that woman born with the world’s loveliest face, interminable, eternally present…
Father took me to market to buy an ox. It was the first day of October, 1964. The sky was clear, the air fresh, the sunlight radiant; birds were flying in the sky, locusts were sticking their soft abdomens into the hard earth to lay their eggs. I picked them up off the ground and strung them on a blade of grass so I could take them home to roast and eat.
The marketplace was bustling, now that the hard times were behind us. The harvests that autumn were unusually large, which accounted for all the happy faces. Taking me by the hand, Father led me over to the livestock market. Lan Lian was my father; they called me Lan Lian Junior. When people saw the two of us together, they often sighed: father and son, both branded with birthmarks on their faces, seemingly afraid that people wouldn’t know they were related.
Mules, horses, and donkeys were available at the livestock market. On that day there were only two donkeys, one a gray female with floppy ears and a downcast, disheartened look. Her eyes were dull, with gummy yellow mucus in the corners. We didn’t have to look in her mouth to know that she was an old mare. The other donkey, a black gelded male that was almost as big as a mule, had an off-putting white face. White face: no offspring. Like a villain on the Peking opera stage, he had a venomous look about him. Who’d want an animal like that? That one needed to be sent to the knackers without delay. “Dragon meat in heaven, donkey meat on earth.” The commune’s Party cadres were ardent fans of cooked donkey, especially the newly arrived Party secretary, who had previously served as County Chief Chen’s secretary. His name was Fan Tong, which sounded just like the words for “rice bucket.” He had an astonishing capacity for food.
County Chief Chen had deep emotional ties with donkeys; Secretary Fan was in love with donkey meat. When Father saw the two old and ugly animals, his face darkened and tears wetted his eyes. I knew he was thinking about the black donkey we’d owned, the “snow stander” that had been written up in the newspaper, the one that had accomplished something no other donkey in the world could match. He wasn’t alone in missing that donkey; I missed him too. When I thought back to my elementary school days, I recalled how much pride that donkey brought us three children. And not just us: even Huang Huzhu and Huang Hezuo, the twin girls, got their share as well. Though Father and Huang Tong, and Mother and Qiuxiang, barely spoke and seldom even greeted one another, I always felt a special closeness to the Huang twins. If you want to know the truth, I felt closer to them than I did to my half sister Lan Baofeng.
The two donkey traders apparently knew Lan Lian, since they nodded and smiled meaningfully. Father immediately dragged me over to the oxen market, almost as if he was running away from something, or he’d received a sign from heaven. We could never buy a donkey, since no donkey in the world could compare with the one we’d once owned.
The donkey market had been nearly deserted; the oxen market was just the opposite, with all sizes, shapes, and colors of animals available. How come there are so many oxen, Dad? I thought they’d been killed off during the three years of famine we just got through. It looks like these animals popped up through cracks in the earth or something. There were Southern Shandong oxen, Shaanxi oxen, Mongol oxen, Western Henan oxen, and a bunch of mixed breeds. We entered and, without a second glance, headed straight for a young bull that had just recently been haltered. Looking to be about a year old, it had a chestnut-colored coat, a satiny hide, and big, bright eyes that signaled both intelligence and a mischievous nature. We could tell he was fast and powerful by looking at his strong legs. Young as he was, he already had the frame of a fully grown adult ox, like a young man with fuzz above his lip. His mother, a long-bodied Mongol, had a tail that dragged along the ground and forward-jutting horns. These oxen take great strides, are impatient by nature, can withstand extreme cold and rough treatment, survive easily in the wild, are excellent in front of a plow, and are well suited to pulling a cart. The animal’s owner was a middle- aged man with a sallow complexion and thin lips that did not cover his teeth; a pen was hooked in the pocket of his black uniform, which had missing buttons. He looked like an accountant or storekeeper. A cross-eyed boy with shaggy hair stood behind the owner; he was about my age and, like me, a school dropout. We sized each other up; there was a spark of recognition.
“In the market for an ox?” the boy called out to me. He added conspiratorially, “This one’s a half-breed. Sire’s a Swiss Simmental, mother’s a Mongol. They mated on the farm. Artificial insemination. The Simmental bull weighed in at eight hundred kilos, like a small mountain. If you’re in the market, this is the one you want to buy. Stay away from the female.”
“Shut up, you little brat!” the sallow-faced man scolded. “If I hear another word out of you I’ll sew your mouth shut!”
With a giggle, the boy stuck out his tongue and ran over behind the man. Then he secretly pointed to the mother with the crooked tail, to make sure I noticed.
Father bent down and reached out to the young ox, like a member of the gentry class inviting a bejeweled, well-dressed young lady to dance in a brightly lit dancehall. Many years later, I saw that very gesture in foreign movies, and invariably thought of my father and that young ox. Father’s eyes flashed, a radiance I think you only see in the eyes of a loved one from whom you’ve been cruelly separated for so long. What really amazed me was that the ox actually walked up, wagged his tail, and licked Father’s hand, once, then a second time. Father stroked his neck.
“I’ll take this one.”
“You can’t buy just the one,” the trader said in a tone that ruled out any bargaining. “I can’t take him from his mother.”
“I only have a hundred yuan,” Father insisted, “and I only want that young one.” He took the money out of an inner pocket and held it out to the ox trader.
“You can have them both for five hundred,” the man replied. “I’m not going to repeat myself. Either buy them or be on your way. I don’t have time to argue.”
“I said I only have a hundred.” Father laid the money at the trader’s feet. “I want that young one.”
“Pick your money up!”
Father was on his haunches in front of the young ox, intense emotion suffusing his face. He stroked the animal. Obviously, he hadn’t heard the trader’s remark.
“Go on, Uncle, sell it to him…,” the boy said.
“Keep your opinions to yourself!” the man said as he handed the mother ox’s tether to the boy. “Take her!” He walked up and pushed Father away from the young ox so he could lead it over to its mother. “I’ve never seen anybody like you,” he said. “Don’t get any ideas about taking it without my approval.”
Father was sitting on the ground, looking dazed.
“I don’t care,” he said, as if possessed. “This is the ox I want.”
Now, of course, I understand why he was so insistent on buying that particular animal, but at the time I didn’t know that the ox was the latest incarnation of Ximen Nao – Ximen Donkey. What I thought was, Father was under such pressure owing to his perverse insistence on remaining an independent farmer that he wasn’t himself mentally or emotionally. Now I’m convinced there was a spiritual bond between him and that ox.
In the end we bought the ox. It was inevitable, all previously arranged in the underworld. When nothing had yet been settled between Father and the ox trader, the Party branch secretary of the Ximen Village Production Brigade, Hong Taiyue, the brigade commander, Huang Tong, and some other people entered the market. They saw the mother ox and, of course, the young animal. Hong deftly opened the mother’s mouth.
“The teeth are all worn down. This one belongs at the knackers.”
“Elder brother,” the ox trader said with a sneer, “nobody says you have to buy my animals, but you can’t talk about them like that. How can you call these teeth worn down? I tell you, if the brigade wasn’t so short of money, I wouldn’t sell her for any amount. I’d take her home to mate and have another calf next spring.”
Hong stretched his hand out of his wide sleeve to negotiate price in the tried and tested tradition of livestock markets. But the man waved him off.
“None of that. Here’s the deal. Both for five hundred, the one and only price.”
Father wrapped his arms around the young ox and said angrily:
“This is the ox I want, I’ll pay a hundred yuan.”
“Lan Lian,” Hong Taiyue mocked him. “Save yourself the trouble. Go home, get your wife and kids, and join the commune. If you’re so fond of animals, we’ll assign you the job of tending them.” Hong cast a glance at Brigade Commander Huang. “What do you say to that, Huang Tong?”
“Lan Lian,” Huang Tong said, “your stubbornness has won us over. Now it’s time for you to join the commune,
