up his track pants, and shouted back to Wang Deji, ‘He attacked me first!’ Then he wiped his hands on the stone steps and took off again. A moment later he disappeared into Xiangchunshu Street.

     ‘So much blood!’ Wang Deji muttered as he traced the dark red trail down under the bridge. Then he saw Fusan, watermelon knife in hand, staggering away from his boat watched by a group of wailing women and agitated children. Fusan came towards him towing a line of blood. Reaching the public toilet he could go no further and he bent forward, head pressed to the wall, eyes fixed wrathfully on Wang Deji.

     Wang Deji approached the bloodied figure, unafraid. ‘Is it you? Aren’t you Fusan the melon seller?’ he said. Fusan leaned against the wall, his blood-soaked body shaking uncontrollably, the knife still clutched in his hand.

     ‘What have you got that knife for?’ Wang Deji said.

     ‘Give to Liang.’

     ‘What are you going to give it to Liang for? To stab Shoulai?’

      Fusan first shook his head, then nodded. His eyes were wide open, staring at Wang Deji, the knife still in his hand. Wang Deji suddenly understood that he was being asked for help – that Fusan wanted him to take the knife. Wang Deji shook his head, ‘I can’t take that knife, how could I help you stab Shoulai? It’s too late for all that now. I’ll take you to the hospital.’

      Wang Deji was a good-hearted man. First he tried to push Fusan on his bicycle, but no sooner was Fusan on the back than he fell right off again. After holding the handlebars for a while, Wang Deji locked up the bicycle and threw it against the wall, saying, ‘You’ve lost too much blood to sit yourself. I’ll have to carry you.’

     So Wang Deji, a strong fellow who even with a man on his back could run at a fair pace, carried Fusan over Tiexin Bridge. When he reached the top of the bridge he saw Chen Suzhen, white-faced, spatula in hand, running towards him. ‘What are you showing up now for?’ he shouted. ‘Your son’s already caused a disaster!’

     Chen Suzhen dropped to a crouch, panting, trying to get a look at the man on Wang Deji’s back. ‘It’s Fusan, isn’t it? Is it bad?’

     ‘You have to ask if it’s bad?’ Wang Deji said. ‘There’s blood all over the road; you tell me if it’s bad.’

     Wang Deji expected some help from Chen Suzhen, but when she saw the blood on Fusan … well, women can’t stand the sight of blood, and with a little cry she collapsed. At the same moment, Wang Deji heard a clanging sound behind him – the watermelon knife had slipped from Fusan’s hand and landed by Chen Suzhen’s foot. Wang Deji stopped. ‘Do you want to pick that up? he asked Fusan. ‘That’s material evidence. Don’t let someone else run off with it.’ Fusan didn’t understand what he was saying, and only asked, ‘Are you Liang?’

     ‘I’m not Liang, I’m Wang from the farm machinery factory.’ Wang Deji said. ‘Don’t you know me? A couple days ago we met in the corner store. You bought a half-jin of grain alcohol, remember?’

     ‘You’re not Liang? Where the hell did Liang get to?’

     ‘How should I know?’ Wang Deji said. ‘You don’t remember where he went? Have you lost so much blood your mind’s stopped working?’

     ‘My mind is just fine, it’s my body that won’t move,’ said Fusan. ‘Liang went to buy soap. You’re not Liang, I thought it was Liang carrying me.’

     ‘So long as your mind’s clear, what’s important is saving your life,’ said Wang Deji. ‘Just stop going on about Liang; it doesn’t matter who’s carrying you so long as we get you to the hospital!’

      Boys chased after Wang Deji as he carried Fusan, calling out, ‘Who did it? Who did it?’ Adults stood shocked in front of their shops and homes, already gossiping, ‘It must be gangs fighting again. Look what they’ve 

      ‘Have I got three heads and six arms?’ Wang Deji replied. ‘How can I call an ambulance with him on my back?’

     It seemed absolutely everyone was out in the street, everyone except Liang. At the mouth of Taohuanong Alley where people gathered to play chess Wang Deji spied Fat Xie sitting on a tiny stool. Fat Xie was a good man, but once in front of a chessboard he could not be moved. He craned his head above the knot of people, took one look at Wang Deji’s predicament, and pulled his head back in again. Piqued, Wang Deji abandoned hope of finding help. He would finish this good deed himself, all the way to the hospital.

     Later, Wang Deji said Fusan just seemed to get quieter and heavier, occasionally trembling as though he were malarial, then he was still. So much of Fusan’s blood covered Wang Deji’s back that the man stuck as if he’d been glued there. Wang Deji talked to Fusan the whole way, ‘Hold on, hold on, we’re almost there.’ He was encouraging both Fusan and himself; in the end he managed to hold on, but Fusan didn’t. Wang Deji told everyone that as they passed Beida Bridge he saw a flatbed truck hauling cement, but the driver wouldn’t stop and help. Wang Deji cursed him, and he’d blustered back, ‘What’s more important, saving one life or seizing revolution and increasing production?’

     Wang Deji didn’t know why Fusan hadn’t held on. He had run fast enough – not as fast as an ambulance maybe, but certainly faster than a bicycle. When they’d almost reached the gate of the No. 5 People’s Hospital the Songkeng youth named Liang caught up with them. He was a mostly useless country boy who could only weep and yell at Wang Deji, ‘Who did this? Who did this?’ His patience finally exhausted by the boy’s wretchedness, Wang Deji roared, ‘You can investigate after we’ve saved his life!’ The cast-iron man was now tottering, and shifting Fusan onto Liang’s back Wang Deji rushed to the wall, supporting himself against it, and vomited.

     Liang was still weeping outside the hospital gate with Fusan on his back when Wang Deji was done. ‘What the hell are you crying for? Get in there!’ he said. Shoving Liang he found Fusan had gone limp. Wang Deji looked into Fusan’s eyes, which stared furiously at the sky. But his gaze had become fixed, his pupils dilated. Liang rushed Fusan into the janitor’s room of the hospital, blubbering at an old watchman, ‘Save him, doctor, save him!’

     All we know about Fusan’s death is what Wang Deji has told us. That year, the youths of Xiangchunshu Street would follow Wang Deji, asking him over and over to recount the details of Fusan’s final journey. To be blunt, there will always be those who love to hear of blood. Moreover, Wang Deji knew how to tell a story, mixing in just the right measure his struggle to save Fusan and the remorse of his failure. But this is all long ago, and I must consider the negative effect this story of the watermelon boats might have on the young. Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve decided not to go into any more detail about Fusan’s death, or the turmoil it caused in the mortuary of the No. 5 People’s Hospital.

* * *

Liang was not only useless, he was stupid too, and we needn’t rely on Wang Deji for this; anyone could see it. Auxiliaries were sent from the police station to secure the scene and put up a notice on Fusan’s boat reading ‘Entry Forbidden to Unauthorised Personnel’, and that included Liang, who was pushed from boat to dock, and from dock to riverside, a dreamy look of perplexity and obedience on his face. As they left he burst into tears and shouted after them, ‘So have you caught him or not?’

     By nightfall, some unsavory folk from the streets had descended on the dock and were conducting their own inspection of the scene. Sitting on the river bank, sleeping against a wall with his arms wrapped around his knees, Liang was in their way and so they shooed him back onto the boat. ‘What the fuck do the police know?’ said one. ‘It’s not holy writ, what they say. They may be all right at chasing down whores and pickpockets, but when it comes to murder they cock it up. Fingerprints for proof? A crowd of people saw Shoulai do it – what more proof do you need? Go back and sleep on your boat, it’s not as if you’re an “unauthorised personnel”. How can they forbid you entry?’

     ‘The public baths are open again,’ offered another. ‘If you give the old man at the door a watermelon he’ll let you sleep there for sure.’

     ‘Are you an idiot?’ scoffed a third. ‘Can’t you see the boy won’t leave the boat? And there’s the watermelons. Someone’s got to watch the watermelons.’

     Liang eyed the people around him with suspicion. When disreputable people turn solicitous one has to assume ulterior motives, and Liang was a little afraid of them. ‘I’ll sleep here,’ he said. ‘I have to watch the boat.’ He shrank back and put his head down as if to continue sleeping, but his ears caught everything as the group, paying him no heed, made their appraisal of Shoulai. Realising he was not one of them, Liang jumped up saying, ‘That butcher! Just for a single melon. Is a country person’s life only worth a single melon?’

     The entire city had soon heard about the incident by Tiexin Bridge and the following day people came to visit the dock from dawn till dusk. The murderer and victim might not be on show for their viewing pleasure, but the cordoned-off boat was, and there was plenty of blood on the dock and the bank. Liang mustered all his courage when people came to gawk at the boat, staring at them and saying, ‘People are coming from Songkeng, they’re already on their way.’ They could tell he was hinting at some kind of revenge. ‘They arrested Shoulai yesterday,’ someone said. ‘He was waiting for a train at the station and got impatient. He went into the culture hall to watch a film. They got him and cuffed him right as he was sitting down.’

     ‘Cuffing him is enough, is it?’ said Liang. ‘A life – is a country person’s life only worth a melon?’

     ‘Shoulai’s family issued a statement,’ said another. ‘He’s only seventeen years old. Anyone under the age of eighteen is a juvenile offender, and gets re-education through labour instead of the bullet.’

     Liang exploded. ‘Who are you kidding? If you’re seventeen you can stab anyone you like? Okay then, everyone from Songkeng under the age of eighteen will come stab people, and they won’t have to pay with their lives!’

     They could see Liang was in a frenzy and that he was completely ignorant of the law. Not knowing how to explain the rights and wrongs of the matter they decided not to incite him further and left to himself, Liang gradually calmed down – and as he calmed, he grew bitter. ‘You were all raised the same, and you all think the same. A country person’s life,’ he repeated, ‘is only worth a melon.’

     That night, those who lived near the bridge could see from their windows something like a little bundle lying on the bank by the watermelon boat. It was Liang, on guard.

* * *

The riot of the Songkeng people in Xiangchunshu Street took place maybe three or four days later, I can no longer recall. Afterwards, we learned the details. Two tractors from Songkeng stopped at the cement factory on the north edge of town and unloaded more than twenty people, mostly strong youths carrying hoes, iron rakes and other farm tools. Liang came sprinting from the direction of Tiexin Bridge, wiping away tears as he ran and crying out, ‘What took you so long getting here? What took you so long?’

     Among the Songkeng people were a group we’d never seen before. They went from the cement factory directly over Beida Bridge, and to the mortuary of the No. 5 People’s Hospital. The rest, under the direction of Liang, surged through Xiangchunshu Street, right up to Chen Suzhen’s door.

     Besides an armed rebellion in the north end of town many years ago, the residents of Xiangchunshu Street had never seen such a tumultuous, formidable sight as the Songkeng people’s punitive strike on Chen Suzhen’s house. Nearly twenty of them rushed up to the narrow doorway, tearing it down when it posed an obstacle and declaring they would use the door to carry Shoulai to the hospital, in exchange for Fusan. A few were dressed neatly, and one appeared to be a village cadre: he carried no farm tools, but had a fountain pen clipped in his shirt pocket. The majority had come straight from the fields, their faces fierce with grimy sweat, their bodies giving off the faint aroma of earth and the wilds. Some had forgotten to roll down their trouser legs, and their shins and calves were still caked in mud from the paddies.

     Entering the house, they were confronted by Shoulai’s father, Liu, who had hurried back from some military factory in Jiangxi and had been in the kitchen boiling medicine for Chen Suzhen. She had been lying sick in bed for days. Chen Suzhen was prone to chronic headaches even at the best of times, not to mention now, as disaster struck her family. She heard footsteps like rolling thunder outside the house, then the clang of the medicine jar as it hit the floor and Liu shouting, ‘What are all you people doing here? What do you want?’

     Liu’s cries were swallowed up by strange voices, high and low, the clamourous, unified sound of the Songkeng people’s rage. ‘Hand him over! Hand him over!’ they demanded. Amid the voices Chen Suzhen could hear the keen weeping of a woman, and she knew something bad was going to happen. She made to get up from the bed, but her body would not rise and the world began spinning before her eyes. She shouted as loud as she could to her husband, ‘Run! Get the police!’ But her voice was swallowed in a great roar of sound, and she heard the doors and windows being shaken and smashed, bowls and dishes crashing from the cupboard, her husband’s howls stifled, then turned to screams of pain. Chen Suzhen snatched up an alarm clock from her bedside and hurled it at the door, ‘Don’t fight them! Get the police!’

     Chen Suzhen remembered Songkeng men rushing into the room. One was Liang; she recognised him. Another she hadn’t seen before, but by his thin, dark appearance she guessed he was one of Fusan’s brothers. Chen Suzhen wasn’t at all scared. She surveyed them coolly from the bed and spoke, one word at a time: ‘My son has already been taken.’

     ‘Hand him over! Hand him over!’ they demanded, and seeing that they refused to hear her, Chen Suzhen said, ‘There’s no point in your coming here. A murder demands a life and he’s going to die, that’s the law.’

     ‘Hand him over! Hand him over!’

     Chen Suzhen knew it was hopeless, so she stopped talking and just lay on the bed, watching them and the hoes in their hands with a rare calm. ‘If you think that one life in exchange isn’t enough, then take mine as well, I’m not afraid,’ she said.

     Chen Suzhen kept her eyes on the hoes; she believed they wouldn’t do it. Seeing Fusan’s brother looking at her in despair she bravely met his gaze. In the end, it was he who looked away, only to stare at her pillow, and at the packet of crackers Liu had placed beside it that morning. ‘You’re eating crackers,’ he said, and he snatched up the patterned sheet Chen Suzhen was lying on and looked at the straw mat beneath, ‘You put a sheet on the mat when you sleep, do you? Is it more comfortable that way?’ Fusan’s brother struck the brown-lacquered frame of the bed with the handle of his hoe. ‘You sleep in a high-class bed like this, yet you raise a beast?’ His sneering tone intensified, and fury flared in his eyes. ‘You raised him, didn’t you? My mother has been weeping for three days and three nights, hasn’t drunk a drop of water, and you’re here lounging in bed and eating crackers!’

     Then the people from Songkeng did something Chen Suzhen would never forget. Maybe it was because she was lying in bed, or maybe it was the packet of crackers next to her pillow. She remembered how Fusan’s brother grabbed the crackers and threw them on the floor, crushing them underfoot. Then he shouted to the others, ‘Smash her bed! Let’s see how she lounges around eating crackers then!’ They raised their hoes and hammered at the joints of her bed. Chen Suzhen’s body trembled and shook. She had never imagined she’d be subjected to such bizarre humiliation, but she hadn’t a scrap of strength to resist. Her body bounced ridiculously, and as her bed collapsed, her resolution collapsed with it. Chen Suzhen began crying, and felt she was sinking. One end of the bed crashed to the floor, the other held up, and her body slid like a sack of cement down a loading ramp at the docks.

     Liu never made it out of his door that day. The farm tools carried by the Songkeng people were not intended to kill, only to wreck, and Liu knew that this was about revenge, but he couldn’t countenance such savagery. In the midst of the tumult he snatched up a cleaver and someone yelled, ‘The son is just like his father, they both reach for the knife!’ Liu was widely regarded as an honest man, nothing like his son, but the Songkeng people couldn’t know that. They rushed him, and the handle of some farming tool struck him. Liu sat down on the rice pot and was unable to stand again. Later they said three of his ribs were broken.

     It was the neighbour, Auntie Qian, who went for the police. Auntie Qian had tried in vain to get through Chen Suzhen’s door, but the Songkeng people had left a guard to keep the neighbours out. Auntie Qian had argued, ‘It’s right that you’ve come here for resolution, but you can’t make a ruckus like this. A lot of people here work the night shift and need to sleep during the day. You’re shaking heaven with your noise; how are they going to rest?’ When her scolding didn’t have the slightest effect, she huffed, ‘You’re not in the countryside anymore, where you can solve anything with a big enough gang. You may ignore what I’ve got to say, but just see who else is coming to talk to you!’

     First came two clerks from the local police station, one old and one young, who managed to gain entry by virtue of their uniforms. The older was Comrade Qin, a little more experienced, and known to everyone in Xiangchunshu Street. As soon as he entered he knew the situation would be hard to control, and as he tended Liu’s wounds he tried to talk the Songkeng people into leaving. The younger had little regard for tact or strategy. He pulled out a pair of handcuffs and tried to slap them on someone; every farm implement in the room was suddenly pointed at him. Comrade Qin pulled him to one side and whispered a few words to his younger colleague, who immediately squeezed through the crowd and out the door to call for back up.

     A few minutes later a Dongfeng truck from the chemical factory arrived and seven or eight people wearing leather military belts and blue work uniforms dismounted. Each carried a rifle. The people surrounding the front door of Chen Suzhen’s house had never seen guns up close before, and one boy shot his mouth off, ‘They’re only worker-militia; the guns are fake!’ Irritated, one of the militiamen snapped back, ‘Fake? Want me to try it on you?’

     Chen Suzhen’s home quieted the moment the militia entered. The Songkeng people were, one by one, relieved of their farm tools, which were tossed onto the truck while someone kept count – eight hoes, six iron rakes, even two sickles. After the tools came the people. As they were pushed into the street they were tallied too, ‘One, two, three, four …’ eighteen all told, among them two women. One of the women, of uncertain kinship to Fusan, had an unusually piercing voice. She was lactating and as she wept and cried out one hand wiped at her milk-stained shirt. It was impossible to distinguish what she was saying, but her eyes swept the watchful crowd as if looking for a public verdict, or someone to give her justice.

     The worker-militia herded all the men from Songkeng onto the truck, regardless of wrongdoing, which would be determined by an investigation. The women were free to go, but just stood there; the quieter of the two wiped away her tears with her shirt, the other continued talking to the bystanders. Her swift Songkeng speech was hard to understand, but it was clear she was arguing for their sympathy. ‘He’d come alone to sell watermelons, nothing more. How was it their watermelon money bought a man’s life in the bargain? He’s dead now, and we can’t even come unburden ourselves?’ Her listeners declined to divulge their views on the matter, though some were curious about her relationship to the deceased and couldn’t help asking, ‘Which of you was Fusan’s wife?’

     She shook her head. ‘I was his sister.’

     ‘What about that one?’

     ‘She was his sister too. Fusan’s sister.’

     There was no need for Fusan’s sisters to be on the truck, but they almost jumped out of their skins when it sounded its horn. As they saw it pull away they must have imagined something horrible was going to happen and they began to shriek in unison and leapt forward to grab the tailgate, one on the right, the other on the left, as if trying to prevent it from moving. Realising this was futile, the sister who was lactating ran to the front of the truck and lay down on the ground.

     This sister of Fusan made a very strong impression on everyone, though no one knew her name. The way she lay there – as though welcoming death – was something we’d only seen in films, yet in no way did she resemble the feminine heroes of our imagination. She lay before the truck with her clothes in disarray, a large wet patch on her shirt-front, the broad undulations of her bulging belly exposed most ungracefully. Everyone ran to the front of the truck to watch her, the crowds swelling, blocking the narrow thoroughfare altogether. Children began to blow whistles, further agitating the air in Xiangchunshu Street.

     It was now that Chief Jin from the north police station arrived. A personal appearance by Chief Jin indicated just how thorny the issue had become. Any problem that might arise in Xiangchunshu Street was within his jurisdiction but this disturbance was already well out of hand and touched on urban-rural relations. There were no relevant directives on the books and he was at a loss for what to do – that much was written on his face. Jin sought out the Songkeng man who appeared to be a cadre and asked him to talk to Fusan’s sister, but the cadre was crafty. ‘She wants to die. Just let the truck roll over her. Anyway, the lives of us Songkeng people aren’t worth much, right?’ The Songkeng cadre didn’t understand the law, or he pretended not to, and he wouldn’t assist in its application. Jin lost his temper and rolled up his sleeves. ‘If you won’t go quietly, you’ll be sent by force. You there, gather round! Get this shrew onto the truck!’

     And so the problem was solved rather brusquely. We watched as several men worked together to lift Fusan’s sister onto the truck. Of course, she struggled for all she was worth, but it did no good; she was hefted up easily, her horrible screeches peppered with Songkeng vulgarities. At this moment a late arrival squeezed to the front of the crowd, his head craning around someone’s shoulder, clicking his tongue and saying, ‘My, my – it’s like a pig being slaughtered. These country women are fierce!’ Those in front of him knew the whole story and their sympathies were wavering from side to side. At the moment, they were inclined towards the Songkeng people, but unable to explain their position easily, they only said, ‘If you don’t know the facts, you’ve got no right to speak.’

     After a period of confusion, the truck was driven slowly away, loaded with Songkeng people, women and men, their exhausted faces gliding slowly over the heads of the crowd. They were faces that had clearly suffered fright and intimidation, and some still bore traces of terror, terror and disorientation, in their pitiful eyes. Others, like Liang, seemed vaguely ashamed – plenty of people in the street had bought melons on his boat and recognised him. Still others, like Fusan’s brothers, cast angry looks at both sides of the street. Most fearless was the cadre. He stood above the others, fiddling with the fountain pen in his pocket, wearing a studied expression of arrogance on his face. He even struck a pose, hand raised in a wave. People looked left and right trying to figure out who he was waving to but seeing no one, they guessed this was just a show of fearlessness. Several commented that his casual wave reminded them of Chairman Mao as he surveyed the Red Guards from the top of Tiananmen Gate.

* * *

There, it seemed, the matter rested, and then one day in September Fusan’s mother arrived.

     At first, no one knew who the old woman pacing back and forth beside Tiexin Bridge was. She wore a short, blue button-up gown, black pants, straw sandals and a head-wrap – the typical attire of an elderly Songkeng woman. Standing on the bridge she gazed out towards the river banks, wiping her eyes, which were filmed with white – and maybe it was this that kept her from seeing what she was looking for. She came down to the foot of the bridge and peered again at both sides of the river, one hand to her forehead. Taking hold of Shen Lan, who taught at the kindergarten, she asked, ‘Young miss? What happened to the watermelon boats that are here in summer?’

     Shen Lan wasn’t from this area and was used to speaking Mandarin with the children; she didn’t understand the woman’s Songkeng dialect and told her to go to the local residential committee. When this brought no response, Shen Lan pointed to a red-lacquered window on the far bank of the river. ‘The residential committee. Cross the bridge and go to that house there. The residential committee is in that house.’

     But Fusan’s mother’s eyes were bad, and not only could she not see the red window on the far bank, she didn’t seem to know what a ‘residential committee’ was. ‘Young miss, I’m looking for watermelon boats, for one boat,’ she persisted. She could tell her listener was losing patience and her face broke into an obsequious smile. ‘A watermelon boat, the one where a man died.’ It was only then, as she watched Fusan’s mother’s throat working as though she were going to cry, that Shen Lan guessed the identity of this old woman from Songkeng. As her hand came up swiftly to press her neck, once, twice, stemming her tears, to Shen Lan’s surprise a smile reappeared on the old woman’s face and she said, ‘Miss, will you help me? My eyes are bad, I cannot see.’

     Shen Lan went over to the stone pier and looked up and down the river for a long time. She could see boats selling garlic and chum, iron boats for mud dredging, cement transport barges, even a reeking sewage boat moored by the public toilet at the foot of the bridge, but no watermelon boats. ‘Tell me miss, where are you pointing?’ said Fusan’s mother. ‘My eyes are ruined with crying and I can’t tell.’

     ‘I’m not pointing anywhere, I can’t see them either,’ Shen Lan said. ‘I’d better take you to the residential committee. They can help you look.’ As Shen Lan led Fusan’s mother across Tiexin Bridge, she asked, ‘Why did they send you to find the boat, an elderly woman with bad eyes?’

     ‘That boat didn’t belong to us,’ the old woman said. ‘Fusan borrowed it from Wang Lin’s family. Now that Fusan’s gone, the boat needs to be rowed back and returned to Wang Lin.’

     ‘I wasn’t asking you that,’ said Shen Lan. ‘I was asking why they sent you, at your age, to row the boat back to Songkeng?’

     ‘I’ll row it back slowly. I can row it home in two days,’ said Fusan’s mother.

     ‘Isn’t there anyone else in your family? Shen Lan asked bluntly. ‘I heard Fusan’s brothers and sisters were all arrested, have they not let them out yet?’

     Fusan’s mother hesitated, then came close to Shen Lan, right up to her ear. ‘Miss, you’re a good person. I can tell you, Fusan’s brothers and sisters were only released yesterday.’

     ‘Well, let them come row the boat back home,’ Shen Lan said.

     Fusan’s mother looked to the top of the bridge, then looked down below the bridge, then said quietly, ‘I wouldn’t let them come back here, not for anything. The police said they’d go easy on us this time. We didn’t have to pay for the things in her house, or for the medical treatment. The police said this time wouldn’t count, but if they came again it would be a legal matter and they’d be locked up.’

     So Fusan’s mother was taken to see Director Cui, a cadre at the residential committee. Director Cui was busy preparing promotional materials for Patriotic Hygiene Month, but she gave the old woman a cup of tea to drink, telling her there was no rush, that a boat that size was still on the river no matter where it had floated, that it wouldn’t have sprouted wings and flown away. So long as the boat hadn’t floated past Beida Bridge it was still the business of her committee. If it had floated past Beida Bridge she would consult with the Taohuating residential committee and resolve the matter.

     Being shown to a neighbourhood office was the first step towards Fusan’s mother recovering the boat. Residential committees rely upon the masses, and even the smallest disturbances are reported – never mind the sudden appearance of a very large boat. Indeed, two days prior, someone had reported to Director Cui that a sixteen-year-old known as Crooked Mouth had realised the boat was unwatched and used a basket to drag off the remaining melons. At the time, the cadres of Xiangchunshu Street had been busy resolving the issue of the attack on Chen Suzhen’s home, and with making preparations for Patriotic Hygiene Month. They had no time to spare a thought for a few unguarded melons and let the matter drop.

     Director Cui sent someone to fetch Crooked Mouth and, without revealing the identity of Fusan’s mother, she ordered him to confess how many melons he’d taken from the boat. Crooked Mouth observed Director Cui’s expression with narrowed eyes, trying to judge what evidence she might have, and replied, ‘How many melons do you think were left? However many you say, that’s how many there were.’

     Director Cui’s face darkened. ‘Am I asking you or are you asking me? I’m telling you, Crooked Mouth, don’t think we don’t know about your little thievery. We’ve got everything written down. Don’t get cocky just because we haven’t come knocking for a few days!’

     ‘There were only a few melons left,’ said Crooked Mouth, no fool. ‘If I hadn’t taken them to eat, they would have rotted – some were rotten already.’

     ‘How many melons?’ Director Cui pressed. ‘Tell me and things will go well. Otherwise, you’ll be telling it to the police!’

     ‘Eleven or twelve,’ said Crooked Mouth, ‘many of them rotten.’

     ‘All right, we’ll cut it in half then; say six melons at three mao per melon. You owe her one yuan eight mao!’

     Only then did Crooked Mouth notice Fusan’s mother sitting on a stool, and he could see by her headscarf that she was from Songkeng. Immediately he started in on her: ‘You’re going to fleece me for a few rotten melons!’

     Fusan’s mother leapt up in a fright: ‘Young man! What are you saying? I’ve never fleeced anyone; cheating is always punished! I’m just looking for a boat. Did you take my son’s boat, young man?’

     ‘I only took melons. I’m no Goliath. How could I take a whole boat?’ said Crooked Mouth. ‘Don’t ask me where your son’s boat went, ask Wang Deji’s son. I saw him and two of his friends playing on the boat. They rowed it under Tiexin Bridge.’

     As punishment, Director Cui told Crooked Mouth to fetch Wang Deji’s young son, Anping. Crooked Mouth leaned on the doorway for a while, thinking, then started to negotiate with Director Cui. ‘So, I’ll go get Anping, and when that’s done this has got nothing more to do with me?

     ‘That’s not for me to decide. They weren’t my melons,’ said Director Cui. ‘You’ll have to ask this lady here.’

     Crooked Mouth turned to face Fusan’s mother. ‘So are you going to make me pay for the melons or not? If so, how about I just give you five mao?’

     Fusan’s mother waved her hand, ‘No need, no need. I’m not after money for the melons, I just want to take the boat back home. Hurry now, young man, and help me find the boat.’

     Fusan’s mother meant to go along with Crooked Mouth, but he wouldn’t let her and Director Cui urged her to stay behind and wait, so she sat down next to the window, her head turned toward the river outside. Director Cui offered another cup of tea, which she refused with polite insistence, saying she wouldn’t be able to drink it. She asked if the old woman who used to sell onions under Tiexin Bridge was still there, saying that she was a good person too and had once given her water to drink. ‘Which old woman?’ Director Cui asked. ‘What was her name?’ But Fusan’s mother couldn’t remember, only saying that the woman had a mole at the corner of her mouth. Director Cui had little interest in chatting with Fusan’s mother, and only grunted while she busied herself with her work. ‘When I was young, I rowed a boat up to Tiexin Bridge to sell cabbage; I knew a lot of people up here,’ she heard Fusan’s mother say.

     ‘Who did you know?’ she asked distractedly.

     Fusan’s mother thought a minute. ‘Some people at the Tiger Kitchen, some at the druggists, some at the tobacco store … I knew quite a few.’

     ‘The Tiger Kitchen was torn down just last year, and the druggists is now the Xinfeng Pharmacy,’ said Director Cui.

     Fusan’s mother sighed, ‘After I had five daughters, I had no more time to sell cabbages. It’s been twenty years since I came to Tiexin Bridge. No one would recognise me. My eyes are ruined with crying; I wouldn’t recognise them either.’ As she spoke, Crooked Mouth led Anping through the door. He shoved the twelve-year-old inside and, his duty done, turned and disappeared. Anping appeared unruffled as he stood in the doorway, looking at Director Cui and watching Fusan’s mother from the corner of his eye, one finger digging in a nostril. ‘So, was it you who rowed the boat off? And if you didn’t do it, who did?’ Director Cui said.

     ‘I only untied the rope. Who said I was rowing it? It was Dasheng who was rowing,’ said Anping. ‘We pushed the boat under Tiexin Bridge, then it turned sideways and got stuck there, so we got off.’

     ‘So you got off?’ said Director Cui, mocking his tone. ‘You rowed someone else’s boat away, got it stuck under the bridge and then just left it there?’

     ‘The boat’s not under the bridge anymore, it floated off by itself,’ Anping protested.

     Director Cui lost her temper. ‘If it floated off by itself, isn’t that your responsibility? Go and bring Dasheng here, now. You two are responsible for finding that boat again. If you don’t, I’ll tell Wang Deji, and we’ll see how he deals with you!’

     Fusan’s mother had been sitting hunched on a stool, but now she stood and went over to tug Director Cui’s sleeve. ‘Comrade Cui, you must speak kindly to the child.’ Then she went over to Anping, patting at his pants, trying to smile despite the anxiety on her face, and said ‘You’re a good boy, you know? We country people can’t live without our boats.’

     ‘What are you patting my clothes for, they’re not dusty!’ said Anping, glaring at the old woman and brushing at his clothes where her hand had been.

     ‘You’re a good boy,’ said Fusan’s mother, stroking his head.

     Anping leaped backwards, leaving her hand stroking air, and went back to digging at his nostril and watching her from the corner of his eye. Suddenly he said, ‘Wasn’t it your son who got stabbed by Shoulai?’

     Director Cui snatched up a newspaper and gave Anping a sharp whack on the head: ‘Now I’m telling your father or my name’s not Cui!’ She turned to look at Fusan’s mother, who was standing bent at the waist, trembling slightly, as she had been all along.

     ‘I won’t hold the boy’s words against him,’ she said, waving a hand. She rubbed her eyes with a corner of her shirt. ‘My life is hard enough without holding grudges. The year before last my husband passed away; last spring we had swine fever and three big sows died; this year, Fusan.… A disaster every year, and my tears have dried up. If I start crying, my eyes hurt terribly, and as soon as they do I get those headaches again, and once I’ve got a headache I won’t have the strength to row a boat. So I can’t cry anymore; I need to row that boat home.’

     Row the boat home. Director Cui knew that, to Fusan’s mother, getting the boat home was more important than anything. When she saw the depth of her determination, Director Cui relaxed a little. Many women used the residential committee as a place to cry, make a scene, or faint dead away; Director Cui hated that. Fusan’s mother neither cried nor made a scene, which stirred her compassion. Only the boat itself was a bother. Who knew where it had floated to, or whether it was still within the jurisdiction of the residential committee of Tiexin Bridge and the east side of Xiangchunshu Street? Director Cui couldn’t drop her work to go and look for boat, so she took hold of Anping. ‘Wang Anping, you listen to me. You are to take this elderly lady out and help her look for her boat. You will look from Tiexin Bridge to Beida Bridge. This is the task I am entrusting to you. If you can’t do it, then I’ve got another solution to the problem. What other solution? You don’t know? You really don’t know or you’re just pretending you don’t know? It’s simple: If you can’t do it I’ll get Wang Deji to do it for you.’

     That afternoon, we all saw Wang Deji’s son walking Fusan’s mother past the houses by the side of the river. Some people pointed to the woman and asked the boy, ‘Is that your granny? Is your granny from Songkeng?’ Anping replied nastily, ‘She’s your granny! Your granny’s from Songkeng!’ Fusan’s mother didn’t mind his prejudice against Songkeng people; she just smiled at the people on the street and asked, ‘Comrade, have you seen that watermelon boat from Songkeng?’

     ‘Do you want me to keep looking or not?’ Anping said. ‘If you do, quit asking everyone you see. You can’t even speak clearly. Your “boat” sounds like “booze”. People will think you want a drink!’

     Fusan’s mother tried to stroke his head again. Her hand reached out then drew back. ‘You’re a good boy. Grandmother’s eyes are bad and she can’t see. She needs your help.’

     Anping snorted: ‘Haven’t you heard about Lei Feng? Director Cui is forcing me to be like Lei Feng. If I don’t do this good deed, she’ll get my dad to deal with me. That witch!’

     When they reached Dasheng’s door, Anping said to Fusan’s mother, ‘You wait here, I’m going in to look.’ He pushed open the unlatched door and charged inside, yelling Dasheng’s name, then made straight for the bedroom and the window that overlooked the river. Dasheng’s mother, Li Jinzhi, was at the sewing machine making curtains and started in fright. ‘Damned child! What are you doing? You terrified me.’

     ‘I’m looking for Dasheng!’ said Anping.

     ‘Our Dasheng’s not here! said Li Jinzh. ‘Didn’t his father warn you that you weren’t to play with him? You’re turning him bad.’

     Anping laughed sarcastically. ‘Warn me? Who wants to play with him anyway? I’ll tell you, I’m learning from Lei Feng and helping someone find their boat!’ Anping had already climbed onto Dasheng’s bed and he knelt there opening the shutters of the riverside window and leaning out to look along the river. Li Jinzhi took up her tailor’s ruler to hit him. Anping yelped, ‘Don’t hit me! I swear on my ma, I’m learning from Lei Feng! It’s this boat, have you seen a boat float by here?’ Li Jinzhi tried to pull Anping down off the bed as she listened to his explanation. ‘Watermelon boat? Winter melon boat? I haven’t seen a thing. I’m not a cat. I don’t sit on the windowsill all day and watch the boats go by!’

     ‘It’s the boat where Shoulai stabbed somebody to death!’ Anping shouted.

     This shocked Li Jinzhi, and when she recovered she was angrier than before. She cracked Anping on the shoulders with her ruler as she cursed him. ‘You little beast! What are you doing looking for a dead man’s boat from my house? Why not look from your own house? If you cause us any grief, you just see if I don’t get Wang Deji to beat you senseless!’ Ducking her ruler, Anping leaped down from Dasheng’s bed, still arguing, ‘My house isn’t on the river, you stupid woman, how could I look for the boat there?’

     Li Jinzhi chased Anping as he ran from the house, and nearly crashed into Fusan’s mother outside the door. When she saw the old Songkeng woman, she suddenly realised Anping hadn’t been lying. Fusan’s mother spoke to her, calling her ‘sister’; Li Jinzhi wasn’t surprised by this – all Songkeng people call women ‘sister’, no matter the difference in their ages. Li Jinzhi sounded her acknowledgement and released Anping, looking Fusan’s mother over. ‘Was it your son who…?’ she began, but her question half-asked she thought better of it and swallowed the rest.

     Li Jinzhi worked in a textile factory with Chen Suzhen and the two of them didn’t get along, so she couldn’t help saying, ‘That Shoulai! I’ll tell you the truth, I’ve known he was trouble since he was small. His parents spoiled him: “An unfilial child is the parents’ sin”.’ Fusan’s mother made no response, and it dawned on Li Jinzhi that the old lady had no idea who had taken her son’s life. She looked anxious and restless, and as she began to follow Anping away Li Jinzhi took hold of her saying, ‘Come inside for a drink before you go.’

     ‘My thanks to you, sister, but I’ve had something to drink and want no more,’ said Fusan’s mother. ‘Sister, you live on the river. You haven’t seen a watermelon boat, have you?’

     Li Jinzhi replied that she had not, but then, in her mind’s eye, she saw Idiot Guangchun walking past her bicycle with a sweep oar on his shoulder. Her eyes flashed. ‘Hang on a minute, let’s go look at Guangchun’s house!’

* * *

And so Fusan’s mother was taken back down the street, back the way she’d come, to Idiot Guangchun’s house. At the door Li Jinzhi was stopped by Guangchun’s grandmother, who said he might be an idiot but he’d never taken other people’s things and demanded to know when Li Jinzhi had ever seen him take something from someone.

     ‘He didn’t take anyone’s things,’ Li Jinzhi said. ‘He just took a sweep oar!’ She pointed to Fusan’s mother standing outside. ‘Look at her! Just look at her!’ Guangchun’s grandmother stuck her head outside and saw an old woman from Songkeng, standing hunched over against a telephone pole. ‘What about her?’

     Li Jinzhi lowered her voice. ‘That’s the mother of Fusan, from the watermelon boat,’ she said. ‘Granny, Guangchun may not be right in the head, but you burn incense at the temple, you pray to Buddha. How could you take their oar?’

     Guangchun’s grandmother’s face lost its composure and she scuttled back inside. ‘Guangchun! Guangchun!’ she shouted. ‘You still claim you’re not an idiot? How could you bring that thing back here?’

     Li Jinzhi followed her inside and found Idiot Guangchun in the courtyard, standing over the sweep oar. Its tung-oil coating had been rubbed off in places and the dark colour of the wood showed through. The oar had always had commerce with the water, and once on dry land looked like some clumsy, old-fashioned piece of weaponry, and so had suited Idiot Guangchun’s odd fantasies of war. Guangchun’s grandmother had hung a bunch of pickled vegetables on the blade of the oar, and a damp mop on the handle, where it was still dripping. Li Jinzhi brushed everything aside and dragged the oar to the doorway, shouting to Fusan’s mother, ‘Is this your oar?’

     Fusan’s mother drew near, her blinking eyes seeing little. She reached for the oar and felt it, then cried out, ‘This is it! This is the oar from the boat! I’ve been using it for twenty years, I recognise it. There used to be a red cloth tied to the handle.’

     Li Jinzhi sighed. ‘If we’ve got the oar, we can get the boat,’ she said. ‘We’ll just see if the idiot remembers where it is.’ But Idiot Guangchun had already been pushed out the door by his grandmother to offer a military salute to Fusan’s mother. His grandmother emerged behind him and grasped Fusan’s mother’s hand saying, ‘Our Guangchun’s mind isn’t so good. He took that oar home to play soldiers with, please don’t hold it against him. He told me he got it from a wrecked ship at the distillery dock.’

At dusk that day we saw a crowd of people carrying a sweep oar and heading for the distillery dock, Idiot Guangchun marching proudly at their head. The people following him were grouped in tight formation: Wang Deji’s son Anping, Li Jinzhi, Guangchun’s grandmother, and an old Songkeng woman with a towel wrapped around her head. As the group progressed along the road it grew in numbers. Someone took the oar from Anping, but he made no fuss: Wang Deji, heading home from work, had just spied his son and sped towards him on his bicycle, roaring, ‘Get the hell home!’ Anping leaped behind Fusan’s mother, pointing at her and saying, ‘I’m learning from Lei Feng! If you don’t believe me ask her yourself!’

     Wang Deji later said that when he saw Fusan’s mother, he’d been shocked; he had never seen a mother and son who looked so alike. But never mind the similarity of their faces, what shocked him most was the way Fusan’s mother stood among the crowd, with her back bent, one hand on her waist and the other slowly reaching out to grasp his own. In that instant he saw Fusan at the foot of Tiexin Bridge, leaning against the wall of the public toilet, the watermelon knife held out in one hand.

     Twenty days after its misadventure, no one would have recognised the watermelon boat from Songkeng; squeezed over to a corner of the dock by the boats the distillery used for shipping yellow wine, it bore that particular desolate air of abandonment. The wheat-stalk matting that had served as a tent was gone, as were three of the four tent posts, leaving the fourth standing alone on deck like the crude flagpole of an elementary school. The brick stove on the prow had been cleanly dismantled by someone who had a use for the bricks. Someone else had used the boat as a dump for coal ash, and for waste water, and there was a mess of vegetable scraps too. The interior looked as filthy as the trash boats that work the river bank in summer.

     Li Jinzhi stood on the dock, her finger pointing at the sailors on the wine-shipping vessels: ‘How could you be so rotten! Look what you’ve done to this perfectly good boat! Your own boats are awfully tidy, but you use this one as a trash dump?’

     ‘Who are you swearing at?’ A voice from the wine boats answered hotly. ‘If we hadn’t hooked this boat over it would have floated to Taiping Bridge ages ago!’

     ‘It’s enough that the boat’s here, sister. You don’t need to quarrel with them,’ Fusan’s mother said to mollify Li Jinzhi as Wang Deji and the others tried to refit the sweep oar. They were inexperienced and clumsy, and the old woman, becoming anxious as she watched them, began edging herself down onto the boat. Before Li Jinzhi could come and take her arm she was on board.

     It was a September evening and sunlight seeped over the distillery dock, the air fragrant with the smell of yellow wine, the surface of the river glinting gold. But it was a patch of dried blood on the boat deck that drew everyone’s gaze. They’d been watching Fusan’s mother and Wang Deji as they installed the oar when Idiot Guangchun pointed to a corner of the prow and said to Anping, ‘Look at that pool of blood, doesn’t it look like a cow?’ Everyone looked to where Guangchun’s finger was pointing and, sure enough, there was the blood. It may not have looked like a cow, but it was very clearly a pool of blood.

     Li Jinzhi, pressing one finger to her lips, indicated that no one should make a fuss. ‘Her eyes are bad, just don’t draw her attention to it.’ Anping ignored her and started showing off his knowledge to Idiot Guangchun. ‘Bloodstains are hard to wash out; you can’t do it with water, you have to use alcohol,’ he said. Telling Guangchun to fetch some alcohol he said he’d prove it to him there on the spot. When Idiot Guangchun asked, ‘Where’s the alcohol?’ Anping, caught out, rolled his eyes and said, ‘Never mind, never mind. Showing you would just be a waste, all you care about is whether it looks like a cow or a horse, you idiot!’

     Eventually, only Fusan’s mother was left on the boat, and the wine vessels were moved aside to clear a channel. Wang Deji and the others didn’t know boats and, unable to be of help, moved to the bank. As they watched her slowly sweep the boat outwards Li Jinzhi asked, ‘Did you see that bloodstain on the prow?’

     ‘How could we miss a pool that size? But I didn’t dare say anything,’ said Wang Deji.

     ‘Her eyes are bad, I hope she won’t see it,’ Li Jinzhi sighed. ‘How could she row that boat if she saw her own son’s blood?’

     ‘She can hardly row the boat as it is. It’s more than fifty kilometres to Songkeng,’ said Wang Deji. ‘Her family must not know she came down here, otherwise how could they let her do it?’

     Fusan’s mother swept the boat out onto the open river, then her body ceased its rowing motion and slowly turned about, her hand lifting to wipe at her eyes as she tried to make out Li Jinzhi and the others back on the dock. It seemed she wanted to wave goodbye to the people gathered there, but it was obvious she could see nothing at a distance. Unable to distinguish the crowd of good-hearted people from Xiangchunshu Street from the mountain of distillery wine jugs nearby, she knelt down and kowtowed in the direction of the dock. Idiot Guangchun began laughing. ‘Why is she kowtowing to the wine jugs?’ The others waved their hands and shouted, ‘You’re too polite! Please stand up! Please stand up!’ Fusan’s mother rose quickly. Standing in the distance, she was just a little blot surrounded by the setting sun on the water, her outline dark and blurred.

     And so the last watermelon boat from Songkeng left the distillery dock on a mild September evening. Wang Deji, who’d been to Songkeng to repair tractors, said Fusan’s mother would have to spend at least one night on the river along the way. She was no longer young, and moved slowly, and it seemed as though she was not rowing at all, but being borne downstream by the boat riding the current towards Songkeng. Wang Deji and the others stood together on the distillery dock, watching the watermelon boat that had come that summer and stayed until fall as it drifted back downstream and slipped out of sight.