Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

1

Torture and Proclaimed Innocence in Yama’s Hell

Reincarnation Trickery for a White-Hoofed Donkey

My story begins on January 1, 1950. In the two years prior to that, I suffered cruel torture such as no man can imagine in the bowels of hell. Every time I was brought before the court, I proclaimed my innocence in solemn and moving, sad and miserable tones that penetrated every crevice of Lord Yama’s Audience Hall and rebounded in layered echoes. Not a word of repentance escaped my lips though I was tortured cruelly, for which I gained the reputation of an iron man. I know I earned the unspoken respect of many of Yama’s underworld attendants, but I also know that Lord Yama was sick and tired of me. So to force me to admit defeat, they subjected me to the most sinister form of torture hell had to offer: they flung me into a vat of boiling oil, in which I tumbled and turned and sizzled like a fried chicken for about an hour. Words cannot do justice to the agony I experienced until an attendant speared me with a trident and, holding me high, carried me up to the palace steps. He was joined by another attendant, one on either side, who screeched like vampire bats as scalding oil dripped from my body onto the Audience Hall steps, where it sputtered and produced puffs of yellow smoke. With care, they deposited me on a stone slab at the foot of the throne, and then bowed deeply. “Great Lord,” he announced, “he has been fried.” Having been fried to a crisp, I knew that even a light tap would turn me to charred slivers. Then, from high in the hall above me, somewhere in the brilliant candlelight in the hall above, I heard a mocking question from Lord Yama himself:

“Ximen Nao, whose name means West Gate Riot, is more rioting in your plans?”

I’ll not lie to you; at that moment I wavered as my crisp body lay sprawled in a puddle of oil that was still popping and crackling. I had no illusions: I had reached my pain threshold and could not imagine what torture these venal officials would next employ if I did not yield to them now. Yet if I did, would I not have suffered their earlier brutalities in vain? I struggled to raise my head, which could easily have snapped off, and looked into the candlelight, where I saw Lord Yama, underworld judges seated beside him, oleaginous smiles on their faces. Anger churned inside me. To hell with them! I thought appropriately; let them grind me to powder under a millstone or turn me to paste in a mortar if they must, but I’ll not back down.

“I am innocent!” I screamed.

Rancid drops of oil sprayed from my mouth with that scream: I am innocent! Me, Ximen Nao; in my thirty years in the land of mortals I loved manual labor and was a good and thrifty family man. I repaired bridges and repaved roads and was charitable to all. The idols in Northeast Gaomi Township temples were restored thanks to my generosity; the poor township people escaped starvation by eating my food. Every kernel of rice in my granary was wetted by the sweat of my brow, every coin in my family’s coffers coated with painstaking effort. I grew rich through hard work, I elevated my family by clear thinking and wise decisions. I truly believe I was never guilty of an unconscionable act. And yet – here my voice turned shrill – a compassionate individual like me, a person of integrity, a good and decent man, was trussed up like a criminal, marched off to a bridgehead, and shot!… Standing no more than half a foot from me, they fired an old musket filled with half a gourd full of powder and half a bowl full of grapeshot, turning one side of my head into a bloody mess as the explosion shattered the stillness and stained the floor of the bridge and the melon-sized white stones beneath it… You’ll not get me to confess, I am innocent, and I ask to be sent back so I can ask those people to their face what I was guilty of.

I watched Lord Yama’s unctuous face undergo many contortions throughout my rapid-fire monologue and saw how the judges around him turned their heads to avert their eyes. They knew I was innocent, that I had been falsely accused, but for reasons I could not fathom, they feigned ignorance. So I shouted, repeating myself, the same thing over and over, until one of the judges leaned over and whispered something in Lord Yama’s ear. He banged his gavel to silence the hall.

“All right, Ximen Nao, we accept your claim of innocence. Many people in that world who deserve to die somehow live on while those who deserve to live die off. Those are facts about which this throne can do nothing. So I will be merciful and send you back.”

Unanticipated joy fell on me like a millstone, seemingly shattering my body into shards. Lord Yama threw down his triangular vermilion symbol of office and, with what sounded like impatience, commanded:

“Ox Head and Horse Face, send him back!”

With a flick of his sleeve, Lord Yama left the hall, followed by his judges, whose swishing wide sleeves made the candles flicker. A pair of demonic attendants, dressed in black clothing cinched at the waist with wide orange sashes, walked up from opposite directions. One bent down, picked up the symbol of authority, and stuck it in his sash. The other grabbed my arm to pull me to my feet. A brittle sound, like bones breaking, drew a shriek from me. The demon holding the symbol of authority shoved the demon holding the arm and, in the tone of an old hand instructing a novice, said:

“What in damnation is your head filled with, water? Has an eagle plucked out your eyes? Can you really not see that his body is as crispy as one of those fried fritters on Tianjin’s Eighteenth Street?”

The young attendant rolled his eyes as he was being admonished, not sure what to do.

“Why are you standing around?” Symbol of Authority said. “Go get some donkey blood!”

The attendant smacked his head, sudden enlightenment written on his face. He turned and ran out of the hall, quickly returning with a blood-spattered bucket. Evidently it was heavy, since he stumbled along, bent at the waist, and was barely able to keep his balance.

He set the bucket down beside me with a thud that made my body vibrate. The stench was nauseating, a hot, rank odor that seemed to carry the warmth of a real donkey. The image of a butchered donkey flashed briefly in my head, and then dissolved. Symbol of Authority reached into the bucket and took out a pig-bristle brush, which he swished around in the sticky, dark red blood, and then brushed across my scalp. I yelped from an eerie sensation that was part pain, part numbness, and part prickliness. My ears were assailed with subtle pops as the blood moistened my charred, crispy skin, calling to mind a welcome rain on drought-dry land. My mind was a tangle of disjointed thoughts and mixed emotions. The attendant wielded his brush like a house painter, and I was quickly covered with donkey blood, head to toe. He then picked up the bucket and dumped what remained over me, and I felt a surge of life swell up inside me. Strength and courage returned to my body. I no longer needed their support when I stood up.

Despite the fact that the attendants were called Ox Head and Horse Face, they bore no resemblance to the underworld figures we are used to seeing in paintings: human bodies, one with the head of an ox, the other the face of a horse. These were totally human in appearance, except, that is, for their skin, whose color was iridescent blue, as if treated with a magical dye. A noble color, one rarely seen in the world of mortals, neither on fabric nor on trees; but I’d seen flowers of that color, small marshy blossoms in Northeast Gaomi Township that bloomed in the morning and withered and died that afternoon.

With one attendant on each side of me, we walked down a seemingly endless dark tunnel. Coral lantern holders protruded from the walls every few yards; from them hung shallow platter-shaped lanterns that burned soybean oil, the aroma sometimes dense, sometimes not, which kept me clearheaded some of the time, and befogged the rest of the time. In the light of the lanterns, I saw gigantic bats hanging from the tunnel dome, eyes shining through the darkness; foul-smelling guano kept falling on my head.

Finally, we reached the end and climbed onto a high platform, where a white-haired old woman reached out with a fair, smooth-skinned arm that did not befit her age, scooped out a black, foul-smelling liquid from a filthy steel pot with a black wooden spoon, and emptied it into a red-glazed bowl. One of the attendants handed me the bowl and flashed a smile that held no trace of kindness.

“Drink it,” he said. “Drink what is in this bowl, and your suffering, your worries, and your hostility will all be forgotten.”

I knocked it over with a sweep of my hand.

“No, I said. “I want to hold on to my suffering, worries, and hostility. Otherwise, returning to that world is meaningless.”

I climbed down off of the wooden platform, which shook with each step, and heard the attendants shout my name as they ran down from the platform.

The next thing I knew, we were walking in Northeast Gaomi Township, where I knew every mountain and stream, every tree and blade of grass. New to me were the white wooden posts stuck in the ground, on which were written names – some familiar, some not. They were even buried in the rich soil of my estate. I did not learn until later that when I was in the halls of hell proclaiming my innocence, a period of land reform had been ushered in to the world of mortals, and that the big estates had been piecemealed out to landless peasants; naturally, mine was no exception. Parceling out land has its historical precedents, I thought, so why did they have to shoot me before dividing up mine?

Seemingly worried that I would run away, the attendants held me by the arms in their icy hands, or, more precisely, claws. The sun shone brightly, the air was fresh and clean; birds flew in the sky, rabbits hopped along the ground. Snow on the shady banks of the ditches and the river reflected light that hurt my eyes. I glanced at the blue faces of my escort, suddenly aware that they looked like costumed and heavily made-up stage actors, except that earthly dyes could never, not in a million years, paint faces with hues that noble or that pure.

We passed a dozen or more villages as we walked down the river-bank road and met several people coming from the opposite direction. Among them were my friends and neighbors, but each time I tried to greet them, one of my attendants clapped his hand around my throat and turned me mute. I showed my displeasure by kicking them in the legs, but elicited no response; it was as if their limbs had no feeling. So I rammed my head into their faces, which seemed made of rubber. The hand around my neck was loosened only when we were alone again. A horse-drawn wagon with rubber wheels shot past us, raising a cloud of dust. Recognizing that horse by the smell of its sweat, I looked up and saw the driver, a fellow named Ma Wendou, sitting up front, a sheepskin coat draped over his shoulders, whip in hand, a long-handled pipe and tobacco pouch tied together and tucked into his collar to hang down his back. The pouch swayed like a public house shop sign. The wagon was mine, the horse was mine, but the man on the wagon was not one of my hired hands. I tried to run after him to find out what was going on here, but my attendants clung to me like vines. Ma Wendou had to have seen me and known who I was, and he surely heard the sounds of struggle I was making, not to mention smelled the strange unearthly odor that came from my body. But he drove past without slowing down, like a man on the run. After that we encountered a group of men on stilts who were reenacting the travels of the Tang monk Tripitaka on his way to fetch Buddhist scriptures. His disciples, Monkey and Pigsy, were both villagers I knew, and I learned from the slogans on the banners they were carrying and from what they were saying that it was the first day of 1950.

Just before we arrived at the stone bridge on the village outskirts, I grew uneasy. I was about to see the stones beneath the bridge that had been discolored by my blood and flecks of my brain. Dirty clumps of hair and strips of cloth sticking to the stones gave off a disagreeable blood stench. Three wild dogs lurked at the bridge opening, two lying down, one standing; two were black, the other brown, and all three coats shone. Their tongues were bright red, their teeth snowy white, their gleaming eyes like awls.

In his story “The Cure,” Mo Yan wrote about this bridge and dogs that grew crazed on the corpses of executed people. He wrote about a filial son who cut the gallbladder, the seat of courage, out of an executed man, took it home, and made a tonic for his blind mother. We all know stories about using bear gallbladder as a curative, but no one has ever heard of the curative powers of the human gallbladder. So it was made-up nonsense from the pen of a novelist who likes to do such things, and there wasn’t an ounce of truth in it.

Images of the execution floated into my head on the way from the bridge to my house. They had tied my hands behind my back and hung a condemned sign around my neck. It was the twenty-third day of the twelfth month, seven days before New Year’s. Cold winds cut through us that day; red clouds blotted out the sun. The sleet was like kernels of white rice that slipped beneath my collar. My wife, from the Bai family, walked behind me, wailing loudly, but I heard nothing from my two concubines, Yingchun and Qiuxiang. Yingchun was expecting a baby any day, so I could forgive her for staying home. But the absence of Qiuxiang, who was younger and was not pregnant, bitterly disappointed me. Once I was standing on the bridge, I turned to see Huang Tong and his team of militiamen. You men, we all live in the same village and there’s never been any enmity between us, not then and not now. If I have somehow offended you, tell me how. There is no need to do this, is there? Huang Tong gazed at me briefly, and then looked away. His golden yellow irises sparkled like gold stars. Huang Tong, I said, Yellow-eyed Huang, your parents named you well. That’s enough out of you, he said. This is government policy! You men, I went on anyway, if I am to die, I should at least know why. What law have I broken? You’ll get your answers in Lord Yama’s underworld, Huang Tong said as he raised his ancient musket, the muzzle no more than half a foot from my forehead. I felt my head fly off; I saw sparks, I heard what sounded like an explosion, and I smelled gunpowder in the air…

Through the unlatched gate at my house I saw many people in the yard. How did they know I would be coming home? I turned to my escort.

“Thank you, brothers, for the difficulties encountered in seeing me home,” I said.

Sinister smiles spread across their blue faces, but before I could figure out what those smiles meant, they grabbed my arms and propelled me forward. Everything was murky; I felt like a drowning man. Suddenly my ears filled with the happy shouts of a man somewhere:

“It’s out!”

I opened my eyes to find that I was covered with a sticky liquid, lying near the birth canal of a female donkey. My god! Who’d have thought that Ximen Nao, a literate, well-educated member of the gentry class, would be reborn as a white-hoofed donkey with floppy, tender lips!

2

Xlmen Nao Is Charitable to Save Blue Face

Bai Yingchufi Lovingly Comforts an Orphaned Donkey

The man standing behind the donkey with a broad grin on his face was my hired hand Lan Lian. I remembered him as a frail, skinny youth, and was surprised to see that in the two years since my death, he had grown into a strapping young man.

He was an orphan I’d found in the snow in front of the God of War Temple and brought home with me. Wrapped in a burlap sack and shoeless, he was stiff from the cold; his face had turned purple and his hair was a ratty mess. My own father had just died, but my mother was alive and well. From my father I had received the bronze key to the camphor chest in which were kept the deeds to more than eighty acres of farmland and the family’s gold, silver, and other valuables. I was twenty-four at the time and had just taken the second daughter of the richest man in Bai-ma, or White Horse, Town, Bai Lianyuan, as my wife. Her childhood name was Apricot, and she still had no grown-up name, so when she came into my family, she was simply known as Ximen Bai. As the daughter of a wealthy man, she was literate and well versed in propriety, had a frail constitution, breasts like sweet pears, and a well-proportioned lower body. She wasn’t bad in bed either. In fact, the only flaw in an otherwise perfect mate was that she had not yet produced a child.

Back then I was on top of the world. Bumper harvests every year, and the tenant farmers eagerly paid their rent. The grain sheds overflowed. The livestock thrived, and our black mule gave birth to twins. It was like a miracle, the stuff of legend, not reality. A stream of villagers came to see the twin mules, and our ears rang with their words of flattery. We rewarded them with jasmine tea and Green Fort cigarettes. The teenager Huang Tong stole a pack of our cigarettes and was dragged up to me by his ear. The young scamp had yellow hair, yellow skin, and shifty yellow eyes, giving the impression he entertained evil thoughts. I dismissed him with a wave of the hand, even gave him a packet of tea to take home for his father. Huang Tianfa, a decent, honest man who made fine tofu, was one of my tenant farmers; he farmed five acres of excellent riverfront land, and what a shame he had such a no-account son. He brought over a basketful of tofu so dense you could hang the pieces from hooks, along with a basketful of apologies. I told my wife to give him two feet of green wool to take home and make a couple of pair of cloth shoes for the new year. Huang Tong, oh, Huang Tong, after all those good years between your father and me, you should not have shot me with that musket of yours. Oh, I know you were just following orders, but you could have shot me in the chest and left me with a decent-looking corpse. You are an ungrateful bastard!

I, Ximen Nao, a man of dignity, open-minded and magnanimous, was respected by all. I had taken over the family business during chaotic times. I had to cope with the guerrillas and the puppet soldiers, but my family property increased by the addition of a hundred acres of fine land, the number of horses and cows went from four to eight, and we acquired a large wagon with rubber tires; we went from two hired hands to four, from one maidservant to two, and added two old women to cook for us. So that’s how things stood when I found Lan Lian in front of the God of War Temple, half frozen, with barely a breath left in him. I’d gotten up early that morning to collect dung. Now you may not believe me, since I was one of Northeast Gaomi Township’s richest men, but I always had a commendable work ethic. In the third month I plowed the fields, in the fourth I planted seeds, in the fifth I brought in the wheat, in the sixth I planted melons, in the seventh I hoed beans, in the eighth I collected sesame, in the ninth I harvested grain, and in the tenth I turned the soil. Even in the cold twelfth month, a warm bed could not tempt me. I’d be out with my basket to collect dog dung when the sun was barely up. People joked that I rose so early one morning I mistook some rocks for dung. That’s absurd. I have a good nose, I can smell dog dung from far away. No one who is indifferent to dog dung can be a good landlord.

There was so much snow that the buildings, trees, and streets were buried, nothing but white. All the dogs were hiding, so there’d be no dung that day. But I went out anyway. The air was fresh and clean, the wind was yet mild, and at that early hour there were all sorts of strange and mysterious rarities – the only way you could see them was to get up early. I walked from Front Street to Back Street and took a turn around the fortified village wall in time to see the horizon change from red to white, a fiery sunrise as the red sun rose into the sky and turned the vast snowy landscape bright red, just like the legendary Crystal Realm. I found the child in front of the God of War Temple, half buried in the snow. At first I thought he was dead and figured I’d pay for a meager coffin to bury him to keep the wild dogs away. Only a year before, a naked man had frozen to death in front of the Earth God Temple. He was red from head to toe, his pecker sticking out straight as a spear, which drew peals of laughter. That outlandish friend of yours, Mo Yan, wrote about that in his story “The Man Died, His Dick Lived On.” Thanks to my generosity, the corpse of this man, the one who died by the roadside but whose dick lived on, was buried in the old graveyard west of town. Good deeds like that have wide-ranging influence and are more consequential than memorials or biographies. I set down my dung basket and nudged the boy, then felt his chest. It was still warm, so I knew he was alive. I took off my lined coat and wrapped him in it, then picked him up and carried him home. Prismlike rays of the morning sun lit up the sky and the ground ahead of me; people were outside shoveling snow, so many villagers were witness to the charity of Ximen Nao. For that alone, you people should not have shot me with your musket. And on that point, Lord Yama, you should not have sent me back as a donkey! Everyone says that saving a life is better than building a seven-story pagoda, and I, Ximen Nao, sure as hell saved a life. Me, Ximen Nao, and not just one life. During the famine one spring I sold twenty bushels of sorghum at a low price and exempted my tenant farmers from paying rent. That kept many people alive. And look at my miserable fate. Is there no justice in heaven or on earth, in the world of men or the realm of spirits? Any sense of conscience? I protest. I am mystified!

I took the youngster home and laid him down on a warm bed in the bunkhouse. I was about to light a fire to warm him when the foreman, Old Zhang, said, You can’t do that, Boss. A frozen turnip must thaw out slowly. If you heat it, it will turn to mush. That made sense, so I let the boy warm up naturally on the bed and had someone in the house heat a bowl of sweet ginger water, which I poured slowly into his mouth after prying it open with chopsticks. He began to moan once some of that ginger water was in his stomach. Having brought him back from the dead, I told Old Zhang to shave off the boy’s ratty hair and the fleas living in it. We gave him a bath and got him into some clean clothes. Then I took him to see my aging mother. He was a clever little one. As soon as he saw her, he fell to his knees and cried out, “Granny,” which thrilled my mother, who chanted “Amita Buddha” and asked which temple the little monk came from. She asked him his age. He shook his head and said he didn’t know. Where was home? He wasn’t sure. When he was asked about his family, he shook his head like one of those stick-and-ball toys. So I let him stay. He was a smart little pole-shinnying monkey. He called me Foster Dad as soon as he laid eyes on me, and called Madame Bai Foster Mother. But foster son or not, I expected him to work, since even I engaged in manual labor, and I was the landlord. You work or you don’t eat. Just a new way of expressing an idea that has been around for a long time. The boy had no name, but since he had a blue birthmark on the left side of his face, I told him I’d call him Lan Lian, or Blue Face, with Lan being his surname. But, he said, I want to have the same name as you, Foster Dad, so won’t you call me Ximen Lanlian? I said no, that the name Ximen was not available to just anyone, but that if he worked hard for twenty years, we’d see about it. He started out by helping the foreman tend the horse and donkey – Ah, Lord Yama, how could you be so evil as to turn me into a donkey?- and gradually moved on to bigger jobs. Don’t be fooled by his thin frame and frail appearance; he worked with great efficiency and possessed good judgment and a considerable bag of tricks, all of which made up for his lack of strength. Now, seeing his broad shoulders and muscular arms, I could tell he’d grown into a man to be reckoned with. “Ha ha, the foal is out!” he shouted as he bent down, reached out his large hands, and helped me stand, causing me more shame and anger than I care to think about.

“I am not a donkey!” I roared. “I am a man! I am Ximen Nao!” But my throat felt exactly the way it had when the two blue-faced demons had throttled me. I couldn’t speak no matter how hard I tried. Despair, terror, rage. I spat out slobber, sticky tears oozed from my eyes. His hand slipped, and I thudded to the ground, right in the middle of all that gooey amniotic fluid and afterbirth, which had the consistency of jellyfish.

“Bring me a towel, and hurry!” Lan Lian shouted. A pregnant woman came out of the house, and my attention was immediately caught by the freckles on her slightly puffy face, and her big, round, sorrowful eyes. Hee-haw, hee-haw- She’s mine, she’s Ximen Nao’s woman, my first concubine, Yingchun, brought into the family as a maidservant by my wife. Since we didn’t know her family name, she took the name of my wife, Bai. In the spring of 1946, she became my concubine. With big eyes and a straight nose, a broad forehead, wide mouth, and square jaw, hers was a face of good fortune. Even more important, her full breasts, with their pert nipples, and a broad pelvis made her a cinch to bear children. My wife, apparently barren, sent Yingchun to my bed with a comment that was easy to understand and filled with heartfelt sincerity. She said, “Lord of the Manor [that’s what she called me], I want you to accept her. Good water must not irrigate other people’s fields.”

She was a fertile field indeed. She got pregnant our first night together. And not just pregnant, but with twins. The following spring she gave birth to a boy and a girl, what they call a dragon and phoenix birth. So we named the boy Ximen Jinlong, or Golden Dragon, and the girl Ximen Baofeng, Precious Phoenix. The midwife said she’d never seen a woman better suited to having babies, with her broad pelvis and resilient birth canal. The babies popped out into her hands, like melons dumped from a burlap sack. Most women cry out in anguish the first time, but my Yingchun had her babies without making a sound. According to the midwife, she wore a mysterious smile from start to finish, as if having a baby was a form of entertainment. That gave the poor midwife a case of the nerves; she was afraid that monsters might come shooting out.

The birth of Jinlong and Baofeng produced great joy in the Ximen household. But so as not to frighten the babies or their mother, I had the foreman, Old Zhang, and his helper, Lan Lian, buy ten strings of firecrackers, eight hundred in all, hang them on a wall on the southern edge of the village, and light them there. The sound of all those tiny explosions made me so happy I nearly fainted. I have a quirky habit of dealing with good news by doing hard work; it’s an itch I can’t explain. So while the firecrackers were still popping, I rolled up my sleeves, jumped into the livestock pen, and shoveled up ten wagonloads of dung that had accumulated through the winter. Ma Zhibo, a feng shui master who was given to putting on mystical airs, came running up to the pen and said to me mystifyingly, Menshi – that’s my style name – my fine young man, with a woman in childbirth in the house, you must not work on fences or dig up dirt, and absolutely must not shovel dung or dredge a well. Stirring up the Wandering God does not bode well for the newborn.

Ma Zhibo’s comment nearly made my heart stop, but you can’t call an arrow back once it’s been fired, and any job worth starting is certainly worth finishing. I couldn’t stop then, because only half the pen was done. There’s an old saying: A man has ten years of good fortune when he need fear neither god nor ghost. I was an upright man, not afraid of demons. So what if I, Ximen Nao, bumped up against the Wandering God? It was, after all, only Ma Zhibo’s foul comment, so I scooped a peculiar gourd-shaped object out of the dung. It had the appearance of congealed rubber or frozen meat, was murky but nearly transparent, brittle but pliable. I dumped it on the ground at the edge of the pen to examine it more closely It couldn’t be the legendary Wandering God, could it? I watched Ma’s face turn ashen and his goatee begin to quiver. With his hands cupped in front of his chest as a sign of respect, he said a prayer and backed up. When he bumped into the wall, he bolted. With a sneer, I said, If this is the Wandering God, it’s nothing to fear. Wandering God, Wandering God, if I say your name three times and you’re still here, don’t blame me if I treat you harshly. Wandering God, Wandering God, Wandering God! With my eyes tightly shut, I shouted the name three times. When I opened them, it was still there, hadn’t changed, just a lump of something in the pen next to some horse shit. Whatever it was, it was dead, so I raised my hoe and chopped it in two. The inside was just like the outside, sort of rubbery or maybe frozen, not unlike the sap that oozes out of peach tree knots. I scooped it up and flung it over the wall, where it could lie with the horse shit and donkey urine, hoping that it might be good as fertilizer, so the early summer corn would grow in ears like ivory and the late summer wheat would have tassels as long as dog tails.

That Mo Yan, in a story he called “Wandering God,” he wrote:

I poured water into a wide-mouthed clear glass bottle and added some black tea and brown sugar, then placed it behind the stove for ten days. A peculiar gourd-shaped object was growing in the bottle. When the villagers heard about it, they came running to see what it was. Ma Congming, the son of Ma Zhibo, said nervously, “This is bad, that’s the Wandering God! The Wandering God that the landlord Ximen Nao dug up that year was just like this.” As a modern young man, I believe in science, not ghosts and goblins, so I chased Ma Congming away and dumped whatever it was out of the bottle. I cut it open and chopped it up, then dumped it into my wok and fried it. Its strange fragrance made me drool, so I tasted it. It was delicious and nutritious… after eating the Wandering God, I grew four inches in three months.

What an imagination!

The firecrackers put an end to rumors that Ximen Nao was sterile. People began preparing congratulatory gifts they would bring to me in nine days. But the old rumor had no sooner been cast aside than a new one was born. Overnight, word that Ximen Nao had stirred up the Wandering God while shoveling dung in his pen spread through all the eighteen villages and towns of Northeast Gaomi Township. And not just spread, but picked up embellishments along the way. The Wandering God, it was said, was a big meaty egg with all seven of the facial orifices; it rolled around in the animal pen until I chopped it in two and a bright light shot into the sky. Stirring up the Wandering God was sure to cause a bloody calamity within a hundred days. I was well aware that the tall tree catches the wind and that wealth always causes envy. Many people could not wait for Ximen Nao to fall, and fall hard. I was troubled, but could not lose faith. If the gods wanted to punish me, why send the lovely Jinlong and Baofeng my way?

Yingchun beamed when she saw me; with difficulty she bent down, and at that moment I saw the baby she was carrying. It was a boy with a blue birthmark on his left cheek, so there was no doubt he’d come from Lan Lian’s seed. How humiliating! A flame like the tongue of a poisonous viper snaked up in my heart. I had murderous urges, at minimum needed to curse someone. I could have chopped Lan Lian into pieces. Lan Lian, you’re an ungrateful bastard, an unconscionable son of a bitch! You started out by calling me Foster Dad and eventually dropped the word foster. Well, if I’m your dad, then Yingchun, my concubine, is your stepmother, yet you’ve taken her as a wife and have had her carry your child. You’ve corrupted the system of human relations and deserve to be struck down by the God of Thunder! Then, when you arrive in hell, you deserve to have your skin flayed, be stuffed with grass, and be dried before you are reincarnated as a lowly animal! But heaven is bereft of justice, and hell has abandoned reason. Instead of you, it is I who have been sent back as a lowly animal, me, Ximen Nao, who lived his life doing good. And what about you, Yingchun, you little slut? How much sweet talk did you whisper while you were in my arms? And how many solemn pledges of love did you take? Yet my bones weren’t even cold before you went to bed with my hired hand. How can a slut like you have the nerve to go on living? You should do away with yourself at once. I’ll give you the white silk to do it. Damn it, no, you are not worthy of white silk! A bloody rope used on pigs, looped over a beam covered with rat shit and bat urine, to hang yourself is what’s good for you! That or four ounces of arsenic! Or a one-way trip down the well outside the village where all the wild dogs have drowned! You should be paraded up and down the street on a criminal’s rack! In the underworld you deserve to be thrown into a snake pit reserved for adulteresses! Then you should be reincarnated as a lowly animal, over and over and over, forever! Hee-haw, hee-haw – But no, the person reincarnated as a lowly animal was Ximen Nao, a man of honor, instead of my first concubine.

She knelt clumsily beside me and carefully wiped the sticky stuff from my body with a blue-checked chamois rag. It felt wonderful against my wet skin. She had a soft touch, as if wiping down her own baby. What a cute foal, you lovely little thing. Such a pretty face, and what big blue eyes! And those ears, covered with fuzz… the rag moved to each part of my body in turn. She was still as big-hearted as ever, and was covering me with love, that I could see. Deeply touched, I felt the evil heat inside me dissipate. My memory of walking the earth as a human grew distant and cloudy. I was nice and dry. I’d stopped shivering. My bones had hardened, my legs felt strong. An inner force and a sense of purpose combined to make me put that strength to good use. Ah, it’s a little male donkey. She was drying off my genitals. How humiliating! Images of our sexual congress back when I was a human flooded my mind. A little male what? The son of a mother donkey? I looked up and saw a female donkey standing nearby, quaking. Is that my mother? A donkey? Rage and uncontrollable anxiety forced me to my feet. I stood there on four feet, like a low stool on high legs.

“It’s on its feet, it’s standing!” It was Lan Lian, excitedly rubbing his hands. He reached out and helped Yingchun to her feet. The gentle look in his eyes showed that he held strong feelings for her. And that reminded me of something that had occurred years before. If I remember correctly, someone had warned me to be on guard against bedroom antics by my young hired hand. Who knows, maybe they had something going way back then.

As I stood in the morning sun on that first day of the year, I kept digging in my hooves to keep from falling over. Then I took my first step as a donkey, thus beginning an unfamiliar, taxing, humiliating journey. Another step; I wobbled, and the skin on my belly tightened. I saw a great big sun, a beautiful blue sky in which white doves flew. I watched Lan Lian help Yingchun back into the house, and I saw two children, a boy and a girl, both in new jackets, with cloth tiger-head shoes on their feet and rabbit-fur caps on their heads, come running in through the gate. Stepping over the door lintel was not easy for such short legs. They looked to be three or four years old. They called Lan Lian Daddy and Yingchun Mommy. Hee-haw, hee-haw- I did not have to be told that they were my children, the boy named Jinlong and the girl called Baofeng. My children, you cannot know how your daddy misses you! Your daddy had high hopes for you, expecting you to honor your ancestors as a dragon and a phoenix, but now you have become someone else’s children, and your daddy has been changed into a donkey. My heart was breaking, my head was spinning, it was all a blur, I couldn’t keep my legs straight… I fell over. I don’t want to be a donkey, I want my original body back, I want to be Ximen Nao again, and get even with you people! At the very moment I fell, the female donkey that had given birth to me crashed to the ground like a toppled wall.

She was dead, her legs stiff as clubs, her unseeing eyes still open, as if she had died tormented by all sorts of injustices. Maybe so, but it didn’t bother me, since I was only using her body to make my entrance. It was all a plot by Lord Yama, either that or an unfortunate error. I hadn’t drunk an ounce of her milk; the very sight of those teats poking out between her legs made me sick.

I grew into a mature donkey by eating sorghum porridge. Yingchun made it for me; she’s the one I can thank for growing up. She fed me with a big wooden spoon, and by the time I’d grown up, it was useless from being bitten so often. I could see her bulging breasts when she fed me; they were filled with light blue milk. I knew the taste of that milk, because I’d drunk it. It was delicious, and her breasts were wonderful. She’d nursed two children, and there was more milk than they could drink. There are women whose milk is toxic enough to kill good little babies. While she fed me she said, You poor little thing, losing your mother right after you’re born. I saw that her eyes were moist with tears, and could tell that she felt sorry for me. Her curious children, Jinlong and Baofeng, asked her, Mommy, why did the baby donkey’s mommy die? Her time was up, she said. Lord Yama sent for her. Mommy, they said, don’t let Lord Yama send for you. If he did, then we’d be motherless, just like the little donkey. So would Jiefang. She said, Mommy will always be here, because Lord Yama owes our family a favor. He wouldn’t dare disturb us.

The cries of newborn Lan Jiefang emerged from the house.

Do you know who Lan Jiefang – Liberation Lan – is? This Lan Qiansui, the teller of this tale, small but endowed with an air of sophistication, three feet tall yet the most voluble person you could find, asked me out of the blue.

Of course I know. Because it’s me. Lan Lian is my father, Yingchun is my mother. Well, if that’s the case, then you must have been one of our donkeys.

That’s right, I was one of your donkeys. I was born on the morning of the first day of 1950, while you, Lan Jiefang, were born in the evening of the first day of 1950. We are both children of a new era.

3

Hong Taiyue Rails at a Stubborn Old Man

Ximen Lu Courts Disaster and Chews on Bark

Much as I hated being an animal, I was stuck with a donkey’s body. Ximen Nao’s aggrieved soul was like hot lava running wild in a donkey shell. There was no subduing the flourishing of a donkey’s habits and preferences, so I vacillated between the human and donkey realms. The awareness of a donkey and the memory of a human were jumbled together, and though I often strove to cleave them apart, such intentions invariably ended in an even tighter meshing. I had just suffered over my human memory and now delighted in my donkey life. Hee-haw, hee-haw – Lan Jiefang, son of Lan Lian, do you understand what I’m saying? What I’m saying is, when, for example, I see your father, Lan Lian, and your mother, Yingchun, in the throes of marital bliss, I, Ximen Nao, am witness to sexual congress between my own hired hand and my concubine, throwing me into such agony that I ram my head into the gate of the donkey pen, into such torment that I chew the edge of my wicker feedbag, but then some of the newly fried black bean and grass in the feedbag finds its way into my mouth and I cannot help but chew it up and swallow it down, and the chewing and swallowing imbue me with an unadulterated sense of donkey delight.

In the proverbial blink of an eye, it seems, I am halfway to becoming an adult, which will bring an end to the days when I was free to roam the confines of the Ximen estate. A halter has been put over my head and I have been tethered to a trough. At the same time, Jinlong and Baofeng, who have been given the surname Lan, have each grown two inches, and you, Lan Jiefang, born on the same day of the same month in the same year as I, are already walking. You waddle like a duck out in the yard. On a stormy day during this period, the family in the eastern addition has been blessed with the birth of twin girls. That proves that the power of the Ximen Nao estate has not weakened, since everyone seems to be having twins. The first one out was named Huzhu – Co-Operation – and her sister was called Hezuo – Collaboration. They are the offspring of Huang Tong, born from a union between him and Ximen Nao’s second concubine, Qiuxiang. The western rooms were turned over to my master, your father, after land reform; originally, it had been my first concubine, Yingchun’s, quarters. When the eastern rooms were given over to Huang Tong, the original occupant, Qiuxiang, apparently came along with them, and wound up as his wife. The main building of the Ximen estate, five grand rooms, now served as government offices for Ximen Village. It was where daily meetings were held and official business conducted. That day, as I was gnawing on a tall apricot tree, the coarse bark made my tender lips feel like they were on fire. But I was in no mood to stop. I wanted to see what was underneath. The village chief and Party secretary, Hong Taiyue, shouted and threw a sharp rock at me. It hit me in the leg, loud and irritating. Was that pain I felt? A hot sensation was followed by open bleeding. Hee-haw, hee-haw – I thought this poor, orphaned donkey was going to die. I trembled when I saw the blood, and hobbled from the eastern edge of the compound, as far away from the apricot tree as possible, all the way to the western edge. Right by the southern wall, in front of the door of the main building, a lean-to made of a reed mat over a couple of poles, open to the morning sun, had been set up to keep me out of the elements, and was a place to run to when I was frightened. But I couldn’t go there now, because my master was just then sweeping up droppings from the night before. I hobbled up and he saw that my leg was bleeding; I think he’d probably also seen Hong Taiyue throw the rock. When it was on its way, it cut through the colorless air, making a sound like slicing through fine silk or satin, and struck fear into the heart of this donkey. My master was standing in front of the lean-to, a man the size of a small pagoda, washed by the sunlight, half his face blue, the other red, with his nose as the dividing line, sort of like the division between enemy territory and the liberated area. Today that figure of speech sounds quaint, but at the time it was fresh and new. “My poor little donkey!” my master cried out in obvious agony. Then his voice turned angry. “Old Hong, how dare you injure my donkey!” He leaped over me and, with the agility of a panther, got up into the face of Hong Taiyue.

Hong was the highest-ranking official in Ximen Village. Thanks to a glorious past, when all other Party cadres were turning in their weapons, he wore a pistol on his hip. Sunlight and the air of revolution reflected off his fancy brown leather holster, sending out a warning to all bad people: Don’t do anything reckless, don’t harbor evil thoughts, and don’t think of resisting! He wore a wide-brimmed gray army hat, a button-down white jacket, cinched at the waist by a leather belt at least four inches wide, and a gray lined jacket draped over his shoulders. His pants ballooned over a pair of thick-soled canvas shoes, with no leggings. He looked like a member of an armed working team during the war. During that war, I was Ximen Nao, not a donkey. It was a time when I was the richest man in Ximen Village, a time when Ximen Nao was a member of the enlightened gentry, someone who favored resistance against the invaders and supported progressive forces. I had a wife and two concubines, two hundred acres of fine land, a stable filled with horses and donkeys. But Hong Taiyue, I say, you, Hong Taiyue, what were you then? A typical lowlife, the dregs of society, a beggar who went around banging on the hip bone of a bull ox. It was sort of yellow, rubbed shiny, with nine copper rings hanging from the edge, so all you had to do was shake it gently for it to produce a huahua langlang sound. Holding it by the handle, you haunted the marketplace on days ending in 5 and 0, standing on the cobblestone ground in front of the Yingbinlou Restaurant, face smeared with soot, naked from the waist up, a cloth sachet hanging from your neck, your rotund belly sticking out, feet bare, head shaved, dark eyes darting every which way as you sang tunes and did tricks. Not a soul on earth could get as many different sounds out of an ox’s hip bone as you could: Hua langlang, hua langlang, huahua langlang, hualang, huahua, langlang, hualanghualang… it danced in your hand, its gleaming whiteness flickering, the center of attention in the marketplace. You drew crowds, quickly transforming the square into an entertainment center: the beggar Hong Taiyue banging on his ox bone and singing. It may have been more like the squawks of chickens and ducks, but the cadence had a recognizable rhythm, and it was not without a bit of charm:

Then this local gem of a man’s real identity was revealed, and villagers learned to their surprise that he had been an underground member of the Northeast Gaomi Township branch of the Communist Party, who had sent secret reports up to the Eighth Route Army. He’d looked me in the eye after I’d turned over all my riches and, eyes like a pair of daggers, face the color of cold iron, had announced solemnly: “Ximen Nao, during the first stage of land reform, you managed to get by with your deceptive petty favors and phony charity, but this time you’re a cooked crab that can no longer sidle your way around, a turtle in a jar with no way out. You plundered the people’s property, you were a master of exploitation, you ran roughshod over men and had your way with women, you oppressed all the people, you are the epitome of evil, and only your death will quell the people’s anger. If we do not move you, a black rock of an obstruction, out of the road, if we do not chop you, a towering tree, down, land reform in Northeast Gaomi Township will come to a standstill and the poor and downtrodden peasants of Ximen Village will never be able to stand up on their own. The district government has approved and sent forward to the Township Government a judgment that the tyrannical landlord Ximen Nao is to be dragged up to the stone bridge on the outskirts of the village and shot!”

An explosion, a burst of light, and Ximen Nao’s brains were splattered over the gourd-sized stones beneath the bridge, polluting the air around it with a disagreeable stench. These were painful thoughts. I could say nothing in my defense; they refused to let me. Struggle against landlords, smash their dog heads, cut the tall grass, pluck out the thickest hairs. If you want to accuse someone, you’ll never run out of words. We’ll make sure you die convinced of your crimes, is what Hong Taiyue said, but they gave me no chance to argue in my defense. Hong Taiyue, your words meant nothing, you did not make good on your promise.

He stood in the doorway, hands on his hips, face to face with Lan Lian, an intimidating presence. Even though I was able only moments before to conjure up an image of him bending over obsequiously in front of me, ox bone in hand, he instilled fear in this wounded donkey. About eight feet separated my master and Hong Taiyue. My master was born to poverty, a member of the proletariat, red as could be. But he’d once claimed a foster relationship – father and son – with me, Ximen Nao, a dubious relationship, to say the least, and though he later raised his level of class consciousness and was in the vanguard of the struggle against me, thus recapturing his good name as a poor peasant and acquiring living quarters, land, and a wife, the authorities viewed him with suspicion, owing to his special relationship with Ximen Nao.

The two men faced off for a long moment. My master was the first to speak:

“What gave you the right to injure my donkey?”

“If he gnaws on the bark of my tree again, I’ll shoot him!” Hong Taiyue roundly rebuffed him, patting the holster on his hip for emphasis.

“There’s no need for you to be so damned vicious with an animal!”

“As I see it, people who drink from a well without considering the source or forget where they came from when they stand tall are worse than an animal!”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Lan Lian, listen carefully to what I’m about to say.” Hong took a step closer and pointed to Lan Lian’s chest as if his finger were the muzzle of a gun. “After the success of land reform, I advised you not to marry Yingchun. I realize she had no choice in giving herself to Ximen Nao, and I support the government’s position that it’s a good thing for a widow to remarry. But as a member of the impoverished class, you should have married someone like Widow Su from West Village. Left without a room to live in or a strip of land to till after her husband died, she was forced to beg to survive. She may have a face full of pockmarks, but she’s a member of the proletariat, one of us, and she could have helped you maintain your integrity as a committed revolutionary. But you ignored my advice and were set on marrying Yingchun. Since our marriage policy stresses freedom of choice, I did not stand in your way. As I predicted, over the past three years your revolutionary zeal has evaporated. You are selfish, your thinking is backward, and you want to live in a style more dissipated than even your former landlord, Ximen Nao. You have turned into a degenerate, and if you don’t wake up soon, you’ll find yourself wearing the label of an enemy of the people!”

My master stared blankly at Hong Taiyue, without moving. Finally, after catching his breath, he said weakly:

“Old Hong, since Widow Su has those fine attributes, why don’t you marry her?”

Hong reacted to this seemingly inoffensive question as if he’d lost the power of speech. He looked hopelessly flustered before finding his voice. Without responding to the question, he said authoritatively:

“Don’t get cute with me, Lan Lian. I represent the Party, the government, and the impoverished residents of Ximen Village. This is your last chance to come around. I hope you rein in your horse before you go over the cliff, that you find your way back into our camp. We’re prepared to forgive your lack of resolve and your inglorious history of enslaving yourself to Ximen Nao, and we’ll not alter your class standing of farm laborer just because you married Yingchun. Farm laborer is a label with a gilded edge, and you had better not let it rust or gather dust. I’m telling you to your face that I hope you will join the commune, bringing along that roguish donkey, the wheelbarrow, the plow, and the farming tools you received during land reform, as well as your wife and children, including, of course, those two landlord brats Ximen Jinlong and Ximen Baofeng. Join the commune and stop working for yourself, end your quest for independence. Stop being headstrong, an obstructionist. We have brought over thousands of people with more talent than you. Me, Hong Taiyue, I’ll let a cat sleep in the crotch of my pants before I’ll let you be a loner on my watch. I hope you’ve listened to every word I’ve said.”

Hong Taiyue’s booming voice had been conditioned by his begging days, back when he went around beating an ox hip bone. For anyone with that sort of voice and eloquence not to become an official is an affront to human nature. Even I was caught up in his monologue as I watched him berate my master; he seemed taller than Lan Lian, though he was actually half a head shorter. The mention of Ximen Jinlong and Ximen Baofeng gave me the scare of my life, for the Ximen Nao who lived in my donkey body was on tenterhooks regarding the children he’d sired and then left stranded in the midst of a turbulent world. He fretted over their future, for although Lan Lian could be their protector, he could also be an agent of doom. Just then, my mistress, Yingchun – I tried desperately to put the image of her sharing my bed and accepting the seed that produced the two children out of my mind – emerged from the western rooms. Before stepping out, she had looked into the broken remnant of a mirror hanging on the wall to check her appearance, of that I’m sure. She was wearing an indigo blue jacket over loose black pants; a blue apron with white flowers was tied around her waist, and a blue and white kerchief, matching the pattern of the apron, covered her head. It was a nicely coordinated outfit. Her haggard face was lit up in the sunlight; her cheeks, her eyes, her mouth, and her ears all combined to dredge up a host of memories. Quite a woman she was, a treasure I’d have loved to kill. Lan Lian, you bastard, you’ve got a good eye. If you’d married the pockmarked Widow Su from West Village, even being transformed into the Supreme Daoist Jade Emperor would not have been worth it. She walked up to Hong Taiyue, bowed deeply, and said:

“Brother Hong, you’re too important to worry about the problems of small fry like us. You mustn’t bring yourself down to the level of this coarse laborer.”

I saw the tautness in Hong Taiyue’s face fall away. Like a man climbing off his donkey to walk downhill, in other words, using her arrival as a way forward, he said:

“Yingchun, I don’t have to rehash your family history for you. You two can act recklessly if you think your own situation is hopeless, but you have to think about your children, whose whole lives are ahead of them. Eight or ten years from now, when you look back, Lan Lian, you’ll realize that everything I said to you today was for your own good, for you, your wife, and your children. It’s the best advice anyone could give.”

“I understand, Brother Hong,” she said as she tugged at Lan Lian’s arm. “Tell Brother Hong you’re sorry. We’ll go home and talk about joining the commune.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Lan Lian said. “Even brothers are dividing up family property, so what good is putting strangers together to eat out of the same pot?”

“You really are stubborn,” Hong Taiyue said indignantly. “All right, Lan Lian, go ahead, be out there all by yourself. We’ll see who’s more powerful, you or the commune. Today I’m all but pleading with you to join the commune, but one day, Lan Lian, you’ll get down on your knees and beg me to let you in, and that day is not far off, take my word for it!”

“I won’t join! And I’ll never get down on my knees in front of you!” His eyes were lowered as he continued. “Your Party regulations state, ‘Joining a commune is voluntary, leaving it is permissible.’ You cannot force me to join!”

“You’re a stinking dog turd!” Hong Taiyue said in a furious out-burst.

“Brother Hong, please don’t…”

“You can stop that Brother this and Brother that,” Hong said scornfully. “I’m the Party secretary,” he said to Yingchun with a look of disgust. “And I’m the village chief, not to mention a member of the village security force!”

“Party secretary, village chief, security officer,” Yingchun echoed timidly, “we’ll go home and talk this over…” She shoved Lan Lian and sobbed, “You stubborn ass, your head is made of stone, come home with me right now…”

“I’m not going anywhere until I’m finished with what I have to say. Village chief, you injured my donkey, so you have to pay to fix his leg.”

“I’ll pay, all right, with a bullet!” Hong Taiyue patted his holster and laughed. “Lan Lian, oh my, Lan Lian, you’re really something.” Then, raising his voice, he exclaimed, “Tell me who this apricot tree belongs to.”

“It belongs to me.” Huang Tong, commander of the local militia, had been standing in his doorway, watching the argument develop. He ran up to Hong Taiyue and said, “Party secretary, village chief, security officer, this tree was given to me during land reform, but it hasn’t produced a single apricot, and I’ve been thinking of taking it down one day. Like Ximen Nao, it has a score to settle with us poor peasants.”

“That’s a bunch of crap!” Hong Taiyue said coldly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. If you want to be on my good side, then don’t make up stories. This tree produces no fruit because you haven’t taken care of it. It’s got nothing to do with Ximen Nao. The tree may belong to you now, but sooner or later it’s going to be the property of the commune. The road to collectivization requires the complete elimination of private ownership. Stamping out exploitation is a universal trend. And that is why you’d better start taking care of this tree. If you let that donkey gnaw at its bark one more time, I’ll flay the skin off your back!”

Huang Tong nodded and forced a smile onto his face. Flashes of gold emerged from his squinty eyes. His mouth was open just enough to reveal his yellow teeth and purple gums. Huang Tong’s wife, Qiuxiang, Ximen Nao’s second concubine, appeared then, a carrying pole over her shoulder, with her twins, Huzhu and Hezuo, seated in a basket on each end. She had brushed her swept-back hair with osman-thus oil and powdered her face; she wore a dress with floral piping and green satin shoes embroidered with purple flowers. An audacious woman, she was dressed just as she had been when she’d been my concubine, with rouged cheeks and smiling eyes. She cut a lovely figure, with curves in all the right places, nothing like a laboring woman. I knew the woman well. She did not have a good heart. She had a sharp tongue and a devious mind, a woman whose only virtue was in bed, not someone to get close to or confide in. She had high aspirations, and if I hadn’t kept her down, my wife and my first concubine would have died at her hand. Even before I became a dirty dog, this wench saw the writing on the wall and turned on me, saying I’d raped her, that I ran roughshod over her, that Ximen Bai mistreated her on a daily basis; she even opened her blouse in front of a crowd of men at the great account-settling meeting and pointed out scars on her breasts, wailing and sputtering loudly, This is where the landlord’s wife burned me with the red-hot bowl of a pipe, these are where that tyrant Ximen Nao poked me with an awl. As someone who’d studied to be a stage actress, she knew exactly how to worm her way into people’s hearts. I, Ximen Nao, brought her into my house out of kindness. She was at the time a teenager whose hair was still in braids as she followed her blind father from place to place and sang for money. Unfortunately, her father died on the street one day, and she had to sell herself in order to bury him. I took her in as a maidservant. You ungrateful bitch, if Ximen Nao hadn’t come to your rescue, you’d have died from the elements or been forced into a life of prostitution. The whore made tearful accusations, spouting lies that sounded so truthful that the women at the foot of the stage were sobbing openly, whetting their glistening sleeves with a torrent of tears. The slogans took over, rage swept over the crowd, and that sealed my doom. I’d known that in the end I’d die at this whore’s hand. She wept, she howled, but before long, she stole a glance at me out of those long, narrow eyes. If not for the two militiamen who had me by the arms, I’d have rushed up, not giving a damn what happened to me afterward, and slapped her hard – once, twice, three times. I’m not afraid to tell the truth: at home, because of all the lies she told, I did that, I slapped her three times, and she fell to her knees, wrapped her arms around my legs, tears clouding her eyes, and I saw that look, so enchanting, so pitiful, so full of affection, that my heart softened and my maleness hardened; what can you do with a woman who can’t stop telling lies, who’s lazy and spoiled? But three hard slaps, and they crawl into bed with you as if drunk. A flirtatious woman like that, I tell you, was my punishment. Old Master, Old Master, dear Elder Brother, go ahead, kill me, put me to death, cut me to pieces, but my soul will still wrap itself around you… she pulled a pair of scissors out of her bodice and tried to stab me, but was stopped by the militiamen and dragged down off the stage. Up till that moment I’d clung to the idea that she was putting on an act to protect herself; I couldn’t believe that any woman could have such deep-seated loathing for someone she’d cuddled with in bed…

She picked up Huzhu and Hezuo in their baskets, apparently heading to market, and gave Hong Taiyue a come-hither look. Her dark little face was like a black peony.

“Huang Tong,” Hong said, “keep an eye on her, she’s in need of remolding. Make sure she stops acting like a landlord’s mistress. Send her out to work in the fields and stop her from going from one marketplace to another.”

“Are you listening?” Huang Tong placed himself in front of Qiuxiang. “The Party secretary is talking about you!”

“Me? What did I do? If I can’t go to market, why not shut it down? If you’re afraid I’m too attractive to men, go get some sulfuric acid and ruin my face.” All this chatter from her tiny mouth was a terrible embarrassment to Hong Taiyue.

“You slut, you’re just itching to be smacked around!” Huang Tong growled.

“Says who, you? If you so much as touch me the wrong way, I’ll fight you till both our chests are bloody!”

Huang Tong slapped her before anyone could react. Everyone stood there dumbstruck, and I was waiting for Qiuxiang to make a frightful scene, to roll around on the ground, to threaten suicide, the sorts of things she always did. But I waited in vain. She didn’t resist at all. She just threw down her carrying pole, covered her face, and bawled, throwing a fright into Huzhu and Hezuo, who also started bawling. From a distance, their glistening, fuzzy little tops looked like monkey heads.

Hong Taiyue, who started the war, turned into peacemaker, trying to smooth things over between Huang Tong and his wife. Then, without a sideward glance, he walked into what had been the main house of the Ximen estate; now a badly printed wooden sign hanging on the brick wall proclaimed, “Ximen Village Party Committee.”

My master wrapped his arms around my head and massaged my ears with his rough hands, while his wife, Yingchun, cleaned my injured leg with salt water and wrapped it with a piece of white cloth. At that sorrowful yet warm moment, I was no Ximen Nao, I was a donkey, one about to become an adult and accompany his master through thick and thin. Like it says in the song that Mo Yan wrote for his new play, The Black Donkey:

4

Gongs and Drums Pound the Heavens as the Masses Join the Co-op

Four Hooves Plod through the Snow as the Donkey Is Shod

The first of October, 1954, China’s National Day, was also the day Northeast Gaomi Township’s first agricultural cooperative was established. Mo Yan, about whom we’ve already spoken, was born on that day, as well.

In the early morning, Mo Yan’s father ran anxiously up to the house and, when he saw my master, began wiping his tear-filled eyes with his sleeve, not saying a word. My master and his wife were eating breakfast at the moment, but they put down their bowls at the sight that greeted them and asked: What’s happened, good uncle? In the midst of his sobs, Mo Yan’s father managed to say: The baby, she had the baby, a boy. Are you saying that Aunty has had a baby boy? my master’s wife asked. Yes, Mo Yan’s father said. Then why are you crying? my master asked. You should be happy. Mo Yan’s father just stared at my master. Who says I’m not? If I wasn’t happy, why would I be crying? My master laughed. Yes, he said, of course, you’re crying because you’re happy. Why else would you cry? Break out the liquor, he said to his wife. We are going to celebrate. None for me today, Mo Yan’s father begged off. I have to spread the good news to lots of people. We can celebrate another day Yingchun, Mo Yan’s father said as he bowed deeply to my master’s wife. I have you and your Deer Placenta Ointment to thank for this. The boy’s mother said she’ll bring him to show you after her month of lying in. We’ll both kowtow to you. She said you have stored up such good fortune that she wants the boy to be your nominal son, and if you say no, I’m to get down on my knees and plead. My master’s wife said: You two are cutups. I’m happy to do it. There’s no need for you to get down on your knees. – And so, Mo Yan isn’t only your friend, nominally, he’s your brother.

Your brother Mo Yan’s father had no sooner left the house than things started heating up in the Ximen estate compound – or should I say the village government office compound. First, Hong Taiyue and Huang Tong pasted up a pair of couplets on the main gate. Then the musicians filed in, crouched down in the yard, and waited. These men looked familiar to me somehow. Ximen Nao’s memory seemed to be returning, but fortunately my master came in with the feed and brought an end to my recollections. Thanks to the opening in my lean-to, I was able to watch the goings-on outside as I ate. At about mid-morning, a teenage boy came running into the yard carrying a little flag made of red paper.

“He’s coming!” he shouted. “The village chief wants you to start!”

The musicians scrambled to their feet, and in no time, drums banged, gongs clanged, followed by blaring and tooting wind instruments welcoming the honored guest. I watched as Huang Tong ran around shouting, “Out of my way, make room, the district chief is here!”

Under the leadership of Hong Taiyue, head of the co-op, District Chief Chen and several of his armed bodyguards strode in through the gate. The lean district chief, with his deep sunken eyes, swayed as he walked; he was wearing an old army uniform. Farmers who had joined the co-op swarmed in after him, leading their livestock, all draped in red bunting, and carrying farm tools over their shoulders. Within minutes, the yard was filled with farm animals and the bobbing heads of their owners, bringing the place alive. The district chief stood on a stool beneath the apricot tree and waved to the massed crowd. His gestures were received with shouted greetings, and even the animals were caught up in the celebration: horses whinnied, donkeys brayed, cows mooed, increasing the happy clamor and adding fuel to the joyous fire. In the midst of all that noise and activity, but before the district chief had begun his speech, my master led me – or should I say, Lan Lian led his young donkey – through the crowd, under the gaze of the people and their animals, right out through the gate.

Once out of the compound, we headed south, and as we passed the elementary school playground, by Lotus Bay we saw all the bad elements, moving rocks and dirt under the supervision of two militiamen armed with rifles adorned with red tassels; they were building up an earthen platform north of the playground, the place where operas had been performed, where mass criticism meetings had been held, and where I, Ximen Nao, had stood when I was being struggled against. Deep in Ximen Nao’s memory lay the recognition of all these men. Look there, that skinny old man whose knees are nearly buckling from the weight of the big rock he’s carrying, that’s Yu Wufu, who was head of security for three months. And look there, that fellow carrying two baskets of earth on a carrying pole, that’s Zhang Dazhuang, who went over to the enemy, taking a rifle with him, when the Landlords’ Restitution Corps launched an attack to settle scores. He was a carter for my family for five years. My wife, Ximen Bai, arranged his marriage with Bai Susu, her niece. When I was being struggled against, they said that I slept with Bai Susu the night before she was married to Zhang Dazhuang, which was a barefaced lie, a damned rumor; but when they called her up as a witness, she covered her face with her jacket, wailed tearfully, and said nothing, thus turning a lie into the truth and sending Ximen Nao straight down to the Yellow Springs of Death. Look over there at the young man with the oval face and slanty eyebrows, the one who’s carrying that green locust log; that’s Wu Yuan, one of our rich peasants, and a dear friend of mine. He’s quite a musician, plays both the two-stringed erhu and the suona. During off seasons on the farm, he played with the local band as they walked through town, not for money but for the sheer pleasure of it. And then there’s that fellow with a few scraggly hairs on his chin, the one with the worn-out hoe over his shoulder who’s standing on the platform dawdling and trying to look busy; it’s Tian Gui, the onetime manager of a flourishing liquor business, a skinflint who kept ten hectoliters of wheat in his grain bins but made his wife and kids eat chaff and rotten vegetables. Look, look, look, that woman with the bound feet carrying half a basket of dirt but having to stop and rest every four or five steps, that’s my formal wife, Ximen Bai. And look there, behind her, it’s Yang Qi, the village public security head, a cigarette dangling from his lips and a willow switch in his hand. Quit loafing and get to work, Ximen Bai, he snarls. She is so alarmed she nearly falls, and the heavy basket of dirt lands on her tiny feet. She shrieks, my wife does, then cries softly from the pain, and begins to sob, like a little girl. Yang Qi raises his switch and brings it down hard – I pulled the rope out of Lan Lian’s hand and ran at Yang Qi – the switch snapped in the air a mere inch from Ximen Bai’s nose, didn’t touch her, showing what an expert the man is. The thieving, depraved bastard – a gluttonous, hard-drinking, whoremongering, chain-smoking gambler – squandered what his father left him, made his mother’s life such a misery that she hanged herself from a roof beam, and here he was, a redder-than-red poor peasant, a frontline revolutionary. I was going to drive a fist right into his face – actually, I don’t have a fist, so I’d have had to kick him or bite him with my big donkey teeth. Yang Qi, you bastard, with your scraggly chin hairs and dangling cigarette and willow switch, one of these days, I, Ximen Donkey, am going to take a big bite out of you.

My master jerked me back by the rope, saving that gangster Yang Qi from a bad ending. So I raised up and kicked with my hind legs, striking something soft – Yang Qi’s belly. Since becoming a donkey, I’ve been able to take in a lot more with my eyes than Ximen Nao ever could – I can see what goes on behind me. I watched as that bastard Yang Qi hit the ground hard, and I saw his face turn ashen. It took him a long moment to catch his breath, and when he did he called out for his mother. You bastard, your mother hanged herself because of you! Calling for her won’t do you any good!

My master threw down the rope and rushed over to help Yang Qi up. Back on his feet, Yang picked up the switch to hit me over the head, but my master grabbed his wrist. “I’m the only person who can do that, Yang Qi,” my master said. “Fuck you, Lan Lian!” Yang Qi roared. “You, with your cozy relationship with Ximen Nao, are a bad element who’s wormed his way into the class ranks. I’ll use this switch on you too!” But my master tightened his grip on the man’s wrist, drawing yelps of pain from someone who had abused his body by bedding all the loose women in town; finally he let the switch fall to the ground. With a shove that sent Yang stumbling backward, my master said, “Consider yourself lucky my donkey doesn’t have iron shoes yet.”

My master turned and led me out through the southern gate, where yellowing bristlegrass atop the wall swayed in the wind. That was the local co-op’s first day, and the day I reached adulthood. “Donkey,” my master said, “today I’m going to have you shod to protect you from stones in the road and keep sharp objects from cutting your hooves. It’ll make you an adult, and I can put you to work.” Every donkey’s fate, I surmised. So I raised my head and brayed, Hee-haw, hee-haw- It was the first time I’d actually made the sound aloud, so loud and crisp my startled master beamed.

The local blacksmith was a master at making shoes for horses and donkeys. He had a black face, a red nose, and beetle brows without a hair on them; there were no lashes above his red, puffy eyes, but three deep worry wrinkles across his forehead, repositories for coal ash. His apprentice’s face, as I could see, was pale under a mass of lines created by runnels of sweat. There was so much sweat running down the boy’s body, I worried that he was about to dry up. As for the blacksmith himself, his skin was so parched it looked like years of high heat had baked all the water out of it. The boy was operating a bellows with his left hand and wielding a pair of fire tongs with his right. He removed steel from the forge when it was white-hot, then he and the blacksmith hammered it into the desired shape, first with a sledge, then a finishing hammer. The bang-bang, clang-clang sound bouncing off the walls and the flying sparks had me spellbound.

The pale, handsome boy should have been on the stage, winning over pretty girls with sweet talk and tender words of love, not hammering steel in a blacksmith shop. But I was impressed by his strength, watching as he wielded an eighteen-pound sledge that I’d thought only the bull-like blacksmith could manage with such ease; it was like an extension of the boy’s young body. The hot steel was like a lump of clay waiting to be turned into whatever the blacksmith and his apprentice desired. After hammering a pillow-sized clump of steel into a straw cutter, a farmer’s biggest hand tool, they stopped to rest. “Master Jin,” my master said to the blacksmith, “I’d like to enlist your services to make a set of shoes for my donkey.” The blacksmith took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke out through his nose and his ears. His apprentice was gulping water out of a large, coarse china bowl. The water, it seemed, turned immediately to sweat, giving off a peculiar smell that was the essential odor of the handsome, innocent, hardworking boy’s being. “That’s some white-hoofed donkey,” the old blacksmith said with a sigh. Where I was standing, just outside the tent, not far from the road that led to the county town, I looked down and saw my snow-white hooves for the first time.

The boy put down his bowl. “They’ve got two new hundred-horsepower East Is Red tractors over at the state-run farm, each one as powerful as a hundred horses. They attached a steel cable to a poplar tree so big it takes two people to wrap their arms around it, hooked it to one of those tractors, and it yanked the tree right out of the ground, roots and all. Those roots were half a block long.” “You know everything, don’t you!” the old blacksmith scolded the boy. Then he turned to my master. “Old Lan,” he said, “it may only be a donkey, but it looks like you’ve got a good one. Who knows, some high official might get tired of riding a fine horse one day and decide it’s time to ride a donkey. When that day comes, Lan Lian, donkey luck will be yours for the asking.” The boy smirked at that, then burst out laughing. He stopped laughing as abruptly as he’d started, as if the laughter and the expression that flashed onto his face and immediately vanished were private business. The old blacksmith was clearly shocked by the boy’s bizarre laughter. “Jin Bian,” he said after a moment, “do we have any horseshoes?” As if he’d been waiting for the question, Jin Bian replied, “We have a lot, but all for horses. We can put them into the forge, heat them up, and change them into donkey shoes.” And that is what they did. In the time it takes to smoke a pipe, they had turned four horseshoes into four donkey shoes. Then the boy moved a stool outside and put it on the ground behind me, so the old blacksmith could lift up my legs and trim my hooves with a pair of sharp shears. When he was finished, he stepped back to look me over. Again he sighed, this time with deep emotion. “This really is a fine donkey,” the blacksmith said. “It’s the best looking one I’ve ever seen!” “No matter how good-looking he is, he’s no match for one of those combines. The state-run farm imported a bright red one from the Soviet Union. It can harvest a row of wheat in the blink of an eye. It gobbles up the wheat stalks in front and shoots the kernels out the back. In five minutes you’ve got a bagful.” All this the boy said with breathless admiration. The old blacksmith sighed. “Jin Bian,” he said, “it sounds like I won’t be able to keep you here for long. But even if you leave tomorrow, today we’ve got to shoe this donkey.” Jin Bian came up alongside me and lifted one of my legs, hammer in hand and mouth full of nails. He fitted a shoe on my hoof with one hand and hammered it on with the other, two strokes per nail, never missing a beat. One down. All four shoes took him less than twenty minutes. When he finished, he threw down his hammer and walked back inside the tent. “Lan Lian,” the blacksmith said, “walk him a bit to see if there’s a limp.” So my master started me walking, from the supply and marketing co-op over to the butcher shop, where they were just then butchering a black pig. White knife in, red knife out, a terrifying sight. The butcher was wearing an emerald green old-style jacket, and the contrast with the red was eye-popping. We left the butcher shop and walked to the District Government Office, where we met with District Chief Chen and his bodyguard. The opening-day ceremony for the Ximen Village Farming Co-op must have ended. The district chief’s bicycle was broken; his guard was carrying it over his shoulder. One look from District Chief Chen and he couldn’t keep his eyes off me. How good-looking and powerful I must have been to catch his attention like that! I knew I was an intimidating donkey among donkeys; maybe Lord Yama had given me the finest donkey legs and the cream of donkey heads out of an obligation to Ximen Nao. “That’s a wonderful donkey,” I heard Chief Chen say. “His hooves look like they’re stepping in snow. He’d be perfect at the livestock work station as a stud.” I heard his bicycle-toting guard ask my master, “Are you Lan Lian from Ximen Village?” “Yes,” my master replied as he slapped me on the rump to get me moving faster. But Chief Chen stopped us and patted me on the back. I reared up. “He’s got a temper,” he said. “You’ll have to work on that. You can’t work with an animal that’s easily spooked. An animal like that is hard to train.” Then, in the tone of an old hand, he said, “Before I joined the revolution, I was a trader in donkeys. I’ve seen thousands of them, I know them like the palm of my hand, especially their temperament.” He laughed long and loud; my master laughed along with him, fatuously. “Lan Lian,” the chief said, “Hong Taiyue told me what happened, and I wasn’t happy with him. I told him that Lan Lian is one tough donkey, and you have to rub him with the grain. Don’t be impatient with him, or he might kick or bite you. I tell you, Lan Lian, you don’t have to join the co-op right away. See if you can compete with it. I know you were allotted eight acres of land, so see how much grain you harvest per acre next fall. Then check to see how much the co-op brings in. If you do better, you can keep working your land on your own. But if the co-op does better, you and I will have another talk.” “You said that,” my master said excitedly. “Don’t forget.” “Yes, I said it, you’ve got witnesses,” the district chief said, pointing to his bodyguard and the people who had gathered around us. My master led me back to the blacksmith shop, where he said, “He doesn’t limp at all. Every step was perfect. I’d never have believed that someone as young as your apprentice could do such an excellent job.” With a wry smile, the blacksmith shook his head, as if weighed down with concerns. Then I spotted the young blacksmith Jin Bian, a bedroll over his shoulder – the corners of a gray blanket sticking out from under a dog-skin wrapping – walking out of the shop. “Well, I’ll be leaving, Master,” he said. “Go ahead,” the old blacksmith replied sadly. “Go seek your glorious future!”

5

Ximen Bai Stands Trial for Digging Up Treasure

The Donkey Disrupts Proceedings and Jumps a Wall

Now that I’d heard so many words of praise over my new shoes, I was in a fine mood, and my master was delighted with what the district chief had said. Master and donkey, Lan Lian and I, ran happily through the gold-washed autumn fields. Those were the best days of my donkey life. Yes, better to be a donkey everyone loves than a hopeless human. As your nominal brother Mo Yan wrote in the play The Black Donkey.

When we reached the village, Lan Lian picked some tender grass and yellow wildflowers from the side of the road to weave into a floral wreath, which he draped over my neck behind my ears. There we met the daughter of the stonemason Han Shan, Han Huahua, and their family’s female donkey, which was carrying a pair of saddlebag baskets; one held a baby in a rabbit fur cap, the other held a white piglet. Lan Lian struck up a conversation with Huahua; I made eye contact with her donkey. The humans had their speech, we had our own ways to communicate. Ours was based on body odors, body language, and instinct. From their brief conversation, my master learned that Huahua, who had been married to someone in a distant village, had come back for her mother’s sixtieth birthday and was now returning home. The baby in the basket was her infant son; the piglet was a gift from her parents. Back then, live animals, like piglets or lambs or chicks, were the preferred gifts. Government awards were often horses or cows or long-haired rabbits. My master and Huahua had a special relationship, and I thought back to when I was still Ximen Nao, how Lan Lian would be out with his cattle and Huahua would be out with her sheep, and the two of them would play donkeys frolicking in the grass. Truth is, I wasn’t all that interested in what they were doing now. As a potent male donkey, my immediate concern was the female donkey with the saddlebag baskets that was standing right there in front of me. She was older than me, somewhere between five and seven, by all appearances, which I determined from the depth of the hollow in her forehead. Naturally, she could just as easily – maybe even more easily – guess my age. Don’t assume that I was the smartest donkey ever just because I was a reincarnation of Ximen Nao – for a time I entertained that very misconception – since she could have been a reincarnation of someone far more important. My coat was gray when I was born, but I was turning darker all the time. If I hadn’t been almost black at the time, my hooves wouldn’t have appeared so eye-popping white. She was a gray donkey, still quite svelte, with delicate features, perfect teeth, and when she brought her mouth up close to me, I got a whiff of aromatic bean cake and wheat bran from between her lips. Sexual emanations poured from her, and at the same time I sensed the heat of passion inside, a powerful desire for me to mount her. It was contagious: an overpowering urge to do just that rose in me.

“Are they caught up in co-op fever where you are?” “With the same county chief leading the charge, there’s no way to avoid it,” Huahua said wistfully.

I walked over behind the donkey, who might have been offering her hindquarters to me. The scent of passion was getting stronger. I breathed it in deeply, and it was like pouring strong liquor down my throat. I bared my teeth and closed both nostrils, in order to keep any foul odors from escaping. It was the sort of pose that pretty much melted her heart. At the same time, my black shaft reached out heroically and nudged itself up against my belly. This was a once-in-a-life-time opportunity, fleeting to boot; just as I was raising my front legs to consummate the deal, my eyes fell on the baby in the saddlebag basket, sound asleep, not to mention, of course, the squealing piglet. Now, if I were to rear up into the mounting position, my newly shod hooves could wipe out those two little lives. And if I did that, Ximen Donkey could pretty much count on spending eternity in hell, with no chance of rebirth as anything. As I pondered my dilemma, my master jerked on the reins, forcing my front hooves down onto the ground as Huahua shrieked in alarm and quickly led her donkey out of “danger.”

“My father instructed me that since she’s in heat, I needed to be especially watchful. I forgot. In fact, he said to be sure and watch out for the donkey belonging to the Ximen Nao family. Can you imagine, even though Ximen Nao has been dead all these years, my father still thinks you’re his hired hand, and he refers to your donkey as Ximen Nao’s donkey.”

“That’s better than thinking that it’s a reincarnation of Ximen Nao,” my master said with a laugh.

I tell you, that shocked me. Did he know my secret? If he knew that his donkey was actually Ximen Nao reincarnated, would that work for or against me? The red ball in the sky was about to set; time for my master and Huahua to say good-bye.

“We’ll talk again next time, Brother Lan,” she said. “My home’s fifteen li from here, so I’d better get going.”

“So your donkey won’t make it back tonight, is that it?”

Huahua smiled and said conspiratorially:

“She’s a very clever donkey. After I feed and water her, all I have to do is remove her reins, and she’ll run home on her own. She does it every time.”

“Why do you have to remove her reins?”

“So no one can catch and take her away with them. The reins slow her down.”

“Oh,” my master said as he stroked his chin. “Why don’t I see you home?”

“Thanks,” she said, “but they’re putting on a play in the village tonight, so if you leave now you can see it.” Huahua turned and started off with her donkey, but stopped after a few steps, turned back, and said, “Brother Lan, my father said you shouldn’t be so stubborn, that you’d be better off throwing in your lot with everybody else.”

My master shook his head but didn’t respond. Then he looked me in the eye and said, “Let’s go, partner. I know what’s on your mind, and you nearly got me into a peck of trouble! What do you think, should I take you to the vet and get you fixed?”

My heart nearly stopped and my scrotum constricted; I’d never been so scared in my life. Don’t do it, Master, I wanted to howl, but the words stuck in my throat and emerged as brays: Hee-haw, hee-haw -

Now that we’d arrived in the village, my new shoes sang out crisply on the cobblestone road. Although I had something else on my mind, the image of her beautiful eyes and tender pink lips and the smell of her affectionate urine in my nose nearly drove me crazy. And yet my previous life as a human had made me an uncommon donkey. Misfortunes in the human world held a great attraction for me. I watched people rushing off to somewhere, and from what they spoke of along the way, I learned that a colored, glazed pottery urn filled with riches was on display in the Ximen estate compound, now the Village Government Office, headquarters of the co-op, and, of course, the home of my master Lan Lian and Huang Tong. The urn had been dug up by workers as they prepared an outdoor stage for the play. I immediately imagined the shady looks on the people’s faces when they looked upon riches being removed from the urn, and Ximen Nao’s memories resurfaced to dilute the amorous feelings of Ximen Donkey. I didn’t recall ever hiding any gold, silver, or jewelry in that place; we had hidden a thousand silver dollars in the animal pen as well as a trove of wealth in the walls of the house, but they had been found by the Poor Peasants Brigade in searches during the land reform movement. Poor Ximen Bai had suffered grievously over that.

At first, Huang Tong, Yang Qi, and the others had locked up Ximen Bai, Yingchun, and Qiuxiang for observation and investigation, with Hong Taiyue in command. I was kept in a separate room, out of sight of the interrogations, but well within earshot. Out with it! Where did Ximen Nao hide your family’s riches? Out with it! I heard the crisp sounds of willow switches and clubs banging on tables. And I heard that slut Qiuxiang cry out: Village Chief, Group Leader, good uncles and brothers, I was born to poverty, I was fed husks and rotten vegetables in the Ximen household, they never treated me like a human being, I was raped by Ximen Nao, my legs held down by Ximen Bai and my arms by Yingchun, so Ximen Nao could fuck me! – That’s a damned lie! That was Yingchun shouting. The sound of beating, someone was pulling them apart. – Everything she’s saying, all lies! That was Ximen Bai weighing in. In their house I was lower than a dog, lower than a pig, uncles, elder brothers, I’m an oppressed woman, I’m just like you, I’m one of your class sisters, it’s you who’ve rescued me from a sea of bitterness, I owe you everything, I’d love nothing more than to scoop out Ximen Nao’s brains and hand them to you, nothing would make me happier than to gouge out his heart and liver for you to enjoy with your wine… Just think, why would they tell me where they hid their gold and silver? You class brothers, you must understand what I’m telling you, Qiuxiang pleaded tearfully. Yingchun, on the other hand, neither cried nor made a scene. She stuck to her simple defense: All I concerned myself with was my chores and raising the children. I know nothing outside of that. She was right, those two did not know where the family wealth was hidden; that knowledge was shared only by Ximen Bai and me. A concubine is just that, not someone you can trust. Unlike a real wife. Ximen Bai kept her silence until she was forced to say something. The family is just an empty shell, she said, which people might have thought was filled with gold and silver, when in fact we couldn’t make ends meet. There was a little money for household expenditures, but he wouldn’t give it to me. I could picture her when she said that: She’d be staring daggers with her big, blank eyes, at Yingchun and Qiuxiang. I knew she despised Qiuxiang, but Yingchun had come with her as a maidservant, and when you break the bones, the tendons stay connected; it had been her idea for Yingchun to become my concubine so I could keep the family line going. And Yingchun had carried out her end of the bargain, producing a pair of twins, a boy and a girl. Bringing Qiuxiang into the house, on the other hand, had been a frivolous idea of mine. Success during good times can turn a man’s head; when a dog is happy with the way things are going, it raises its tail; when a man is happy with the way things are going, it’s his pecker that gets raised. To be sure, it was her seductive charms that got to me: she flirted with her eyes and won me over with her breasts. The temptation was simply too great for Ximen Nao, who was far from being a saint. Ximen Bai made it abundantly clear how she felt about this: You’re the head of the household, she said angrily, but one of these days that witch is going to be your undoing! So, when Qiuxiang said that Ximen Bai held her legs while Ximen Nao raped her, she was lying. Did Ximen Bai ever hit her? Yes. But she also hit Yingchun. Eventually, they let Yingchun and Qiuxiang go, and from where I was locked up, in a room with a window, I saw the two of them walk out of the main house. I wasn’t fooled by Qiuxiang’s disheveled hair or dirty face, because I could see the smug look in her eyes, which were rolling happily in their sockets. Clearly worried, Yingchun ran straight to the eastern rooms, where Jinlong and Baofeng were crying themselves hoarse. My darling son, my precious daughter! I whimpered silently, where did I go wrong, what heavenly principles did I violate to cause such suffering, not just to me, but to my wife and children? But then I reflected that every village had landlords who were struggled against, whose so-called crimes were exposed and criticized, who were swept out of their homes like garbage, and whose “dog heads” were beaten bloody, thousands and thousands of them, and I wondered, Was it possible that every one of them – of us – committed such evil acts that this was the treatment we deserved? It was our inexorable fate; earth and sky were spinning dizzily, the sun and moon trading places; there was no escape, and only the protection of Ximen Nao’s ancestors could keep his head on his shoulders. With the world in such a state, just staying alive was a result of sheer luck; asking for more would have been preposterous. But I couldn’t help worrying about Ximen Bai. If they wore her down to the point where she told them where our riches were hidden, not only would that not lessen my crimes, it would seal my doom. Ximen Bai, my loyal wife, you are a deep thinker, a woman of ideas, and you mustn’t lose sight of what’s important at this critical moment! The militiaman guarding my cell, Lan Lian, blocked my view out the window with his back, though I could hear the interrogation in the main house start up again. This time they really turned up the heat. The screams were deafening as willow switches, bamboo rods, and whips smacked against a table and thudded against Ximen Bai’s back. My dear wife’s shrieks broke my heart and shattered my nerves. – Out with it! Where did you hide your gold and silver? – We have no gold and silver… – Ah, Ximen Bai, you’re so stubborn it looks like you won’t open up till we start knocking you around. That sounded like Hong Taiyue, though not completely. Then silence. But only for a moment, before Ximen Bai’s howls erupted, and that made my hair stand on end. What were they doing to her? What could force such frightful howls out of a woman? – Are you going to tell us or not? If you don’t, you’ll get more of the same! – I’ll tell you… I’ll tell you… My heart felt like it had been rid of a stone. Go ahead, tell them. After all, a man can only die once. Better for me to die than for her to suffer on my account. Out with it, where did you hide it? – It’s hidden, it’s hidden in the Earth God Temple east of the village, in the God of War Temple north of the village, at Lotus Bay, in the belly of a cow… I don’t know where it’s hidden, because there isn’t any. During the first Land Reform campaign, we handed over everything we owned!-You’ve got your nerve, Ximen Bai, trying to make fools of us! – Let me go, I honestly don’t know anything… – Drag her outside! I heard a man in the main house threaten, someone who was probably sitting in the mahogany armchair I used to sit in. Next to that chair was an octagonal table on which I kept my writing brush, ink stick, ink slab, and paper; hanging from the wall behind the table was a longevity scroll. Behind the scroll was a hollow in which forty silver coins weighing fifty ounces, twenty gold ingots each weighing an ounce, and all of Ximen Bai’s jewelry were hidden. I saw two armed militiamen drag Ximen Bai out of the house; her hair was a mess, her clothes ripped and torn, and she was soaking wet. I couldn’t tell if what was dripping from her body was blood or sweat, but when I saw the shape she was in, I knew that Ximen Nao had not vainly kicked up a row in this world. I suddenly realized that the militiamen who came out with her were meant to be a firing squad. My arms had been tied behind me, so all I could do, like Su Qin carrying a sword on his back, was ram my head into the window frame and scream, Don’t execute her!

You vulgar bone-rapping bastard, I said to Hong Taiyue, as far as I’m concerned, a single hair on my scrotum is worth more than you, but in letting me fall into the hands of you low-class peasants, fortune has not smiled on me. I cannot fight heaven’s laws. I give up, count me as your lowly grandson.

With a laugh, Hong Taiyue said, I’m glad you see things that way. Yes, me, Hong Taiyue, I am vulgar, and if not for the Communist Party, I’d be stuck with banging on that ox bone for the rest of my life. But the tables have been turned on you, and we poor peasants have had a change of luck. We’ve floated to the top. By settling accounts with you people, all we’re doing is retrieving the riches you accumulated. I’ve reasoned with you more times than I can count. You did not provide your hired hands and tenant farmers with a livelihood, Ximen Nao, you and your family lived off of our labor. Hiding your riches from us was an unforgivable crime, but if you hand them over now, we are prepared to treat you with leniency.

I alone was responsible for hiding my money and valuables. The women had nothing to do with it. I knew they were unreliable, that all you had to do was pound the table to get them to reveal all our secrets. I’m willing to turn over everything I own, wealth that will astound you, enough for you to buy an artillery cannon, but you must give me your word that you will release Ximen Bai and won’t take my crimes out on Yingchun and Qiuxiang, since they know nothing.

You don’t need to worry about that, Hong said. We’ll do everything by the book.

All right. Untie my hands.

The militiamen eyed me suspiciously, then looked at Hong Taiyue.

Again, with a laugh, he said, They’re afraid you’ll fight like a cornered beast, that you’ll do anything to get away.

I smiled. He personally untied my hands, even offered me a cigarette. I accepted, even though I’d lost feeling in my hands, and sat in my armchair, beaten down with dejection. Finally, I reached up and pulled down the scroll. – Break open the wall with your rifle butts, I said to the militiamen.

They were dumbstruck by the sight of the riches they retrieved from the hollow, and those looks told me everything I needed to know about what they were thinking. They all wished they could walk away with that treasure and probably were already conjuring up dreams of wealth and leisure: If this house had been handed over to me and I’d stumbled upon this hidden treasure…

While they were standing around dazed by the riches, I reached down, grabbed a revolver that was hidden under the armchair, and fired a shot into the tile floor; the bullet ricocheted and lodged in the wall. The militiamen hit the floor in panic. Only Hong Taiyue remained standing, the bastard, showing what he was made of. Did you hear that, Hong Taiyue? If I’d pointed this at your head, right now you’d be spread out on the floor like a dead dog. But I didn’t, not at you or at any of your men, since I have no account to settle with any of you. If you hadn’t come to struggle against me, someone else would have. It’s the times. All rich people are doomed to meet the same fate. And that’s why I haven’t harmed a single hair on any of you.

You’re got that right, Hong said. You’re a man who knows what’s what, someone who sees the big picture, and as a man, I respect you. More than that, you’re a man I’d be happy to share a bottle with, even become sworn brothers with. But speaking as a member of the revolutionary masses, you and I are irreconcilable foes and I am obliged to eliminate you. This is not personal hatred, it’s class hatred. As a representative of a class that is marked for elimination, you could have shot me dead, but that would have made me a revolutionary martyr. The government would have then executed you, turning you into a counterrevolutionary martyr.

I laughed, roared, in fact. I laughed so hard I cried. When I was finished, I said, Hong Taiyue, my mother was a devout Buddhist, and not once in my life have I been guilty of killing anyone or anything, carrying out my filial obligations to her. She told me that if I every killed anyone or anything after her death, she would suffer torment in the afterworld. So if it’s martyrdom you’re looking for, you’ll have to find someone else to make that possible. As for me, I’ve lived long enough. It’s time for me to die. But my death will be unrelated to your so-called classes. I accumulated my wealth by being smart, industrious, and lucky, and I never entertained the thought of joining any class. And I certainly won’t die a martyr of any sort. As far as I’m concerned, living on like this would fill me with all kinds of meaningless grievances. There are too many things I don’t understand, which makes me uncomfortable, so dying is better. I put my pistol up to my temple and said, There’s an urn with a thousand silver dollars buried in the animal pen. My apologies, but you’ll have to dig through animal dung to get to it, which means you’ll cover your bodies with a foul stench before you hold the silver dollars in your hands.

No problem, Hong Taiyue said. For a thousand silver dollars, not only are we willing to dig through animal dung, we’d roll around in a pool of shit if we had to. But I urge you not to kill yourself. Who knows, maybe we’ll let you live long enough to watch us poor peasants stand up and be counted, see us fill with pride, see us become masters of our own fate and create a fair and just society.

Sorry, but I don’t feel like living. As Ximen Nao I’m used to having people nod their heads and bend low to me, not the other way around. Maybe we’ll see each other in the next life. Gentlemen! I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, a dud. And when I lowered the pistol to see what was wrong, Hong Taiyue grabbed it out of my hand. His men rushed up and tied me up again. You aren’t so smart, after all, my friend Hong said as he held up the pistol. You didn’t have to check it. The virtue of a revolver is how often it misfires. If you’d pulled the trigger one more time, the next bullet would have spun into the chamber and you’d be on the floor chewing on a tile like a dead dog, if it too wasn’t a dud, that is. He laughed smugly and ordered the militiamen to go out and start digging. Then he turned back to me. Ximen Nao, he said, I don’t believe you were trying to trick us. A man who’s about to kill himself has no reason to lie…

Pulling me along behind him, my master managed to force his way in through the gate as, on orders from village officials, militiamen were shoving people out. The cowards couldn’t move fast enough, with rifles poking them in the backside, while some brave individuals were pushing their way in to see what was going on. You can imagine how hard it was for my master to lead a big strong donkey in through that gate. The village had planned to move the Lan and Huang families out of the compound so they could free up the entire Ximen estate for government offices. But since there were no vacant buildings in which to put them, and since my master and Huang Tong were not easy heads to shave, getting them to move would have been harder than climbing to heaven, at least for the time being. That meant that on a daily basis I, Ximen Donkey, was able to enter and leave through the same gate as the village bosses, not to mention district and county officials on their inspection tours.

As the clamor persisted, the crowd in the compound pushed and shoved, until the militiamen, in no mood to strain themselves in quelling the uproar, moved away to smoke a leisurely cigarette. From where I stood, in my lean-to, I watched as the setting sun splashed its golden rays onto the apricot tree branches. A pair of armed militiamen kept guard beneath the tree, the object at their feet blocked from view by the crowd. But I knew it was the treasure-filled urn, with a surge of humanity pressing closer and closer to it. I swore to heaven that the riches in that urn had nothing to do with Ximen Nao – with me. But then, my heart skipped a beat when I saw Ximen Nao’s wife, Ximen Bai, walk out of the main building in the custody of a rifle-toting militiaman and the head of public security.

Her hair looked like a ball of tangled yarn, and she was covered with dirt, as if she’d emerged from a hole in the ground. Her arms hung limp at her sides as she swayed with each step to keep her balance. When the raucous people in the compound saw her, they fell silent and instinctively parted to open up the path leading to the main building. The gate of my estate had once faced a screen wall on which the words “Good Fortune” had been inlaid, but that had been demolished by a pair of money-grubbing militiamen on a second inspection during Land Reform. They’d shared a dream that hundreds of gold ingots were hidden inside the wall, but all they retrieved was a pair of rusty scissors.

Ximen Bai tripped on a cobblestone and fell to the ground, where she lay, facedown. Yang Qi kicked her.

“Get the hell up!” he cursed. “Quit faking!”

I felt a blue flame blaze up inside my head and pawed the ground out of anxiety and rage. I could sense the heavy hearts among the villagers in the compound as the atmosphere turned forlorn. Ximen Nao’s wife was sobbing. She arched her back and tried to get up by supporting herself with her hands. She looked like a wounded frog.

As Yang Qi swung his foot back for another kick, Hong Taiyue called him to a halt from the steps:

“What are you doing, Yang Qi? After all these years since Liberation, you are smearing mud on the face of the Communist Party by the way you curse and hit people!”

The mortified Yang Qi stood there, rubbing his hands and mumbling to himself.

Hong Taiyue came down the steps and walked up to where Ximen Bai lay on the ground. He bent down and helped her up, but her legs buckled as she tried to go down on her knees.

“Village Head,” she sobbed, “spare me, I honestly know nothing. Please, Village Head, spare the life of this lowly dog…

“No more of that talk, Ximen Bai,” he said, holding her up so she could not get down on her knees. He looked so obliging, but then he abruptly turned severe. Facing the crowd, he said sternly: “Get out of here! What’s the big idea? What’s there to see? Go on, get out of here!”

With bowed heads, the people began leaving.

Spotting a heavyset woman with long, straight hair, Hong signaled to her.

“Yang Guixiang,” he said, “come over here and help.”

Yang, a onetime director of the Women’s Relief Society, was now in charge of women’s affairs. She was a cousin of Yang Qi. Happy to assist, she helped Ximen Bai back into the house.

“Think hard, Ximen Bai, did your husband, Ximen Nao, bury this urn? And while you’re thinking about that, what else did he bury? Tell us, there’s nothing to be afraid of, since you’ve done nothing wrong. Ximen Nao is the guilty one.”

Sounds of torture emerged from the main house and assailed my ears, which were standing straight up. At this moment, Ximen Nao and the donkey were one and the same. I was Ximen Nao, Ximen Nao was now a donkey, I was Ximen Donkey.

“I honestly don’t know, Village Chief. That place isn’t my family’s land, and if my husband wanted to bury something, he wouldn’t bury it there…”

“Smack!” Someone banged the table with the flat of his hand.

“Hang her up if she won’t tell!”

“Squeeze her fingers!”

My wife wailed pitifully, begging for her life.

“Think hard, Ximen Bai. Ximen Nao is dead, so buried riches cannot do him any good. But if we dig them up, they can make our co-op stronger. There’s nothing to be afraid of, we’ve all been liberated. Our policy is not to beat people, and we’re certainly not about to resort to torture. All you have to do is tell us, and I promise I’ll cite you for meritorious service.” I knew that was Hong Taiyue talking.

My blazing heart filled with sadness, and I felt as if someone was branding me with a red-hot iron or stabbing me with a sharp knife. The sun had set by then and the moon was climbing high in the sky, its chillingly gray beams trickling down onto the ground, the trees, the militiamen’s rifles, and the glittery glazed urn. That urn does not belong to the Ximen family, and besides, we’d never bury our riches in a place like that. It’s where people have died and bombs have exploded, where ghosts congregate, and it would be folly for me to bury anything there. Ours was not the only wealthy family in the village, why were we the only ones you accused with no proof?

I could stand it no longer, could not bear to hear Ximen Bai cry; it brought pain and guilt feelings. If only I’d treated her better. After bringing Yingchun and Qiuxiang into the house, I never again visited my wife’s bed, leaving a thirty-year-old woman to sleep alone night after night. So she recited sutras and struck the wooden fish, that hollow block of wood with which my mother had beat out a rhythm when she uttered her Buddhist devotionals: clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack… I reared back, but I was tied to a hitching post, so I sent a tattered basket flying with a kick by my rear hooves. I lunged to one side, I sprang to the other, white-hot brays tore from my throat. That seemed to loosen the reins. I’d freed myself. I charged through the unlocked gate on my way to the middle of the compound, where I heard Jinlong, who was relieving himself against the wall, yell, “Daddy, Mommy, our donkey got loose!”

I pranced around in the compound for a moment to test my legs and hooves; they clattered on the stones and raised sparks. Moonbeams glistened on my nicely rounded rump. Lan Lian ran out of his quarters, and militiamen emerged from the main house. Rays of candlelight pierced the open doorway and lit up part of the compound. I trotted over to the apricot tree, turned and kicked the glazed urn with my rear hooves, destroying it with a loud splintering noise, some of the pieces sailing above the tree and then landing on roof tiles with a clatter. Huang Tong ran out of the main house, Qiuxiang came out of the eastern rooms. The militiamen cocked their rifles, but I wasn’t afraid; I knew they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a person, but would never shoot a donkey. As barnyard animals, donkeys lack human understanding of things, and anyone who kills one will himself become a barnyard animal. Huang Tong stepped down on my loose reins, but all I had to do was rear up to put him on his backside. Then by swinging my head, the reins whipped through the air and struck Qiuxiang in the face. Hearing her wail was music to my ears. You black-hearted slut, I’d like to mount you right here! I leaped over her; people ran up to restrain me. But nothing was going to stop me from running into the main house. It’s me, Ximen Nao, I’ve come home! I want to sit in my own chair, smoke my own pipe, pick up my little liquor decanter and down four ounces of good strong liquor, and then enjoy a nice braised chicken. All of a sudden, the room seemed awfully small, and my footsteps resounded on the tile floor. Pots and pans were smashed, furniture was on its back or its side. I saw the big, flat, golden-yellow face of Yang Guixiang, who, thanks to me, had been forced up against a wall. Her shrieks hit me like darts. Then my eyes fell on Ximen Bai, my virtuous wife, who was sprawled weakly on the tile floor, and that threw my mind into turmoil. I forgot that I now had a donkey’s body and a donkey’s face. I wanted to reach down and pick her up, only to discover that she was lying unconscious between my legs. I felt like kissing her, but then I saw that her head was bleeding. Love is forbidden between humans and donkeys. Good-bye, virtuous wife. Just as I had lifted my head and turned to exit the room, a dark figure stepped out from behind the door and wrapped his arms around my neck. With hands like steel talons, he grabbed my ears and my reins. My head sagged from the pain. But as soon as I could see what was going on, the village chief, Hong Taiyue, was lying across my head like a vampire bat. My bitter rival. As a human being, I, Ximen Nao, never fought you, but I’ll not suffer at your hands as a donkey I was seeing red. Bearing up under the pain, I threw back my head and broke for the door. The doorframe scraped the parasite from my body – Hong Taiyue remained inside the room.

With a loud cry, I burst into the compound, but several people clumsily managed to close the gate before I could get to it. My heart had suddenly outgrown the compound; it was too small to hold me, and I ran around madly, sending people scurrying. I heard Yang Guixiang scream,

“The donkey bit Ximen Bai’s head, it’s bleeding, and he broke the village chief’s arm!”

“Shoot it, kill it!” someone else shouted. I heard the militiamen cock their rifles, and I saw Lan Lian and Yingchun running toward me. Moving at the fastest speed I could manage and summoning up all the strength I had, I headed for a breach in the wall caused by heavy summer rains. I leaped, reached into the air with all four hooves, stretched to my fullest length, and sailed over the wall.

The legend of Lan Lian’s flying donkey is still told by old-time residents of Ximen Village. Naturally, it’s told most vividly in stories written by Mo Yan.

6

Tenderness and Deep Affection Create a Perfect Couple

Wisdom and Courage Are Pitted against Vicious Wolves

I headed south at top speed after flying over a toppled wall. I nearly broke a leg when my front hooves landed in mud, and I was seized with terror. I tried to free my legs from the mud, but only succeeded in sinking in deeper. So I stopped, settled down, and planted my rear legs on solid ground. Then I lay down and rolled to the side, managing to pull my front legs free. After that I climbed out of the ditch, giving proof to the words that Mo Yan once wrote: A goat can scale a tree, a donkey is a good climber.

I followed the road southwest at a gallop.

You probably recall my mention of the female donkey belonging to the stonemason, the one carrying Han Huahua’s son and the piglet on her way home to her in-laws. Well, she – the donkey – ought to have been out of her halter and on her way back by this time. When we parted to go our own ways, we agreed that tonight would be ours to enjoy. Words once spoken by humans cannot be taken back, not even by a team of horses; for donkeys, it’s a matter of a promise is a promise, and we would wait for one another, no longer how long it took.

Chasing the emotional message she left in the air around her at dusk, I raced down the road she’d taken, raising a clatter with my hooves that traveled far on the night air; it was almost as though I was following the sound of my own hoofbeats, or that the sound was chasing me. Roadside reeds were withered and yellow on that late autumn evening, dew had become frost, and fireflies flitting amid the grass created a spotty illumination of the ground with their blinking green lights. My nose was assailed by a stench hanging in the air, which I knew came from an old corpse whose flesh had long since rotted away, but whose bones continued to reek.

Han Huahua’s in-laws lived in Old Man Zheng Village, whose richest resident, Zheng Zhongliang, had been one of Ximen Nao’s friends, though they were of different generations. I thought back to the time when we were chatting over fine spirits and he had patted me on the shoulder and said, My young friend, amassing wealth creates enemies, dispensing it brings good fortune. Enjoy life while you can, take your pleasure where you can, and when your wealth is gone, fortune will smile on you. Do not take the wrong path… Ximen Nao, you goddamned Ximen Nao, stay out of my business. I am now a donkey with the fires of lust burning inside me. When Ximen Nao enters the picture, even if it’s only his recollections, the result is a recapitulation of a bloody, corrupt history. A river ran across the open fields between the Ximen and Old Man Zheng villages. A dozen sandy ridges meandered along both sides of the stream like writhing dragons, all covered with tamarisk bushes in such profusion I couldn’t see beyond them. A major battle had been fought there, with airplanes and tanks, and the victims of that battle still lay where they died. Stretchers had filled the streets of Old Man Zheng Village, loaded with wounded soldiers, their moans and groans accompanying the chilling caws of crows in the air. But enough talk about wartime, since that is when donkeys are used to transport machine guns and ammunition in the thick of battle, and a handsome black donkey like me would not have been able to avoid conscription.

Long live peace! In peacetime, a donkey can freely tryst with the female of his choice. We’d agreed to meet on the river’s edge; light from the moon and stars was reflected off the shallow water, like slithering silver snakes. Accompanied by the low chirping of autumn insects and cooled by night breezes, I left the road, climbed over the sandy bank, and stepped into the river, which swallowed up my feet. The smell of the water reminded me how dry my throat was and gave rise to a desire to drink. Which is what I did, though I made sure not to drink too much of the sweet, cold river water, since I needed to run a bit more and didn’t want a lot of water sloshing around in my stomach. My thirst slaked, I climbed the opposite bank and began walking down a twisting path, moving in and out of the tamarisk bushes until I was standing atop a high sandy ridge, where her smell swept over me, thick and powerful. My heart was beating wildly against my ribs, my blood heated up, my excitement was so great I lost the ability to bray and was reduced to emitting choppy whinnies. My darling donkey, my treasure, my most adorable, my dearest, my sweetheart! Oh, how I want to embrace you, to wrap my legs around you, to nibble your ears, to kiss your eyes and lashes and pink nose and lips like flower petals. My darling, my cherished, I fear only that my breath will melt you, that by mounting you I’ll break you. My tiny-footed little donkey, I know you are near. My tiny-footed little donkey, you do not know how much I love you.

I raced toward the smell, but halfway down the ridge, I saw a sight that tested my courage. My donkey was running wild amid the tamarisk, spinning around and kicking out with her hooves, braying loudly, as she tried to sound intimidating. In front and in back, to one side or the other, she was the intended victim of a pair of gray wolves; unhurriedly, biding their time, sometimes moving as a team, sometimes as individuals, they probed, they moved in and out, they feigned an attack. A treacherous, lethal pair of predators, they were patiently wearing her down; when, her strength and will gone, she lay down on the ground, they would go straight for the throat. Then, after they’d drunk their fill of her blood, they would tear open her abdomen and eat her now useless vital organs. Only death awaited any donkey meeting up with a pair of wolves working in tandem at night on a sandy ridge. My little donkey, if I hadn’t shown up, your unhappy fate would have been sealed. Love has saved you. Is there anything else that could erase the innate fears of a donkey and send him to rescue you from certain death? No. That is the only one. With a call to arms, I, Ximen Donkey, charged down the ridge and headed straight for the wolf that was tailing my beloved. My hooves kicked up sand and dust as I raced down from my commanding position; no wolf, not even a tiger, could have avoided the spearhead aimed at it. It saw me too late to move out of the way, and I thudded into it, sending it head over heels. Then I turned and said to my donkey, Do not fear, my dear, I am here! She moved close to me; I sensed the violence with which her chest was rising and falling and could feel the sweat covering her body. I nibbled her neck to comfort and encourage her. Don’t be afraid, I’m here. There’s nothing to fear from these wolves. Stay here while I smash their heads with my hooves of steel!

The wolves’ eyes were green as, shoulder to shoulder, they held their ground, boiling with anger at my sudden appearance, as if I’d fallen out of the sky. If not for me, they’d already be feasting on donkey meat. I knew they would not take defeat lying down, that having come down from the mountains, they would not and could not pass up this opportunity. Their strategy had been to drive the poor donkey onto the sandy ridge, with its tamarisk bushes, expecting her to get bogged down in the loose sand. For us to win the fight, we had to get away from the sandy soil, and fast. After starting her down the ridge, I turned and followed, walking backward. The wolves matched our progress, at first following behind me, but then splitting up and running ahead to launch a frontal attack. My dear, I said, see that river at the foot of this ridge? The ground is rocky there, good and hard, and the shallow water is clear enough to see the bottom. All we have to do is make a mad dash for the river. Once we’re in the water, the wolves will have lost their advantage, and victory will be ours. Call up all the courage you have, my dear, to run down this slope. We have size and inertia going for us. We’ll also be kicking sand in their eyes. So let’s make that mad dash, and we’re safe. Ready to do as I said, she moved up next to me, and we took off, leaping across tamarisk bushes, the pliant branches scraping our bellies on the way. It was like riding a wave, and we were soon like two tidal waves racing toward the shore. Through my peripheral vision, I saw the wolves stumbling and tumbling and looking pathetic in the chase. They did not reach the river-bank, coats covered with sand, until we were safely in the water and catching our breath. I told her to drink. Drink it slowly, my dear, don’t choke and don’t drink too much or you’ll be cold. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she nipped me on the rump. I love you, my good little brother, she said. If you hadn’t shown up to rescue me, I’d be in the wolves’ stomachs by now. By saving you, my darling, I saved myself. I’ve been in a deep depression ever since I was reborn as a donkey. But since meeting you, I’ve come to realize that even something as lowly as a donkey can know supreme happiness when love exists. I was a man in my former life, a man with a wife and two concubines, but for me there was only sex, no love. I mistakenly thought I was a happy man, but now I see how pitiable I was. A donkey seared by the flames of love is happier than any man. And a male that has the good fortune to rescue his beloved from the mouths of wolves, who can demonstrate his courage and wisdom in front of his beloved, is given a chance to satisfy his masculine vanity. Because of you, my dearest, I’ve become an honorable donkey and the happiest animal on the face of the earth. We nibbled away each other’s itches, we rubbed each other’s hides, we were a perfect couple, our shared emotions deepening with words of tenderness, to the point where I nearly forgot the wolves on the riverbank.

They were hungry wolves, salivating at the thought of our tasty flesh. There was no quit in that pair, and much as I longed to consummate our relationship, I knew that would only put us both in our graves. They were just waiting for something like that to occur. At first, they stood on rocks and lapped up water like dogs. Then they sat on their haunches, raised their heads to the sky, and howled at the forbiddingly cold half moon.

Several times I lost sight of reason and reared up on my hind legs to mount my beloved. The wolves moved toward us before my front legs touched her body. My abrupt stop sent them scurrying back to the bank. They clearly had an abundance of patience, and I knew I needed to go into attack mode, but only with my donkey love’s co-operation. Together we rushed the wolves’ position on the riverbank. They leaped to safety and then made their way slowly up the sandy ridge. We weren’t going to fall into that trap. Instead we crossed the river and galloped off in the direction of Ximen Village. The wolves charged into the water, which came up to their bellies and slowed them down. Let’s go after them, my beloved, I said, let’s put these savages out of their misery. Having already mapped out a strategy, we virtually flew back to the river, where we jumped and splashed water into their eyes to confuse them before attacking with our hooves. The wolves struggled to get away, but their coats were weighted down by the water. I reared up and aimed my hooves at one of them, but it darted out of the way, so I spun around and landed on the back of the second wolf, driving it under the water, where I held it as bubbles rose to the surface. Meanwhile, the first wolf leaped onto the neck of my beloved. Seeing the danger she was in, I abandoned the drowning wolf and kicked out with my rear hooves, hitting the attacker square in the head. I felt the crack of bone and watched as it crumpled and lay flat in the water; movements in its tail showed it was still alive. Meanwhile its half-drowned partner had crawled up onto the bank, its fur sticking to its body, now revealed as gaunt, bony, and very ugly. My beloved rushed up onto the bank, cut off its escape route, and began pounding it with her hooves. Spinning and twisting to avoid the deluge of falling hooves, it slid and rolled back into the water, where I reared up again and came down hard on its head. The green lights in their eyes slowly dimmed. To make sure they were both dead, we took turns smashing our hooves into their bodies until they were pinned among the rocks in the riverbed; mud and wolf blood dirtied the water all around.

Together we walked upriver, not stopping until the water was clear again and we could no longer smell wolf blood. She turned to look at me and nibbled my hide affectionately with a twittering sound. Then she spun around and offered me the ideal position. I want you, my dear, mount up. Me, a pure and innocent donkey with a beautiful body and superior genes, in order to continue a superior lineage, I will give them to you, along with my virginity, my lovely Huahua donkey, only to you. I then rose up like a mountain, held her body with my front legs, and thrust forward. Feelings of great joy erupted, surging over me, and over her. My god!

7

Fearing Trouble Huahua Makes a Solemn Vow

Naonao Shows His Prowess by Biting a Hunter

We coupled six times that night, seemingly a physiological impossibility for donkeys. But I swear to the Jade Emperor in Heaven that I am not lying, I take a vow before the moon’s reflection in the river that I am telling the truth. I was no ordinary donkey, nor was she. In a former life she’d been a woman who died for love; when she released passion that had been pent up for decades, she could not stop. Exhaustion finally set in when the red morning sun first appeared on the horizon. It was an empty, transparent exhaustion. Our spirits seemed raised to a state of sublimation by our profoundly soulful love, made beautiful beyond imagining. We combed one another’s manes, thrown into disarray, and cleaned each other’s mud-streaked tails, all with our lips and teeth. The tender light of devotion flowed unchecked from her eyes. Humans are overweening creatures, believing themselves to have raised amorous feelings to the greatest heights, while in fact, nothing can stir up a man’s passions like a female donkey. Here, of course, I refer to my donkey, Han Donkey, the one belonging to Han Huahua. After standing in the middle of the river to drink the clear water, we sauntered up to the bank to dine on reeds that had already turned yellow, but retained enough moisture for us, and juicy red berries. We frightened birds away as we ate, and spotted a fat snake slithering out from a clump of grass. It must have been looking for a place to sleep through the winter, so it didn’t pester us. After we had told one another everything there was to tell, it was time to choose pet names. She called me Naonao, I called her Huahua.

Naonao and Huahua. We’ll stay together forever. Heaven and earth cannot tear us apart. How does that sound, Naonao? It sounds wonderful, Huahua. Let’s become wild donkeys and live amid the meandering ridges of sand, among the lush tamarisk bushes, alongside the clear water of this worry-free river. We’ll eat nice green grass when we’re hungry, we’ll drink from the river when we’re thirsty, and we’ll lie down to sleep together, coupling often, loving and caring for one another always. I’ll swear to you that I’ll never look at another female donkey, and you’ll swear to me that you’ll never let another male mount you. I swear it, my dear Naonao. Darling Huahua, I swear it too. You must not only ignore other female donkeys, but mustn’t even look at a mare, Naonao, Huahua said as she nipped my hide. Humans are shameless the way they mate male donkeys with female horses to produce strange animals they call mules. Don’t worry, Huahua. Even if they blindfolded me, I’d never mount a horse. But you need to promise me you’ll never let one mount you, because male horses and female donkeys also produce mules. Don’t worry, Naonao. Even if they tied me to a stake, I’d keep my tail tucked tightly between my legs. What I have belongs only to you…

We lay in our love nest, neck to neck, like a pair of swans frolicking on the water. Words cannot chronicle our mutual affection; our tender feelings were indescribable. We stood shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the river, gazing at our reflection. Lights flashed in our eyes, our lips swelled, our beauty came from love; we were a match made in heaven.

As we stood there lost in love in the bosom of nature, a clamor rose behind us. Jerking our heads up out of our reveries, we saw a group of twenty or so people fanning in on us.

Run, Huahua! – Don’t be afraid, Naonao. Look, it’s people we know.

Huahua’s attitude turned my heart cold. Of course I knew who they were, I could see that right off. The crowd included my master, Lan Lian, his wife, Yingchun, and two of Lan Lian’s village friends, the brothers Fang Tianbao and Fang Tianyou (martial arts masters in a story by Mo Yan). My cast-off halter was cinched around Lan Lian’s waist; he was holding a long pole with a noose on the end, while Yingchun was carrying a lantern whose red paper shade was so badly singed the metal frame beneath it was exposed. One of the Fang brothers was carrying a rope in his hand, the other was dragging a club behind him. Others in the crowd included Han, the humpbacked stone mason, his half-brother, Han Qun, plus some men I’d seen before but whose names I didn’t know. They looked tired and dirty, which meant they’d been out looking all night.

Run, Huahua! – I can’t, Naonao. – Then grab hold of my tail with your teeth, and I’ll pull you along. -Where can we run to, Naonao? They’ll catch up to us sooner or later, Huahua said meekly. Besides, they’ll probably go back for their rifles, and no matter how fast we run, we can’t outrun a bullet. Huahua, I replied, disappointed, you haven’t forgotten our vows already, have you? You swore to stay with me for all eternity, swore that we would be wild donkeys, to live in freedom, with no constraints, loving one another in nature’s bosom. She hung her head as tears welled up in her eyes. Naonao, she said, you’re a male donkey. You were relaxed after you pulled yourself out of me, not a care in the world. But now I’m carrying your offspring. I’m probably carrying twins, and my belly will soon be getting big. I’m going to need all the nutrition I can get; I want to be eating fried black beans, freshly milled bran, and crushed sorghum, all finely mashed and run three times through a sieve to make sure there are no stones or chicken feathers or sand. It’s already October, and the weather is turning cold. How am I going to eat as I drag my big belly around when the ground hardens, snow falls, the river freezes over, and the grass is covered with a blanket of snow? Or, for that matter, find water to drink? Then, when the babies are born, where will I sleep? Even if I force myself to stay with you on a sandy ridge, how will our babies stand the bitter cold? If they freeze to death in the snow and ice, their bodies lying out in the cold like logs or rocks, won’t you, their father, be heartbroken? Donkey fathers might be able to callously abandon their offspring, Naonao, but not their mothers. Or maybe some mothers can, but not your Huahua. Women can abandon their sons and daughter for their beliefs, but not donkeys. I ask you, Naonao, can you understand what a pregnant donkey feels?

Under the assault of Huahua’s barrage of questions, I, Naonao, a male donkey, had no adequate comeback. Huahua, I said feebly, are you sure you’re pregnant?

What a foolish question, Huahua said angrily. Six times in one night, Naonao, filling me with your seed. I’d be pregnant if I were a sawhorse, or a stone, or a log!

Ahhh, I muttered, crestfallen, as I watched her obediently walk over to meet her mistress.

Tears fell from my eyes, only to dry in the white heat of a name- less anger. I wanted to run, to bound away; I could not tolerate this sort of betrayal, however justified, and could not continue to live the humiliating life of a donkey in the Ximen estate. I turned and ran to the glittering surface of the river, my objective the tall sandy ridge, where the tamarisk grew in misty profusion, the pliant red branches serving as cover for red foxes, striped badgers, and sand grouses. So long, Huahua, go enjoy your life of splendor, I’ll not miss the warmth of my donkey lean-to, I must answer the call of the wild and seek my freedom. But I’d not even made it to the riverbank when I discovered that there were people lying in wait in the tamarisk, their heads camouflaged with leaves and twigs, their bodies cloaked in rush capes the color of dry grass; they were armed with muskets like the one that splattered the brains of Ximen Nao. Terror-stricken, I turned and headed east along the bank toward the early morning sun. The hair on my hide was painted flame-red; I was a galloping ball of fire, a donkey whose head was like a burning torch. Death did not scare me; I had faced ferocious wolves without a trace of fear, but the black holes of those muskets pointing at me terrified me, not the weapons themselves, but the horrible image of splattered brains they created. My master must have anticipated my path of escape, since he crossed the river up ahead, not even taking off his shoes and socks beforehand. Water flew in all directions as he lumbered through the river toward me. I changed direction, but not quickly enough to avoid the pole he swung, and the noose fell around my neck. But there was no quit in me, no easy defeat. Galling on all my strength, I raised my head and thrust out my chest, tightening the noose and making me fight for every breath. My master pulled on the pole with all his might and leaned backward until he was nearly parallel with the water. He dug in his heels; I dragged him along, his feet digging ruts in the sandbar like plows.

In the end, as my strength waned and I could hardly breathe, I stopped running and was quickly surrounded, although the people held back, not daring to approach me. It was then that I was reminded of my reputation as a donkey prone to biting people. In the village, where life was peaceful and quiet, a donkey made news by causing injury with its teeth, and that news spread through the village like wildfire. But who among those men and women knew why I’d done that? Who could have guessed that the hole taken out of Ximen Bai’s head had resulted from a kiss by her reincarnated husband, who had forgotten he was now a donkey, not a man?

Yingchun, displaying considerable courage, walked up to me with a handful of fresh green grass.

“Little Blackie,” she muttered, “don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. Come home with me…”

When she was standing next to me, she rested her left hand on my neck and put the grass in her right hand up to my mouth, stroking me gently as she shielded my eyes with her bosom. The sensation of her soft, warm breasts was all the stimulation Ximen Nao’s memories needed to flood into my head, and tears spurted from my eyes. She whispered in my ear, and the hot breath of this hot-blooded woman made me lightheaded. My legs shook; I fell to my knees.

“Little black donkey,” I heard her say, “my little black donkey, I know you’ve grown up and that you’re looking for a mate. A man thinks of marriage, a woman wants a mate, a donkey wants to sire its young. I don’t blame you for that, it’s perfectly normal. Well, you found your mate and you’ve planted your seed, so now you can come home with me…”

The other people quickly put my halter on and affixed the reins, adding a rusty-smelling chain, which they put in my mouth. Someone pulled the chain tight around my lower lip. The pain was so intense I had to flare my nostrils and gasp for air. But Yingchun reached out and hit the hand that was tightening the bit,

“Let that go,” she said. “Can’t you see he’s injured?”

They tried to get me to stand. That’s exactly what I wanted. Cows and sheep and pigs and dogs can lie down, but not donkeys, not unless they’re dying. I struggled to get to my feet, but my body weighed me down. Was I going to die at the tender age of three? For a donkey, that was not good news under any circumstances, but the idea of dying like this really got to me. There in front of me was a broad road, divided into many little paths, each leading to a scene worth viewing. Swept away by intense curiosity, I had to go on living. As I rose up on shaky legs, Lan Lian told the Fang brothers to stick their long club under my belly, one on each side, while he went around behind me to hold up my tail. With Yingchun holding me around the neck, the Fang brothers gripped their ends of the pole and shouted, “Lift!” With their help, I stood up, still wobbly, my head drooping heavily. But I struggled to stay upright; I mustn’t fall down again. I did it, I was standing straight.

The people walked around me, amazed and puzzled by the bloody injuries on my rear legs and my chest. How could the act of mating produce injuries like that? they wondered. I also heard members of the Han family discussing similar injuries on their female donkey. Is it possible, I heard the older Fang brother ask, that the two animals spent the whole night fighting one another? His brother shook his head. Impossible. A man who’d come to help the Han family retrieve his donkey downriver, pointed to something in the river, and yelled:

“Come over here and tell me what this is!”

One of the dead wolves was rolling slowly in the water; the other was pinned underwater by a rock.

The crowd rushed over to see what he was pointing at, and I knew that it was wolf fur on top of the water and blood on the rocks – wolf blood and donkey blood – still filling the air around the spot with its stench. The signs of a fierce battle were obvious from prints on the rocks from wolf claws and donkey hooves and from the blood-streaked injuries to my and Huahua’s bodies.

Two men rolled up their pant legs, took off their shoes and socks, and waded into the water to bring the two wolf carcasses up onto the bank. I sensed people turning to me with looks of respect, and I knew that Huahua was being honored by the same looks. Yingchun threw both arms around me and lovingly stroked my face; I felt moist pearls fall from her eyes onto my ears.

“Damn you all!” Lan Lian said proudly. “The next person who says anything bad about my donkey will answer to me! Everyone says that donkeys are cowards, that they turn tail and run if they see a wolf. But not my donkey. He killed two ferocious wolves all by himself!”

“Not by himself,” stonemason Han corrected him indignantly. “Our donkey deserves credit too.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Lan Lian said with a smile. “She does. And she’s my donkey’s wife.”

“With such severe injuries, I doubt that this marriage was ever consummated,” someone volunteered lightheartedly.

Fang Tianbao bent down to examine my genitals, then ran over to check underneath the Han family’s female. He lifted up her tail and took a good look.

“Yes, it was,” he announced authoritatively. “Take my word for it. You Hans are going to have a new donkey.”

“Old Han, you’d better send a couple of pecks of black beans over to help our black donkey regain his strength,” Lan Lian said somberly.

“Like hell!” was Han’s curt reply.

By this time, the musket-armed men who had been hiding in the tamarisk bushes joined the others. Light on their feet, they moved furtively. Clearly, they were not farmers. Their leader was a squat man with piercing eyes. He walked up to the dead wolves and bent over to turn the head of one with the barrel of his weapon, after which he did the same to the abdomen of the other wolf. In a voice that betrayed surprise mixed with regret, he said:

“This is the destructive pair we’ve been looking for!”

One of his men, also armed with a musket, turned to the crowd and announced loudly:

“That does it. We can go back and report to our superiors now”

“I doubt that you people have seen these two,” one of the men said to Lan Lian and the others. “They’re not a pair of wild dogs, they’re gray wolves, the kind you seldom see out on the plains. They fled from Inner Mongolia and left a bloody trail. They were both tricky and vicious. In just over a month they killed a dozen or more head of livestock, including horses, cows, even a camel. We think people were next on their menu. If word had gotten out, the people would have panicked, so we organized six hunting teams in secret, searching and lying in wait for these two day and night. Now it’s over.” Another one, a man with an obvious sense of his own importance, kicked one of the carcasses: “You never thought this day would come, you bastard!” he cursed.

The team leader took aim at the head of one of the wolves and fired. Flames from the barrel of his musket and the smoke that followed swallowed the animal up, its head now shattered, just like Ximen Nao’s, the rocks splattered with grays and reds.

Another hunter took the hint and, with a smile, shot the other wolf in the abdomen. A fist-sized hole opened up in its belly, out of which a dirty mess of guts poured.

Dumbfounded by what they’d just seen, Lan Lian and the others could only gape at one another. Once the smell of gunpowder had dissipated, the melodious sound of flowing water beguiled their ears; a flock of sparrows numbering in the hundreds came on the air, rising and falling like a dark cloud. They settled with a loud fluttering sound on tamarisk bushes, bending the pliant branches like fruit-laden trees. Waves of bird-talk enlivened the sandy ridges. To that was added the gossamer voice of Yingchun:

“What was that for? Why shoot dead wolves?”

“Is that your damned attempt to take credit for this?” Lan Lian thundered. “You didn’t kill those wolves, my donkey did.”

The leader of the hunting team took two brand-new notes and tucked one under my reins, the other under Huahua’s.

“Do you really think you can shut me up with money?” Lan Lian said, spitting mad. “That’s not going to happen!”

“Take back your money,” Han the stonemason said. “Our donkeys killed those wolves, and we’re taking them with us.”

The hunter smirked.

“Good brothers,” he said, “with one eye open and the other shut, everyone wins. You could plead your case until your lips were chapped, and no one would believe that your donkeys were capable of doing that. Especially now that one’s head has been blown open and the other’s belly has a gaping bullet hole.”

“Our donkeys were clawed and bitten bloody by those wolves,” Lan Lian shouted.

“I agree, they have wounds all over their bodies, and no one could say they weren’t caused by wolves. And so…” The man smirked again. “Here’s what that proves: Two attacked your donkeys, causing bloody injuries, but at the moment of greatest danger, the three members of the Number Six hunting team arrived on the scene and, with no thoughts for their own safety, engaged the wolves in a life-or-death battle. The team leader, Qiao Feipeng, stood face-to-face with the male wolf, took aim, and fired, shattering its head. A second member of the team, Liu Yong, took aim at the second wolf and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired. After he’d spent a whole night hiding amid tamarisk bushes, his powder was wet. The wolf opened her mouth, which seemed to spread all the way to her ears, bared her gleaming white fangs, let loose a hideous, spine-tingling roar, and went straight for Liu Yong, who rolled out of the way of her first charge. But his heel caught between two rocks, and he lay faceup on the sandy ground. With a leap, her tail stretched out behind her, she charged again like a yellow blur. At that desperate moment, in less time than it takes to tell, Lü Xiaopo, the youngest member of the hunting team, took aim and fired at the animal’s head. But since it was a moving target, the shot hit her in the abdomen. When she fell, she rolled on the ground, spilling her guts all over the place, a terrifying sight. Though she was a vile predator, it was too terrible to see. By this time, Liu Yong had reloaded his musket and fired at the wolf, which was still rolling in agony. But because of the distance between them, the buckshot sprayed the area and peppered the dying animal in many spots. She stretched out her legs and died.”

While Qiao was weaving his story, Liu Yong stepped backward, aimed, and fired buckshot into the wolf’s carcass, creating holes with burned edges.

“So, what do you think?” Qiao asked, smiling proudly. “Whose story do you think people will believe, yours or mine?” He put more gunpowder into the barrel of his musket and said, “You outnumber us, but don’t even think of taking the wolves back with you. We hunters have an unwritten rule: Whenever there’s a dispute over a kill, the hunter with the most buckshot in it keeps it. And there’s another rule. A hunter is within his rights to shoot anyone who walks off with his kill. It’s a matter of retaining his self-esteem.”

“You’re fucking thugs!” Lan Lian said. “You’re going to be visited by nightmares after this. You’ll pay for taking what doesn’t belong to you.”

The hunter just laughed. “Reincarnation and retribution are nonsense people use to trick old ladies. I don’t believe them for a minute. But maybe there’s something we can do together. If you’ll help us carry these carcasses to town on the backs of your donkeys, the county chief will reward you handsomely and I’ll give you each a bottle of the finest liquor.”

I couldn’t take any more of that. Opening my mouth to bare my front teeth, I took aim at that flat head of his. But he was too fast for me. He moved his head away just in time, but I got him by the shoulder. Now you’ll see what a donkey can do, you thug! You people think that only felines or canines, with their sharp claws and teeth, know how to be predators, and that we donkeys, with our hooves, only know how to eat grass and husks of grain. You are all formalists, dogmatists, book worshippers, and empiricists. Well, today, I’m going to teach you that when he’s irritated, a donkey will bite!

After gripping the hunter’s shoulder in my teeth, I raised my head and shook it back and forth. I tasted something sour, unpleasant, and very sticky. As for the crafty, smooth-talking fellow, well, he was on the ground, bleeding from his shoulder, and unconscious.

He could always tell the county chief that one of the wolves had bitten him on the shoulder during the fight. Or he could say that when the wolf buried its fangs in his shoulder, he reacted by biting the animal on the back of its head. As to how he’d managed to finish off the wolf, well, he could say what he wanted.

Our people, meanwhile, saw that things had turned ugly, so they quickly got us on the road home, leaving the wolf carcasses and the wolf hunters on the sandbar.

8

Ouch, Xlmen Donkey Loses a Gonad

A Colossal Hero Arrives at the Estate

January 24, 1955, was the first day of the first month of the Yiwei Lunar Year. Mo Yan settled on that day as his birthday. During the 1980s, officials who hoped to hold positions for several more years or who wanted to climb the bureaucratic ladder even higher would change their age down and their schooling up, but who would have thought that Mo Yan, certainly no official, would join the fad? It was a fine morning, with flocks of pigeons circling in the early morning sky, their melodic cooing coming first from one direction, then the other. My master stopped working to look up into the sky, the blue half of his face making for a pretty sight.

Over the previous year, the eight acres of Lan family land had produced 2,800 catties of grain, an average of 350 per acre. In addition, they had brought in twenty-eight pumpkins planted on the ridges between crops and twenty catties of high-quality hemp. He refused to believe the co-op’s announced harvest of 400 catties per acre, and I heard him say to Yingchun more than once, “Do you think they could grow 400 catties the way they go about it? Who do they think they’re fooling?” Her smile could not hide the worries she felt deep down. “You’re the man of the house, but why must you always sing a different tune than the others? They’ve got numbers, we’re all by ourselves. Remember, a powerful tiger is no match for a pack of wolves.” Lan Lian glared at her. “What are you afraid of? We have the support of District Chief Chen.”

My master, wearing a brown felt cap and a brand-new padded coat cinched at the waist by a green cloth sash, was brushing my coat, which was very comforting physically; his praise did the same for my spirit.

“Old Blackie,” he said, “my friend, you worked hard last year. Half the credit for the good harvest goes to you. Let’s do even better this year. It’ll be like kicking that damned co-op in the nuts!”

I warmed up as the sunlight kept getting brighter. The pigeons were still up in the sky, the ground was covered by shredded red-and-white paper, firecracker debris. The night before, the sky had lit up and explosions had rocked the earth, creating clouds of gunpowder smoke; the compound looked and smelled like a war zone, to which was added the lingering odor of meaty dumplings, year-end cakes of sticky rice, and all kinds of sweets. The master’s wife had placed a bowl of dumplings in water to cool them off, then dumped them into my food trough with my regular feed, patted me on the head, and said:

“Little Blackie, it’s New Year’s, have some dumplings.”

I’m the first to admit that dumplings at New Year’s is an exceptional courtesy to extend to a donkey. They were nearly treating me as one of their own, a human just like them. I’d earned the respect of my master after killing those two wolves and now had the finest reputation of any donkey in the eighteen villages and hamlets within a radius of a hundred li. So what if those three damned hunters got away with the carcasses? The people here knew what really happened. No one denied that the Han family donkey had played a role in that battle, but they knew I’d pretty much carried the day and she’d been a bit player, one whose life I’d saved, by the way. I’d already reached the gelding age, and my master had put the fear of the knife in me. But he didn’t mention it again after my battlefield heroics. The previous fall I’d gone out to work in the fields with my master, followed by Xu Bao, the local veterinarian, pack over his back and a brass bell in his hand, a man who specialized in castrating so-called beasts of burden. His shifty eyes kept returning to a spot between my rear legs. His body reeked of cruelty, and I knew what he had in mind. He was one of those bastards who enjoyed swallowing a donkey or bull gonad with a cup of strong liquor. He was definitely not fated to die in bed. Well, anyway, I watched him carefully and never let my guard down. The minute he walked up behind me, I’d greet him with a pair of flying hooves right in his crotch. I wanted that cruel son of a bitch to know what it felt like to leave the field without his family jewels. And if he approached me from the front, I’d bite him in the head. That’s what I did best. He was real sneaky, turning up suddenly here and there, but always staying a safe distance away and not giving me a chance to go into action. When people on the road saw stubborn Lan Lian walking ahead of his now famous donkey, followed by that castrating son of a bitch, they asked questions like:

“Say, Lan Lian, time to turn your donkey into a eunuch?”

or:

“Xu Bao, did you find something to go with your liquor again?”

“Don’t do it, Lan Lian,” someone shouted. “That donkey had the balls to take on those wolves. Each nut supplies some of an animal’s courage, so he must have as many as a sack of potatoes.”

Some boys on their way to school fell in behind Xu Bao to sing a ditty about him:

Xu Bao Xu Bao, sees an egg and takes a bite!

Without an egg to bite, he sweats all night.

Xu Bao Xu Bao, a donkey dick of a sight.

A scoundrel who won’t stand up and fly right…

Xu Bao stopped and glared at the little brats, reached into his pack, pulled out a gleaming little knife, and shouted threateningly:

“You’d better shut up, you little bastards! Master Xu here will cut the balls off the next one of you who makes up something like that!”

The boys huddled together and responded with goofy laughs. So Xu Bao took several steps forward, and the boys matched him, going backward. Then Xu Bao charged, and the boys scattered in all directions. Xu Bao turned back to me, gelding on his mind. The boys came back, formed up, and followed him, repeating their ditty:

Xu Bao Xu Bao, sees an egg and takes a bite!

This time, Xu Bao had no time for those little pests. Taking a wide berth, he ran up in front of Lan Lian and started walking backward.

“Lan Lian,” he said, “I know this donkey’s bitten people. Every time he does that, you have to come up with medical expenses and lots of apologies. I say geld him. He’ll be back in three days, completely recovered, the most obedient donkey you could ask for, guaranteed.”

Lan Lian ignored him; my heart was pounding. My temper was something Lan Lian knew all too well. So he grabbed hold of the bit in my mouth and kept me from going after the man.

Xu Bao scuffled along, raising dust as he walked backward, the bastard, probably something he did a lot. He had a shriveled little face adorned with baggy triangular eyes and front teeth with a big space between them, from which spittle sprayed whenever he talked.

“Take my advice, Lan Lian,” he said, “you need to geld him; gelding is good, it’ll save you trouble. I usually charge five yuan, but for you I’ll do it for nothing.”

Lan Lian stopped, smirked, and said:

“Xu Bao, why don’t you go home and geld your old man?”

“What kind of talk is that?” Xu Bao squeaked.

“If that bothers you, then let’s see what my donkey has to say.” He let go of my reins and said, “Sic him, Blackie!”

With a loud bray, I reared up, the way I’d mounted Huahua, aiming to come down on Xu Bao’s scrawny head. People out on the street screeched in horror; the little brats swallowed their shouts. Now I’m going to feel and hear my hooves landing on Xu Bao’s cranium, I was thinking. But that didn’t happen. I didn’t see the contorted look of shock I’d expected and didn’t hear the howls of fright I’d hoped for; what I did see, out of the corner of my eye, was a slippery figure darting under my exposed belly, and I had a premonition of bad things to come. Unfortunately, my reactions were too slow; a sudden chill struck my genitals, followed by a sharp, intense pain. I felt an immediate sense of loss and knew I’d been tricked. Twisting my body to look behind me, the first thing I saw was blood on my rear legs. The next things I saw was Xu Bao, standing by the roadside, a bloody gray gonad in the palm of his hand; he was grinning from ear to ear and showing off his prize to a bunch of gawkers, who shouted their approval.

“Xu Bao, you bastard, you’ve ruined my donkey,” my master cried out in agony. But before he could leave my side and tear into the evil veterinarian, Xu Bao dropped the gonad into his bag and flashed his knife in a threatening manner. My master fell back weakly.

“I did nothing wrong, Lan Lian,” Xu Bao said as he pointed to the gawkers. “It was obvious to everyone, including our young friends here, that you let your donkey attack people, and it was my right to protect myself. It’s a good thing I was on my toes, or my head would be a squashed gourd by now. So I’m the good guy here, Lan Lian.”

“But you’ve ruined my donkey…”

“That was my plan, and I’m the one who could have done just that. But I felt sorry for a fellow villager and held back. That donkey has three gonads, and I only took one. That’ll calm him down a bit, but he’ll still be a spirited animal. You should damn well be thanking me. It’s not too late, you know.”

Lan Lian bent over to examine my privates, where he discovered that Xu Bao was telling the truth. That helped, but not enough to thank the man. No matter how you looked at it, the sneaky bastard had taken one of my gonads without prior consent.

“Xu Bao, take heed,” Lan Lian said. “If anything happens to my donkey because of this, you’ll pay, and pay dearly.”

“The only way this donkey won’t live to be a hundred is if you mix arsenic into his feed. I advise you not to work him in the field today. Take him home, feed him nutritious food, and rub on some salt water. The wound will heal in a couple of days.”

Lan Lian took Xu Bao’s advice without any public acknowledgment. That eased my suffering a little, but it was still with me, and still strong. I glared at the bastard who would soon swallow my gonad, and was already planning my revenge. But the honest truth was, this unforeseen incident, sudden and effective, instilled in me a degree of grudging respect toward the unimpressive, bowlegged little man. That there were people like that in the world, someone who made a living castrating animals and was good at his job – relentless, accurate, fast – was something you’d have to see to believe. Hee-haw, Hee-haw – My gonad, tonight you’ll accompany a mouthful of strong liquor down into Xu Bao’s guts, only to wind up in the privy tomorrow, my gonad, gonad.

We’d only walked a short distance when we heard Xu Bao call out from behind:

“Lan Lian, know what I call that gambit I just employed?”

“Fuck you and your ancestors!” Lan Lian fired back.

This was greeted with raucous laughter from the gawkers.

“Listen carefully,” Xu Bao said smugly. “You and your donkey both. I call it ‘Stealing peaches under the leaves.’”

“Xu Bao Xu Bao, stealing peaches under the leaves! Lan Lian Lan Lian, embarrassment teaches…” The young geniuses made up new lines, which they sang as they walked behind us all the way to the Ximen estate compound.

Lots of people created a lively atmosphere in the compound. The five children from the east and west rooms, all dressed in New Year’s finery, were running and hopping all over the place. Lan Jinlong and Lan Baofeng had reached school age, but hadn’t yet started school. Jinlong was a melancholy boy, seemingly weighted down with concerns; Baofeng was an innocent little girl, and a real beauty. Though they were the offspring of Ximen Nao, there were no bonds between them and Ximen Donkey. The true bonds had been between Ximen Donkey and the two offspring delivered to the donkey belonging to Han Huahua, but tragically, they and their mother had all died when the youngsters were barely six months old. The death of Huahua was a terrible emotional blow to Ximen Donkey. She had been poisoned; the two babies, the fruits of my loins, died from drinking their mother’s milk. The birth of twin donkeys had been a joyous event in the village, and their deaths, along with their mother, had saddened the villagers. Stonemason Han had nearly cried himself sick, but someone unknown was very happy; that someone was the person who had mixed poison into Huahua’s feed. District headquarters, thrown into turmoil over the incident, sent a special investigator, Liu Changfa – Long-haired Liu – to solve the case. A crude and inept individual, Liu summoned the residents in groups to the village government offices and interrogated them by asking the sorts of questions you might hear on a phonograph record. The results? No results. After the incident, in his story “The Black Donkey,” Mo Yan fixed the blame for poisoning the Han family’s donkey on Huang Tong, and although he made what appeared to be an air-tight case, who believes anything a novelist says?

Now I want to tell you, Lan Jiefang, born on the same day of the same month in the same year as I, I mean you, you know who you are, but I’ll refer to you as He, well, He was five years old, plus a little, and as He grew older, the birthmark on his face got bluer and bluer. Granted, He was an ugly child, but a cheerful one, lively and so full of energy He couldn’t stand still. And talk? That mouth of his never stopped, not for a second. He dressed like his half brother Jinlong, but since He was shorter, the clothes always looked too big and baggy. With his cuffs and shirtsleeves rolled up, He looked like a miniature gangster. But I knew He was a good-hearted boy who found it hard to get people to like him, and my guess is He could thank his nonstop talking and his blue birthmark for that.

Now that we’ve gotten him out of the way, let’s talk about the two girls of the Huang family, Huang Huzhu and Huang Hezuo. They wore lined jackets with the same floral pattern, cinched at the waist by sashes with butterfly knots. Their skin was fair, their eyes narrow and lovely. The Lan and Huang families were neither especially close nor particularly distant, altogether a complicated relationship. For the adults, getting together was awkward and uncomfortable, since Yingchun and Qiuxiang had both shared a bed with Ximen Nao, making them simultaneously rivals and sisters; now they were both remarried, but they still shared the same compound, living with different men in different times. By comparison, the children got along fine, a perfectly innocent and simple relationship. Given his natural melancholy, Lan Jinlong remained more or less aloof. Lan Jiefang and the Huang twins were best friends, with the girls always calling the boy Elder Brother Jiefang; as for him, a boy who loved to eat, he was always willing to save some of his sweets for the girls.

“Mother, Jiefang gave his candy to Huzhu and Hezuo,” Baofeng told their mother on the sly.

“It’s his candy, he can give it to anyone he wants,” Yingchun said to her daughter with a pat on the head.

But the children’s stories haven’t really begun yet. Their dramas won’t take center stage for another ten years or more. So for the time being, they’ll have to stay with their minor roles.

Now is the time for a very important character to come on stage. His name is Pang Hu, which, interestingly, means Colossal Tiger. He has a face like a date and eyes like the brightest stars. He’s wearing a padded army cap and a crudely stitched jacket on which a pair of medals is pinned. He keeps a pen in his shirt pocket, a silvery watch on his wrist. He walks on crutches; his right leg is perfectly normal, but his left one ends at the knee, his khaki pant leg knotted just below the stump. He wears a new leather shoe, with the nap on the outside, on his good leg. The moment he came through the gate, everyone in the compound – adults, children, even me – was awestruck. During those days, men like that could only have been heroic members of China’s volunteer army who had returned from the fighting in Korea.

The battlefield hero walked up to Lan Lian, his crutches thudding against the brick path, his good leg landing heavily at each step, as if putting down root, the empty cuff on the other leg swaying back and forth.

“If I’m not mistaken,” he said, “you must be Lan Lian.”

Lan Lian’s face twitched in response.

“Hello, there, volunteer soldier,” Lan Jiefang, the chatterbox, ran up to greet the stranger, oozing reverence. “Long live the volunteer soldiers!” he said. “You’re a war hero, I just know it. What do you want with my father? He’s not much of a talker. I’m his spokesman.”

“Shut up, Jiefang!” Lan Lian barked. “This is adult business, stay out of it.”

“No harm done,” the war hero said with a kindly smile. “You’re Lan Lian’s son, Lan Jiefang, am I right?”

“Do you know how to tell fortunes?” Jiefang sputtered, unable to conceal his surprise.

“No,” the war hero said with a crafty smile, “but I know how to read faces.” That said, he turned serious once more, tucking one crutch under his arm and offering his hand to Lan Lian. “Glad to meet you, my friend. I’m Pang Hu, new director of the district Supply and Marketing Co-op. Wang Leyun, who sells farming implements in the sales department of the production unit, is my wife.”

Lan Lian, at a momentary loss, shook hands with the war hero, who saw in his perplexed look that he was in a bit of a fog. Turning around, the man shouted:

“Gather round, all of you!”

Just then a short, rotund woman in a blue uniform, a pretty little girl in her arms, strode in the gate. The white-framed eyeglasses she wore told everyone that she was not a farmer. Her baby had big round eyes and rosy cheeks like autumn apples. Beaming from ear to ear, she was the perfect example of a happy child.

“Ah,” Lan Lian exclaimed happily, “so this is the comrade you’re talking about.” He turned toward the western rooms and called to his wife. “Gome out here, we have honored guests.”

I recognized her too. The memory of something that had happened the previous winter was still clear. Lan Lian had taken me to the county town to get some salt, and on the way back we’d met up with this Wang Leyun. She was sitting by the side of the road, heavily pregnant and moaning. She was wearing a blue uniform then too, but the bottom three buttons were undone to accommodate her swollen belly. Her white-framed eyeglasses and fair skin marked her immediately as a government worker. Her savior had arrived, as she saw it. Please, brother, help me, she said with considerable difficulty. – Where are you from? What’s happened? – My name is Wang Leyun. I work at the district Supply and Marketing Co-op. I was on my way to a meeting, since I didn’t think it was time, but… but… Seeing a bicycle lying nearby in the bushes, we knew at once the predicament she was in. Lan Lian walked around in circles, rubbing his hands anxiously. What can I do? he asked. How can I help you? – Take me to the county hospital, hurry. My master unloaded the bags of salt I was carrying, took off his padded coat and tied it across my back, and helped the woman get on. Hold on, Comrade, he said. She grabbed my mane and moaned some more as my master took my reins in one hand and held on to the woman with the other. – Okay, Blackie, let’s go. I took off, for I was a very excited donkey. I’d carried plenty of things on my back – salt, cotton, crops, fabric – but never a woman, and I danced a little jig, toppling the woman onto my master’s shoulder. Steady, Blackie! my master ordered. I got the idea. Blackie got the idea. So I started trotting, taking care to keep my gait smooth and steady, like flowing water or drifting clouds, something a donkey does best. A horse can only be smooth and steady when it gallops, but if a donkey gallops instead of trots, it makes for a bumpy ride. I sensed that this was a solemn, even sacred, mission. It was also stimulating, and at that time I felt myself existing somewhere between the realms of man and beast. I felt a warm liquid soaking into the jacket under her and onto my back, also felt sweat from the woman’s hair dripping onto my neck. We were only a couple of miles from the county town, on the road leading straight to it. Weeds on both sides of us were knee-high; a panicky rabbit ran out of the weeds and right into my leg. Well, we made it into town and went straight to the People’s Hospital. Back in those days, hospital personnel were caring people. My master stood in the hospital entrance and shouted: Somebody, come help this woman! I brayed to help out. A bunch of men and women in white smocks came running out and carried the woman inside, but not before I heard waa-waa sounds emerge from between her legs as she was taken off my back. On our way back home, my master was in obvious low spirits, grumbling over the sight of his wet, dirty padded coat. I knew he was superstitious and believed that the excretions of a woman in labor were not only dirty, they were unlucky. So when we reached the spot where we’d encountered the woman, he frowned, his face darkened, and he said, What does all this mean, Blackie? This was a new coat. What am I going to tell my wife?

Hee-haw, hee-haw – I gloated, happy to see him facing a dilemma. – Is that a smile, Blackie? He untied the rope and, with three fingers, lifted the coat off of my back. It was… well, you know. He cocked his head, held his breath, and flung the water-soaked and very heavy jacket as if it were made of dog skin, watching it sail into the weeds like a big, strange bird. The rope also had bloodstains, but since he needed it to tie down the sacks of salt, he couldn’t throw it away, so he dropped it on the ground and rolled it around in the dirt with his foot until it changed color. Now all he was wearing was a thin jacket with several missing buttons; his chest turned purple from the cold, and with his blue face, he looked like one of Lord Yama’s little attendants. He bent down, scooped up two handfuls of dirt, and rubbed it on my back, then brushed it off with some weeds he plucked from the side of the road. Blackie, he said, you and I performed an act of charity, didn’t we? Hee-haw, hee-haw – He stacked the sacks of salt on my back and tied them down. Then he looked over at the bicycle in the weeds. Blackie, he said, as I see it, this bicycle ought to belong to me now. It cost me a coat and a lot of time. But if I covet something like this, I’ll give up the credits I earned from that act of charity, won’t I? Hee-haw, hee-haw – All right, then, let’s take this good deed as far as it’ll go, like seeing a guest all the way home. So he pushed the bicycle and drove me – actually, there was no need to do that – all the way back to the country town and up to the hospital entrance, where he stopped and shouted, You in there, the woman in labor, I’m leaving your bicycle here at the entrance! Hee-haw, hee-haw- More people ran out. – Okay, Blackie, let’s get out of here. He smacked me on the rump with my reins. Let’s go, Blackie…

Yingchun’s hands were coated with flour when she came out. Her eyes lit up when she saw the beautiful little girl in the arms of Wang Leyun. She reached over.

“Pretty baby,” she mumbled. “Pretty baby, so cute, so pudgy…”

Wang Leyun handed the baby to Yingchun, who cradled it in her arms, lowered her head, and smelled and kissed her face.

“She smells wonderful,” she said, “just wonderful…”

Waa-waa. The baby wasn’t used to all that fuss.

“Hand her back to the comrade,” Lan Lian demanded. “Just look at you, more wolf than human. What baby wouldn’t be scared to death?”

“That’s all right, no harm done,” Wang Leyun said as she took the baby back and got her to stop crying.

Yingchun tried to rub the flour off her hands.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she apologized. “Look how I dirtied her clothes.”

“We’re all farmers,” Pang Hu said. “No need to worry. We came, today especially to thank you. I hate to think what might have happened if not for you.”

“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.

9

Ximen Donkey Meets Ximen Bai In a Dream

Following Orders, Militiamen Arrest Lan Lian

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 -

The aroma flooded the air, like fine liquor, like honey, like husks straight from the frying pan. The red thread in my imagination became a thick red rope. After traveling half the night and encountering countless hardships, like finding a melon at the end of a vine, I was finally about to meet my true love. I bolted forward but abruptly slowed down after only a few steps, for there in the light of the moon a woman all in white sat cross-legged in the middle of the path. No trace of a donkey, female or otherwise. And yet the smell of a donkey in heat hung in the air around us. Was this a trap? Was it possible that a woman could emit a smell that could drive a male donkey crazy? Slowly, cautiously, I approached the woman. The closer I got, the more brightly Ximen Nao’s memory lit up in my mind, like a series of sparks creating a wildfire, pushing my donkey consciousness into darkness and reasserting my human emotions. I didn’t have to see her face to know who she was. Outside of Ximen Bai, no other woman exuded the smell of bitter almonds. My wife, you poor, poor woman!

Why do I refer to her that way? Because of the three women in my life, she suffered the bitterest fate. Yingchun and Qiuxiang both remarried peasants who had gained stature in the new society. She alone, as a member of the landlord class, had been forced to live in the Ximen ancestral caretaker’s hut and suffer through unbearable reform through labor. The squat, confining hut, with its rammed earth walls and a thatched roof, was so dilapidated it could not withstand the onslaught of wind and rain, and was in danger of toppling; when that happened it would bury her forever. The bad elements had all joined the People’s Commune, under the supervision of the poor and lower-middle peasants, reforming themselves through labor; in accordance with common practice, she too should have been spending her days as a member of the iron ore transport teams or breaking up large chunks of ore under the supervision of Yang Qi and his ilk, her hair in disarray, her face covered with dirt and grime, clothes torn and tattered, more ghost than human; so why was she sitting in this lovely setting, dressed in white and giving off a compelling fragrance?

“I knew you’d come, husband, I knew you’d be here. I was sure that after all these years of suffering, after seeing so much betrayal and shameless behavior, that you would recall my loyalty.” She seemed to be both talking to herself and pouring out her grief to me. Her voice carried the tone of sweetness and desolation. “I knew that my husband had been turned into a donkey, but you are still my husband, the man I lean on. Only after you were turned into a donkey did I feel that we were true kindred spirits. Do you recall how we met on grave-sweeping day in the year you were born? You passed by the hut where I live on your way to pick greens with Yingchun. I saw you that day while I was secretly adding fresh dirt to your and your parents’ graves, and you ran up to me, nibbling at the hem of my jacket with your soft pink lips. I looked up and saw you, such a lovely little donkey. I rubbed your nose and your ears; you licked my hand. My heart ached yet grew hot, I felt both sorrow and warmth, and tears flowed from my eyes. Through the mist I saw that your eyes were also moist, and in them I saw my own reflection. The look was one I knew well. I know you suffered injustice, my husband. I covered your grave with the dirt in my hand and then sprawled atop it, sobbing quietly with my face pressed to the fresh yellow earth. You gently touched my backside with your hoof, so I turned my head and once again saw that look in your eyes. My husband, I believe with all my heart that you have been reborn as a donkey. How unkind Lord Yama has been to turn my cherished husband into a donkey. But then, I thought, maybe that was your choice, that in your abiding concern for me, you would rather come back as a donkey to be my companion. Maybe Lord Yama planned to let you be reborn into a rich and powerful family, but you chose the life of a donkey instead, my dear, dear husband… The grief welled up inside me and I could not keep myself from wailing piteously. But in the midst of my wails, the sound of distant bugles, brass drums, and cymbals came on the air. Yingchun, who was standing behind me, said softly, Don’t cry, people are coming. She was still a woman of conscience. A packet of spirit money was hidden under the wild greens in her basket, and I guessed that she had brought it to burn at your grave. I forced myself to stop crying and watched as you and Yingchun rushed off into the grove of black pines. At every third step you stopped and turned to look, at every fifth you hesitated, and I knew the depth of your feelings for me. The contingent of people drew near, drums and gongs signaling their approach, red flags the color of blood, floral wreaths the color of snow. Teachers and students from the elementary school were coming to sweep the graves of martyrs. A light rain was falling, swallows were flying low in the sky. Peach flowers were like a sunset in the martyrs’ cemetery, visitors’ songs filled the air, but your wife did not dare cry over your grave, my husband. That night you went wild in the village office compound and bit me, and everyone thought you’d gone crazy, but I knew you were calling attention to my unfair treatment. They had already dug up the family treasure. Did they really think there was more buried at Lotus Bay? I treated that bite as a kiss from my husband. It may have been more violent than most, but that was the only way I could print it indelibly on my heart. Thank you for that kiss, my husband, for it was my salvation. When they saw the blood, they were so afraid I might die they carried me back into my home. My home, the run-down little hut by your gravesite. I lay down on the damp, dirt-covered sleeping platform, hoping for an early death, so that I too could be reborn a donkey, and we would be reunited again, a loving donkey couple…”

Xing’er, Bai Xing’er, my wife, my very own… I shouted, but all that came out were donkey sounds. The throat of a donkey thwarted my attempts at human speech. I hated my donkey body. I struggled to say something to you, but reality is cruel, and no matter what words of love I formed in my heart, all that came out was Hee-haw, hee-haw – So all I could do was kiss you, caress you with my hooves, and let my tears fall onto your face. A donkey’s tears are as big as the biggest raindrops. I washed your face with my tears as you lay on your back looking up at me, tears filling your eyes as well as you murmured, Husband, my husband… I tore off your clothes with my teeth and covered you with kisses, suddenly reminded of our wedding night. You were so shy, panting so alluringly, and I could tell that you were a daughter from a refined family, a girl who could embroider a double lotus and recite the “Thousand Poets’ Verses”…

A crowd of people, hooting and hollering, surged into the Ximen compound and snapped me out of my dream. There would be no good times for me, no conjugal bliss. They brought me back from my half human-half donkey existence. I was once again a donkey from head to tail. The people all wore scowls of arrogance as they barged into the western rooms and emerged with Lan Lian in custody; they stuck a white paper flag in his collar behind his neck. Though he tried to resist, it took little effort to subdue him. And when he tried to complain, they said, We’ve been ordered to inform you that you can farm your own land if that’s what you want, but smelting steel and building a reservoir are national projects requiring the participation of all citizens. We overlooked you when we built the reservoir, but you’re not getting out of work this time. Two men dragged him bodily out of the compound and another came to lead me out of my lean-to, a fellow with considerable experience in dealing with domestic animals: sidling up next to me, he grabbed hold of the bit and jerked it up into my mouth at the slightest sign of resistance, causing unbearable pain and making it hard for me to breathe.

My master’s wife ran out in an attempt to stop him from leading me away.

“You can take my husband out to work, that’s fine by me,” she said, “and I’ll smash rocks and smelt steel if you want. But you cannot take my donkey with you.”

With a display of anger and impatience, the man said:

“What do you take us for, madam citizen, puppet soldiers out to confiscate people’s livestock? We’re core members of the People’s Commune Militia, and we’re following orders, just doing our job. We’re taking your donkey on loan. You’ll get him back when we’re finished with him.”

“I’ll go in his place!” Yingchun said.

“Sorry, but those aren’t our orders and we’re not authorized to improvise.”

Lan Lian broke loose from the men holding him.

“There’s no call for you to treat me like this,” he said. “Building a reservoir and smelting steel are national projects, so of course I’ll go without complaint. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. But I have one request. Let my donkey go with me.”

“That’s something we’re not authorized to permit. Take up your request with our superiors.”

So the man led me out cautiously, ready for anything, whereas Lan Lian was escorted out of the compound and the village as if he were an army deserter, past the onetime district offices and all the way over to the People’s Commune, which, as it turned out, was where the red-nosed blacksmith and his apprentice had fitted me with my first set of iron shoes at their furnace. As we were passing the Ximen ancestral cemetery, some middle-school students under the supervision of their teachers were digging up graves and removing headstones; a woman in white mourning attire came flying out of the caretaker’s hut and ran straight for the students, throwing herself onto the back of one of them, her hands around his neck. But a brick flew over and hit her in the back of the head. Her face was ghostly white, as if covered with quicklime. Her earsplitting shrieks angered me. Flames brighter than molten steel licked up out of my heart, and I heard human speech tear from my throat:

“Stop! I, Ximen Nao, demand that you stop digging up my ancestral graves! And don’t you dare strike my wife!”

I reared up, ignoring the lip-splitting pain from the bit, lifting the man beside me up into the air and then flinging him into the mud alongside the road. As a donkey, I could have treated what I was seeing with indifference. But as a man, I could not allow anyone to dig up my ancestral graves or strike my wife. I charged into the crowd of students and bit one of their teachers on the head, then knocked down a student who was bent over to scoop out dirt. The students fled, their teachers lay on the ground. I watched Ximen Bai roll around, and cast one last glance at the open graves before turning and racing into the dark confines of a pine forest.

10

Favored with a Glorious Task, I Garry a County Chief

Meeting Up with a Tragic Mishap, I Break a Front Hoof

My anger slowly subsided after two days of running wild across Northeast Gaomi Township territory hunger forcing me to subsist on wild grass and the bark of trees. This coarse diet brought home the hardships of living the life of a donkey. A longing for the fragrant feed I’d gotten used to led me back to the life of a common domestic animal, and I began the trek back to my village, drawing close to human habitation.

At noontime that day, I reached the outskirts of Tao Family Village, where I saw a horse carriage at rest beneath a towering ginkgo tree. The heavy aroma of bean cakes mixed with rice straw filled my nostrils. Two mules that had been pulling the carriage were standing beside a basket hanging from a triangular trestle feasting on the fragrant feed.

I had always looked down on mules, bastard animals that were neither horse nor donkey, and wanted nothing more than the opportunity to bite them into oblivion. But on this day, fighting was the furthest thing from my mind. What I wanted was to edge up to the basket and get my share of some good food to replenish the strength I’d used up during two days of rushing headlong from one end of the territory to the other.

Holding my breath, I approached them gingerly, striving to keep the bell around my neck from announcing my arrival. Though that bell, placed there by the crippled war hero, enhanced my stature, there were times when it worked against me. When I ran like the wind, it signaled the passage of a mighty hero; at the same time, it kept me from ever breaking free of pursuit by humans.

The bell tinkled. The heads of the two mules, both much bigger than I, shot up. Knowing at once what I was after, they pawed the ground and snorted menacingly, warning me not to set hoof in their territory. But with all that good food in front of my eyes, how could I simply turn and walk away? I surveyed the scene: The black, long-necked mule was yoked in the wagon shafts, so he didn’t worry me. The second animal, a young black mule that was tethered and fettered, would also have trouble dealing with me. All I had to do to get to the food was stay clear of their teeth.

They tried to intimidate me with irritatingly loud brays. Don’t be so stingy, you bastards, there’s enough there for all of us. Why hog it all? We have entered the age of communism, when mine is yours and yours is mine. Seeing an opening. I ran up to the basket and took a huge mouthful. They bit me, sending the bits clanging. Bastards, if it’s biting you want, I’m the master. I swallowed the mouthful of feed, opened wide, and bit the yoked mule on the ear, chomping down and sending half its ear fluttering to the ground. The next bite landed on the neck of the other mule and left me with a mouthful of mane. Chaos ensued. Grabbing the basket in my teeth, I backed up quickly. The tethered mule charged. I spun around, showing him my backside before kicking out with both legs. One hoof hit nothing but air, the other landed smack on his nose. Pain drove him headfirst to the ground. Then, eyes closed, he got up and ran in circles until his legs got all entangled with the rope. I ate like there was no tomorrow. But tomorrow came anyway, as the carter, a blue bundle tied around his waist and a whip in his hand, ran out of a nearby yard, screaming at me. I sped up the eating process. He ran at me, whip writhing in the air like a snake and making popping sounds. He was upper-body strong and bowlegged, exactly what an experienced carter should look like. The whip was like an extension of his arm, and that was worrisome. Clubs didn’t scare me, they’re easy to dodge. But a whip is unpredictable. Someone who knows how to handle one can bring down a powerful horse with it. I’d seen it done and didn’t want it to be done to me. Uh-oh, here it comes! I had to move out of danger, which I did, though now I could only gaze at the feed basket. The driver chased after me. I ran off a ways. He stopped, keeping one eye on the feed basket. Then he looked over at his wounded mules and cursed a blue streak.

He said that if he had a rifle, one bullet is all it would take. That made me laugh. Hee-haw, hee-haw – By that I meant, If you didn’t have that whip in your hand, I’d run up and bite you in the head. He caught my meaning, obviously realizing that I was that notorious donkey that went around biting people. He neither dared to put down his whip nor press me too hard. He glanced around, obviously looking for help, and I knew that he both feared and wanted to get me in his clutches.

I picked up the scent of an approaching band of men. It was the militiamen who’d been after me a few days earlier. I’d only had time to eat about half of what I’d wanted, but one mouthful of such high-quality feed was the equivalent of ten mouthfuls of what I’d been eating. My energy was restored, my fighting will revitalized. You’re not going to hem me in, you two-legged dullards.

Just then a square, grass-green, and very strange object sped my way, bouncing from side to side and trailing dust. I know now that it was a Soviet Jeep-like vehicle; actually, these days I know a lot more than that: I can point out an Audi, a Mercedes, a BMW, and a Toyota; I also know all about U.S. space shuttles and Soviet aircraft carriers. But at the time, I was a donkey, a 1958 donkey This strange object, with its four rubber wheels, was clearly faster than me, at least on level ground. But it would be no match for me on rugged terrain. Allow me to repeat Mo Yan’s comment: A goat can scale a tree, a donkey is a good climber.

For the convenience of my story, let’s just say I knew what a Soviet Jeep was. It struck fear in me, but also piqued my curiosity, and I hesitated just long enough for the militiamen to catch up and surround me. The Soviet Jeep blocked my escape route when it stopped less than a hundred yards from me and disgorged three men. One of them I recognized right off: the former district, now county, chief. He hadn’t changed much in the years since I’d last seen him; even the clothes on his back looked like the same ones he’d worn in the past.

I had no bone to pick with County Chief Chen. In fact, the praise he’d showered on me years before continued to warm my heart. He’d also been a donkey trader, and that I liked. In a word, he was a county chief with emotional ties to donkeys, and I not only trusted him, I was actually glad to see him.

With a wave of his hand, he signaled his men not to approach any closer. Then with another wave he signaled the militiamen behind me, who wanted either to capture or kill me to bring credit to themselves, to stop where they were. He alone, raising his hand to his mouth to give out a whistle that was music to my ears, walked up to me. When he was four or five yards away, I spotted the toasted bean cake in his hand and drank in its heavenly fragrance. He treated me to a familiar little whistled melody, which brought feelings of mild sadness. My tensions dissolved, my taut muscles relaxed, and I wished for nothing more than to place myself in this man’s caressing hands. And then he was standing next to me, draping his right arm over my neck and holding the bean cake up to my mouth with the other. When the cake was gone, he rubbed the bridge of my nose and muttered:

“Snow Stand, Snow Stand, you are a fine donkey. Too bad people who have no understanding of donkeys turned you wild and unruly. It’s all right now, you can come with me, I’ll teach you how to become a first-rate, obedient, and courageous donkey that everyone will love.”

He first ordered the militiamen away and told his driver to return to town. Then he climbed aboard, bareback, like a pro, straddling me right at the spot where I was most comfortable. He was a practiced rider who knew his way around a donkey. With a pat on my neck, he said:

“Let’s go, my friend.”

From that day forward I was County Chief Chen’s mount, carrying a lean Party official with an abundance of energy all over the vast spaces of Gaomi County. Up till that time, my movements had been restricted to Northeast Gaomi Township, but after I became the county chief’s companion, my traces were found north to the sandbars of the Bohai, south to the iron mines of the Wulian Mountain Range, west to the billowing waters of Sow River, and east to Red Rock Beach, where the fishy smells of the Yellow Sea permeated the air.

This was the most glorious period of my entire donkey life. During those days, I forgot about Ximen Nao, forgot about all the people and events that had colored his life, even forgot about Lan Lian, with whom I’d had such close emotional ties. As I recall those days now, the basis of my contentment was most likely linked to a subconscious appreciation of “official” status. A donkey, of course, respects and fears an official. The deep affection that Chen, the head of an entire county, held for me is something I’ll remember to the end of my days. He personally prepared my feed and would let no one else brush my coat. He draped a ribbon around my neck, decorated with five red velvet balls, and added a red silk tassel to the bell.

When he rode me on an inspection tour, I was invariably accorded the most courteous reception. Villagers supplied me with the finest feed, gave me clean spring water to drink, and groomed my coat with bone combs. Then I was led to a spot on which fine white sand had been spread, where I could roll around comfortably and take my rest. Everyone knew that taking special care of the county chiefs donkey made him very happy. Patting my rump was equivalent to patting the county chief’s behind with flattery. He was a good man who preferred a donkey over a vehicle. It saved gasoline and was superior to walking on his inspection trips to mine sites in the mountains. I knew, of course, that at bottom, he treated me the way he did because of the deep affection he’d developed for my kind during his years as a donkey trader. The eyes of some men light up when they see a pretty woman; the county chief rubbed his hands when he saw a handsome donkey. It was perfectly natural that he would feel good about a donkey with hooves as white as snow and intelligence the equal of any man.

After I became the county chief’s mount, my halter served no further purpose. A surly donkey with a reputation for biting people had, in short order, thanks to the county chief, become a docile and obedient, bright and clever young donkey – nothing less than a miracle. The county chief’s secretary, a fellow named Fan, once took a picture of the county chief sitting on my back during an inspection tour of the iron mines; he sent it with a short essay to the provincial newspaper, where it was prominently published.

I met Lan Lian once during my stint as the county chief’s mount. He was carrying two baskets of iron ore down a narrow mountain path while I was on my way up the mountain with the county chief on my back. When he saw me, he dropped his carrying pole, spilling the iron ore, which rolled down the mountain. The county chief was irate:

“What was that all about? Iron ore is too valuable to lose, even a single rock. Go down and bring that back up.”

I could tell that Lan Lian hadn’t hear a word the county chief said. His eyes flashed as he ran up, threw his arms around my neck, and said:

“Blackie, old Blackie, at last I found you…”

Recognizing that he was my former owner, Chen turned to Secretary Fan, who followed us everywhere on an emaciated horse, and signaled for him to come deal with the matter. Fan, always alert to what his boss wanted, jumped off his horse and pulled Lan Lian off to one side.

“What do you think you’re doing? This is the county chief’s donkey.”

“No, it isn’t, it’s mine, my Blackie. He lost his mother at birth and only survived because my wife fed him millet porridge from his first days. We relied upon him for our livelihood.”

“Even if what you say is true,” Secretary Fan said, “if the county chief hadn’t come along when he did, a group of militiamen would have made donkey meat out of him. He now has a very important job, taking the county chief into villages and saving the nation the expense of a Jeep. The county chief cannot do without him, and you should rejoice in knowing that your donkey is playing such an important role.”

“I don’t care about that,” Lan Lian replied stubbornly. “All I know is, he’s my donkey, and I’m taking him with me.”

“Lan Lian, old friend,” the county chief said. “These are extraordinary times, and this donkey has been an enormous help to me in negotiating these mountain paths. So let’s just say I’ve got your donkey on temporary loan, and as soon as the steel smelting project has ended, you can have him back. I’ll see that the government gives you a stipend for the duration of the loan period.”

Lan Lian wasn’t finished, but an official from the co-op walked up, dragged him back to the side of the road, and said sternly:

“Like a goddamn dog who doesn’t know how lucky he is to be carried in a sedan chair, you should be thanking your ancestors for accumulating good luck, which is why the county chief has chosen your donkey to ride.”

Raising his hand for the man to stop the harangue, the county chief said:

“How’s this, Lan Lian? You’re a man of strong character, for which I admire you. But I can’t help feeling sorry for you, and as chief official of this county, I hope you’ll soon be leading your donkey into the co-op and stop resisting the tides of history.”

The co-op official held Lan Lian to the side of the road so the county chief-so that I – could pass, and when I saw the look in Lan Lian’s eyes, I felt pangs of guilt and wondered to myself: Could this be considered an act of betrayal to my master on my way up to a higher limb? The county chief must have intuited my feelings, for he patted me on the head and said consolingly:

“Let’s go, Snow Stand. Carrying the county representative is making a greater contribution than tagging along behind Lan Lian. Sooner or later, he’ll join the People’s Commune, and when he does, you’ll become public property. Wouldn’t it be perfectly normal for the county chief to ride on a People’s Commune donkey?”

As you’ll see, this was a case of: Extreme joy begets sorrow; when things reach their extreme, they turn and head in the opposite direction. At dusk on the fifth day after the encounter with my former master, I was carrying the county chief home from a visit to the iron mine at Reclining Ox Mountain when a rabbit hopped across the path in front of me. Spooked, I reared up and caught my right front hoof between some rocks when I landed. I fell, and so did the county chief, who hit his head on a sharp rock, which knocked him out and opened a gash in his head. His secretary immediately told some men to carry the unconscious county chief down the mountain. Meanwhile, some farmers tried to free my hoof, but it was stuck tight and deep. Nothing worked. They pushed, they pulled, and then I heard a crack rise up from the rocks and felt a pain so severe I too passed out. When I came to, I discovered that my right front hoof and the bones that connected it to my leg were still stuck in the rocks, and that my blood had stained a large section of the roadway. I was overcome by grief. My usefulness as a donkey was over, that I knew. The county chief would have no further use for me. Even my master would have no interest in feeding a donkey that could no longer work. All I had to look forward to was the butcher’s knife. They’d slit my throat, and once I’d spilled all the blood in my body, they’d skin me and slice my flesh into morsels of tasty meat that would wind up in people’s stomachs… Better that I take my own life. I glanced over at the cliff and could see the misty village below. With one loud hee-haw – I rolled across the roadway toward the dropoff. What stopped me was a loud cry from Lan Lian.

He had run up the mountain. He was all sweaty, and his knees were spotted with blood. He’d obviously stumbled and fallen on his way up. In a voice distorted by flowing tears, he shouted:

“Blackie, my old Blackie…”

He wrapped his arms around my neck as some farmers lifted up my tail and moved my rear legs to help me stand up. Excruciating pain shot up my injured leg when it touched the ground and sweat gushed from my body. Like a dilapidated wall, I toppled to the ground a second time.

I heard one of the farmers say in what passed for sympathy:

“He’s a useless cripple, that’s the bad news. The good news is he’s got plenty of meat on his bones. We ought to be able to sell him for a decent sum to the butchers.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Lan Lian swore angrily. “Would you take your father to the butchers if he broke his leg?”

That stunned everyone within earshot. But the silence was quickly broken by the same farmer.

“Watch your mouth! This donkey, is he your father?” He rolled up his sleeves, itching for a fight, but was held back by the men around him.

“Let it go,” they said. “Just let it go. The last thing you want is to piss off this madman. He’s the only independent farmer in the whole county. They know all about him up at the county chief’s office.”

The crowd broke up, leaving just the two of us. A crescent moon hung in the sky; the sight and the situation made me sad beyond words. After venting against the county chief and that bunch of farmers, my master took off his jacket and tore it into strips to bind my injured leg. Hee-haw, hee-haw – That really hurt. He wrapped his arms around my head, his tears falling onto my ears. “Blackie, old Blackie, what can I say to make this better? How could you believe anything the officials said? At the first sign of trouble, all they care about is saving their precious official. They don’t give a damn about you. If they’d sent for a stonemason to break up the rocks that pinned your hoof, it might have been saved.” The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he let go of my head and ran over to the rocky spot in the road, where he reached down and tried to retrieve my separated hoof. He cried, he swore, he panted from sheer exhaustion, and he eventually managed to retrieve it. Standing there holding it in his hand, he wailed, and when I saw the iron shoe, worn shiny after all that time, I broke down and cried too.

With the encouragement of my master, I managed to stand up again; the thick bindings made it possible – barely – for me to rest my injured leg on the ground, but my balance, sadly, was lost. Fleet-footed Ximen Donkey was no more, replaced by a cripple who lowered his head and listed to the side with every step. I entertained the thought of flinging myself off the mountain and putting an end to this tragic life; my master’s love was all that kept me from doing just that.

The distance from the iron mine at Reclining Ox Mountain to Ximen Village in Northeast Gaomi Township was about twenty miles. If all four of my legs were in good shape, that little distance would not have been worth mentioning. But now one of them was useless, making the going unbelievably hard; I left traces of flesh and blood along the way, marked by wrenching painful cries from my throat. The pain made my skin twitch like ripples on a pond.

My stump was beginning to stink by the time we reached Northeast Gaomi Township, drawing hordes of flies whose buzzing filled our ears. My master broke some branches from a tree and twisted them together to make a switch to keep the flies away. My tail hung limply, too weak to swish; thanks to an attack of diarrhea, the rear half of my body was covered with filth. Each swing of my master’s switch killed many flies, but even greater numbers swarmed up to take their place. So he took off his pants and tore them into strips to replace the first bindings. Now he was wearing only shorts and a pair of heavy, thick-soled leather boots. He was a strange and comical apparition.

Along the way we dined on the wind and slept in the dew. I ate some dry grass, he subsisted on some half-rotten yams from a nearby field. Shunning roads, we walked down narrow paths to avoid encountering people, like wounded soldiers deserting the scene of battle. We entered Huangpu Village on a day when the village dining hall was open, the delightful smells wafting our way. I heard my master’s stomach rumble. He looked at me with tears in his reddened eyes, which he dried with his dirty hands.

“Goddamn it, Blackie,” he blurted out, “what are we doing? Why are we hiding from everyone? We’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. You were injured while working for the people, so the people owe you, and by taking care of you like this, I’m doing the people’s work too! Come on, we’re going in.”

Like a man leading an army of flies, he walked with me into the open-air dining hall. Steamers heaping with lamb dumplings were brought out of the kitchen and placed on a table. They were gone almost immediately. Lucky diners skewed the hot dumplings with thin tree branches and gnawed at them from the side; others tossed them from hand to hand, slurping hungrily.

Everyone saw us come in, cutting a sorry figure, ugly and filthy, and smelling as bad as we looked. Tired and hungry, we gave them a terrific fright, and probably disgusted them in the bargain, costing them their appetite. My master swatted my rump with his switch, sending a cloud of flies into the air, where they regrouped and landed on all those steaming dumplings and on the dining hall kitchen utensils. The diners hooted unappreciatively.

A fat woman in white work clothes, by all appearances the person in charge, waddled up to us, held her nose, and, in a low, muffled voice, said:

“What do you think you’re doing? Go on, get out of here!”

Someone in the crowd recognized my master.

“Aren’t you Lan Lian, from Ximen Village? Is it really you? What happened to you?”

My master just looked at the man without replying, then led me out into the yard, where everyone stayed as far away from us as possible.

“That’s Gaomi County’s one and only independent farmer,” the man shouted after us. “They know about him all the way to Changwei Prefecture! That donkey of his is almost supernatural. It killed a pair of wolves and has bitten a dozen or more people. What happened to its leg?”

The fat woman ran up.

“We don’t serve independent farmers, so get out of here!”

My master stopped walking and, in a voice filled both with dejection and passion, replied:

“You fat sow, I am an independent farmer, and I’d rather die than be served by the likes of you. But this donkey of mine is the county chief’s personal mount. He was carrying the chief down the mountain when his hoof got caught in some rocks and broke off. That’s a work-related injury, and you have an obligation to serve him.”

I’d never heard my master berate anyone so passionately before. His birthmark was nearly black. By then he was so skeletal he looked like a plucked rooster, and a very smelly one, as he advanced on the fat woman, who kept backing up until, covering her face with her hands, she burst into tears and bolted.

A man in a well-worn uniform, hair parted in the middle, looking very much like a local official, walked up to us, picking his teeth.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to feed my donkey, I want you to heat a tub of water and give him a bath, and I want you to get a doctor over here to bandage his injured leg.”

The official shouted in the direction of the kitchen, drawing a dozen people out into the yard.

“Do as he says, and make it quick.”

So they washed me from head to tail with hot water, and they summoned a doctor, who treated my injured leg with iodine, put a medicinal salve on the stump, and wrapped it with heavy gauze. Finally, they brought me some barley and alfalfa.

While I was eating, someone carried out a bowl of steaming dumplings and placed it in front of my master. A man who looked like a mess cook said softly:

“Eat up, elder brother, don’t be stubborn. Eat what you have here and don’t give a thought to your next meal. Get through today without worrying about tomorrow. In these fucked-up times you suffer for a few days, then you die, the lamp goes out. What’s that, you don’t want these?”

My master was sitting on a couple of chipped bricks tied together, bent over like a hunchback and staring at my useless stump; I don’t think he heard a word the mess cook said. His stomach was rumbling again, and I could guess how tempting those plump, white dumplings must have been. Several times he stuck out a black, grimy hand to pick one of them up, only to quickly pull it back.

11

With a War Hero’s Help, an Artificial Hoof

Starving Citizens Dismember and Eat a Donkey

My stump healed and I was out of danger, but I’d lost the ability to work and was just a crippled donkey. The slaughterhouse team came by several times with an offer to buy me and improve the lives of Party cadres with my meat. My master sent them away with loud curses.

In a story called “The Black Donkey,” Mo Yan wrote:

The mistress of the house Yingchun found a beat-up leather shoe somewhere, brought it home, and cleaned it; she filled the inside with cotton, sewed a strap onto the top, and tied it to the crippled donkey’s injured leg, which helped to stabilize him. And so, in the spring of 1959, a strange scene appeared on village roads: the independent farmer Lan Lian pushing a cart with wooden wheels, piled high with fertilizer, his arms bare, his face defiant. The donkey pulling the cart wore a beat-up leather shoe on one leg as he hobbled along, his head drooping low. The cart moved slowly, the wheels creaked loudly. Lan Lian, bending deeply at the waist, pushed with all his might. The crippled donkey pulled with all his might to make his master’s job a little easier. At first, people stopped and stared at this strange team, and a few even covered their mouths to stifle a laugh. But eventually the laughter died out. During the early days of their co-op labor, elementary schoolchildren would fall in behind them; one or two of the bad kids would throw stones at the donkey, but they were invariably punished at home.

In the spring, the earth takes on the quality of leavened dough; in addition to the wheels of our heavily laden cart, my hooves also sank deeply into the ground, making it almost impossible to keep moving. The fertilizer had to be taken out into the fields, so hard work was called for; I pulled with all my might to make the job easier on him. But I hadn’t gone more than a dozen steps when I left the shoe my mistress had made stuck in the dirt. When the exposed stump hit the ground like a club, the terrible pain pushed my sweat glands to the limit. Hee-haw, hee-haw – It’s killing me! I’m worse than useless, Master. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the blue side of his face and his bulging eyes, and I was determined to help him pull the cart into the field, even if I had to crawl, in part to repay his kindness, in part as payback for all the smug looks, and in part to create a model for all those little bastards. Owing to the loss of balance, I had to bend over until my knee touched the ground. Ah, that hurt a lot less than touching it with the stump and made it easier to pull. So I went down on both knees, in full kneel, and, pulling with all my might, managed to get the cart moving again. The shaft pressed so hard against my throat, I had trouble breathing. I knew how awkward I must have looked, certainly worthy of ridicule. But let them laugh, all of them, so long as I could help my master move the cart to where he wanted it to go. That would spell victory, and glory!

After he’d unloaded the fertilizer, my master came up and wrapped his arms around my head. He was sobbing so hard he could barely get the words out:

“Blackie… such a good donkey…”

After taking out his pipe and filling it, he lit up and took a deep drag. Then he held the stem up to my mouth.

“Take a puff, Blackie,” he said. “You won’t feel quite so exhausted.”

After following him for so many years, I’d gotten hooked on tobacco. I took a deep drag and blew streams of smoke out of my nostrils.

That winter, after learning that the Supply and Marketing Co-op director, Pang Hu, had been fitted with a prosthetic leg, my master decided that I deserved to be fitted with a prosthetic hoof. To that end, he and his wife, drawing on a friendship forged years before, went to see Pang Hu’s wife, Wang Leyun, and told her what they had in mind. Happy to oblige, she let my master and mistress study Pang Hu’s new leg from all angles. It had been made in a factory dedicated to producing prosthetics for crippled heroes of the revolution, a service obviously denied to me, a donkey. Even if the factory had been willing to undertake the task, my master would not have been able to afford the cost. So they decided to make a prosthetic hoof on their own. Three whole months it took them, through trial and error, until they finally managed to produce a false hoof that looked pretty much like the real thing. All that remained was to strap it on.

They walked me around the yard; the new hoof felt much better than the beat-up shoe, and while my gait was somewhat stiff, my limp was less pronounced. So my master led me out onto the street, head high, chest out, as if proudly showing off. I tried my best to match his attitude and give him the face he deserved. Village children fell in behind us to share in the excitement. Seeing the looks on people’s faces and listening to what they were saying, I could tell that they held him in high regard. Then when we met up with gaunt, sallow Hong Taiyue, he remarked:

“Lan Lian, are you putting on a show for the People’s Commune?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” my master replied. “The People’s Commune and I are like well water and river water – they don’t mix.”

“Yes, but you’re walking on a People’s Commune street.” Hong pointed first to the street, then to the skies above. “And you’re breathing the air above the People’s Commune and soaking up rays of the sun shining down on the People’s Commune.”

“This street was here before the People’s Commune was created, and so were the air and the sun. They were given to all people and animals by the powers of heaven, and you and your People’s Commune have no right to monopolize them!” He breathed in deeply, stomped his foot on the ground, and raised his face to the sun. “Wonderful air, terrific sunlight!” Then he patted me on the shoulder and said, “Blackie, take a deep breath, stomp down on the ground, and let the sun’s rays warm you.”

“You talk like that now, Lan Lian, but you’ll soften up one day,” Hong said.

“Old Hong, roll up the street, blot out the sun, and stuff up my nose if you can.”

“Just you wait,” Hong said indignantly. I’d intended to put my new hoof to use by working several more years for my master. But then the famine came, turning the people into wild animals, cruel and unfeeling. After eating all the bark from trees and the edible grass, a gang of them charged into the Ximen estate compound like a pack of starving wolves. My master tried to protect me by threatening them with a club, but he lost his nerve under the menacing green light that blazed in their eyes. He threw down his club and ran away. I trembled in fear in the presence of that gang, knowing my day of reckoning had come, that my life as a donkey had come full circle. All that had happened over the ten years since I’d been reborn on this spot on earth flashed before me. I closed my eyes and waited.

“Take it!” I heard someone in the yard yell. “Take the independent farmer’s grain stores! Kill! Kill the independent farmer’s crippled donkey!”

I heard sorrowful shouts from my mistress and the children and the sounds of pillaging and fighting among the starving people. A heavy blow on the head stunned me and drove my soul right out of my body to hover in the air above and watch the people cut and slice the carcass of a donkey into pieces of meat.