Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (21 page)

Hu Bin thudded to the ground like a dog going after a pile of turds. The ox butted him over and over, calling to mind the scene of a blacksmith hammering on his anvil. Each butt produced a weak complaint from Hu Bin, whose body seemed thinner and longer and wider, like a cow patty. Ximen Jinlong arrived on the scene and cracked his whip on your rump, over and over, each snap leaving a red mark. But you didn’t turn on him, you offered no resistance, though at the time I wished that you’d turned and butted him all the way into the river, where he’d crack through the ice and be half drowned or half frozen to death — two half deaths would have meant one complete one — though I didn’t really want him to die, since that would have crushed Mother, who, I knew, cherished him more than she cherished me. So I broke off some thick reeds, and while he was lashing you on the rump, I lashed him on the head and neck. Perturbed by my lashing, he turned and used his whip on me. Ow! Dear Mother! That not only hurt, it tore open my padded coat. Blood trickled from a cut on my cheek. Then you turned around.

Oh, how I wanted you to butt him. But you didn’t. Still, he warily backed off. You made a low, grumbling sound. Your eyes were so sad. The sound you made was, after all, a call to your son, something he didn’t understand. You came toward him; what you wanted was to stroke him, but he didn’t understand that either. He thought you were coming after him, so he raised his whip and brought it down on you. It was a brutal hit, and right on target — it hit you in the eye. Your knees buckled into a kneel; tears gushed from your eyes and dripped noisily to the ground.

“Ximen Jinlong,” I screamed, horrified, “you thug, you’ve blinded my ox!”

He hit you again on the head, even harder, opening a gash on your face; this time it was blood that dripped to the ground. My ox! I ran up and covered your head. My tears dripped onto your juvenile horns. I protected you with my slender body. Go ahead, Ximen Jinlong, use your whip, rip my coat to shreds, slice my flesh like mud and spread it over the dead grass, but I won’t let you hit my ox anymore. I felt your head throbbing against my chest; I scooped up some of the alkaline soil and rubbed it into your wounds, and I tore padding from my coat to dry your tears. I was heartsick that he might have blinded you. But as the saying goes, You cannot cripple a dog and you cannot blind an ox: your eyesight was spared.

Over the month that followed, the same scene played out every day: Ximen Jinlong pressuring me into joining the commune before Father returned. I said no, he beat me, and my ox took it out on Hu Bin. And each time Hu Bin was the target, he hid behind my brother. The two of them — my brother and my ox — squared off against one another, neither giving ground for several minutes, until they both backed off and the day passed without further incident. At first, a fight to the death seemed inevitable, but as time passed, it turned into a game. What made me proud in all this was the fear my ox instilled in Hu Bin, and how that cruel, evil mouth of his lost its insolence. The minute the jabbering began, my ox would lower his head and bellow, his eyes would turn red, and he’d tense before charging. All the panicky Hu Bin could do was hide behind my half brother, who never again raised his whip against my ox. Maybe he had an inkling of something. You two were, after all, father and son, and there must have been some sort of connection. As for his beatings of me, they too became more symbolic than real. That was in reaction to the bayonet I wore in my belt and the helmet I had begun wearing after that first violent struggle. I’d stolen the two additions from a scrap pile during the steel smelting campaign years before. After keeping them hidden in the ox shed for so long, it was time to put them to use.

Ah, Ximen Ox! The spring planting season were happy days for us. The letter Dad brought back from the provincial capital served its purpose well. You’d grown into an adult ox by then, and had pretty much grown out of the cramped quarters our tiny ox shed provided. The young oxen belonging to the production brigade had already been castrated, and people were urging my dad to put a nose ring on you for purposes of work, but he ignored them all. I agreed, since our relationship had gone beyond that of farmer and farm animal; not only were we kindred spirits, intimate friends, we were also comrades-inarms walking hand in hand, standing shoulder to shoulder, united in our commitment to independent farming and our firm opposition to collectivization.

Our three-point-two acres of farmland were surrounded by land belonging to the commune. Given the proximity to the Grain Barge River, our thick, rich topsoil was ideal for plowing. With these three-point-two acres and a strong ox, my son, you and I can look forward to eating well, Dad said. He’d returned from the provincial capital with a severe case of insomnia, and I often awoke from a deep sleep to find him sitting fully dressed on the edge of the
kang,
leaning against the wall and puffing on his pipe. To me, the thick tobacco smoke was slightly nauseating.

“Why aren’t you sleeping, Dad?” I’d ask.

“I will,” he’d say, “soon. You go back to sleep. I’ll go give the ox a bit more hay.”

I’d get up to pee — you should know all about my bed-wetting. When you went out to graze as a donkey, I’m sure you spotted my bedding drying in the sun. Whenever Wu Qiuxiang saw my mother taking it out to dry, she’d call out for her daughters: Hey, Huzhu, Hezuo, come out here and take a look at the world map Jiefang drew on his bedding. The girls would come running with a stick to point at the stains on my bedding. This is Asia, this is Africa, here’s Latin America, this is the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean . . . humiliation made me want to crawl into a hole and never come out, and it sparked a desire to set fire to that bedding. If Hong Taiyue had witnessed that, he’d have said, Master Jiefang, you could throw that bedding over your head and charge an enemy pillbox. No bullet could penetrate it and a hand grenade would bounce right off it! — But what was the use in dredging past humiliations? The good news was, once I’d joined Dad as an independent farmer, my bed-wetting problem cured itself, and that was one of the more important reasons I stood up for independent farming and in opposition to collectivization. The moonlight, limpid as water, turned our little room silvery; even mice scrounging for scraps of food became silver rodents. I heard Mother’s sighs on the other side of the wall, and I knew she too suffered from sleeplessness. She couldn’t stop worrying about me, and she wished Dad would take me into the commune, so we could be a happy family again. But he was too stubborn to do that just because she wanted him to. The beauty of the moonlight drove away all thoughts of sleep, and I wanted to see how the ox spent his nights in the shed. Did he stay awake all night or did he sleep, just like people? Did he sleep lying down or standing up? Eyes open or eyes shut? I threw my coat over my shoulders and slipped out into the yard. The ground was cold against my bare feet, but I didn’t feel a chill. The moonlight was even denser out in the yard, turning the apricot tree into a silvery tower that cast a dark arboreal shadow on the ground. Dad was out there tossing feed in a sifter, seeming bigger than he was in the daylight, as a broad moonbeam lit up the sifter and his two large hands. The sound —
shush shush
— emerged rhythmically from the sifter, which seemed to hang in the air; Dad’s hands looked like appendages to it. The feed was dumped into the trough, after which came the slurping sound of a bovine tongue licking it up. I saw the ox’s shining eyes, I smelled its hot bovine odor. Blackie, I heard Dad say, tomorrow we start the plowing, so eat up. You’ll need your strength. We’ll do ourselves proud, Blackie, and give those socialists an eyeful. Lan Lian is the world’s greatest farmer, and Lan Lian’s ox is the world’s greatest ox! The ox shook his large head in response. They want me to put a nose ring on you, Dad continued. Bullshit! My ox is like my son, more human than animal. I treat you like a man, not an ox. Do people put nose rings on men? And they want me to geld you. Double bullshit! I told them to go home and geld their sons! What do you think of that, Blackie? Before you came, Blackie, I had a donkey, the best donkey in the world. A hard worker, like you, more human than animal, and prone to violence. He’d still be alive today if they hadn’t killed him during the steel-smelting campaign. But on second thought, if that donkey hadn’t passed on, I wouldn’t have you. I knew you were the one I wanted the minute I laid eyes on you at the livestock market.

Blackie, I can’t help feeling that you’re the reincarnation of that donkey, that fate has brought us together!

I couldn’t see my dad’s face in the shadows, only his hands resting on the feed trough, but I could see the ox’s aquamarine eyes. The ox’s coat, chestnut colored when we first brought him home, had darkened until it was nearly black, which is why Dad called him Blackie. I sneezed, startling Dad. Flustered, he slinked out of the shed.

“Oh, it’s you, son. What are you doing standing here? Go back inside and get some sleep.”

“How about you, Dad?”

He looked up at the stars.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll go with you.”

As I lay there half asleep, I could sense Dad crawling quietly out of bed, and I wondered why So as soon as he was out the door, I got up, and once I was out in the yard, the moonlight seemed brighter, almost like undulating sheets of silk above me — immaculately white, glossy, and so cool I felt I could tear them out of the sky and fold them around me or roll them into balls and put them in my mouth. I looked over at the ox shed, which had grown bigger and brighter, obliterating all the darkness; the ox dung looked like white steamed buns. But, to my amazement, neither Dad nor the ox was in the shed. I knew I’d been right behind him and had watched him enter the shed, so how could he have simply vanished? And not only him, but the ox as well. They couldn’t have been transmuted into moonbeams, could they? I walked over to the gate and looked around. Then I understood. Dad and the ox had gone out. But what were they doing out there in the middle of the night?

There were no sounds on the street. The trees, the walls, the ground, all silver; even the propaganda slogans on the walls were dazzling white: “Ferret Out Those in Power within the Party Who Are Taking the Capitalist Road,” “Pursue the Four Clean-ups Campaign to its Conclusion!” Ximen Jinlong had written that one. What a genius! I’d never before seen him write a slogan, but he’d walked up that day carrying a bucket filled with black ink and an ink-saturated brush made of twisted hemp fibers, and written that one on our wall. Every stroke was vigorous, every line straight and even, every hook powerful. At least as big as a pregnant goat, each character drew gasps of admiration from anyone who saw them. My brother was the best-educated and most highly respected youngster in the village. Even the college students who made up the Four Clean-ups Brigade and other brigade workers not only liked him, they were his friends. He was already a member of the Communist Youth League and, or so I heard, had submitted his application to join the Party. An active participant in Party activities, he drew as close as possible to Party members in order to help his case. Chang Tianhong, a talented member of the Four Clean-ups Brigade, and a former voice student at the provincial art academy, taught my brother elements of Western styles of singing. There were days during that winter when the two of them sang revolutionary songs, dragging the notes out longer than a braying donkey; their duets became a standard opening before meetings of the brigade members. My brother’s friend, whom we called Little Chang, was often seen entering and leaving our compound. He had naturally curly hair, a small, pale face with big bright eyes, a wide mouth, stubble that looked blue, and a prominent Adam’s apple. A big young man, and tall, he stood out from all the other young villagers. Many of the envious young fellows gave him a nickname: “Braying Jackass,” and since my brother studied singing with him, his nickname was “Junior Jackass.” The two “jackasses” were like brothers, so close their only regret was that they couldn’t both fit into the same pair of pants.

The village Four Clean-ups campaign created torment in the lives of every cadre: Huang Tong, the militia company commander and brigade commander, was removed from his positions over the misappropriation of money; Hong Taiyue, the village Party secretary, was removed from his position for roasting and eating a black goat that was being raised in the brigade goat nursery. But they were back at their posts in short order; not so fortunate was the brigade accountant, who stole horse feed from the production brigade. His dismissal was permanent. Political campaigns, like stage plays, are spectacles, events incorporating clamorous gongs and drums, wind-blown banners, slogans on walls, with commune members working during the day and attending meetings at night. I was a minor independent farmer, but noise and excitement appealed to me too. Those were days when I desperately wanted to join the commune, so I could follow behind the “two jackasses” and see the sights. The cultured behavior of the “two jackasses” did not go unnoticed by the young women; love was in the air. Watching with cool detachment, I could see that my sister, Ximen Baofeng, had fallen for Little Chang, while the twins, Huang Huzhu and Huang Hezuo, had fallen for my brother. No one fell for me. Maybe in their eyes I was just a dumb little boy. How could they know that love burned in my heart? I was secretly in love with Huang Tong’s elder daughter, Huzhu.

Well, enough of that. So I went out into the street, and still found no trace of my dad and the black ox. Gould they have flown to the moon! I conjured up an image of Dad on the back of the ox, hooves pounding the clouds, tail moving back and forth like a rudder as they levitate, higher and higher. It had to be an illusion, because Dad wouldn’t fly to the moon and leave me behind. So I knew I had to keep my feet planted on earth and look for them in the same realm. I stood still, concentrating all my energy. First, I sniffed the air, nostrils wide open. It worked. They hadn’t gone far; they were southeast of where I was standing, in the vicinity of the decrepit village wall, at one of the dead-infant sites, a spot where villagers used to discard children who had died in infancy. Later on, fresh dirt was brought in to level the ground and turn it into the brigade threshing floor. Perfectly flat, it was surrounded by a waist-high wall, alongside which some stone rollers and stone mills had been left. It was a favorite place for children to play. They chased each other around, dressed only in red stomachers, their bare bottoms fully exposed. I knew they were actually the ghosts of dead children who came out to play when the moon was full. So cute, those spirit-children, as they lined up and jumped from the stone rollers to the stone mills and from the stone mills back to the stone rollers. Their leader was a little boy with a vertical pigtail who had a shiny whistle in his mouth, which he blew rhythmically. The other children echoed his whistle each time they jumped, in perfect cadence, a treat for the eyes. I was so mesmerized I nearly felt like joining their number. When they tired of jumping from the stone rollers to the stone mills, they climbed the wall and sat in a straight line, legs hanging down as they pounded the wall with their heels and sang a ditty that moved me so much I stuck my hand in my pocket and took out a handful of fried black beans. When they reached out, I placed five beans in each hand, on which I saw fine yellow hairs. They were captivating children, with bright eyes and lovely white teeth. From the top of the wall rose the crunching of beans and an alluring scorched aroma. Dad and the ox were performing drills out on the threshing floor as more red children than I could count appeared on the top of the wall. I put my hand over my pocket. What would I do if they all wanted black beans? Dad was wearing skin-tight clothes with a green lotus-shaped piece of cloth on each shoulder and a tall horn-shaped piece of tin plate on his head. He had painted the right side of his face with red grease paint, creating a stunning contrast with the blue birthmark on the left side. He was barking unintelligible commands as he drilled; to me they sounded like curses, but I was sure the red children on the wall understood every word, because they clapped rhythmically and thumped their heels against the wall and whistled; a few even took little horns out from under their stomachers and tooted along, while others brought drums up from the other side of the wall, placed them between their knees, and pounded away. At the same time, our family ox, sporting red satin cloth on his horns and a big red satin flower on his forehead, which made him look like a jubilant bridegroom, was running around the outer edge of the threshing floor. His body glistened, his eyes were bright as crystal, his hooves like lit lanterns that carried him in a graceful, smooth, and easy gait. Each time he passed by the red children, they pounded their drums and shouted their approval, producing waves of cheers. In all, he circled the floor ten times or more before joining Dad in the center, where Dad rewarded him with a chunk of bean cake. Then Dad rubbed his head and patted him on the rump.