Like my father, Huang Tong and his wife refused to see me. I got down on my knees at their door and kowtowed three times, banging my head loudly enough for them to hear.
Two months later Huang Tong was dead.
On the night of his death, Wu Qiuxiang hanged herself from a dead branch on the apricot tree in the middle of the yard.
Once the funerals for my father-in-law and mother-in-law were over, Chunmiao and I moved into the Ximen family compound. The two rooms Mother and Hezuo had occupied now became our living quarters, separated from Father only by that thin wall. As before, he never went out in the daytime, but if we looked out our window at night we sometimes saw his crooked back along with the old dog, who never left his side.
In accordance with Qiuxiang’s wishes, we buried her to the right of Ximen Nao and Ximen Bai. Ximen Nao and his women were now all united in the ground. Huang Tong? We buried him in the Ximen Village public cemetery, no more than two yards from where Hong Taiyue lay.
On October 5, 1998, the fifteenth day of the eight month by the lunar calendar, the Mid-Autumn Festival, there was a reunion of all who had lived in the Ximen family compound. Kaifang returned on his motorcycle from the county town, his sidecar filled with two boxes of moon cakes and a watermelon. Baofeng and Ma Gaige were there. Gaige, who had worked for a private cottonseed-processing factory, had lost his left arm in a cutting machine; his sleeve hung empty at his side. You wanted to express your condolences to this nephew of yours, it seemed, but no words emerged when your lips moved. That was also the day that you, Lan Jiefang, and Pang Chunmiao received formal permission to marry. After years of hardship, your lover finally became your wife, and even an old dog like me was happy for you. You kneeled outside your father’s window. In a supplicating tone, you said:
“Dad… we’re married, we are a legally married couple, and will no longer bring you shame… Dad… open your door and let your son and your daughter-in-law pay their respects to you…”
Finally your father’s dilapidated door swung open, and you went up to it on your knees; there you held the marriage certificate high over your head. “Father,” you said.
“Father…,” Chunmiao greeted him.
He rested his hand on the door frame. His blue face twitched, his blue beard quivered, blue tears fell from his blue eyes. The Mid-Autumn moon sent down blue rays of light.
“Get up,” your father said in a voice that trembled. “At last you’ve put yourselves in the proper roles… my heart is free of concerns.”
The Mid-Autumn banquet was held under the apricot tree, with moon cakes, watermelon, and a variety of fine dishes arrayed on the table. Your father sat at the north end, with me crouched beside him. You and Chunmiao sat to the east, opposite Baofeng and Gaige. Kaifang and Huzhu sat to the south. The moon, perfectly round, sent its rays down on the Ximen family compound. The old tree had all but died years earlier, but in lunar August, a few new leaves appeared on some of the branches. Your father flung a glassful of liquor up toward the moon, which shuddered; the beams suddenly darkened, as if a layer of mist had shrouded the face of the moon. But only for a moment; the new light was brighter, warmer, and cleaner than before. Everything in the compound – the buildings, the trees, the people, and the dog – seemed to be steeped in a bath of light blue ink.
Your father splashed the second glassful on the ground. He poured the third glassful down my mouth. It was a dry red wine that Mo Yan had asked a German master winemaker friend to make. Deep red in color, with a wonderful bouquet and a slightly bitter taste, when it touched my throat it brought a host of memories.
It was Chunmiao’s and my first night as husband and wife, and our hearts were so full of emotions sleep would not come. We were bathed by moonlight streaming in through the cracks. We lay naked on the
“Chunmiao,” I called out softly, “let’s make love. When Mother and Hezuo see that we are in perfect harmony, they will be able to move on, knowing all is well…”
We wrapped our arms around each other and began to move in the moonlight like fish tumbling in the water. We made love with tears of gratitude in our eyes. Our bodies seemed to float up and out the window, all the way to the moon, with countless lamps and the purple ground far below. There we saw: Mother, Hezuo, Huang Tong, Qiuxiang, Chunmiao’s mother, Ximen Jinlong, Hong Taiyue, Ximen Bai… They were all sitting astride white birds, flying into a void we could not see. Even Ma Gaige’s lost arm, dark as an eel, was following in their wake.
Late that night your father led me out of the compound. By this time there was no doubt that he knew who I was. On our way out we stood in the gateway and, feeling intense nostalgia, yet seemingly with no wistfulness at all, took a long look inside. Then we headed out to the plot of land, where the moon hung low waiting for us.
When we reached the one-point-six-acre plot of land, which seemed to us to have been carved out of gold, the moon began to change color, first to a light eggplant purple, and then, slowly, into an azure hue. At that moment, everything around us took on an ocean blue that merged perfectly with the vast sky; we were two tiny creatures at the bottom of that ocean.
Your father lay down in the hole he had dug. Softly, he said:
“You can go, too, Master.”
I walked over to my plot and jumped in. I fell, down and down, all the way to the hall where blue lights flashed. The underworld attendants were whispering back and forth. The face of Lord Yama, seated in the main hall, was unfamiliar to me. But before I could open my mouth, he said:
“Ximen Nao, I know everything about you. Does hatred still reside in your heart?”
I hesitated momentarily before shaking my head.
“There are too many, far too many, people in the world in whose hearts hatred resides,” Lord Yama said sorrowfully. “We are unwilling to allow spirits who harbor hatred to be reborn as humans. Unavoidably, some do slip through the net.”
“My hatred is all gone, Great Lord!”
“No, I can see in your eyes that traces of it remain,” Lord Yama said, “so I will send you back once more as a member of the animal kingdom. This time, however, you will be reborn as a higher species, one closer to man, a monkey, if you must know, and only for a short time – two years. I hope that during those two years you will be able to purge your heart of hatred. When you do that, you will have earned the right to return to the realm of humans.”
In accordance with Father’s wishes, we spread the wheat and beans in his room, as well as the corn hanging from the rafters, into his grave, covering his face and body with those precious grains. We spread some of it into the dog’s grave as well, though that was not spelled out in Father’s last wishes. We wrestled with one item for a while, but ultimately decided to part with Father’s wishes by erecting a marker over his grave. The words were written by Mo Yan and cut into stone by the stone mason from my donkey era, Han Shan:
Everything that comes from the earth shall return to it.
Book Five: An End and a Beginning
54
The Face of the Sun
Dear reader, this would seem to be the logical place to wrap up this novel, but there are characters whose fates have not yet been revealed, something most readers want to see. So let’s give our narrators, Lan Jiefang and Big-head, a rest and let me – their friend Mo Yan – pick up the threads and pin a tail on this lumbering animal of a story.
After Lan Jiefang and Pang Chunmiao buried his father and the dog, they entertained the thought of living out
