Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

his failed plan to set up a counterrevolutionary organization. After beating and kicking him mercilessly, they ran him out of the compound. The goatskin coats were passed out to Red Guards on night duty. From the time the revolutionary tide began to sweep through the land, my brother slept only in the original brigade office, now command headquarters, in his clothes, and always in the company of his four warrior attendants and a dozen or more underlings. They laid straw and blankets out on the floor and were kept warm by the addition of the newly acquired coats.

But let’s return to what we were talking about earlier: My mother rushed out of the house with the goatskin coat over her shoulders, which made her appear unusually big. The coat had been allocated to my sister by my brother, since she was the Red Guard doctor first, then the village doctor. True to her filial nature, she gave the coat to my mother to ward off the cold. She ran up to where my brother lay, knelt down beside him, and lifted up his head. What’s wrong, son? My brother’s face was purple, his lips dry and cracked, and his ears oozed pus and blood; he looked like he’d become a martyr. Your sister, where’s your sister? She went to Chen Dafu’s to deliver his baby. Jiefang, my mother wailed, be a good boy and go get her. I looked down at Jinlong, then over at the now leaderless Red Guards, and my heart ached. We had the same mother, after all. Sure, he liked to throw his weight around, and that made me a little jealous. But I admired him. He was a rare talent, I knew that, and I didn’t want him to die. So I raced out of the compound and down the street, headed west for a couple of hundred yards, then turned north into a lane, where Chen Dafu and his family lived in three rooms with a thatched roof and a rammed- earth wall, the nearest compound to the river about a hundred yards down the lane.

Chen’s scrawny dog greeted me with ferocious barking. So I picked up a brick and threw it at him, hitting him in the leg. With a series of pained yelps, he ran into the yard on three legs, just as Chen Dafu emerged from inside carrying a very big and very intimidating club. Who hit my dog? I did! I replied with an angry glare. Seeing it was me, the towering dark man softened; his features relaxed as he flashed an ambiguous smile. Why be afraid of me? Because I had something on him. I’d seen what he and Huang Tong’s wife, Wu Qiuxiang, were doing in the willow grove one day. Embarrassed to be caught in the act, she ran off, bent at the waist, abandoning her laundry basin and mallet. A checkered article of clothing floated down the river. As he was buttoning up his pants, Chen Dafu threatened me: If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you! If Huang Tong doesn’t kill you first, I replied. His tone softened and he tried to soft-soap me instead, saying he’d get his wife’s niece to marry me. The image of a sandy-haired girl with tiny ears and snot on her lip floated into my mind. Hell! I said. Who wants that yellow-haired niece of yours? I’d rather go through life as a bachelor than marry anyone as ugly as that! Ah, my boy, you’re raising your sights too high. I tell you, I’m going to see that you and that ugly girl are married one day! Then I guess you’d better get a rock and beat me to death, I said. Kid, he replied, let’s you and me make a gentleman’s agreement. You don’t tell anyone what you saw here, and I won’t try to fix you up with my wife’s niece. If you break your promise, I’ll have my wife take her niece to your place and set her down on your bed, then have her tell people you raped her. How would you like that? I thought for a moment. Having that ugly, stupid girl sit on my bed and then telling people I raped her would spell big trouble. Despite the saying, “An upright person does not fear a slanted shadow, and dried excrement does not stick to walls,” I thought this might be more than I could handle. So we reached an agreement. But over time, based upon the way he treated me, I realized that he was more afraid of me than I was of him. That’s why I didn’t have to worry, even if I crippled his dog, and why I could talk back to him like that. Where’s my sister? I said. I need to find her. She’s with my wife, delivering a baby. I gazed at the five snot-nosed children in his yard, each slightly taller than the one before, and mocked him: That’s quite a wife you’ve got there, popping them out like a bitch, one litter after the other. He bared his teeth. Don’t talk like that. You’re too young to say hurtful things like that. You’ll see why when you grow up. I haven’t got time to argue with you, I said. I’m here to get my sister. I turned and faced his window. Sis! I shouted. Mother sent me here to get you. Jinlong’s dying! The shrill cry of a newborn baby erupted inside the house, drawing Chen Dafu to the window as if his pants were on fire. What is it? he shouted. The woman inside responded weakly, It’s got that thing between its legs. Chen covered his face with his hands and walked in tight circles in the snow beneath the window. Wu! he uttered at the end of each circle. Wu! The old man in the sky has opened his eyes, finally, and Chen Dafu now has an heir – My sister tore out of the house and asked me what was wrong. Jinlong’s dying, I said. He fell off the platform and hit the ground. He won’t last long.

My sister elbowed her way through the crowd and knelt at Jinlong’s side. First she put her finger under his nose, then she rubbed his hand, and finally felt his forehead. Take him inside, she commanded, and hurry! The four warrior attendants picked him up and headed for the office, but my sister stopped them. Take him home and put him on the kang! They turned and carried him into my mother’s house, where there was a heated kang. My sister made sideward glances to the Huang sisters, Huzhu and Hezuo, who were looking on, teary-eyed. The fair skin of their faces was dotted with chilblains like ripe cherries.

First my sister relieved my brother of the leather belt he wore day and night and tossed it, along with the starter’s pistol, into a corner, where it landed on top of a curious mouse, which squeaked once and died, blood seeping from its nose. Then she pulled down my brother’s pants to expose his discolored, louse-covered buttocks. With a frown, she opened an ampoule with a pair of tweezers, drew some liquid into a syringe, and jammed it haphazardly into him. In all she gave him two injections and hooked him up to an IV drip. She deftly found a vein on her first attempt, just as Wu Qiuxiang entered with a bowl of ginger tea, which she planned to spoon-feed my brother. With her eyes, my mother anxiously sought the opinion of my sister, who simply nodded noncommittally. Wu Qiuxiang began spooning the ginger tea into my brother’s mouth, her own mouth opening and closing in concert with his, so typical of mothers, something that cannot be faked. Wu Qiuxiang saw herself as my brother’s true mother. I knew that her feelings toward my brother and sister were complex, since relations between our two families were messy, to say the least. Her mouth was moving in concert with his not because of any special ties between our families, but because she knew what was in her daughters’ hearts and had witnessed my brother’s exceptional talents during the revolution. She was determined that one of her daughters would marry him, the ideal prospective son-in-law. The thought seared my mind, driving out my concern for my brother’s survival. I’d never cared much for Wu Qiuxiang, but seeing her run out of the willow grove, bent at the waist, that day had actually brought us closer together. That was because every time we met, her face reddened and she did her best to avoid eye contact. I began to take notice of her: thin waist and pale ears with a red mole on one lobe. There was magnetism in her laugh, which was deep and low. I was in the shed one night, helping Dad feed the ox, when she slipped in quietly and handed me two warm chicken eggs. She put her arm around me and held my head up against her breast. You’re a good boy, she said softly. You didn’t see anything, did you? In the darkness, I heard the ox ram his good horn into a post; his eyes were like burning torches. Given a fright, she pushed me away and slipped back outside. I followed her, a shifting silhouette in the starlight, experiencing feelings I couldn’t describe.

I’ll be honest with you. When she pressed my head up against her breast, my little pecker stiffened. That seemed terribly wrong, and it bothered me for the longest time afterward. I was enchanted by Huang Huzhu’s long braid, and from that became enchanted by her. I drifted into a fantasy world, wishing that Wu Qiuxiang would marry Hezuo, the daughter with the boyish haircut, to Jinlong, and let me marry Huzhu. But it was far more likely that she’d marry Huzhu to my brother. She was no more than ten minutes older than her sister, but even one minute still made her the elder sister, and elder sisters were always expected to marry first. I was in love with Huzhu, but given the ambiguous relationship between me and her mother, who had pressed my head against her breast in the ox shed and caused my pecker to stiffen, there was no chance she’d be allowed to marry me. I hurt, I was anxious, I had guilt feelings. And if that weren’t enough, I’d been exposed to all sorts of misinformation about sex by Hu Bin when we were grazing animals together. Things like: “Ten drops of sweat equal one drop of blood, and ten drops of blood equal one drop of semen.” Or: “After the first ejaculation, a boy stops growing.” These cockeyed concepts had me in their grip, and the future looked bleak. Looking at Jinlong’s finely developed body, then at my own scrawny frame, and finally at Huzhu’s voluptuous figure, all I could feel was despair. I even contemplated suicide. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be an empty-headed bull? I thought. Now, of course, I know you were anything but empty-headed, that in fact there were all kinds of thoughts running through your mind, and not limited to affairs of the mortal world, but included concerns of the netherworld, past, present, and future.

My brother was on the mend. He was pale as a ghost, but he struggled out to lead the revolution. While he lay unconscious for several days, my mother had thrown his clothes into boiling water, drowning all the fleas, but his handsome Dacron military tunic came out so badly wrinkled it looked like something a cow had chewed and spit out. His imitation army cap came out faded and wrinkled, resembling nothing so much as the scrotum of a castrated bull. The sight of his badly transformed tunic and cap put him in panic mode. He flew into a rage; dark blood spewed from his nostrils. Mother, he said, why didn’t you just kill me? Stung by feelings of remorse, she didn’t know