Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (69 page)

“Old man, you no longer have the right to resign your position or withdraw from the Party. What you can look forward to is being fired from your job and kicked out of the Party, plus a ban on all public employment.”

We stayed in bed into the afternoon, alternating between exhaustion and passion. The room was hot and muggy, and our sheets were soaked from sweat that also saturated our hair. I was captivated by the smell of her body and the lights in her eyes.

“I could die today, Chunmiao, with no regrets. . . .”

As I lay there making love and loving her, I was no longer in the grip of the hate I’d felt toward the goons who had blindfolded me, dragged me into a dark room, and beaten me bloody. Except for a badly bruised bone in one leg, they had left me with only flesh wounds. They knew their business. I also no longer harbored any hatred toward the people who had ordered the beating. I deserved the beating. It was the price I had to pay for the abiding love I received.

The students whooped with delight when a three-day holiday was announced. The natural disaster, which exposed so many serious problems, meant a strange good time for the children. A thousand Fenghuang Elementary School students hit the road and spread out, wreaking havoc on the already chaotic traffic.

Without knowing where we were going, I followed your son to the doorway of the New China Bookstore. A whole group of kids went inside, but not your son. His blue birthmark showed up cold and hard, like a piece of tile. Pang Kangmei’s daughter, Fenghuang, was there, in an orange raincoat and rubber galoshes, looking like a brilliant flame. A young, muscular woman stayed close behind her — obviously, her bodyguard. Coming up behind her was my third sister, her coat neat and clean. She tried her best to avoid the mud puddles, but inescapably dirtied her paws. When your son and Fenghuang spotted each other, she spat on the ground at your son’s feet. “Hooligan!” she cursed. His head drooped to his chest as if he’d taken a sword swipe against the nape of his neck. Dog Three snarled at me. She wore the most mysterious expression.

I bit down on your son’s sleeve and showed him it was time to go home. But he took no more than a dozen steps before stopping, his birthmark the color of jasper and tears in his eyes.

“Dog,” he said emotionally, “we’re not going home. Take me where they are.”

Taking a break in our lovemaking, we fell into a half sleep, brought on by exhaustion. While she slept she muttered things like: “It’s your blue face that I love. I fell for you the first time I saw you. I wanted to make love with you that first time Mo Yan took me to your office.” For us to be doing what we were doing and saying things like that was shamefully inappropriate when all the county’s cadres were dealing with the results of a devastating natural disaster. But I won’t hold anything back from you, Big-head.

We heard our door and window rattle, then we heard you bark. We’d promised not to open the door even if God came knocking. But your barks were like an order that must be obeyed. I jumped out of bed, knowing full well that my son would be with you. Lovemaking had helped heal my injuries, so I dressed quickly and easily, though my legs were rubbery and I was still lightheaded. At least I didn’t fall. Then I helped Chunmiao, whose body seemed to have no bones to support her, get dressed; I straightened her hair a little.

I opened the door and was blinded by wet, hot rays of sunlight. Almost immediately a handful of loose black mud came hurtling toward my face, like a slimy toad. I didn’t try to get out of the way; my subconscious wouldn’t let me. It smacked me square in the face.

I wiped the mud from my face. Some had gotten into my left eye, which stung badly, but I could still see out of my right eye. It was my son, seething with anger, and his dog, which looked at me with indifference. The door and window were spattered with mud, scooped out of a mud hole in front of the steps. My son stood there with his schoolbag over his back. His hands were coated with mud, and there was plenty more on his face and his clothes. What I should have seen was a look of rage, but what I did see were the tears spilling from his eyes. My tears quickly followed. There was so much I wanted to say to him, but all that came out was a pain-filled:

“Go ahead, son, throw it. . . .”

I took a step outside, grabbing the door frame to keep from falling, and shut my eyes to await the next handful of mud. I could hear him breathing hard as handful after handful of hot, stinking mud sailed through the air toward me. Some of it hit me in the nose, some on the forehead, and some on my chest and belly. One handful was harder than the others; clearly doctored with a piece of brick or tile, it hit me right in the crotch; I groaned as I bent over in pain, fell into a crouch, and finally sat down.

I opened my eyes, washed by tears; I could now see out of both of them. My son’s face was twisted like a shoe sole in a fiery oven. The mud in his hand fell to the ground as he burst out crying, covered his face with his hands, and ran away. After a few parting barks, the dog turned and followed him.

All the time I was standing there letting my son vent his anger by flinging mud in my face, Pang Chunmiao, my lover, was standing beside me. I was the object of the attacks, but unavoidably, she received some of the wayward hits. After helping me to my feet, she said softly:

“We have to accept this, elder brother. . . . I’m happy ... it feels to me like our sins have been lessened. . . .”

Dozens of people were standing in the second-story hallway of the New China Bookstore building. I could see they were bookstore cadres and clerks. One of them, a young fellow named Yu, who had once asked Mo Yan to see if I’d help him get a promotion to assistant manager, was chronicling my troubles from a variety of angles and distances with a heavy, expensive camera. Mo Yan later showed me a bunch of the pictures the man had taken, and I was shocked by how good they were.

Two of the observers came downstairs and walked timidly up to us. We knew who they were at once: one was the bookstore’s Party secretary, the other was the chief of security. They spoke without looking at us.

“Old Lan,” the Party secretary said awkwardly, “I’m sorry, but our hands are tied . . . we’re going to have to ask you to move out. ... I want you to know we’re just carrying a Party Committee decision—”

“You don’t have to explain,” I said. “I understand. We’ll move out right away.”

“There’s . . . more.” The security chief hemmed and hawed. “Pang Chunmiao, you have been suspended pending an investigation, and you’re to move into the second-story security section office. A bed has been placed there for you.”

“You can suspend me,” Chunmiao said, “but you can forget about an investigation. The only way you’ll get me to leave his side is to kill me!”

“As long as we understand each other,” the security chief said. “We’ve said what we were supposed to say.”

Arm in arm — to hold each other up — we walked over to a water faucet in the middle of the yard.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the Party secretary and security chief, “but we need to use a little of your water to wash the mud off our faces. If you have any objections—”

“How can you say that, Old Lan?” the Party secretary blurted out. “What do you take us for?” He cast a guarded look around him. “Whether or not you move out is none of our business, if you want the truth, but my advice would be to leave as soon as possible. The person in charge is boiling mad.”

We washed the mud off our face and bodies and then, under the watchful gaze of the people at the windows, went back into Chunmiao’s cramped, muggy, moldy dorm room, where we embraced and kissed.

“Chunmiao . . .”

“Don’t say anything.” She stopped me. “I don’t care if it’s climbing a mountain of knives or swimming a sea of fire,” she said calmly, “I’ll be there with you.”

On the morning of the first day back to school, your son and Pang Fenghuang met at the school entrance. He looked away, but she strode up and tapped him on the shoulder, indicating she wanted him to follow her. When they reached a French parasol tree east of the school gate, she stopped and said excitedly, her eyes shining:

“You did great, Lan Kaifang!”

“What did I do?” he muttered. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Don’t be so modest,” Fenghuang said. “I was listening when they reported to my mother. She ground her teeth when she said, ‘Those two have no shame, and it’s time they got what they deserved!’”

Your son turned to walk away, but she grabbed his shirt and kicked him in the calf.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she spat out angrily. “I’ve got more to say to you.”

She was a delicate little witch, pretty as a perfectly sculpted statue. With tiny breasts like budding flowers, she had a young maiden’s beauty that was impossible to resist. Your son’s face said anger, but in his heart he’d already completely surrendered. I could only sigh. While the father’s romantic drama was playing out, the son’s romantic history was just beginning.

“You hate your father, I hate my aunt,” Fenghuang said. “She must have been adopted by my maternal grandparents, because she wasn’t close to us at all. My mother and her parents locked her in a room and took turns trying to talk sense into her and get her to leave your father. My grandmother even got down on her knees and begged, but she wouldn’t listen. Then she jumped the wall and ran off to her depraved life with your father.” Fenghuang clenched her teeth. “You punished your father, and I want to punish my aunt!”

“I don’t want anything more to do with them,” your son said. “They’re a couple of horny dogs.”

“Right, that’s what they are!” Fenghuang said. “They’re a couple of horny dogs. That’s exactly what my mother called them.”

“I don’t like your mother,” your son said.

“How dare you not like my mother!” She punched him. “My mother is the County Committee Party secretary,” she grumbled. “She sat in our schoolyard and directed the rescue operations there with an IV bottle hanging from her arm! Don’t you have a TV set? You didn’t see her cough up blood on TV?”

“Our TV is broken, but I don’t like the way she does things. What are you going to do about it?”

“You’re just jealous, you and your blue face, you ugly shit!”

He grabbed her schoolbag strap and jerked her toward him. Then he pushed her back so hard she bumped into the tree behind her.

“You hurt me,” she said. “All right, I won’t call you Blue Face again. I’ll call you Lan Kaifang. We spent our childhood together, which means we’re old friends, doesn’t it? So you have to help me carry out my plan to punish my aunt.”

He walked away, but she ran up and blocked his way. She glared at him.

“Did you hear what I said?”

The idea of moving somewhere far away never crossed our minds. All we wanted was to find a quiet spot somewhere to stay out of the limelight and resolve my marital status through legal means.

Lüdian Township’s new Party secretary Du Luwen, who had once succeeded me as political director of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative, was an old friend, so I phoned him from a bus station and asked him to help me find a quiet place somewhere. He hesitated at first, but in the end he agreed. Instead of taking the bus, we sneaked over to a little place by the Grain Transport River called Yutong Village, southeast of the county town, where we hired a boat at the pier to take us downriver. The owner was a middle-aged woman with a gaunt face and large, deerlike eyes. She had a year-old child in the cabin, tied to her leg by a length of red cloth to keep him falling into the water.

Du Luwen met us at the Lüdian Township pier in his car and drove us to the cooperative, where we moved into a three-room apartment in the rear compound. After taking a pounding by independent entrepreneurs, the cooperative was on the verge of closing for good. Most of the employees had moved on to new ventures, leaving behind only a few old-timers to keep watch over the buildings. A former cooperative Party secretary who had once lived in our apartment had subsequently retired and moved into the county capital. Completely furnished, the place came equipped with a bag of flour, another of rice, some cooking oil, sausage, and canned goods.

“You can hide out here. Give me a call if you need anything, and don’t go outside unless you absolutely have to. This is Party Secretary Pang territory, and she often makes unannounced inspections.”

And so we began our dizzying days of happiness. We cooked, we ate, and we made love.

Your son could not resist Pang Fenghuang’s charm, and so, in order to help her carry out her plan to punish her aunt, he told your wife a lie.

I pursued the fused smells, like a braided rope, of you and Pang Chunmiao, with them right behind me; I unerringly followed your trail to the pier at Yutong Village, where we boarded the same boat.

“Where are you two young students going?” the friendly boat owner asked from the rear of the boat, her hand on the rudder.

“Where are we going, Dog?” Pang Fenghuang asked me.

I turned to look downriver and barked.

“Downriver,” your son said.

“Where downriver?”

“Just take us downriver. The dog will let us know when we get to where we’re going,” he said confidently.