Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

it on the head, then rubbed its horns, first the whole one, then the deformed one.
    “Ox,” he said, “you’ve set out on a bright, sunny road, and we welcome you.”
    I saw lights flash in the ox’s eyes, but it was only tears. My dad’s ox was like a tiger whose whiskers had been pulled off, no longer awesome, gentle as a kitten.
    My dream had come true: I was admitted into my brother’s Red Guard organization. Not only that, I was given the role of Wang Lianju in the revolutionary opera The Red Lantern. Every time Li Yuhe called me a traitor, I was reminded of how Dad had used the same word on me. The feeling that I had in fact betrayed Dad by joining the commune grew stronger as time passed, and I couldn’t shake the worry that one day he’d take his own life. But he didn’t; he neither hanged himself from a rafter nor jumped into the river. Instead, he moved out of the room and began sleeping in the ox shed, where he set up a stove in a corner and used a steel helmet as a wok. In the long days that followed, since he had no plow, he worked his land with a hoe, and since he couldn’t manage a wheelbarrow by himself, he carried fertilizer into the field in baskets over his shoulder and used a gourd as a seeder. From 1967 to 1981, his one-point-six acres were a thorn in the side of the authorities, a tiny plot of land smack in the middle of the People’s Commune. His existence was both absurd and sobering; it aroused pity and commanded respect. In the 1970s, Hong Taiyue, back in his role as Party secretary, came up with a variety of schemes to eliminate the last independent farmer, but my dad thwarted all of them. Each time he’d throw the length of rope at Hong’s feet and say:
    “Go ahead, hang me from the apricot tree!”
    Jinlong had been counting on my surrender to the commune and the successful performance of a revolutionary opera to make Ximen Village a model for the county, and when that happened, as a village leader, he’d enjoy a meteoric rise through the ranks. But things did not turn out as he had hoped. First of all, despite the waiting, day and night, by him and by my sister, Little Chang never did come back on the tractor to direct the opera, and then one day word reached them that he had been removed from his post for his unsavory dealings with women. With him gone, my brother’s backing crumbled.
    Then, as the days grew warmer, my brother’s situation worsened, since the masses rejected his plans to stage more revolutionary operas. Some old-timers from redder-than-red poor peasant backgrounds said to him one day while he was smoking a cigarette up in the apricot tree:
    “Commander Jinlong, shouldn’t you be organizing some farm work? Neglecting the land for even a short time can cost a whole year. When workers make revolution, the state pays their wages, but the only way we peasants survive is by planting crops!”
    While they were speaking their piece, they saw my dad walk out the gate with two baskets of manure. The smell of fresh dung in that early spring air energized them.
    “Crops are to be planted in revolutionary land. Production is fine, but only when it’s an integral part of the revolutionary line!” My brother spat out the butt and jumped down out of the tree, landing awkwardly and falling in a heap. The old peasants tried to help him up, but he shoved them away with a snarl. “I’m on my way to see the Commune Revolutionary Committee. You wait here, and don’t do anything foolish.”
    After changing into high-topped galoshes, he went over to the makeshift toilet to relieve himself before heading out on the muddy road to the commune. There he met Yang Qi. They had become enemies over the affair with the goatskin coats, but that was hidden below the surface.
    “Commander Ximen,” Yang said with an irritating grin, “where are you off to? You look more like a Japanese MP than a Red Guard.”
    Shaking his penis, Jinlong snorted to show his contempt for Yang Qi, who continued to grin and said:
    “You’ve lost your backing, buddy, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were next. If you’re smart, you’ll give up your position and hand it to someone who knows something about farming. Singing opera doesn’t put food on the table.”
    With a sneer, my brother said, “The County Revolutionary Committee made me chairman, and they’re the only ones who can take it away from me. The Commune Revolutionary Committee does not have that authority.”
    Trouble was sure