Freedom Swimmer Read online

  ‘Yes, Aunt Shu.’

  She was with three very young boys. Two toddlers were clawing at her trousers while she held a baby in her arms. Her aunt was screeching and scolding, before raising her hand to slap Fei on the back of the head. I winced in sympathy. Then Fei looked up and our eyes met.

  After all that time wishing and hoping, the first thing I did when I finally saw her was run.

  That was years ago and I still hadn’t spoken to her. Instead, I spent a lot of time spying on her. I knew that the three boys she minded were her cousins and that she was living with Aunt Shu. I remembered Shu standing at my door, hands on her hips poised to attack and couldn’t help shuddering every time I saw her so I kept my distance.

  Tian and I pedalled our rusty bike into Long-chi. Tian had found the bike by the side of the road a few months back, and the two of us had tried to repair it with what tools and scrap metal we could find, a tricky task since most of the scrap metal had been turned over to the steel furnaces. With some cleverly placed bits of string and spokes carved from sturdy sticks, the bike rolled, but leaned violently to the left, which made it hard to ride alone. Instead, the two of us took turns pedalling, with the other riding on the handle bars, leaning to the far right to act as a counterweight.

  The ride was bumpy as we rolled past fields. A couple of goats stood out on the dry patches of grass, ribs protruding from their sides. The livestock never seemed to fully recover from the famine, even the new ones that were brought in from nearby. No matter how good the grass, or how much they grazed, they stayed skinny.

  We hit a fork in the dirt road and veered to the left. The road to the right was overgrown with weeds and grass from lack of use. Tian pumped the pedals a little faster. I could just make out the roar of the river that lay at the end of the right fork.

  The festival was even busier than usual. Ours wasn’t the only village with new arrivals, and it looked like villagers from all around the district were keen to share their observations of the youths assigned to them. There were more goods for sale than I’d seen in a while; the villagers must have seen the new arrivals as potential customers.

  Tian and I wound our way through the narrow streets, past a group of men squatting on the ground playing a noisy gambling game with marked sticks of bamboo. It was early still, but they would have been gambling since dawn and would likely stay the rest of the day.

  The roads in town were smoother, unlike the rocky tracks of our village, so it was easy to roll our rickety bike along. We passed a rickshaw puller hauling a load of mud bricks to the other end of the town, probably to someone building a house nearby.

  Tian and I found a spot in the centre of the market next to a statue of an old government official from imperial times. Tian and I had no idea who he was supposed to be, but he resembled the elderly schoolmaster from our early school days. So we nicknamed him ‘Old Lao’.

  We sank to the ground under Old Lao, keeping the bicycle close by. Tian dug into his pocket and lit his first cigarette of the day. I leaned back against the lumpy base of the statue, ignoring the concrete digging into my back, and shut my eyes. It was nice to just sit for a moment.

  ‘Hey, look, look. They’re coming,’ Tian hissed, whacking me on the arm. I gazed out to where he was pointing. The local girls were walking up the path, a tight circle of them, all wearing the same shapeless grey shirt and trousers. They travelled together in a pack, as most girls in the villages did, giggling and gossiping and pretending not to notice the stares from the local boys. A couple were pushing cheap, flimsy bikes. With their small hands gripping the handle bars and their braids flouncing behind them – to us they may as well have been a royal procession.

  In the middle of the group, with two girls clinging to her elbows, was Fei. I sucked in a breath watching her laugh and toss her head. I could just make out her voice, like dainty bells.

  ‘Fei!’ Her name caught in my throat. I tried again.

  ‘Fei!’

  I watched her turn, half a head taller than the rest of the girls. Her braid arched gracefully, like a dancer’s ribbon, as she sought out the voice.

  She caught my gaze and her eyes lit up for just a moment and then immediately darkened. Her eyes darted about, checking her surrounding, and then her lips pulled apart as if to speak.

  The short girl with blunt pigtails by her side scowled at me and tugged Fei towards her, hissing something in her ear.

  Fei glanced down at her friend and then back at me. She swallowed and shook her head.

  ‘Come on.’ The pigtailed girl shot me a suspicious glare before steering her friend away.

  The girls marched past us underneath the statue. When they got to the other side of the square, Fei broke away from the group, giving a small wave before dashing down the narrow alleyway where I knew she lived with her aunt and cousins.

  Tian nudged me in the ribs and gave me a challenging look, as if to ask, ‘Today?’

  I took a deep breath and clenched my fists. Tian didn’t know it but I had made up my mind the night before. It would be my seventeenth birthday the next week. It had been more than six years since Fei had shown up at the door. And since that evening sitting out on the rocks with Li, I had wondered why I was so scared. My father’s actions may have been a black mark against me in the village, but it didn’t keep me from talking to her. As Li had said, we were all flesh and bone.

  So yes, today would be the day.

  Tian shook his head in disbelief as I got up and smoothed down my trousers. But just as I was about to follow Fei down the alley, another group strode into the square.

  It was the city boys, all wide-eyed and excited, like a litter of puppies. The shopkeepers and farmers were silent, gawking at the sight. It wasn’t just the group from our village; at least thirty boys had been sent to the area, and it looked like this was their reunion. They had changed out of their work clothes and back into their green Red Guard uniforms. There was no mistaking the cleanliness of their garments and clear skin; their urban upbringing shone through in every face.

  The boys tried to ignore the staring of the locals. On the edge of the group, Feng spotted us by the statue. He seemed surprised to see us, but instead of coming over, he turned to address the group.

  ‘Comrades, brothers, we must be of service to our community today. Assist our new neighbours and friends,’ he shouted, and the boys’ chatter died away. ‘We have worked hard already, this is true, but like the Chairman says, “Youth is like the sun at eight or nine o’clock in the morning.” We are young, we are able and we have purpose – we are here to learn and help our peasant neighbours.’

  There were a few murmurs from the boys, some complaints, but mostly they seemed to agree with Feng’s speech. Feng began splitting up the boys, pointing to various tasks and chores throughout the town square, directing the boys to assist with repairs and help clean up. The villagers were completely taken aback as they watched the boys clamber up roofs to repair broken tiles and fetch brooms to sweep up the streets. They’d been expecting the arrival of customers, not handymen.

  A pair of boys came over. One of them had a few thick whiskers on his chin, which surprised me as the city boys I’d seen went to great lengths to remain clean shaven. The boys stopped in front of us and gestured to the statue.

  ‘Hideous,’ one of them said.

  ‘Deplorable,’ said the whiskered one. ‘Get a hammer. He’ll have to go.’

  Tian leapt to his feet, stepping into the whiskered boy’s path. ‘What’s wrong with Old Lao?’ he demanded.

  The city boy glowered. ‘Don’t you know anything, heong haa zai? “Destroy the Four Olds, Cultivate the Four News”. This imperialist dog represents the poison that has been fed to the Chinese people for generations and kept us like slaves until Chairman Mao’s great revolution.’

  Tian puffed out his chest. ‘Don’t call our town a dog, you little entitled city –’

  Li rushed over. ‘Comrade Chen, Comrade Sun, there are a pair of elderly
women who could use some help fetching water.’ He pointed to where two stout village grandmothers were striding through the square, clearly having no trouble balancing their loads. The boys exchanged a look but grudgingly went over to help, though the whiskered one gave Tian a hideous sneer.

  I raised an eyebrow at Li, but he ignored my unspoken question. ‘I’m going to check some of the houses across the square, see if they need some help,’ he said. I wasn’t sure if it was an invitation, but Tian made no sign of leaving our spot, so I just nodded mutely. Tian shook his head as the boys around us raced off to do more good.

  ‘I can’t believe the garbage they’ve filled their heads with,’ he muttered. ‘Destroy the Olds, my arse.’

  I didn’t reply. The boys had surprised me, most of all Feng. Sure, he was confident and eloquent. But what struck me was how much he really seemed to believe in what he was saying, and in the teachings of that little book. I’d opened mine up again, trying to unlock the mystery of how those printed words inspired people like Feng to action. But whatever their power was, it didn’t reach me.

  Tian got up and seized our bike by the handlebars. ‘I’m off. See you for lunch,’ he said, and threw a leg over the seat and wobbled off. That meant he was going to meet up with his ‘contact’ – some dodgy merchant from another town known for dealing in contraband and stolen goods. It was how Tian kept his bribe cigarettes in high supply. I sometimes wondered what Tian could offer in exchange, but figured I was better off not knowing.

  I was happier on my own anyway. After all, I had a mission to accomplish. I was going to talk to Fei.

  My knees felt weak, and my gut shifted so that I had to put an arm out to steady myself against the statue. I blinked a few times to clear my vision.

  It was now or never.

  Throngs of villagers had arrived now. Little children waved lanterns, and a large crowd watched a pair of pipa and erhu players perform a duet in the square. I squeezed past them, heading to the little laneway where Fei had disappeared.

  I’d been down this alleyway a few times, the uneven concrete familiar beneath my feet. Out the front of Shu’s house, almost at the end of the alley, three small boys were swordfighting with sticks. My ears pricked up when I heard soft laughter, unmistakably Fei’s. I walked faster, my heart thumping in my chest.

  But when I got closer, my stomach twisted tighter and my legs almost gave way.

  Fei was not alone. Her head was bent towards the ground, playful and embarrassed. And it wasn’t her aunt or one of her friends making her smile. She was laughing with a boy that I suddenly hated with every ounce of my being.

  Li.

  He was leering down at Fei, whispering something that made her blush violently. I tried to force myself to look away but couldn’t. Li reached a hand towards her, brushing against her arm so that she flinched.

  My vision blurred and I felt hot rage rise up from the pit of my stomach. I gasped aloud, and Li’s glance darted in my direction. He started to smile, but his expression turned to confusion when he registered the fury in my face.

  I glared, willing the earth to crawl up and close in around me or for a giant wave to sweep through the alley and carry me away. Or even better, to carry Li away.

  Instead, I spun on my heels and ran.

  I ran all the way back to the village. My lungs screamed for air, my legs begged to rest but I couldn’t stop. I ran past the village and away from the dormitory, heading towards the ocean. Before I reached the sea, I veered off towards the little boarded-up mud house. I kicked at the door until the old wood splintered and gave way. The single room was full of dust, dirt and rats’ nests but I didn’t care. I sank to my knees in the middle of the floor and wailed. Now, I finally understood the old imperial romances, where the forsaken hero found himself contemplating suicide as a result of unrequited love.

  The rats skittered out of the house, alarmed by my howling.

  I got on my feet, seizing the water jug, and raised it over my head, then brought it crashing down to the ground. The bucket clattered away, refusing to break. I yelled again and took hold of the old chamber pot. It was heavy, made of sturdy clay. The pot landed with a booming crack and shattered into ten thousand pieces; only then did I feel like I had unleashed the whole hurt of my heart.

  I collapsed, bits of sharp clay cutting into my skin, panting. Eventually, I stopped feeling pain and just stayed there, staring at nothing.

  Footsteps on the gravel cut in on my silence. I had no idea how long I’d been there. For a moment, I thought it was my father returning home from the fields. But the cold floor and shards of shattered clay brought me back to reality. The door creaked open behind me.

  ‘Ming.’

  I turned towards the familiar voice. My rage had subsided and was replaced by mortification. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this, even my oldest friend.

  But Tian’s eyes were kind. He held the door open, his head cocked. ‘I haven’t seen the inside of this place for a long time.’ He took in the musty inside, the broken shards of clay and shook his head. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

  I nodded glumly, wiping my face with the back of my arm. My knees were a bloody wreck but I felt I’d got what I deserved. I couldn’t make my feet move towards the door. Tian sighed and stepped inside, meeting me halfway. I wasn’t sure how he had known to find me here, but Tian was full of surprises.

  ‘Li said he saw you at the markets.’

  I stiffened at the mention of Li. The last thing I wanted was the city boys making fun of me.

  ‘What happened?’

  But I ignored the question. ‘Do you think about them?’ I whispered. ‘The way things used to be?’ Tian never talked about his family; none of us ever did. The past only danced around in dark shadows and whispers.

  ‘All the time,’ he said. His tough mask slipped away. ‘I see Ma and Ba in my sleep, I see them when I wake up. Sometimes, I think all this, all the stuff that happened, the famine and the Three Years of Natural Disasters, that it’s just a dream. And when I finally wake up we’ll be back at home and Ma will be doing the washing and DiDi will be picking his nose and eating it.’ He had a faraway smile. ‘But then I go to the fields and I know this … this is it. And we don’t talk about it and we all act like nothing happened. But someone needs to pay. I don’t understand the crap they feed us at meetings but I know that with everything that happened, all of this was someone’s fault.’ He sighed. ‘I was hoping maybe the city boys would know more about why, who was in charge – who had let this happen. But they’re too caught up in their posters and slogans about the Olds and News to notice something that could be right under their noses.’

  I frowned. I had never realised Tian felt this way. He was always joking and playing tough, so his serious side was new to me and I didn’t know what to say.

  Tian sighed again. ‘But what does it matter if we ever find out the truth? In the end, we’re going to live and die on those fields.’

  ‘What if we didn’t? What if we left?’ I blurted. Tian’s face clouded over. I bit my lip, but the possibility was too tempting to ignore. ‘What if went to Hong Kong? If we follow the river upstream …’

  Tian seized me by the collar, choking me as he practically lifted me off the floor.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ he hissed, shaking me. ‘How stupid are you?’ His eyes darted around the room, searching for spies among the dust and cobwebs. ‘Don’t you ever, ever say something like that again. I don’t know what crazy ideas your Ba put in your head but you’ll get yourself killed talking like that. If you ever hint at something like that, I will rip off those puny arms of yours so you never swim a stroke again, you understand me?’

  I recoiled at the violence in his words, but I knew something else was behind them, stronger than the anger. Fear.

  We stared at each other for a long while, both of our bodies shaking as he held me by the shirt collar. Finally, I conceded. ‘Okay. I won’t say it again, I promise.’

>   Tian let me go. I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the blood come back. ‘Let’s get back.’ Tian said finally, pretending nothing had happened. ‘We can’t leave the cooking to Wang. You know how he overcooks the noodles.’ He tried to smile.

  I just nodded, choking back the lump in my throat.

  I lingered by the door after Tian left, taking in the small, grimy room, the dust-covered furniture and the pieces of the shattered chamber pot. I turned away, gently pulling the broken door shut behind me.

  Chapter 6

  MING

  We’d missed dinner. Wang and Cho had taken pity on the city boys and whipped up some hasty noodles and broth for everyone. I wasn’t hungry so I went to bed. My whole body felt heavy and it was a struggle just to hold my head up.

  One minute I was sinking into my bunk, the next moment the loudspeakers were sounding out the call to work. I scrabbled out of bed and into my clothes, feeling the chill in the morning air.

  ‘Early night huh?’ Li flashed his lopsided grin from the next bunk. My stomach turned and I had to look away, fighting back the urge to either be sick or cry.

  ‘Morning, laan fan zyu,’ Tian chimed in. Sleeping pig.

  Feng and the others had already left, so after a quick breakfast of cold buns, we trudged to the work hall to receive our daily assignments and report to our Brigade Leader. My head felt foggy and I was barely thinking when a hand grabbed my shoulder.

  ‘Hey,’ Li gave me another smile but I could read the worry in his eyes. ‘You didn’t go to the beach last night.’

  I glowered at him and tried to yank my arm away, but Li’s grip was firm.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ He pulled his eyebrows together so his smooth movie-star forehead crinkled just so. I noticed his perfect skin, high cheekbones and his long straight nose. His head had that questioning tilt, and I could see exactly why a girl like Fei would choose him over me. I shook his arm off.