Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (13 page)

“You not only took me to the hospital, you even made a second trip to return my bicycle,” Wang Leyun said emotionally. “The doctors and nurses all said you couldn’t find a more honest man than Lan Lian if you went searching with a lantern.”

“I’ve got a good donkey,” Lan Lian said to hide his embarrassment. “He’s fast and steady.”

“Yes, you’re right, he is a good donkey,” Pang Hu said with a little laugh. “And famous to boot. A famous donkey!”

Hee-haw, hee-haw
—

“Say, he understands us,” Wang Leyun said.

“Old Lan,” Pang Hu said as he reached into a bag he was carrying, “if I were to try to reward you, that would demean you and spoil a budding friendship.” He took out a cigarette lighter and lit it. “I took this from one of the American devils. I’d like you to have it as a little memento.” Then he took out a little brass bell. “This I asked someone to get for me at a secondhand market. It’s for your donkey.”

The war hero walked up to me and draped the bell over my neck.

“You’re a hero, too,” he said as he patted me on the head. “This is your medal.”

I shook my head, so moved I felt like crying.
Hee-haw, hee-haw
— The bell rang out crisply.

Wang Leyun took out a bag of candy and parceled it out among the children, including the Huang twins. “Are you in school?” Pang Hu asked Jinlong. Jiefang jumped in before Jinlong could reply. “No.” “You need to go to school, that’s something you have to do. Young people are the future red leaders in our new society, our new nation, and they mustn’t be illiterate.” “Our family hasn’t joined the co-op, we’re independent farmers. My father won’t let us go to school.” “What? An independent farmer? How can an enlightened man like you be independent? Is this true? Lan Lian, is it?”

“It’s true!” The resounding answer came from the gateway. We turned to see who it was — Hong Taiyue, the village chief, Party secretary, and head of the local co-op. Dressed the same as always, he seemed more gaunt than ever, and more alert. He strode into the compound, all skin and bones, offered his hand to the war hero, and said, “Director Pang, Comrade Wang, happy New Year!”

“Yes, happy New Year!” The crowd surged in, spreading New Year’s greetings, but none of the old forms. No, they were new phrases to fit all the great changes; here I give only that one example.

“Director Pang, we’re here to talk about setting up an advanced co-op, combining the smaller co-ops in neighboring villages into one big one,” Hong Taiyue said. “You’re a war hero, how about a talk?”

“I haven’t prepared anything,” Pang said. “I came specifically to thank Comrade Lan for saving the lives of my wife and child.”

“You don’t need to prepare anything, just speak to us. Tell us about your acts of heroism, we’d love to hear that.” Hong Taiyue began clapping his hands, and in no time applause was sweeping over the compound.

“All right,” Pang said as he was carried by the crowd over beneath the apricot tree, where someone placed a chair. “Just an informal chat.” Choosing not to sit, he stood before the crowd and spoke in a loud voice: “Ximen Village comrades, happy New Year! This year’s New Year’s is a good one, next year’s will be even better, and that is because, under the leadership of the Communist Party and Comrade Mao Zedong, our liberated peasants have taken the path of agricultural co-ops. It is a great golden highway, broadening with each step!”

“But there are some people who stubbornly tread the path of individual farming and prefer to compete with our co-ops,” Hong Taiyue interjected, “and who refuse even to admit defeat!”

Everyone’s eyes were on my master, who looked down at the ground and fiddled with the cigarette lighter the war hero had given him.
Click
— flame —
click
— flame —
click
— flame — His wife nudged him to stop. He glared at her. “Go in the house!”

“Lan Lian is an enlightened comrade,” Pang Hu said, raising his voice. “He led his donkey in courageously taking on the wolves and he led it again in coming to the rescue of my wife and child. His refusal to join the co-op results from a momentary lack of understanding, and you people must not coerce him into joining. I fully believe that Comrade Lan Lian will one day join the co-op and travel with us down the great golden highway.”

“Lan Lian,” Hong Taiyue said, “if you still refuse to join the advanced co-op, I’ll get down on my knees to you!”

My master untied my reins and led me over to the gate, the bell around my neck, the gift from the war hero, ringing crisply.

“Lan Lian, are you going to join or aren’t you?” Hong shouted from behind.

My master stopped just outside the gate. “Not even if you get down on your knees!” His voice was muffled.

My friend, I shall now relate events of 1958 for you. Mo Yan did that in many of his stories, but he was spinning nonsense, not to be believed. What I am going to reveal is my own personal experience, a valuable window on history. At the time, the five children, including you, in the Ximen estate were all second-graders in the Northeast Gaomi Township Communist Elementary School. I shall omit any discussion of the great smelting campaign and the backyard furnaces; nothing of interest there. Nor will I touch upon the communal kitchens or the great movements of farmers throughout the county. Why prattle on about things in which you were involved? As for abolishing villages and amalgamating production brigades, creating a county-wide People’s Commune overnight, well, you know more about that than I. What I’d like to relate are some experiences I, a donkey raised by an independent farmer, had in 1958, a special year; they are the stuff of legend. That is, I assume, what you’d like to hear. I’ll do what I can to avoid political issues, but forgive me if they find their way into my tale.

It was a moonlit night in May. Warm breezes from the fields carried delightful aromas: mature wheat, riverside reeds, tamarisk bushes growing on sandbars, felled trees . . . These aromas greatly pleased me, but not enough to bolt from the home of that stubborn independent farmer of yours. If you want to know the truth, what had the appeal to get me to bite through my halter and run away, whatever the consequences, was the smell of a female donkey, a normal reaction by a healthy adult male. Nothing to be ashamed of there. Ever since losing a gonad to that bastard Xu Bao, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d lost some prowess in you-know-what. Sure, I still had two of the things left, but I didn’t have much faith in them to do the job. Until that night, that is, when they awoke from their dormancy; they heated up, they expanded, and they made that organ of mine stand up like a steel rod, emerging time and time again to cool off. The image of a female donkey left no room in my mind for affairs that were capturing the hearts and souls of people at the time: she had a perfect body, with nice long legs; her eyes were clear and limpid; and her hide was smooth and glossy. I wanted to meet and mate with her; that was all that counted. Everything else was nothing but dog shit.

The gate at the Ximen compound had been taken down and removed, apparently to be used as fuel for a smelting furnace. That meant that merely biting through my halter was an act of liberation. But don’t forget, years earlier I had jumped the wall, so gate or no gate, there was nothing to hold me back.

Out on the street, I raced after that infatuating odor. I had no time to take in the sights along the way, all of which were related to politics. I ran out of the village, heading for the state-run farm, where the light of fires turned half the sky red. That, of course, was the largest furnace site in Northeast Gaomi Township Later events would prove that only what was produced in those furnaces could lay claim to the title of usable steel. Credit for that went to the congregation of veteran steel engineers who had studied abroad, only to return to their homeland as rightists undergoing reform through labor.

These engineers stood by the furnaces supervising the work of temporary workers taken from their farms to produce steel. The great fire inside turned their faces red. A dozen or more furnaces lined the wide river on which crops were transported. To the west of the river stood Ximen Village; to the east, the state-run farm. Both of Northeast Gaomi Township’s rivers fed this larger river, and where they converged was a marshy, reedy spot with a sandbar and miles of tamarisk bushes. At first, the villagers kept their distance from the people at the state-run farm, but this was a time of unity, when the great Army Corps was doing battle. Oxcarts, horse-drawn wagons, even two-wheeled carts pulled by people, crowded the highway carrying a brown ore they said was taken from iron mines. The backs of donkeys and mules were laden with what they said was iron ore; old folks, women, even children, carried what they said was iron ore in baskets, all in a constant stream, like a colony of ants, taking their loads to the giant furnaces at the state-run farm. In later years people would say that the great smelting campaign produced nothing but smelting waste; that isn’t so. The Gaomi County officials showed how clever they were by putting the rightist engineers to work, resulting in the production of usable steel.

In the mighty torrent of collectivization, the residents of the People’s Commune forgot all about Lan Lian, the independent farmer, leaving him free to function outside the authorized system for several months. Then when the co-op’s harvest was left to rot while people smelted steel, he comfortably brought in a bumper crop of grain from his eight acres of land. He also cut down several thousand catties of reeds at places attended by no one, with which he planned to weave reed mats to sell in the winter, when there was no farmwork to do. Having forgotten all about him, people naturally had no thoughts for his donkey either. So at a time when even rail-thin camels were brought out to carry iron ore, I, a husky male donkey, was left to freely chase after a smell that stirred my passions.

As I ran down the road, I passed many people and their animals, including a dozen or more donkeys — but not a trace of the female whose tantalizing aroma drew me to her. The farther I traveled, the weaker the scent, disappearing at times, then reappearing, as if to lead me far off into the distance. I was relying not only on my sense of smell but on intuition as well, and it told me I was not heading in the wrong direction, that the one I was following was either carrying or pulling a load of iron ore. There was no other possibility. At a time like this, with tight organization and ironclad demands, was it remotely possible that a second carefree donkey was hiding somewhere, broadcasting the fact that she was in heat? Prior to the creation of the People’s Commune, Hong Taiyue flung curses at my master: Lan Lian, you’re the only fucking independent farmer in all of Gaomi County. That makes you a black model. Wait till we’ve gotten through this busy spell, and you’ll see how I deal with you! Like a dead pig that’s beyond a fear of scalding water, my master struck a nonchalant pose. “I’ll be waiting.”

I crossed the bridge over the transport river that had been bombed out years earlier and only recently rebuilt. I skirted the area where furnaces were blazing, without seeing a female donkey. My appearance invigorated the furnace workers, who were dead on their feet, like a bunch of drunks. They moved to surround me, holding steel hooks and spades, hoping to capture me. Impossible. They were already swaying from exhaustion, and there was no chance they could summon up the energy to catch me if I ran; if they somehow managed that, they’d be too weak to hold me. They shouted, they yelled, all a bluff. The roaring fires made me seem even more impressive than usual, since they made my black hide glisten like satin, and I was pretty sure that these men could not dredge up a memory of ever having seen such a sight as filled their eyes at this moment, the first truly noble and dignified donkey they’d ever encountered.
Hee-haw
— I charged them as they were attempting to encircle me, sending them scattering. Some stumbled and fell, others ran away, dragging their tools behind them, like a defeated army beating a retreat. All but one, a short fellow in a hat made of willow twigs. He poked me in the rump with his steel hook.
Hee-haw
— That son of a bitch’s hook was still hot, and I smelled something burning. Damned if he hadn’t branded me! I kicked out with my rear hooves and ran out of the fiery surroundings into a dark area where there was plenty of mud and from there into the reeds.

The moist mud and watery mist gradually calmed me down and lessened the pain on my rump; but it still hurt, worse than the bite the wolf had taken out of me. Continuing along the muddy bank, I stopped to drink some river water, which had the unpleasant taste of toad piss. I swallowed some little objects that I knew were tadpoles. Nauseating, to be sure, but what was I to do? Maybe they had a curative effect, so it would be like taking a dose of medicine. I lost all my senses, didn’t know what to do, when that lost odor suddenly reappeared, like a red silk thread in the wind. Afraid of losing it yet again, I took up the chase anew, this time confident that it would lead me to that female donkey. Now that I’d put some distance between me and the furnace fires, the moon seemed brighter. Frogs croaked up and down the river, and from somewhere far off I detected human shouts and the beating of drums and gongs. I didn’t have to be told that I was hearing the hysterical shouts of fabricated victory by fanatical people.

And so I followed the red thread of aroma for a very long time, leaving the smelting furnaces of the state-run farm far behind. After passing through a bleak village from which no sound emerged, I stepped onto a narrow path bordered on the left by wheat fields and on the right by a grove of white poplars. Ready to harvest, the wheat field gave off a dry, scorched odor under the chilled beams of moonlight. Critters moving through the field made rustling noises as they broke tassels off the wheat stalks and sent grains raining to the ground. Light bouncing off the poplar leaves turned them into silver coins. But who had time to take in the lovely scenery? I’m just trying to give you an idea of what it was like. Suddenly —