Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

who would win and who would lose if a fight broke out, as well as whether I’d stand by and watch or jump in and, if the latter, whose side I’d be on.

“Say what you want to say,” Dad said. “Let’s see what you’re made of. Stay where you are, Jiefang. Keep your eyes and ears open.”

“Fine with me,” Jinlong said. “Do you think I won’t hang you from the apricot tree?”

“Oh, you’ll do it, all right, you’ll do anything.”

“Don’t interrupt me. I’m only letting you off for the sake of Mother. I’m not going to beg you to join the commune, since the Communist Party has never begged anything from capitalist-roaders. Tomorrow we’ll hold a public meeting to welcome Jiefang into the commune, along with his land, his plow, and his seeder. The ox too. We’ll present him with a red flower, and do the same for the ox. At that moment, you’ll be all alone in this ox shed. It will be heartbreaking for you when the clash of cymbals, the pounding of drums, and the resounding cracks of firecrackers enter this empty shed. You’ll be cut off from the masses, living apart from your wife, and separated from your children, and even the ox that would not betray you will be forcibly taken from you. What will your life mean then? If I were you,” Jinlong said as he kicked the rope and looked up at the overhead beam, “if I were you, I’d loop that rope over the beam and hang myself!”

He turned and walked out.

“Evil bastard-” Dad jumped up and cursed Jinlong’s back before dejectedly hunkering down on the straw.

I was devastated, shocked by Jinlong’s behavior. I felt so sorry for Dad at that moment, and ashamed of wanting to abandon him. I’d been helping the enemy in his evil ways. I threw myself down at Dad’s feet, grabbed his hands, and said through my tears:

“I won’t join, Dad. I’m going to stay with you and be an independent farmer even if it means I have to live the rest of my life as a bachelor-”

He wrapped his arms around my head and sobbed for a moment. Then he pushed me away, dried his eyes, and straightened up. “You’re a man already, Jiefang, so you must stand by what you say. Go ahead, join the commune, take the plow and the seeder with you. As for the ox-” He looked over at the ox; the ox returned the look. “You can take it too!”

“Dad!” I shouted in alarm. “Are you really going to take the road he points out?”

“Don’t worry, son,” he said as he jumped to his feet. “I don’t take roads anybody points out for me. I take my own road.”

“Don’t you dare hang yourself, Dad!”

“Why would I do that? Jinlong still has a bit of conscience left. He’d have no problem getting people to kill me the same way the people in Pingnan County killed their independent farmer. But his heart isn’t in it. He’s hoping I’ll die on my own. If I do, the last black spot in the county, in the province, in all of China, will erase itself. But I’m not about to die. If they want to kill me, there’s nothing I can do about it, but it’s wishful thinking to expect me to die on my own. I’m going to live, and live well. China’s going to have to get used to this black spot!”

20

Lan Jiefang Betrays Father and Joins the Commune

Ximen Ox Kills a Man and Dies a Righteous Death

I took my one-point-six acres of land, a wooden plow, a seeder, and the ox into the commune. When I led you out of the shed, firecrackers exploded, cymbals and drums filled the air with their noise. A group of half-grown kids wearing gray imitation army caps ran in amid the smoke and confetti to grab up all the firecrackers with their fuses intact. Mo Yan mistakenly picked up one without a fuse and, bang, his lips parted as it tore a hole in his hand. Serves you right! A firecracker nearly blew off my finger as a kid, and the memory of Dad treating it with paste flashed in my mind. I turned and looked back at Dad, and it was almost more than I could bear. He was sitting on a pile of cut straw, staring at the coiled rope in front of him.

“Dad,” I called out anxiously “Don’t you dare think of…”

He looked over and, appearing disheartened, waved a couple of times. I walked into the sun and left Dad in the dark. Huzhu pinned a big red paper flower on my chest and smiled at me. I could smell the Sunflower brand lotion on her face. Hezuo hung a paper flower the same size on the ox’s deformed horn. The ox shook his head and sent the flower to the ground.

“The ox tried to gore me!” Hezuo shrieked, exaggerating the movement.

She turned and bolted into the arms of my brother, who pushed her away with an icy look and walked up to the ox. He patted it on the head, then rubbed its horns, first the whole one, then the deformed one.

“Ox,” he said, “you’ve set out on a bright, sunny road, and we welcome you.”

I saw lights flash in the ox’s eyes, but it was only tears. My dad’s ox was like a tiger whose whiskers had been pulled off, no longer awesome, gentle as a kitten.

My dream had come true: I was admitted into my brother’s Red Guard organization. Not only that, I was given the role of Wang Lianju in the revolutionary opera The Red Lantern. Every time Li Yuhe called me a traitor, I was reminded of how Dad had used the same word on me. The feeling that I had in fact betrayed Dad by joining the commune grew stronger as time passed, and I couldn’t shake the worry that one day he’d take his own life. But he didn’t; he neither hanged himself from a rafter nor jumped into the river. Instead, he moved out of the room and began sleeping in the ox shed, where he set up a stove in a corner and used a steel helmet as a wok. In the long days that followed, since he had no plow, he worked his land with a hoe, and since he couldn’t manage a wheelbarrow by himself, he carried fertilizer into the field in baskets over his shoulder and used a gourd as a seeder. From 1967 to 1981, his one-point-six acres were a thorn in the side of the authorities, a tiny plot of land smack in the middle of the People’s Commune. His existence was both absurd and sobering; it aroused pity and commanded respect. In the 1970s, Hong Taiyue, back in his role as Party secretary, came up with a variety of schemes to eliminate the last independent farmer, but my dad thwarted all of them. Each time he’d throw the length of rope at Hong’s feet and say:

“Go ahead, hang me from the apricot tree!”

Jinlong had been counting on my surrender to the commune and the successful performance of a revolutionary opera to make Ximen Village a model for the county, and when that happened, as a village leader, he’d enjoy a meteoric rise through the ranks. But things did not turn out as he had hoped. First of all, despite the waiting, day and night, by him and by my sister, Little Chang never did come back on the tractor to direct the opera, and then one day word reached them that he had been removed from his post for his unsavory dealings with women. With him gone, my brother’s backing crumbled.

Then, as the days grew warmer, my brother’s situation worsened, since the masses rejected his plans to stage more revolutionary operas. Some old-timers from redder-than-red poor peasant backgrounds said to him one day while he was smoking a cigarette up in the apricot tree:

“Commander Jinlong, shouldn’t you be organizing some farm work? Neglecting the land for even a short time can cost a whole year. When workers make revolution, the state pays their wages, but the only way we peasants survive is by planting crops!”

While they were speaking their piece, they saw my dad walk out the gate with two baskets of manure. The smell of fresh dung in that early spring air energized them.

“Crops are to be planted in revolutionary land. Production is fine, but only when it’s an integral part of the revolutionary line!” My brother spat out the butt and jumped down out of the tree, landing awkwardly and falling in a heap. The old peasants tried to help him up, but he shoved them away with a snarl. “I’m on my way to see the Commune Revolutionary Committee. You wait here, and don’t do anything foolish.”

After changing into high-topped galoshes, he went over to the makeshift toilet to relieve himself before heading out on the muddy road to the commune. There he met Yang Qi. They had become enemies over the affair with the goatskin coats, but that was hidden below the surface.

“Commander Ximen,” Yang said with an irritating grin, “where are you off to? You look more like a Japanese MP than a Red Guard.”

Shaking his penis, Jinlong snorted to show his contempt for Yang Qi, who continued to grin and said: