Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

by Mo Yan

  Armed with revolutionary fervor, my half brother Ximen Jinlong called upon his imagination in leading the four Sun brothers — his four warrior protectors — and a pack of bored kids — his shrimp soldiers and crab generals — as well, it goes without saying, as a bunch of adults who dearly loved a show, in taking the Great Cultural Revolution into its second year, when spring arrived on the land.

  They built a platform under the apricot tree with a wooden plank, then hung hundreds of red cloth streamers from the branches of the tree to represent flowers in bloom. Every night, the fourth Sun brother — Tiger Cub — climbed up onto the platform and, puffing out his cheeks, blew his bugle to call the masses to gather round. It was a lovely little bronze bugle, adorned with a red tassel. When it first fell into his hands, Tiger Cub puffed his cheeks out and practiced on it every day, making sounds like a lowing cow. But he mastered the instrument in the days leading up to spring, and was able to produce sweet music, mostly from popular folk tunes. He was a talented youngster, a quick study, no matter what he put his hand to. My brother had people mount a rusty old cannon on top of the platform and scoop several dozen holes out of the compound wall for gun ports, then had them stack cobblestones alongside each hole. Though there were no firearms to hand out, village youngsters with red-tasseled spears stood sentry beside the holes. Every few hours, Jinlong would climb onto the platform and survey the surroundings with a pair of homemade binoculars, creating the impression of a general observing enemy activities. The air was so cold his fingers were like carrots that had been washed in ice water; his cheeks, fittingly, were as red as late-autumn apples. Dressed only in his military tunic and unlined pants, in order to preserve the desired image, he kept his sleeves rolled up high and wore only a brown imitation army cap. Pus and blood oozed from chilblains on his ears; his nose ran continuously. Physically, he was a mess, but he was bursting with energy. The fires of passion burned in his eyes.

  Seeing him out there like that, my mother worked through the night to make a padded coat for him; to preserve the image of a commanding officer, Huzhu helped to give the coat a military look. They even sewed a floral pattern into the collar with white thread. My brother refused to wear it. Mother, he said somberly, don’t fuss like an old woman. The enemy could attack at any minute, and my men are manning their stations in the snow and ice. Should I be the only person wearing a padded coat? My mother glanced all around and discovered that my brother’s “four warrior attendants” and his running dogs were similarly dressed in imitation military uniforms they’d dyed brown, and that they too suffered from running noses, the frozen tips of which looked like hawthorn fruit. And yet, a look of sacred dignity was frozen on each little face.

  My brother mounted his platform every morning, a bullhorn fashioned out of sheet metal in his hand as he held forth to his running dogs below, to villagers who came to be entertained, and to the entire snowbound village, adopting the tone of a great man, which he had learned at the feet of Braying Jackass, exhorting his little revolutionary generals and poor and lower-middle peasants to wipe the scales from their eyes and sharpen their vigilance, to hold their ground to the very last, to wait patiently for spring to arrive with its warmth and new flowers, when they would link up with the main forces under the command of Commander in Chief Chang. His oration was frequently interrupted by a spell of hacking coughs; wheezing sounds like clucking chickens emerged from his chest, hacking sounds emerged from his throat, and we knew that signified the presence of phlegm. But clearing his throat and spitting out the phlegm as he stood on the platform would not become a military commander, so he swallowed the offensive material, to the disgust of all My brother’s hacking coughs were not the only cause of interruption; shouted slogans from the foot of the platform frequently broke into his oration. The second Sun brother — Tiger Sun — took the lead in shouting slogans. He had a booming voice, was somewhat educated, and knew just when to shout to incite the crowd into reaching the apex of revolutionary fervor.

  During a particularly heavy snowstorm one day, as if the sky had opened up and sent ten thousand eiderdown pillows to earth, my brother mounted the platform, raised his megaphone, and was about to harangue his audience when he rocked back and forth, dropped his megaphone, and tumbled to the ground, landing with a thud. Stunned by what they’d just seen, people screamed and ran up to him, all talking at once: What’s wrong, Commander? Commander, what’s wrong? My mother ran crying out of the house, with only a tattered goatskin coat thrown over her shoulders to ward off the cold, and which made her appear unusually big.

  That goatskin coat had been one of a lot of tattered coats our village’s former public security chief Yang Qi had bought from Inner Mongolia on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Emitting a rank odor, it was stained by cow dung and dried sheep’s milk. When he tried to peddle those coats, Yang Qi was accused of profiteering and brought under escort to the commune by Hong Taiyue, who threw him in jail. The coats were locked in the storeroom awaiting final disposition by the commune. Then the Cultural Revolution was launched, and Yang Qi was released and sent home, where he joined Jinlong’s rebel faction and was the strongest voice of the people when Hong Taiyue was held up to public criticism. Yang worked hard to curry favor with my brother, desperate to be appointed deputy commander of the Ximen Village Red Guard detachment. My brother refused his request. The Ximen Village Red Guard detachment, he said decisively, is under unified leadership. There are no deputies. Deep down, he was contemptuous of Yang Qi, a repulsively ugly man with shifty eyes. Considered one of the proletarian thugs, he possessed a belly full of wicked thoughts and was exceedingly destructive. He could be used, but not in a position of authority. I personally overheard my brother say that to his trusted followers in the command headquarters. In a foul mood over having failed in his attempt to gain favor, Yang Qi then conspired with the locksmith Han Liu to break into the storeroom and retrieve the coats that had been taken from him, which he decided to sell out on the street. With winds whistling and snow falling, icicles hanging like sawtooth fangs from the eaves, this was ideal weather for goatskin coats. Villagers crowded round, turning the coats — stained and dirty, patchy, covered with mouse droppings, and nauseatingly foul smelling — over in their hands. Smooth-tongued Yang Qi spoke of his tattered, rotting goods as if they’d once been part of the imperial wardrobe. He picked up a short, black coat, slapped the greasy, worn-out fur —pow pow. Listen to that. Take a look. Feel it, try it on. Listen, it’s like a brass gong. Look, it’s like silk and satin. Look again, the fur is black as paint, and you’ll start to sweat when you slip it on. With one of these coats over your shoulders, you can crawl on ice and lie in the snow without feeling the least bit cold! A nearly new black goatskin coat for only nineteen yuan, about the same as finding one lying in the street. Go ahead, Great-Uncle Zhang, try it on. Oh, oh, my dear uncle. That coat fits like the Mongolian tailor made it just for you. One inch more and it’s too long, one inch less and it’s too short. So, what do you think, hot enough for you? It’s not? Touch your forehead, you’re sweating, and you say it’s not hot? Eight yuan? If not for the neighborhood connection, I wouldn’t sell it for fifteen. You won’t go higher than eight? Old Uncle, what can I say? Last autumn, I smoked a couple of your pipes, so I owe you for that. A man can’t rest till he pays off a debt. All right, then, nine yuan, and I lose money on this sale. Nine yuan and it’s yours. Take it home with you, but first get a rag and wipe the sweat from your forehead. You don’t want to catch cold. Eight, you say? How about eight-fifty? I’ll lower it a bit and you raise it a bit. After all, you’re a generation older than me. If it was anybody else I’d smack him in the ear so hard he’d roll all the way down to the river. Eight yuan, it’s like I’m giving you a transfusion of my own blood, type O, the same as Dr. Bethune. All right, eight yuan, but Old Zhang, now you’re the one who owes me a favor. He counted the sticky bills: five, six, seven, eight, all right, the coat is yours. Now take it home and show the missus. Sit around in i
t for half an hour, and I guarantee the snow on your roof will melt. The heat you give off, even from a distance, will turn the snow in your yard into little rivers and the icicles hanging from your eaves will clatter to the ground. . . .

  With my brother valiantly leading the way, his “four warrior attendants” arrayed spiritedly around him, the Red Guard forces came raucously up the street. A weapon was tucked into my brother’s belt, a starter’s pistol he’d taken from the elementary school PE instructor. Light glinted off the chrome barrel, which was shaped like a dog’s dick. The “four warrior attendants” were also sporting belts, made from the hide of a Production Brigade cow that had recently starved to death. Not completely dry and not yet tanned, the belts stank something awful. Each of them had a revolver tucked into his belt, the ones used by the village opera troupe, all beautifully carved out of elm by the skilled carpenter Du Luban, and then painted black. They were so real-looking that if they fell into the hands of bandits, they could be used in robberies. The back part of the one in Dragon Sun’s belt had been hollowed out to make room for a spring, a firing pin, and a detonating cap. When fired, it produced a louder crack than a real pistol. My brother’s pistol used caps, and when he pulled the trigger, it popped twice. The underlings behind the “four warrior attendants” were all carrying red-tasseled spears over their shoulders, the metal tips polished to a shine with sandpaper and razor sharp. If you buried one in a tree, it was hard work pulling it out. My brother led his troops at a fast clip. The eye-catching red tassels against the virgin snow created a spectacular tableau. When they were about fifty yards from the spot where Yang Qi was selling his rank goods, my brother drew his pistol and fired it into the air: Pow! Pow! Two puffs of smoke quickly dissipated above him. Comrades! he shouted. Charge! Holding their spears as weapons, the words Kill Kill Kill thundered overhead as they sloshed through the snow, turning it to mud with loud crunches. As soon as they reached the spot, my brother gave them a signal, and they surrounded Yang Qi and a dozen or so of his potential goatskin coat customers.

  Jinlong glared at me, and I glared right back. Truth be told, I was feeling lonesome and would have loved to join his Red Guard unit. Their mysterious yet solemn movements excited me. The pistols in the four warrior attendants’ belts excited me even more. They were impressive, even if they were fake, and I was itching to have one just like them. So I asked my sister to tell Jinlong that I wanted to join his Red Guard unit. He told her: Independent farming is a target of revolution, and he does not qualify to be a Red Guard. The minute he takes his ox into the commune I’ll accept him and even appoint him as a team leader. He raised his voice so I could hear every word without having my sister repeat it. But joining the commune, especially the ox, was not my decision to make. Dad hadn’t uttered a word since the incident in the marketplace. He just stared straight ahead, a vacant look on his face, holding the butcher knife in his hand as a threat. After losing half a horn, the ox had the same vacant look. It looked at people out of the corner of its half-closed eyes, its abdomen rising and falling as it emitted a low growl, as if ready to bury its good horn in someone’s belly. No one dared to go near the ox shed, where Dad and his ox were staying. My brother led his Red Guards into the compound every day to stir things up, with gongs and drums, attempts to fire the cannon, attacking bad elements and shouting slogans. My dad and his ox seemed not to hear any of it. But I knew that if any of them got up the nerve to enter the ox shed, blood would be spilled. Under those circumstances, if I tried to lead the ox into the commune, even if Dad said okay, the ox would never do it. So going out to watch Yang Qi peddle his goatskin coats was just an attempt to kill some time.

  My brother raised his arm and aimed his starter’s pistol at Yang Qi’s chest. Trembling, he commanded: Arrest the profiteer! The four warrior attendants ran up and pointed their fake revolvers at Yang Qi’s head from four directions. Put your hands up! they shouted in unison. All Yang Qi did was sneer. Boys, he said, who do you think you’re going to scare with knots from an elm tree? Go ahead, shoot, if you’ve got the balls. I’m prepared to die a hero’s death, to die for a cause. Dragon Sun pulled the trigger. A loud crack, a puff of yellow smoke, a broken gun barrel, and blood spilling from between his thumb and forefinger; the smell of gunpowder hung over them all. Yang Qi, frightened by the noise, paled; a moment later, his teeth were chattering. He looked down at the hole burned in the breast of his coat. Brothers, he said, you really did it! To which my brother responded, Revolution is not a dinner party. I’m a Red Guard, too, Yang Qi said. My brother said that they were Chairman Mao’s Red Guards, while he was just a ragtag Red Guard faction. Since Yang Qi was in a mood to argue, my brother told the Sun brothers to take him to the command headquarters to be criticized and denounced. Then he told the Red Guard troops to confiscate the goatskin coats Yang Qi had laid in the grass beside the road.

  The public meeting to criticize and denounce Yang Qi went on all night. A bonfire was lit in the compound using wood from furniture the bad elements had been forced to break apart and bring over. That included several pieces of valuable sandalwood and rosewood furniture — all burned. Bonfires and public criticism meetings were nightly affairs. The fires melted the snow on the rooftops; black gooey mud was the runoff. My brother knew there was only so much furniture they could use as firewood, but he had an idea. Feng Jun, a pockmarked villager who had been to Northeast China, once told him that, because of the sap, even green pine trees will burn. So my brother told his Red Guards to take the bad elements out behind the elementary school and have them cut down pine trees. One after another, the downed trees were dragged over to the street outside the command headquarters by the village’s pair of scrawny horses.

  The denouncement of Yang Qi centered on his capitalist activities, his verbal abuse of the little generals, and his failed plan to set up a counterrevolutionary organization. After beating and kicking him mercilessly, they ran him out of the compound. The goatskin coats were passed out to Red Guards on night duty. From the time the revolutionary tide began to sweep through the land, my brother slept only in the original brigade office, now command headquarters, in his clothes, and always in the company of his four warrior attendants and a dozen or more underlings. They laid straw and blankets out on the floor and were kept warm by the addition of the newly acquired coats.

  But let’s return to what we were talking about earlier: My mother rushed out of the house with the goatskin coat over her shoulders, which made her appear unusually big. The coat had been allocated to my sister by my brother, since she was the Red Guard doctor first, then the village doctor. True to her filial nature, she gave the coat to my mother to ward off the cold. She ran up to where my brother lay, knelt down beside him, and lifted up his head. What’s wrong, son? My brother’s face was purple, his lips dry and cracked, and his ears oozed pus and blood; he looked like he’d become a martyr. Your sister, where’s your sister? She went to Chen Dafu’s to deliver his baby. Jiefang, my mother wailed, be a good boy and go get her. I looked down at Jinlong, then over at the now leaderless Red Guards, and my heart ached. We had the same mother, after all. Sure, he liked to throw his weight around, and that made me a little jealous. But I admired him. He was a rare talent, I knew that, and I didn’t want him to die. So I raced out of the compound and down the street, headed west for a couple of hundred yards, then turned north into a lane, where Chen Dafu and his family lived in three rooms with a thatched roof and a rammed-earth wall, the nearest compound to the river about a hundred yards down the lane.

  Chen’s scrawny dog greeted me with ferocious barking. So I picked up a brick and threw it at him, hitting him in the leg. With a series of pained yelps, he ran into the yard on three legs, just as Chen Dafu emerged from inside carrying a very big and very intimidating club. Who hit my dog? I did! I replied with an angry glare. Seeing it was me, the towering dark man softened; his features relaxed as he flashed an ambiguous smile. Why be afraid of me? Because I had something on him. I’d seen what
he and Huang Tong’s wife, Wu Qiuxiang, were doing in the willow grove one day. Embarrassed to be caught in the act, she ran off, bent at the waist, abandoning her laundry basin and mallet. A checkered article of clothing floated down the river. As he was buttoning up his pants, Chen Dafu threatened me: If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you! If Huang Tong doesn’t kill you first, I replied. His tone softened and he tried to soft-soap me instead, saying he’d get his wife’s niece to marry me. The image of a sandy-haired girl with tiny ears and snot on her lip floated into my mind. Hell! I said. Who wants that yellow-haired niece of yours? I’d rather go through life as a bachelor than marry anyone as ugly as that! Ah, my boy, you’re raising your sights too high. I tell you, I’m going to see that you and that ugly girl are married one day! Then I guess you’d better get a rock and beat me to death, I said. Kid, he replied, let’s you and me make a gentleman’s agreement. You don’t tell anyone what you saw here, and I won’t try to fix you up with my wife’s niece. If you break your promise, I’ll have my wife take her niece to your place and set her down on your bed, then have her tell people you raped her. How would you like that? I thought for a moment. Having that ugly, stupid girl sit on my bed and then telling people I raped her would spell big trouble. Despite the saying, “An upright person does not fear a slanted shadow, and dried excrement does not stick to walls,” I thought this might be more than I could handle. So we reached an agreement. But over time, based upon the way he treated me, I realized that he was more afraid of me than I was of him. That’s why I didn’t have to worry, even if I crippled his dog, and why I could talk back to him like that. Where’s my sister? I said. I need to find her. She’s with my wife, delivering a baby. I gazed at the five snot-nosed children in his yard, each slightly taller than the one before, and mocked him: That’s quite a wife you’ve got there, popping them out like a bitch, one litter after the other. He bared his teeth. Don’t talk like that. You’re too young to say hurtful things like that. You’ll see why when you grow up. I haven’t got time to argue with you, I said. I’m here to get my sister. I turned and faced his window. Sis! I shouted. Mother sent me here to get you. Jinlong’s dying! The shrill cry of a newborn baby erupted inside the house, drawing Chen Dafu to the window as if his pants were on fire. What is it? he shouted. The woman inside responded weakly, It’s got that thing between its legs. Chen covered his face with his hands and walked in tight circles in the snow beneath the window. Wu! he uttered at the end of each circle. Wu! The old man in the sky has opened his eyes, finally, and Chen Dafu now has an heir — My sister tore out of the house and asked me what was wrong. Jinlong’s dying, I said. He fell off the platform and hit the ground. He won’t last long.