Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

  You vulgar bone-rapping bastard, I said to Hong Taiyue, as far as I’m concerned, a single hair on my scrotum is worth more than you, but in letting me fall into the hands of you low-class peasants, fortune has not smiled on me. I cannot fight heaven’s laws. I give up, count me as your lowly grandson.

  With a laugh, Hong Taiyue said, I’m glad you see things that way. Yes, me, Hong Taiyue, I am vulgar, and if not for the Communist Party, I’d be stuck with banging on that ox bone for the rest of my life. But the tables have been turned on you, and we poor peasants have had a change of luck. We’ve floated to the top. By settling accounts with you people, all we’re doing is retrieving the riches you accumulated. I’ve reasoned with you more times than I can count. You did not provide your hired hands and tenant farmers with a livelihood, Ximen Nao, you and your family lived off of our labor. Hiding your riches from us was an unforgivable crime, but if you hand them over now, we are prepared to treat you with leniency.

  I alone was responsible for hiding my money and valuables. The women had nothing to do with it. I knew they were unreliable, that all you had to do was pound the table to get them to reveal all our secrets. I’m willing to turn over everything I own, wealth that will astound you, enough for you to buy an artillery cannon, but you must give me your word that you will release Ximen Bai and won’t take my crimes out on Yingchun and Qiuxiang, since they know nothing.

  You don’t need to worry about that, Hong said. We’ll do everything by the book.

  All right. Untie my hands.

  The militiamen eyed me suspiciously, then looked at Hong Taiyue.

  Again, with a laugh, he said, They’re afraid you’ll fight like a cornered beast, that you’ll do anything to get away.

  I smiled. He personally untied my hands, even offered me a cigarette. I accepted, even though I’d lost feeling in my hands, and sat in my armchair, beaten down with dejection. Finally, I reached up and pulled down the scroll. — Break open the wall with your rifle butts, I said to the militiamen.

  They were dumbstruck by the sight of the riches they retrieved from the hollow, and those looks told me everything I needed to know about what they were thinking. They all wished they could walk away with that treasure and probably were already conjuring up dreams of wealth and leisure: If this house had been handed over to me and I’d stumbled upon this hidden treasure . . .

  While they were standing around dazed by the riches, I reached down, grabbed a revolver that was hidden under the armchair, and fired a shot into the tile floor; the bullet ricocheted and lodged in the wall. The militiamen hit the floor in panic. Only Hong Taiyue remained standing, the bastard, showing what he was made of. Did you hear that, Hong Taiyue? If I’d pointed this at your head, right now you’d be spread out on the floor like a dead dog. But I didn’t, not at you or at any of your men, since I have no account to settle with any of you. If you hadn’t come to struggle against me, someone else would have. It’s the times. All rich people are doomed to meet the same fate. And that’s why I haven’t harmed a single hair on any of you.

  You’re got that right, Hong said. You’re a man who knows what’s what, someone who sees the big picture, and as a man, I respect you. More than that, you’re a man I’d be happy to share a bottle with, even become sworn brothers with. But speaking as a member of the revolutionary masses, you and I are irreconcilable foes and I am obliged to eliminate you. This is not personal hatred, it’s class hatred. As a representative of a class that is marked for elimination, you could have shot me dead, but that would have made me a revolutionary martyr. The government would have then executed you, turning you into a counterrevolutionary martyr.

  I laughed, roared, in fact. I laughed so hard I cried. When I was finished, I said, Hong Taiyue, my mother was a devout Buddhist, and not once in my life have I been guilty of killing anyone or anything, carrying out my filial obligations to her. She told me that if I every killed anyone or anything after her death, she would suffer torment in the afterworld. So if it’s martyrdom you’re looking for, you’ll have to find someone else to make that possible. As for me, I’ve lived long enough. It’s time for me to die. But my death will be unrelated to your so-called classes. I accumulated my wealth by being smart, industrious, and lucky, and I never entertained the thought of joining any class. And I certainly won’t die a martyr of any sort. As far as I’m concerned, living on like this would fill me with all kinds of meaningless grievances. There are too many things I don’t understand, which makes me uncomfortable, so dying is better. I put my pistol up to my temple and said, There’s an urn with a thousand silver dollars buried in the animal pen. My apologies, but you’ll have to dig through animal dung to get to it, which means you’ll cover your bodies with a foul stench before you hold the silver dollars in your hands.

  No problem, Hong Taiyue said. For a thousand silver dollars, not only are we willing to dig through animal dung, we’d roll around in a pool of shit if we had to. But I urge you not to kill yourself. Who knows, maybe we’ll let you live long enough to watch us poor peasants stand up and be counted, see us fill with pride, see us become masters of our own fate and create a fair and just society.

  Sorry, but I don’t feel like living. As Ximen Nao I’m used to having people nod their heads and bend low to me, not the other way around. Maybe we’ll see each other in the next life. Gentlemen! I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, a dud. And when I lowered the pistol to see what was wrong, Hong Taiyue grabbed it out of my hand. His men rushed up and tied me up again. You aren’t so smart, after all, my friend Hong said as he held up the pistol. You didn’t have to check it. The virtue of a revolver is how often it misfires. If you’d pulled the trigger one more time, the next bullet would have spun into the chamber and you’d be on the floor chewing on a tile like a dead dog, if it too wasn’t a dud, that is. He laughed smugly and ordered the militiamen to go out and start digging. Then he turned back to me. Ximen Nao, he said, I don’t believe you were trying to trick us. A man who’s about to kill himself has no reason to lie. . . .

  Pulling me along behind him, my master managed to force his way in through the gate as, on orders from village officials, militiamen were shoving people out. The cowards couldn’t move fast enough, with rifles poking them in the backside, while some brave individuals were pushing their way in to see what was going on. You can imagine how hard it was for my master to lead a big strong donkey in through that gate. The village had planned to move the Lan and Huang families out of the compound so they could free up the entire Ximen estate for government offices. But since there were no vacant buildings in which to put them, and since my master and Huang Tong were not easy heads to shave, getting them to move would have been harder than climbing to heaven, at least for the time being. That meant that on a daily basis I, Ximen Donkey, was able to enter and leave through the same gate as the village bosses, not to mention district and county officials on their inspection tours.

  As the clamor persisted, the crowd in the compound pushed and shoved, until the militiamen, in no mood to strain themselves in quelling the uproar, moved away to smoke a leisurely cigarette. From where I stood, in my lean-to, I watched as the setting sun splashed its golden rays onto the apricot tree branches. A pair of armed militiamen kept guard beneath the tree, the object at their feet blocked from view by the crowd. But I knew it was the treasure-filled urn, with a surge of humanity pressing closer and closer to it. I swore to heaven that the riches in that urn had nothing to do with Ximen Nao — with me. But then, my heart skipped a beat when I saw Ximen Nao’s wife, Ximen Bai, walk out of the main building in the custody of a rifle-toting militiaman and the head of public security.

  Her hair looked like a ball of tangled yarn, and she was covered with dirt, as if she’d emerged from a hole in the ground. Her arms hung limp at her sides as she swayed with each step to keep her balance. When the raucous people in the compound saw her, they fell silent and instinctively parted to open up the path leading to the main building. The gate of my
estate had once faced a screen wall on which the words “Good Fortune” had been inlaid, but that had been demolished by a pair of money-grubbing militiamen on a second inspection during Land Reform. They’d shared a dream that hundreds of gold ingots were hidden inside the wall, but all they retrieved was a pair of rusty scissors.

  Ximen Bai tripped on a cobblestone and fell to the ground, where she lay, facedown. Yang Qi kicked her.

  “Get the hell up!” he cursed. “Quit faking!”

  I felt a blue flame blaze up inside my head and pawed the ground out of anxiety and rage. I could sense the heavy hearts among the villagers in the compound as the atmosphere turned forlorn. Ximen Nao’s wife was sobbing. She arched her back and tried to get up by supporting herself with her hands. She looked like a wounded frog.

  As Yang Qi swung his foot back for another kick, Hong Taiyue called him to a halt from the steps:

  “What are you doing, Yang Qi? After all these years since Liberation, you are smearing mud on the face of the Communist Party by the way you curse and hit people!”

  The mortified Yang Qi stood there, rubbing his hands and mumbling to himself.

  Hong Taiyue came down the steps and walked up to where Ximen Bai lay on the ground. He bent down and helped her up, but her legs buckled as she tried to go down on her knees.

  “Village Head,” she sobbed, “spare me, I honestly know nothing. Please, Village Head, spare the life of this lowly dog . . .

  “No more of that talk, Ximen Bai,” he said, holding her up so she could not get down on her knees. He looked so obliging, but then he abruptly turned severe. Facing the crowd, he said sternly: “Get out of here! What’s the big idea? What’s there to see? Go on, get out of here!”

  With bowed heads, the people began leaving.

  Spotting a heavyset woman with long, straight hair, Hong signaled to her.

  “Yang Guixiang,” he said, “come over here and help.”

  Yang, a onetime director of the Women’s Relief Society, was now in charge of women’s affairs. She was a cousin of Yang Qi. Happy to assist, she helped Ximen Bai back into the house.

  “Think hard, Ximen Bai, did your husband, Ximen Nao, bury this urn? And while you’re thinking about that, what else did he bury? Tell us, there’s nothing to be afraid of, since you’ve done nothing wrong. Ximen Nao is the guilty one.”

  Sounds of torture emerged from the main house and assailed my ears, which were standing straight up. At this moment, Ximen Nao and the donkey were one and the same. I was Ximen Nao, Ximen Nao was now a donkey, I was Ximen Donkey.

  “I honestly don’t know, Village Chief. That place isn’t my family’s land, and if my husband wanted to bury something, he wouldn’t bury it there. . . .”

  “Smack!” Someone banged the table with the flat of his hand.

  “Hang her up if she won’t tell!”

  “Squeeze her fingers!”

  My wife wailed pitifully, begging for her life.

  “Think hard, Ximen Bai. Ximen Nao is dead, so buried riches cannot do him any good. But if we dig them up, they can make our co-op stronger. There’s nothing to be afraid of, we’ve all been liberated. Our policy is not to beat people, and we’re certainly not about to resort to torture. All you have to do is tell us, and I promise I’ll cite you for meritorious service.” I knew that was Hong Taiyue talking.

  My blazing heart filled with sadness, and I felt as if someone was branding me with a red-hot iron or stabbing me with a sharp knife. The sun had set by then and the moon was climbing high in the sky, its chillingly gray beams trickling down onto the ground, the trees, the militiamen’s rifles, and the glittery glazed urn. That urn does not belong to the Ximen family, and besides, we’d never bury our riches in a place like that. It’s where people have died and bombs have exploded, where ghosts congregate, and it would be folly for me to bury anything there. Ours was not the only wealthy family in the village, why were we the only ones you accused with no proof?

  I could stand it no longer, could not bear to hear Ximen Bai cry; it brought pain and guilt feelings. If only I’d treated her better. After bringing Yingchun and Qiuxiang into the house, I never again visited my wife’s bed, leaving a thirty-year-old woman to sleep alone night after night. So she recited sutras and struck the wooden fish, that hollow block of wood with which my mother had beat out a rhythm when she uttered her Buddhist devotionals: clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack... I reared back, but I was tied to a hitching post, so I sent a tattered basket flying with a kick by my rear hooves. I lunged to one side, I sprang to the other, white-hot brays tore from my throat. That seemed to loosen the reins. I’d freed myself. I charged through the unlocked gate on my way to the middle of the compound, where I heard Jinlong, who was relieving himself against the wall, yell, “Daddy, Mommy, our donkey got loose!”