both for the sake of your family and to enhance the reputation of the Ximen Village Production Brigade. Every time there’s a meeting, the question invariably arises: Is that Ximen Village farmer still working as an independent?”
Father ignored them. Starving members of the People’s Commune had killed our black donkey and eaten him, and they’d stolen all the grain we’d stored up. I might be able to understand that sort of abominable behavior, but the wounds on Father’s heart would not be easily healed. He often said that he and that donkey were not linked by the traditional master-livestock relationship but were almost like brothers, joined at the heart. Despite the fact that he could not possibly have known that the black donkey was the reincarnation of the man for whom he had worked, he unquestionably sensed that he and the donkey were fated to be together. To him the comments of Hong Taiyue and the others were nothing but platitudes. Father couldn’t even muster the interest to respond. He just held on to the ox’s neck and said:
“This is the ox I want.”
“So you’re the independent farmer,” the surprised ox trader said to Lan Lian. “Brother, you’re something special” He studied Father’s face, then mine. “Lan Lian, blue face. He really does have a blue face,” he blurted out. “It’s a deal. A hundred yuan. The young ox is yours!” He bent down, picked the money up off the ground, counted it, and stuffed it in his pocket. “Since you’re from the same village,” he said to Hong Taiyue, “you can benefit from your association with this blue-faced brother. I’ll sell you this female for three hundred eighty, a discount of twenty yuan.”
Father untied the rope around his waist and put it around the ox’s neck. Hong Taiyue and his entourage put a new halter on the female and returned the old one to the trader. Livestock deals never include the halters.
“Better come with us, Lan Lian,” Hong Taiyue said to Father. “I doubt you’ll be able to drag your young ox away from its mother.”
Father shook his head and walked off, the young ox obediently falling in behind him. There was no struggle, even though the mother ox bellowed her grief, and even though her son did look back and call out to her. At the time I thought he’d probably reached the age where he didn’t need her as much as he once had. Now I realize that you, Ximen Ox, were Ximen Donkey, and before that, a man, one whose fate was still tied to my father. That’s why there was instant recognition between them and notable emotion, and why separation was not an option.
I was about to walk off with Father when the trader’s boy ran up and said furtively:
“You should know that that female is a ‘hot turtle.’”
“Hot turtles” were what we called animals that slobbered and began panting as soon as they started working in the summer. I didn’t know what the term meant at the time, but I could tell from the way the boy said it that a “hot turtle” was not a good ox. To this day I don’t know why he thought it was important that I know that, nor do I know what it was about him that made me feel I knew him somehow.
Father said nothing on the road home. I felt like saying something a few times, but one glance at his face, caught up in his own mysterious thoughts, and I decided not to intrude. No matter how you look at it, buying that ox, one I liked at first sight, was a good thing. It made Father happy, it made me happy too.
Father stopped on the outskirts of the village to smoke his pipe and get a good look at you. Without warning, he burst out laughing.
Father did not laugh often, and I’d never heard him laugh like that. It kind of scared me. Hoping he wasn’t suddenly possessed, I asked him:
“What are you laughing at, Father?”
“Jiefang,” he said, staring not at me, but at the ox’s eyes, “look at this animal’s eyes. Who do they remind you of?”
That was not what I expected to hear, and I assumed that something was wrong with him. But I did as I was told. The young ox’s moist, limpid eyes were blue-black and so clear I could see my reflection in them. He seemed to be looking at me as he chewed his cud; his pale blue mouth moved slowly as he chewed, then swallowed a clump of grass that skittered all the way down to his other stomach like a mouse. A new clump then rose to take its place.
“What do you mean, Dad?”
“You can’t see it?” he said. “His eyes are an exact replica of our donkey’s eyes.”
With Father’s help, I tried conjuring up a picture of our donkey, but all I could manage were the sheen of his coat, his mouth, which was normally open in front of big white teeth, and the way he stretched out his neck when he brayed. But try as I might, I couldn’t recall what his eyes looked like.
Instead of pushing me to try harder, Father told me some tales involving the wheel of transmigration. He told me about a man who dreamed that his deceased father said to him, Son, I’m coming back as an ox. I’ll be reborn tomorrow. The next day, as promised, the family ox delivered a male calf. Well, the man took special care of that young ox, his “father.” He didn’t put a nose ring or halter on him. “Let’s go, Father,” he’d say when they went out into the field. After working hard, he’d say, “Time to rest, Father.” So the ox rested. At that point in his tale, Father stopped, to my chagrin. So what happened? After hesitating for a moment, Father said, I’m not sure this is the sort of thing I should be telling a child, but I’ll go ahead. That ox did a pecker pull – later on I learned that “pecker pull” meant masturbation – and was seen by the woman of the house. “Father,” she said, “How could you do something like that? You should be ashamed of yourself.” The ox turned and rammed its head into the wall and died on the spot. Ahhh – Father released a long sigh.
13
A Stream of Guests Urge Participation in the Commune
Independent Farming Gains a Distinguished Advocate
“Qiansui, I can’t let you keep calling me ‘Grandpa.’” Timidly, I patted him on the shoulder. “Just because I’m in my fifties and you’re a five-year-old boy, if we go back forty years, that is, the year 1965, during that turbulent spring, our relationship was one of a fifteen-year-old youth and a young ox.” He nodded solemnly. “It’s as if it was yesterday.” I gazed into the ox’s eyes and saw a look of mischief, of naivete, and of unruliness…
I’m sure you remember the intense pressure our family was under that spring. Eliminating the last remaining independent farmer was one of the most important tasks confronting the Ximen Village Production Brigade as well as the Milky Way People’s Commune. Hong Taiyue enlisted the help of villagers who enjoyed high prestige and commanded universal respect – Great Uncle Mao Shunshan, Old Uncle Qu Shuiyuan, and Fourth Elder Qin Buting; persuasive women – Aunty Yang Guixiang, Third Sister-in-Law Su Erman, Sister Chang Suhua, and Great Aunt Wu Qiuxiang; and clever, glib students – Mo Yan, Li Jinzhu, and Niu Shunwa. These ten people were the only ones I could recall; there were, in fact, many more, and they all made it to our door, like eager matchmakers or people wanting to display their wisdom and eloquence. The men surrounded my father, the women my mother; the students went after my brother and my sister, but did not spare me either. Smoke from the men’s pipes nearly suffocated the geckoes on our walls; the women’s hindquarters wore out the mats on our sleeping platform, the
“Old Lan, good nephew, join up. If you don’t, your family will be unhappy, and so will your animals.”
Unhappy? I was anything but. How could they know that I was in reality Ximen Nao, that I was Ximen Donkey, an executed landlord, a dismembered donkey, so why would I want to throw in my lot with my personal enemies? Why was I so reluctant to be away from your father? Because I knew that was the only way I could be engaged in independent farming.
Women sat cross-legged on our sleeping platform like nosy relatives from some distant village. With slobber building up in the corners of their mouths, they were like the tape recorders in roadside shops that play the same damned stuff over and over. Finally, my anger won out:
“Big-tits Yang and Fat-ass Su, get the hell out of our house. You make me sick!”
Angry? Not a bit. With silly grins, they said:
