“Well, I don’t have too much to complain of nowadays. Can you guess why I did not write to you during the Cultural Revolution?”

“No. Why?”

“I was criticized as a bourgeois intellectual and locked up in a cell for a year. After I was released, I was still considered ‘politically black,’ so I did not want to incriminate you.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Gao said, “but you should have let me know. My letters were returned. I should have guessed.”

“It’s all over,” Liu said, “and here we are, together, fishing for our lost years.”

“Tell you what,” Gao said, eager to change the subject, “we’ve got enough to make an excellent soup.”

“A wonderful soup-Wow, another!” Liu was reeling in a thrashing perch-well over a foot long.

“My old wife is no intellectual, but she’s pretty good at making fish soup. Add a few slices of Jinhua bacon, throw in a pinch of black pepper and a handful of green onion. Oh, what a soup.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

“You’re no stranger to her. I’ve shown your picture to her frequently. “

“Yes, but it’s twenty years old,” Liu said. “How can she recognize me from a high-school picture? Remember He Zhizhang’s famous line? ‘My dialect is not changed, but my hair has turned gray!”

“Mine, too,” Gao said.

They were ready to go back now.

Gao returned to the wheel. But the engine shuddered with a grinding sound. He tried full throttle. The exhaust at the rear spurted black fumes, but the boat did not move an inch. Scratching his head, Captain Gao turned to his friend with an apologetic gesture. He was unable to understand the problem. The canal was small but not shallow. The propeller, protected by the rudder, could not have scraped bottom. Something might have caught in it-a torn fishing net or a loose cable. The former was rather unlikely. The canal was too narrow for fishermen to cast nets there. But if the latter was the cause of the trouble, it would be hard to disentangle it to free the propeller.