Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

by Mo Yan

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.

  Book Two

  The Strength of an Ox

  12

  Big-head Reveals the Secret of Transmigration

  Ximen Ox Takes Up Residence in Lan Lian’s Home

  “Unless I’m mistaken,” I ventured under the wild, piercing gaze of the big-headed child, Lan Qiansui, “you were a donkey that was hit over the head by a starving villager. You crashed to the ground, where your body was cut up and eaten by a gang of starving villagers. I witnessed it with my own eyes. My guess is, your spirit hovered about the scene in the Ximen estate compound for a while before heading back to the underworld, where, after many twists and turns, you were born into the world once more, this time as an ox.”

  “Exactly right.” I detected a slightly melancholy tone in his voice. “By describing for you my life as a donkey, I have related about half of what happened later. During my years as an ox, I stuck to you like a shadow, and you are well versed in the things that happened to me, so there’s no point in my repeating them, is there?”

  I studied his head, which was so much larger than either his age or his body seemed to warrant; studied his enormous mouth, with which he talked on and on; studied all his myriad expressions, appearing one minute and vanishing the next — a donkey’s natural, unrestrained dissipation, an ox’s innocence and strength, a pig’s gluttony and violence, a
dog’s loyalty and fawning nature, a monkey’s alertness and mischievous qualities — and studied the world-weary and disconsolate composite expression, which incorporated all of the above. My memories involving the ox came thick and fast, like waves crashing on the shore; or moths drawn to a flame; or iron filings sucked toward a magnet; or odors surging toward your nostrils; or colors seeping outward on fine paper; or my longing for that woman born with the world’s loveliest face, interminable, eternally present. . .

  Father took me to market to buy an ox. It was the first day of October, 1964. The sky was clear, the air fresh, the sunlight radiant; birds were flying in the sky, locusts were sticking their soft abdomens into the hard earth to lay their eggs. I picked them up off the ground and strung them on a blade of grass so I could take them home to roast and eat.

  The marketplace was bustling, now that the hard times were behind us. The harvests that autumn were unusually large, which accounted for all the happy faces. Taking me by the hand, Father led me over to the livestock market. Lan Lian was my father; they called me Lan Lian Junior. When people saw the two of us together, they often sighed: father and son, both branded with birthmarks on their faces, seemingly afraid that people wouldn’t know they were related.

  Mules, horses, and donkeys were available at the livestock market. On that day there were only two donkeys, one a gray female with floppy ears and a downcast, disheartened look. Her eyes were dull, with gummy yellow mucus in the corners. We didn’t have to look in her mouth to know that she was an old mare. The other donkey, a black gelded male that was almost as big as a mule, had an off-putting white face. White face: no offspring. Like a villain on the Peking opera stage, he had a venomous look about him. Who’d want an animal like that? That one needed to be sent to the knackers without delay. “Dragon meat in heaven, donkey meat on earth.” The commune’s Party cadres were ardent fans of cooked donkey, especially the newly arrived Party secretary, who had previously served as County Chief Chen’s secretary. His name was Fan Tong, which sounded just like the words for “rice bucket.” He had an astonishing capacity for food.

  County Chief Chen had deep emotional ties with donkeys; Secretary Fan was in love with donkey meat. When Father saw the two old and ugly animals, his face darkened and tears wetted his eyes. I knew he was thinking about the black donkey we’d owned, the “snow stander” that had been written up in the newspaper, the one that had accomplished something no other donkey in the world could match. He wasn’t alone in missing that donkey; I missed him too. When I thought back to my elementary school days, I recalled how much pride that donkey brought us three children. And not just us: even Huang Huzhu and Huang Hezuo, the twin girls, got their share as well. Though Father and Huang Tong, and Mother and Qiuxiang, barely spoke and seldom even greeted one another, I always felt a special closeness to the Huang twins. If you want to know the truth, I felt closer to them than I did to my half sister Lan Baofeng.

  The two donkey traders apparently knew Lan Lian, since they nodded and smiled meaningfully. Father immediately dragged me over to the oxen market, almost as if he was running away from something, or he’d received a sign from heaven. We could never buy a donkey, since no donkey in the world could compare with the one we’d once owned.

  The donkey market had been nearly deserted; the oxen market was just the opposite, with all sizes, shapes, and colors of animals available. How come there are so many oxen, Dad? I thought they’d been killed off during the three years of famine we just got through. It looks like these animals popped up through cracks in the earth or something. There were Southern Shandong oxen, Shaanxi oxen, Mongol oxen, Western Henan oxen, and a bunch of mixed breeds. We entered and, without a second glance, headed straight for a young bull that had just recently been haltered. Looking to be about a year old, it had a chestnut-colored coat, a satiny hide, and big, bright eyes that signaled both intelligence and a mischievous nature. We could tell he was fast and powerful by looking at his strong legs. Young as he was, he already had the frame of a fully grown adult ox, like a young man with fuzz above his lip. His mother, a long-bodied Mongol, had a tail that dragged along the ground and forward-jutting horns. These oxen take great strides, are impatient by nature, can withstand extreme cold and rough treatment, survive easily in the wild, are excellent in front of a plow, and are well suited to pulling a cart. The animal’s owner was a middle-aged man with a sallow complexion and thin lips that did not cover his teeth; a pen was hooked in the pocket of his black uniform, which had missing buttons. He looked like an accountant or storekeeper. A cross-eyed boy with shaggy hair stood behind the owner; he was about my age and, like me, a school dropout. We sized each other up; there was a spark of recognition.

  “In the market for an ox?” the boy called out to me. He added conspiratorially, “This one’s a half-breed. Sire’s a Swiss Simmental, mother’s a Mongol. They mated on the farm. Artificial insemination. The Simmental bull weighed in at eight hundred kilos, like a small mountain. If you’re in the market, this is the one you want to buy. Stay away from the female.”

  “Shut up, you little brat!” the sallow-faced man scolded. “If I hear another word out of you I’ll sew your mouth shut!”

  With a giggle, the boy stuck out his tongue and ran over behind the man. Then he secretly pointed to the mother with the crooked tail, to make sure I noticed.

  Father bent down and reached out to the young ox, like a member of the gentry class inviting a bejeweled, well-dressed young lady to dance in a brightly lit dancehall. Many years later, I saw that very gesture in foreign movies, and invariably thought of my father and that young ox. Father’s eyes flashed, a radiance I think you only see in the eyes of a loved one from whom you’ve been cruelly separated for so long. What really amazed me was that the ox actually walked up, wagged his tail, and licked Father’s hand, once, then a second time. Father stroked his neck.

  “I’ll take this one.”

  “You can’t buy just the one,” the trader said in a tone that ruled out any bargaining. “I can’t take him from his mother.”

  “I only have a hundred yuan,” Father insisted, “and I only want that young one.” He took the money out of an inner pocket and held it out to the ox trader.

  “You can have them both for five hundred,” the man replied. “I’m not going to repeat myself. Either buy them or be on your way. I don’t have time to argue.”

  “I said I only have a hundred.” Father laid the money at the trader’s feet. “I want that young one.”

  “Pick your money up!”

  Father was on his haunches in front of the young ox, intense emotion suffusing his face. He stroked the animal. Obviously, he hadn’t heard the trader’s remark.

  “Go on, Uncle, sell it to him . . . ,” the boy said.

  “Keep your opinions to yourself!” the man said as he handed the mother ox’s tether to the boy. “Take her!” He walked up and pushed Father away from the young ox so he could lead it over to its mother. “I’ve never seen anybody like you,” he said. “Don’t get any ideas about taking it without my approval.”

  Father was sitting on the ground, looking dazed.

  “I don’t care,” he said, as if possessed. “This is the ox I want.”

  Now, of course, I understand why he was so insistent on buying that particular animal, but at the time I didn’t know that the ox was the latest incarnation of Ximen Nao — Ximen Donkey. What I thought was, Father was under such pressure owing to his perverse insistence on remaining an independent farmer that he wasn’t himself mentally or emotionally. Now I’m convinced there was a spiritual bond between him and that ox.

  In the end we bought the ox. It was inevitable, all previously arranged in the underworld. When nothing had yet been settled between Father and the ox trader, the Party branch secretary of the Ximen Village Production Brigade, Hong Taiyue, the brigade commander, Huang Tong, and some other people entered the market. They saw the mother ox and, of course, the young animal. Hong deftly opened the m
other’s mouth.

  “The teeth are all worn down. This one belongs at the knackers.”

  “Elder brother,” the ox trader said with a sneer, “nobody says you have to buy my animals, but you can’t talk about them like that. How can you call these teeth worn down? I tell you, if the brigade wasn’t so short of money, I wouldn’t sell her for any amount. I’d take her home to mate and have another calf next spring.”

  Hong stretched his hand out of his wide sleeve to negotiate price in the tried and tested tradition of livestock markets. But the man waved him off.

  “None of that. Here’s the deal. Both for five hundred, the one and only price.”

  Father wrapped his arms around the young ox and said angrily:

  “This is the ox I want, I’ll pay a hundred yuan.”

  “Lan Lian,” Hong Taiyue mocked him. “Save yourself the trouble. Go home, get your wife and kids, and join the commune. If you’re so fond of animals, we’ll assign you the job of tending them.” Hong cast a glance at Brigade Commander Huang. “What do you say to that, Huang Tong?”

  “Lan Lian,” Huang Tong said, “your stubbornness has won us over. Now it’s time for you to join the commune, both for the sake of your family and to enhance the reputation of the Ximen Village Production Brigade. Every time there’s a meeting, the question invariably arises: Is that Ximen Village farmer still working as an independent?”

  Father ignored them. Starving members of the People’s Commune had killed our black donkey and eaten him, and they’d stolen all the grain we’d stored up. I might be able to understand that sort of abominable behavior, but the wounds on Father’s heart would not be easily healed. He often said that he and that donkey were not linked by the traditional master-livestock relationship but were almost like brothers, joined at the heart. Despite the fact that he could not possibly have known that the black donkey was the reincarnation of the man for whom he had worked, he unquestionably sensed that he and the donkey were fated to be together. To him the comments of Hong Taiyue and the others were nothing but platitudes. Father couldn’t even muster the interest to respond. He just held on to the ox’s neck and said: