not enough! I need lots of water, the more the better! She took the dipper, took aim at Dad’s face, and said: Close your eyes, Dad! Actually, they’d been closed all along, since he couldn’t open them. She splashed the dipper full of water into his face. Water! she screamed hoarsely. Water! Water! I was shocked to hear a sound like that from my gentle sister. Mother came out of the house with a bucket of water, stumbling toward us. Astonishingly, Huang Tong’s wife, Wu Qiuxiang, a woman whose only fear was that things would go smoothly, who wished terrible afflictions on absolutely everyone, came out of her house also carrying a bucket of water. Darkness had fallen. From the shadows my sister cried out: Throw it all into his face! One dipper full of water after another splashed into Dad’s face, creating the sound of crashing waves. Bring me a lantern! she demanded. My mother ran into the house and came back with a small kerosene lantern, walking cautiously and shielding the flickering flame with her hand. A breeze blew by and put it out. Mother lost her footing and lay sprawled on the ground. The lantern must have sailed a long way away; I detected the smell of kerosene wafting from a distant corner of the wall. I heard Jinlong say to one of his toadies in a low voice: Go light the gas lamp.
Outside of the sun, the brightest source of light in Ximen Village at the time was a gas lamp. Though only seventeen, Tiger Cub Sun was the village expert on that lamp. He could light it off in ten minutes, whereas it took others half an hour. They invariably broke the wicker filament; he never did. He’d stare at the filament, so white it hurt the eyes, and listen to the hiss of the gas, mesmerized. The compound was black as ink, but a light was beginning to glow inside the house, as if a fire were spreading. Surprised looks appeared on people’s faces as Tiger Cub Sun emerged from the Ximen Village Red Guard headquarters with a gas lamp on a pole, like bringing out the sun to invest the red wall and red tree with radiance, fiery, blindingly red. Every face in the crowd was immediately visible: Huang Huzhu, standing in the doorway of her house, fingering the tip of her braid like the spoiled daughter of a feudal family; Huang Hezuo, standing under the apricot tree, casting looks all over the place, her boyish haircut starting to grow out, bubbles oozing from between her teeth; Wu Qiuxiang running around, as if there were so many things she wanted to say, but no one to talk to; Ximen Jinlong, hands on his hips in the middle of the yard, a somber look in his eyes, his brows furrowed as if he were pondering weighty questions; three of the Sun brothers fanned out around Ximen Jinlong like a pack of running dogs; and finally, Huang Tong, who was busy splashing water into my dad’s face. The water: some of it splashed back into the radiant light and some of it dripped down my father’s face; by then he was sitting up, hands on his stretched-out legs, his face raised to receive the water bath. He was calm: no more violent thrashing, no more cries of anguish; most likely my sister’s arrival had eased his mind. My mother was crawling on the ground and mumbling, My lantern, where’s my lantern? Covered in mud, she looked terrible, especially in the glaring light of the gas lamp, which showed her hair to be silvery white. She looked much older than her age of not quite fifty, and my heart ached for her. It appeared as if the paint on Dad’s face had thinned out a bit, but it was still bright red, and beads of water rolled off it like raindrops from a lotus leaf. Gawkers had gathered outside the compound, until the gateway was black with people. My sister stood there as calmly as a battlefield general. Bring the lamp over, she said. Tiger Cub Sun carried it up, taking very small steps. The second Sun brother – Tiger – came flying out of the headquarters with a bench, probably acting on orders from my brother, and set it down a couple of yards from my dad so his brother would have something to set the lantern on. My sister opened her satchel and removed some cotton and a pair of tweezers. Picking up a piece of cotton with the tweezers, she soaked it in water and cleaned the area around Dad’s eyes; after that, she cleaned his eyelids. She worked with great care and speed. When that was done, she filled a syringe with water and told my dad to open his eyes. He couldn’t do it. Who’ll come over and pry his eyes open? my sister asked. Mother crawled up, bringing all that mud with her. Jiefang, my sister said, come pry Dad’s eyes open. I shrank back. Dad’s red face was terrifying to me. Hurry up! she said. So I stuck my spear in the ground and went up to her, tiptoeing like a chicken in the snow. I looked at her, looked at the syringe in her hand, and tried to pry one of Dad’s eyes open. His agonizing shriek cut into me like a knife, and I jumped way back from sheer fright. What is it with you? my sister asked angrily. It’s okay with you if your dad goes blind, is that it? Huang Huzhu, who had been standing in her doorway, walked nimbly up to us. She was wearing a red-checked coat over a gaily patterned blouse, with both collars turned up. Her braid rolled back and forth along her spine. I can still see it after all these years. The distance from her doorway to our ox shed was about thirty paces. In the bright light of the gas lamp, those thirty paces were a wonderful show of their own, projecting shadows of a beautiful woman. All eyes were on her, but none more intensely than mine. After all the terrible things she had said about my sister, here she was, boldly walking up to be her assistant. I’ll do it! she said in a loud voice that arrived on the air like a robin redbreast. The mud didn’t deter her; so what if her pretty white-soled shoes were badly soiled? Everyone knew what a clever, deft young woman she was. The insoles my sister embroidered were lovely, but not as lovely as Huzhu’s. When the apricot tree was in bloom, she’d stand under it, eyes on the flowers, fingers flying as she transferred the flowers to the insole, making them more beautiful and fragile than those on the tree. She kept those insoles in little piles under her pillow, and I wondered who she was going to give them to. Braying Jackass? Ma Liangcai? Jinlong? How about me?
Her eyes shone in the extraordinary glare of the gas lamp, as did her teeth. She was, undeniably, a beauty, with a nicely rounded bottom and pert bosom, and I, in my single-minded dedication to follow my dad in independent farming, had completely overlooked the beauty right beside me. In that brief moment, the time it took to walk from her doorway to our ox shed, I fell hopelessly in love with her. She bent over, extended her long delicate fingers, and pried open one of my dad’s eyes. He cried out in agony, but I heard a little popping sound when the eyelid was unstuck, like bubbles released by fish from the bottom. The eye socket looked like an open wound from which bloody fluids flowed. My sister took aim with her syringe and squirted a slow silvery stream of water, controlling the force so the irrigation would be effective without damaging the eye. Once in the eye, the water turned to blood and then streamed down his face. Dad groaned in agony With the same degree of accuracy and the same speed, my sister and Huzhu, mortal enemies who had reached a silent agreement to work together, irrigated my dad’s other eye. They then washed them clean – left, right, left, right – over and over. Finally, my sister put eye drops in both eyes and covered them with a bandage. Jiefang, she said, take Dad in the house. I ran over and lifted him up by his armpits. Getting him to stand was like pulling a turnip out of muddy ground.
At that moment a strange sound – somewhere between a cry, a laugh, and a sigh – emerged from the ox shed. It was our ox. Tell me, were you crying or laughing or sighing? Go on with your story, Big-head Lan Qiansui said icily. Don’t ask me that.
– The startled crowd of gawkers turned to look at the shed, suffused with light. The ox’s eyes were like lamps giving off a blue light; golden emanations radiated from his body. Dad struggled to go into the shed. Ox! he cried. My ox! You’re all I have, my whole family! The note of despair in those cries chilled the heart of everyone who heard them. Jinlong may have betrayed you, but my sister, Mother, and I love you. How can you say that the ox is your whole family? His body may have been an ox, but his heart and soul were Ximen Nao, so all those people in the yard – his son, his daughter, his first and second concubines, as well as his farmhand and me, his farmhand’s son – produced feelings in him that were all jumbled up: love, hate, enmity, and gratitude -
It may not have been as involved as you make it out to be, Big-head Lan Qiansui said. Maybe I made that strange sound because I had a clump of grass caught in my throat. But you’ve taken a simple matter and turned it inside out, deliberately complicating it in your jumbled narration.
– It was a jumbled world back then, which makes it hard to speak with clarity. But let me pick up where I left off: The Ximen Village parade came over from the eastern head of the marketplace, accompanied by gongs and drums and red banners snapping in the wind. Brigade Commander Huang Tong was being paraded through the streets by Jinlong and his Red Guards, in addition to the former Party secretary Hong Taiyue, along with the onetime security head, Yu Wufu, the rich peasant Wu Yuan, Zhang Dazhuang the traitor, and Ximen Bai, wife of the landlord Ximen Nao, all old-line bad elements. My dad, Lan Lian, was also under escort. Hong Taiyue was clenching his teeth and staring straight ahead. Zhang Dazhuang wore a worried frown. Wu Yuan was weeping. Ximen Bai was slovenly and dirty. The paint hadn’t been cleaned off my dad’s face; his eyes were blood red and tear-filled. The tears resulted from damaged corneas, not any sort of internal weakness. On the cardboard sign around Dad’s neck Jinlong himself had written: “Stinking, Obstinate Independent Farmer.” Dad was carrying our plow over his shoulder, the one they’d given him during land reform. He had a hempen rope around his waist, which was tied to a set of reins, which in turn were tied to a bull ox. It was a reincarnation of the tyrannical landlord Ximen Nao; in other words, you. Feel free to interrupt me anytime and pick up where I leave off. You can relate what happened after that. I see the world through human eyes, but yours is an animal universe, so you can probably tell a more interesting story. No? All right, I’ll continue. You were a mighty ox, with horns like steel, broad shoulders, powerful muscles, and incandescent eyes that radiated malevolence. A pair of tattered shoes had been hooked on your horns. That was the brainchild of the Sun brother who was such an expert in the use of gas lamps. He meant only
