Life and Death are Wearing Me Out
I recognized her too. The memory of something that had happened the previous winter was still clear. Lan Lian had taken me to the county town to get some salt, and on the way back we’d met up with this Wang Leyun. She was sitting by the side of the road, heavily pregnant and moaning. She was wearing a blue uniform then too, but the bottom three buttons were undone to accommodate her swollen belly. Her white-framed eyeglasses and fair skin marked her immediately as a government worker. Her savior had arrived, as she saw it. Please, brother, help me, she said with considerable difficulty. — Where are you from? What’s happened? — My name is Wang Leyun. I work at the district Supply and Marketing Co-op. I was on my way to a meeting, since I didn’t think it was time, but. . . but. . . Seeing a bicycle lying nearby in the bushes, we knew at once the predicament she was in. Lan Lian walked around in circles, rubbing his hands anxiously. What can I do? he asked. How can I help you? — Take me to the county hospital, hurry. My master unloaded the bags of salt I was carrying, took off his padded coat and tied it across my back, and helped the woman get on. Hold on, Comrade, he said. She grabbed my mane and moaned some more as my master took my reins in one hand and held on to the woman with the other. — Okay, Blackie, let’s go. I took off, for I was a very excited donkey. I’d carried plenty of things on my back — salt, cotton, crops, fabric — but never a woman, and I danced a little jig, toppling the woman onto my master’s shoulder. Steady, Blackie! my master ordered. I got the idea. Blackie got the idea. So I started trotting, taking care to keep my gait smooth and steady, like flowing water or drifting clouds, something a donkey does best. A horse can only be smooth and steady when it gallops, but if a donkey gallops instead of trots, it makes for a bumpy ride. I sensed that this was a solemn, even sacred, mission. It was also stimulating, and at that time I felt myself existing somewhere between the realms of man and beast. I felt a warm liquid soaking into the jacket under her and onto my back, also felt sweat from the woman’s hair dripping onto my neck. We were only a couple of miles from the county town, on the road leading straight to it. Weeds on both sides of us were knee-high; a panicky rabbit ran out of the weeds and right into my leg. Well, we made it into town and went straight to the People’s Hospital. Back in those days, hospital personnel were caring people. My master stood in the hospital entrance and shouted: Somebody, come help this woman! I brayed to help out. A bunch of men and women in white smocks came running out and carried the woman inside, but not before I heard waa-waa sounds emerge from between her legs as she was taken off my back. On our way back home, my master was in obvious low spirits, grumbling over the sight of his wet, dirty padded coat. I knew he was superstitious and believed that the excretions of a woman in labor were not only dirty, they were unlucky. So when we reached the spot where we’d encountered the woman, he frowned, his face darkened, and he said, What does all this mean, Blackie? This was a new coat. What am I going to tell my wife?
Hee-haw, hee-haw — I gloated, happy to see him facing a dilemma. — Is that a smile, Blackie? He untied the rope and, with three fingers, lifted the coat off of my back. It was . . . well, you know. He cocked his head, held his breath, and flung the water-soaked and very heavy jacket as if it were made of dog skin, watching it sail into the weeds like a big, strange bird. The rope also had bloodstains, but since he needed it to tie down the sacks of salt, he couldn’t throw it away, so he dropped it on the ground and rolled it around in the dirt with his foot until it changed color. Now all he was wearing was a thin jacket with several missing buttons; his chest turned purple from the cold, and with his blue face, he looked like one of Lord Yama’s little attendants. He bent down, scooped up two handfuls of dirt, and rubbed it on my back, then brushed it off with some weeds he plucked from the side of the road. Blackie, he said, you and I performed an act of charity, didn’t we? Hee-haw, hee-haw — He stacked the sacks of salt on my back and tied them down. Then he looked over at the bicycle in the weeds. Blackie, he said, as I see it, this bicycle ought to belong to me now. It cost me a coat and a lot of time. But if I covet something like this, I’ll give up the credits I earned from that act of charity, won’t I? Hee-haw, hee-haw — All right, then, let’s take this good deed as far as it’ll go, like seeing a guest all the way home. So he pushed the bicycle and drove me — actually, there was no need to do that — all the way back to the country town and up to the hospital entrance, where he stopped and shouted, You in there, the woman in labor, I’m leaving your bicycle here at the entrance! Hee-haw, hee-haw— More people ran out. — Okay, Blackie, let’s get out of here. He smacked me on the rump with my reins. Let’s go, Blackie . . .
Yingchun’s hands were coated with flour when she came out. Her eyes lit up when she saw the beautiful little girl in the arms of Wang Leyun. She reached over.
“Pretty baby,” she mumbled. “Pretty baby, so cute, so pudgy . . .”
Wang Leyun handed the baby to Yingchun, who cradled it in her arms, lowered her head, and smelled and kissed her face.
“She smells wonderful,” she said, “just wonderful . . .”
Waa-waa. The baby wasn’t used to all that fuss.
“Hand her back to the comrade,” Lan Lian demanded. “Just look at you, more wolf than human. What baby wouldn’t be scared to death?”
“That’s all right, no harm done,” Wang Leyun said as she took the baby back and got her to stop crying.
Yingchun tried to rub the flour off her hands.
“I’m terribly sorry,” she apologized. “Look how I dirtied her clothes.”
“We’re all farmers,” Pang Hu said. “No need to worry. We came, today especially to thank you. I hate to think what might have happened if not for you.”
“You not only took me to the hospital, you even made a second trip to return my bicycle,” Wang Leyun said emotionally. “The doctors and nurses all said you couldn’t find a more honest man than Lan Lian if you went searching with a lantern.”
“I’ve got a good donkey,” Lan Lian said to hide his embarrassment. “He’s fast and steady.”
“Yes, you’re right, he is a good donkey,” Pang Hu said with a little laugh. “And famous to boot. A famous donkey!”
Hee-haw, hee-haw —
“Say, he understands us,” Wang Leyun said.
“Old Lan,” Pang Hu said as he reached into a bag he was carrying, “if I were to try to reward you, that would demean you and spoil a budding friendship.” He took out a cigarette lighter and lit it. “I took this from one of the American devils. I’d like you to have it as a little memento.” Then he took out a little brass bell. “This I asked someone to get for me at a secondhand market. It’s for your donkey.”
The war hero walked up to me and draped the bell over my neck.
“You’re a hero, too,” he said as he patted me on the head. “This is your medal.”
I shook my head, so moved I felt like crying. Hee-haw, hee-haw — The bell rang out crisply.
Wang Leyun took out a bag of candy and parceled it out among the children, including the Huang twins. “Are you in school?” Pang Hu asked Jinlong. Jiefang jumped in before Jinlong could reply. “No.” “You need to go to school, that’s something you have to do. Young people are the future red leaders in our new society, our new nation, and they mustn’t be illiterate.” “Our family hasn’t joined the co-op, we’re independent farmers. My father won’t let us go to school.” “What? An independent farmer? How can an enlightened man like you be independent? Is this true? Lan Lian, is it?”
“It’s true!” The resounding answer came from the gateway. We turned to see who it was — Hong Taiyue, the village chief, Party secretary, and head of the local co-op. Dressed the same as always, he seemed more gaunt than ever, and more alert. He strode into the compound, all skin and bones, offered his hand to the war hero, and said, “Director Pang, Comrade Wang, happy New Year!”
“Yes, happy New Year!” The crowd surged in, spreading New Year’s greetings, but none of the old forms. No, they were new phrases to fit
all the great changes; here I give only that one example.
“Director Pang, we’re here to talk about setting up an advanced co-op, combining the smaller co-ops in neighboring villages into one big one,” Hong Taiyue said. “You’re a war hero, how about a talk?”
“I haven’t prepared anything,” Pang said. “I came specifically to thank Comrade Lan for saving the lives of my wife and child.”
“You don’t need to prepare anything, just speak to us. Tell us about your acts of heroism, we’d love to hear that.” Hong Taiyue began clapping his hands, and in no time applause was sweeping over the compound.
“All right,” Pang said as he was carried by the crowd over beneath the apricot tree, where someone placed a chair. “Just an informal chat.” Choosing not to sit, he stood before the crowd and spoke in a loud voice: “Ximen Village comrades, happy New Year! This year’s New Year’s is a good one, next year’s will be even better, and that is because, under the leadership of the Communist Party and Comrade Mao Zedong, our liberated peasants have taken the path of agricultural co-ops. It is a great golden highway, broadening with each step!”
“But there are some people who stubbornly tread the path of individual farming and prefer to compete with our co-ops,” Hong Taiyue interjected, “and who refuse even to admit defeat!”
Everyone’s eyes were on my master, who looked down at the ground and fiddled with the cigarette lighter the war hero had given him. Click — flame — click — flame — click — flame — His wife nudged him to stop. He glared at her. “Go in the house!”
“Lan Lian is an enlightened comrade,” Pang Hu said, raising his voice. “He led his donkey in courageously taking on the wolves and he led it again in coming to the rescue of my wife and child. His refusal to join the co-op results from a momentary lack of understanding, and you people must not coerce him into joining. I fully believe that Comrade Lan Lian will one day join the co-op and travel with us down the great golden highway.”
“Lan Lian,” Hong Taiyue said, “if you still refuse to join the advanced co-op, I’ll get down on my knees to you!”
My master untied my reins and led me over to the gate, the bell around my neck, the gift from the war hero, ringing crisply.
“Lan Lian, are you going to join or aren’t you?” Hong shouted from behind.
My master stopped just outside the gate. “Not even if you get down on your knees!” His voice was muffled.
9
Ximen Donkey Meets Ximen Bai In a Dream
Following Orders, Militiamen Arrest Lan Lian
My friend, I shall now relate events of 1958 for you. Mo Yan did that in many of his stories, but he was spinning nonsense, not to be believed. What I am going to reveal is my own personal experience, a valuable window on history. At the time, the five children, including you, in the Ximen estate were all second-graders in the Northeast Gaomi Township Communist Elementary School. I shall omit any discussion of the great smelting campaign and the backyard furnaces; nothing of interest there. Nor will I touch upon the communal kitchens or the great movements of farmers throughout the county. Why prattle on about things in which you were involved? As for abolishing villages and amalgamating production brigades, creating a county-wide People’s Commune overnight, well, you know more about that than I. What I’d like to relate are some experiences I, a donkey raised by an independent farmer, had in 1958, a special year; they are the stuff of legend. That is, I assume, what you’d like to hear. I’ll do what I can to avoid political issues, but forgive me if they find their way into my tale.
It was a moonlit night in May. Warm breezes from the fields carried delightful aromas: mature wheat, riverside reeds, tamarisk bushes growing on sandbars, felled trees . . . These aromas greatly pleased me, but not enough to bolt from the home of that stubborn independent farmer of yours. If you want to know the truth, what had the appeal to get me to bite through my halter and run away, whatever the consequences, was the smell of a female donkey, a normal reaction by a healthy adult male. Nothing to be ashamed of there. Ever since losing a gonad to that bastard Xu Bao, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d lost some prowess in you-know-what. Sure, I still had two of the things left, but I didn’t have much faith in them to do the job. Until that night, that is, when they awoke from their dormancy; they heated up, they expanded, and they made that organ of mine stand up like a steel rod, emerging time and time again to cool off. The image of a female donkey left no room in my mind for affairs that were capturing the hearts and souls of people at the time: she had a perfect body, with nice long legs; her eyes were clear and limpid; and her hide was smooth and glossy. I wanted to meet and mate with her; that was all that counted. Everything else was nothing but dog shit.
The gate at the Ximen compound had been taken down and removed, apparently to be used as fuel for a smelting furnace. That meant that merely biting through my halter was an act of liberation. But don’t forget, years earlier I had jumped the wall, so gate or no gate, there was nothing to hold me back.
Out on the street, I raced after that infatuating odor. I had no time to take in the sights along the way, all of which were related to politics. I ran out of the village, heading for the state-run farm, where the light of fires turned half the sky red. That, of course, was the largest furnace site in Northeast Gaomi Township Later events would prove that only what was produced in those furnaces could lay claim to the title of usable steel. Credit for that went to the congregation of veteran steel engineers who had studied abroad, only to return to their homeland as rightists undergoing reform through labor.
These engineers stood by the furnaces supervising the work of temporary workers taken from their farms to produce steel. The great fire inside turned their faces red. A dozen or more furnaces lined the wide river on which crops were transported. To the west of the river stood Ximen Village; to the east, the state-run farm. Both of Northeast Gaomi Township’s rivers fed this larger river, and where they converged was a marshy, reedy spot with a sandbar and miles of tamarisk bushes. At first, the villagers kept their distance from the people at the state-run farm, but this was a time of unity, when the great Army Corps was doing battle. Oxcarts, horse-drawn wagons, even two-wheeled carts pulled by people, crowded the highway carrying a brown ore they said was taken from iron mines. The backs of donkeys and mules were laden with what they said was iron ore; old folks, women, even children, carried what they said was iron ore in baskets, all in a constant stream, like a colony of ants, taking their loads to the giant furnaces at the state-run farm. In later years people would say that the great smelting campaign produced nothing but smelting waste; that isn’t so. The Gaomi County officials showed how clever they were by putting the rightist engineers to work, resulting in the production of usable steel.
In the mighty torrent of collectivization, the residents of the People’s Commune forgot all about Lan Lian, the independent farmer, leaving him free to function outside the authorized system for several months. Then when the co-op’s harvest was left to rot while people smelted steel, he comfortably brought in a bumper crop of grain from his eight acres of land. He also cut down several thousand catties of reeds at places attended by no one, with which he planned to weave reed mats to sell in the winter, when there was no farmwork to do. Having forgotten all about him, people naturally had no thoughts for his donkey either. So at a time when even rail-thin camels were brought out to carry iron ore, I, a husky male donkey, was left to freely chase after a smell that stirred my passions.
As I ran down the road, I passed many people and their animals, including a dozen or more donkeys — but not a trace of the female whose tantalizing aroma drew me to her. The farther I traveled, the weaker the scent, disappearing at times, then reappearing, as if to lead me far off into the distance. I was relying not only on my sense of smell but on intuition as well, and it told me I was not heading in the wrong direction, that the one I was following was either carrying or pulling a load of iron ore. There was no other possibility. At a ti
me like this, with tight organization and ironclad demands, was it remotely possible that a second carefree donkey was hiding somewhere, broadcasting the fact that she was in heat? Prior to the creation of the People’s Commune, Hong Taiyue flung curses at my master: Lan Lian, you’re the only fucking independent farmer in all of Gaomi County. That makes you a black model. Wait till we’ve gotten through this busy spell, and you’ll see how I deal with you! Like a dead pig that’s beyond a fear of scalding water, my master struck a nonchalant pose. “I’ll be waiting.”
I crossed the bridge over the transport river that had been bombed out years earlier and only recently rebuilt. I skirted the area where furnaces were blazing, without seeing a female donkey. My appearance invigorated the furnace workers, who were dead on their feet, like a bunch of drunks. They moved to surround me, holding steel hooks and spades, hoping to capture me. Impossible. They were already swaying from exhaustion, and there was no chance they could summon up the energy to catch me if I ran; if they somehow managed that, they’d be too weak to hold me. They shouted, they yelled, all a bluff. The roaring fires made me seem even more impressive than usual, since they made my black hide glisten like satin, and I was pretty sure that these men could not dredge up a memory of ever having seen such a sight as filled their eyes at this moment, the first truly noble and dignified donkey they’d ever encountered. Hee-haw— I charged them as they were attempting to encircle me, sending them scattering. Some stumbled and fell, others ran away, dragging their tools behind them, like a defeated army beating a retreat. All but one, a short fellow in a hat made of willow twigs. He poked me in the rump with his steel hook. Hee-haw — That son of a bitch’s hook was still hot, and I smelled something burning. Damned if he hadn’t branded me! I kicked out with my rear hooves and ran out of the fiery surroundings into a dark area where there was plenty of mud and from there into the reeds.