Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (28 page)

Jinlong glared at me, and I glared right back. Truth be told, I was feeling lonesome and would have loved to join his Red Guard unit. Their mysterious yet solemn movements excited me. The pistols in the four warrior attendants’ belts excited me even more. They were impressive, even if they were fake, and I was itching to have one just like them. So I asked my sister to tell Jinlong that I wanted to join his Red Guard unit. He told her: Independent farming is a target of revolution, and he does not qualify to be a Red Guard. The minute he takes his ox into the commune I’ll accept him and even appoint him as a team leader. He raised his voice so I could hear every word without having my sister repeat it. But joining the commune, especially the ox, was not my decision to make. Dad hadn’t uttered a word since the incident in the marketplace. He just stared straight ahead, a vacant look on his face, holding the butcher knife in his hand as a threat. After losing half a horn, the ox had the same vacant look. It looked at people out of the corner of its half-closed eyes, its abdomen rising and falling as it emitted a low growl, as if ready to bury its good horn in someone’s belly. No one dared to go near the ox shed, where Dad and his ox were staying. My brother led his Red Guards into the compound every day to stir things up, with gongs and drums, attempts to fire the cannon, attacking bad elements and shouting slogans. My dad and his ox seemed not to hear any of it. But I knew that if any of them got up the nerve to enter the ox shed, blood would be spilled. Under those circumstances, if I tried to lead the ox into the commune, even if Dad said okay, the ox would never do it. So going out to watch Yang Qi peddle his goatskin coats was just an attempt to kill some time.

My brother raised his arm and aimed his starter’s pistol at Yang Qi’s chest. Trembling, he commanded: Arrest the profiteer! The four warrior attendants ran up and pointed their fake revolvers at Yang Qi’s head from four directions. Put your hands up! they shouted in unison. All Yang Qi did was sneer. Boys, he said, who do you think you’re going to scare with knots from an elm tree? Go ahead, shoot, if you’ve got the balls. I’m prepared to die a hero’s death, to die for a cause. Dragon Sun pulled the trigger. A loud crack, a puff of yellow smoke, a broken gun barrel, and blood spilling from between his thumb and forefinger; the smell of gunpowder hung over them all. Yang Qi, frightened by the noise, paled; a moment later, his teeth were chattering. He looked down at the hole burned in the breast of his coat. Brothers, he said, you really did it! To which my brother responded, Revolution is not a dinner party. I’m a Red Guard, too, Yang Qi said. My brother said that they were Chairman Mao’s Red Guards, while he was just a ragtag Red Guard faction. Since Yang Qi was in a mood to argue, my brother told the Sun brothers to take him to the command headquarters to be criticized and denounced. Then he told the Red Guard troops to confiscate the goatskin coats Yang Qi had laid in the grass beside the road.

The public meeting to criticize and denounce Yang Qi went on all night. A bonfire was lit in the compound using wood from furniture the bad elements had been forced to break apart and bring over. That included several pieces of valuable sandalwood and rosewood furniture — all burned. Bonfires and public criticism meetings were nightly affairs. The fires melted the snow on the rooftops; black gooey mud was the runoff. My brother knew there was only so much furniture they could use as firewood, but he had an idea. Feng Jun, a pockmarked villager who had been to Northeast China, once told him that, because of the sap, even green pine trees will burn. So my brother told his Red Guards to take the bad elements out behind the elementary school and have them cut down pine trees. One after another, the downed trees were dragged over to the street outside the command headquarters by the village’s pair of scrawny horses.

The denouncement of Yang Qi centered on his capitalist activities, his verbal abuse of the little generals, and his failed plan to set up a counterrevolutionary organization. After beating and kicking him mercilessly, they ran him out of the compound. The goatskin coats were passed out to Red Guards on night duty. From the time the revolutionary tide began to sweep through the land, my brother slept only in the original brigade office, now command headquarters, in his clothes, and always in the company of his four warrior attendants and a dozen or more underlings. They laid straw and blankets out on the floor and were kept warm by the addition of the newly acquired coats.

But let’s return to what we were talking about earlier: My mother rushed out of the house with the goatskin coat over her shoulders, which made her appear unusually big. The coat had been allocated to my sister by my brother, since she was the Red Guard doctor first, then the village doctor. True to her filial nature, she gave the coat to my mother to ward off the cold. She ran up to where my brother lay, knelt down beside him, and lifted up his head. What’s wrong, son? My brother’s face was purple, his lips dry and cracked, and his ears oozed pus and blood; he looked like he’d become a martyr. Your sister, where’s your sister? She went to Chen Dafu’s to deliver his baby. Jiefang, my mother wailed, be a good boy and go get her. I looked down at Jinlong, then over at the now leaderless Red Guards, and my heart ached. We had the same mother, after all. Sure, he liked to throw his weight around, and that made me a little jealous. But I admired him. He was a rare talent, I knew that, and I didn’t want him to die. So I raced out of the compound and down the street, headed west for a couple of hundred yards, then turned north into a lane, where Chen Dafu and his family lived in three rooms with a thatched roof and a rammed-earth wall, the nearest compound to the river about a hundred yards down the lane.

Chen’s scrawny dog greeted me with ferocious barking. So I picked up a brick and threw it at him, hitting him in the leg. With a series of pained yelps, he ran into the yard on three legs, just as Chen Dafu emerged from inside carrying a very big and very intimidating club. Who hit my dog? I did! I replied with an angry glare. Seeing it was me, the towering dark man softened; his features relaxed as he flashed an ambiguous smile. Why be afraid of me? Because I had something on him. I’d seen what he and Huang Tong’s wife, Wu Qiuxiang, were doing in the willow grove one day. Embarrassed to be caught in the act, she ran off, bent at the waist, abandoning her laundry basin and mallet. A checkered article of clothing floated down the river. As he was buttoning up his pants, Chen Dafu threatened me: If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you! If Huang Tong doesn’t kill you first, I replied. His tone softened and he tried to soft-soap me instead, saying he’d get his wife’s niece to marry me. The image of a sandy-haired girl with tiny ears and snot on her lip floated into my mind. Hell! I said. Who wants that yellow-haired niece of yours? I’d rather go through life as a bachelor than marry anyone as ugly as that! Ah, my boy, you’re raising your sights too high. I tell you, I’m going to see that you and that ugly girl are married one day! Then I guess you’d better get a rock and beat me to death, I said. Kid, he replied, let’s you and me make a gentleman’s agreement. You don’t tell anyone what you saw here, and I won’t try to fix you up with my wife’s niece. If you break your promise, I’ll have my wife take her niece to your place and set her down on your bed, then have her tell people you raped her. How would you like that? I thought for a moment. Having that ugly, stupid girl sit on my bed and then telling people I raped her would spell big trouble. Despite the saying, “An upright person does not fear a slanted shadow, and dried excrement does not stick to walls,” I thought this might be more than I could handle. So we reached an agreement. But over time, based upon the way he treated me, I realized that he was more afraid of me than I was of him. That’s why I didn’t have to worry, even if I crippled his dog, and why I could talk back to him like that. Where’s my sister? I said. I need to find her. She’s with my wife, delivering a baby. I gazed at the five snot-nosed children in his yard, each slightly taller than the one before, and mocked him: That’s quite a wife you’ve got there, popping them out like a bitch, one litter after the other. He bared his teeth. Don’t talk like that. You’re too young to say hurtful things like that. You’ll see why when you grow up. I haven’t got time to argue with you, I said. I’m here to get my sister. I turned and faced his window. Sis! I shouted. Mother sent me here to get you. Jinlong’s dying! The shrill cry of a newborn baby erupted inside the house, drawing Chen Dafu to the window as if his pants were on fire. What is it? he shouted. The woman inside responded weakly, It’s got that thing between its legs. Chen covered his face with his hands and walked in tight circles in the snow beneath the window.
Wu!
he uttered at the end of each circle.
Wu!
The old man in the sky has opened his eyes, finally, and Chen Dafu now has an heir — My sister tore out of the house and asked me what was wrong. Jinlong’s dying, I said. He fell off the platform and hit the ground. He won’t last long.

My sister elbowed her way through the crowd and knelt at Jinlong’s side. First she put her finger under his nose, then she rubbed his hand, and finally felt his forehead. Take him inside, she commanded, and hurry! The four warrior attendants picked him up and headed for the office, but my sister stopped them. Take him home and put him on the
kang!
They turned and carried him into my mother’s house, where there was a heated
kang.
My sister made sideward glances to the Huang sisters, Huzhu and Hezuo, who were looking on, teary-eyed. The fair skin of their faces was dotted with chilblains like ripe cherries.

First my sister relieved my brother of the leather belt he wore day and night and tossed it, along with the starter’s pistol, into a corner, where it landed on top of a curious mouse, which squeaked once and died, blood seeping from its nose. Then she pulled down my brother’s pants to expose his discolored, louse-covered buttocks. With a frown, she opened an ampoule with a pair of tweezers, drew some liquid into a syringe, and jammed it haphazardly into him. In all she gave him two injections and hooked him up to an IV drip. She deftly found a vein on her first attempt, just as Wu Qiuxiang entered with a bowl of ginger tea, which she planned to spoon-feed my brother. With her eyes, my mother anxiously sought the opinion of my sister, who simply nodded noncommittally. Wu Qiuxiang began spooning the ginger tea into my brother’s mouth, her own mouth opening and closing in concert with his, so typical of mothers, something that cannot be faked. Wu Qiuxiang saw herself as my brother’s true mother. I knew that her feelings toward my brother and sister were complex, since relations between our two families were messy, to say the least. Her mouth was moving in concert with his not because of any special ties between our families, but because she knew what was in her daughters’ hearts and had witnessed my brother’s exceptional talents during the revolution. She was determined that one of her daughters would marry him, the ideal prospective son-in-law. The thought seared my mind, driving out my concern for my brother’s survival. I’d never cared much for Wu Qiuxiang, but seeing her run out of the willow grove, bent at the waist, that day had actually brought us closer together. That was because every time we met, her face reddened and she did her best to avoid eye contact. I began to take notice of her: thin waist and pale ears with a red mole on one lobe. There was magnetism in her laugh, which was deep and low. I was in the shed one night, helping Dad feed the ox, when she slipped in quietly and handed me two warm chicken eggs. She put her arm around me and held my head up against her breast. You’re a good boy, she said softly. You didn’t see anything, did you? In the darkness, I heard the ox ram his good horn into a post; his eyes were like burning torches. Given a fright, she pushed me away and slipped back outside. I followed her, a shifting silhouette in the starlight, experiencing feelings I couldn’t describe.

I’ll be honest with you. When she pressed my head up against her breast, my little pecker stiffened. That seemed terribly wrong, and it bothered me for the longest time afterward. I was enchanted by Huang Huzhu’s long braid, and from that became enchanted by her. I drifted into a fantasy world, wishing that Wu Qiuxiang would marry Hezuo, the daughter with the boyish haircut, to Jinlong, and let me marry Huzhu. But it was far more likely that she’d marry Huzhu to my brother. She was no more than ten minutes older than her sister, but even one minute still made her the elder sister, and elder sisters were always expected to marry first. I was in love with Huzhu, but given the ambiguous relationship between me and her mother, who had pressed my head against her breast in the ox shed and caused my pecker to stiffen, there was no chance she’d be allowed to marry me. I hurt, I was anxious, I had guilt feelings. And if that weren’t enough, I’d been exposed to all sorts of misinformation about sex by Hu Bin when we were grazing animals together. Things like: “Ten drops of sweat equal one drop of blood, and ten drops of blood equal one drop of semen.” Or: “After the first ejaculation, a boy stops growing.” These cockeyed concepts had me in their grip, and the future looked bleak. Looking at Jinlong’s finely developed body, then at my own scrawny frame, and finally at Huzhu’s voluptuous figure, all I could feel was despair. I even contemplated suicide. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be an empty-headed bull? I thought. Now, of course, I know you were anything but empty-headed, that in fact there were all kinds of thoughts running through your mind, and not limited to affairs of the mortal world, but included concerns of the netherworld, past, present, and future.

My brother was on the mend. He was pale as a ghost, but he struggled out to lead the revolution. While he lay unconscious for several days, my mother had thrown his clothes into boiling water, drowning all the fleas, but his handsome Dacron military tunic came out so badly wrinkled it looked like something a cow had chewed and spit out. His imitation army cap came out faded and wrinkled, resembling nothing so much as the scrotum of a castrated bull. The sight of his badly transformed tunic and cap put him in panic mode. He flew into a rage; dark blood spewed from his nostrils. Mother, he said, why didn’t you just kill me? Stung by feelings of remorse, she didn’t know what to say. As my brother’s anger subsided, sadness welled up inside him and tears streamed down his face. He climbed up onto the
kang,
covered his head with the quilt, and for the next two days wouldn’t eat or drink a thing and responded to nothing anyone said. Poor Mother came into the room and went back out, over and over, the cold sores at the corners of her mouth, a sign of her anxiety.
Ai,
how stupid could I be? she muttered. What a stupid old woman! Finally, my sister could stand it no longer. She pulled the bedding back to reveal a haggard, stubbly young man with sunken eyes. It’s just an old tunic! she said, clearly rankled. Is that worth nearly driving Mother to suicide? He sat up, his eyes glazed, and sighed. His tears began to flow even before he spoke. You don’t know what that tunic meant to me. You know the saying, “Humans need nice clothes, horses require a fine saddle.” It was that tunic that made it possible for me to issue commands and intimidate the bad elements. Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now, my sister said. Do you expect your tunic to recapture its original shape because you lie in bed like a dead man? My brother thought that over. All right, I’ll get up. I’m hungry. Those last two words sent Mother scurrying into the kitchen, where she set to work preparing noodles and frying some eggs, the fragrance quickly saturating the compound.