Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

another as they rolled along the street. He shook his head, a sad smile on his face. He had every right to be angry, but he wasn’t. He was Wu Yuan, one of our rich peasants, a man who could tease the saddest notes out of a flute, which he played with refined elegance. He belonged to the ancients, a man who, as you say, had befriended the tyrannical landlord Ximen Nao. I ran off, leaving Wu Yuan to load the stones back onto his cart. They were to be delivered to the Ximen compound on orders from the Ximen Village branch of the Golden Monkey Red Guard faction commander, Ximen Jinlong. I ran smack into Huang Huzhu. Most of the village girls had cut their hair short, with a part, like the boys, exposing the skin on their scalp and neck. She alone stubbornly clung to her braid, which she tied off at the end with a red ribbon: feudal, conservative, diehard, an attitude that easily rivaled that of my dad, who stubbornly refused to abandon independent farming. Before long, however, that braid served her well, for when the revolutionary model opera Red Lantern was staged, she was a natural for the role of Li Tiemei, who wore a braid just like that. Even actresses in the county opera troupe who were assigned the role of Li Tiemei had to wear fake braids. Our Li Tiemei had the real thing, every strand of hair firmly attached to her scalp. I later learned why Huang Huzhu was so dead set on keeping her braid. That was because of all the fine capillaries in her hair; if she’d cut her hair they’d have oozed blood. Her hair was thick and lush, a quality rarely seen. Hu Zhu, I said when I bumped into her, have you seen my sister? She opened her mouth, as if she wanted to say something, but immediately shut it again. She was cold, scornful, absolutely off-putting. I couldn’t let her expression bother me. I asked you, I said in a very loud voice, have you seen my sister? Pretending she didn’t know, she asked me: And just who is your sister? You fucking Huang Huzhu, are you telling me you don’t know who my sister is? If you don’t know that, then you must not even know who your own mother is. My sister, Lan Baofeng, health worker, a barefoot doctor. Oh, her, she said with a slight and very contemptuous twist of her mouth. Outwardly proper, but dripping with jealousy, she said. She’s at school, entangled with Ma Liangcai. Go now, or you’ll miss it, two dogs, a mutt and a bitch, one more aroused than the other, they’ll be coupled any minute! That threw me. I never expected coarse language like that from someone as old-fashioned as Huzhu -

Another accomplishment of the Great Cultural Revolution! Big-head Lan Qiansui said coldly. His fingers were bleeding profusely. I handed him the medicine I’d prepared beforehand. He rubbed it on his fingers, stopping the bleeding at once.

– Her face reddened and her chest swelled, and I knew exactly what that was all about. While she may not have been secretly in love with Ma Liangcai, seeing him cozy up to my sister upset her. I’m not going to worry about you now, I said. I’ll take care of you later, you tramp. Falling for my brother – No, he’s no longer my brother, hasn’t been for a long time, he’s just Ximen Nao’s bad seed. So’s your sister, she said. That stopped me. My throat felt like it was clogged by a hot sticky pastry. They’re different, I said finally. She’s decent and gentle, good-hearted, red- blooded, humane. She’s my sister. – She has almost no humanity left. She smells like a dog. She’s the bastard offspring of Ximen Nao and a mongrel bitch, and you can smell it on her every time it rains, Huzhu said, clenching her teeth. I turned my spear around. During the revolutionary period, the people had the power to execute individuals. The Jia Mountain People’s Commune passed the execution authority down to the village level, and Mawan Village had killed thirty-three people in a single day, the oldest eighty-eight, the youngest thirteen. Some were clubbed to death, and some were sliced in half with hay cutters. I aimed my spear at her chest. She threw out her chest to meet the tip. Go ahead, kill me if you’ve got the guts! I’ve lived long enough already. Tears sprang from her lovely eyes. Something strange there, something I couldn’t figure out. Huzhu and I had grown up together. We’d played together on the riverbank, naked as the day we were born, and she developed such a special interest in my little pecker that she ran home in tears, telling her mother, Wu Qiuxiang, that she wanted one. How come Jiefang has one and I don’t? Wu Qiuxiang stood under the apricot tree and really chewed me out: Jiefang, you little thug, if you take ever advantage of Huzhu again, I’ll cut your pecker off when you’re not looking. It seemed like only yesterday, but now, suddenly, Huzhu had become as enigmatic as a river turtle. I turned and ran. A woman’s tears always rattle me. As soon as a woman starts to cry, I get nose-aching sad. I get lightheaded. I’ve suffered over that sign of weakness my whole life. Ximen Jinlong dumped red paint in my dad’s eyes, I shouted back, and I have to find my sister to save his eyesight… Serves him right. Your family, dog eat dog… Her hateful comment chased me down. I guess you could say I’d broken free from Huzhu at that moment, though my growing hatred for her was tempered by the same amount of lingering fondness. I knew she had no feelings for me, but at least she’d told me where my sister was.

The elementary school was located at the west end, near the village wall. It had a large yard encircled by a wall made of bricks from gravesites, which ensured that there would always be spirits of the dead hanging around, coming out at night to wander. A large grove of pine trees beyond the wall was home to owls whose chilling screeches struck fear into anyone who heard them. It was a miracle those trees hadn’t been cut down as fuel during the iron- and steel-smelting campaign, something that can be attributed to a single old cypress tree that actually bled when they tried to chop it down. Who’d ever seen blood from a tree before? It was like Huzhu’s hair, which bled if it was cut. By all appearances, the only things that were preserved were the unusual ones.

I found my sister in the school office. There was no romanticizing with Ma Liangcai; she was treating a wound on him. Someone had hit him, opening a gash in his head, and my sister was wrapping a bandage around it, leaving exposed only one eye so he could see where he was going, his nostrils so he could breathe, and his mouth so he could eat and drink. To me he resembled the Nationalist soldiers we’d seen in movies after they’d been beaten bloody by Communist forces. She looked like a nurse, but totally devoid of expression, as if carved out of cold, polished marble. All the windows had been smashed, and all the shards of broken glass had been scooped up by children who had taken them home to their mothers, mostly for use in peeling potatoes. People had put the larger pieces in papered-up window frames so they could see outside and get some sunlight. Late August evening winds blew in from the pine grove, carrying the smell of pine tar, blowing papers off the office desktop onto the floor. My sister took a little vial from her reddish brown leather medical satchel, poured out a few tablets, and wrapped them in a piece of paper she picked up off the floor. Two at a time, three times a day, she told him. After meals. He forced a smile. Don’t waste them, he said. There’s no before or after meals, I’m not going to eat. I’m going on a hunger strike as a show of resistance against the savagery of those Fascists. I come from three generations of poor peasants, red to our roots, so why did they beat me? My sister gave him a sympathetic look and said softly: Teacher Ma, don’t get upset, it’ll make your injury worse… He thrust out his hands and grabbed hold of my sister’s hand. Baofeng, he said almost hysterically, Baofeng, I want you to like me, I want you to be mine… All these years, I think of you when I’m eating, when I’m sleeping, when I’m out walking, I don’t know what to do with myself, I’m in a daze. I don’t know how many times I’ve walked into a wall or a tree, and people assume I’m thinking about my studies, but I’m really thinking about you… I found all that lovesick claptrap emerging from a little hole in the bandages preposterous; his eyes were strangely bright, like wet lumps of coal. My sister struggled to free her hands; she drew her head back and shook it from side to side to get away from the hole in the bandages that was his mouth. Don’t fight me, he said, do it my way… Ma Liangcai was beginning to rant. The guy was unscrupulous. Sister! I shouted as I kicked open the door and ran into the room armed with my spear. Ma Liangcai abruptly let go of my sister’s hands and stumbled backward, knocking over the basin stand and spilling water all over the brick floor. Kill! I shouted as I jammed my spear into the wall. Ma Liangcai lost his balance and sat down hard on the pulpy wet newspaper, obviously scared witless. I pulled the tip of the spear out of the wall and said to Lan Baofeng, Sister, Jinlong had people brush red paint into Dad’s eyes. When I left he was rolling on the floor in agony. Mother sent me to get you. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Gome with me and keep Dad from going blind. She picked up her medical satchel, cast a fleeting glance at Ma Liangcai shaking in a corner, and ran out with me, so fast I couldn’t keep up. Her satchel swung back and forth, banging noisily against her backside as she ran. The stars were out; in the western sky Venus shone brightly alongside a crescent moon.

My dad was still rolling around in the yard, and no one could hold him down. He kept rubbing his eyes and crying out in pain, sending cold shivers down people’s spines. All my brother’s toadies had slipped away, leaving only him and his protectors, the four Sun brothers. My mother and Huang Tong were each holding one of my dad’s arms to try to keep him from rubbing his eyes. But he was too strong for them, and his arms kept slipping out of their grasp, like slippery catfish. My mother, gasping from exertion, kept cursing: Jinlong, you unconscionable beast, he may not be your biological father, but he raised you from childhood. How could you be so savage?

My sister charged into the compound like a savior from the heavens. Lan Lian, Mother said, stop struggling, Baofeng’s here. Baofeng, help your father, don’t let him go blind. He may be stubborn, but he’s a good man, and he was especially good to you and your brother… Night had not fallen completely, but the red throughout the compound and on Dad’s face had turned dark green. The smell of paint hung in the air. Bring me some water, and hurry! My sister was still out of breath. Mother ran into the house and came out with a dipper full of water. That’s