Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (5 page)

“Lan Lian, listen carefully to what I’m about to say.” Hong took a step closer and pointed to Lan Lian’s chest as if his finger were the muzzle of a gun. “After the success of land reform, I advised you not to marry Yingchun. I realize she had no choice in giving herself to Ximen Nao, and I support the government’s position that it’s a good thing for a widow to remarry. But as a member of the impoverished class, you should have married someone like Widow Su from West Village. Left without a room to live in or a strip of land to till after her husband died, she was forced to beg to survive. She may have a face full of pockmarks, but she’s a member of the proletariat, one of us, and she could have helped you maintain your integrity as a committed revolutionary. But you ignored my advice and were set on marrying Yingchun. Since our marriage policy stresses freedom of choice, I did not stand in your way. As I predicted, over the past three years your revolutionary zeal has evaporated. You are selfish, your thinking is backward, and you want to live in a style more dissipated than even your former landlord, Ximen Nao. You have turned into a degenerate, and if you don’t wake up soon, you’ll find yourself wearing the label of an enemy of the people!”

My master stared blankly at Hong Taiyue, without moving. Finally, after catching his breath, he said weakly:

“Old Hong, since Widow Su has those fine attributes, why don’t you marry her?”

Hong reacted to this seemingly inoffensive question as if he’d lost the power of speech. He looked hopelessly flustered before finding his voice. Without responding to the question, he said authoritatively:

“Don’t get cute with me, Lan Lian. I represent the Party, the government, and the impoverished residents of Ximen Village. This is your last chance to come around. I hope you rein in your horse before you go over the cliff, that you find your way back into our camp. We’re prepared to forgive your lack of resolve and your inglorious history of enslaving yourself to Ximen Nao, and we’ll not alter your class standing of farm laborer just because you married Yingchun. Farm laborer is a label with a gilded edge, and you had better not let it rust or gather dust. I’m telling you to your face that I hope you will join the commune, bringing along that roguish donkey, the wheelbarrow, the plow, and the farming tools you received during land reform, as well as your wife and children, including, of course, those two landlord brats Ximen Jinlong and Ximen Baofeng. Join the commune and stop working for yourself, end your quest for independence. Stop being headstrong, an obstructionist. We have brought over thousands of people with more talent than you. Me, Hong Taiyue, I’ll let a cat sleep in the crotch of my pants before I’ll let you be a loner on my watch. I hope you’ve listened to every word I’ve said.”

Hong Taiyue’s booming voice had been conditioned by his begging days, back when he went around beating an ox hip bone. For anyone with that sort of voice and eloquence not to become an official is an affront to human nature. Even I was caught up in his monologue as I watched him berate my master; he seemed taller than Lan Lian, though he was actually half a head shorter. The mention of Ximen Jinlong and Ximen Baofeng gave me the scare of my life, for the Ximen Nao who lived in my donkey body was on tenterhooks regarding the children he’d sired and then left stranded in the midst of a turbulent world. He fretted over their future, for although Lan Lian could be their protector, he could also be an agent of doom. Just then, my mistress, Yingchun — I tried desperately to put the image of her sharing my bed and accepting the seed that produced the two children out of my mind — emerged from the western rooms. Before stepping out, she had looked into the broken remnant of a mirror hanging on the wall to check her appearance, of that I’m sure. She was wearing an indigo blue jacket over loose black pants; a blue apron with white flowers was tied around her waist, and a blue and white kerchief, matching the pattern of the apron, covered her head. It was a nicely coordinated outfit. Her haggard face was lit up in the sunlight; her cheeks, her eyes, her mouth, and her ears all combined to dredge up a host of memories. Quite a woman she was, a treasure I’d have loved to kill. Lan Lian, you bastard, you’ve got a good eye. If you’d married the pockmarked Widow Su from West Village, even being transformed into the Supreme Daoist Jade Emperor would not have been worth it. She walked up to Hong Taiyue, bowed deeply, and said:

“Brother Hong, you’re too important to worry about the problems of small fry like us. You mustn’t bring yourself down to the level of this coarse laborer.”

I saw the tautness in Hong Taiyue’s face fall away. Like a man climbing off his donkey to walk downhill, in other words, using her arrival as a way forward, he said:

“Yingchun, I don’t have to rehash your family history for you. You two can act recklessly if you think your own situation is hopeless, but you have to think about your children, whose whole lives are ahead of them. Eight or ten years from now, when you look back, Lan Lian, you’ll realize that everything I said to you today was for your own good, for you, your wife, and your children. It’s the best advice anyone could give.”

“I understand, Brother Hong,” she said as she tugged at Lan Lian’s arm. “Tell Brother Hong you’re sorry. We’ll go home and talk about joining the commune.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Lan Lian said. “Even brothers are dividing up family property, so what good is putting strangers together to eat out of the same pot?”

“You really are stubborn,” Hong Taiyue said indignantly. “All right, Lan Lian, go ahead, be out there all by yourself. We’ll see who’s more powerful, you or the commune. Today I’m all but pleading with you to join the commune, but one day, Lan Lian, you’ll get down on your knees and beg me to let you in, and that day is not far off, take my word for it!”

“I won’t join! And I’ll never get down on my knees in front of you!” His eyes were lowered as he continued. “Your Party regulations state, ‘Joining a commune is voluntary, leaving it is permissible.’ You cannot force me to join!”

“You’re a stinking dog turd!” Hong Taiyue said in a furious out-burst.

“Brother Hong, please don’t. . .”

“You can stop that Brother this and Brother that,” Hong said scornfully. “I’m the Party secretary,” he said to Yingchun with a look of disgust. “And I’m the village chief, not to mention a member of the village security force!”

“Party secretary, village chief, security officer,” Yingchun echoed timidly, “we’ll go home and talk this over . . .” She shoved Lan Lian and sobbed, “You stubborn ass, your head is made of stone, come home with me right now ...”

“I’m not going anywhere until I’m finished with what I have to say. Village chief, you injured my donkey, so you have to pay to fix his leg.”

“I’ll pay, all right, with a bullet!” Hong Taiyue patted his holster and laughed. “Lan Lian, oh my, Lan Lian, you’re really something.” Then, raising his voice, he exclaimed, “Tell me who this apricot tree belongs to.”

“It belongs to me.” Huang Tong, commander of the local militia, had been standing in his doorway, watching the argument develop. He ran up to Hong Taiyue and said, “Party secretary, village chief, security officer, this tree was given to me during land reform, but it hasn’t produced a single apricot, and I’ve been thinking of taking it down one day. Like Ximen Nao, it has a score to settle with us poor peasants.”

“That’s a bunch of crap!” Hong Taiyue said coldly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. If you want to be on my good side, then don’t make up stories. This tree produces no fruit because you haven’t taken care of it. It’s got nothing to do with Ximen Nao. The tree may belong to you now, but sooner or later it’s going to be the property of the commune. The road to collectivization requires the complete elimination of private ownership. Stamping out exploitation is a universal trend. And that is why you’d better start taking care of this tree. If you let that donkey gnaw at its bark one more time, I’ll flay the skin off your back!”

Huang Tong nodded and forced a smile onto his face. Flashes of gold emerged from his squinty eyes. His mouth was open just enough to reveal his yellow teeth and purple gums. Huang Tong’s wife, Qiuxiang, Ximen Nao’s second concubine, appeared then, a carrying pole over her shoulder, with her twins, Huzhu and Hezuo, seated in a basket on each end. She had brushed her swept-back hair with osman-thus oil and powdered her face; she wore a dress with floral piping and green satin shoes embroidered with purple flowers. An audacious woman, she was dressed just as she had been when she’d been my concubine, with rouged cheeks and smiling eyes. She cut a lovely figure, with curves in all the right places, nothing like a laboring woman. I knew the woman well. She did not have a good heart. She had a sharp tongue and a devious mind, a woman whose only virtue was in bed, not someone to get close to or confide in. She had high aspirations, and if I hadn’t kept her down, my wife and my first concubine would have died at her hand. Even before I became a dirty dog, this wench saw the writing on the wall and turned on me, saying I’d raped her, that I ran roughshod over her, that Ximen Bai mistreated her on a daily basis; she even opened her blouse in front of a crowd of men at the great account-settling meeting and pointed out scars on her breasts, wailing and sputtering loudly, This is where the landlord’s wife burned me with the red-hot bowl of a pipe, these are where that tyrant Ximen Nao poked me with an awl. As someone who’d studied to be a stage actress, she knew exactly how to worm her way into people’s hearts. I, Ximen Nao, brought her into my house out of kindness. She was at the time a teenager whose hair was still in braids as she followed her blind father from place to place and sang for money. Unfortunately, her father died on the street one day, and she had to sell herself in order to bury him. I took her in as a maidservant. You ungrateful bitch, if Ximen Nao hadn’t come to your rescue, you’d have died from the elements or been forced into a life of prostitution. The whore made tearful accusations, spouting lies that sounded so truthful that the women at the foot of the stage were sobbing openly, whetting their glistening sleeves with a torrent of tears. The slogans took over, rage swept over the crowd, and that sealed my doom. I’d known that in the end I’d die at this whore’s hand. She wept, she howled, but before long, she stole a glance at me out of those long, narrow eyes. If not for the two militiamen who had me by the arms, I’d have rushed up, not giving a damn what happened to me afterward, and slapped her hard — once, twice, three times. I’m not afraid to tell the truth: at home, because of all the lies she told, I did that, I slapped her three times, and she fell to her knees, wrapped her arms around my legs, tears clouding her eyes, and I saw that look, so enchanting, so pitiful, so full of affection, that my heart softened and my maleness hardened; what can you do with a woman who can’t stop telling lies, who’s lazy and spoiled? But three hard slaps, and they crawl into bed with you as if drunk. A flirtatious woman like that, I tell you, was my punishment. Old Master, Old Master, dear Elder Brother, go ahead, kill me, put me to death, cut me to pieces, but my soul will still wrap itself around you . . . she pulled a pair of scissors out of her bodice and tried to stab me, but was stopped by the militiamen and dragged down off the stage. Up till that moment I’d clung to the idea that she was putting on an act to protect herself; I couldn’t believe that any woman could have such deep-seated loathing for someone she’d cuddled with in bed . . .

She picked up Huzhu and Hezuo in their baskets, apparently heading to market, and gave Hong Taiyue a come-hither look. Her dark little face was like a black peony.

“Huang Tong,” Hong said, “keep an eye on her, she’s in need of remolding. Make sure she stops acting like a landlord’s mistress. Send her out to work in the fields and stop her from going from one marketplace to another.”

“Are you listening?” Huang Tong placed himself in front of Qiuxiang. “The Party secretary is talking about you!”

“Me? What did I do? If I can’t go to market, why not shut it down? If you’re afraid I’m too attractive to men, go get some sulfuric acid and ruin my face.” All this chatter from her tiny mouth was a terrible embarrassment to Hong Taiyue.

“You slut, you’re just itching to be smacked around!” Huang Tong growled.

“Says who, you? If you so much as touch me the wrong way, I’ll fight you till both our chests are bloody!”

Huang Tong slapped her before anyone could react. Everyone stood there dumbstruck, and I was waiting for Qiuxiang to make a frightful scene, to roll around on the ground, to threaten suicide, the sorts of things she always did. But I waited in vain. She didn’t resist at all. She just threw down her carrying pole, covered her face, and bawled, throwing a fright into Huzhu and Hezuo, who also started bawling. From a distance, their glistening, fuzzy little tops looked like monkey heads.

Hong Taiyue, who started the war, turned into peacemaker, trying to smooth things over between Huang Tong and his wife. Then, without a sideward glance, he walked into what had been the main house of the Ximen estate; now a badly printed wooden sign hanging on the brick wall proclaimed, “Ximen Village Party Committee.”

My master wrapped his arms around my head and massaged my ears with his rough hands, while his wife, Yingchun, cleaned my injured leg with salt water and wrapped it with a piece of white cloth. At that sorrowful yet warm moment, I was no Ximen Nao, I was a donkey, one about to become an adult and accompany his master through thick and thin. Like it says in the song that Mo Yan wrote for his new play,
The Black Donkey:

The first of October, 1954, China’s National Day, was also the day Northeast Gaomi Township’s first agricultural cooperative was established. Mo Yan, about whom we’ve already spoken, was born on that day, as well.