Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

  At that moment a strange sound — somewhere between a cry, a laugh, and a sigh — emerged from the ox shed. It was our ox. Tell me, were you crying or laughing or sighing? Go on with your story, Big-head Lan Qiansui said icily. Don’t ask me that.

  —The startled crowd of gawkers turned to look at the shed, suffused with light. The ox’s eyes were like lamps giving off a blue light; golden emanations radiated from his body. Dad struggled to go into the shed. Ox! he cried. My ox! You’re all I have, my whole family! The note of despair in those cries chilled the heart of everyone who heard them. Jinlong may have betrayed you, but my sister, Mother, and I love you. How can you say that the ox is your whole family? His body may have been an ox, but his heart and soul were Ximen Nao, so all those people in the yard — his son, his daughter, his first and second concubines, as well as his farmhand and me, his farmhand’s son — produced feelings in him that were all jumbled up: love, hate, enmity, and gratitude —

  It may not have been as involved as you make it out to be, Big-head Lan Qiansui said. Maybe I made that strange sound because I had a clump of grass caught in my throat. But you’ve taken a simple matter and turned it inside out, deliberately complicating it in your jumbled narration.

  — It was a jumbled world back then, which makes it hard to speak with clarity. But let me pick up where I left off: The Ximen Village parade came over from the eastern head of the marketplace, accompanied by gongs and drums and red banners snapping in the wind. Brigade Commander Huang Tong was being paraded through the streets by Jinlong and his Red Guards, in addition to the former Party secretary Hong Taiyue, along with the onetime security head, Yu Wufu, the rich peasant Wu Yuan, Zhang Dazhuang the traitor, and Ximen Bai, wife of the landlord Ximen Nao, all old-line bad elements. My dad, Lan Lian, was also under escort. Hong Taiyue was clenching his teeth and staring straight ahead. Zhang Dazhuang wore a worried frown. Wu Yuan was weeping. Ximen Bai was slovenly and dirty. The paint hadn’t been cleaned off my dad’s face; his eyes were blood red and tear-filled. The tears resulted from damaged corneas, not any sort of internal weakness. On the cardboard sign around Dad’s neck Jinlong himself had written: “Stinking, Obstinate Independent Farmer.” Dad was carrying our plow over his shoulder, the one they’d given him during land reform. He had a hempen rope around his waist, which was tied to a set of reins, which in turn were tied to a bull ox. It was a reincarnation of the tyrannical landlord Ximen Nao; in other words, you. Feel free to interrupt me anytime and pick up where I leave off. You can relate what happened after that. I see the world through human eyes, but yours is an animal universe, so you can probably tell a more interesting story. No? All right, I’ll continue. You were a mighty ox, with horns like steel, broad shoulders, powerful muscles, and incandescent eyes that radiated malevolence. A pair of tattered shoes had been hooked on your horns. That was the brainchild of the Sun brother who was such an expert in the use of gas lamps. He meant only to make you look bad, not imply that you dallied with loose females, as such things symbolize. That son of a bitch Jinlong was going to include me in the public exposure parade, but I threatened him with my red-tasseled spear. I’ll stick this into anyone who tries to parade me like that, I said. That gave him a shock, but he chose discretion in the face of my intransigence. I couldn’t help thinking that if Dad had stood up like I did by taking down the hay cutter and brandishing it in front of the shed, threatening to use it, my brother would have backed down. But my dad was the one who backed down, letting them lead him away and hang a cardboard sign around his neck. If our ox had displayed its bullish temper, no one could have gotten away with hanging a pair of tattered shoes on its horns and parading it in the street, but it had also gone along with it obediently.

  Commander of the Golden Monkey Red Guard faction, Little Chang, the Braying Jackass, and commander of the Ximen Village branch of the Golden Monkey faction, Jinlong, Junior Jackass, linked up in the middle of the marketplace, that is, the square in front of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative Restaurant, where they held hands and exchanged revolutionary greetings, red glints seeming to emanate from their eyes, their hearts bursting with revolutionary fervor; they may have been thinking about how the combined forces of China’s peasants, workers, and soldiers at Jinggangshan had vowed to plant red flags all over Asia, Africa, and Latin America and free all oppressed members of the proletariat from the abyss of suffering. The two Red Guard units linked up, county and village; the two groups of capitalist-roaders linked up, with Donkey County Chief Chen Guangdi, Donkey-dick Secretary Fan Tong, an alien class enemy, Hong Taiyue, a capitalist-roader who beat his ox hip bone, and Hong’s running dog, Huang Tong, who had married the concubine of a landlord. They cast furtive glances all around, letting their facial expressions convey their reactionary thoughts. Lower your heads. Lower. Lower! The Red Guards kept pushing their heads down, lower and lower, until their hindquarters were as high in the air as they’d ever get; one more push, and they’d be on their knees. Instead, their assailants pulled them back by their hair and their collars. My dad refused to lower his head, and owing to his special relationship with Ximen Jinlong, the other Red Guards let him get away with it. Braying Jackass was the first to speak. He stood on a table that had been moved out from the dining hall; with his left hand on his hip, he waved his right in a variety of gestures: a sword slice, a bayonet stab, a fist pound, and a judo chop, each gesture matched by the oration, the tone, and the cadence. Saliva gathered in the corners of his mouth, his words bristled with ferocity, but with no substance, like red condoms blown up in the shape of wax gourds to fly around, crashing noisily into one another until they exploded with loud pops. One of the more interesting episodes in the history of Northeast Gaomi Township involved a nurse who had once blown up a condom until it burst and injured her eyes. Braying Jackass was a master speechmaker. He modeled himself after Lenin and Mao Zedong, especially the way he thrust out his right arm at a right angle, tossed his head back, chin out, and gazed far into the distance. When he shouted: “Attack, attack, and again attack the class enemies!” he sounded like Lenin reborn. The Lenin of Lenin in 1918 had arrived in Northeast Gaomi Township. Silence fell over the crowd, as if the people’s throats were squeezed shut, but only for a moment, and then shouts arose — Hooray! by the uncultured, Long Life! by their opposite numbers. The Hoorays and Long Life shouts were not intended for Braying Jackass, but, like a blown-up condom, he was so carried away he was virtually floating. There were even grumblings down below, such as: We can’t treat that bastard lightly! uttered by an old-timer who had studied in a private school, could read just about everything, and who hung around the barbershop, where he said to men getting haircuts, Ask me how to write any character you want, and if I can’t do it, I’ll pay for your haircut. A couple of middle-school teachers asked him how to write several obscure characters they’d found in dictionaries, and even they couldn’t stump him. One teacher decided to trick him by making up a character, a simple circle with a dot in the middle. The man sneered. Think you can stump me, do you? This one is pronounced peng, and is the sound of a stone tossed into a well. I got you this time, the teacher said. I made it up. In the beginning, the man said, all characters were made up. The teacher was at a loss for words; the self-satisfied man beamed. Junior Jackass followed Braying Jackass onto the bench, but his speech was a pale imitation of the one by his predecessor.

  Now, Ximen Ox, I should relate what you were doing on that market day. At first, you meekly followed behind my dad, matching him step for step. But your glorious image and your obedient behavior seemed odd to people, especially to me. You were a spirited animal that had displayed extraordinary behaviors in prior months and years. If, at the time, I’d been aware that the arrogant soul of Ximen Nao and the memory of a renowned donkey were hidden deep inside you, I’d have been disappointed in your behavior. You should have fought back, should have raised havoc in the marketplace, should have played the major role in that carnivalesque episode, like one of those bulls in
a Spanish corrida. But you didn’t. You held your head low, tattered shoes hanging from your horns, a symbol of shame, unhurriedly chewing your cud, as people could tell from the rumblings down in your stomachs. And so it went, from early morning till noon, from chilled air to warm, till the ground baked in the sun, till the fragrance of braised buns emerged from the Supply and Marketing Cooperative dining hall. A one-eyed young man with a badly worn coat thrown over his shoulders came limping out of the marketplace, dragging an impressive yellow dog behind him. He was an infamous dog-killer. Born into a poor family, and quickly orphaned, he was sent to school by the government free of charge. But, hating school with a passion, he ruined what could have been a glorious future. Preferring a life of complete freedom over one involving books and study, he made no attempt to better himself, and the Party could do nothing about it. Killing dogs and selling them for their meat, he enjoyed life to the fullest. Now at the time, private butchering was illegal, whether it was pigs or dogs. The government held a monopoly in the trade. But they left one side of the net open for this particular dog-killer. Any government, whatever its makeup, would treat someone like him with leniency. He was a dog’s natural enemy. Neither very tall nor very big, he wasn’t particularly quick on his feet and had poor eyesight. A dog wouldn’t have trouble tearing him limb from limb. But any dog, from mild-mannered to vicious, tucked its tail between its legs, shrank in on itself, and, with naked fear in its eyes, whimpered imploringly when it saw him, accepting its fate as it let him put a rope around its neck and hang it from a tree. He’d then drag the strangled animal back to the hole beneath a stone bridge where he lived and worked to skin and clean the dog with river water, then chop it up and toss the meat into a pot. After he fired up his stove with kindling, the water would come to a boil and release dense steam from under the bridge; as it followed the currents, the fragrance of dog meat would suffuse the river all around.

  An evil wind rose up, snapping the banners so ferociously that one of the poles snapped in two, sending that banner circling into the air to dance for a moment before landing on the ox’s head. That’s when you went wild, exactly what I’d been waiting for, me and many of the gawkers in the marketplace. This farce could only end riotously.

  You began by shaking your head in an attempt to flick off the banner. I know what it’s like to look at the sun by covering my head with a red flag; bright red, like a vast ocean, as if the sun were immersed in an ocean of blood, and I was struck by a feeling that the end of the world was upon me. Since I’m not an ox, I don’t know how you felt with a red banner covering your head, but the violence of your movements led me to assume that you were terror-stricken. The tips of your steely horns were those of a fighting bull. If a pair of knives had been attached to them, you could have decimated the crowd and routed the survivors. Even after many shakes of your head and sweeps of your tail, the red banner stayed put, and panic set in; you ran. Now, your reins were tied to my dad’s waist, so when you, a four-year-old bull weighing nearly five hundred catties, without an ounce of unwanted fat, an animal filled with the vigor of youth and unimaginable strength, took off running, you dragged him behind you as if he were a mouse on the tail of a cat. You ran straight into the crowd, drawing fearful howls and screams. My brother could have been giving the best speech ever heard at that moment, and no one would have been listening. Truth is, they all came to watch the show, and couldn’t care less if you were revolutionary or counterrevolutionary. Take that red banner off his head! someone yelled. But who was willing or brave enough to do that? Taking it off would have ended a good show. In running for cover, the people subconsciously formed tight clusters. Old women were crying, children were bawling. Goddamn it, you’re crushing my eggs! You’re trampling on my children! You broke my bowl, you bastards! A while before, when the wild geese were falling out of the air, the people had surged to the middle of the yard; now, with the running of the ox, the people were sprinting right and left to get out of its way. Piling up on each other, some ran to the wall, where they were flattened like thin cakes; others ran into the butcher’s rack, where they crashed to the ground along with the expensive raw pork, some winding up in their mouths. Before goring anyone in the ribs, the ox squashed a little piglet. The peddler, a butcher named Zhu Jiujie who was so outrageously rude he might as well have been a member of the imperial family, picked up his butcher knife and swung it at the ox’s head. With a loud clang, it struck one of the horns and flew off into the air, while the severed half of the horn wound up on the ground. The red banner jumped at that opportunity to detach itself from the ox’s head. The animal stopped dead in its tracks, panting loudly, belly heaving, foam gathering around its mouth, eyes bloodshot, as a liquid, flecked with blood, oozed from the stump of the severed horn. This liquid was the ox’s essence, what’s known as “ox-horn essence,” reputed to be an exceptional aid for male virility, as much as ten times more powerful than the palm tree extract found on Hainan Island. A particularly corrupt authority figure, a former member of the provincial Party Committee who was exposed by the Red Guards, had taken a girl in her twenties as his wife when he was already turning gray Too old to perform in bed, he asked around for something to restore his virility, and this ox-horn essence is what the people recommended. He sent some of his thugs out to force all the farmers in the county and those belonging to the province to send their uncastrated and unmated young bulls to a secret location, where their horns were cut off and the liquid extracted; then the bones were crushed and delivered to their boss, the senior official. Sure enough, his gray hair was black again, his wrinkles disappeared, and his organ stood up like a machine gun with a crooked barrel, to mow down a phalanx of women like rolling up a mat.

  I need to talk about my dad here. His injury was not yet healed. At first, everything he saw was veiled in red. Then this happened, and he had no idea where he was. All he could do was stumble along after the ox, but he quickly gave that up, wrapped his arms around his head, and was dragged behind the ox like an embroidered ball. Fortunately, he was wearing a padded coat that absorbed most of the bumps and he sustained no major injuries. When the ox lost its horn and stopped running, Dad wasted no time in standing up and untying the rope around his waist. If the ox started running again, this time he wouldn’t be dragged along. But then he looked down and saw the severed half of the ox’s horn on the ground, and cried out in horror, nearly passing out from the shock. My dad had said that the ox was his family, his whole family, so how could he not be anxious, be pained, be enraged, when his family suffered an injury? His gaze moved to the fat, oily face of the pig butcher, Zhu Jiujie. At a time in history when no Chinese had enough oil in their diet, the officials and pig butchers like him not only ate the fattest, oiliest food, but did so with smug self-satisfaction, proudly enjoying the good life that Communism offered. As an independent farmer, my dad had no interest in the affairs of the commune. But now this People’s Commune pig butcher had lopped off our ox’s horn, and my dad cried out in horror, My ox! before fainting dead away. I knew that if he hadn’t fainted at that moment, he’d have picked up the butcher knife and gone for the pig butcher’s big, fat head. I hate to think what that would have led to. I was glad he fainted. But the ox was very much awake, and you can imagine how losing that horn hurt. With a loud bellow, he lowered his head and charged the fat butcher. What caught my attention at that instant was the cluster of long hairs sticking out from the ox’s navel, like a fine, wolf-hair writing bush. It too was on the move, rising and falling, as if composing a line of seal characters. I looked away from this mystical writing brush just in time to see the ox twist his head to one side and bury his good horn in Zhu Jiujie’s plump belly. His head kept moving, so the horn didn’t sink in to the hilt. Then he jerked his head upward like an erupting mountain of flesh, and out from the hole in Zhu Jinjie’s belly poured big yellow clumps of fat.

  My dad came to after everyone else had run away, and the first thing he did was pick up the butcher knife to stand gua
rd in front of his one-horned ox. Although he said nothing, the determined look in his eyes made an unmistakable statement to the Red Guards who were encircling him: You’ll have to kill me to get to this ox. Zhu Jiujie’s spilled fat reminded the Red Guards of the man’s tyrannical disposition and disgusting conduct, and they could not have been happier. Holding the butcher knife in one hand and the tether in the other, Dad walked off with his ox like a man who has raided an execution ground to rescue the condemned, all the way home. The blazing sun had long since vanished and gray clouds had gathered in the sky. Light snowflakes danced in the light breezes before settling onto Northeast Gaomi Township’s land.

  18

  A Deft Hand Mends Clothes, Huzhu

  Declares Her Love

  Heavy Snows Seal a Village, Jinlong Takes Command

  During that long winter, when every third day saw a light snowfall and every fifth day a heavy one, the telephone lines connecting Ximen Village to the commune and the county town were downed by snow. At the time, all broadcasts from the county traveled on telephone wires, so when the wires went down, the broadcasting stations went mute. And when the roads were blocked by snowbanks, there was no newspaper delivery. Ximen Village was cut off from the outside world.

  You ought to recall that winter’s snows. Every morning my dad took you outside the village. If it was a nice day, the red sunbeams would drench the snow and ice with brilliance. My dad would hold your reins with his right hand and carry the knife he’d taken from the pig butcher in his left. You both exhaled pink steam from your mouths and nostrils. The hair around your mouth and my dad’s beard and eyebrows were coated with frost. You headed out into the wild, into the sun, crunching the snow under your feet.